CHAPTER 295: CHAPTER 295- BLACK CORE

The moment they stepped deeper into the forest, the air grew unnaturally cold and heavy. Sunlight struggled to pierce the thick canopy, casting the path ahead in deep, shifting shadows.

"Hmm," Fey shivered, rubbing her arms. "Why’s it so cold all of a sudden? Hey, you don’t think this place is haunted, do you?"

Zoe, who had been moving with her usual predatory grace, suddenly froze at the word "haunted." Her ears flattened slightly against her head. "G... ghost...?" she whispered, her voice losing its flat monotone and gaining a distinct tremor. The fearless beast-girl had a glaring, unexpected weakness.

Julian felt her tension and immediately reached out, his hand enveloping hers. His touch was firm and grounding. "Don’t be ridiculous," he said, his voice a calm, steady anchor in the eerie atmosphere. "There’s no such thing. Ignore Fey’s nonsense."

Fey, however, was undeterred, her eyes wide as she pointed at the encroaching darkness. "Nonsense? Can’t you feel it? It’s getting darker around us, and not just because of the trees. This place feels... watched."

Julian’s eyes narrowed, scanning the surroundings. "It seems we are not welcome here," he murmured, his analytical mind overriding any notion of the supernatural. His gaze then dropped back to the blood trail, which was now smeared and messy. "The trail is changing. It’s no longer just dripping. Something was dragged... and it’s connected to that."

He gestured ahead, where the trees thinned into a small, foul clearing.

There, a monster was hunched over a shapeless mass of fur and bone. It was a grotesque sight—a hulking form of pure, matte black, as if carved from shadow. Its body was a chaotic patchwork of mutated flesh, with chunks of raw, red meat and pulsating tumors visibly embedded and growing across its form, showcasing its horrific biology. It was busy noisily tearing into its meal, the sound of crunching bone and wet chewing echoing unnaturally in the cold, silent forest.

The trio observed the grotesque creature for a moment longer, its feasting a symphony of wet, tearing sounds. Julian’s expression was one of cold analysis, not disgust.

"Zoe, flank right. Fey, be ready to solidify any liquid it might project. I’ll take it head-on," Julian commanded, his voice a low whisper.

With a burst of enhanced speed, Julian shot forward. The monster, sensing the threat, looked up from its meal, its maw dripping with gore. It roared, and a wave of pure darkness erupted from its body, a tangible force that sought to corrode and decay everything it touched.

"Liquid Barrier!" Fey shouted, and a wall of water solidified into crystal-clear ice, intercepting the wave of darkness. The ice cracked and blackened but held.

Simultaneously, Zoe lunged from the shadows on the right, her claws aiming for the creature’s leg tendons. The monster was surprisingly agile, swatting her away with a powerful arm, but the distraction was all Julian needed.

"Gravity Crush," he intoned, his hand outstretched.

An invisible force slammed down on the monster, pressing it into the ground. It struggled, its mutated flesh bulging, and unleashed another blast of dark energy, this one more focused, directly at Julian.

Julian didn’t dodge. "Lightning."

A brilliant fork of blue-white lightning met the dark energy mid-air, causing a small, concussive explosion that shook the trees. In that moment of sensory overload, Julian closed the distance. His hand, wreathed in a swirling vortex of shadow and lightning, shot forward like a spear and pierced the monster’s chest.

The creature let out a final, choked gurgle before going still.

As its body began to dissolve into black sludge, something writhed within the cavity Julian had created. A pale, worm-like parasite, pulsating with sickly energy, tried to squirm free, seeking a new host.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Julian summoned a small, concentrated ball of lightning in his palm and vaporized the parasite into ash.

Once the body fully disintegrated, all that remained was a small, black core. It was unlike any other core they had seen—a perfect sphere of the deepest, most opaque black, seeming to absorb the very light around it. Julian picked it up, feeling a strange, cold, and potent energy thrumming within it.

"It could wield darkness as a tangible force," Celestia would have noted, had she been there. "And this core... its energy signature is aberrant."

Thinking the threat was neutralized, Julian turned to leave, the pitch-black core secured in his Inventory. Fey was already complaining about the smell, and Zoe was cautiously sniffing the air, her instincts still on edge.

It was that instinct that saved them.

A guttural rasp came not from the dissolving corpse, but from the mangled "prey" the monster had been eating. The mass of fur and bone suddenly twisted, a broken limb snapping back into place with a sickening crack. What they had assumed was a victim was, in fact, another one of its kind—perhaps lying in wait, or simply playing dead.

It moved with a speed that belied its mutilated appearance, its form blurring and vanishing from one spot only to reappear a few feet away, lashing out with claws made of condensed darkness. It was significantly faster and stronger than the first.

"Damn it, it can teleport?!" Fey yelled, throwing up a hasty Liquid Barrier that shattered under the assault.

Zoe lunged to intercept, but the monster vanished again, reappearing behind Julian and spewing a wide-area cloud of corrosive black mist. The trio was forced to scatter.

The fight became a frantic game of cat and mouse against a teleporting foe that painted the battlefield with its dangerous attacks. It took a coordinated effort—Fey creating slippery surfaces to disrupt its footing, Zoe predicting its reappearance points through pure instinct, and Julian finally pinning it down with a massive, sustained Gravity Crush—to finally put the second monster down for good.

As it dissolved, Julian stared at the spot, his expression grim. "They’re becoming more ferocious. And smarter."

His eyes then fell upon the remains of the first monster, the one this second creature had been "eating." The pieces clicked into place. "It wasn’t just eating. Look." He pointed to where the black core would have been in the first monster’s remains—it was gone, likely consumed. "They’re cannibalizing each other. Consuming the cores of their own kind."

A theory, cold and unsettling, formed in his mind. "This accelerated evolution... this newfound aggression and power... it might be linked to this. They’re forcing their own evolution through predation."