From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 106: The Pit

They didn’t run.

Not because they weren’t afraid. Not because it wasn’t warranted. But because running would make noise. Running would confirm what the pit was already beginning to suspect.

They backed away in silence, each step measured. Leon kept his eyes on the ridge, watching for any sign the seed below would act. But the red glow faded, and the kneeling figures resumed their stillness.

Almost like it hadn’t happened.

Almost.

Once they were out of sight, Leon motioned them deeper into the trees.

Mira whispered, "That wasn’t just another seed. It was a birthing chamber."

Tomas kept his voice low. "We shouldn’t have seen that."

Leon agreed. "And whatever’s inside knows we did."

They climbed higher into the ridgeline, putting distance between them and the basin. The torch path was gone now. Only natural moonlight guided them, filtered through branches that swayed without wind.

Leon stopped at a rocky overhang and scanned the horizon. "We’ll make camp here. Keep shifts tight. No fire. No light."

Tomas raised a brow. "We’re sleeping?"

"We’re waiting," Leon corrected. "We need to see what comes out of that pit."

No one argued.

Hours passed. Mira took first watch, her back to the stone, eyes on the basin’s slope. Tomas curled up under a tangle of brush, blade across his chest. Leon sat apart, crouched against a fallen log, his breathing shallow.

Just after the third hour, something moved below.

Mira tensed. She tapped twice on the stone beside her. Leon rose silently and joined her.

Down in the basin, the torches began to flicker.

Not from wind.

From motion.

A procession emerged.

Not the kneeling ones. These were taller. Still hunched, but clothed in layers of bark and black cloth. Their limbs were wrapped tight, their faces hidden behind wooden masks carved with spirals. Each held a staff—not for walking, but for rhythm. They struck them against the stone path in a slow, pulsing beat.

And behind them, dragged on a litter of roots, came a figure.

Large. Slumped. Cloaked in thick layers of fungus and moss.

Leon didn’t blink.

The figure wasn’t just being transported.

It was being fed.

Vines extended from its back, connecting to the masked ones. Feeding off their steps. Drawing from their motion. And in the centre of its chest, half-formed and throbbing, was another seed.

Mira whispered, "It’s not a servant. It’s a carrier."

Leon nodded grimly. "And it’s headed north."

Toward the next village.

He turned sharply. "We’re not waiting anymore. We move. We follow it. We cut it down before it plants what it’s carrying."

Tomas sat up, eyes wide. "And if it calls the others?"

Leon stared into the darkness.

"Then we kill fast. And run faster."

They packed in silence.

And behind them, down in the pit, another torch flared to life.

The next carrier was waking.

Leon led them down the opposite ridge, shadows stretching long beneath the moonlight. The basin faded behind trees and distance, but none of them relaxed. Every root, every branch, felt like it was listening—recording their steps.

The carrier moved slowly, giving them time. But it didn’t move alone.

As they stalked the ridgeline above it, they began to hear the sound.

Not chanting. Breathing.

Heavy. Rhythmic. Coordinated.

The masked figures walked in lines of three, tapping their staffs in time with each exhale. The sound echoed far past what should’ve been possible, like it was carried through the trees themselves. It wasn’t just noise—it was direction. A beacon.

Leon pointed to a slope where the forest thickened. "We cut ahead. Intercept at the bend in the valley."

Mira hesitated. "That’s swamp territory. Low ground."

"All the better," he replied. "It’ll slow them more than us."

Tomas gave a low grunt. "And trap us if they surround us."

Leon didn’t argue. He just moved.

The descent was quick and rough. Brambles tore at their legs, roots sloped into muddy runoffs, but they reached the valley floor before the procession. The air here stank of stagnant water and sap. Insects had returned—just a few—but it was the first sign of true life in hours.

Leon set his hand against the trunk of a massive, leaning pine. "Here."

Mira drew a line with salt across the path. Then another. "It won’t hold if they’re sentient."

"It’ll slow them if they bleed."

Minutes passed.

Then the first staff struck stone again.

Leon crouched low in the reeds, blade resting across his knees. Mira knelt opposite him, her hand on a pulse rune etched into the dirt. Tomas held position in a tree just above, arrow nocked and ready.

The carrier appeared first.

Not walking.

Gliding.

The vines beneath it moved like centipede legs, dragging the moss-laden form forward with impossible grace. The half-formed seed in its chest had grown. The veins were now visible on the outside of its robes, glowing faint red beneath the fungus.

Leon exhaled. "Now."

The rune flared.

The first line of staff-bearers hit the pulse field and screamed—not in fear, but instinct. Their bodies seized, limbs twitching violently. The carrier slowed.

Then Tomas’s arrow struck.

Straight through one of the glowing veins.

The creature shrieked—high and mechanical. The sound echoed across the swamp. Roots exploded upward from the ground behind it.

Leon was already moving. He slammed his shoulder into the nearest masked figure, sending it sprawling into the muck. Mira followed, blade slashing through two more. The staff beat faltered. The procession broke ranks.

But the carrier rose.

It stood for the first time, seven feet tall and growing. Its cloak unraveled, revealing a torso wrapped in living bark. The vines from its back lashed outward like whips.

One struck Tomas’s tree, snapping it in half.

"MOVE!" Leon shouted.

Tomas leapt clear, hitting the ground hard. He rolled, loosed another arrow mid-motion, and clipped the carrier’s side.

The corrupted creature turned toward him, unseeing, unthinking, but moving with purpose.

Leon struck from behind, cutting through the thick root-cloak. Black sap sprayed outward. The thing spun, fast despite its size, and slammed Leon backward with a wide-angled sweep.

