The Fallen System: Gaining Bloodlines of the Fallen-Chapter 45: Hunt

"That’s enough."

Ling quoted him, the smile still on her lips, but her silver eyes now looked at him intently.

"If we go any further, we’ll run into more beasts and even worse creatures. Stronger ones."

"And is that a problem?" she asked, with a faint provocation in her voice.

"We’ll part ways here." Cairen’s declaration came.

Ling’s smile vanished. Her eyes narrowed, assessing him.

"Part ways? Why? We’re doing well together, better than well," she said with slight surprise.

"I was with you because you know the forest much better than I do," he began to explain, his voice calm but with unshakable conviction.

"But now I’ve gotten used to it. The mist, the smell, the sounds. My spiritual sense has adapted. So I need to spend some time alone."

"If I don’t put myself under pressure on my own, if I always have you as the front line to crush any obstacle, I won’t learn how to handle real pressure nor understand my own limits."

Ling remained silent. Her piercing gaze bore into him.

He could feel the storm of thoughts through the bond. Irritation, and a hint of rejection. But then, a chill of tactical respect. She seemed to be recalculating something.

"Fine," she finally said, the word leaving with a resigned sigh, but her eyes showed it had been difficult for her to decide.

Cairen lifted his chin.

"We still have the bond. If something happens, we’ll be able to find each other easily."

She only nodded, her face returning to a mask of recovered serenity.

Without more words, he turned and began to walk, diving alone into the denser mist, in a different direction from Ling.

The bond between them stretched, an invisible thread of consciousness and shared existence. But the weight of her presence at his side vanished at last.

Cairen took a deep breath, the cold air of the forest filling his lungs. It was like a momentary freedom.

"Finally..." he whispered to himself, and a determined smile appeared on his lips.

Now his true hunt, the true confrontation with himself, could begin.

The mist enveloped Cairen as he walked away from Ling’s presence. For the first time since arriving at the castle, he was truly alone.

No walls, no servants coming from time to time, no occasional provocations or Ling’s sarcastic comments. No shadow of the princess opening the way for him.

Even the system seemed strangely quiet. It didn’t answer his questions. Nor did it give him another mission. Cairen even thought perhaps something had gone wrong.

But when he called his status, it appeared perfectly, so there didn’t seem to be any problem. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

As he walked, absolute silence followed.

Without the princess’s voice or her brutality crushing every beast that appeared within his spiritual sense. Hunting them before he could even move.

The forest seemed heavier without someone’s company. Denser, lonelier.

Cairen couldn’t tell if that was good or bad. He simply kept moving forward without thinking too much about it.

Soon he found his first prey. A mist boar, the same kind they had hunted before.

Alone, it wasn’t any challenge to defeat the beast. The chains emerged, the shackles tightened, and the sentence fell.

The boar’s body writhed, turning into a false fallen. Then, all the vital energy, bones, flesh, its entire carcass, turned into dense fallen energy, which was absorbed and sent to Cairen’s dantian.

Cairen then continued. Without sharing the hunt with Ling, the difference was immense. The gain was all his.

In the following days, feline beasts, wolves, and even moss-covered bears were all hunted and turned into energy one after another.

He hunted them, judged them as false fallen, and absorbed every last trace of energy.

It was a cold, methodical cycle, strengthening him at every moment in the forest.

Cairen could feel it.

His steps grew lighter. His muscles responded with more agility, adjusting to his new strength.

The energy inside him spun in a spiral, becoming denser and slowly expanding, but at a steady pace, growing heavier and more alive.

When night came, he looked for a place to rest.

He walked for a while until he found the hollow trunk of an ancient tree, wide enough for him to crawl inside and settle.

The moss around muffled sound, and the mist covered the entrance, better hiding his presence.

Inside, in the silence, Cairen breathed deeply. There was nothing left to divide his attention.

"Did Ling manage to find a place to sleep?"

The thought came out of nowhere.

