Chapter 88: Don’t Touch It

Chapter 88: Don’t Touch It

"I’m trying."

Her visor flashed rapidly as she scanned the enormous tree at the center of the grove. The mechanical whirring of her suit’s processors grew louder, straining under the sheer volume of anomalous data flooding her system.

Nothing.

Every attempt to analyze it returned incomplete information. The holographic projections bleeding into the air around her face flickered violently, text corrupting into unreadable symbols before resetting entirely.

"It’s absorbing energy from everything around it," she muttered, her fingers dancing blindly across her wrist console as she tried to force a breakthrough. "The soil, the roots, the smaller trees... it’s a closed ecosystem of absolute consumption."

She suddenly stopped. Sky looked at her. The rigid stiffness of her posture sent a sudden spike of adrenaline through his veins. "What?"

Chloe pointed toward the ground, her finger trembling slightly. "Those bones." Sky looked down. The chamber floor was practically covered with them. Some were ancient, reduced to little more than fragments. They were yellowed, brittle things, half-buried under centuries of compressed dirt and creeping moss.

Others looked disturbingly fresh. The fabric of tattered armor still clung to some, and the stark white of the marrow showed no signs of environmental decay, only an absolute emptiness.

"There’s something inside them," Chloe continued, her voice dropping an octave as she read the microscopic energy signatures. "Residual energy."

Vesper’s expression hardened. Her gaze swept over a particularly fresh ribcage that lay shattered near a thick root cluster.

"Soul energy."

Chloe nodded.

"Exactly."

Sky’s eyes narrowed. The grim reality of their situation was settling in. This wasn’t a standard dungeon boss guarding a treasure room. It was an apex predator that fed on the fundamental essence of living beings.

The enormous tree pulsed.

THUM.

The vibration didn’t just rattle the stones; it echoed inside Sky’s chest cavity, a deep, heavy thud that made his heart skip a beat.

Several roots shifted.

The bones beneath them trembled. They skittered across the floor like dry leaves caught in a sudden draft, drawn toward the base of the trunk by an unseen magnetic force.

Then the Soul Clone suddenly reacted. Sky felt a violent tug inside his chest. It felt as though a pair of phantom hands had reached through his ribcage, grabbing hold of his spiritual pathways and yanking hard. He staggered. The world tilted violently for a fraction of a second, his vision swimming with spots of cold, dead light.

"Again..."

Vesper immediately turned toward him. Her golden aura flared instinctively, sensing the sudden fluctuation in his vital signs.

"Your clone?" Sky shook his head. He gripped the hilt of his Blood Blade harder, using the physical weight of the weapon to anchor his awareness back to his body.

"It’s gone."

"What?"

"The connection is still being pulled." His Soul Clone wasn’t even present anymore. He had shattered the manifestation minutes ago, severing the link completely to protect himself from the initial strike. Yet something was trying to reach it.

No.

Not the clone.

Him.

The entity was tracing the phantom residue of the ability, using the lingering spiritual scent to track the source back to the host.

Sky’s breathing became heavier. Each inhalation felt like breathing in crushed ice, chilling his lungs from the inside out. "This thing doesn’t just attack the body."

Chloe’s expression darkened as she watched Sky’s internal energy matrix destabilize on her secondary monitors.

"It attacks the soul." The realization settled over them. It was a suffocating truth. Physical armor meant nothing here. Magical shields meant nothing if the attack could simply bypass the corporeal shell and target the metaphysical core of an Awakened. Vesper slowly raised her Holy Scepter Blade. The sacred steel gleamed with a brilliant, righteous light, a radiant defiance against the absolute dark of the grove.

"Then we destroy it."

She stepped forward, her boots crunching against the scattered bone fragments as she prepared to launch a preemptive strike.

Sky immediately grabbed her arm. His grip was frantic, breaking his usual calm demeanor.

"Wait."

Vesper looked at him. Her eyes narrowed.

"Why?"

"I don’t know what happens if that thing gets a direct connection to your soul." Sky’s gaze was dead serious. "If it feeds on spiritual energy, your holy light might just be a banquet to it. We don’t strike blindly." Chloe nodded quickly, backing up Sky’s warning as her diagnostic tools confirmed his intuition.

"He’s right."

She projected a new scan, the holographic light casting a pale green glow over their faces.

"The roots aren’t the primary threat." Sky looked at the tree. The massive trunk seemed to stretch upward into infinity, disappearing into the subterranean darkness of the cavern ceiling.

"Then what is?"

Chloe pointed toward its trunk.

"The tree itself."

A faint red outline appeared beneath the bark. It filtered through the layers of wood, revealing a complex, labyrinthine network of glowing pathways that converged toward the center of the organism. Deep inside the enormous trunk was a dense concentration of energy. But it wasn’t like the energy of a normal Savage Beast. It wasn’t a singular, cohesive pool of mana that could be disrupted or drained.

It was compressed.

Almost like thousands of souls had been forced together. They were compressed into a singular, agonizing mass, screaming silently within the prison of the white timber.

Sky stared at the reading. The sheer scale of the energy was staggering, a mountain of stolen life force.

"That’s its core?"

"Not exactly."

Chloe zoomed in. The holographic display fractured, expanding a small section of the trunk to reveal the microscopic reality of the entity’s anatomy.

"There are multiple cores."

Sky’s eyes widened. The implications were horrifying.

"Thousands."

Silence. The word hung in the air like a death sentence. You couldn’t just pierce a single heart to kill this monster. It had a thousand hearts, each one born from a stolen life. Vesper’s grip tightened around her Holy Scepter Blade. The golden light rippling along the edge of her weapon vibrated with a dangerous intensity. "Then how do we kill it?"

Chloe stared at the impossible readings. For the first time since they had entered the dungeon, her voice sounded entirely devoid of hope.

"I don’t know."

Suddenly—

WHOOSH!

A massive root tore through the ground. It didn’t emerge slowly; it erupted with the speed and violence of a launching missile.

Sky jumped aside. The root slammed into the spot where he had been standing.

BOOM!

Stone and dirt exploded into the air. The shockwave rattled his teeth, sending a shower of sharp stone splinters raining down across the chamber. Sky landed several meters away, his Blood Blade raised. His boots slid across the uneven floor, kicking up a cloud of ancient dust as he reestablished his footing.

Chloe’s visor flashed red. A high-pitched alarm began to blare inside her helmet, signaling an immediate, unavoidable threat environment.

"They’re attacking."

Sky glanced at the countless pale trees surrounding them. Every single one of them had fully unfurled its branches, the pale wood flexing as they reached toward the center of the room.

"Yeah."

He tightened his grip around the Blood Blade.

"I noticed."