Free Web NovelChapter 25: The Abyss Awakens
"Blood. Feed me."
A cold, abyssal voice resounded in Lucien’s mind, ancient and hollow, like something speaking from the bottom of an endless void.
This was not his own thought. It was deeper, older, pressing against the edges of his consciousness with a weight that made his skull ache.
The voice came from the Abyss Carver.
Its presence slithered through his thoughts like smoke, curling around his will, whispering of hunger and satisfaction. It had tasted his blood, and it wanted more.
Lucien’s breath hitched. His fingers tightened around the hilt, the leather wrapping glued to his grip. The blade pulsed once, a faint, cold thrum that traveled up his arm and settled in his chest.
"Blood. Feed me."
The voice came again. Stronger this time.
Lucien’s vision blurred. For a moment, the forest around him faded, and all he could see was an abyss, endless, cold, dark.
It came like a whisper from the devil.
At the edge of his death, a saviour appeared, but it was a devil. He could feel how dark the Abyss Carver truly was.
Lucien stood at the edge of the endless abyss, and he jumped into it.
"Drink."
This single word felt like what the Abyss Carver had been waiting for.
Dark tendrils burst out from the Abyss Carver, darker and more domineering than the shadow tendrils. They were like the essence of darkness itself, writhing, hungry, alive.
They latched onto the hand he held it with, sinking into his skin like leeches, sucking his blood like that of a mosquito. Lucien felt a cold, draining pull as the blade drank deeply, each pulse sending a shiver through his body.
But as it drank, it glowed with dark light, a deep, abyssal radiance that pulsed like a heartbeat. Its aura increased, growing heavier, more oppressive. Darkness engulfed everything, swallowing the trees, the ground, the sky itself.
The Alpha Wolf immediately sensed the danger, moving to attack Lucien.
It shuttled through shadows like before, appearing with blinding speed. But what welcomed it was one of the dark tendrils, which lashed out like a serpent and sent it flying into a corner of the trees, crashing through branches and bark.
Darkness extended, concealing Lucien’s figure. A huge wave of Originat was released toward the surroundings, pressing against the air like an invisible tide.
The Alpha Wolf suddenly began to tremble, sensing the aura emitted by the Abyss Carver. Its limbs shook, its crimson eyes flickering with something that looked almost like fear.
The darkness dispersed, revealing Lucien’s figure, his appearance still the same.
But the Abyss Carver had changed.
Where once it was a weapon of frozen darkness and broken void, it now seemed alive, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic glow like a heartbeat trapped in steel. Faint veins of deep crimson ran along the flat of the blade, pulsing with a dim, abyssal light. They looked like veins, living, breathing, hungry. The darkness that clung to the blade was denser now, more absolute, as if it had grown thicker and more possessive.
The hilt had also transformed. The shadow-touched leather wrapping had darkened further, now appearing almost black, with faint, silvery threads woven through it that seemed to shift like smoke. The crossguard, once simple and claw-like, now curled into a more menacing shape, like the talons of a beast, ready to strike.
A faint, cold mist curled from the blade’s edge, as if it was breathing.
And at the center of the flat, where the crimson veins converged, a single, dark abyssal eye seemed to watch, unblinking, ancient.
The dark abyssal tendrils stretched to his arm holding it, turning it black. The darkness spread across his skin like ink, pulsing in rhythm with the blade’s heartbeat.
Lucien felt strength flood his body, raw, overwhelming, intoxicating. But a massive killing intent engulfed his mind, a tidal wave of darkness that threatened to drown his consciousness. If not for the Scholar’s Insight Trait and the Sovereign of Slaughter Instinct, he would have succumbed to the killing intent, lost to the abyss within.
He wanted destruction and ruins, chaos and abyss. The hunger clawed at his thoughts, whispering of carnage and domination.
He didn’t know what to do, but it felt as if wielding this new Abyss Carver had been ingrained in him, as if the blade had always been a part of him, waiting to awaken.
The Alpha Wolf trembled, the aura of the Abyss Carver overwhelming. Its limbs shook, its crimson eyes flickering with primal fear. But for some reason, the ferociousness in its blood swallowed its fear, replacing it with a desperate, burning rage.
It looked at Lucien, the culprit for the destruction of its pack. Even though it wanted to kill him, it knew its strength wasn’t enough.
It howled to the sky, a sound that tore through the forest like a blade. A gigantic circular shadow rune appeared in the sky, pulsating with power. Numerous shadow tendrils, reaching up to a hundred, burst forth from it.
They struck Lucien at the same time, who was standing where he was. With insane speed, they moved, attacking him from all directions, engulfing him with shadow.
But at the nick of time, flames spread through the Abyss Carver. They weren’t red or golden, they were pitch black like the darkness itself, burning with an eerie, hungry light.
All he did was swing it.
The shadow tendrils were destroyed in an instant, sliced through like paper. The circular rune was shattered, all along with the surrounding trees. The shockwave of the swing uprooted everything in its path, leaving a scar of devastation across the open ground.
Lucien’s figure disappeared from the vision of the Alpha Wolf. Intense danger made its instincts scream. It moved from where it was, shuttling through the shadows.
It appeared from a shadow, but it turned out that Lucien had been waiting for it.
PUCHI!
Its skull was pierced through by the Abyss Carver. The blade sank deep, the dark eye on its flat seeming to glow with satisfaction. It tried to move, to fight, but all resistance was futile.
Its vision faded as every last drop of its life force disappeared, drained into the hungry blade.
The Alpha Wolf’s body crumpled to the ground, dissolving into shadows.
It was over.
The transformation ended, the Abyss Carver returning to its original state. The dark glow faded, the crimson veins dimming, the abyssal eye closing as if it had been satisfied. The blade settled back into its familiar form, cold and silent.
Lucien almost slumped to the ground. His legs buckled beneath him, his body swaying as the weight of what he had just endured crashed down on him like a collapsing sky.
His lips were pale, drained of all color. His strength was gone, half of his blood absorbed by the Abyss Carver. If not for the fact that he was still breathing, one might have thought he was already dead. His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged gasps, each breath a struggle.
Lucien breathed heavily, his body covered in bruises and drenched in sweat, but it was worth it. The battle was over. The Alpha Wolf was dead. He had survived.
With his weak strength, he let out a joyous laughter, a broken, hoarse sound that echoed through the silent forest. It was the laugh of someone who had stared death in the face and refused to blink.
He had survived.
As he was relishing in his victory, the sudden rustling of leaves and underbrush alerted him. Lucien’s body went rigid, his instincts screaming that something was wrong. He quickly checked his surroundings, his eyes darting through the shadows between the trees.
His expression turned uglier, his face paling even further. He almost fell to the ground due to the shock.
Numerous ferocious auras could be felt, dozens of them, pressing against his senses like a suffocating tide. Red, ferocious eyes glowed under the cover of the grasses and leaves, watching him from every direction. They were everywhere, surrounding him, closing in.
Lucien’s body shook. He knew what was going to happen, and he wasn’t going to wait for it.
Even with his weak body, one word circulated through his entire being.
Run.
