CHAPTER 201: DEVOUR

The tendrils weren’t tracking me anymore, not precisely.

Their movements were chaotic, unfocused, lashing out in every direction.

The entity wasn’t trying to fight me; it was consuming everything around us.

My stomach sank.

That confirmed it: Jael was gone.

Whatever fragment of will or reason he’d had left had been swallowed by this... thing.

What had started as a battle between us had devolved into something far worse: pure, instinctive hunger.

I stood there, staring at the spreading ink that devoured trees, stones, and even the air’s color itself.

The landscape was being erased piece by piece, turned into a void of lifeless gray.

For a fleeting second, the thought crossed my mind—just leave.

Let it burn itself out. Maybe this mountain could die quietly without taking me down with it.

But I knew better.

If I left it unchecked, it wouldn’t stop here.

That hunger would grow, spreading outward, devouring everything in its path—forest, river, the plains below, and eventually the clan.

My clan. Zarah.

Every goblin who had fought, bled, and trusted me to protect them—they’d all be erased by this spreading hunger.

There would be no bodies to bury, no graves to mourn over.

Just emptiness.

I exhaled through gritted teeth, my decision sealing itself the moment the thought crossed my mind. There was no running. No waiting. No retreat.

I charged.

The entity reacted immediately. Dozens of tendrils erupted from its body, slicing through the air like whips.

I warped between them, the world flickering around me as each spatial shift carried me inches past death.

The tendrils carved trenches into the earth where I’d just stood, and the air behind me shimmered with the rot of their passing.

The moment I found an opening, I swung.

"[Rift Slash]!"

A crescent of violet energy screamed across the battlefield, cutting through the distortion and hitting the creature square in the chest.

But unlike before, when my slashes had at least managed to stagger it, this time there was no reaction—no recoil, no movement.

The attack struck, dispersed, and vanished into the mass of black ink without leaving so much as a tremor.

"Dammit!" I hissed, my pulse hammering in frustration.

Fine. If raw force wouldn’t cut it, I’d go for something far worse.

I raised my hand, feeling the air twist violently around me as void energy surged to the surface.

The space behind the entity began to distort, rippling like glass bending under pressure. A sharp crack rang out—then another—and a tear in reality began to form.

"[Event Collapse]," I muttered, my voice low and steady.

The air shuddered as a massive rift unfolded behind the creature, swirling with impossible darkness.

The ground split beneath my feet as the force built, the world itself bending toward the singularity.

If this didn’t work, nothing would.

The rift widened as I poured more power into it, its pull deepening into a violent vortex that howled through the air. The ground fractured beneath me, cracks spiderwebbing outward as chunks of rock, ash, and debris were torn from the earth and drawn into the swirling void. The pull was so intense that even the light around it bent, distorting the world into a trembling blur.

The entity of black, Jael’s final, corrupted form, was the first thing the rift reached for.

The moment it formed, the pull seized him, dragging at his limbs and tearing at the ink that made up his body. For a heartbeat, I thought it might work.

The mass of darkness wavered, shifting toward the singularity.

But then, it resisted.

The creature slammed both feet into the ground, its stance wide and defiant, the terrain beneath it splintering under the strain.

It wasn’t simply standing against the pull, it was anchoring itself to the world, refusing to yield.

I snarled and forced more power into the rift. The vortex deepened, the sound turning into a deafening roar as its pull intensified. Now, even the black entity began to slide toward it, inch by inch, its surface peeling away in long, writhing strands that were devoured by the void.

For a second, hope flickered.

Then the ground erupted.

Dozens of tendrils burst outward from the creature’s lower body, slamming deep into the earth and rooting themselves like the roots of some demonic tree.

The pull of the rift tore at them, but they held fast, anchoring it in place.

Every moment they held, the corruption beneath spread faster, spilling outward like floodwater, consuming everything it touched.

The landscape was dying faster than I could pull it back.

A cold sweat broke out across my brow as the rift devoured my mana reserves.

The energy expenditure was massive, my internal circuits straining under the sheer force it demanded. My vision blurred for a moment, the edges dimming, but I gritted my teeth and pushed harder.

I didn’t care. Not anymore.

If this thing broke free, if it spread beyond this mountain, everything—my clan, my home, the little piece of peace I’d built—would vanish.

So I kept feeding the rift. Even as my mana drained like a river through a broken dam, even as my lungs burned and the edges of my vision darkened, I pushed every last drop of power I had into it.

If I could just pull it in, just end it, it would all be worth it.

The rift’s pull deepened into a furious storm, its center twisting with a force that made the very air tremble.

The black entity’s body began to warp and strain under the suction—its tendrils snapping one after another with sharp, wet cracks that echoed like breaking bones.

The creature arched backward, its ink-like form rippling violently as it struggled against the pull.

Each second, its footing slipped a little more.

The earth beneath it fractured, dragged upward in slabs before disintegrating into dust as they neared the rift.

It was working. Slowly, painfully, it was working.

Jael—no, the thing that had once been Jael—was being pulled in.

His claws dug trenches into the stone, but even they began to crumble as the gravitational pressure overwhelmed him.

His body stretched unnaturally, like tar being dragged into a drain.

The roar of the vortex swallowed every other sound.

But still, it wasn’t enough.

The rift was close—so close—to...