The first sound wasn't accidental.
Dusk dragged the sabre across exposed bone as he walked. Not enough to dull it. Just enough to scream. Metal against calcified rib. A long, deliberate scrape that cut across the plain.
The wind carried it.
He didn't look at the tower. He didn't look at the seam.
He wanted witnesses.
The ground answered.
A ripple passed beneath the sediment. Then another. Not tremors now. Movement.
Good.
The skull spoke from behind, faint but sharp.
"You abandon concealment."
Dusk didn't slow.
"There's nothing left to conceal."
The first breach came fast. Sand burst upward in a spiral column as a segmented mass tore through. Pale plates. Hooked mandibles. A body too long to track in one glance.
A worm.
No hesitation.
Dusk moved before it completed its arc.
Telekinesis snapped tight around the sabre. Not lifting it. Compressing. Narrowing the vector. Reducing waste.
The worm lunged.
He stepped inside its trajectory.
One clean counter.
The blade did not cleave flesh alone. It pressed.
The impact landed shallow across a plated segment. Not fatal.
Intentional.
The worm recoiled violently. Its forward drive staggered.
Resolve thinned.
Dusk pivoted and let it overextend.
A second breach erupted to his left.
Now two.
He exhaled once.
Good.
He sprinted toward the nearest skeletal tree rising from the sediment. Dead trunk. Hollow interior. Brittle.
The first worm pursued, mandibles tearing furrows through sand.
Dusk vaulted, planted a foot against the trunk, twisted mid-air, and slashed across the worm's upper plates again as it rose to strike.
Somnolent Wrath bit deeper this time.
He didn't need to cut through.
He needed to weaken structure.
The tree cracked as the worm's bulk collided into it.
Dusk landed behind the trunk and drove the blade downward through a seam exposed by the impact.
This time he fed prana.
The resistance shifted.
Resolve thinned.
The worm convulsed, its movements losing cohesion. Its body thrashed blindly and smashed through the weakened trunk.
Wood split.
Mass collapsed.
Dusk stepped back as both tree and worm crashed into the sediment.
He drove the blade once more into exposed tissue.
Silence.
A window surfaced.
Congratulations, Challenger.
You have killed a Bone Devourer.
You have obtained: a Nascent-Rank Core.
He didn't pause to study it.
The second worm was already closing.
Dusk didn't linger over the corpse.
A faint flicker pulsed in his peripheral vision.
A core slid into his palm at a thought.
Solid. Dense. Unstable.
He closed his fingers around it.
No ceremony.
He crushed the outer shell and forced the prana inward.
Prana surged through him in a harsh wave. Not harmonious. Not refined. Forced alignment.
His muscles tightened. Vision sharpened at the edges.
The second worm erupted beneath him.
He moved before thought completed.
Speed increased.
Not dramatically. Efficiently.
He sidestepped the breach, placed his palm against the worm's plated flank mid-motion, and injected prana directly into it.
Not to empower.
To destabilize.
The foreign prana collided with its internal flow. A disruption.
Its strike faltered for half a second.
Enough.
He cut through the softened junction beneath its head.
This time the blade went clean.
The worm collapsed in a spiraling heap.
Another notification flickered.
Congratulations, Challenger.
You have killed....
Dusk didn't wait for it to settle.
More movement.
Three.
Four.
The plain was no longer quiet.
Good.
He stood in open view.
Let the tower see.
Two cores shimmered above his palm in twin pulses of pale light.
He brought his hands together and compressed them simultaneously.
Pain flared through his channels.
He released the pressure inward instead of outward.
A pulse of prana expanded inside him in a shallow field.
The next worm breached directly into it.
Dusk twisted and slashed once across its body. Not deep. Just enough.
External resolve eroded.
He kicked off its plating and redirected his own prana into the second wounded worm charging from the side.
Injected instability.
The first worm slammed into the second.
Their bodies collided violently, weakened intent clashing against disrupted internal flow.
Mandibles tore into the wrong target.
Mass tangled.
Dusk stepped aside.
He didn't interfere.
He watched them damage each other until structural integrity failed.
When one attempted to withdraw, he ended it cleanly.
Two more cores.
Now his breathing had changed.
Faster.
Not from exhaustion.
From pressure.
He was forcing growth.
The prana inside him thickened, becoming less diffuse. More directional.
Telekinesis sharpened.
Range didn't increase.
Density did.
Another worm surfaced behind him, faster than the rest.
Dusk didn't turn.
A core shimmered into existence behind him at the thought.
He seized it with telekinesis mid-materialization and hurled it backward.
It struck the worm's open mandibles and detonated in a chaotic prana burst.
Not explosive.
Disruptive.
The worm convulsed mid-lunge.
Dusk turned then.
Three rapid steps.
One precise thrust.
End.
Silence returned gradually.
Broken segments lay half-submerged across the plain.
Notifications layered faintly in his peripheral vision.
He didn't read them all.
He felt the difference.
Within him, something was condensing.
Not a breakthrough.
Not yet.
But closer.
He felt the remaining cores within him.
Five.
Unstable.
Violent.
Perfect.
The tower's pull intensified.
It felt different now.
Not curiosity.
Recognition.
The skull's voice returned, quieter.
"You believe accumulation equals victory."
"No," Dusk said.
Pain threaded through his muscles.
His veins burned faintly beneath the skin.
"I believe preparation reduces waste."
His stance shifted subtly as his body recalibrated.
Telekinesis compressed further inward.
Somnolent Wrath felt lighter.
Not because it changed.
Because he had.
The ground beneath the tower pulsed again.
Stronger.
The seam widened slightly.
Darkness pressed outward.
Dusk stepped forward through the remains of the worms.
No concealment now.
No testing.
He had made noise.
He had drawn blood.
He had accelerated himself through violence.
The guardian felt it.
Dusk knew it did.
Good.
He didn't slow.
The seam in the sand remained ahead, faint and wrong.
The plain had changed.
So had he.
Five cores rested within him.
Enough for the next exchange.
He adjusted his grip on the sword and moved.
Not faster.
Not slower.
Just forward.
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A/N: Hope you liked it.