Chương 37: Chapter 36 - Anomaly

The passage continued deeper once the last of the Wraithkin had dissolved, the walls narrowing and widening in irregular pulses as they walked, the violet residue growing steadily thicker against the stone. Ant kept his hand near Soul Render's hilt without consciously deciding to, the adrenaline from the last fight refusing to fully settle even as the immediate threat receded behind them.

I can feel it building, Mahkir said, after they'd been walking for several minutes in relative quiet, his amber eyes fixed somewhere ahead of them that Ant couldn't identify. Whatever this is. Magic, or something close enough to it. It's stronger further in than it was at the entrance. Ant relayed it to Kalsar, who nodded without looking particularly surprised.

"That tracks with what I've seen before," he said, his eyes moving along the tunnel walls as he spoke, studying the residue the way a man studies something he's read about more than he's actually walked through.

"Residue tends to concentrate toward the centre of a vortex. Whatever's strongest down here is probably going to be closest to wherever the original pressure built up. Makes sense your Kithren would notice it getting heavier the deeper we go." Ant fell into step beside Maren, glancing at her Kithren padding along a few paces ahead — four-armed, broad-shouldered, moving with a low, careful gait that suggested more caution than confidence after the chaos of the last fight.

He noticed the creature's shoulders had a faint bruising along one side, dark against the grey hide, souvenirs from the earlier collisions that hadn't fully faded.

"Has he levelled at all," Ant asked.

"From that fight?" Maren shook her head, something faintly rueful in the gesture.

"Not yet. He's getting experience — genuinely good experience, from what I can tell — but Mahkir's doing most of the actual damage in every exchange. Axel gets enough to matter eventually. Just not enough to push him over a threshold on his own." She glanced ahead at her Kithren, something protective crossing her expression.

"It's not his fault. I've barely trained him properly. This is more my failing than his."

"Axel," Ant repeated.

"That's his name?"

"Axel." She said it with the particular fondness people reserved for things they'd chosen carefully, years ago, and never had reason to reconsider.

"He came with the name half-formed already, if I'm honest. I just finished it. Felt right." The conversation didn't get much further before Kalsar's voice cut through it, low but no longer quite as flat as before.

"My Kithren's just picked something else up ahead," he said.

"Different signature to the last three — stronger, from the feel of it. Might be worth slowing down and getting ready before we walk straight into whatever it is." Everyone went still. Maren's easy expression sharpened into something more focused, and Ant found his hand back on Soul Render's grip almost before he'd registered moving it there.

"Given what we just saw," Maren said, quickly, already thinking through it out loud, "I think the smartest approach is obvious, regardless of what the levels say. Mahkir's clearly stronger than the numbers suggest. Axel should hold whatever this is — tank it, keep it controlled — while Mahkir focuses entirely on damage. No point spreading the effort evenly if one of us is doing considerably more of the actual work."

I like this plan, Mahkir said, with an immediacy that suggested he'd have voted for any plan that put him at the centre of it. Ant relayed the agreement, and the new Wraithkin came into view a moment later, resolving out of the dark ahead of them. It was considerably larger than the last three — roughly the size of a horse, its shifting form somehow denser than the smaller creatures had been, edges holding together with a stability the weaker Wraithkin had lacked.

Its eyes burned a deeper red, four points of light rather than two, tracking all of them at once with an unsettling, deliberate patience.

"It would be considerably more useful," Maren muttered, eyeing it with the specific frustration of someone denied access to information she badly wanted, "if these things had chips. At least then we could scan it properly. Get some idea of what we're actually dealing with before it's already trying to kill us." Something about the comment sparked an idea Ant hadn't quite reached on his own. He focused inward, directing the skill at the creature ahead. Appraisal.

The response came back almost immediately, sparse in a way that surprised him. [Level 4 Anomaly detected. Warning: High Defence.] That was it. No stat breakdown, no HP total, none of the detailed readout he'd grown used to pulling from Mahkir or from ordinary equipment. Ant felt a flicker of disappointment at the absence of it, some part of him having expected more given how reliably the skill had worked on everything else he'd pointed it at. Anomaly.

Not Wraithkin, not creature, not anything close to the language the system used for everything else he'd appraised so far. He turned the word over as Axel braced for the first strike, trying to work out why his own screen would refuse to categorise something Kalsar had identified without hesitation.

Maybe the system simply didn't have Wraithkin in whatever registry it drew from, the same way it hadn't recognised Mahkir when Maren first tried to log him — a gap in what it understood rather than a statement about what the creature actually was. Or maybe there was something else going on, something closer to the reason his own screen had never worked like anyone else's from the very first moment it appeared. He didn't have time to chase the thought any further than that.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Not fully understanding a thing has never stopped it from trying to kill us before, Mahkir observed, dry and unbothered, already settling into a ready stance. No reason to start worrying about it now. Better than nothing, he supposed. Axel moved to intercept the moment the creature closed the distance, planting himself directly in its path with all four arms braced, absorbing the first strike with a grunt that carried real effort behind it.

