Chapter 7: The Devouring Eclipse
The Whispering Woods did not earn its name from the wind rustling through its leaves. It earned it from the auditory hallucinations caused by the dense, mana-draining fog that blanketed its ancient floor. To a normal cultivator, breathing in this fog felt like inhaling crushed glass; it violently rejected the mana in their cores, causing paranoia and eventual madness.
For Elara, even wrapped in a high-tier stealth cloak, the forest was a suffocating nightmare. She was a Peak Rank 2 genius, accustomed to the pure, refined mana of the capital's jade pavilions. Here, every step was a battle to keep her own emerald-green aura from being leached away by the parasitic environment.
But for Kaelen, the Whispering Woods felt like a buffet.
He walked three paces ahead of her, his heavy boots sinking slightly into the damp, decaying earth. Beneath the thick sleeves of his ruined coat, the five hundred pounds of Abyssal Lead bracers dragged at his arms, but his posture remained impeccably straight.
Internally, however, a cataclysm was taking place.
The dense, earth-attribute mana he had ripped from Vane the Breaker was a violently heavy energy. It had crashed into his Null Singularity like a meteor. For the past three hours of their silent trek, Kaelen's core had been grinding that energy down, breaking it into fundamental, neutral particles of raw power.
Suddenly, Kaelen stopped.
"What is it?" Elara whispered, her hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of her rune-etched dagger. Her amber eyes darted around the oppressive, gray tree trunks. "Did you hear something?"
"No," Kaelen rasped, his voice sounding strained, metallic. "Stay back."
He didn't draw his bone shiv. He simply fell to one knee, his heavy bracers slamming into the mud. The limit of his mortal vessel had been breached. The accumulated energy of the Corrupted Wolf, the three high-grade Beast Cores, and the Mid Rank 3 Earth aura reached a critical mass inside the microscopic black hole in his chest.
[Host Vessel Capacity: Maximum.]
[Mortal Limit Broken.]
[Initiating Rank 1 Ascension: The Devouring Eclipse.]
In Eldoria, when a cultivator broke through to Rank 1 (Aura Initiate), they experienced an 'Aura Bloom'. A radiant burst of light and elemental energy would wash over their surroundings, announcing their entry into the supernatural realm.
Kaelen's breakthrough was the exact opposite.
Elara watched in absolute horror and fascination as the ambient light around Kaelen began to bend. The faint moonlight filtering through the canopy didn't illuminate him; it was dragged into him. A localized sphere of absolute, light-devouring darkness expanded from his chest, covering a three-foot radius. The parasitic fog of the Whispering Woods, which normally drained mana, was violently sucked into this dark sphere, instantly annihilated.
There was no sound, no shockwave. Just a terrifying, silent implosion of reality.
Then, it vanished. The light returned, albeit dimly.
Kaelen stood up slowly. He didn't look exhausted anymore. The ragged, starved peasant boy was entirely gone. Beneath his torn clothes, his muscles possessed a dense, terrifying symmetry, carved from marble and shadow. His dark gray eyes, though still muted by the iron ring, possessed a depth that made Elara feel incredibly small.
He raised his hand and concentrated. Instead of the glowing, protective aura of a normal Rank 1, a thin, virtually invisible layer of spatial distortion coated his skin. It wasn't an aura of energy; it was an 'Anti-Aura'. A localized void that would consume any magic it touched.
"Rank 1," Kaelen whispered to himself, clenching his fist. The five hundred pounds of Abyssal Lead suddenly felt... manageable. Not light, but no longer a crushing burden. His physical strength had exponentially multiplied to match his new Rank.
"What was that?" Elara breathed, stepping closer, unable to mask her awe. "I've read the grand archives of the Vaelen House. I know every rare constitution, every forbidden bloodline. But I have never seen an Aura Bloom that swallows light. You didn't produce mana... you erased it."
