CHAPTER 234: BLOOD AND BECOMING

The beast was spinning in place, its snarl now just a wet, furious gurgle. The wound smoked slightly, as if the Essence channeled by Dylan had cauterized the flesh even as it cut it. The smell of warm blood and mud filled the air.

Julius still hadn’t moved. His calm was a lesson in itself.

"She’s not going to wait for you to catch your breath, Dylan. A wound like that only makes her angry. The next charge won’t be straightforward. It will be cunning."

As if to prove him right, the boar suddenly stopped circling. It lowered its massive head, presenting the base of its thick neck and the dangerous curve of its tusks. A shudder ran along its bristly spine. It didn’t charge. It took a step to the side, then another, tracing an arc around Dylan, its single eye – the other splattered with blood – fixed on him with concentrated hatred.

Dylan pivoted on his heels, maintaining the tenuous thread of his Essence. His chest burned, but his mind was strangely clear. *"Like the rock,"* he repeated to himself. *"Just a moving rock. Find the balance point."*

"She’ll aim for the tendons," Julius growled. "To bring you down. Then it’ll be the throat."

The boar chose its moment. It didn’t lunge head-on. It rushed, low on its legs, in a sudden, oblique movement, aiming not for Dylan’s body, but for the back of his knee.

Instinct screamed at Dylan to jump back. But jumping meant losing his anchor. Losing his anchor meant losing the thread.

Instead, he fell. He let himself drop sideways into the mud, twisting his body in an awkward rotation. The blade, guided by the thread of Essence and not by his eyes, drew a protective arc.

*Ssshiing!*

The metal struck the flint-like tusk in a flash of sparks. The brutal shock nearly tore the sword from his hands. Pain radiated up his wrists, but the blade held. The boar, deflected from its path, rushed past Dylan, snorting in frustration, its maw grazing the young man’s boot.

Dylan was on the ground. Vulnerable. The mud clung to his back, stealing his mobility.

"Up!" ordered Julius, and his voice was no longer nonchalant. It was a crack of a whip. "Essence, into your legs! Now! Not to strike, just to get up!"

The boar was already turning, its hooves churning the soft earth.

Dylan took a sharp breath. He abandoned the thread in his arms, let it fall back into his center, then projected it downward, into his legs. Not like an explosion, but like a spring being compressed and released all at once.

His burning muscles responded. He didn’t push himself up with his hands. He propelled himself from the ground, as if ejected, regaining his balance in an unstable but effective pirouette, just in time to face the beast again.

He panted, his heart hammering wildly. Mud dripped down his face. But he held his ground. And his sword was still there, pointed at the enemy.

A silence fell. The boar, its momentum broken, stared at him, its flank still bleeding profusely. The blood loss and the failure of its tactic finally seemed to be wearing down its savagery.

Julius finally pushed himself off his tree. He didn’t step toward the fight, but to the side, briefly drawing the beast’s gaze.

"Well?" he called to Dylan. "Are you waiting for an apology? Is this your first real fight? A dance in the mud?"

Dylan clenched his teeth. Fear turned into a cold anger. He had held his ground. He had dodged. He had even countered. But it wasn’t enough. Julius was right. This couldn’t last forever.

The thread of Essence danced in his veins, demanding to be used. Not to defend. To finish it.

The boar, disturbed by Julius’s movement, turned its attention back to Dylan with a final snort of exhausted hatred. It prepared for one last charge, slower, heavier.

Dylan inhaled. He let all his fear, his fatigue, his anger, melt into the thread. He no longer guided it. He *became* the thread. A sharp, cold instrument.

The beast charged. Straight on. Without guile. It was giving all it had left.

Dylan didn’t move. He waited. The rumble approached. The smell. The vibration of the ground.

At the last moment, he dodged not to the side, but *inward*. He dove almost under the lowered head, into the blind spot, his sword held not for a thrust, but like a scythe.

The thread of Essence poured into the blade, not to reinforce it, but to make it infinitely sharp, on the very edge of the edge.

