NOVEL NEXT Chapter 188: Flame
"Third Wave: Consumption."
There was no solid ground. No time to brace. No time to prepare.
He dropped from the sky into a writhing, pulsing ocean of red.
At first, he thought it was blood. But then they moved.
Ants.
A sea of them… Billions!
They swarmed over him in a chaotic tide of varying sizes. Some were as small as grains of rice, others as large as golf balls, and some even grew to the size of a small infant.
Their exoskeletons gleamed with a lacquered crimson sheen, polished by mana and malice. Their eyes pulsed with faint light, storing threads of raw energy, and their pincers, jagged, segmented, serrated like bone saws, clicked in perfect, merciless unison.
Damien hit the swarm like a stone dropped into a pit of razors.
They engulfed him instantly.
Before he could raise his arms, they were biting into his shoulders, chewing through his cloak, tearing through the outer layers of his silver-grade skin.
His chest lit up in raw agony as a dozen ants burrowed into his side, carving gashes that poured blood across his ribs. His back arched as something sharp sank into his calf, slicing through tendon and pulling at the bone beneath.
He tried to breathe, one desperate gasp, and instantly regretted it.
They were in his mouth. His nostrils. Crawling into his ears.
His throat clenched in reflex as something tried to burrow down past his tongue.
He coughed violently, his body convulsing, choking on the living tide of segmented limbs and gnashing mandibles.
A scream tore from his throat. But it was muffled, drowned in the wave of red that clawed and chewed and crawled through every exposed orifice.
Panic surged.
This wasn't battle.
This wasn't challenge.
This was nightmare!
A swarm designed not to kill quickly, but to consume from the inside out, to infest and tear and hollow from within.
His vision blurred as blood poured from his scalp, his neck, his lips. The pain came from everywhere, not in pulses, but in a constant burn, too much, too fast, impossible to focus.
And then something snapped.
He stopped thinking. His body took over.
A massive burst of death energy exploded outward from his core.
Not directed, not refined, but primal. Reflexive. A survival response.
Every ant within a ten-meter radius died instantly, their life energy ripped from their bodies like cloth torn from a corpse. They dropped in twitching heaps, husks that evaporated into gray mist.
Damien coughed violently, heaving the creatures out of his throat as he staggered to his feet.
His vision still spun, and his body was shredded, blood running in rivulets down his arms and chest. He wiped a thick smear of insect ichor from his eyes.
He forced himself to think.
He had seconds.
His revolving core responded, still slow but gathering momentum, death energy stabilizing as his mind reengaged.
With effort, he crafted a sphere of death energy around him.
Dense, coiling layers of entropy designed to kill anything organic that came within arm's reach.
For a moment, it held.
He breathed painfully, but cleanly for the first time since falling.
Then the swarm surged again.
Ants slammed against the barrier in waves, their combined force like a tidal flood crashing against a dam.
Some were torn apart on impact. Others clawed into each other's bodies to form bridges of writhing flesh. Dozens passed through microgaps. Then hundreds. Mandibles flashed. Limbs stabbed. Flesh tore anew.
Damien growled in fury, blasting again, this time in tighter bursts, targeted pulses of death designed to wipe clusters from existence.
He moved quickly, turning and sweeping his arms, each motion sending out sickles of necrotic force that carved the swarm apart.
But they kept coming.
For every ten he killed, a hundred replaced them. Their numbers were unrelenting. Their hunger, mindless. Their pain meant nothing. Their coordination, perfect.
He bombed them again. And again. Each time, the energy cost increased. Each time, the strain grew.
His legs wobbled. His core burned. His regeneration barely kept pace with the injuries.
It's not enough.
They keep coming. They never stop.
And then…
A memory.
Blackie's voice, calm and measured. "Life is structured instability. A brief resistance against collapse."
Rage Monkey, mocking but sincere. "So if you live forever, there's no meaning?"
Damien's own words: That's what makes it mean something. Meaning only exists when time is short. When endings are real.
"Death is not destruction. It's return." Blackie had said.
That was the answer.
The ants were not enemies.
They were energy.
They were borrowed life.
They needed to be returned.
His death energy was too blunt. Too aggressive. He had been trying to kill what did not fear death.
But he wasn't a killer.
He was a reclaimer.
He shifted his will.
His death energy responded.
It stopped thrashing. It stopped blasting. It folded inward and became calm… Deliberate. Like water flowing in reverse.
He did not attack the ants.
He called them back.
Every living thing dies eventually. But Damien didn't want them to die. He wanted them to remember that they were never meant to last forever.
He reached outward, not with violence, but with command.
A new pulse erupted from him.
One that was silent, elegant and utter final.
The ants paused for a beat before collapsing like puppets with their strings cut.
Not torn. Not exploded. They simply fell. Legs curled inward. Mandibles stilled. No blood. No noise.
Billions of them. Gone.
Their life essence flowed into Damien's core like rivers into the sea.
It was beautiful.
His core swelled. The revolving motion intensified. Death energy refined itself in real time, sharpening into something finer, clearer. Not a weapon. A law.
And the system answered.
[New Skill Acquired: Return Mandate – Reap all lesser lifeforms within range by enforcing death as a state of order]
[Energy Recovered: 317% Mana Threshold Restored]
Damien stood alone in a silent plain of ash and scattered carapaces.
He did not speak.
He did not move.
He simply breathed and understood.
He was not here to kill.
He was here to remind the world that everything, every ant, every beast, even every Sovereign… returns.
The world was silent.
But he could feel it watching. And this time… it was taking him seriously.
"Fourth Wave: Flame."