Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 343: An Incursion’s Worst Nightmare

The spikes conjured by Umbral Spire ripped through the batfolk as if their flesh and bones were no more than parchment. A line of destruction carved itself through the heart of their camp, splintering huts and collapsing fragile wooden walls as though they were no sturdier than dry twigs. Any warrior caught in the path of those three-meter-long lances was either slain outright or left writhing, mortally wounded. Nearly fifty of them fell in a single breath, their bodies scattered among the shattered remains of homes and streets. It was a devastating toll for only thirty spikes, made all the easier by the batpeople’s tendency to cluster together. Thalion felt the familiar rush, the subtle spike of power, the gnawing hunger, followed by a surge of terror radiating from the survivors. Their fear was intoxicating, a dark resonance that fed him as surely as blood.

He leapt high into the air, vaulting over the walls and descending into the heart of his own carnage. He could have started on the ramparts, working methodically inward, but restraint had no place here. He wanted to unleash his full power, to test the limits of his fusion with the elemental.

This time, he held back the passive aura of fear that radiated from his crippled form. If dread were to grip his enemies, it would come through his skills who also had that mental punch. He had closed an incursion alone before, and this one looked even weakerl. With Josh and Jack working their own havoc nearby, there was little real danger, unless he faltered. Luck favored them. At least two of the incursions seemed to have stemmed from relatively fragile factions, their warriors lacking the hardened might of true veterans.

The batfolk were slow to react, staring with wide, alien eyes as if trying to comprehend what had struck them. They only understood when Thalion landed amidst them, exhaling a thick cloud of Umbral Miasma. This time he tried something new: instead of directing his breath outward, he forced the choking darkness downward, letting it roll across the ground like a living fog.

It expanded outward in a circle, blanketing ten meters around him, rising three meters high like a wall of midnight smoke. Shock rippled through the enemy ranks, their fear sharp and vivid in his mind. His title allowed him to taste the flavor of their emotions, but with the elemental amplifying their terror it became something deeper, richer, intoxicating.

Thalion raised his hand. Shadows twisted, and spears of darkness erupted from beneath the batfolk’s feet. Their own silhouettes betrayed them, solidifying into jagged lances that pierced their bodies in an instant. Another twenty fell, screaming as black energy tore through flesh. Some of the creatures sprouted leathery wings in desperation, beating furiously to hurl themselves backward, out of the choking miasma. Yet even as they retreated, fear clung to them, heavy and suffocating.

“What is this?!” a woman’s voice shrieked above the chaos. She stood with one hand outstretched, summoning a swirl of dark energy in her palm.

Thalion smiled grimly. That they also wielded the affinity for darkness was almost amusing. Their shadows were pale imitations, fragile threads against the abyss he commanded. His darkness would devour theirs utterly, as he had already begun to feel from the weak spell she was weaving. If they had no other affinities, then their fate was sealed.

With a flick of his wrist, Thalion birthed fresh tendrils of shadow. They lashed out, ensnaring batfolk and dragging them screaming into the mist, while his Shadow Claw swept wide in a crescent slash. Five arcs of seething black tore through warriors and split open yet another house behind them, reducing the wooden structure to rubble. Archers on the walls loosed a volley, but the darkness disoriented them. Thalion slipped between arrows as though the air itself guided him, a predator moving through his domain.

The melee fighters hesitated on the edge of the miasma, too terrified to enter. Even so, their weapons carried ranged techniques, arcs of force bound with elemental energy. Blades of shadow and waves of corrupted mana cut through his fog. Yet when one strike caught his shoulder, it proved laughably weak. The impact barely shifted him, leaving not even a mark.

He chuckled softly, answering with a barrage of fresh spikes that skewered the attackers where they stood, hurling their broken bodies back into walls. Their screams filled the air, twisted with agony and despair. The darkness did not simply kill—it ate. Flesh and bone blackened, eroded, and crumbled into nothingness, consumed piece by piece.

Then the Abyssal Devourer stirred. Tendrils erupted from the crippled eclipsari form, writhing like serpents across the battlefield. They sought out the dying, the wounded, the paralyzed. All who were frozen by terror. Each was turned into darkness, their essence ripped away to feed Thalion and his elemental partner. He welcomed the flow. It amplified his strikes, lent weight to his claws, and sharpened the bite of his shadows. The more they feared, the stronger he became. And now, surrounded by panic, his slaughter of the batfolk only quickened.

A lone mage raised a barrier of swirling darkness, but the spike tore through it as though it were parchment, empowering itself in the process. A heartbeat later, the man’s head was gone, obliterated in a spray of shadow and gore. More mages retaliated, flinging spells in every direction, but their efforts were futile.

Thalion was too fast, too strong, and their reactions far too slow. A few brave souls tried to charge into the rolling Umbral Miasma, weapons raised high. Their courage earned them only agony: their flesh blistered and peeled as if burned away, their screams cut short by either death itself or the merciless tendrils of the elemental. For the darkness elemental, pain and terror were no different from blood in the water to a shark. It hunted without pity, devouring one victim after another. And while lesser beings would have fatigued from such relentless slaughter, Thalion only grew more powerful, his strength swelling with each life consumed.

