The Anomaly's Path

The sun hadn’t even cleared the horizon when the floorboards creaked. I didn’t need to be fully awake to know who it was; that heavy, rhythmic stride was unmistakable.

”Up, brat. The jungle doesn’t wait for the lazy,” Roran’s voice boomed.

I groaned, pushing the blanket aside.

My body was a map of yellow and purple bruises from yesterday’s stones, but as I sat up, I felt a strange lightness.

Last night, I slept while trying to use the Flowing Vessel Art. It’s was hard to maintain it and you need proper focus otherwise it didn’t really work. My mana felt tight and coiled, no longer leaking out like steam from a broken pipe.

I felt dense, ready.

I got dressed and walked to the main room. Martha had already piled my plate high with eggs and thick bread, just like Roran had ordered. I ate fast, ignoring the way the kids stared at my bruised arms.

Mia was watching me from across the table, her eyes worried, but she did not say anything.

Then we were out the door.

We did not head for the usual place. Roran led me past the edge of the village, past the familiar paths I had been running for weeks, deeper into the jungle. The trees grew thicker here, so close together that their branches tangled overhead and blocked out most of the sky.

The ground was damp and soft, and the air tasted like dirt and old leaves and something else.

Something rotting.

We walked for nearly two hours. The further we went, the more the atmosphere shifted. The light-hearted chirping of birds was replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence. The insects stopped buzzing. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

This was not the safe part of the forest.

This was the ”Dead Zone” of the Wayford outskirts. Monsters lived here—vile things that stayed away from the village only because Roran lived there. His presence was like a silent border, a scent of a predator so strong that even the mindless beasts knew that crossing the perimeter meant death.

”Look down there,” Roran said, stopping at the edge of a jagged ravine.

I crept to the edge and looked down. My stomach did a slow flip. Below us was a muddy trench filled with tall, ugly grey grass.

...And in that grass, things were moving.

They were hairless creatures with skin the color of a rotten plum. Their bodies were skinny and slick, like they had been dipped in oil. They had no eyes, just giant twitching holes where their noses should be and mouths packed with rows of needle-thin clear teeth.

”Skitter-Wights,” Roran muttered. ”Scavengers. On their own, they’re trash—barely Grade 1. You could snap their necks with one hand. But they have a hive mind. When there’s thirty of them, they don’t hunt like animals. They hunt like a single machine. They will circle you, wear you down, and then eat you alive while you’re still screaming.”

I gripped my practice sword so hard the grain dug into my palms. I had been calling it Nova lately, after the System in my head. It was not my real katana—that was still being forged by Torben—but it was balanced and functional. Old, scarred, nameless to anyone else. But to me, it was Nova.

”I see... so what’s the plan? We watch their movements?”

Roran looked at me with a terrifyingly blank expression. ”What are you talking about? You are going down there to kill ever single one of them.”

My heart skipped a beat. ”W-what? Are you kidding me? Roran, there are dozens of them! Did you even see those teeth? Even if they’re weak, they will swamp me in seconds! I can’t take on thirty monsters alone! I am not—”

Roran didn’t argue. He reached out, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, and yanked me off my feet. He pulled me so close I could see the cold, lethal intent in his eyes.

”If you are scared of a bunch of bottom-feeders, then go home,” he hissed, his voice low and quiet. ”Go back to being the failure everyone said you were. Because out here, there is no second chance. You either stand your ground, or you become food.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He literally shoved me off the ledge.

”FUCK YOU, RORAN!” I screamed as I tumbled down the muddy slope, crashing through thorns and landing hard in the grey grass. The air was knocked out of my lungs and my shoulder hit the ground at a bad angle, sending a spike of pain down my arm.

I pushed myself up, gasping. The sword Nova was still in my hand. I had not dropped it.

The second I hit the ground, the noise in the ravine stopped. Every single one of those plum-colored freaks froze. Then, thirty snouts turned toward me in perfect unison.

Then they screamed.

Skreeee!

The first one leaped. It was fast—faster than I expected. A blur of oily skin and needle teeth flying straight at my face.

My body reacted instantly—Flowing Vessel Art snapped into place, and I triggered Starlight Steps. I blurred to the left, the wight’s teeth snapping shut on empty air. I swung the sword with everything I had.

Crack!

Its head caved in like a wet melon. Purple blood sprayed across my face.

But I didn’t have time to celebrate.

Four more came at me from different sides. They are trying to flank me, I realized. They want to pin my legs.

I lunged forward instead of backing up, putting my shoulder into the chest of the nearest wight and sending it flying. I swung a wide, horizontal arc. ”Get back!” I roared, but another one latched onto my left thigh.

Its teeth were like needles. They punched through my pants and sank deep into my muscle. The pain was sharp and hot and it made my vision go white for a moment.

”GAAAH! BITCH!”

I slammed the hilt of sword into its snout. The bone shattered and the creature went limp, but more were already leaping.

My boots churned up the wet dirt as I sprinted across the trench. I could hear them behind me, dozens of them, their claws scraping against rocks and their hungry screams filling the air.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I could not just keep swinging. My mana was already dropping. The Flowing Vessel Art was helping—I could feel it circulating through my body, pulling in mana from the air faster than I was burning it—but it was not enough. Not against this many.

And then I felt it.

My core.

It was pulsing, throbbing. The mana was flowing so fast that it was creating friction, pushing against the walls of my core from the inside. It felt like my stomach was full of hot coals.

I am close, I realized. If I survive this, I am soon breaking through to next rank.

”You crazy old bastard!” I cursed Roran, who was just leaning against a tree above, watching me bleed.

He did not answer.

