Chapter 211: Loop 2 Day 9 (2)

Chapter 211: Loop 2 Day 9 (2)

Ever since my creation, I had an instinctive understanding of what a Core felt like, even if that feeling was something completely different for every Core. It could be ash and heat pressing against my tongue, like the FlameCore. It could be the sensation of nature itself, of glowcaps and darkwood, like the Nature Core had been. It could be the comfort of infinity that the Great Core had brought me. It could be anything.

But it didnt matter; whatever it was, I just knew.

Even if I didnt know what it was.

The strange scent-taste of the distant Core stayed with me as I slithered down the tunnel, a mysterious and ever-present companion. It was difficult to understand, more complex than something like the Flame Core. It was the lack of consistency, more than anything; the scent-taste changed, warping every so often. One moment it tasted like the Nature Core, like glow-caps and darkwood and more. Then it turned cloying, and disappeared. Changed again, this time to something closer to the ore-flesh scent of blood, before it changed yet another time.Nêww chapters will be fully updated at novelhall.com

I couldnt quite understand it, in the end; it didnt help that I was feeling tired. It made thinking harder than normal. I had been moving a lot recently. Fighting a lot. It made sense to be tired, even if it wasnt a good time for it. But my scale-flesh was feeling heavier by the moment. Weaker.

I paused, biting down on my scale-flesh and letting [Life - Invigorating Bite] jolt me back into wakefulness. Not for the first time. The tunnel was long, and the Lesser Core was far. I was thankful that I could move so much faster, at least.

I kept going, bidding my Darkweavers to follow with a lazy thought-hiss. Their legs wobbled with every step. I hadnt been feeding them well. A few of them fell, and I commanded the fallen Darkweavers to get back up. To move on.

Forever loyal, they did as I commanded, pulling themselves up again and trudging behind me on far too many legs. I hoped that they would make it to the Lesser Core with me, though their bodies could still be useful even if they didnt. [Ambushers Vision] was hard to level now, but every Darkweaver I consumed mattered. The enhanced sight it gave me was important; I wouldnt even be able to see in the tunnel without it.

All of the glow-caps had died off many slithers ago - either that or they were taken away by light-hating bad-things similar to the Darkweavers. I hadnt seen any yet, but I was keeping an eye out. As much as I could, anyway. There wasnt any light to see by, besides the little bit that I could pull from my own stores of [Illusion Spark]. And that would eventually run out - though not any time soon, with how carefully I was using it. My increased size let me store a lot more light than before.

I hissed, catching the scent-taste of the Lesser Core on my tongue again, assuring myself that I was moving in the right direction. [Razorflesh]-sharpened scales scraped against stone with every slither, edges catching ever-so-slightly on raised ridges in the rock to form an undulating hiss.

My Darkweavers followed the sound, trailing behind on failing legs.

Lesser Core Skill: [Life - Invigorating Bite XI] Increased.

A thread-trap that near-perfectly blended into the darkness of the tunnel, its edges anchored inside various wall-cracks or secured around stone-spikes, with an opening at the bottom small enough for me to squeeze under and one at the top large enough for my Darkweavers to clamber through. Unfortunately, my growing size meant the lower opening was larger than Id have liked, but I couldnt risk getting caught within my own spore-puppets thread-trap midfight.

That would just be embarrassing.

My preparations complete, I sent out another thought-hiss. The weakest of my remaining Darkweavers started forward on trembling legs, climbing over the thread-trap and setting down on the other side. I doubted that it would make it back to me; it couldnt seem to move very fast anymore, afflicted by the same exhaustion that was affecting us all. The same weakness that had forced me to jolt myself back into liveliness with [Life - Invigorating Bite] again and again.

A weakness and exhaustion caused by the Lesser Core itself; in the end, that was the only explanation. It had been growing over time, getting stronger as I followed the Cores tantalizing scent-taste. An invisible defense, or at least as close as something could get; like the heat given off by a Flame Core, or the fast-spots and slow-spots of the Great Core itself.

The Cores aspect made manifest. One that I was beginning to make guesses at. Ones that I didnt like.

My Darkweaver set itself down on the other side of the thread-trap, and I sent it in the direction of the waiting bad-things. It wasnt long before the bad-things noticed, a sudden clamor filling the empty cavern. I commanded the Darkweaver to turn back, forcing it to rush in the direction of the waiting thread-trap. Between the presence of the threads between us, and my desire to get a better glimpse of what the enemy looked like before they reached me, I used [Illusion Spark] to let another bit of my remaining stores of light flare outwards in a narrow beam.

The beam fell on the incoming bad-things. They each walked on four tattered and broken limbs, a spiked tail trailing in their wake. Their legs ended in sharp-tipped claws, dried blood and bile caught between the gaps. Their eyes glowed with a mindless hunger, and their teeth were broken and jagged. Most notable, however, were the other things about them.

The rot. The decay. The exposed bits of bone that should have left them crippled.

The fact that I knew what death looked like, and these bad-thingsshould have been dead.

Ignoring that fact, they fell upon my weakened Darkweaver in a near-mindless fury, shredding its flesh with fang and claw and overwhelming numbers, leaving a corpse in their wake.

By the time they reached the thread-trap where I and the rest of my spore-puppets waited, my Darkweaver had pulled itself to its feet behind them. It limped after them, walking on broken limbs like a shambling corpse.

Its eyes glowed ever-so-slightly in the light, reflecting an unending hunger.

And I found a full understanding of the Lesser Cores nature at last.