The tide of battle shifted as Josh and Jack arrived. Josh crashed into the fray in his grasshopper form, his body ablaze with violent energy. Claws and bladed elbows carved through batfolk with terrifying ease, each strike leaving nothing but ruined corpses behind. His speed was inhuman, blurring, darting, impossible to track.

Counterattacks rebounded harmlessly from his chitinous armor, leaving not even a mark. Jack, meanwhile, fought with cruel precision in his human guise. He blinked across the battlefield in rapid succession, each teleport punctuated by concussive blasts of telekinetic force. Walls collapsed, houses splintered, and warriors snapped like brittle twigs under his invisible strikes. Whenever an enemy closed in, he vanished, reappearing behind another to unleash further devastation, sowing chaos like wildfire.

Their arrival shattered the last semblance of order. Thalion noticed the panic in the enemy ranks as some of the batfolk abruptly transformed, their bodies twisting and reshaping into massive winged beasts. In a flurry of leathery wings, they surged into the night sky, shrieking with desperate fury. So they are shapeshifters after all, Thalion thought grimly, breaking free from the miasma to give chase. But speed was on their side, and despite his relentless pursuit, many slipped away into the jungle’s endless canopy. The battle was over, though the hunt was not.

Minutes later, silence returned to the base. Ash and the stench of blood hung heavy in the air as Thalion, Josh, and Jack stood before the towering incursion pillar. Though they had slain countless foes, not all of the batfolk were dead. Too many had fled in the chaos, scattering before they could be tracked down. Yet the heart of the incursion still beat before them.

Without hesitation, Thalion summoned the tentacles of the Abyssal Devourer. They wrapped greedily around the black stone monolith, pulling and consuming it piece by piece. Josh and Jack watched in wide-eyed disbelief as the pillar crumbled into nothingness within minutes. The process might have looked slow to the untrained eye, but given the resistance of the material, it was terrifyingly efficient.

Now they knew the truth. The massive bats haunting the skies were none other than the batfolk themselves, their true forms revealed. That many had escaped into the jungle remained a problem, but not nearly as dire as leaving the incursion itself active. Even so, Thalion knew the threat was far from gone. Survivors would hunt for weaker prey, desperate to gather rings before they were rooted out. Bloodshed was inevitable. Yet with the pillar destroyed, at least the flow of new enemies had ceased and his faction’s survival became more secure.

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Progress was steady. In only two days, they had closed two incursions across the surrounding lands. Plans were already forming to repurpose the captured bases; the crude houses the batfolk had built would serve as much-needed shelter. Too many of Thalion’s people still slept on branches or the bare ground, vulnerable and restless. Now, with two more fortified positions under their control, that problem would begin to ease.

“So,” Josh asked, turning to Thalion after the last fragments of the pillar vanished into shadow, “what now? A little hunting before we report the base taken?”

“I want to hunt alone tonight,” Thalion replied, his voice a guttural growl, resonant with the dark timbre of the crippled eclipsari. “There are things I need to figure out before we face stronger foes.” He longed for one full night immersed in the predator’s form, only then would he return to practice in his human body, or in the serpentine shape of the Tidecaller.

The leviathan’s blue crystal still weighed heavily on his mind. Though locked away, its dormant power gnawed at him. Consuming it was the most likely path forward, but first he needed further body-tempering and time to absorb the other crystals fully. The oceans were brimming with monstrous prey. Their essence might carry him closer to divinity. Every effort mattered. The System Event loomed closer with each passing hour, and still no warning had come. It could begin tomorrow, or in the very next breath.

“Then Jack and I will head back,” Josh said with a nod. “We’ll tell Kaldrek what happened and maybe hear news from the other incursion.” Without waiting for an answer, the two of them departed swiftly into the fading light.

Thalion remained behind, watching the dying sun bleed across the treetops. His curiosity burned, but so did his hunger. There was little daylight left, perhaps enough for one or two hunts. Then, when the jungle surrendered to darkness, he would seek out the last incursion they had discovered.

Thalion decided not to close the incursion immediately. Instead, he would shadow its edges, perhaps picking off a few scouts if the opportunity arose. If they proved as frail as the batfolk, he might consider going further, but there was no need to rush. Tonight, he wanted to remain within reach of Maike and Kaldrek in case their base came under attack. Better to move carefully than to gamble everything. Charging recklessly into a strong incursion could end in disaster, and fighting all day without pause would only dull his edge. A few hunts for training and body-tempering, then back to the base to ensure everyone’s safety. That was the wiser course.

Before leaving, Thalion made a short detour through the conquered camp, his shadows devouring corpses and draining the last breaths of those clinging to life. By the time he was finished, the sun had already begun to sink, painting the treetops in molten gold. He turned into the jungle, heading deeper, further from the safety of his faction’s walls. Somewhere out there lay the base of the three-eyed humans, and he hoped to stumble upon it during his return.

