CHAPTER 44: strange forest
A corpse lay split behind him,leylin didn't look back.Dissatisfaction lingered on his face , not because the gorilla had been weak, but because the fight had ended too quickly.
Growlll.....gluttony purred in his chest, full and smug.Leylin exhaled through his nose, a crooked smile forming.
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
He stepped forward.
Too short," he muttered.
Gluttony hummed, smug and heavy.He crouched and pressed his palm against the creature's remaining chest.
"Fine," he sighed. "Eat."
The response was immediate.A violent pull.The corpse shriveled as if centuries passed in seconds. Light, heat, vitality, even the residual aura were dragged into him, flooding his meridians like molten iron.
Flesh crawled over bone.A new arm grew from his shoulder ...not slowly, not painfully, but with terrifying efficiency, veins threading themselves into existence as though following a blueprint older than the world.
Leylin flexed his fingers once.Satisfied.
Just as he was about to turn around and leave, the world screamed.Something erased the air beside his head.Not sliced.Not torn.Erased.Leylin twisted on instinct. Too slow.His regrown arm vanished at the shoulder.For half a heartbeat he simply stared at the empty space where it had been.
"…Seriously?"
Blood sprayed.Pain followed.Then he moved.A step forward.A pivot.A backhand strike toward empty space...CLANG.
Metal met bone.The impact detonated through the clearing, shockwaves flattening trees outward in a perfect circle.Something stood there now.White.Still.Sword sheathed.Leylin's eyes narrowed....System," he said, voice low but urgent. "Scan."
[Analyzing…]
[Target Acquired]
Coordinates flooded his vision.A single word cut through the forest.
"Good."
Leylin's gaze sharpened.A figure stepped forward from nothing.White robes.
Hood drawn low.A katana at the waist. Two more crossed on the back.Every line of him was sharp .. shoulders, jaw, even the fall of fabric, like the world had carved him with a blade and stopped when it was satisfied.
Leylin tried to read him.Nothing.No data.Only pressure .. an aura denser than the gorilla's, so compressed that space itself seemed reluctant to touch him.
"So you're the new anomaly," the man said mildly.
Leylin frowned. "New?"
No answer.The assassin glanced at the surroundings as if bored.
"Let's finish this."
He vanished.Danger detonated through Leylin's instincts.He pivoted left.
A single finger passed where his head had been.Behind him, the forest ended.Miles of trees gone .. not fallen, not cut, but erased from trunk upward, leaving smooth stumps like a field of broken pillars.
Leylin felt something unfamiliar brush his spine.Not fear.Awareness.He leapt backward, landing atop a shattered trunk.The assassin looked up at him.For a moment, nothing moved.
Then.."You talk too much."
He appeared behind Leylin.A strike aimed for the heart.Leylin vanished.
The chase ignited.Through trees.Across ravines.Over rivers that exploded into steam beneath their steps.Punches.Feints.Counters.
Neither gaining ground.Neither revealing anything real.The assassin never drew his sword.Leylin never used Envy.A duel of withheld catastrophes.
Leylin's mind raced, feeding data to the system, searching for patterns.Then he slowed deliberately.A fraction too slow.The assassin's eyes sharpened.He thrust forward to end it..leylin smiled."Got you."
His chest opened like a devouring maw.The assassin's arm plunged into it.
"Boom."
All the kinetic force Leylin had absorbed from the gorilla detonated outward.Light swallowed the forest.When it faded, the assassin stood unmoved.His arm was gone.Blood dripped steadily onto the ground.No pain.No reaction.
He studied the wound, then looked back at Leylin.For the first time..he smiled."Not bad."His remaining hand rested on the hilt of his katana.
"Now," he said softly,"I can take this seriously."
Leylin's heartbeat slowed.Because only then did he understand.Everything before this.had been restraint.
And in a distant part of the forest.. something opened it's eyes to .. turning massive crimson eyes to the location of leylins battle