Pitch-black scales scraped against stone.
The sound was slow… deliberate… grating against the silence as the snake demon made its way forward. Each movement dragged across the rock with a heavy, suffocating presence, like something ancient forcing itself into motion.
Its eyes—
They burned.
Deep, vivid hues of red, glowing brighter with every passing second. The bloodlust it emanated thickened the air itself, pressing down on my chest until even breathing felt like a struggle.
I took a step back.
Not consciously.
My body moved on its own, fear tightening its grip around my mind—intensifying, spiraling, becoming something I could no longer control.
A mental attack…?
The snake's movement—
There was something wrong with it.
Hypnotizing.
For a split second, it flickered out of existence.
Gone.
Not just from sight—but from sense. Its asura energy vanished completely, as if it had never been there.
And then—
Another appeared.
From a different angle.
Before I could react, the first returned.
Now there were two.
Both identical.
Perfectly so.
Not just in form—but in presence. The same suffocating bloodlust. The same dense, coiled asura energy.
My breath caught.
I started seeing things.
At the edges of my vision, vague, shadow-like figures flickered in and out of existence—never fully forming, never fully gone. Shapes that shouldn't exist, moving in ways my mind couldn't follow.
My grip on reality began to slip.
False information flooded my senses, blending seamlessly with what was real.
When I focused again—
Three snakes.
Side by side.
Moving toward me.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Unstoppable.
It was invading my mind.
I had to break out of it.
How—
No.
That wasn't the right question.
How was it doing this?
The answer came as fast as the thought.
The eyes.
My mind had started slipping the moment those crimson pupils began to burn brighter.
It was entering through my vision.
I shut my eyes.
Darkness swallowed everything.
The world vanished—
But the fear didn't.
It grew worse.
Heavier.
More suffocating.
And still—
I could sense them.
Three snakes.
Their asura energy lingered clearly in my perception.
Did it really split into three?
No.
Something about it felt wrong.
Incomplete.
I let my atma flow outward, seeping into the surroundings. The world pushed back against it faintly, reacting to my presence.
And then—
I felt it.
Close.
Too close.
My body moved before thought could catch up—I dove to the side as something massive crashed down where I had stood.
The snake's maw.
It struck with enough force to shatter the ground, aiming to swallow me whole.
The real one—
Was the fourth.
Completely hidden.
Beyond my ability to sense its asura energy.
The other three—
Bait.
A perfect distraction.
And it had almost killed me.
My eyes remained closed.
Yet the world wasn't gone.
It was… different.
There were no shapes.
No edges.
No structure my mind could cling to.
And yet—
I knew.
I wasn't observing the world anymore.
I was inside it.
Woven into it.
Every subtle shift brushed against my awareness. The air thickened before movement. Pressure leaned ever so slightly toward where something would be.
I moved.
Not after the attack—
But before it fully existed.
Another strike came.
I was already gone.
The asura presence bled into everything around me, like a slow corrosion. The world itself seemed to recoil from it, space warping ever so slightly under its influence.
A wrongness.
Spreading.
Consuming.
There was no gap between cause and awareness.
No delay.
No need to interpret.
I wasn't predicting anything.
I was simply there—
At the exact moment it began.
It felt like seeing the future.
But it wasn't.
I was touching the present—
Before it had the chance to become the past.
The snake grew restless.
Its attacks became sharper, more aggressive—yet each one missed by a widening margin. My body moved the instant the world flinched, slipping past its strikes as if guided by something beyond thought.
It gave chase.
Relentless.
Its massive body coiled and uncoiled with terrifying speed, curling around the terrain, cutting off escape routes, pushing me further and further toward the edge of the precipice.
It was herding me.
Cornering me.
I gritted my teeth.
I couldn't keep dodging forever.
Not like this.
My barrier had weakened—I was letting my atma dissipate into the surroundings to maintain this state, to keep track of the real snake.
At this rate—
I would run out.
From the moment this began, nothing had gone the way I expected.
But at least—
I still had one option.
Escape.
The river below.
I extended my senses further, pushing the perception the absorption had granted me outward.
The beings I had sensed earlier—
Gone.
Most likely circling around the waterfall, preparing to close in from another direction.
Should I abandon this fight?
The thought formed—
And died just as quickly.
Because I felt it.
Deep beneath the water.
An enormous concentration of asura energy.
A single being.
Unmoving.
Unaffected by the violent currents crashing against the waterfall.
Watching.
Waiting.
The illusion of choice shattered.
There was no escape.
This—
Was still a last stand.
The asura energy within my body was burning at a terrifying rate. The snake's energy was too grounded, too unified—I couldn't establish a link, couldn't begin absorption.
And the others were coming.
The swarm of weaker beasts was still there.
Waiting.
Ready to descend at the first opening.
Every second I wasted—
The odds worsened.
Then—
Something changed.
I felt it.
Nature itself.
The energy in the surroundings—
Being pulled.
Dragged.
Sucked inward.
Toward the snake's maw.
The air tightened.
The world held its breath.
Something—
Was coming.