Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

’Huh?...How does it have Null?’

Atlas stood there with that thought fixed in his mind, the box already put away in his bag when he had entered the forest route earlier, and now Reiden reacted beneath his new hand gloves, a slow hum that came from the markings on his right hand as if it had sensed the same thing he had.

Atlas frowned and looked at his right hand for a moment, then thought, ’You want that Null pressure? Why? And how does it even have that Attribute — something that shouldn’t exist anywhere except inside me?’

He turned his attention back to the monster, which was still focused on the Angel it had caught, a B-rank Explorer by the feel of what remained of the Spirit around the body, the monster chewing through the head slowly, no urgency in any of it, and Atlas watched without any emotional reaction to what he was seeing, he had grown up in the outer slums of Ormolio where things more brutal than this happened without anyone stopping to acknowledge them, so the scene in front of him registered as information rather than anything else.

’It’s an S-rank Monster...its size alone is way above anything I have faced, and it carries Spirit mixed with Null pressure on top of that...’

’seems like it hasn’t sensed me because of Spirit Instinct and Sense Nullification.’

The knowledge from the Zero Inscription played through his mind briefly, the description of Null as a Unique Energy that was energy and not energy at the same time, a definition that still felt vague to him even now because his understanding of it was entirely practical, he knew how to build the pressure and use it, but the actual nature of what Null was remained something he didn’t know and couldn’t even understand even if he knew...for now and seeing it in something other than himself made that gap in his knowledge sit more uncomfortably.

The monster finished with the Angel and threw the body aside like it had no weight worth acknowledging, and in that same motion it turned its head toward Atlas’s position.

And it grinned.

Atlas narrowed his eyes, ’I knew B-rank Traits wouldn’t work on an S-rank, and it carries Null pressure on top of that, Spirit Instinct is useless here.’

He changed his approach entirely.

His attributes had gone from 50 to 70 since clearing that last Ruin, twenty increase across each day until they settled at 70, the growth that had come from the Codex through the usual method, and at this level he knew he could hold against an S-rank if he used Reiden and Rei-Kokuin properly, so he stopped hiding and switched to that instead, there was also no one present in this part of the forest to see what he was about to do.

He turned both Traits off.

The moment he did, the monster’s expression shifted, its eyes dropping to his right hand, something in its face changing as it recognised the same pressure it carried in itself now sitting in what it had thought was prey, and it went still for a moment rather than attacking immediately.

Atlas narrowed his eyes further at that reaction, then made a decision and pulled the gloves off entirely.

The monster flinched visibly.

What had been a simple ’+’ and four straight lines on the back of his palm when Reiden first formed, had now grown into a network of curved carved lines that stretched from the original marking all the way up toward his elbow, the pattern dense and precise across almost his entire arm, the rest of it hidden under his attire.

The monster looked at it and understood something, whatever reasoning process ran behind those hollow red eyes with no pupils produced a clear conclusion, if it did not kill this thing in front of it right now, something bad was going to happen to it, and so...it moved.

It was standing only a few meters away, blood falling from its jagged teeth, but suddenly...it vanished.

’Shit! Its speed—’

Before that thought finished a jolt of pain drove through the left side of his ribcage as Atlas’s body left the ground, moving fast and vertically through the trees at the edge of the forest, blood filling his mouth on impact, ”Kheuk—!”

The first tree took the main force of his body and cracked open a hole in its trunk, slowing him enough that the second and third and fourth hurt less, his body breaking through the trunks one after another until he came to a stop several trees deep and dropped to the ground with a THUD.

Though he didn’t feel any pain while his body broke through those trees at all, what had damaged him from inside was that punch that came from that Monster.

Regenerative Hide activated the instant the first blow connected, not after the fall, not after he stopped moving, on the hit itself, the trait was now running on pure instinct because as his Attributes and Control had risen together the traits tied to instinct had started firing without needing a conscious thought to trigger them, and by the time he was back on his feet with one hand wiping the blood from his mouth the damage was already closed.

He looked ahead through the broken tree line toward the monster, which was walking toward him at a steady pace, no rush in its movement, and seeing that he thought, ’That wasn’t speed or movement at all, it was close to what those assassins used but different in some way, probably one of it’s traits...’

Atlas had concluded it even before this fight as he had some experience from Velgrath the Crowbeast, he knew S-rank must have multiple Traits and they were way too powerful.

Though his focus turned towards the Monster again as he dismissed those thoughts for now.

Reiden hummed again inside his arm, and Atlas looked at his right hand for a moment before nodding, ”You are right...let’s use all of it or that thing will kill me instead.”

He released the Null pressure outward.

It was the first time he used it directly as an Attribute against something outside himself, not as the backing force for the Active Vector’s slash, but as raw Null pressure let out from his body, and the moment it came out... it nullified the Spirit around him entirely, his own Spirit included, which meant he could not mix Spirit with Null at all, both existed separately and the Null erased the Spirit in the space around him the moment it released.

He just couldn’t understand how that Monster was able to mix these two energies, he could only think about this later if...he got out of this Alive that is.

He noted that and filed it away while keeping his eyes on the approaching monster.

He lowered his stance, left leg sliding back across the ground with a rough scrape, settling into the form that had come to him through the Rei-Kokuin knowledge rather than any physical training, a stance built for a way of moving that didn’t exist outside of what that knowledge had given him.

The monster vanished from its position.

Atlas spoke, ”無歩 — Mu-ho.”

He vanished too.

Both of them reappeared at the midpoint between where they had each been standing, both fists already coming toward the other.