Ethan pushed aside the last giant leaf of The rainforest and stepped through.
A desert stretched out before him.
He stopped at the sharp border where rainforest t sand, caught off guard by how abrupt the change was. Behind him, tangled green life pressed close and humid; ahead, an ocean of pale dunes rolled into the distance. The division felt wrong, almost surgical, as if so invisible blade had cleaved the world in two and decided that everything lush would end here, and everything dead would begin.
"Holy hell... if I didn’t know this wasn’t the Sea of Death, I’d think I was ho," Blackie muttered, squinting out at the dunes.
It did look like it. An endless sea of sand, crest after crest fading into the horizon. The only real difference was the sky. There was no sun here, no burning glare, only a dim vault lit by a restless green aurora that rippled across the darkness. The shifting light cast long, distorted shadows over the dunes, turning every rise into sothing that looked almost alive.
"Let’s go," Ethan said quietly.
He stepped forward.
The mont both feet settled into the sand, a strange tingling numbness crept up through his soles. It was followed by a fleeting sensation he couldn’t na, sothing subtle and deeply unsettling.
It slipped away before he could pin it down.
"Eugh..." Blackie shuddered, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shake sothing off.
"You felt that too?" Ethan asked, glancing at him.
Blackie frowned. "Not sure. Just got the creeps for a second. Feels normal now."
Ethan gave a slow nod. Sa for him. Yet the harder he tried to rember exactly what that sensation had been, the more it blurred, dissolving like mist under sunlight. It was as if his mind itself were smoothing over the mory, nudging him gently to stop thinking about it.
That alone made him uneasy.
"Boss..." Blackie’s voice lowered. "You get the feeling this sand is... moving?"
Ethan forced his gaze downward. Without Soul Sense, he felt half-blind. He had grown too accustod to perceiving the world beyond sight, and the absence of that constant awareness left him strangely exposed.
He focused.
At first, it looked like ordinary sand. Then he noticed it. The surface wasn’t settling the way sand should. The grains seed to shift in faint, uneven ripples, almost imperceptible unless you stared.
Blackie crouched and scooped up a handful.
He brought it close to his face, then he jerked back as if he’d grabbed a live coal.
"Shit! This isn’t sand—"
Blue lightning exploded around his palm.
A plu of acrid black smoke rose as the grains burst with sharp, wet popping sounds. They didn’t crumble. They ruptured. Tiny explosions crackled in rapid succession, and a wave of putrid stench hit the air, thick and nauseating.
"—they’re eggs! Bug eggs!" Blackie shouted, flinging the charred fragnts away and scrambling upright. He wiped his hand violently against his pants, face twisted in disgust.
Ethan’s blood ran cold.
The Cloudfang elder had ntioned a desert beyond the forest. He had said that halfway across, they’d discovered sparse eggs hidden among the sand.
Sparse.
Hidden among.
This was neither.
The ground was made of them.
They were not walking across a desert. They were standing atop a living, layered mass of insect spawn stretching who knew how deep. The dunes were nothing more than contours ford by countless clustered eggs.
Three hundred years had changed this place beyond recognition.
The elder’s warning echoed in Ethan’s mind, clear and grim.
Don’t touch the eggs. Don’t kill them.
Blackie had just incinerated a handful.
"Run," Ethan said, grabbing Blackie’s arm.
They launched forward.
The mont Ethan pushed off, a sickening chorus of wet squelches sounded beneath his boots. Eggs crushed and ruptured under every stride. Avoiding them was impossible. The layer extended as far as he see, and likely far beneath the surface as well.
He had promised Serena Chen he would bury bodies if they found any.
Here, there would be nothing left to bury. Anything that died in this place would be stripped to bone within minutes.
A low hum began to build behind them.
Bzzzzzzzzzz...
It thickened, swelling into a continuous vibration that seed to fill the air itself. Ethan risked a glance back.
