Chapter 341
Slightly better fodder (2)
From this now slightly less exceedingly beautiful creature, from the glowing ball within its gaping mouth—
A deadly ray of pink and red suddenly shot forward, tearing through the air as a sound that invoked goosebumps echoed across the battlefield.
SCREEEE!
It surged forward with overwhelming vigor and power, cutting through everything in its path. Its destination was absolute—when it arrived, it would bring devastation to whatever stood in its way.
It was inevitable.
Natsuki felt the world slow down for her as her awareness sharpened to an unnatural degree. Every fragment of existence seemed to stretch and unfold before her. She could feel the air pushing against her skin in a delicate manner, each current grazing her as if it carried intent.
She felt the blood rushing through her veins, a steady, thunderous rhythm that echoed within her body. The sounds around her brushing across her ears, distorted yet vivid, while every scent flooded into her nose with overwhelming clarity.
All her senses felt alive. More alive than they had ever been.
She had never felt so real.
And yet—
It was also at this moment that she became aware of how false it all was.
The pushing, the rushing, the brushing, the gushing… none of it was real.
It didn't exist.
The deadline creatures didn't exist.
The pressure didn't exist.
The pain didn't exist.
The dark-eyed boy didn't exist.
She didn't exist.
Her senses didn't exist.
Everything before her—everything within her—was nothing more than a fabrication. A fragile illusion constructed upon nothing.
And so, she let go.
She let go of the world she had been given.
She let go of the battlefield, the danger, the fear—
She let go of everything.
Because nothing existed.
It was all an illusion.
A profound clarity washed over her, like stepping beyond the edge of reality itself. It felt like an epiphany—no, something deeper than that. As if she had peeled back the final layer of existence and glimpsed the truth beneath it all.
Her eyes began to glow, richer and deeper than before. The indigo light within them leaked outward, bleeding into her surroundings as though reality itself was being dyed by her presence.
It spread slowly, unnaturally, staining the air around her.
She no longer looked human.
She looked like something eternal.
An aeternus being.
Her expression softened into something distant, something untouchable. That familiar aloofness returned to her face, but now it carried a weight far beyond indifference.
Her gaze no longer belonged to this world.
With the ray descending toward her—inevitable, absolute—Natsuki remained unfettered. The encroaching creatures had already closed in, their presence hemming her from both sides, ready to crush, to overwhelm, to end everything in a single collapsing moment… and yet—
She moved.
Her sword, positioned to her left, reacted like a knight answering the silent command of its sovereign, it twisted violently through the air, its edge carving a sharp arc before plunging into the outstretched claw of a mid-sprawling creature. The impact forced the limb sideways, dragging its owner off balance and into the path of another.
That second creature was different—its body thick, gelatinous, its form unstable, shifting with a sluggish elasticity. The blade drove through the first creature's claw and buried itself into the viscous body beyond, sinking deep as though piercing through wet clay.
The slime-like creature didn't register pain. It didn't resist.
It didn't understand.
It didn't understand that, in that single moment, it had already been turned into something else entirely—
A tool.
Natsuki was already in motion.
Her body rose into the air with effortless grace, her movements neither rushed nor delayed, as though she existed slightly outside the flow of time itself. Her fingers reached out, catching onto the shoulder of another incoming creature just as it lunged toward her.
She didn't stop it.
She used it.
With a subtle shift of her weight and a controlled twist of her core, she redirected its entire momentum, spinning it violently off its original course. The creature was flung sideways, its trajectory rewritten mid-attack, sent hurtling straight toward the butterfly lizard.
The creature reacted on instinct.
Its massive jaws snapped open and clamped down.
A brutal, crushing bite.
Bone, flesh, and whatever else composed the creature vanished between its teeth as it devoured without hesitation.
And still—
Natsuki moved.
Like a puppeteer pulling invisible strings, she continued to guide everything around her. The sword embedded within the first two creatures acted as an anchor, while the gelatinous body began to stretch unnaturally under the forces applied to it.
It elongated and pulled into strands that clung and adhered to anything they touched.
As the surrounding mid-tier creatures surged forward, they were caught—snagged by those nearly invisible threads of viscous matter. Limbs brushed against it, torsos collided into it, and in an instant, they found themselves tethered.
Bound together.
