It didn’t take long for Evan to reach the edge of the forest.
The mont he arrived, he imdiately sensed that sothing was wrong.
The aftermath of the salamander was still clearly visible.
The usual distribution of beasts had been completely disrupted. The weaker ones, normally confined to the outer edges, had been pushed outward in chaotic clusters, gathering at the very boundary of the vegetation. They moved restlessly, agitated, driving away even weaker creatures and the unawakened beasts that normally inhabited the area.
It made no sense.
Evan narrowed his eyes slightly, extending his perception deeper into the forest.
There he sensed sothing even more wrong.
Between the trees, he could sense several Rank E presences in places they should never have been.
Sothing had forced them all outward.
And he already knew what it was.
He stepped into the forest without encountering resistance, slipping past the displaced groups of beasts with natural ease. His clone’s [Death Sense] spread ahead of him like a silent tide.
At first, nothing unusual.
Just the usual scattered presences of the forest... all of them tainted by a faint, lingering sense of unease.
Then, further ahead, sothing different.
A vital signature that did not belong to the other nervous beasts. No, this one was calr, denser, far more stable, yet it remained there as if the rest of the world revolved around it by its own will.
Evan followed it.
But he had not gone far before he began to feel changes in the air, heat.
A dry, heavy warmth that increased with every step, carrying the scent of burned earth and sothing deeper, mineral-like, as if stone had been left burning for too long.
He stopped at the edge of a line of trees and looked down at what had once been a clearing.
The clearing had been transford.
A basin roughly forty ters wide had ford, its floor replaced by a small lake of magma. Slow-moving, glowing in shades of deep red and orange, occasionally breaking into lazy bubbles that rose and popped without sound.
At the center of it, almost entirely subrged and completely motionless, a creature slept.
The Blazing Salamander.
It was larger than expected, around six ters long. Its body was low and heavy, pressed close to the ground. Its scales were dark at the edges, glowing faintly at the joints, as though an inner fire never truly went out. Its tail slowly stirred the magma in long, unhurried arcs. Its eyes were closed.
Evan stared at it for a long mont.
’This complicates things.’ he thought.
He couldn’t kill it inside the magma. Even if the heat wouldn’t imdiately harm him, fighting in that environnt was out of the question, the creature was in its elent, literally.
Any attack he launched would be absorbed, deflected, or rendered aningless.
He needed it out.
He checked the distance. Just under ten ters from the edge of the lake. Close enough.
The [Death Mark] was his best option, as always. Now that the ability had reached E-Rank, it no longer required physical contact, only remaining within a ten-ter radius for it to activate.
He took position, suppressing his presence completely. He waited until the creature’s slow breathing confird its calm state, then stepped forward and closed the distance.
The system notification arrived quietly.
[Death Mark has been applied to target.]
[Target Vitality: 99.8%]
The vitality began to drop, second by second.
99.6%... 99.4%... 99.2%...
The amount drained each second varied depending on the rank of the target. For weaker creatures, it was significantly higher. For stronger ones, like the salamander, it was much smaller.
That said, while the rate of the drain was slow, it was still enough to be noticed, even by the creature itself.
The salamander’s eyes snapped open.
Not slowly. Not groggily. Instantly.
Its pupils contracted into thin slits under the magma-lit glow as it scanned its surroundings. It had felt sothing, no, not pain. Not yet. Sothing subtler. A strange wrongness, as if its body had just beco slightly less than it was a mont ago.
Its head turned.
It found him.
For a single mont, they stared at each other.
Then it erupted.
The salamander surged upright, magma churning violently around it as it released a sound between a hiss and a roar, a sharp, explosive cry that sent waves of heat rolling across the clearing. It lunged toward the edge of the lake.
Evan was already moving.
He retreated toward the treeline, maintaining distance deliberately. The salamander reached the bank and stopped, not from hesitation, but because its body was still partially trapped between magma and solid ground. Its front limbs struck the scorched earth.
It opened its mouth.
A concentrated jet of superheated liquid fire shot forward, fast and compressed, aid directly at him.
Evan dodged sideways, feeling the heat pass close enough to burn the air around him. The attack struck a tree behind him, instantly igniting it, sap boiling and exploding in seconds.
"Great... it even has ranged attacks," he muttered under his breath.
He landed smoothly and kept moving, circling the edge of the clearing, drawing its attention in a wide arc. The salamander followed, dragging itself further out of the magma with each movent. Three limbs now on land, tail still subrged, heat radiating off its body in visible waves.
It fired again. He moved again.
The pattern was set.
He wasn’t fighting yet, just maintaining distance, letting the Death Mark work, pulling the creature away from its advantage little by little. The salamander was faster than its size suggested, low to the ground, capable of sudden bursts of speed. But with each passing minute, it grew more agitated, and agitation made it predictable.
He could feel the Mark at work through the system’s faint feedback: a slow, steady drain. Not enough to be obvious at first, but enough to accumulate.
At the eight-minute mark, the salamander suddenly paused mid charge.
It had felt it.
[Target Vitality: 95.8%]
The hesitation lasted only a second, but Evan caught it. A brief fracture in its rhythm. Its head turned sharply, searching for the source of the drain, finding nothing it could strike.
Then panic set in.
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