Chapter 248: First Battle in the Mist
The creature didn’t roar or shriek or make any sound at all. It simply attacked, moving with that same terrible speed that had brought it upon them so quickly.
The creature’s speed, while impressive, didn’t concern Leon in the slightest. He could match and exceed it without effort – what might have been a blur of motion to others was almost leisurely to his enhanced perception. But he recognized that for someone from the Lower Domain, for someone without his advantages, this creature’s velocity would be absolutely terrifying. Death would come before most warriors even registered the attack.
What did interest him was the creature’s target selection. Instead of attacking him – the one standing ready with drawn sword – it veered sharply toward Seraphine. That deliberate choice told Leon everything he needed to know: this wasn’t some mindless beast operating on instinct. It possessed intelligence and tactical thinking. It had identified what it perceived as the weaker target.
A fatal miscalculation.
Leon had complete confidence in Seraphine’s ability to handle herself. She was a seasoned warrior who had survived the Forbidden Mist once before, escaped when others would have died. Given time, she could certainly deal with this creature.
But this wasn’t the time for training exercises or proving grounds. They were in hostile territory, surrounded by unknown dangers. Efficiency trumped everything else.
Leon’s figure vanished from where he stood.
To Seraphine’s eyes, he disappeared entirely, the mist swallowing even the afterimage of his movement. To the creature’s multiple eyes, he might have registered as a flicker, a distortion in the air. But before any of them could process what had happened, Leon materialized directly in the creature’s path.
His Epic-ranked sword moved in a perfect arc, the blade singing through the air with lethal precision. The strike was so clean, so perfectly executed, that for a moment it seemed nothing had happened at all.
Leon felt no resistance at all.
Then the creature separated into two halves, bisected from crown to groin in one flawless cut. The blade had passed through it like butter, offering no more resistance than air. Both halves tumbled past Leon, their momentum carrying them forward even as they fell.
Leon allowed himself a fraction of a second’s satisfaction. Clean kill, minimal effort, threat neutralized—
One of the creature’s claws lashed out from the fallen half, moving with desperate speed toward his throat.
Leon’s sword flickered again, severing the entire arm at what might have been a shoulder. The limb fell away, those terrible claws never reaching their target. But immediately, another attack came from the other half of the bisected creature, forcing Leon to pivot and strike again. Another arm fell to the forest floor.
Yet something was wrong. The creature wasn’t dying.
Both halves were moving, crawling across the spongy forest floor with disturbing purpose. The severed flesh writhed with a wet squelch, the stench of iron and rot rising so sharply it burned his throat. They weren’t fleeing – they were trying to reconnect. Tendrils of white flesh reached out from the severed surfaces, stretching toward each other like desperate fingers. Where the arms had been cut away, the flesh was already bubbling, beginning to reform.
"Leon!" Seraphine’s voice cut through his analysis. Everything had happened so fast – perhaps a second from first strike to now – that she was only processing what she was seeing. "You need to use elemental mana or Aura! Physical damage won’t stop it – these things keep regenerating! Elemental energy disrupts their healing!"
The information clicked immediately in Leon’s mind. Different from the abyssal monster he’d faced before, but similar in its refusal to die from conventional wounds. The regeneration wasn’t identical – less aggressive than abyssal corruption, more like a natural adaptation to the mist environment – but the solution was apparently the same.
The creature, now somehow even more enraged despite being in pieces, pulled itself together faster than should have been possible. White flesh knitted together with wet, organic sounds that turned Leon’s stomach. Threads of pale tissue stretched across the ground, sticky strands snapping with soft pops as they reknit.
Within seconds, it was whole again, those dozens of eyes now burning with what could only be described as fury.It charged again, and this time it moved significantly faster. The near-death experience had triggered something, pushing it beyond its usual limitations. For a warrior of the Lower Domain, this enhanced speed would have been impossible to track, a death sentence written in motion.
For Leon, it was still painfully slow.
Let’s get this over with
He wrapped his sword in crackling lightning, his Level One Lightning Aura spreading along the blade until it glowed with electric death. The Epic-ranked weapon accepted the elemental enhancement eagerly, the marriage of superior craftsmanship and raw elemental power creating something truly deadly.
The creature lunged, four claws extended to tear him apart.
Leon sidestepped with casual grace, the attack missing by centimeters that might as well have been kilometers. His lightning-wrapped blade came up in the same motion, bisecting the creature once again in an almost lazy diagonal cut from shoulder to opposite hip.
This time, the effect was drastically different.
Lightning coursed through the severed flesh, crackling and sparking as it disrupted whatever unnatural force allowed the creature to regenerate. The white skin blackened and charred at the edges of the cut, the flesh unable to reach out and reconnect. The stench of burning flesh mixed with the sharp crackle of ozone filled the mist with acrid smoke. The creature’s many eyes widened in what might have been shock or pain – it was impossible to tell with such an alien face.
Both halves hit the ground with a wet thud and didn’t move again.
The forest fell silent except for the constant whisper of moving mist. The entire encounter had lasted perhaps ten seconds from first contact to final death, but Leon knew this was just the beginning. If creatures like this were common in the mist, their journey to truly understand this barrier would be far more complicated than anticipated.
"Well," Seraphine said after a moment, her voice carrying a mix of appreciation and amusement, "that was efficient. Though you might have let me get at least one strike in."
Leon glanced at her, noting the slight smile on her face despite the situation. "Next time," he promised, already scanning through his spatial awareness for any other approaching threats.
The dead creature was already beginning to dissolve, its white flesh breaking apart and drifting away like the mist itself. Within moments, there would be no evidence it had ever existed at all.