Chapter 542: Dominion of the Black Serpent
byLuke summoned his Spectral Beast. The black thread unfurled from his abdomen, lifted into the air, and coalesced into a creature shaped from pure [Wraith Form]. The Abyss King materialized beside the corpse of its former physical self.
“Looks like your trick actually worked, human,” Franky muttered, eyeing the serpent.
“Now I have a pet snake.”
The massive dark serpent, made of smoke, shadow, and living night, regarded him with two glowing yellow eyes, recognizing its master. It hissed, tasting the air, its fangs glinting. Luke kept it under strict mental control for safety, refusing to let it switch into autonomous mode just yet.
“It’s a little smaller,” Franky noted, comparing the two bodies.
“Probably because of my core.”
His Spectral Beast was Rank F, and it had devoured a Rank D core. The power had compressed, resulting in something slightly weaker than an Abyss Prince but still carrying the full suite of the Abyss King’s skills.
I need to evolve my beast’s core as fast as possible.
Luke had only wanted to test [Form Devourer], and the results exceeded expectations. After experiencing the entire fusion ritual himself, he understood the risks more clearly. He couldn’t just feed it any random core; the process mirrored the same volatile fusion he endured. A single mistake could kill him.
[Form Devourer] essentially recreated the core fusion ritual inside his soul, which made it dangerous. But some things were becoming obvious. It was far safer to use cores from creatures he personally defeated. Perhaps it had something to do with experience points or soul imprinting. He couldn’t be sure. But instinct screamed a warning: Only devour what he killed, and preferably what he killed alone.
Since he had to defeat the creature again inside his soul, choosing something he couldn’t handle physically would be suicide. Still… the realization stirred something primal inside him. Any beast he killed could become his Spectral Beast. Whenever a new and interesting monster appeared, he could take it for himself. A true predator.
“Kneel,” he commanded, releasing direct control and letting the serpent operate autonomously.
The smoke-serpent hissed, eyes drifting across the cavern, lingering on its own massive corpse. Then it turned to Luke. Slowly, deliberately, it lowered its head to the ground in submission.
Luke leapt onto the serpent’s skull, standing proudly atop his new mount.
“Come on, Franky,” he said. “Let’s hunt every last serpent in this place.”
The enormous beast roared in agreement and surged forward through the abyss, and Luke rode into the hunt on the back of his newly claimed monster.
***
Vaelor pulled his consciousness fully back into his physical body in his own universe. He found himself standing in an office buried under piles of paperwork. He rose abruptly.
I actually spent all that time with two Primordials. And one of them was the Primordial of Darkness?
Even he couldn’t quite believe it. He had fulfilled the dream of every demon god. He strode out of the office without hesitation.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” one of his assistants said, standing as Vaelor passed.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” the assistant repeated, hurrying after him.
Vaelor walked straight through doors using intangibility while the poor assistant scrambled behind him, opening and closing them in a panic.
The w-demon quickened his pace.
“Lord Vath’Ironak,” the servant said again, suddenly at his side. “My lord, is something wrong? You never interrupt your work like this. Please, tell me what needs to be done and I will handle it.”
“I’m not doing paperwork today,” Vaelor replied.
“No?”
“In fact, I won’t be doing that kind of work for a while. I’m going to my forge.”
Vaelor vanished and reappeared within a massive castle on another continent, perched atop a frigid mountain. This was his personal refuge, a place no one visited except him.
“A cloud of smoke with many eyes,” he repeated aloud.
During the brief conversation he’d had with Luke Moon, he had asked for the creature’s true appearance. And Luke had given him only that description. A gigantic black cloud filled with grinning white eyes. A shape that seemed eager to expand.
“It shouldn’t have manifested like that,” he muttered.
Vaelor was a scholar above all else, a specialist in Spectral Beasts. Long ago, eras ago, he had been trapped in a forest where the creatures first appeared. Spectral Beasts came from another dimension, something ancient and native to regions of reality bordering the Void.
They began as small hauntings slipping into the physical plane, feeding on the fear of sentient beings around them. They adapted. And eventually one among the brood would grow strong enough to possess a beast and cross fully into the physical world. They existed to destroy and to hunt. They functioned like ants, thinking as a colony.
When they attacked Vaelor’s country, he had been the only survivor. He lived only because he used their own power against them. He seized control of a Spectral Beast and severed its connection to the “queen”, redirecting the bond to himself. That was why the black thread linking soul to beast no longer reached into their dimension. It bound to the one who dominated it.
