With a swift motion, Mikael yanked out the massive black claw that had nearly torn him in two. Blood gushed freely from his chest, cascading in thick streams—but he didn’t care. His attention was locked forward, instincts sharpened, body tensed.

ROAR!

A deafening, anguished roar erupted from ahead. For a split second, the very air distorted—flickering unnaturally—before a demonic beast revealed itself.

It was a towering, three-meter-tall panther with jet-black fur that seemed to devour the surrounding light. An oppressive, feral aura radiated from its body, laced with the unmistakable pressure of a Mid-stage Spiritual Foundation Realm demonic beast. Its presence alone felt heavy, dangerous.

The only flaw in its overwhelming presence was the front paw now missing from its body, lying bloodied and inert on the forest floor.

Mikael didn’t recognize the beast, but had he studied more about the region’s fauna and demonic beasts, he would have known what now stood before him—a Shadowfang Panther. One of the most feared ambush predators of the Savagefang Mountain Range, this species was infamous for its innate stealth. Their camouflage was so potent that even advanced Divine Sense often failed to catch them.

What made them truly terrifying was that despite only being Mid-stage, their battle power rivaled—if not surpassed—that of many Late-stage Spiritual Foundation Realm beasts.

But Mikael didn’t need a name. The scene spoke for itself.

‘So I was right. There really was something stalking me.’ His mind moved quickly, assessing the situation. The panther was exposed—injured. If he let it vanish again, there might not be a second chance.

He lunged forward without hesitation.

In a flash, he closed the distance, unleashing a flurry of Lunar Shadow Slash strikes.

Sangrelia’s blade blurred, arcs of silver and black slashing with lethal force. The bloody edge of his longsword shimmered under the moonlight as it cut through the space where the panther stood. For a brief moment, the beast froze—then its figure flickered.

With a subtle ripple in the air, it vanished.

Mikael’s strikes landed on seemingly nothing. But a split second later, droplets of blood sprayed mid-air—proof that some of his attacks had connected, even against the beast’s invisibility.

It was a hit… but not enough.

Unlike before, the Shadowfang Panther did not cry out. It endured the pain in silence, refusing to break its camouflage. Its composure held firm this time. No slip, no sudden reappearance.

And once again, Mikael was left alone in the clearing. Alone—but not safe. The beast was still there, somewhere, lurking. Waiting.

He stood still, every sense honed to the absolute limit. Divine Sense, hearing, instinct—everything strained to catch even the faintest ripple in reality. Yet this time, he didn’t trust anything completely.

‘I can’t rely solely on Divine Sense. Last time it baited me by sending false ripples, then ambushed me from behind. I can’t fall for the same trick twice,’ he thought coldly, his body motionless.

Moving would only make him a target. The panther’s ability to choose the moment of engagement gave it the upper hand. He had to force it to reveal itself.

A minute passed. Then another.

At last, he caught a faint shift in the surrounding space.

He immediately slashed toward the disturbance with another Lunar Shadow Slash—but once again, hit only air.

“Tsk,” Mikael clicked his tongue. ‘I was hoping it would take advantage of my ‘opening,’ but it didn’t.’

The forest held its breath.

Mikael remained rooted in place, sword angled low, blood still dripping from his chest. Moonlight filtered through the canopy, casting shifting patterns of silver across the clearing. His eyes scanned the emptiness before him, but sight was nearly entirely useless against a creature like this.

Then, without warning—

SHRIP.

A diagonal gash tore open across his side.

He gritted his teeth, barely flinching as warm blood spilled out. His Divine Sense hadn’t caught a thing—no ripple, no sound. Just pain.

‘It truly was baiting me. If it wanted to, I can’t even sense it—even with my Entry in the Divine Sense Refining Method!’ he thought grimly, a small dose of panic rising. After all, fighting a powerful enemy you can’t even sense?

That was the stuff of nightmares. But Mikael was a battle-hardened veteran, and he crushed the vague wave of panic. In his eyes, a bone-chilling coldness was beginning to form.

