The chase began to ascend in earnest. The forgiving soil of the forest floor gave way to treacherous limestone, slick in places where water seeped, jagged in others where time had carved cruel edges. Narrow ledges and steep drops cut through the slope. The Iron-Hoofed Goat bounded upward, its hind legs bunching and releasing with terrifying power as it jumped from one rocky protrusion to the next.
Rudra followed, not quite as graceful, but precise in his own way. He had marked every second and third step in his mind, every stone that wobbled, every gap that looked wider than it was. This was the final stretch of the hunt, the last dance between prey and predator before the script he had written took over completely.
As he climbed, he did not forget to catch his breath and calm his heart. His hunt was over. He had absolute certainty of this. Now he needed to proceed to the next step.
The air thinned as the elevation rose, turning sharp and dry in Rudra's lungs. The cliffs weren't just a geographical boundary; they were a graveyard carved into the land itself, a place where bones gathered in cracks between shattered stone and ledges. For the Iron-Hoofed Goat, this vertical maze was home. Its specialized hooves, bit into rock with ease, granting it effortless purchase on surfaces that would send a normal human sliding toward a broken-necked death.
Rudra, however, was not a normal human.
He climbed with swift motion but never in a hurry. He was already aware that he could never hope to catchup to the beast. That was never a part of his plan in the first place. If he were to catch up on it at this moment, it would lose its composure, deviate from this path or worse pick a route that was actually safe.
He did not want that.
But unaware of it's hunters thoughts, the goat still tried its best to escape. It bounded across a two-meter gap between jagged limestone pillars, its hind legs coiling like springs before launching it into the air. This, exactly this, was what Rudra had been waiting to see.
Show me, Rudra thought, narrowing his gaze on the beast's hindquarters. He watched the way the muscles bunched and released. He tracked the subtle flow of mana as it surged from the core in the goat's chest, ran through its spine, and sank down into the iron-capped hooves to create a momentary gravitational anchor at the moment of impact. This was the Iron Leap stripped down to its essence. He had seen this ability displayed a lot of times, but only now, in its moment of crisis could he truly feel that he grasped its essence.
The goat reached a narrow crevice,
SNAP.
A heavy cord, hidden in a groove along the rock, whipped free. Woven from spider-silk threads braided with steel wire, it moved faster than the goat could react. It wasn't meant to kill. Its design was simple: entangle, hold, and buy time. The cord snagged the beast's front left leg mid-stride. Momentum betrayed it. The Iron-Hoofed Goat let out a harrowing, metallic scream as its body slammed sideways into the rock, muscles straining against the restraint.
Panicked, it tried to call on Minor Foresight to find an escape route, to select the timeline where it slipped free and fled. But Rudra had planned for that. He hadn't set a single trap and trusted luck. He had set a sequence.
As the goat thrashed, desperately trying to wrench its leg free, one iron hoof crashed down on a flat patch of stone at the chimney's base. The disguised pressure plate underneath depressed with a dull click.
Two weighted nets—more spider-silk lines threaded with lead beads—dropped from the cliffs above. They hit with brutal efficiency, tangling around the goat's torso and neck, dragging it sideways and pinning its cerulean body against the cold cliff wall. The more it struggled, the tighter the cords bit into its flesh, turning frantic strength into its own restraint.
Rudra hauled himself over the edge of the plateau, arms and shoulders burning, breath coming heavy but controlled. He didn't dash toward the caught beast. He took a moment to stand there, feet planted at the edge, watching the Iron-Hoofed Goat writhe in its web of lines. His gaze was cool, analytical, almost distant.
"One month," Rudra said quietly, his voice barely loud enough to rise over the goat's panicked bleating. He reached into his satchel and drew out a small, curved blade. The dark metal shimmered faintly, etched with fine cooling runes designed to keep whatever blood it touched from coagulating too quickly. "I spent thirty days studying your gait, your fear, your hunger. Do you know how many times I climbed this cliff in the dark, just to make sure these wires lay at the exact angle of your leap?"
The goat screamed again, a raw, grating sound that scraped against the stone and rattled down the slope. Its blue eyes were wide and wild, full of gut-deep terror. The closer death came, the more human that fear looked.
"Don't worry," Rudra murmured, and there was a strange gentleness in his tone that did not match the situation. "Your instincts won't be wasted. They'll be much more useful in my hands than they ever were in yours."
He stepped closer, boots finding steady footing on the uneven rock, careful not to jostle any lines. This was always the most dangerous part of the hunt. A cornered magical beast, sensing no escape, could choose to self-detonate its mana core. One pulse of released energy and the vital blood he needed would be ruined,,, charred, scattered, or turned into a useless, inert sludge.
