The Ibex charged.
Elias met it head-on.
Wind roared around him as he formed a spear of compressed air, influencing parameters of friction to make its tip needle-sharp, its shaft dense as stone. He hurled it at the creature's chest. The Ibex did not dodge. It thickened its hide, density spiking in an instant, and the spear shattered against its flank like glass. He barely had time to brace before the Monocerus Ibex was upon him again—no hesitation, no wasted motion. It didn't charge like before. It appeared faster, its hooves striking the ground with a rhythm that distorted perception itself.
Not speed.
Density.
It had made itself lighter between steps, then impossibly heavy at the moment of impact—each stride a compressed explosion.
Elias twisted, wind spiraling around his body as he forced himself sideways. The horn passed inches from his ribs—and the shockwave alone cracked something inside him.
A sharp, wet snap echoed through his chest.
Pain followed.
Immediate.
Blinding.
His ribs had caved inward from the pressure alone.
'Yeah… that's not good.' He thought as his body was flung backward, crashing through a cluster of iron-barked trees. Bark shredded his skin, metal splinters biting into muscle before he slammed into the ground and rolled.
Flow surged.
Accelerate Heal kicked in.
Bones shifted, grinding back into place with a nauseating crunch as fresh tissue forced itself into existence.
Elias coughed, blood splattering the ground.
The difference became undeniable.
Not subtle.
Not theoretical.
Absolute.
The Ibex didn't give him time to recover fully.
It stomped.
The ground collapsed.
Not shattered—collapsed, as if gravity itself had been dragged downward. Elias felt the pull before he saw it, his body sinking into the earth as the Ibex increased its density to something absurd.
He reacted instantly.
Wind exploded outward beneath him, lifting him free just as the ground beneath compressed into a crater.
The Ibex vanished.
Elias' eyes widened—
Then instinct screamed.
He twisted midair—
Too late.
The Ibex erupted from beneath him, its body phasing upward through the overturned earth before solidifying at the exact moment of contact.
The horn struck his side.
Everything went white.
His body bent unnaturally around the impact as he was launched across the forest like a ragdoll, smashing through trees, branches tearing at his flesh, bones snapping again—arm this time, clean through the forearm.
He hit the ground and didn't stop, sliding, tumbling, until he finally came to rest in a shallow trench carved by his own body.
For a moment—
Silence.
Then—
Pain returned in waves.
His arm hung limp, twisted at an impossible angle. His side screamed with every breath, his lungs struggling to expand.
Flow surged again.
Bones reknit.
Muscle reformed.
Skin sealed.
Slower this time.
Elias forced himself up, breathing hard.
'This bastard…'
The Ibex stood at a distance, watching him. Its eyes were calm. It was not tired. It was not wounded. It was not even breathing hard. He blinked once and the creature was already upon him.
He rolled to the side just as the Ibex's hoof came down where his head had been.
The ground exploded again.
Elias didn't stand.
He slid, dragging wind beneath him like a current, pulling himself across the terrain as the Ibex pivoted with terrifying precision.
His hand snapped upward.
The air above the Ibex distorted.
He didn't compress it this time.
He destabilized it.
Stable charge (+).
Unstable charge (-).
He forced the two states into proximity—
—and lightning screamed into existence.
A jagged arc tore downward, striking the Ibex squarely across its back. The flash lit the forest in blinding white, thunder cracking a heartbeat later as the ground trembled.
For a moment—
Elias thought it worked.
Smoke curled.
The Ibex stood still.
Then it shook itself.
The electricity dispersed across its body, grounding through its hooves as it adjusted its density to redirect the current harmlessly into the earth.
Elias blinked.
"…you're joking."
The Ibex charged again.
He barely had time to react.
Wind burst outward as he launched upward, twisting midair. The Bat Glider snapped open, catching the current as he angled away—
—but the Ibex followed.
It became lighter.
Not just lighter—aerodynamic.
It bounded off a tree trunk, then another, its massive body moving with impossible agility as it pursued him through the air, shattering the tree tops with each bound.
It had anticipated his movements and didn't follow his arc. Instead, it cut across it and intercepted him.
