CHAPTER 214: BREAK THE SILENCE

The ground trembled again, closer this time. The undergrowth cracked beneath an invisible weight.

Julius spun on his heels, his lone sword drawing a silver arc through the humid air. "The tree, Dylan! Now!"

Dylan didn’t need to be told twice. He grabbed hold of the oak he’d only just uprooted—fifteen tons of concentrated wood and rage. No chance he’d set it down gently. With a roar that drowned out the hiss of the Darkclaws, he swung it like an oversized club.

CRACK–BOOM!

The trunk crushed the first two charging creatures, reducing their spider-like bodies to a black, slimy pulp. The rest, faster, dodged by leaping onto nearby trunks, their eight bloodshot yellow eyes locked onto the two men. Their claws, as long as sabers, scraped against the bark.

"Nice one, bag of bones!" Julius shouted, already moving. He slipped behind Dylan, using the giant as a living shield. A Darkclaw dove from the top of a pine, claws aimed straight for Dylan’s neck. Julius was faster. His sword sliced the air in a deadly swish, severing the monster’s forelegs before it touched its target. The unbalanced body crashed heavily to the ground.

"You said intelligently!" Dylan growled, stomping on the wounded monster’s head. A satisfying crunch rang out. "Throwing trees is intelligent?"

"When it flattens the enemy, yes!" Julius blocked a side strike with the hilt of his sword, the impact shoving him back against Dylan. "Your regeneration... that’s the key. Make it a useful hara-kiri!"

Dylan understood. Too late.

A sharp, tearing pain ripped through his side. A claw had found an opening, carving twenty centimeters of flesh. He roared—more from surprise than raw pain—as the Stigma on his left forearm pulsed with a dim glow, and the wound began knitting shut instantly, faint smoke rising from it.

"Now, piece of shit!" Julius bellowed, pointing his sword at a huge dead branch hanging above a group of three Darkclaws scuttling sideways toward them.

Humiliation burned alongside the lingering pain. Dylan ignored the blood soaking his fatigues and leapt—not toward the monsters, but toward the massive trunk of a nearby beech. His fists sank into the wood as if it were soft clay. A sharp, focused blow. Not to uproot—just to bring it down.

CRREEEAK... CRACK!

The beech groaned, then tipped with terrifying slowness before collapsing like a giant’s hammer—right onto the dead branch Julius had marked.

The branch shot forward like a battering ram, impaling the three Darkclaws and pinning them to the ground with a sickening gurgle. The falling beech crushed two others who hadn’t escaped in time.

Julius took his chance. Like a demon, he darted among the disoriented survivors. His sword was nothing but a flash of death—one head severed here, a leg sliced off there, an abdomen split open further on. He danced with death, each movement calculated to save energy and maximize terror.

Dylan, meanwhile, played the bulldozer. Less graceful, but brutally effective. He snatched up a boulder the size of a barrel and hurled it like a cannonball, smashing a Darkclaw trying to flank Julius. Another landed on his back, claws sinking into his thick muscles. Dylan simply grabbed it by a hind leg and slammed it against the fallen beech again and again, until nothing remained but a shapeless pulp. His torn flesh was already sealing shut, leaving only streaks of fresh blood on newly restored skin.

The silence fell as suddenly as the beech had.

A dozen blackened corpses lay sprawled—some crushed, others cut with surgical precision, still others reduced to jam. The acrid stench of blood and monstrous entrails thickened the air.

Julius, sword lowered but ready, scanned the shadowed treeline. Nothing moved. He turned toward Dylan, who was breathing like a bull, his torso marred with pink, gleaming scars that were fading before the eye.

"Not bad, for a beginner," Julius admitted, raising one brow. He wiped the blackened blade on the grass. "You got the idea. Your body is a tool. In your case, one hell of a resilient tool."

Dylan spat blood—his own, this time. "Your ’intelligent’ strategy was to have me sliced in half so you could mop up the scraps?"

"Distract? No." Julius flashed a feral grin. "Bait. And it worked perfectly. You regenerate, they feast, I clean up. Energy saved." He stepped closer, his piercing gaze examining Dylan’s last wounds as they sealed. "Next time, try luring them into a trap before they pierce your guts. It’s classier."

Dylan shot him a glare that could shatter granite. "There’s no next time, Julius. And stop talking to me like I’m your trained mutt."

Julius ignored the protest. He picked up an intact claw from the debris—long and curved like a cursed dagger—and handed it to Dylan. "Here. For when you feel like playing monster flayer. Not as good as a sword, but better than your fists. Think of it as... a welcome gift to the world of awakened survivors."

He turned on his heel, heading back toward their makeshift camp, leaving Dylan standing in the carnage, a bloody claw in hand and rage in his heart. But also—though he hated to admit it—a strange, raw satisfaction. They had held their ground. Together. Even if the thought of calling Julius "Master" still made him sick. The forest, now silent, seemed a little less menacing. A little.

Dylan stayed still for a while, breath still heavy, staring at the claw in his hand as if it might answer him.

Then his gaze drifted to the carcasses scattered around him. The Darkclaws might be hell-born abominations, but they had at least one merit: each one held an anima gem. And for Dylan, that meant food.

He crouched beside a gutted body, the smell of black blood and bile stinging his nose. With a swift motion, he plunged his fingers into the still-warm mass, searching blindly until he felt a smooth hardness under his fingertips. He pulled.

A small translucent stone, streaked with a sickly green light, slid out of the entrails with a wet sound.

"Ugh..." he muttered, wiping his hands on the still-warm fur of the monster. But already, he could feel the imprisoned energy thrumming in his palm, like a foreign heart beating for him alone. He drew it inward and absorbed it.

The gem cracked, shattered into luminous dust that seeped into his skin. A shiver ran down his spine; the Stigma on his left arm flared brighter, and his regeneration quickened.

He went from carcass to carcass. Some gems were as large as an egg, others tiny, almost dried out. Each time, the sensation was the same: warmth, resistance, then absorption. The pain of his recent wounds melted into a euphoric numbness.

The world seemed a little sharper. The forest a little less hostile. His breathing, a little less ragged.