Another wight lunged at me from the left. I activated Flash Instinct—the active version this time. I pushed lightning mana into my brain and my spine, and the world slowed down.

The wight’s body hung in the air like a painting. I could see every detail. The way its skin rippled. The drool dripping from its teeth. The empty holes where its eyes should have been.

My body moved on its own.

I stepped inside its reach—Starlight Steps, sliding forward instead of back—and brought Nova up under its jaw. The blade pierced through its skull and came out the top of its head.

Pop!

The active Flash Instinct faded. The world snapped back to normal speed. The wight dropped to the ground, and I felt blood trickle from my nose.

One more down but still too many bastards left.

I did not have time to wipe it away. Three more were already on me.

I pushed mana into the sword. Black Lightning sparked along the blade, hissing in the damp air. The bolts were not strong—I was too tired for that—but they were enough. I swung, and the black electricity jumped from my sword to the nearest wights.

Three of them seized up and fell to the ground, their skin blackening and bursting into a foul-smelling mist.

However... there were too many.

I was getting tired. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

One wight jumped onto my back. Its claws dug into my shoulders, and its teeth sank into the meat of my neck. I reached back and grabbed its head, ripping it off me, but another one bit my arm. Then another one hit my legs from the side.

I went down.

They piled on top of me. A mountain of oily, stinking flesh and needle teeth. I could not move. I could not breathe. I could feel them biting me everywhere—my arms, my chest, my legs.

I am going to die.

I am actually going to die here.

The fear hit me like a wave., cold and heavy. It squeezed my chest and made my heart stutter.

But right behind the fear came something else.

Rage.

Cold, familiar rage. The same rage I had felt when I fought the Night Terror. The same rage that had made me swing my sword even when my body was done.

My senses suddenly flared. I felt the air ”pinch” right in front of my face. A wight was mid-leap, aimed right for my throat. I could not teleport or make the stone disappear like I had done in training.

But I could do something small.

I reached out with my mana and tugged at the space right in front of me..

POP!

My head felt like it was hit by a sledgehammer. My vision went blurry and blood sprayed out of my nose, but I felt the shift. I wasn’t there anymore. I had folded a tiny bit of space to jerk myself a foot to the right. The wight sailed past my head and hit the mud where my face used to be.

I didn’t wait. I went berserk.

I stopped trying to be a ”swordsman” and started being a butcher. I grabbed the nearest wight by the jaw and ripped its head apart. The bone cracked and the flesh tore and purple blood sprayed across my face.

I did not care.

I used another tiny space fold—just a flicker of mana, just a tug—to snap my sword into the throat of a wight that was coming at me from the side. The blade appeared inside its neck before its body even finished its leap.

”DIE! JUST DIE!” I was screaming now, my voice raw.

I used Black Lightning to blast them back and then blurred forward with Starlight Steps to finish them off.

It was a mess.

Purple blood and flying teeth and my own red blood mixing together in the mud. One wight bit my shoulder and I did not even flinch. I just shoved my sword through its eye socket and kept moving until its head hit the ground.

I was a wreck. My shirt was shredded, my skin was a map of bite marks and deep scratches, and I was losing so much blood I could feel my head spinning.

But my core.

My core was screaming.

The mana was not just flowing anymore. It was surging. Pounding against the walls of my core like a wave against a cliff. The heat in my stomach was so intense that I thought I might throw up.

Almost there. Just a little more.

Finally, the last one tried to run. I didn’t let it. I used the last dregs of my mana to fold the space between us. The world twisted around me. My head pounded and blood poured from my nose.

...And then I was right behind it.

I brought my wooden katana down on its spine. The blade was half-splintered from all the killing, but it was still strong enough. The impact crushed the wight’s back and drove its body into the mud.

It twitched once. Then it stopped moving.

Silence.

I stood there, shaking, my chest heaving. Purple slime and red blood were dripping off me. Nova was half-splintered. I looked up at the ledge, my vision swimming.

Roran was just standing there. He didn’t clap. He didn’t even look impressed.

”You took too long,” he said. ”You spent half the time crying and the other half bleeding. Get up. We are tracking the next pack.”

I tried to shout ”Fuck you,” but all that came out was a wet cough. I fell over onto my back, staring at the dark canopy. Every muscle in my body was screaming, and my core was vibrating so hard it felt like it would crack my ribs.

I was in pain. I was bleeding.

But as I lay there in the mud and the guts, I realized I was finally standing at the door of a breakthrough.

I just had to push. I was not a dog anymore.

I was a wolf.

...And I had just tasted blood.

_

Author’s Note — Skitter-Wights

Monster Name: Skitter-Wight

Grade: Grade 1 — Fodder (Low to Mid sub-rank)

Description:

Skitter-Wights are scavenger monsters found in the deep jungles near Wayford. They are hairless creatures with slick, plum-colored skin that feels oily to the touch. They have no eyes.

Instead, they rely entirely on scent and sound to track their prey. Their faces are dominated by two large, twitching nostril holes and a mouth filled with rows of thin, needle-like teeth.

Behavior:

Skitter-Wights are weak individually — a single adult human with a weapon could kill one without much trouble. However, they are never found alone. They hunt in packs, sometimes numbering in the dozens, and possess a primitive hive mind.

This allows them to coordinate attacks, flank prey, and wear down even experienced fighters through sheer numbers.

They are ambush predators. They prefer to surround their prey before attacking, using their numbers to confuse and overwhelm.

Weaknesses:

Low durability — a solid strike to the head or spine will kill them instantly

Blind — they rely on scent and sound, so stealth can be effective against them

Cowardly — if enough of them are killed, the survivors will flee