For eras, Vaelor studied these creatures, trying to map their hauntings. What began as duty became obsession. He wanted to eliminate the equivalent of their queen bee, the commander behind them all, the one he named the Apex Typhon. If Spectral Beasts were predators of all life by nature, then above them existed an Apex. He cataloged the four types of Spectral Beast in order of power: Specter, Sinister, Nightmare, and Typhon. The more a Spectral Beast devoured, the stronger it became. And the Typhon was the most dangerous of all.
Vaelor unrolled the old scroll and read through the descriptions. Written there were the secrets and the wounds of his race. As wraiths, they had been capable of sensing a haunting forming in reality and killing it before it fully manifested by possessing a beast. They had been the hunters of Spectral Beasts in the physical realm, and for that, the creatures had chosen to exterminate them. What shocked Vaelor at the time and set off a deep alarm within his people was the truth that these beasts were not irrational. They learned. They adapted. And they obeyed orders from the Apex.
He needed to know now. What type of Spectral Beast did Luke Moon create?
When I created mine, it wasn’t anywhere near that size. It was tiny, small enough to rest in my hand. I had to feed it, strengthen the core, let it grow slowly over time. But his… started like that.
Vaelor moved through his books, notebooks, and journals. The more faces a haunting possessed, the more dangerous it was. A living legion compressed into a single entity.
I was lucky to create a Sinister-type Spectral Beast. But that thing…
There were only two possibilities left. Luke Moon had created a Nightmare… or a Typhon.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
***
Luke stood beside his Spectral Beast, now wearing the full form of the Abyss King. The giant serpent hissed and clashed violently with an Abyss Prince, the two massive bodies coiling and striking like thunderous whips. Luke guided his creature like a puppet on invisible strings.
“This snake is stupid, human!” Franky barked. “That’s not how you attack! She’s supposed to hiss, flash her fangs, then strike!”
“I don’t know how snakes fight. I’m figuring it out as I go!” Luke shot back.
The Abyss Prince slammed its tail into a chunk of stone, sending razor-sharp fragments flying. Luke immediately released direct control, letting his beast switch into autonomous mode. The shift was instant. The serpent moved differently: faster, more fluid, ducking and snapping with real killing instinct.
He conjured two throwing knives. One he infused with [Shadow Mana Explosion]. The other he focused with [Burst Throw]. He hurled the shadow-charged blade first. It streaked through the air, swallowed in noir light.
[Telekinetic Impulse activated]
The knife drilled into the serpent’s neck and erupted. The blast was far stronger than anything the crude [Mana Infusion] had ever created, tearing open a smoking hole in the Abyss Prince’s flesh.
Luke flung the second blade, stacking another [Telekinetic Impulse] on it. It punched through the fresh wound like a high-powered rifle shot.
[You have slain an Abyss Prince – Lvl 94]
The serpent collapsed, lifeless. Luke’s Spectral Beast didn’t even pause; it lunged past the corpse, sliding through the cavern network, swallowing, tearing, ripping apart every serpent that crossed its path. Luke and Franky leapt onto its back as it surged forward.
When they reached another cluster of serpent-beasts, Luke unleashed a barrage of throwing knives fueled by [Shadow Mana Explosion]. The cavern lit with black detonations, serpents thrashing and dying in violent bursts. Franky even swooped overhead to contribute, spitting fire at anything that moved.
They hunted deeper until, mid-charge, Luke’s Spectral Beast abruptly dissipated into smoke and was gone.
Great. Somewhere in this massive nest, and now without his giant snake mount.
The remaining serpents had grown fiercer the moment the Abyss King vanished. Luke carved his way forward alone, hurling knives skyward that detonated in flares of abyssal light. He sprinted through the chaos, kukris flashing as he carved open serpents and harvested whatever cores survived the explosions. Several cores had been obliterated entirely.
“Lucky we ran into that Abyss Prince,” he muttered to Franky. There was no sign of another.
He checked his notifications, skimming the day’s progress.
**Your second class [Witch] has reached Level 47!**
**Your second class [Witch] has reached Level 48!**
**Your class [Demonic Predator] has reached Level 78!**
“That little snake of yours is stupid. And weak. Doesn’t know how to be a real serpent,” Franky grumbled.
0 Comments