There was almost no resistance. Just a brief hiss, sharper than the first.

Dylan passed under the beast’s neck and rose behind it, in perfect balance.

The boar took three more steps, then its front legs gave way. It collapsed heavily on its side, a gush of dark blood spurting from its throat, slit from ear to ear. One last ragged breath left its lungs, then nothing. The body shuddered once and fell still.

Silence returned, heavier than all the previous noise. Dylan trembled all over, his Essence leaving him like a receding tide, leaving behind immense weakness and muscles turned to mush.

He looked at the dead beast. Then at his empty hands. Then at Julius.

The captain looked at him, arms still crossed. His face was impassive, but a strange glint – perhaps satisfaction, perhaps something else – shone deep in his eyes.

"Good," he said finally, breaking the silence. His voice was neutral again. "You understood the lesson. Now, you will clean it, skin it, and we will eat it tonight. An awakened third-rank beast like this is not to be wasted."

He turned to go back to the cabin, then stopped.

"And Dylan?"

The young man looked up, exhausted.

"Breakfast," said Julius with a small gesture toward the rock, "was for the stone." He nodded toward the boar. "For this... you get a double portion."

And he disappeared inside the cabin, leaving Dylan alone with his victory, his exhaustion, and the bloody task that awaited him.

——

Dylan knelt beside the still-warm carcass. The strong, metallic smell of blood mixed with the sharper odor of entrails. His throat tightened, but he forced his hand not to tremble as he drew the crude knife Julius had entrusted to him.

"Learn to profit from every fight," the former captain had said.

So he was learning.

The blade entered the flesh with a wet, almost intimate sound. The skin resisted, tougher than he’d expected, but he soon found the joints, the natural flaws, and the knife slid, separating muscle and tendon. The first movements were clumsy, brutal; then, strangely, a rhythm set in. Not elegant, but effective. His hands covered in blood, he worked with a mute attention, as if he were digging not into flesh, but into his own limits.

The gem appeared almost by accident. Wedged in the knotted mass of an organ hard as stone, it pulsed under his fingers, releasing a soft, golden light that contrasted violently with the mud and viscera. Dylan retrieved it carefully, wiping it as best he could on his already stained arm. It was still beating, like an orphaned heart.

That pulsation... he knew it. It awoke buried memories: the fire crackling in the forest, Elisa’s figure, tense as a bow, Maggie’s fierce smile as she brandished her improvised weapon. Three backs pressed together, three ragged breaths, three voices covering each other to keep from yielding to fear.

He saw again their clumsy but sincere coordination, their shouts of warning, their nervous laughter when a failed attack turned into an unexpected victory.

They had been weak, but together, the three of them hadn’t backed down.

A burning sensation shot through his chest. Where were they now? Maggie, perhaps already in the heart of the war, stubborn as ever. Elisa, fragile but tenacious, into what hell had she been thrown? The thought of them fighting alone, out there, bit deeper than any wound.

Dylan clenched the gem. No, he had no right to remain weak. No right to merely survive.

Every step, every pain, every drop of sweat... it all had to bring him closer to them.

He raised the stone toward the gray sky, took a deep breath, and absorbed it.

The energy surged through him like a warm wave. Not a wild torrent—not this time. A river widening, fluid, luminous. His muscles cried out, but the gem soothed them, revitalized them. The fatigue partly dissipated, replaced by a new clarity. In the steady beat of this power, he thought he heard an echo: Maggie’s footsteps, Elisa’s voice.

He reopened his eyes. The world hadn’t changed. But he had.

The carcass still lay there, open and silent. Julius, leaning against a trunk nearby, watched him without a word, his gaze fixed less on the beast than on the young man who had just drawn from it far more than a simple meal.

Dylan wiped the blood from his fingers onto the mud, then stood up, his chest still coursing with that inner light.

He hadn’t just survived this fight.

He had just promised himself he would win a thousand others.