Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

Atlas’s eyes moved to the Trait name.

Then he became still.

His mouth slowly opened beneath the mask, and his eyes widened as he stared at the line on the page.

[ Spirit Instinct - Rank C ]

The words slowly formed and Atlas only stared with his wide eyes. His eyes were wide not because of the Trait’s name or rank, but because of the realization he came to.

’Those monsters... they could sense the danger of the scythe because of this Trait.’

That was why they had frozen before he even moved. That was why their legs had been trembling and their eyes had stayed fixed on the scythe rather than on him. The fear had not been directed at Atlas himself. It had been directed at the weapon, and this Trait had been the reason they could feel that danger in the first place.

’And if I was a fool I would think this Trait is garbage... but this is a ridiculous Trait. If I am right about what it does then...’

He didn’t think farther. Instead he quickly grabbed the Sanguis Stylus from the Codex’s side and tapped the Trait with the tip. As usual, the Trait name glowed faintly before Atlas felt it. His head snapped upward as his heartbeat went up only once.

Thump.

His eyes remained wide as he felt something coursing through his spirit veins directly. This was not Spirit he was feeling. It was no form of energy. Instead it was... sense.

Sense was directly engraving into his spirit veins. The process was different from every other Trait assimilation he had gone through before. Those had carried some form of energy or physical change. This one carried nothing like that. It was purely an addition to his perception, something slotting into the existing structure of his spirit veins without forcing anything out of place.

As it settled in, Atlas did not feel any pain at all. Instead he felt more relaxed and comfortable than he had a moment before.

A few moments passed before the assimilation with the Trait was complete.

Then Atlas lowered his head and looked around.

Before, he had been able to sense the general shape of the chamber around him using his sharpened perception. He could make out the walls and the rough position of things in the dark. But now it was different. Now he could literally make out the whole chamber’s structure in his mind. The depth of the walls, the uneven sections of the floor, the height of the ceiling, all of it formed clearly without him needing to focus hard on any single part.

But that was not all he felt.

Something else had changed as well. This time it was inside him, in his spirit veins. Atlas looked at his hands. He lifted the Explorer Attire’s sleeve around the wrist and narrowed his eyes.

”Hmm? Is this why I couldn’t sense those monsters?”

His veins were slowly flickering with Spirit that shouldn’t have been visible to the naked eye at all. Spirit moving through veins was something that existed internally. It was not something that showed on the surface of the skin under normal conditions. But right now it was faintly visible, which meant his Spirit flow had shifted in some way after the assimilation.

Atlas focused inward.

He concentrated on that flickering, on the Spirit moving through his veins, on the thin layer of presence his body naturally gave off just by existing. Every cultivator and explorer gave off some degree of presence. It came from Spirit naturally circulating through the body. For most people it was not something they could consciously control.

Atlas adjusted the flow.

He didn’t stop it. He just thinned it down, reduced how much of it reached the surface, the same way you reduce how much light comes through a gap without closing the gap entirely.

His presence turned off completely.

Atlas looked at his whole body and saw that it was completely invisible. The presence he carried was gone as well. He hadn’t used any technique or skill that he had been taught. What he had done was adjust his Spirit to turn itself off using the Trait. His Spirit flow was still there inside him, still functioning, but its visibility and the presence it produced had become so thin that not even high rank explorers would be able to sense him even if he walked directly past them.

For any human, that should not have been possible to do so simply.

Then Atlas looked at the Codex again and saw the usual text lines forming underneath the Trait name.

[ Grants the ability to sense any danger, even if minimal to the point it won’t cause any real harm. It also helps in completely masking off user’s presence from anyone. The usage depends on proficiency of the Trait. ]

A faint smile formed behind Atlas’s mask.

’This Trait is C-rank? I think the Codex is judging according to the monster’s rank... but this is out of the world.’

The rank reflected where the Trait had come from, not the actual value of what it did. The monsters in that first chamber had been C-rank, so the Trait they carried was logged at C-rank as well. But the ability itself had nothing to do with combat power or raw strength. It was a sensory and concealment Trait, and those operated on a completely different scale from combat-based ones.

Then he closed the Codex. The Stylus went out from his hand on its own, returned to the side of the Codex, and reattached itself automatically.

”Terminate.”

The Codex went into his chest.

Then he turned toward the scythe in his hand. He turned off the Trait for now, and that was when he sensed the black aura surrounding the scythe. Though Atlas was not familiar with the word aura, he could tell this was not Spirit nor any form of energy he had encountered before. It was something else, and he couldn’t understand what it was. He had not noticed it before because Spirit Instinct had sharpened his perception enough that things which had been in the background before were now more noticeable.

He stared at the scythe for a long moment before exhaling and looking forward toward the next chamber’s route. Then he stepped forward.

Atlas turned the Trait on again and continued walking with his senses on full alert. This was an Abyss-rank Ruin, his first ever ruin where the boss was a peak A-rank. The outer chambers were already filled with C-rank monsters, so he didn’t need to guess what came next. The following chambers would carry at least B-rank or peak B-rank monsters.

He stayed on guard at all times.

As Atlas walked through the narrow corridor-like route, he sensed markings and statues carved into the walls on both sides. He couldn’t understand how these had come to be. He didn’t even know how these ruins came to exist in this world to begin with, what had built them or what they had originally been used for. There was no information available to him on that, and standing in a corridor thinking about it served no purpose. He kept moving.

After a short while he arrived at the entrance to the next chamber without much difficulty.

He didn’t rush inside. He extended his senses first and checked the space beyond the entrance carefully. He held that for several seconds, measuring whether any monsters were already inside and waiting for him. His senses came back clear. No presence. No movement.

He stepped inside.

And the moment he did —

He felt it.

Chhhkkkkkk.

”Kheuk—! Ughhhh.”

Atlas staggered forward with his scythe in his hand as he groaned in pain. He felt his skin and Attire ripped from behind him. His flesh was torn apart and he could tell from the shape of the damage that it was a claw. A claw had torn into him from behind, and the most shocking part was not the pain itself.

It was that he hadn’t sensed the monster even with the Trait active.

With wide eyes and teeth clenched under his mask, Atlas quickly stood up and blurred forward with a burst of motion as Regenerative Hide began healing his flesh. His Spirit reserves being much larger than before made the healing faster than it would have been at any earlier point. He put several meters between himself and whatever had hit him, then turned around.

That was when he saw the monster clearly, visible now through the same Trait that had seemingly failed him. And as he looked at it, he understood why Spirit Instinct hadn’t detected it before. The reason was not that the Trait had malfunctioned. The reason was something else entirely.

Atlas narrowed his eyes.

”A Muxical... It’s not a hybrid one, It’s the original one.”

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[A/N: Umm...So this Author just wanted to say thanks to all of you guys, because of you this book is growing at a steady pace but I want this story to reach more people, So kindly throw some Golden tickets to this Novel~~]