Each movement Natsuki made added another connection, another point of contact, another adjustment in the invisible web she was weaving in real time. Creatures crashed into one another, dragged each other off course, their own momentum betraying them as they became entangled in something they couldn't perceive or comprehend.
And all the while—
The ray continued its descent.
It was as if she was drawing everything inward, forcing every variable, every threat, every moving piece into a single converging point. A collapsing center where all trajectories would meet.
And at the center of it—
Her.
But she wasn't finished.
Not yet.
Her attention shifted, finally landing on the the yeti-like creature.
It towered above the chaos, its elongated arms stretching high into the sky before curving downward in a grotesque arc. The limbs cut through the air with terrifying speed, their ends forming circular, blade-like structures that gleamed with lethal intent.
They came down toward her— Meant to pierce straight through her face and end everything in a single strike.
Through the gaps in its wild, overgrown hair, glimpses of its expression could be seen. And what lay beneath was not mindless aggression—
It was anticipation.
Bloodlust.
Excitement.
It believed it had caught its prey.
Natsuki called her sword back at that exact moment, just as the descending ray closed the distance between them, its light now swallowing everything in its path.
The blade tore free from the tangled mass with a violent pull, ripping through flesh and viscous strands alike before snapping back into her grasp as if summoned by something far beyond mere intent.
The instant her fingers wrapped around the hilt—
She raised it.
Pointing toward the sky.
For a fleeting moment, the image froze in place.
Amidst the chaos, the writhing creatures, the collapsing battlefield, and the imminent destruction descending from above, she stood as though untouched by it all. Like a commander at the end of a long and bloody war, declaring victory to their tired soldiers.
There was nowhere left to go...
But up?
The sword, which had already defied gravity time and time again, responded once more. Only now, it did so with finality. It began to rise—slowly at first, then with increasing force, dragging Natsuki along with it as though the sky itself had claimed her.
Her feet left the ground.
Her body followed.
Ascending.
The yeti-like creature's attack came down exactly where she had been—its curved, blade-like limb slicing through the air with enough force to split stone.
But it struck nothing.
In front of it, the redirected convergence reached its peak.
The gelatinous creature—stretched, warped, and forced into a grotesque web—had become a mass of bodies, limbs, and half-embedded forms. The mid-tier creatures caught within it struggled without understanding, their movements restricted, their positions fixed in place by something they couldn't perceive.
The yeti creature's blade didn't stop.
It continued.
Driving straight through that mass.
Its sharpened, circular edge pierced into the slime-like body, meeting resistance for only a brief instant before forcing its way through. The viscous surface split and clung, stretching around the blade as it pushed deeper, dragging multiple trapped creatures along with it.
One was pierced clean through the torso, its body folding unnaturally around the blade as it was carried forward. Another was sliced open at the side, its form torn apart as the momentum dragged it along.
The force carried through.
And on the other side... Was the butterfly lizard.
Its massive, multifaceted eye reflected the incoming motion for only an instant before the blade drove straight into it.
The surface ruptured upon impact, the fragile structure of the eye collapsing inward as the weapon forced its way deep into the socket. Thick fluid burst outward in a violent spray, the shimmering surface shattering as the blade lodged itself within.
A bellow unlike anything before erupted from the creature, a sound layered with pain, confusion, and something far more primal. Its entire body convulsed, wings jerking violently as its head thrashed, trying to comprehend what had just occurred.
It had not been prepared.
The creature that had barely contributed to the battle… that had remained distant, almost irrelevant to the immediate chaos—
Had been struck.
But there was no time to react.
No time to understand.
No time to recover.
The ray had arrived.
The neon pink and red ray descended with ruthless intent, tearing through the battlefield without pause as it crashed directly into the convergence of creatures, striking the slime creature at the very centre of it all.
The moment it made contact, everything broke. For a single instant, everything seemed to freeze as the light made contact—
And then it tore through.
The impact was catastrophic.
The slime creature at the heart of it all was the first to react. Its gelatinous body, once pliable and binding, began to convulse violently as the sheer heat of the ray overwhelmed it. Its surface bubbled and blistered in an instant, swelling outward before collapsing inward as if it were being cooked from the inside out.
Great pockets of its body burst open, releasing thick, steaming fluid that evaporated almost as soon as it was exposed. The strands it had used to bind the others together snapped violently under the stress, recoiling as the structure holding everything in place failed all at once.
And within it—
The mid-tier creatures had nowhere to go.
The ray punched through them without resistance.
