Leaping through the tall trees, Axel thought of the betrayal he received from his former subordinates. He vowed to get revenge even with the restrictions placed on him by the oath, to make them grovel in the dirt like he had.
The cuts and bruises hurt, but not as much as his pride, one of the few things one could have as a child in the slums. To have been beaten by the people he had only considered lesser, his pride had been lost and now, his only thought was getting it back with any means necessary.
Passing through the tall branches, he couldn't help but marvel at how truly massive they were, towering above the rest. They made everything around them feel small and insignificant, like ants before an elephant.
I need to find water to wash off theblood. The boy thought as he smelled the muddy, blood-soaked clothes he was wearing. The smell of blood would attract predators and while he usually could take down most of the predators in this forest, both his oath and current state would make even escaping hard. Not to mention fighting mana beasts or worse, the corrupted.
Pausing on a particularly wide branch, Axel heard the distant sound of water and started quickly heading in that direction while being as silent as possible so as to not provoke the surrounding wildlife.
As the distant sound started getting closer, Axel thanked the gods for giving him a break and a chance.
However, as soon as he got to the final branch overlooking the source of water, his prayers started to turn to curses as Axel held his stomach while gagging as to not be seen by the abomination.
Before him was a corrupted, beings who defied the gods and turned to the titans for power, it had meaty flesh trying to wrap around a deformed black skeleton but some places were left uncovered, the flesh looked rotten and had some parts dangling from its carcass, there were tentacles that came from the left side of it, dangling in the air, while some were eating the deer carcass in front of it. Its very presence draining color from the plants around the riverbed it was next to. it loosely resembled a bear, but only because it was massive and stood on four legs.
It turned around and their eyes met, the eldritch horror's eyes were black and lifeless, like an never-ending abyss, threatening to swallow the boy in them. His first instinct was to run, but there was an instinctual fear that kept him in place, it came from the fear of that which shouldn't exist, of something whose existence defied the laws which created this world. His head started to hurt but he couldn't look away, its presence was overwhelming.
He remembered the caretakers at the orphanage would say that a grown man would revert to a crying child in front of a corrupted, he also remembered laughing at that idea. Crying was a gross understatement, He felt he was seeing something fundamentally wrong and that running away was the only thing that would keep him alive but his legs wouldn't listen.
At this point, the corrupted started moving towards him, but that was wrong as well, it was dragging itself using its tentacles and muscles across the ground. Axel kept commanding his legs to move, but they wouldn't.
As a last ditch effort, he compressed all his mana into his middle finger and thumb and snapped his fingers. The two fingers were broken and lacerated from over-compression but the dust and mud on the ground near him shot into the air, blocking his sight from the corrupted.
His legs started to work again as he quickly turned around and ran in a random direction to leave as fast as possible.
"Screech!" A bloodcurdling scream was heard a short distance away from him but Axel never turned back and kept running to get as far away as humanly possible, he started hearing slithering tentacles wrapping to the decayed ground and squelching muscles contracting as the corrupted was coming after him.
He didn't care about disturbing the wildlife anymore as he ran as fast while ignoring the pain and lethargy he was feeling. He didn't stop, he couldn't, not until his pride was back.
Thank the gods that it was only half corrupted. A true corrupted would have annihilated me with just its gaze, He thought as he ran.
After some time, Axel decided he'd ran enough so he stopped for a break and examined his injuries.
Other than the fingers I broke to escape, the rest of the wounds will heal in about three days, He thought as he tried pat off the mud that stuck to him.
At this point, Axel's legs felt heavier than lead, having run for the past 4 hours at his fastest, he felt lightheaded from the countless cuts but he was too afraid to rest in case the corrupted was nearby.
He started surveying the surroundings to find a suitable place to spend the night, he wanted to find a place underground to mask his scent and make it harder to find him.
As he walked across the ever-expansive forest, looked down upon by the towering oath trees in the dead of the night, Axel found a strange sight, a singular white tree, it had a dim sheen surrounding it, cloaking it in its brilliance, with a height almost matching its giant cousins.
A wave of curiosity overcame Axel's rationality since he chose to approach the tree. Its branches were glowing and as he got closer, he discovered the other side of the tree had a human sized hole leading underground. It was the perfect place for him to stay for the night. The underground place was dimly luminated by what Axel thought were the trees roots.
Climbing down the hole was not a hard task, even for Axels tired body. When he reached the area, he froze in his tracks. What he thought was wrong, the trees roots weren't the thing that was illuminating the underground, it was a large red circle, perpendicular to the ground. What stopped Axel wasn't the mana emitting from the circle or its red color, but the fact that it had no depth, it was not a sphere or cylinder, but a circle.
The child got closer, curiosity shining in his jade eyes, and he wanted to tap on it with his finger, even more surprising was that it went in the circle. He flinched and quickly took his finger back out again. Finding it unharmed, he put his whole arm in next before taking it out.
Should I try to go in? It might mask my scent from that abomination, He thought.
Not wanting to ever meet that thing again, and thinking there was nothing to lose, Axel entered.