Mira’s light rune burst, blinding the carriers for half a second—long enough for her to drive her dagger into the seed’s edge.

It pulsed.

Once.

Then cracked.

The creature froze.

Leon, gasping, lunged again and drove his blade into the split.

It shattered.

A shriek unlike any before erupted from its chest as the vines recoiled violently. The masked ones spasmed and collapsed.

The carrier collapsed seconds later.

Still. Not dead.

But empty.

Mira dropped to her knees beside it, breath ragged. "The seed wasn’t finished. If it had been..."

Leon wiped his blade clean and stood slowly. "It would’ve spread. Called the others."

Tomas groaned from where he lay. "We’re lucky it didn’t."

"No," Leon said. "We’re fast. Not lucky."

He looked north, where the road continued.

Two more torches flickered to life in the far distance.

Two more carriers.

"Let’s see how fast we really are."

They didn’t stop to rest.

They dragged their breath with them as they ran—through bog and vine, over stone and rot—silent as they could manage. The path wasn’t carved; it was worn. Grooves in the forest where roots had pulled back to make way. Not for them.

For something that came often.

The road north curved between twin rises of land, jagged with split trunks and charred branches. Once, it might’ve been a trail used by hunters. Now, it was a vein, and the blood that followed was thick and crawling.

Leon led them up the left ridge, hoping for another vantage. But there was no time to plan another ambush. Not with two more carriers moving.

Not with the ground beginning to hum.

He stopped short. Held out a hand.

They froze behind him.

The road below—empty.

But the hum didn’t stop.

It was under them.

Leon looked down.

The ground pulsed.

"Back!" he shouted, but it was too late.

The ridge split like paper. Rotten soil peeled back as a massive limb burst upward—a vine thicker than any they’d seen. Covered in barbs. It lashed toward them.

Mira rolled clear, scraping her palm raw on stone. Tomas fell flat, pinned by a sweep of dirt. Leon barely managed to slice the tip before it reached him.

The vine recoiled. Not dead. Testing.

Then the forest responded.

A new sound—a sharp, popping rhythm.

The masked figures returned.

But not from the road.

From the trees.

They poured out from both sides, silent save for the strike of their staffs. Leon counted at least twelve. No carriers in sight. These were guards. Clean-up.

"Scatter," he snapped.

They split without hesitation.

Mira vaulted over a fallen trunk, launching a flash rune behind her. The light blinded three. Tomas ducked into a hollowed stump and fired blind into the crowd.

Leon didn’t run.

He waited for the first one to reach him.

It did—staff swinging wide. Leon ducked low, drove his blade upward through the figure’s gut, and kicked the corpse backward before it could fall limp on him. But there was no scream. No blood.

Just decay.

He glanced down. The mask was rotting already.

Old. Reused.

Not people.

Vessels.

Two more charged.

Leon dropped low, swept one off its feet, and cleaved through the second’s knees. He didn’t stop moving. They needed space.

Mira slammed a barrier rune against a tree and caught a cluster of masked ones behind it. The bark twisted under the force of the impact, dragging two of them into the wood. When they pulled free, their limbs were misshapen, warped by the rune.

"Leon!" she called out. "They’re not stopping!"

He turned—and saw Tomas go down.

A staff struck his side hard, sending him skidding across the moss. The second masked figure leapt after him, blade raised.

Leon sprinted.

He hit the assailant mid-air, blade first. They both tumbled, but Leon rolled to his feet and stabbed down.

Three more were coming.

He grabbed Tomas by the collar and dragged him behind a root bulge, tossing a smoke rune ahead of them.

The explosion clouded the glade.

"Alive?" Leon asked quickly.

Tomas grunted, breath shallow. "Ribs. Maybe cracked. Don’t stop."

Leon didn’t.

He hauled Tomas to his feet, tucked under one arm. Mira appeared through the smoke, panting, a cut above her eyebrow.

"We move now. We lose them in the gully ahead."

Leon didn’t argue.

They stumbled forward—bleeding, limping, but alive.

And behind them, the humming stopped.

Only when they reached the crest of the hill did they understand why.

The second carrier had arrived.

Above the ground, cradled by a cradle of twisting limbs. Not vines—arms. Dozens of them. Thin and long, impossibly jointed, like the fingers of some ancient hand buried in the roots. They carried the carrier as if it were a cradle-born god, its swollen frame pulsing with half-formed life.

Mira froze. "That’s not the same as before."

Leon didn’t breathe. He studied it.

The seed in its chest wasn’t throbbing red—it was green now. Sickly. Alive.

And it looked... aware.

Its head turned. Just a fraction.

But it was enough.

"They evolved," Leon said quietly. "Or this one was made different."

"Watching for us?" Tomas whispered, voice slurred from pain.

"No," Mira said, swallowing. "Waiting."

Leon grabbed her shoulder, firm. "We don’t fight this one. Not yet. We track it. Find where it’s going, and what it wants."

"But—"

"We’re not ready."

He meant it.

Not with Tomas limping. Not with Mira bleeding. Not with whatever the hell that thing was floating two feet above the ground like it belonged to the gods.

It was heading northeast.

Not toward a village.

Toward the range.

Mira realised it first. "The mountains."

Leon nodded grimly. "Where the oldest roots are."

Tomas coughed, trying to sit up. "Where it was born?"

"Or where it’s going to die," Leon replied. "If we’re lucky."

They moved, slower this time, slipping between dead trunks and ferns, shadows under the moonlight.

The forest didn’t stop them.

It let them follow.

Because whatever the carrier was heading toward...

It didn’t fear being followed.

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