Universe's End

Chapter 274: Viper III

I hate snakes.

For all of Eric’s life, he’d never been a fan, and that was predating the Collapse. As a kid, his older brother had bought a fuck off-sized anaconda. Then, when he couldn’t be bothered to buy food for the snake one time, he’d decided that his bunny, Poochy, was a fine alternative.

Fucking crackhead. Still miss you, Lil’ Pooch.

Then there was the time an Eyelash Viper had bitten him, this time thanks to his wonderful mother, who’d decided to buy the same older brother a venomous snake.

And people wonder why I ended up the way I did.

The point was, throughout his life, he’d never had a good experience with snakes.

And now a fucking snake was getting in his way, all to block him from getting back at the asshole who’d killed Garfunk.

It wasn’t as if he was best buddies with the overgrown badger. Definitely not. But where Tom was somehow the one poking fun at was generally an endeavor that resulted in little more than an annoyed sigh, Garfunk took the bait nine times out of ten. In a way, he reminded Eric of his oldest brother, who’d decided he wanted to join the military to get away from home, and then gotten himself blown the fuck up in some dusty hellhole.

Eric had been the only one from their family at his funeral.

Whatever the case may be, some untreated trauma that a shrink would probably get themselves all wet in the panties over, or just his general dislike for snakes, the Apophis Serpent blocking his path was a problem that needed to be dealt with. Which, for as much bluster as Eric had spouted, was something the calmer part of his mind was already breaking down.

Something is off about this monster.

While it wasn’t denoted as either an Alpha Variant or a Territory Alpha, the fact that it could speak was off-putting; usually, only monsters of the aforementioned category were intelligent enough for that. Then there was the fact that there had been that other monster that had scrapped with Tom, monsters strong enough to do that didn’t just pop up.

Except for here, apparently.

Diving through the shadows, Eric activated Long Night’s Hunt as he appeared behind the serpent, driving twin daggers angled toward where its skull met the rest of its spine, looking to sever the connection in one blow.

Only for his daggers to rebound off the scales as they turned crystal.

Well, didn’t expect that, but it wasn't like I expected it to be that easy either.

Stepping away back through the shadows, Eric was already reassessing when suddenly the snake vanished, turning into what looked like a bolt of blue lightning and sinking into the ground. Glancing around, Eric felt a hint of unease, not used to being the one who was being snuck up on.

Of course, had Eric been that easy to catch off guard or beat, he wouldn’t have survived to this point either.

When the serpent lunged out from the ground behind it, its jaws wide as it looked to grab hold of his entire chest in one bite, Eric spun around, driving a spinning kick into its snout and knocking the serpent away before diving through the shadows once more and appearing behind its head, stabbing down into its eye socket.

Like a game of cat and mouse, the snake avoided the attack as it turned into pure energy, the daggers phasing through. Yet, even as they didn’t appear to inflict any real damage, Eric could feel the damage being transferred directly, even if at a reduced effectiveness.

Oh, hoh, I can work with that.

Grinning, inky blackness began to drip from his daggers as he infused his Primordial Night affinity through them.

The serpent literally began to fly away, escaping the darkness, as it seemed to realize instantly that any inky blackness injected directly into its energy form was unwise.

“Oh, running away?” Eric taunted.

“What is that?” The serpent asked, a tone of curiosity and alarm in its aura-infused psychic voice.

“Primordial Night,” Eric said, shooting a nasty grin at the serpent. “Nasty stuff. The first night, the long night, whatever funny description you want to give it. To those who aren’t equipped to handle it, it is the final darkness.”

Which sounded far more melodramatic than Eric tended to angle for, but hey, if Eon wanted him to play a bit of the dastardly type, he wasn’t against it either.

“It is poison and venom and-”

“And so much more, correct,” Eric agreed. “But this isn’t a classroom. Nightfall!”

Activating the domain-type skill, the inky blackness of the Primordial Night became reality. It was one of his ace skills, and so to have had it shattered earlier so easily greatly peeved Eric to no end. Here he was, with an ultra-rare and powerful domain attack, and the Architect asshole had undone it like nothing. Sure, it wasn’t technically a true domain; the description had even mentioned that specifically, but he hadn’t expected anyone to understand domains enough to undo it like untying a regular shoelace.

I hate to admit it, but without Tom, that asshole might have been a bad match-up for me.

Then there had been the bit where he’d walked straight into a trap and gotten caught.

But the joke was on him, because he was going to kill his stupid pet snake.

Within the world of Nightfall, Eric felt damn near invincible, able to appear and disappear anywhere at will. If he were more practiced with magic, he felt confident he could even manipulate the environment to assault his target directly.

Knowing he had the upper hand, Eric stepped forward, daggers already moving.

Only to be launched away as the serpent’s tail smacked him the moment he appeared.