To avoid that, Rudra let his movements shift into a soothing rhythm. He began to hum, low and steady, the sound vibrating more through his chest and teeth than the air. The note wasn't random. He adjusted it minutely, matching it to the cadence of the goat's panicked breathing, then to the faint, muffled thrum he could feel through the rock from its mana core. It was a crude version of a beast-calming technique he'd torn from a black-market manuscript and practiced until it made his throat raw.
The goat's struggling slowed by a fraction. Its eyes remained wide, but something in its posture loosened. Fear was still there, but the edge of immediate panic dulled. Perhaps its sight had already shown its fate to itself. Maybe it accepted it. Maybe not.
That tiny opening was all he needed.
Rudra moved. The curved blade flashed once.
He didn't simply stab the heart and hope for the best. The cut was surgical, executed with the precision of someone who had rehearsed the angle on dissected carcasses and stolen anatomy diagrams. The blade entered at a narrow gap between vertebrae near the base of the skull, slicing through the nerves that connected the brain's conscious control to the mana core, but leaving the circulatory system intact.
The Iron-Hoofed Goat went limp, its scream cutting off mid-note. Its eyes lost focus, but the heart continued to beat, pumping blood in an increasingly sluggish rhythm. Life ebbed out of the beast, not in an explosive burst, but in a controlled, steady flow.
Rudra's tempo changed.
He pulled a small pouch of pungent herbs from his satchel, quickly grinding them between his fingers to awaken the oils, then smeared the thick paste around the puncture wound. The mixture smelled sharply of resin and something metallic, sealing the flesh and helping to keep the vital essence from escaping. Every second mattered now. Every drop of blood that seeped out here was one drop less for his rune.
"Now for the carving," he muttered under his breath.
The sun had begun its slow descent, sliding toward the horizon and washing the cliffside in long, blood-tinged shadows. Rudra shrugged off his camouflaging cloak and set it aside. Beneath it, his frame was lean but well-built, the product of years of running, climbing, and fighting for every scrap of progress. At fifteen, he already carried the wiry strength of someone who had never been allowed to be weak.
He knelt beside the carcass, the stone cold against his knees, and set the curved blade aside in favor of the ritual knife. Its edge was straighter, thinner, built for precise etching rather than killing. With practiced strokes, he began to cut symbols into the goat's hide.
The pattern that emerged was intricate, a network of interlocking lines and curves that wrapped around the beast's torso and converged over the chest. These weren't decorative marks. They formed a Blood Siphon array, structured to guide and compress the life-force that lay dormant in muscle, organ, and bone. Each symbol had a function: to draw, to refine, to bind, to centralize.
As he worked, the red light of the dying sun caught in his ruby eyes, making them burn brighter. Combined with the streaks of blood on his hands and forearms, it gave him a distinctly inhuman look. Kneeling over a bound beast, eyes glowing, knife dancing in sure strokes, he looked less like a boy and more like some young demon priest, holding court over a sacrificial altar.
The air shifted.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, a faint crimson mist began to rise from the carved runes. It seeped from the lines like steam from fresh wounds, curling upward in tendrils. The scent intensified, ozone and iron, damp fur and raw power. The mist didn't disperse in the breeze that skimmed across the plateau. Instead, it rolled inward, drawn along the paths carved by the array.
It gathered.
The drifting red vapor spiraled toward the goat's chest. The flow quickened, streams of mist rushing together until they formed a dense, rotating mass just above the hide. The rotation tightened, faster and faster, condensing into a single, glowing, rhombic crystal that hung in the air like a suspended drop of hardened blood.
The crystal rotated slowly, facets catching the fading light. It was beautiful in a brutal way: a gem of pure, condensed life-force, every drop of vital blood and instinct rendered into one fragile, potent object.
Rudra's hand trembled slightly as he extended his palm under it. He forced his breathing to steady, drawing his focus inward. A Stage 1 cultivator didn't have much internal energy to work with, but what he had, he pushed outward, threading it carefully into the spinning crystal. It shuddered, then stabilized, the rotation evening out.
With a final, sharp exhale that felt like it squeezed his lungs empty, he guided the crystal downward and pressed it into the goat's chest, right above where its heart lay. The flesh parted willingly under its influence, accepting the foreign object as if it had always been meant to be there.
There was a faint thrum that ran through the plateau, a sound felt more than heard. The stone beneath his knees vibrated for a heartbeat, then stilled. The next few seconds were crucial for his hunt to be a success. If the vital crystal he had coalesced was rejected by the beast's heart, all his efforts would have been for nothing.