The branches carried him swiftly, his crippled eclipsari form leaping from bough to bough with predatory grace. The air grew heavier with the damp musk of leaves and earth as he followed trails that only his instincts revealed. Yet after an hour of prowling, the jungle offered only meager prey. Fat, sharp-toothed rabbits tearing up the undergrowth in swarms. Annoying pests, but hardly worth his time. What he longed for was something worthy of testing his progress. A duel like the one with the massive green mantis. That had been dangerous and exhilarating. He still wondered whether that mantis had been an unusually strong variant, or if he himself had simply grown so much since.

At last, the forest yielded a proper challenge. Ahead, a colossal bear lumbered into view, its shoulders rising more than three meters high. Its muscles rippled beneath a pelt of midnight black, each step sending vibrations through the earth. Steam burst from its jaws in heavy, angry exhalations. A predator on the hunt. Thalion stilled, studying it with fascination. Then, without warning, the ground betrayed the beast. A monstrous flower unfolded beneath its paws, snapping shut like a trap and swallowing the bear whole.

Recognition struck Thalion instantly. It was the same devouring plant from the first stage of the tutorial, its leaves thick as armor plates, built to imprison prey until it dissolved alive. But this time, the outcome was different. With a furious roar, the bear ripped free, tearing the half-meter-thick leaves apart as though they were paper. It did not stop until every last shred of green was shredded into pulp. Only then did it shake itself, bloodied but unbroken, and trudge forward, victorious. This was the beast he had been searching for. His fight of the day.

He crouched low, gathering his thoughts. What skills would such a juggernaut possess? Likely the classics. A thunderous roar, empowered bites and claws. But perhaps more, perhaps even a buffing skill. That would make the fight far more interesting. With a flick of will, a spear of darkness surged from his shadow, five meters long and honed to lethal sharpness. It streaked through the air, striking the bear square in the back. Yet instead of piercing cleanly through, the spine deflected the blow, and the spike buried itself deep into the beast’s flank. The bear staggered, bellowing its fury to the canopy.

The roar shook the very air, vibrating through Thalion’s chest like the toll of a great war drum. he realized instantly. The beast was not merely strong. It was enhanced. Grinning beneath the shadow of his form, Thalion dashed forward, claws of darkness unsheathing from his hands. He aimed for the beast’s right paw, his strike a blur of black arcs.

The bear ignored the lashing shadows and spears of darkness, charging at Thalion with reckless fury. Its gaping jaws snapped for his throat, and claws the size of scythes carved through the air with terrifying force. Yet Thalion had anticipated the onslaught. He moved with predatory precision, his body slipping past every strike as if the bear’s attacks were painted in slow motion. He countered with ruthless efficiency, ripping strips of flesh with his claws, carving into muscle with each pass, and skewering the beast with jagged spires of shadow until it resembled a grotesque porcupine.

When the bear reared on its hind legs, a mountain of black muscle blotting out the fading light, Thalion leapt upward. He landed against the spike lodged in its side, driving it deeper until the blade of darkness tore through flesh and burst out of the bear’s belly. The beast bellowed, thrashing violently, its roar shaking the canopy like thunder. Thalion clung fast, sending abyssal tendrils plunging into the open wounds. They writhed through organs and sinew, devouring from within. The bear convulsed, but its brute strength was useless against the weight of his aura gnawing at its very soul. Slowly its movements grew sluggish, its ferocity fading into weakness, until at last the system whispered its verdict.

You have killed Giant Black Bear Level 96.

A surge of satisfaction coursed through him. This was his highest-level kill yet. He shifted into the form of the slain beast to inspect its gifts, though disappointment quickly followed. The skills were crude. An empowered bite, a heavier claw strike. Nothing truly adaptable.

Its power had come from sheer brute force, mountains of strength, vitality, toughness, and speed. To rely so heavily on raw stats was almost criminal, yet enviable. He would not let it discourage him. Instead, he consumed the bear in the old-fashioned way, tearing through its essence piece by piece. The reward came swiftly with two points of strength and plus one in vitality. A small gain, but small gains became tides if he kept building them.

The sky was bleeding into twilight, streaks of crimson fading into deep indigo. Time to return. With a final glance at the torn battlefield, Thalion shifted into his eagle form and soared upward, wings slicing the cooling air. Tempest Glide carried him faster, the rush of wind singing past his feathers. Yet as the forest rolled beneath him, he realized how far he had strayed. An hour of relentless flight passed before he spotted the telltale glow of the other incursion.

This one was nothing like the batfolk’s crude camp. High stone walls already encircled the perimeter, bristling with defenses. Within, buildings of heavy masonry rose like fortresses, their silhouettes stark against the twilight. It was night and day compared to the other incursions, a sign of real strength. A chill of anticipation settled in Thalion’s chest. This would mean trouble. He banked his wings, gliding silently overhead, and turned toward home.