Chapter 11: Void Hunt
"If thunder is the voice of wrath, mine will speak in silence."
📅 Age: 10 Years
Spirit Rank: 40 (Spirit Ancestor)
Spirit Rings:
2,300+ Yrs – Curse: Soul Rot
5,300+ Yrs – Corruption: Thought Decay
17,200+ Yrs – Catastrophe: Collapse
🔒 (Pending) – Target: Void-Tunneling Basilisk (53,600+ Years)
For days, Tian scouted from high ground with his upgraded crystal scope, rarely blinking. The Void-Tunneling Basilisk didn't move like a creature. It moved like a phenomenon. Its form shimmered as if woven from bent glass, tail always half-phased into space.
It rarely left its dimensional rift pool, a crater of spatial instability that twisted time, gravity, and light.
Only twice did it emerge fully into the mortal plane.
And Tian was waiting both times.
🧠 Phase One: The Hunt Plan
Tian's planning board — a makeshift wall of bark, spirit grass, and carved notes — outlined three options:
Headshot ambush? Useless. Its third eye phased in and out of visible light, and the bullet's linear path would distort in warped gravity.
Trap collapse? Risky. Spatial beasts ignored linear time, and its awareness pulsed in rhythmic bursts — it could "see" future motion within five meters.
Lure then collapse shot? Possible — if he could anchor it.
So he did what no one else would dare:
He poisoned the rift pool.
A compressed capsule of decaying curse-element venom harvested from his own spirit ring — Soul Rot — delivered by modified bullet into the core of the pool.
The Basilisk reacted like a dragon disturbed mid-slumber.
It screeched, reality fractured, and it launched itself fully into real space.
The hunt had begun.
⚔️ Phase Two: Engagement
Tian was already in AVATAR mode. His SIG MCX SPEAR shimmered into existence, fully formed, glowing faintly from its rings.
Summon Duration Remaining: 55:00
Ammo: 880 rounds
Spirit Power: Full reservoir
He leapt from cover, sliding down shale into the combat zone.
Scope locked. Breath shallow. Target: Basilisk frontal lobes.
The Basilisk flickered. Its body bent sideways — literally turned in space — and reappeared twenty meters away.
Tian smiled.
"Spatial step reaction time: 0.3 seconds. Predictable."
He fired.
The bullet struck air — vanished. Space had curved, bent, and spat it somewhere else.
But Tian didn't curse.
That wasn't a miss. It was data.
💡 Phase Three: Trap and Anchor
He activated his gravity mines, crafted using fragments of Collapse domain energy. These weren't explosive — they were sink points, like localized gravity traps.
He dropped four of them, forming a reverse cloverleaf trap, each activated by spirit threads strung through terrain, invisible to human or beast eyes.
The Basilisk struck — a flicker of motion, then BOOM —
a pillar of rock imploded beside Tian. His shoulder cracked; his ribs screamed.
He rolled under its tail sweep and fired three rounds directly into the air above its head. The bullets disappeared — not from missing, but from piercing folded space.
The beast hissed. It was confused.
"Good," Tian murmured. "Think I'm blind. Think I'm weak."
💥 Phase Four: Execution Shot
Tian dashed right. The Basilisk lunged.
The trap triggered.
A gravity mine snapped open, pulling the Basilisk's head downward mid-phase.
Its skull collided with compressed terrain, momentarily anchoring it in real space.
That was the moment.
Tian's eyes dilated. Scope locked.
All four rings flared silently — one after the other.
Not loud. Not flashy.
Just light pulsing down the barrel.
"This is what unspeakable thunder sounds like."
He pulled the trigger.
BANG.
One bullet. Laced with 17,200 years of catastrophic energy, compressed through spatial collapse, guided by corruption, and coated in soul-decaying curse.
It didn't explode.
It unwound.
The impact hit — not as force, but as reality detachment.
The Basilisk screamed as its heart no longer existed, its ribcage crumbled inward, and the space it occupied evaporated like fog under sun.
🌀 Phase Five: Ring Rejection
The corpse twitched — then collapsed inwards.
Tian leapt atop it, digging both palms into the space above the dissolving core.
The ring formed.
53,600 years of swirling destruction and unstable gravitational energy condensed into one enormous black ring rimmed in silver, orbiting violently.
His body shook.
Spirit Power: Rank 40 → 41 → 42… stalled.
Muscles tore. Bones screamed.
The beast will struck him like a hammer of wrath.
"You are not worthy. You are too human. You are not chosen."
Tian bled from eyes, nose, and ears. He bit his tongue to stay conscious.
"I don't need to be chosen," he rasped.
"I'm the one with the gun."
He summoned the gun again — yes, a risk mid-absorption — and aimed at his own shadow.
BANG.
The echo spiraled through the absorption zone, fracturing the beast's will — not destroying it, but confusing it, breaking its coherence.
And Tian pushed his hand into the core.
"Consume it. Link. Assimilate."
The black ring slowed.
Then it surged downward — into his spine, his dantian, his soul.
⚠️ Aftermath: Body + Soul
He convulsed for ten full minutes.
When he woke, it was dark. His clothes were shredded.
His AVATAR form had dissipated.
But the ring had fused.
[4th Spirit Ring: Void-Tunneling Basilisk]
— Skill: Spatial Collapse Round
— Effect: Fires a bullet that creates a localized gravity rupture, warps time briefly, and disables all defensive formations, barriers, and shields within a 5-meter radius of impact.
— Secondary Effect: Area Denial. Creates a 3-second displacement field where no enemy can safely occupy the space.
📈 Status Update
Attribute
Value
Spirit Rank
42 (Spirit Ancestor)
Spirit Rings
4 — All self-hunted
Gun AVATAR
Power equivalent to Rank 80 body
Bullet Cap
880/day → upgraded to 1365/day
Duration
55min x4/day → now 63min x4/day
New Skill
Spatial Collapse Round
Nickname Spread
"Unspeakable Howling Thunder" now whispered in two kingdoms
Tian stood up, eyes bloodshot but steady.
"Four down. Five to go."
"They still think I'm a freak with a hidden dagger…"
"Let them."
He loaded a new magazine.
Not because he needed to shoot.
But because it felt right.
Because he knew…
Someone, somewhere, just felt a shiver — and didn't know why.
[End of Chapter 11 – Void Hunt]