[Black DoberBone: Canine teeth as sharp as razors and as tough as tungsten, these creatures are highly adept at hunting land creatures, and are able to tear into them almost instantly. Above all, their ability to hunt in packs is their most promising feature.]
[Winged Flame Monkey: Flight oriented, with the ability to face head-on against any combat-oriented enemy in melee combat. Has flame-based projectile abilities.]
[Grace Mammoth: Giant beast, tanks attacks, insulates the environment from cold, and has a charge ability that allows it to push through its limits. Also has healing abilities for fellow beasts.]
Staring at the translucent interface panel listing the beasts Adam had systematically tamed ever since descending into this vast basin, Ethen could only smile faintly.
These beasts weren’t just individually powerful. They were the ideal predatory pack, each possessing specialized adaptations that made them exceptionally lethal in fluid combat situations while retaining overwhelming battlefield dominance.
The Black DoberBone was an absolute butcher on land. Its razor-sharp fangs could shred reinforced chitin and hardened hides with casual ease, while its pack-hunting coordination turned every encounter into a coordinated flanking nightmare.
The Winged Flame Monkey filled the aerial skirmish role. It possessed the agility to outmaneuver flying foes, the brute strength to engage elite melee combatants toe-to-toe, and the destructive capacity to bombard enemy clusters with rolling carpets of high-yield flame from above.
Then there was the colossal Grace Mammoth.
It was an immovable living bastion capable of taking catastrophic frontline punishment head-on, completely insulating its allies from cryogenic environmental hazards, and overcharging its physical parameters to trample through fortified defensive lines while continuously mending the injuries of the pack.
Each beast served an exact tactical purpose.
Yet when Ethen glanced sideways at Adam’s tranquil expression and serene demeanor, associating cold tactical calculus with the First Man felt entirely discordant.
Adam never looked like someone who spent his quiet hours obsessively breaking down bestiaries or running comparative combat projections.
He was perpetually relaxed, wandering through death traps with an unhurried grace that often made Ethen wonder if the man even understood the mortal stakes of the Bastion.
And yet the proof lay right before him.
Adam had personally tracked, designated, and dominated these creatures.
Every single one had been chosen with surgical precision.
Ethen closed the interface and turned his attention toward the colossal shadow resting at the bottom of the rocky ravine.
Whatever strange instincts guided the First Man, his bizarre talent for beast evaluation was undeniable.
"It’s down there?"
Reaching the jagged rim of an enormous impact crater, Ethen gestured toward a colossal wooden vessel wedged deep into the fractured bedrock below.
The ship was utterly massive.
Its architectural design was completely alien to anything constructed across the human kingdoms or the Bastion’s high docks. Several thick sections of its hull had splintered under catastrophic pressure, its ancient wooden skeleton partially swallowed by jagged scree and petrified roots.
It looked as though it had plummeted from the upper reaches of the void, carving an enormous scar into the earth upon impact.
Ethen’s eyes narrowed as he studied the ancient wreckage.
Endless scholarly debate raged across the academies regarding the true origin of the Nether Realm.
Some scholars argued it was an ancient rogue world drifted off course from the cosmic void, eventually colliding with their own reality during a primordial cataclysm.
Others theorized it was the ruined expanse of a forgotten mortal empire that had been severed from history and sealed away by taboo arts.
There were even wild religious claims that it was the shattered hunting garden of a forgotten primordial god who had ruled long before the current divine pantheons emerged.
Nobody in the civilized territories knew the absolute truth.
Yet one undeniable reality was stamped across every canyon.
This forsaken realm had once housed complex civilizations.
Civilizations whose architectural mastery and runic engineering produced vessels durable enough to survive the crushing weight of uncounted millennia.
The evidence was carved into the very earth.
From the sunken citadels poking through the violet mist to the forgotten crypts slumbering beneath the soil, remnants of the realm’s previous masters endured.
And now, nestled in an untamed crater, sat another piece of the puzzle.
A ghost ship.
"Yes," Adam replied softly, his golden eyes narrowing slightly as he observed the splintered hull buried in the stone basin.
He had stumbled upon the hollow during his solitary foraging walks through the untamed flats.
The vessel had struck him as bizarre from the very beginning.
Despite its immense physical mass, the dark wood appeared strangely formless—wavering and rippling along the edges of perception like a shifting pool of black ink.
Adam had cautiously descended the slope to investigate.
The instant his bare hand made contact with the hull, the vessel had reacted.