“Ahhh.” A slow exhale escaped Mikael’s mouth just as he felt it—a nearly imperceptible change in his Divine Sense. Without thinking, without analyzing, he reacted. The silver light of moonlight accompanied Sangrelia as she descended upon ‘empty air’.

His blade cut through the air with a shrill hum—and again, blood burst into view mid-motion, painting the clearing red.

He didn’t stop. Two more strikes followed, one sweeping horizontally, the other stabbing forward like a crescent moon.

Clank.

He felt it in his bones as Sangrelia collided not with fur or flesh, but with something sharp—a claw.

There was a momentary deadlock, the obsidian-black longsword clashing against the invisible limb of the beast.

With its rough position locked, Mikael wasted no time. He launched a powerful kick toward the general area where Sangrelia remained stuck in a silent struggle with the air.

His expression twisted as pain exploded through his foot. The kick had landed—but not the way he intended.

He’d struck directly against the Shadowfang Panther’s claw. His foot was now impaled horizontally through the middle, pinned by a curved spike. The pain was blinding, like a red-hot spike hammered through muscle and bone.

His vision flickered. The nerves in his leg screamed in agony as blood poured from the puncture, soaking his foot crimson.

But Mikael didn’t scream. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

With the massive claw still piercing through his foot, he knew doing nothing meant death. His mobility was crippled, and in a fight like this, even a moment of hesitation could kill him.

A glint of madness flickered in his eyes. Ignoring the searing pain, acting as though his impaled foot didn’t exist, he ducked low and burst forward with a ruthless Cloudbreaking Stride.

The cost was immediate and brutal. A large portion of his foot’s muscle and flesh shredded apart, two of his toes torn clean off.

But the movement freed him. His ruined foot tore away from the claw, and in the same motion, he erupted with strength that pried Sangrelia loose from the stalemate.

In an instant too fast for a mortal to even think, Mikael stood face-to-face with the invisible beast.

Just as he prepared to strike again, he felt it—that looming, mortal threat. The kind of attack that didn’t wound, but killed.

His Foresight of Heaven’s Mandate, his instincts, and his Divine Sense all surged in unison, warning him an instant before the fatal blow could land.

A flicker of blue aura instinctively appeared on his skin—his defensive aura cloak just a breath from activating and shielding him from the strike—but Mikael forcefully suppressed it, unwilling to let it interfere with his growth.

Swish.

Mikael tilted his head slightly to the left—not by much, but just enough to feel a sharp gust pass beside him. A cut opened along his cheek, but nothing more.

His small head movement transformed what would’ve been a lethal attack in nothing more than a minor cut.

At that instant a smile appeared on his face—the kind that, when you see it, you know. You’re fucked.

“DIEEEEE!!!” roared Mikael through the pain, injecting every ounce of suffering flooding his body into that single word.

Moonpiercer Sword Art – Fifth Movement: Celestial Moon’s Embrace.

Mikael gave his all—his Qi, physical strength, mastery of the Moonpiercer Sword Art, even his progress in the Sword Dao. Everything was condensed into a single, all-encompassing strike. It was truly all or nothing.

A stillness took hold.

The forest, the wind, even his own heartbeat paused, as if the world itself were bracing.

A torrent of Lunar Qi manifested around Sangrelia as Mikael swung her toward the Shadowfang Panther’s position.

Sangrelia collided with empty air. For a moment, she stalled—and nothing happened.

It was like the world was holding its breath.

And then—

BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!

A deafening shockwave erupted from Sangrelia’s tip, blasting apart trees in a hundred-meter radius like dry twigs in a storm. The very earth split open, cleaved as if by a divine blade, with soil and stone spiraling violently into the air.

Mikael didn’t even have time to brace.

The force of his own attack struck him like a sledgehammer to the chest, hurling him backward through the canopy. Branches snapped and trees splintered as he tore through them like a falling star.

Crack!

One of his ribs fractured from the impact, a sharp lance of pain ripping through his side. Yet his expression didn’t twist in agony. Instead, a wild grin tugged at his lips, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth.

‘Try to survive that!’