Along the path they had taken, the ground churned. Tiny black specks lifted into the air in staggering numbers. The crushed eggs had triggered the rest.
They were hatching.
Creatures no larger than mosquitoes burst upward in writhing waves, their forms disturbingly uniform. Slender bodies. Translucent wings. Long, needle-like proboscises that glinted under the aurora’s green light.
"Thunder Burst!"
Blackie spun mid-run and hurled a torrent of crackling electricity behind them. Orbs of condensed lightning detonated within the swarm, tearing open a wide corridor. Thousands of the creatures shriveled and fell as ash.
He slowed slightly, a grin flashing across his face. "Haha! That’s more like it—"
"Idiot! Keep moving!" Ethan barked.
Blackie’s grin vanished as he looked beyond the cleared space.
The ground farther back wasn’t settling.
It was boiling.
Another layer erupted upward, denser than before. The new swarm was thicker, and the creatures within it were visibly larger. Their wings beat with a heavier pitch, their bodies darker, their proboscises longer and sharper.
Blackie hunched forward and sprinted harder. "Oh, you’ve got to be kidding ..."
Ethan’s mind raced as he ran.
The eggs had to be layered by age. The topmost layer, freshly laid, hatched into those weak Level 1 pests. Crushing and killing them rely exposed what lay beneath. The deeper layers held older spawn, stronger, approaching Level 2.
Individually, they were nothing.
But there were millions.
Maybe tens of millions.
If they stood and fought, they would only trigger wave after wave until exhaustion dragged them down. Their only option was speed.
As he ran, Ethan forced himself to remain alert despite the sensory void. The Cloudfang elder had spoken of sothing else here. Sothing larger. Sothing that had nearly killed him three centuries ago. The swarms were not the true threat.
The real terror waited ahead, at a place the elder had called the chasm.
And they were running straight toward it.
Without warning, a pulse of dread surged through Ethan’s chest.
"Blackie! Stay close! Anything behind us is yours!"
In the sa breath, Ethan shifted.
His body expanded, muscles thickening as coarse fur rippled into existence. Bear Form surged over him, grounding his balance and reinforcing his mass. The Twilight War Spear materialized in his grip, its presence solid and reassuring in his palm.
The air ahead distorted.
Then—
BOOM.
The ground exploded in front of them.
Sand and shattered eggs blasted skyward as a colossal silhouette rose, blotting out the aurora’s green glow.
"Holy hell... it’s huge!" Blackie breathed.
Before them hovered a gargantuan mosquito, its wings spanning nearly two kiloters from tip to tip. Each beat of those titanic wings churned the air into violent currents. Its body lood like a living siege engine, and from its head extended a proboscis hundreds of ters long, thick as a tower and hollow at the tip.
It lunged.
The massive spear-like proboscis shot toward them, aiming to skewer them both in a single thrust.
Ethan bent his knees and leapt.
The Twilight War Spear arced upward as he soared to et it head-on. The Cloudfang elder had said the creature’s hide was impossibly tough. Three hundred years ago, at a strength just shy of Ethan’s current level, he hadn’t even been able to leave a mark.
But Ethan was not empty-handed.
He had the Twilight War Spear.
Confidence surged through him, sharp and unyielding. There was nothing this weapon could not pierce.
"Die!"
Midair, he chained his skills together, compressing their force into the spear’s tip. Heavy Strike. Crushing Blow. Rend. Power layered upon power until the weapon blazed with condensed silver light, its brilliance cutting through the green haze.
"Pathfinder’s Guidance!"
With one hand locked firm around the shaft, Ethan thrust forward, eting the colossal proboscis head-on.
Clang.
The impact rang out like tal striking tal, sharp and jarring.
The force sent Ethan hurtling backward through the air, his body thrown like a stone.
The giant mosquito’s dive halted abruptly. Its enormous fra shuddered midair, wings faltering for the briefest mont as the shock of the collision rippled through it.
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