Under the luminescent moon, the Vados plains grew unnaturally silent.
The ceaseless night symphony—the distant howls of apex predators, the frantic scrabble of prey fleeing through tall grass, the low rumble of territorial roars echoing from hidden valleys—had all fallen away at once. It was as though the land itself recognized sothing ancient and dangerous had awakened in its heart and decided, collectively, to hold its breath.
The moon hung enormous and low, a perfect silver disc that painted the world in cold, liquid light. Shadows stretched impossibly long; every blade of grass glead with a tallic edge, and the air itself seed thinner, heavier, charged with anticipation.
Before Dax knelt a single dark-green creature.
It was similar in silhouette to the goblins he had torn apart earlier green skin, pointed ears, clawed fingers—but the resemblance ended there.
This one was taller by a head, broader across the shoulders, its posture carrying a hint of natural dignity even in terror. Its skin was a deep, almost black-green, veined faintly with shifting shadows that moved beneath the surface like ink stirred in water. It trembled, head bowed low, palms flat against the earth in absolute submission.
"Not too bad," Dax murmured, voice soft in the stillness.
He circled the kneeling figure once, studying it with clinical detachnt. The creature slowly lifted its head—unprompted, yet sohow compelled by his gaze alone.
A humanoid face stared back: sharp cheekbones, a wide jaw, large ears that swept backward in elegant, predatory curves. Amber eyes glowed faintly in the moonlight, wide with a mixture of fear and dawning curiosity. No trace of the dull, bestial vacancy Dax had seen in the lesser goblins. This one looked… aware.
It looks like a hobgoblin at first glance but it's totally different, Dax thought, tilting his head. They are stated to have Lighter skin tone, shorter ears… this one is darker, larger, more refined. My blood has forced a divergence from its original evolutionary path. Accelerated. Cleaner. Stronger.
"Stand."
The single word carried no volu, yet it rang like a command carved into reality.
The creature rose imdiately. Tender, corded muscles shifted beneath its skin—lean and precise, built for explosive speed rather than brute mass. Curiosity flickered openly now in those amber eyes, warring with the instinctual terror of standing before sothing far greater than itself.
Dax stepped closer without hesitation. He placed one palm flat against the creature's chest, fingers splaying wide. Slowly, deliberately, he explored—tracing the rapid thump of a heart that beat too fast, feeling the strange new pathways his own essence had burned through veins and muscle tissue, sensing the subtle reconfiguration of bone density, tendon elasticity, even the way mana now flowed differently through its ridians.
"I see," he said quietly, almost to himself. "My blood didn't just strengthen you. It rewrote you. Diverted the entire evolutionary trajectory."
He withdrew his hand. Without pause he extended his right palm and sliced deep into his own flesh with a fingernail. Crimson welled instantly—darker than normal human blood, threaded with faint silver-black veins.
He produced a small glass test tube from thin air. With extre care—almost reverence—he let the blood drip inside, ensuring not a single drop escaped or touched the ground. The tube sealed itself with a soft click of contained pressure.
Dax snapped his fingers.
A black oval tore open in the night air; sterile white light spilled out, cutting a harsh rectangle against the moonlit grass.
"Aid bot—test this blood."
A tiny silver orb floated out, humming gently. It accepted the tube with delicate precision, spun once in acknowledgnt, and vanished back into the portal. The gate closed silently behind it.
Dax turned back to the dark-green figure.
"I need twenty n. Can you do that for ?"
The creature bowed lower, forehead touching grass in silent, absolute affirmation.
"Good." A faint smile touched Dax's lips. "Then you'll need a weapon worthy of what you're about to beco."
He reached into his storage space and withdrew a massive carcass—one of the beasts he had claid from Micah earlier. A gigantic serpent-type magical beast, thirty-five feet long even coiled, its body thicker than three n standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Scales glead the exact sa deep green as the goblin's skin; even in death, a faint toxic miasma clung to it, making the air around the corpse shimr with venomous heat. The pressure radiating from the corpse alone was enough to make lesser creatures instinctively flee.
Dax smiled—slow, satisfied, almost affectionate.
"Perfect."
Without hesitation he plunged his hand into the serpent's skull. Bone cracked like dry timber under his fingers. He pulled free a glowing pearl-like core—iridescent, fist-sized, pulsing with concentrated poison mana that swirled inside like trapped lightning storms.
He turned the core slowly in his fingers, examining every facet through Origin Eyes. Layers of venomous energy revealed themselves: spiraling chains of necrotic mana, threads of paralytic essence, pockets of corrosive void that ate at light itself.
Master, Inerous warned quietly, you are poisoning yourself.
"I know."
Dax watched impassively as the serpent's residual blood and core essence seeped into the open cut on his palm. Black veins crept up his forearm like living ink, spreading toward his elbow. Pain flared—sharp, burning, acidic—but he did not flinch, did not pull away.
"For a fact, my body craves this," he said softly. "It hungers for the venom, the corruption, the evolution it promises. But I can wait. My hunger is not what it once was. I control it now."
He turned to the dark-green goblin.
Without warning, he drove the pearl core straight through its back—clean, surgical, piercing spine and heart in one rciless motion.
Screeech!
The creature convulsed violently. Its body arched in agony, limbs jerking in uncontrolled spasms. It dropped to its knees, then collapsed forward, every muscle seizing as the pearl's poison flooded its system.
Dax's eyes remained cold, analytical.
"Synthesis."
Silver radiance burst from his aura, flooding the trembling form like moonlight made liquid. He pressed both hands to the goblin's back, channeling energy directly into the wound. Black goo erupted from every pore—thick, tar-like, reeking of corruption and rebirth. It wrapped the creature in seconds, hardening into a glossy black cocoon that pulsed with inner light. Faint silver veins traced across its surface, throbbing in ti with an unseen heartbeat.
The cocoon settled gently onto the grass, silent now, hibernating.
"While you hibernate," Dax said quietly, "I will create sothing befitting your birth."
He raised his right hand.
A small black hole blood at his palm—tiny, controlled, yet radiating terrifying suction even at this scale.
In the sa instant, a black halo manifested above his head—thin, perfect, pulsing with every beat of his heart. Each pulse sent out a wave of consuming force that made the air groan in protest.
"I hated you once," Dax said, addressing the black hole as though it could hear him. "Because I lacked a proper way to utilize you."
He wasn't speaking to the singularity itself.
He was speaking to the technique buried within it.
"Black Hole Forging."
The small orb drifted upward. Its suction intensified—grass bent flat for dozens of yards in every direction, small stones lifted and spiraled inward like moths to fla.
The surroundings shifted hue—everything tinted deep, bruised purple, as though reality itself were bruising under the strain.
Ancient trees—centuries-old giants—uprooted with dry, splintering cracks. Trunks compressed as they hurtled toward the growing void; branches snapped and folded inward like paper in a fist. Earth tore free in huge chunks; the air howled with the sound of tearing space.
"It is ti."
Dax smiled—wide, almost reverent.
He clapped his palms together.
"Origin Eyes."
The world sharpened to painful clarity.
Every particle of dust, every thread of mana, every hidden current of power laid bare before him in excruciating detail. The black hole pulsed once more—hungry and obedient.
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