Even as his body crashed through the treetops and tumbled across the forest floor, he didn’t care about the pain. His attention remained locked on the point of impact, where the enormous dust cloud now completely obscured the beast’s presence.

He finally rolled to a halt, half-buried in a crater of his own making. Smoke and dust drifted around him, the only sound being the fading echo of the shockwave in the distance.

Even as he coughed blood and his internal injuries flared, he didn’t pause. He pushed himself back up—breathing heavily, blood dripping from his mouth—and kept his eyes fixed on the blast zone.

For a moment, only the erratic rhythm of his breath echoed through the shattered forest. Slowly, the cloud of dust began to settle.

And then, the Shadowfang Panther was revealed.

Or at least, what was left of it.

The once-ferocious predator—feared for its stealth and devastating ambushes—was now unrecognizable. Its body had been torn asunder by the force of Mikael’s strike. Chunks of black fur, shattered bone, and mangled flesh littered the crater. One hind leg was embedded in the trunk of a distant tree, and its ribcage had been blown apart into splinters. A half-charred, half-pulverized fragment of its skull twitched once before going still.

There was no corpse.

Only remnants.

It hadn’t just died—it had been annihilated.

And yet, amid the carnage, something glimmered faintly within a shallow trench near the blast’s center. A dark-purple demonic core, steeped in shadow qi, pulsed weakly. Though a thin crack marred its surface, it had survived—testament to the beast’s cultivation and the innate durability of its core.

A relieved breath escaped Mikael’s bloodied lips. “Ahh… feared it would survive that. But fortunately it didn’t, which makes sense—it was ‘just’ a Mid-stage Spiritual Foundation Realm beast that didn’t seem to have particularly high defense.”

He remained still for a moment, chest rising and falling with effort. His injuries weren’t minor. The torn flesh in his foot throbbed relentlessly, his ribs ached with each breath, and blood continued trailing from the corner of his mouth. Even so, he began walking toward the shattered remains, steps slow but steady, crimson footprints marking the forest floor behind him.

As the adrenaline faded, his focus sharpened. Pain dulled into a background hum as a single glance at the fractured demonic core stirred a thought. ‘Right… why did a Spiritual Foundation beast even have one?’

While his knowledge wasn’t exhaustive, he understood the fundamentals—not just the beasts’ hostility toward humans and their evolutionary path, but also the structure of their so-called ‘cultivation realms’ and the reason they possessed cores even at relatively low levels of strength.

The two concepts were intertwined. The truth was simple: demonic beasts didn’t have cultivation realms in the same way humans or other sapient races did.

Labels like Mid-stage Spiritual Foundation Realm were convenient approximations—terms used by sapient cultivators to measure their strength, to measure something that didn’t neatly fit their system. They were interpretations, not literal truths.

Demonic beasts didn’t grow stronger through comprehension or deliberate cultivation. Their path was shaped by lineage.

A beast’s potential was rooted in the strength and purity of its bloodline. Environment, spiritual treasures, and Qi quality could influence this growth, but they remained secondary. What truly mattered was ancestry. The more refined the lineage, the further a beast could evolve. It was not an intellectual journey—it was an instinctual one.

And central to that progression was the demonic core.

Unlike humans, whose cores only formed upon stepping into the Core Formation Realm, demonic beasts were born with theirs. Their core served both as a foundation and an engine—an essence crystal that developed alongside their physical body and ‘cultivation’.

It could contain echoes of their bloodline, and sometimes even traces of inherited knowledge. For many species, that meant plunging into their own core allowed them to awaken dormant instincts or battle arts as if remembering something long forgotten.

But the core’s strength came with a cost.

It was the toughest part of their body—stronger than bone or claw—but also their greatest vulnerability. A damaged core could cripple their strength, and if destroyed outright, it often meant instant death.

That was the nature of their path. Brutal, instinctive, and ultimately limited. Unlike sapient cultivators who could shatter limits through comprehension, demonic beasts were often bound by the ceiling of their birth.

Yet even so, what they could achieve before reaching that ceiling… was still enough to kill most people.

All this flashed through Mikael’s mind as he reached the Shadowfang Panther’s remains.

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— End of Chapter —