Huh? Maybe I gave myself away too early.

Vanishing back into the darkness, Eric attempted this time to appear beneath the serpent, driving his daggers upward, only to be blasted by a bolt of lightning from the damn snake as he found himself literally shocked.

Alright, not a fluke. It can still sense me somehow.

Within the darkness, he should have been impossible to detect, but apparently, the snake hadn’t gotten that memo.

“Your hiding trick won’t work on me,” The serpent said, sounding annoyingly haughty.

“If you say so.”

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Taking his two daggers, Eric placed the pommels one against the other before slowly pulling them apart, now connected by a pole of gently frothing shadows. Switching his daggers from assassination to fight mode wasn’t exactly his favorite thing in the world; they got stuck in that mode for the next month, but it was clear the dinky little daggers weren’t working.

Armed with a two-sided glaive, Eric gave it a quick whirl before dashing through the shadows, appearing and disappearing several times a second, trying to gauge just how well it could keep track of him as he came in swinging. The moment he appeared, the snake’s aura began blasting outward in a field that gave Eric the feeling of endless leeches wanting to sucker onto him.

Nah.

Sweeping out with the glaive, a shadowy mist shot outward into its aura, the effect nullified by the blanketing field.

Having not expected zero effect from its… whatever that had been, the snake was a hair too slow as the glaive shot outward and stabbed through a nearly imperceptible crevice between scales, the blade earning a pained hiss from the serpent as he yanked it back out and stepped back away through the shadows.

Maybe I was being overly cautious.

Beginning to grow confident, the Rogue stepped out of the shadows once again, dodging a tail swipe as the glaive again shot forward to inflict yet another wound into the serpent, able to detect weak points innately thanks to one of the passive effects of his tier six ascension skill, Long Night’s Hunt.

That was until a crest of pure energy appeared alongside her already impressive crowning crest, like the one true monarch of all King Cobras. Only somewhat cautious, Eric pointed the glaive forward as a nullifying cloud shot outward to overwhelm whatever the oversized serpent was doing, still diving forward.

Only for the nullifying cloud to be the one nullified as it entered the serpent’s aura range.

Wow, what?

Mid-movement, Eric attempted to redirect, but the one thing about his shadow stepping with Long Night’s Hunt was that there was a bit of an internal cooldown; he couldn’t redirect the instant after stepping through darkness, something the Architect had taken advantage of already.

Realizing his attempt to step away wasn’t happening, Eric went on the offensive, blasting his Primal Night aura outward in an attempt to crush the serpent’s own aura outright. At first, it seemed to work, quashing the inferior conceptual force… only for the serpent to suddenly lash back out, as Eric’s eyes widened.

“Excuse the fuck?”

The serpent’s aura had directly changed, colored by shadows and darkness, and while it wasn’t much, Eric could distinctly sense little ‘motes’ of Primal Night woven throughout the tapestry of her aura.

Unable to forcibly suppress the serpent’s aura, it lunged forward, everything having happened within a fraction of a fraction of a second, given the tier they were duking it out at. Eric managed to barely raise his glaive, the only reason the snake wasn’t able to close her jaws down over his body fully. One would typically expect the interior of the serpent’s mouth to be softer and easier to damage with the pointy ends of the double-sided polearm. Instead, crystal scales had formed within her mouth, protecting her as the two found themselves locked one against the other for a moment.

Unfortunately for Eric, it was only a moment that he managed to hold out. Monsters, especially powerful monsters, typically had more raw attributes than enlightened species. Eric himself was largely invested in flexibility, which wasn’t the best if you were attempting to match strength against a snake that looked like it belonged back in the Chamber of Secrets, or at least the Paleocene rainforests of Colombia some sixty million years ago from the last days of Earth.

Unable to hold the monster back, it slammed its jaws around him before slamming him into the side of the weird, oversized tree, which immediately began to writhe as bark tendrils reached outward like little invasive worms.

Yeah, fuck that!

Night Fall was thankfully still active, and so, reaching out, Eric forced himself through the shadows. A forceful positional swap took a hell of a lot out of him; he either needed to be stepping through shadows or hunting a marked target for Long Night’s Hunt to be costless.

“Ow,” Eric grunted to himself as he’d escaped. For good reason, too, an oversized fang was stuck in his chest, having pierced straight through his medium-weight armor, a dark, brass colored leather covered with a metal that resembled black zirconium. The fact that his armor had been so easily breached was impressive, given that the armor was some of the finest armor any of their people had made; only Allison’s bone-white armor was better.

Reaching his hand outward, Eric yanked the fang out of his chest, his body already combating the cocktail of toxins running through his bloodstream. Or, his body was supposed to, his aura colored by Primal Night affinity was great for quashing that sort of stuff through regular old circulation, except for whatever reason, the toxins seemed to refuse to budge as Eric frowned.

