Read Novel Full Chapter 505: Apex Predator
Chapter 505: Apex Predator
"…" Zhita'hna lunges forward in a Mana-charged assault, creating a massive horizontal golden hurricane that surges toward me. I stomp the ground, shattering it and tearing off a huge chunk of earth that I hurl at her.
Using that as cover, I dash forward with a Mana-imbued punch that explodes on impact with her. The ground around us gives way, cracking and collapsing into the crater her previous attack created, sending us both flying apart.
I soar upward into the sky as she tries to rush me, but using [Temporal Speed Blitz] I appear right in front of her and kick her chin. With my tail I grab her waist, and with my legs I wrap around her body, using my hands to pin her wings.
"…!!!" She's firmly locked in my grasp as I plummet downward. She tries to fire her feathers to cut me, but I use darkness to form a barrier around her wings, trapping the feathers.
"[Repulsive Moon]" I use the Repulsive Moon magic to slice through the base of her wings, tearing them off. She screams in pain and then headbutts me, disorienting me as we slam into the ground.
"[Abyssal Cataclysm]" She uses some kind of magic that expands outward from her body like a colossal explosion, hurling me away and scorching my body. Everything around us is disintegrated in seconds as my Pure Mana Armor nearly shatters completely.
"Two minutes…" When I say that, she charges at me even more frenziedly. The more magic she spends, the more it reduces the time she has left. Without her wings, she can only run at me, though she's still incredibly fast.
As she gets close, I try to punch her, but she leans down to dodge, then stomps the ground hard. With magic, an enormous magical circle forms, and a gigantic pillar of black flames erupts.
My Mana Armor is corroded almost instantly, and I watch as my Mana begins to drop at an alarming rate, as if those black flames are consuming my magic.
"…Urgh" She rips open my stomach with the claws on her legs, but I grab her leg and punch her face repeatedly. She opens her mouth to recite some spell, but I shove my hand into her mouth and tear off part of her jaw.
"…" I tilt her backward and slam her down, climbing on top of her. I start pummeling her. With no arms, she can't defend herself. Without her jaw, she can't properly recite magic. And with so much magic being spent, she can barely do anything.
"Thirty seconds!!" She tries one last gambit. She gathers all her magic into her heart, completely abandoning defense. The magic becomes so dense in that one spot it feels suffocating.
"[Bloody Eclipse]"
[Bloody Eclipse] alters the atmospheric pressure, causing surrounding bodies to implode, compressed by the drastic pressure change between their bodies and the environment.
I use this magic I employed in the battle against the humans. The bird-girl's body, due to the immense environmental shift, begins to compress, but her heart is still active and she resists being crushed.
"…" I lower my head and bite into her chest, sinking my face into the flesh and devouring her heart completely. She lets out a pained sound and all her magic vanishes, consumed by my passive ability as my Mana recovers.
"…" The gaze in her slightly compressed face is one of pure disappointment. She lost. She used all the power she had and still failed.
"Haaa…" I take a deep breath, savoring the intense mass of magic I just consumed.
"What madness… I don't know what I was going to do… but I felt I would die. You really bet everything until the very last second, huh? Well, be proud, you…"
"You… lost…" She interrupts me, her voice hoarse and garbled but understandable. I'm briefly confused, seeing her distorted "smile." Even dying, she seems truly victorious. Her eyes, crushed by the atmospheric pressure change, hold that triumphant look.
'Lost? How the hell did I lose? I'm almost unscathed, I've used only about 30% of all the magic I currently have, and she has almost no magic left, and is practically dead.' It's only a matter of time until she finishes dying.
"…Tell me? What did you do!!" Her smile irritates me. She's practically dead, and she still says that? It frightens me a little. My body senses this isn't a bluff, and if it's not a bluff, what exactly did she gain?
My brain runs through thousands of possibilities in a millisecond. Poison? A curse? A skill? Anything that could kill me over time, used without me noticing?
But if it were just that, she wouldn't have said she won. Or rather, she didn't say she won; she said I lost, and there's a difference. The possibilities are so numerous my body shudders, trying to figure out what she did.
'What do I know about her?' I review all the memories I've built since meeting her, every fragment of information I collected, no matter how useless it seemed, until one piece of information surfaces.