"Knowledge is a luxury of the safe," Kaelen replied, pulling his sleeve down over the heavy metal bracers. He didn't elaborate. "We need to set up camp. Your cloak is failing, and your core is exhausted. If you keep pushing, your mana pathways will fracture."
Elara wanted to argue, her noble pride bristling at being ordered around by a slum boy, but a wave of dizziness hit her, proving his point. She nodded weakly.
Kaelen found a small alcove beneath the colossal, twisting roots of an ancient Ironwood tree. While Elara slumped against the wood, shivering in the damp cold, Kaelen went to work. He didn't use magic to light a fire or set up wards. He used brutal, hyper-efficient survival tactics. He gathered specific, dry moss that burned without producing smoke, set up tripwires made of ultra-thin beast sinew, and rubbed a pungent, foul-smelling sap on the perimeter to mask their scent from ordinary predators.
It was a stark contrast. Elara, the peak of civilized magical education, sat helpless, while Kaelen, the embodiment of pragmatic survival, commanded the savage environment.
When he finally sat down across the small, smokeless fire, he pulled out a piece of hardtack bread and began chewing it mechanically.
Elara watched him. Despite the dirt, the blood, and the terrifying darkness she had just witnessed, there was something undeniably magnetic about him. It wasn't just his newfound physical perfection; it was his absolute certainty. In a world ruled by chaotic magic and arrogant nobles, Kaelen was a fixed, immovable point of gravity.
She reached into her silken robes and pulled out a small crystal vial containing a glowing, golden liquid.
"Here," she said, tossing it to him.
Kaelen caught it effortlessly. High-Tier Phoenix Tear Elixir. A single drop could heal shattered bones.
"I don't need this," Kaelen said, tossing it back.
"You took a direct hit from a Mid Rank 3 Earth cultivator," Elara argued, her brow furrowing. "Your internal organs should be a paste. Don't let your male ego kill you before we reach the Free City."
Kaelen didn't argue. He simply pulled down the collar of his shirt. Elara's breath hitched. Where Vane the Breaker's granite-infused fist had struck him, there was no bruise, no shattered ribs. The skin was flawless.
"My body adapts," Kaelen said coldly. "Save your investments for when they are necessary, Merchant."
Elara flushed, feeling a strange mix of embarrassment and intense curiosity. She put the vial away. "You're a cynic, Kaelen."
"I am a realist. You are worth a mountain of gold, Elara. To your family, to the prince you ran from, and to every mercenary in this forest. You bought my services with three beast cores and a promise. But out here, gold means nothing. If you become a liability, I will leave you behind."
It was a harsh, cruel statement. A normal noble girl would have cried or raged.
But Elara was a Vaelen. Her amber eyes sharpened, the frightened runaway vanishing, replaced by the calculating heiress. She leaned forward, the firelight dancing in her eyes.
"Then I will ensure I am an asset," she countered, her voice dropping to a smooth, confident purr. "You have power, Kaelen. Terrifying, undocumented power. But you lack knowledge. You don't know the geography of the Empire, the political landmines, or the value of the resources you need to grow. I do. Without me, you are a blind sword. With me, you can actually aim."
Kaelen looked at her, truly looking at her for the first time. She wasn't just a scared girl hiding under a stall anymore. She was a survivor in her own right, playing the game of thrones with her mind.
"A fair assessment," Kaelen admitted, a microscopic hint of respect in his gray eyes.
Before Elara could smile at her small victory, Kaelen's Void Perception violently pulsed.
The smokeless fire flickered and died. The temperature plummeted.
"Asset," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper as he stood up, the Abyssal Lead bracers clinking softly. "Get up."
"What is it?" Elara asked, instantly drawing her rune-etched dagger, her emerald aura flaring to life despite her exhaustion.
"We are being hunted."
From the dense fog surrounding their camp, dozens of glowing, sickly purple eyes snapped open. The low, guttural growls vibrated through the damp earth.
Abyssal Night-Terrors. They were Rank 2 Mid-Stage pack beasts, mutated by the miasma of the mountains. They looked like skinless hounds, their muscles exposed and dripping with a highly corrosive, purple acid. And there were at least thirty of them.