"That's illegal."
Still, Elias had improvised for this. He suddenly dropped to the ground while the Ibex was still midair and concentrated on the parameters around it.
The wind reacted to carry this out and spiraled into three rings, each one rotating in a different direction, spinning around the Ibex's body like orbital bands. The creature shifted its density to escape the centrifugal force—but the rings shifted with it, tightening, compressing.
Elias pulled.
The Ibex's body was being forced to move in the direction of each individual ring. For a moment—just a moment—it seemed like Elias would succeed.
Then it increased its density.
The rings shattered.
The Ibex dropped, its hooves cracking the stone beneath it. The shockwave blasted Elias backward again, his body skipping across the terrain before slamming into a rocky outcrop.
It didn't even waste a second and charged again.
Dazed, Elias got up and at the last possible second, triggering the shell artifact—the one that mimicked the Diredeer's cry. He had used its first mode to provoke the Ibex. Now he used the second. He pressed it to his lips and screamed.
The sound that emerged was not his voice. It was the shriek of the bats—the same sonic assault that had burst his eardrums on his first night in the Node. The wave of sound struck the Ibex mid-charge, and for the first time, the creature faltered.
Its hooves skidded. Its head shook. Its eyes squeezed shut.
Elias did not wait.
Elias dropped, rolling as the beast skidded past him, his hand already reaching—
The Jade dagger.
He lunged.
Fast, precise.
The blade struck.
And this time—
It cut.
A thin line opened along the Ibex's foreleg, shallow but undeniable.
The creature recoiled.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
Elias' eyes widened slightly.
Then he remembered. The dagger was a Grade five or Saint-level artifact that left a cut on the soul directly proportional to the physical damage dealt and absorbing that spiritual energy.
'I did not expect that to work though.'
The creature opened its eyes. They were no longer calm. They were angry.
The Ibex's density manipulation shifted from reation to proaction.
It made its forehooves impossibly heavy and slammed them into the ground. The shockwave tore through the forest, uprooting trees, splitting stone. Elias was thrown backward, his body tumbling through the air, his shoulder dislocating on impact with a boulder.
He grunted as the joint shifted back into place.
The Ibex was already moving. It made itself light—feather-light—and bounded across the shattered terrain, closing the distance in seconds. Elias rolled, came up, and tried to redirect its momentum with a wall of wind pressure.
The creature phased through it.
Its horn caught his thigh.
Elias screamed as the tip tore through flesh, scraping against bone. He twisted away, leaving a strip of skin behind, and pressed his hand to the wound. Accelerate Heal stitched it closed, but the flow cost was mounting.
'Three...'
He could feel his reserves draining.
'Three more hits. Maybe four. Then I'm empty.'
He unsheathed the obsidian dagger as well as the Ibex charged at him. Its eyes locked onto the blades.
The Ibex seemed to have offense to the cut on its leg. It no longer charged in straight lines. It zigzagged, shifted its density mid-stride, became heavy to crush obstacles and light to glide over them. It used the environment against him—knocking trees into his path, kicking stones at his head, creating chaos that forced him to dodge and weave and burn energy he could not afford to lose.
Elias tried to manipulate the Ibex's density directly.
He reached out with his authority, attempting to impose a parameter on the creature's body—to make it lighter, heavier, anything to throw off its balance.
The Ibex refused.
Its presence pushed back against his will, not violently, but absolutely. It was a higher existence than him. Its authority over its own density was absolute.
'Parameter manipulation…It's basically me editing laws I understand… temporarily. understand density, I learned about it in science class yet Im not able to do anything to you.'
He coughed.
'Fine,' he thought. 'I'll edit mine.'
He adjusted the wind around himself—resistance, friction, pressure—and became faster.
Not as fast as the Ibex.
But fast enough.
The ground beneath Elias liquefied—not into mud, but into something unstable, density fluctuating so rapidly that footing became impossible. He stumbled—
—and a chunk of earth launched upward beneath him like a cannon.
It hit his side.
Hard.
Something cracked again.
He was thrown, tumbling through the air before slamming into the ground face first.
He forced himself up with a hiss.