Well, that’s not good.

Prey worth hunting.

Eia knew she was arrogant, knew she was haughty. She was not blind after all. She had just figured it was always warranted. Was it arrogance when she truly was an apex hunter? Partially sired by one of the former strongest beings on the planet, and uplifted by the greatest Khan of the enlightened, her chosen Brood Father?

That had been her thought process until she’d been humbled decades prior by Metal Scales herself.

Her utterly disgraceful defeat had led her to sharpen her fangs, all with the intent of never again embarrassing herself.

The Living Shadow was the perfect opponent to gauge just how far she’d come. She was already an outlier; the monster closest to her in existence had been the Bird, but with his death, none could truly compare to her, even Tsarina, yappy Jinn, or the ravenous Astra were still solidly closer to ‘natural’ monsters than she was. Perhaps if she broke away from her Brood Father, she would be reclassified as an Alpha Variant, but as that was as likely as the skies inverting, she existed as something else entirely.

Either way, testing herself against the Living Shadow was an opportunity unlike any other. The energy of the Primal Night was unlike anything she’d encountered before. As far as depth went, it was closer to most advanced forms of energy her Brood Father would manipulate while making things, except usable in the heat of battle. Not to mention how he slipped through the darkness like a fish through water.

The saving grace was that, outside of the impossibly precise attacks and highly dangerous Primal Night aura, the actual damage the Rogue inflicted was minimal compared to what Metal Scales or her Brood Father could manage, a difference in specialization. A monster like the Bird would have found itself in an incredibly disadvantageous matchup; the ‘Night Fall’ skill the Rogue utilized would have severed its connection to the twin suns, thereby rendering almost the entirety of its arsenal moot.

Eia was not The Bird. Outside of the danger of being inflicted by attacks colored by Primal Night aura while in her energy form, she believed she could face the Rogue directly.

Flaring her crest once more, she switched the color of her aura, blasting fiery energy outward as she attempted to burn away the darkness of the Nightfall partial domain.

The darkness consumed her aura, and in return for her efforts, the Rogue reappeared for the millionth time, delivering another stab through her scales as she put the inflicted pain aside, the accumulating Primal Night energy still manageable just so long as she didn’t spend long in her energy form.

Tiresome.

With her aura sense heightened to its max, she could still track the Rogue as he slipped through the shadows, appearing and disappearing at will. The problem was that the Rogue had realized that she could detect him even in the darkness. So he’d changed his tactic, attempting split-second offensives from opposite angles, seeking to avoid giving her the time to react, even if she could sense where he was the moment he appeared.

The one benefit to the slowly accumulating Primal Night ‘venom’ within her was that she was beginning to understand some aspects of it. It would take years before she could control or produce it at the same level as the Rogue. Still, she didn’t need to manipulate it directly; she just needed to understand it enough so that her own venoms could survive contact with the powerful concept. While her teeth were the most effective delivery system of her many forms of venom, her ability to envenom her aura also slowly applied the many venoms as well.

In a way, the two of them were angling for the same win condition, whose accumulating ‘toxins’ would triumph over the decider.

Assuming she couldn’t find a way to crack Night Fall as her Brood Father had.

When the Rogue next appeared, striking his glaive into her tail, Eia ignored the pain of the wound and the slowly seeping Primal Night energy as she tensed the muscles up, the Rogue surprised for a split second as his attempt to yank the weapon free and escape back through the darkness foiled as Eia refused to let the weapon budge from her body, as much as it hurt to do so.

The split second was enough for Eia to strike, the Rogue flickering away to avoid the worst of her jaws clamping down on his body.

Avoiding the worst of her jaws wasn’t the same thing as avoiding them entirely. When he reappeared, several smaller fangs remained lodged in his arm as the teeth rapidly regrew in her mouth.

“Right, so, you’re kind of a dick,” The Rogue said, a momentary lull in the violence.

“Your little pinpricks won’t be enough to best me, even with your own venom,” Eia responded, her mentally projected voice carrying his aura just as well as any verbally spoken words.

“I’m starting to agree,” The Rogue frowned, as Eia suddenly felt a looming sense of danger. “So, I guess it’s time to start getting risky. Garfunk told me a few times that I need to learn to let loose more. I never really took it that seriously, caution the better part of valor and all that… But I think I understand better what he meant. The time to grow is during a pressed battle. God, I sound like Tom. Whatever, no more point babbling to an overgrown garter snake.”

With that, the darkness that had been surrounding them vanished, as Eia could physically see further than a few feet once more.

Which would have been a good thing, except as the darkness broke, it didn’t simply vanish as she’d first assumed. It was drawn toward the glaive the Rogue held, as the entire weapon turned black and not just the handle, looking like it had been submerged in inky blackness.

“Night Fall: Singularity.”