Not something I discovered, not something I noticed, but something I asked. And she only answered without much interest: the method to "invite" one of my mother's servants.
"YOU FUCKING BITCH!!!!!" She used so much magic, it must have alerted everything within a radius larger than several solar systems. Magic spreads far, and Pure Mana spreads even farther.
There was so much magic being released at once for several minutes, it must have reached incredibly far.
'This slut didn't want to win!! She wanted to alert something!!' I think about her behavior, the bad feeling I'd been having as if something dangerous was approaching each day.
Along with the fact I had already deduced she was some servant of my mother's toy, since she was alive.
The island has stopped moving. We've been "stationary" in the same spot. From the moment the fight started and she began to lose, she decided she'd rather attract something dangerous than lose completely.
I didn't underestimate her. I took her seriously. I know how dangerous Abyss beings are. But even so… she was clever. She did something I didn't foresee.
"I need to leave before…" As I get up to flee, knowing a being with a level above 500 million is coming, I freeze. An aura of death stares at my back, as if my power were nothing.
Once again, the roles reverse. In seconds, I go from predator to weak prey. But it's worse. It's never been this bad before. This time, the chance of victory is 0, the chance of escape is 0, and the chance of survival in a fight has also dropped to 0.
Other times I encountered stronger monsters, the chance of survival was never 0. I always had ways to survive with the power I had, whether by fleeing or doing something similar.
But this time, I feel that even if I used the copy ability I used to escape the spider girl, I wouldn't stand a chance.
'Breathe, breathe, breathe! I need to stay calm.' My heart is racing, full of adrenaline and fear of a powerful predator I haven't even seen yet. The aura isn't necessarily close.
Rather, it's on the move, which means I'm within this thing's detection range, but it hasn't arrived yet.
'What do I do? I've already been spotted.' There's no running now. Maybe if I had realized earlier it would have been possible, but now, whatever this monster is, it has already noticed me and is coming to get me.
[System Alert.
An Apex Predator has appeared. It is a top-tier predator of the Abyss, typically a being at the very top of the food chain in a region, a monster no other monster is willing to attack.
Normally, monsters tend to attack any other type of monster, but with Apex Predators, things change. Monsters avoid them at all costs and try not to enter their sights.
If caught, they usually give up on life, because there isn't much to be done. An Apex Predator is the apex of the apex in a territory, meaning in physical, magical, mental, and general capabilities, it is the maximum of everything.
Thus, only an Apex Predator can face another. Normally they don't leave their territories, but currently, it is pursuing an "intruder" that has caused it irritation.
The user is that "intruder" – an unnatural monster in the territory that caused problems by having many offspring with a being and rapidly increasing their numbers. This caught the attention of the Apex Predator, who was not at all happy with the ecosystem changing in this way.
As the top predator, it rigidly controls how the numbers of beings fall or rise, and if one type of monster increases in numbers too quickly, the Apex Predator comes to investigate.]
'W-What the hell!! This thing is after me?!' I thought it was after the bird-girl, but no!! This thing is literally hunting me!! All because of that damn spider bitch who used me as an egg incubator!!
"S-System, how can I escape!! I need to escape!!" The primal fear invading me is the greatest I've felt since I was born. I've never seen anything so "dangerous." Even the goddesses didn't give me a sense of danger like this Apex Predator does.
[Normally it would be possible if you were a common monster. But despite being fragile, you are also an Apex Predator. That is, a monster that shouldn't be here. A territory should not have more than one Apex Predator.
If it does, it's usually for very specific reasons, such as Partners, Offspring, or Master-Servant relationships.]
"That doesn't…" Before I can say that's useless, I feel it arrive. Out of nowhere, it crossed the entire distance almost instantaneously, and being this close, my body panics, shivering completely.
[Warning, Warning. The system alerts that due to the aura of an Apex Predator, you may be induced to commit suicide.]
The system warns me of something I've already noticed. My tail seems to want to impale my own body completely, growing agitated, and only not attacking because I don't want to die. I still have a target to kill.
I still have to destroy the human goddess. I won't die until then. So I suppress the instinct to kill myself.
'I-I'll get out alive… I'll make it!' I was so happy with my new power. It's a fucking cruel joke for such a strong being to appear just to ruin my excitement.