Bodies that had once surged forward with force and intent were reduced to nothing more than silhouettes for a fraction of a second before being pierced clean through. Each one was left with a hollowed void carved into their forms, a perfect, smouldering tunnel where the beam had passed.
The destruction continued without slowing.
The yeti-like creature took the brunt of it.
Already mid-motion from its failed strike, its body was perfectly aligned with the path of the ray. The beam slammed into its upper chest, tearing straight through with unstoppable force. Its thick, towering frame shuddered as the impact echoed through it, a deep, rumbling sound escaping from within as it's very blood began to boil.
Steam rose from the wound, cooking everything it touched. The creature staggered, its massive limbs trembling as the damage spread through it, its earlier excitement replaced by agony and pain.
The butterfly lizard was not hit directly, but even that offered little relief.
The edge of the beam carved across its chest, leaving behind a glowing wound that pulsed with neon pink and red. The surface of its body split open along the path of contact, the flesh scorched and seared as the residual energy clung to it.
The lingering pillar of destruction pressed against it, forcing its body backward, its wings twitching violently as it tried to resist.
Above, Natsuki felt the strain. Holding herself up with her sword while carrying her own weight was taking far more mana, and as the ray disappeared, she was given a chance to ease the strain.
She began to descend—slowly, almost gently. Like a drifting petal. Like a fairy falling from the sky after a fleeting moment of divinity.
Her landing was light, controlled, and without hesitation she moved forward. The yeti was still alive but severely injured, yet she ignored it.
Her target was clear.
The butterfly lizard.
Around her, the remains of the others began to fade. The mid spawnlings that had been caught in the blast lost form, their bodies dissolving into nothing as if they had never existed to begin with. By the time she reached her destination, only the two high spawnlings remained.
The blade was still lodged in the butterfly lizard's eye.
Without stopping, Natsuki stepped in and drove her sword into the other eye with force. The strike was direct and ruthless, sinking deep as the creature reacted violently, it's entire body seized, as a piercing cry erupting from it as both sources of vision were taken from it in rapid succession.
There was no pause after.
As she continued, the reality of what had just happened settled in. In only a few minutes, a high novice and a normal human had taken down multiple low spawnlings, mid spawnlings, and were now finishing off two high spawnlings, with one already dead.
It was a mind-boggling sight.
Natsuki was responsible for almost everything that had just occurred, her actions shaping the entire battlefield from beginning to end.
What remained was only the last high spawnling and a few straggling mid spawnlings.
At least… it seemed that way...
As had been established countless times before, the spawnlings' lack of intelligence was one of their greatest weaknesses. It was this very deficiency that had shaped the battlefield, creating a reality that could be manipulated, anticipated, and ultimately controlled.
Yet, even in this truth, there was a lie. Not all instincts were mindless, not all actions were purely random. Some creatures, though limited in cognition, were born with an innate nature that guided their behavior. Intelligence wasn't required—just a perfect, inherent programming that dictated what it would do and when.
Consider the archerfish. It doesn't learn to shoot down insects from overhanging branches through trial and error or conscious planning. It simply waits, aims, and spits water with pinpoint accuracy because its body and instincts have evolved over generations to execute the act flawlessly. It doesn't need to think—it just does.
In the same way, creatures didn't need to learn to eat when hungry or to flee when threatened. Their instincts carried them. They acted because they were compelled to, guided by forces older than their own lifespans.
And this particular creature was no exception.
It was a high spawnling, a predator born to strike once—and only once—at the precise moment that opportunity presented itself. Unlike its lesser brethren, it never wasted effort. It hunted only what it could overpower, waiting silently, patiently, until the weakness revealed itself.
Now, hidden in the low-hanging fog, it scrambled forward. Its limbs and form were almost invisible, its speed amplified by instinctual calculation. Every muscle, every senses, was aimed at a single point: IAM. It would kill him with ease. Survival was impossible.
As it drew closer, IAM—his attention fixed on Natsuki—suddenly felt a surge within him, a warning that set every nerve alight. His eyes narrowed, his instincts flared, and he turned, just enough to sense what was approaching from behind.
The creature leapt. Its stinger aimed straight for his throat, a lethal strike delivered with perfect timing. Death hung in the air before it even landed.
And yet…
IAM wasn't even looking at it directly.
A single word escaped his lips, almost whispered.
"Yohan?"