It was always he who found shelter for the two of them. His mind wondered if she was still just wandering around, relying on brute force to push through the night.

He could feel her movement through the bond. But unless he focused on it enough, it was just a faint signal.

Cairen then frowned, annoyed with himself.

"Why am I worried about that?"

He shoved the thought to the back of his mind, closed his eyes, and let fatigue guide him to sleep.

But the peace didn’t last.

A sudden crash came from outside.

The whole tree shook as if it would be uprooted.

Cairen woke with a start, his breathing heavy, wondering what had happened.

Footsteps.

Those were footsteps. Slow. But heavy.

Each impact on the ground made the trunk he hid in vibrate.

Cairen didn’t move. But he expanded his spiritual sense. And what he saw made him lose control of his breathing for a moment.

Beside the tree, outside, moved a colossal beast. He managed to make out its full form. A dark shadow cutting through the mist, its breathing sounding like a roar.

It was, without a doubt, the largest creature he had ever seen in his entire life.

And the pressure it emanated was suffocating. It was definitely above the realm of Qi Liberation. In fact, he had no idea what realm the creature belonged to.

His body froze.

Trying to remain completely still, a wrong movement a louder breath could make the beast notice him there. And then, he had no doubt he would be crushed without a chance to do much.

He remained in absolute silence as if he were part of the trunk that hid him.

Time dragged cruelly until, little by little, the beast moved away. The footsteps lessened until they vanished into the silence of the forest and mist.

Cairen let out a light, almost imperceptible sigh.

The chill passed.

"This place... is much more dangerous than I imagined."

They were still only in the outer area. If creatures like that walked here, what would the depths of the mountain range be like?

The rest of the night passed without further complications, but sleep wasn’t the same anymore.

Days went by, the hunt continued. Time passed slowly but steadily.

It had already been ten days since they arrived.

And Cairen broke through another limit. Now, he was already at the 3° stage of the Qi Accumulation realm.

The energy spun in his dantian with a terrifying density for his level.

Alone, absorbing everything, his progress was faster, but still not enough for Cairen. He could still break through one more stage before leaving, but it still felt too slow.

Cairen thought that, by absorbing so many beasts with strength far greater than his, advancing would be quick, but it seemed his dantian was a bottomless pit, demanding more Qi than others required.

During these days, he also tested his abilities more.

Veil of Blindness proved useful against weaker enemies. Stripping them of all senses with ease.

But the stronger they were, the more pressure it exerted on his own eyes.

Against someone like Ling, who had already reached the Qi Liberation realm, using the ability for long was unfeasible.

If he used it too long, he would go blind from exhaustion.

The Plague of Serpents was still unbeatable against any enemy of the Qi Accumulation realm. Without Qi barriers to protect their bodies, any drop of his blood would be a death sentence.

Or at least, near death, just a little was enough for his blood to do the job. Dissolving flesh, muscles, and bones until nothing remained.

Cairen knew. Within this realm, he was an absolute threat.

But against stronger cultivators, he would still need caution.

But there was also another ability, the one he received from the fallen Nhamara lineage.

He still hadn’t used it. The opportunity hadn’t come.

"I believe I already have enough strength to be practically invincible in the Accumulation realm. But if there are other monsters like Ling at the War Academy, getting stronger won’t be a bad thing."

Cairen murmured as he absorbed yet another beast with his shackles.

Cairen also realized, fighting stronger beasts, his disadvantages. Cairen was slow. Extremely slow. If a beast attacked, he had to rely on his perception along with the protection of the chains surrounding him like snakes.

Cairen noticed the density of the chains, their weight, had improved greatly. There wasn’t a beast in the Accumulation realm that could break the chains or even move them away from him.

But this speed disadvantage wasn’t something he liked having.

While he was thinking about this, suddenly.

’Ding!’

[Secondary Mission: Show the strength of the Fallen and enter the War Academy]

{Reward: Random Fallen Bloodline (Grade 2)}