CHAPTER 128: VOID TORTOISE?

The rain hammered down without pause, soaking through the canopy and hissing against the undergrowth.

Noah trudged deeper into the farthest stretch of the academy woods, the parchment clutched tight under his cloak.

The last mark on it was here, the supposed territory of the Void Tortoise.

He didn’t expect much. Even the records he’d studied had been filled with contradictions.

This was a beast no one had ever caught, with no carcass ever retrieved, and no nest ever found.

It could’ve been a myth told by hunters to scare apprentices.

Or a legend made up by the students to scare each other.

Still, he had come.

The trees here were old and twisted, their trunks so wide it would take three men to wrap arms around them. Mist clung low to the ground, weaving between the roots like restless ghosts. Each step sank into the wet soil, squelching beneath his boots.

Noah prowled for more than an hour, eyes wide and senses alert for the tiniest changes. He looked for tracks, gouges, trails, anything to prove the existence of this beast. He found nothing.

There were no claw marks, and definitely no tracks. All he could see out here was just the rain, mud, and silence.

At last, he let out a soft breath, half a scoff.

"Nothing. Figures."

He tucked the parchment back into his satchel. At least, he’d already gained something valuable tonight.

The Pillar of Judgement was sitting beautifully inside him, waiting to be unleashed on his enemies. There was no point wasting more time on ghosts.

He turned, angling back towards the academy.

That was when his instincts screamed.

Every nerve in his body shrieked danger. He didn’t think. He threw himself flat on the floor, his cloak snapping wide as he hit the mud.

Something massive passed overhead with a rush of displaced air. The tree he had been standing against exploded into splinters, its trunk reduced to pulp in a single strike.

Noah rolled, scrambled to his knees, eyes darting every which way.

There was nothing there.

The rain poured, unbroken. The mist swirled faintly. But no monster stood in the clearing. Just the aftermath of the attack.

His breath quickened, chest tightening.

Again, his instincts flared.

Noah lunged sideways, and a gouge tore into the earth where he had been, the ground shredded as if by invisible claws.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

Something was here. Something huge, deadly, and unseen.

He surged to his feet, mana already surging. Blackflame roared in his hand, his shadows writhing out, and Devour’s hunger lashed into the mist. But his spell clutched at empty air.

The monster was gone.

"Fast," Noah muttered, heart hammering. "Or something worse."

The woods detonated around him as another strike carved through the air.

Noah blurred, his body fueled by the temporary strength from the Fire Birds he had consumed earlier. His legs pumped, mud splashing as he sprinted through the trees.

The rain blurred into streaks as he wove between roots and trunks, every sense straining to feel the monster’s next attack.

It came again as a pressure in the air and a scream in his instincts. Noah twisted, dropping under a crushing force that shattered a log into splinters.

He retaliated. Fireballs flared, Blackflame hissed, Devour snapped outward. Each spell shredded through empty space, crashing harmlessly into the rain.

"Damn it!" he snarled, his shadows echoing him in furious laughter. "Where are you?"

He darted left, right, baiting, weaving, forcing the rhythm of the hunt to his own tempo.

At last, he felt it. It was like a ripple in the air. Like a distortion like space folding in on itself.

He thrust Devour, shadows lunging hungrily.

For a heartbeat, something caught. Something vast, immense, struggling against his hunger.

Then it slipped away.

Noah’s eyes snapped wide as space itself tore open ahead of him. The monster stepped through the tear, materializing in the rain.

The Void Tortoise.

It stood before him like a walking fortress, the earth shuddering as its weight settled into reality.

Its shell was a mountain of cracked obsidian plates, jagged ridges glowing faintly with lines of violet light that pulsed like veins.

Each ridge seemed to stretch deeper than the shell itself, like staring into a night sky of endless void. The rain struck it and vanished, absorbed into the darkness etched across its back.

Its legs were colossal, each one thicker than a tree trunk, ending in claws that shimmered faintly as if the air bent around them. Where they pressed into the soil, the ground rippled.

Its head was monstrous, reptilian but wrong. A maw lined with jagged teeth opened, and within it was not a throat but a spiraling tunnel of nothingness, a hungry vortex that pulled the rain itself inside.

Its eyes glowed cold blue, but they weren’t fixed. They slid, like orbs drifting inside a pool, never quite stable, never quite solid.

Noah’s breath caught.

’It’s real.’

The tortoise moved, slower now that it had revealed itself, but every step warped the forest around it. Trees bent toward it as if space itself tilted. The mist shredded against its shell, drawn into the glowing void lines.

It opened its maw, and the rain in front of it curved unnaturally, sucked inside.

Noah felt the drag immediately. His shadows screamed, shrieking warnings as the force threatened to drag him off his feet.

He braced, planting one hand into the mud, Devour flaring to resist. His cloak snapped violently behind him as the pull sucked on him, trying to tear him forward into that spiraling abyss.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the tortoise shut its jaws. The pull ceased.

Noah’s chest rose and fell, his eyes never leaving the beast. His hands shook faintly, not from fear, but from exhilaration.

"So it wasn’t a myth after all." His voice was low, but his blood thundered. "Good."

The Void Tortoise shifted, claws tearing grooves into the soil, its shell shimmering faintly with light.

Its eyes rolled, one fixing on him, the other drifting elsewhere, as if it watched both him and some other dimension at once.

Noah grinned despite the rain soaking his face, his shadows writhing in madness around him.

"Let’s do this."