He held, barely, muscles straining under the weight of the impact, clearly settling into the tank role Maren had assigned him with more determination than comfort. Mahkir circled, claws raking at the creature's flank, and Ant moved in alongside him rather than standing back to watch, Soul Render finding an opening at the creature's hind leg while Axel kept its attention occupied.

The blade connected with the same dense resistance Mahkir's claws were finding, barely scratching the surface, but it drew the creature's attention for a half-second — enough for Mahkir to land a cleaner strike while it was distracted. High defence. The appraisal had told him that much, at least, and watching his own sword fail to do much more than annoy the thing made the warning feel considerably more concrete than it had a moment ago.

"Mahkir!" Ant shouted.

"Time for magic. Use Flame Breath!" Mahkir broke off from the melee immediately, retreating a few steps and opening his mouth. The flame that gathered there built faster than Ant remembered from any previous use, and larger — considerably larger, an intensity that made the air around them shimmer with heat before the actual release had even begun.

"Uh oh," Ant said, watching it build, some instinct telling him this was going to look nothing like the controlled bursts from Kalsar's training yard. Mahkir released it.

The column of fire that erupted from him was easily double anything Ant had witnessed before, a roaring wave that filled the passage from wall to wall, and Axel's eyes went comically wide the instant he registered what was coming — three times their normal size, Ant would have sworn, the sheer terror on the creature's face somehow legible despite everything else about him that wasn't remotely human.

Axel abandoned his tank position entirely, powering an enormous leap off the chamber wall with his strong legs and all four arms working together, clearing the blast radius by what looked like inches. The Wraithkin had no such option. The flame consumed it entirely, the creature's dense form finally giving way where claws hadn't managed to make a dent, dissolving into a burst of dark essence that hung in the air for a moment before dissipating into nothing at all. Silence settled.

"Whoa," Ant and Maren said, together, staring at the scorched passage where the creature had stood a moment ago. Mahkir stood at the centre of it, tail curling with unmistakable satisfaction, wearing an expression that could only be described as smug even on a face that wasn't built for human expressions. Axel, clinging to the wall several feet up with all four hands gripping the stone for dear life, looked considerably less impressed with the outcome.

Kalsar hadn't moved from his position at the rear of the group, but his expression had shifted into something considerably more attentive than the studied indifference he'd carried through the earlier fight.

"That skill's growing faster than anything I've seen out of a Kithren his level," he said, half to himself, watching the scorched passage with the particular focus of a man recalculating something.

"Worth keeping an eye on." The screen confirmed it a moment later. Level 4 Anomaly defeated. Experience gained: 500. They pressed on. Two more of the same creature type emerged from the depths of the passage over the following stretch, each fight bearing less resemblance to the chaos of the first encounter than Ant would have expected given how little time had passed between them.

The walk between fights had been short but not nothing, and Ant found himself grateful for it — Mahkir's mana had visibly recovered in the gaps, the pool refilling steadily enough between encounters that Flame Breath remained an option each time rather than something spent once and unavailable for the rest of the vortex. Not instant. Not full, if the fights had come any closer together. But enough.

The second fight settled into something recognisable almost immediately — Axel planting himself directly in the creature's path without needing Maren to call it, absorbing the opening strike and holding position while Mahkir circled to the flank rather than colliding with him this time, the two of them finding a rhythm that hadn't existed an hour earlier.

When Mahkir released Flame Breath, Axel was already moving, clearing the blast radius with a controlled leap rather than the panicked scramble from before, as though he'd anticipated exactly what was coming and simply built the evasion into his positioning from the start. He's actually watching me now, Mahkir observed, mid-fight, something almost approving in the tone. Fewer surprises. Marginally less irritating to work alongside.

The third fight went faster still, Axel and Mahkir trading positions without a word passing between Ant and Maren, the two Kithren apparently reaching an understanding that didn't require either of their bonded humans to broker it. The creature fell in under a minute, Flame Breath finishing what Axel's holding pattern had set up cleanly, no wasted movement, no near misses.

"That's the difference I wanted you to see," Kalsar said, watching the last of the dark essence dissipate.

"An hour ago the two of them were tripping over each other. Now they're not waiting to be told what the other one's doing. That's not something equipment in a yard ever teaches you. Only this does." The screen arrived with the third kill. Level 4 Anomaly defeated. Experience gained: 500. Mahkir has reached Level 5. Ant pulled up the status immediately, curiosity outweighing any remaining caution about interrupting the moment.

Kithren: Mahkir Level: 5 Evolution Stage: 1 Mahkir's tail flicked with quiet satisfaction, and beside him Axel settled onto his haunches, breathing hard but upright, looking — for the first time since the fighting had started — genuinely pleased with himself rather than simply relieved to have survived.