"…three more," he muttered through bloodied teeth.
The Ibex stomped again.
This time, the air itself compressed—not around him, but in front of him, forming an invisible wall that slammed into his chest.
He felt something give.
Ribs again.
He coughed, blood spilling from his lips as he staggered back. He sensed movement and looked to the side. His mind was swiming from all the pain and trauma he was recieving
A crystalline bird was perched on a nearby tree ,watching him.
Elias tilted his head slightly.
"You just going to watch?"
The bird tilted its head, scratched its wing with its beak then flew away.
Elias stared.
"…seriously?"
He didn't get to finish.
The Ibex hit him.
Full force.
He was so out of it that he didn't even see it move.
The impact lifted him off the ground and sent him crashing through multiple trees before slamming him into a boulder.
Everything went white.
Then black.
Then—
Back.
Pain.
Everywhere.
'Two more hits....'
He forced himself up.
Barely.
The Ibex charged again.
Elias didn't dodge. This time he stepped into its charge.
At the last second, he twisted—and let the horn pierce through his side.
He was already so dazed by the phantom pain of the initial attacks that he was shielded from the pain of this attack too as his brain registered them all ass the same.
Being implaed, his body locking for a split second—
—but his arm moved.
Obsidian dagger glinted as he stabbed it in the eye. The Ibex roared.
Not in pain.
In anger.
The second blade sank deep, something dark pulsed through the wound. The daggers insidious mind attack flooding the creature's consciousness with discord. The Ibex thrashed wildly, its density fluctuating, becoming heavy, light, heavy again. Elias clung to its neck as it spun, as it bucked, as it tried to crush him against trees and stone.
He activated the communication artifact but not before he lost his grip.
He was thrown free, crashing to the ground in a broken heap.
Blood pooled beneath him.
'One more hit..'
He could barely move.
His hand trembled as he reached for the communication artifact again.
"…Jamie."
No response.
He coughed.
"…if you delay any more… you're going to find my trampled corpse."
Silence.
The Ibex recovered.
It turned.
Locked onto him again.
"…Jamie."
Nothing.
He forced himself up his healing being reduced to a crawl.
"…hurry up." He breathed deeply.
"Don't rush me!" came Jamie's response.
Before Elias could react to her voice, the Ibex's presence expanded.
Heavy.
Crushing.
It wasn't just physical anymore.
It was intent.
It was enough to make every breath a battle.
He had felt something like this a month before—Ortis. The moment before the Paragon had crushed him with his mere existence.
Elias' body buckled and he dropped to his knees.
He could not rise. He could not run. He could only kneel there, his hands pressed against the earth, as the Ibex lowered its head.
His vision blurred. If he took one more hit...
That was it.
His grip on the Jade Dagger tightened.
If he activated Bloody Wonderland he might survive.
Might.
The Ibex stepped forward.
Then—
It stopped and turned to face another direction suddenly.
Two shapes burst from the treeline—massive, crystalline, their antlers refracting the dim light into scattered rainbows. The Diredeer.
The male struck the Ibex from the side, its antlers carving furrows into the creature's flank. The female followed, her jaws closing on the Ibex's hind leg. The three Apex beasts collided in a tangle of horn and fang and hooves.
She grabbed Elias by the collar, pulling him into the shadows of a concealed depression in the terrain.
"What took you so long?" he rasped.
She shrugged.
"They're smarter than they look."
He blinked. She looked—
Terrible.
Clothes torn.
Blood streaked across her arms where claw marks were visible.
Behind them, the Diredeer were fighting. The male had a spear sticking out of its side—Jamie's spear—and the female's jaw was split, a flap of flesh hanging loose, revealing teeth that should have been hidden beneath muscle and fur.
Elias blinked and looked back at Jamie. He wanted to ask how but pushed the questions aside and pressed his hand against her shoulder, healing her with the last bit of her energy.
"Hey-" Jamie began to protest but Elias put a finger to his lips and leaned agaisnt a nearby treetrunk.
The three Apex beasts faced seperated, sizing each other up.
Presences clashed, the forest trembled.
And then—
They charged.