Chapter 164: Summons Death Cave... omelet

Chapter 164: Summons Death Cave... omelet Cough! Cough! Again and again, his body convulsed, violent tremors shaking through him and forcing his chest to rise and fall in quick, uneven bursts. His lungs burned with every breath, as though the very act of breathing was a punishment. It was hard—terribly hard—to draw in air, and this shocking realization made Kairos jerk, panic flooding his system like cold water down his spine. He didn’t know where he was—not entirely—but he could feel it. The surface beneath him was solid and unwelcoming, hard as stone, and so chillingly cold it almost soothed the sharpness of his pain. It grounded him in the moment, a cruel sort of anchor to his reality. His ears strained for sound, but nothing came—only wind. A dry, eternal wind that whispered through the pit like a ghost, no birds, no movement. Just wind. Nothing more, nothing less. For a split second, a naive thought flitted through his foggy mind—maybe I’m back on Earth. Maybe this has all been some twisted, overdrawn nightmare. But then reality returned—hard and biting like a slap—and as his mind sharpened, as consciousness reassembled its broken pieces, his eyes shot open. They widened in instinct, primal and alert like a wolf suddenly brushed by the scent of prey. Or danger. Without thinking, Kairos threw himself up, climbing to his seat with a jolt, ready to react to any unseen threat that might descend on him. But pain stopped him. Agony gripped his sides like hot iron bands. His ribcage screamed. His shoulders felt crushed under invisible weight. Even his face burned with strain and trauma. The sheer magnitude of his injuries brought him collapsing back down with a harsh gasp, curling into the most comfortable position he could muster just to breathe—just to exist for another second. "Look where you got yourself, Veyl. You just jumped into a massive hole like you’re some kind of super soldier. What a dumb prospect." His inner voice came, cruel and sarcastic as always, stinging with its brutal honesty. Maybe that was the cost of being alone for too long—your thoughts turning on you, becoming rude echoes of yourself. "How senile..." Kairos grit his teeth and activated integration, hoping—praying—for even a fragment of healing. His system hummed within, the low warmth of magic beginning its work. But he knew the truth all too well: healing shattered bones was no casual miracle. Not without a real healer. Not without weeks or months. And he had neither time nor help. As the slow, bitter healing process began, Kairos forced himself to shift his attention. He needed information. Needed to know what kind of grave he’d landed in. Ignoring the aches, he scanned his surroundings, focusing on the crevice he had fallen into. The light was dim but tolerable. Not total blackness—thank the stars. It wasn’t the suffocating void of night, so at least his eyes could adjust. A few feet ahead, jagged rocks jutted out like broken bones. Some pointed upward like waiting spears, others lay shattered, unnaturally twisted. The whole place felt... wrong, like a dead god’s tomb. ’A bunch of rocks... What else were you expecting, Veyl? A sack of water?’ Kairos let a short, dry chuckle escape his lips—bitter and humorless. He wiped dust from his brow and activated the Eye of Clairvoyance, shifting his perception. The world became more detailed, sharper in that ghostly, magical way that only his eye could provide. With it, he saw the truth of this place. A ruined pit, deep and scarred. The rocks here weren’t natural. They looked like they’d been dropped from a great height, as if someone—or something—had tried to bury this place long ago. Or perhaps keep something inside. Kairos narrowed his eyes, extending his clairvoyant gaze to its widest range. He pushed the limits, breathing slowly as the world revealed itself in larger pieces. And what he saw next made his blood run cold. Two things—two utterly damning truths. ’Uh—oh. Is this good news or bad news?’ he muttered internally, frowning as his heart thudded painfully. The first thing his gaze caught was a skeleton. Once human. Once whole. Now torn in half, the torso and legs separated cleanly. Bone scraped against the stone floor in an unnatural heap. Kairos stared, breath tightening. That could’ve been him. That might be him in a few hours. The bones screamed a message without words: he was not the first to fall into this cursed desert pit. And he would not be the last. This wasn’t salvation from the horrors above—this was simply the next stage in the nightmare. But worse than the skeleton was the second discovery. Set against a wall of boulders that cleaved the pit into two uneven sections, a nest—a real, terrifying nest—sat like a throne of doom. Within it were three enormous eggs, each the size of a grown man. Kairos’s stomach twisted. His throat dried up further. And guarding those eggs... A behemoth. A monster larger than anything Kairos had ever seen—larger than any living creature should be. It was covered in a golden-brown carapace, thick and radiant like molten bronze but hard as diamond. Its body had the twisted anatomy of a scorpion, complete with pincers like guillotines and a tail poised with a stinger the size of a sword. Its body was built like a war tank—no sword, no arrow, no bomb would ever crack that armor. Kairos felt nausea churn in his gut. "This is bad news, isn’t it..." he whispered aloud, his voice trembling slightly. He clenched his fists, lips trembling into a tight line. ’Of all the holes you could’ve jumped into, Veyl... it had to be this one. The one with the death-scorpion that could cleave you in half like a twig.’ His body went rigid. Panic scratched the inside of his mind, desperate to take over. This is it. No way out. Not in this state. Not like this. The darkness above had been pure evil—but this? This was a slow, methodical death sentence. He had merely escaped one kind of monster and landed into the jaws of another. A worse one. A final one. ’Fuck, system... what the hell is that thing?’ He needed information. Something. Anything. And to his surprise, the system responded. Cold and unreadable. {It’s a Deviant... All other information cannot be relayed until you have leveled up the Title: The Blind Child Sees No Path.} Kairos let out a long, weary sigh. Truly, nothing in this accursed wasteland came for free. Exhaustion weighed on every muscle, and his ribs protested each shallow breath, but he forced himself to crawl until his back pressed against the shelter of a jagged boulder. Cool stone kissed his feverish skin, calming the thunder of his pulse just enough that he could think. ’I have no idea what this beast—no, this deviant—really is,’ he reflected, scrunching gritty sand between aching fingers. ’I don’t know when it hunts, what signs it leaves, or what noises give it away. All I know is that it’s a mother, and being a mother doesn’t mean it wouldn’t relish fresh meat if it finds me.’ No sooner had that grim notion surfaced than the cosmos seemed to laugh in his face. The mountainous scorpion twitched. One spine-ridged leg stabbed the ground, then another, and another, each landing with the weight of a falling pillar. Its ebony carapace—slick, irregular, almost liquid in the half-light—twisted as the deviant stretched. The tail uncoiled like a serpent waking, barbed sting glinting with a poison Kairos suspected could kill him before he had time to scream. Even the pincers curled around themselves in a sinister, snake-like dance. The display shattered any illusion that this creature was simply an oversized scorpion. It was something far older, far crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. Clacking limbs propelled the behemoth forward—fast. Too fast. It churned over shattered rocks, descending the slope toward Kairos’s hiding place as though it already knew where he cowered. Each impact rattled his skull. Instinct shrieked for flight, but his body felt like cooling lead. ’If it finds me I’m dead,’ he acknowledged, tightening his weary grip on the gauntlet that swaddled his left arm. ’Running buys me seconds, not salvation.’ A shrill, metallic keening burst from the deviant’s maw. Kairos flattened tighter against stone, wishing to melt into it. The scorpion ascended the rubble above him, claws scraping sparks from stone. For one heartbeat it paused, every joint locking as though scenting prey. Another howl tore the air, and Kairos’s remaining courage curdled. He had been found. His mouth opened—perhaps to curse, perhaps to pray—but sound died in his throat. The monster bent its legs and— Leap! The entire wall vanished beneath it as though gravity were a suggestion. The beast soared overhead, blotting out the crimson sky, and landed with an impact that tremored through the earth. Not even the sand dared whisper afterward. A shudder rippled through Kairos’s spine. That effortless vault deserved a name, a warning etched in memory. Deep within, he baptised the creature: the Dark Venom of Hope—because if hope survived here at all, it lay buried beneath this thing’s shadow. He held his breath. Maybe the leap had been a ruse, maybe the fiend lingered just out of sight, waiting for the slightest rustle. Seconds crawled into minutes. Minutes stretched until the sun bled itself into twilight. Only when night swallowed the canyon did the Dark Venom return, scuttling back toward the fissure that served as its lair. In its jaws it clenched a glistening hunk of fresh meat—the upper half of one of those shark-skinned horrors that had haunted Kairos’s path for days. ’Fuck this bastard,’ Kairos thought, bristling at the sight. ’Showing off because it hunted something way beyond my league.’ Anger flared, fleeting but hot, a torch against the darkness of fear. Still, rage could not knit torn sinew or fill hollow lungs, and as hours ticked by he remained pressed to cold stone, eyelids gritty and mind smoldering with insults he dared not speak aloud. Sleep, as always, eluded him. Dawn’s first pallid rays limned the canyon. The Dark Venom stirred, clicking irritably before lumbering toward the mouth of its pit. With a final guttural rasp it vaulted into the open world, hunting anew. As silence settled, Kairos’s gaze drifted to the cluster of mottled eggs nestled in the depression beside the pit—oblong shapes swaddled in threads of ashen silk. A flicker of midnight energy danced across his pupils, raw instinct colliding with desperation. ’Sorry, neighbor,’ he decided, lips curling into a grim smile. ’But I’m making omelet for breakfast.’