"They track by mana," Elara said, her voice trembling slightly. "My aura... I couldn't suppress it while I was resting. I drew them here."
"Then you will help me kill them," Kaelen said. He didn't draw the bone shiv. Against Rank 2 beasts with acidic blood, a short-range bone weapon was useless. He raised his heavy, metal-bound fists.
The pack leader, a massive hound with a jagged horn protruding from its skull, howled and lunged.
The fight began.
Elara proved her worth instantly. She didn't panic. She twirled her dagger, unleashing a flurry of razor-sharp wind blades. [Gale Severance!] The emerald wind sliced through the fog, decapitating two Night-Terrors mid-leap. Their highly acidic blood sprayed the trees, melting the bark instantly. But the wind magic acted as a beacon, drawing the rest of the pack directly toward her.
Five beasts lunged at Elara simultaneously from her blind spots. She was too exhausted to cast another high-tier spell in time.
A shadow blurred past her.
Kaelen intercepted the beasts. He didn't use magic. He used the sheer, overwhelming kinetic force of his new Rank 1 body, multiplied by the five hundred pounds of dead weight on his arms.
He swung his right arm like a medieval siege engine. His Abyssal Lead bracer collided with the skull of the first Night-Terror. The sound was sickening—a wet explosion of bone and acidic blood. The beast was instantly obliterated, its kinetic momentum entirely reversed.
But the acidic blood splashed onto Kaelen's arms and chest.
Elara screamed a warning, expecting the acid to melt through his flesh and bones.
But as the purple acid touched Kaelen's skin, it hissed, smoked, and then... vanished. The thin layer of spatial distortion—his Rank 1 Anti-Aura—violently consumed the magical properties of the acid, converting it into harmless gray dust that fell to the mud.
Kaelen didn't even blink. He was immune to magical attributes.
He stepped into the center of the pack. It was a massacre. He moved with the precision of a machine, every strike mathematically calculated to shatter joints, crush windpipes, and break spines. The beasts' corrosive bites couldn't penetrate his dense muscles, and their magical acid was devoured by his aura.
Within two minutes, twenty-nine Night-Terrors lay dead in a circle around him, their bodies broken, their magical energy entirely drained by the boy standing in the center.
The pack leader, realizing it was facing an apex predator, turned to flee.
Kaelen raised his hand, pointing at the fleeing beast. He channeled the newly assimilated wind mana he had just devoured from Elara's residual magic and combined it with his own void.
"Void Step: Phantom," Kaelen whispered.
He vanished.
A millisecond later, he reappeared directly in front of the sprinting pack leader, fifty feet away. He grabbed the beast by the throat, lifting its six-hundred-pound body off the ground with one hand.
The Singularity in his chest flared. The beast didn't even have time to whimper before its entire Rank 2 core, its life-force, and its physical mass were violently sucked into Kaelen's palm.
He dropped the lifeless, mummified husk to the ground.
Kaelen stood in the quiet fog, his breathing perfectly even, surrounded by the carnage. He looked back at Elara, who was staring at him with wide, terrified, completely mesmerized eyes.
"You are a god," Elara whispered, the words escaping her lips involuntarily.
"No," Kaelen replied, turning his back to her, staring into the deeper darkness of the forest. "I am the thing that kills them."
But as Kaelen spoke, a chilling sensation ran down his spine. His highly evolved Void Perception picked up an anomaly. It wasn't a beast. It wasn't an Azure Sky knight.
Far above them, standing silently on the thinnest branch of a colossal Ironwood tree, a figure was watching. An old man with a long white beard, wearing a tattered gray robe. The man had no aura. He had no heartbeat. He was completely invisible to mana sense.
But he was looking directly at Kaelen, and a smile that held the weight of centuries touched the old man's lips.
"Finally," a voice echoed, not in the air, but directly inside Kaelen's mind. "A true inheritor of the Abyss."