Kamcy

  I opened my eyes to the same eerie red glow.

  For a moment, I didn’t move. I just lay there on the forest floor, staring up at the canopy where moss-eyes blinked lazily from bark and fungus pulsed like diseased hearts embedded in wood.

  I sat up slowly.

  The first thing I saw was my corpse.

  It stood a few meters away, frozen mid-collapse. Turned to a statue.

  The petrified figure was kneeling, one arm missing, its head slightly tilted as if accepting something inevitable. Its face wasn’t twisted in agony like before.

  It was calm.

  Acceptance carved in mineral.

  My blood had hardened into dark, marble veins along the ground. With a quick look, I found what I was actually searching for. My whip lay coiled beside a tree a short distance away, still tangled around my severed arm.

  I exhaled slowly. That was when I noticed something.

  Without realizing it, I had already activated the masking technique. My presence was dimmed, thinned out, like I’d dissolved into the background. I blinked, mildly surprised.

  Subconscious activation.

  That was good.

  That meant my body was learning.

  With deliberate focus, I activated the cloaking technique properly. Energy spread across my skin like a second membrane, thin and fragile. I adjusted it, trying to match the rhythm of the ambient energy in the forest — the same energy that flowed through the world around me.

  The cloak wavered immediately as I moved.

  Too much movement and it would collapse.

  With a little focus, I could still sense them. They hadn’t dispersed. It had been roughly three hours since my last death, and yet the forest still watched.

  Waiting.

  I scanned the battlefield. My whip. My dagger.

  I moved carefully toward them.

  The whip was near a tree, still looped around my severed arm. Above it, clusters of moss-eyes blinked erratically, their red glow intensifying as I approached.

  Just as I bent down—

  My danger sense screamed.

  I leapt backward.

  The moss swelled grotesquely, bloating outward before detonating with a thunderous crack. Shards — hardened spikes of bone-like growth — erupted outward in a violent spray.

  Most missed.

  One didn’t.

  A spike punched into my left wrist.

  My cloaking collapsed instantly.

  Pain flared across my arm — but worse than the pain was the sensation that followed.

  The skin around the wound began to harden.

  Stone crept upward from the embedded spike, spreading like frostbite in fast-forward. The flesh around it turned gray and rigid.

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  From the spike itself, something began to grow.

  An eye.

  A swollen, pulsing mass of moss and twisted flesh bulged outward from my wrist, blinking wetly.

  Without hesitation, I poured energy into my right palm and swung.

  My left arm came off cleanly at the elbow.

  Blood sprayed in a violent arc as stone crept through the severed limb. I watched it finish petrifying mid-air before it hit the ground and shattered into fragments.

  I flexed the remaining muscle of my upper arm, clamping down to slow the bleeding. Energy flooded into the wound, knitting flesh and sealing vessels.

  The forest immediately came to life, roaring with activity.

  It was too late to hide.

  They could see me now.

  Heavy footsteps thundered through the trees. The ground trembled as something massive charged.

  I darted forward, grabbing my whip while explosions of moss-eyes detonated behind me in rapid succession. Bark shredded. Wood splintered. Shrapnel tore past my head.

  A massive, meaty arm slammed into the earth where I had just stood, sending dirt and tree fragments flying.

  I rolled and came up swinging.

  The whip cracked through the air, reinforced with concentrated energy. It slammed into the creature’s torso — a gorilla-caste — and the force shoved it backward several steps. Not serious damage.

  But enough to disrupt it.

  A wolf-caste lunged.

  I ducked low, whipping upward. The tip struck the lower jaw of the creature, and with the added energy concentration, its skull burst apart like a rotten fruit. Bone fragments and brain matter splattered across the tree trunk behind it.

  Two more dove at me.

  I spun between them, the whip lashing out in tight arcs. Limbs came off in wet explosions of torn muscle and exposed marrow. Blood sprayed in hot sheets across my face.

  I activated my sensory field.

  An invisible pulse expanded outward, sharpening everything. I could feel air displacement, muscle tension, hostile intent. The forest slowed in my mind.

  The gorilla-caste was already mid-swing.

  I stepped aside with minimal motion. The fist cratered the ground.

  I retaliated with a backward kick.

  It did nothing.

  The creature barely flinched.

  In fact, it only seemed to annoy it further as it roared and swatted at me with its lower arms. I twisted through the gap between them, narrowly avoiding being crushed.

  Frustration burned within me as I landed and began thinking quickly — returning to an idea that had been lingering in my mind for a while now.

  Energy distribution.

  I had been spreading it too evenly.

  That was wrong.

  For energy usage, balance and concentration seemed to matter a lot.

  Landing on my only available arm, I crouched and poured nearly eighty percent of my energy into my remaining arm. The rest I thinned across my body just enough for structural integrity, evenly distributed across my frame.

  I launched upward.

  Just before impact, I shifted the distribution — putting eighty percent into my legs, the remainder into my frame.

  My kick connected with the creature’s chest.

  This time, bone caved.

  Ribs collapsed inward with a wet crunch as the behemoth was launched skyward like a cannonball. It smashed through branches, tearing leaves and bark apart, before crashing somewhere in the distance with a thunderous impact.

  That worked.

  I allowed myself a small flicker of satisfaction as my theory was confirmed.

  A group of wolf-castes attacked immediately.

  I lashed out, concentrating energy into the whip more precisely this time, distributing it better to boost damage. Instead of merely tearing off heads, the strikes cleaved entire sections of their bodies away. One was split clean from shoulder to hip, organs spilling out in steaming coils.

  Another lost half its torso in a spray of pulverized flesh.

  That bought me some much-needed space.

  I activated cloaking again while moving.

  The first attempt flickered as a claw grazed my ribs, tearing skin open.

  The second attempt was better. I shifted the energy thinner, more evenly layered, syncing it with the rhythm of my breath.

  I moved.

  A wolf-caste lunged where I had been.

  It bit into empty air.

  I reappeared behind it and drove the whip handle straight through its spine, tearing vertebrae apart in a shower of bone splinters.

  The technique still wavered under sudden movement.

  But it was improving.

  The gorilla-caste returned — and another joined it.

  I felt the ground shake as they charged together.

  Fine.

  I had another idea to test anyway.

  Since the beginning, I had always wondered: could energy be expelled in a blast of some kind?

  During my fight against the insectoid caste, I had assumed I would require a core before I could attempt something like that.

  I still could be wrong.

  But now that I had a core, what better time to test that theory?

  I poured energy into the whip.

  More.

  More.

  The handle vibrated violently in my grip. Veins burned along my arm as if molten metal ran through them. The whip glowed — not red — but a bright, volatile blue-white.

  The air distorted around it.

  I lashed out.

  Energy surged from my hand into the whip, racing along its length toward the tip. When it struck the gorilla-caste, there was a crack louder than any before.

  Then—

  Detonation.

  A violent explosion of blinding blue energy erupted outward, consuming everything above the creature’s waist. There was a flash of blue light, electricity surging outward, forcing me to close my eyes temporarily.

  When I opened them again, I couldn’t help but stare.

  Flesh had vaporized instantly. Bone blackened and shattered. Its upper half simply ceased to exist, reduced to charred fragments and burning debris.

  The lower half remained standing for a fraction of a second before collapsing, entrails spilling out in a smoking heap.

  Silence fell.

  Even the forest seemed stunned.