An invisible, undodgeable concussive shockwave had erupted from the wood without the slightest warning.
The sheer kinetic force had sent Adam tumbling through the air like a discarded toy, testing the limits of his durability.
He had absorbed the impact without broken bones, but the eerie, unseen trap was enough to instill rare caution even in him.
Ethen stared down into the gloomy crater for a few silent seconds, calculating their approach.
"Understood," he said, nodding once.
With a silent tug on his soul link, he manifested Vlad into the cold air beside him.
Following weeks of continuous tempering and raw absorption, Vlad’s vampiric authority had developed significantly.
His transformation duration had doubled.
The necrotic potency of his blood arts had sharpened to a razor edge.
Most importantly, his dispersed scouting form had become practically undetectable to ordinary biological senses.
In the span of half a heartbeat, Vlad’s physical vessel dissolved.
His aristocratic figure collapsed into a swarm of hundreds of crimson-eyed bats that scattered into the dim sky.
The chattering swarm swept downward in a wide, sweeping arc, blanketing the crater as they closed in on the fractured vessel from multiple angles.
Ethen remained standing at the cliff’s edge, borrowing Vlad’s sensory feed to map the basin’s topography.
As the swarm descended deeper into the hollow, Ethen’s focus was immediately drawn to the debris field below.
The crater floor was infested with hidden life.
Predators lurked beneath crumbling boulders, coiled tightly inside shadows, and blended seamlessly with the thorny vegetation dotting the dirt.
At a casual glance, they were indistinguishable from mossy rocks and broken terrain.
Yet Ethen’s heightened perception mapped every living outline.
The sudden downdraft from Vlad’s bats disturbed their camouflage.
One after another, the hidden monstrosities began to stir.
Some slithered deeper into the limestone crevices to escape notice.
Others went completely rigid, biding their time in the dark.
The entire crater seemed to awaken, subtly shifting around the intruder’s presence.
And then, Ethen’s danger sense shrieked.
"No, wait!!"
Ethen’s expression twisted in alarm.
Something far more lethal than simple camouflaged beasts had taken notice.
He instantly pushed a mental command through the soul link, ordering Vlad to abort the dive.
It was already too late.
A violent torrent of pitch-black flames erupted from a subterranean fissure, surging upward like an erupting geyser to engulf the bat colony from below.
The dark fire carried neither light nor heat—only absolute destruction.
The black inferno swallowed dozens of bats in an instant.
Vlad immediately broke formation, the surviving bats scattering into wild, frantic evasive dives to clear the kill zone.
Yet the unseen attacker had no intention of letting the scout retreat.
The jet of black flames coiled like a living whip, tracking the bats with terrifying speed.
It scorched across the stone floor and dragged along the crater wall, pursuing the fleeing swarm with relentless precision.
The flame was unnatural.
It moved far too quickly for simple beast breath.
Vlad split the remaining bats into three distinct vectors, yet the black fire mirrored every turn, devouring the rearguard one by one.
The swarm began to thin dangerously.
Vlad was built for swift reconnaissance and targeted assassination, but against a continuous wave of tracking cursed fire, his speed alone was not enough to guarantee survival.
The black flames swept across the rock face, threatening to consume the final core cluster of bats.
Ethen’s pupils contracted to pinpricks.
He could feel Vlad’s soul link flickering under severe spiritual trauma.
"Vlad!"
Just as the black fire snapped forward to incinerate the last of the swarm—
A terrifying shadow burst from the brush along the crater wall.
The Black DoberBone moved like an obsidian spear, crossing fifty yards in a fraction of a second.
Its massive jaws snapped wide, revealing tungsten-hard, razor-sharp fangs.
*CRUNCH!*
The beast clamped down directly onto the throat of the serpentine horror hiding in the fissure.
The sheer kinetic momentum drove the hidden predator violently into the dirt, shattering the stone beneath its skull.
The jet of black flames choked off instantly.
The surviving bats seized the narrow window, diving out of the burning basin toward safety.
They converged behind a high boulder on the opposite slope, reforming Vlad’s humanoid silhouette.
The vampire slumped to his knees, clutching his face in agony.
His aristocratic features were charred to a blackened, smoking ruin, his flesh struggling to regenerate against the lingering necrotic burn.
"Fuck!!"
Ethen spat, his voice dropping into a venomous, furious register.
His expression turned icy cold.
Without a second of hesitation, his boots shattered the stone beneath him as he blurred straight toward Vlad’s position.
His dark eyes burned with lethal, unbridled fury.
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