CHAPTER 76: WILD WAVES (2)

The fog wasn’t moving the same way anymore.

Before, it had swirled loosely, low currents brushing along the stone floor, drifting with a casual kind of menace.

Now it clung to the walls, holding still in long, horizontal strands like something coiled, breath held.

Lucen stepped forward carefully, his boots brushing over the scorched remains of a shattered glyph pattern, and noticed how the mist resisted his motion, like it didn’t want him here anymore.

Or worse, like it was trying to keep him still.

His system ticked softly behind his eyes.

[Mana: 34 / 120]

[Recovery: +2.6/sec]

[Corruption Threshold: 2%]

He rotated his wrist slowly, keeping his palm open as he traced a low-energy glyph along the inside of his sleeve, a dummy spell, harmless and quiet, just enough to check casting latency.

It lit without delay.

’Good.’

That meant the anti-magic interference from the last wave hadn’t followed him this far. But it also meant whatever was out there didn’t need interference to be dangerous.

Lucen walked ten more steps before something shifted ahead.

Not a movement. Not a sound. The air changed, as if a boundary had been crossed. The very density of the rift felt different here, like something enormous had inhaled just once, and the corridor remembered it.

He froze mid-step.

Out of the fog ahead, the outline of a leg emerged. It wasn’t shaped like a human’s or even a beast’s.

It was too long, bent backwards at the knee, ending in a hooked talon that scraped against stone with the sound of wood splintering under pressure.

The limb moved slowly, too slowly. Like it was attached to something that didn’t need to chase anything.

Lucen’s breath slowed.

His fingers flexed again, summoning [Frost Spire] silently, prepping the spike mid-air as he watched the rest of the creature come forward.

When the torso emerged, the spell nearly faltered from his hand.

The thing was tall enough to brush the ceiling, seven, maybe eight feet, and built like someone had taken three different types of creature and glued them together with war magic and bad intentions.

Its skin was a matte, chalk-white texture, as if it had never been warmed by sun or flame.

Ribbed plates wrapped unevenly around its frame, some fused to what looked like muscle, others embedded too deep, as though it had grown around its own armor.

Where a face should have been, there was only a vertical ridge, three eye-like slits glowing faintly down the center, like the spine of a book that stared.

It had no mouth. No nose. No obvious breathing. Just those three eyes that watched him in perfect stillness.

Lucen’s grip tightened.

’Not a rift beast. That shit is definitely not ormal.’

He released [Frost Spire].

The ice lance fired with perfect efficiency, cutting through the air and striking the creature in the upper chest. It should have embedded.

It should have sent a shudder through the creature’s form or driven it back a step.

It didn’t even leave a scratch.

The ice cracked and fell in powdered pieces against its hide. The creature didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. It simply tilted its head a few degrees to the left, like an animal studying a noise it didn’t recognize.

Lucen didn’t retreat, yet. But he didn’t cast again either.

He lowered his hand slowly, watching the creature with quiet calculation.

’Either it absorbed it, or it didn’t need to.’

The thing took another step forward. Its gait was too smooth for a creature that size.

Each movement looked slow until you realized how much ground it had covered.

It wasn’t walking, it was gliding, the limbs moving as a courtesy rather than a necessity. Lucen braced. Tried a new angle.

[Ignition Burst.]

This time he aimed for the eyes. A clean shot. The firebolt hissed across the space and landed dead center in the upper eye-slot.

It didn’t explode. It didn’t scorch. The flame simply... vanished.

No shimmer, no barrier, no elemental dampening. Just gone.

’Null field? No. Not even that. Like it didn’t register fire as a concept.’

Lucen clenched his jaw.

The creature stopped five meters away. Now fully visible, it filled the corridor with its presence alone.

Those strange limbs bent and clicked faintly at each joint.

On either side of its ribbed torso, Lucen noticed something shift, like scars opening, and only then did he realize the creature did have arms, but they were folded into its body like blades tucked into a sheath.

Long, spindly limbs with clawed digits that looked more surgical than brutal.

He took a single step back. Not out of panic. Just out of tactical honesty.

A breeze rolled through the corridor, not from behind, but from the front. From the creature itself. As if it had exhaled for the first time.

And that’s when he felt it.

The mana pressure.

It wasn’t a spell. It wasn’t a cast. It was like the ambient magical energy of the world had decided this thing belonged here, and Lucen didn’t.

[System Alert: Pressure Node Detected]

[Auto-Compression Engaged]

[Corruption Threshold: 6%]

’That’s new.’

His thoughts sharpened as he pivoted, drew a second glyph fast and wide across the floor.

[Shockweave Bolt.]

The electrical pulse snapped through the space toward the creature’s lower leg.

It connected.

There was a flash, then nothing.

No stagger. No convulsion.

The creature merely shifted its weight, the shock sliding across its skin like static on glass.

Lucen’s pulse kicked higher. He fired a second glyph immediately behind it.

[Soundlash.]

The burst slammed into the stone and echoed through the corridor with a bone-rattling hum. Loose debris shook from the ceiling. A cracked glyphline on the floor briefly lit up from resonance.

This time, the creature paused.

Not because it was hurt. But because, for the first time, it had registered what Lucen was doing.

And now it was interested.

The eye-lights flared brighter, and the arms began to unfold.

Slowly. Deliberately. Like it wanted him to see how unnecessary speed was.

Lucen muttered under his breath. "Oh. You’re one of those."

It lunged.

Not with a roar or a screech. Just momentum. A physical command issued to a body that obeyed without resistance.

Lucen barely had time to pivot before a limb slammed into the wall where his head had been. Stone cratered. Dust flew. He rolled across the floor and threw up a glyph mid-slide.

[Crater Bloom.]

The ground beneath the creature erupted.

Except it didn’t.

The spell fizzled halfway. Didn’t detonate.

[Spell Failure — Zone Interference]

[Mana Cost: Partial Deduction — 5]

"Fantastic," Lucen spat, kicking off the ground and pulling back toward the nearest side tunnel. "It’s immune and expensive."

He didn’t look back.

Not because he didn’t want to.

Because he already knew it was following