Jumping from branch to branch was exhilarating, almost childishly fun. Thalion felt like a boy again, flipping through the air, spinning mid-flight, rolling and twisting as if the forest itself were his playground. He streaked through the canopy like an unseen shadow, his movements silent, graceful, and predatory. It didn't take long before he spotted his next prey: a mantis. At first glance it was nothing extraordinary. Green, chitinous, eerily similar to those from Earth. The only difference was its size, which was as large as a school bus, its serrated arms gleaming like scythes ready to carve the jungle apart.

Mantis Level 95

The moment Thalion identified the creature, its head snapped around unnaturally fast. Its bulbous eyes, studded with what seemed like dozens of shifting pupils, locked onto him with unnerving precision. His heart sank. Of course, every living thing felt an identification attempt. Why in the abyss had he done that? He clenched his teeth. Reckless. Stupid. Careless. He had promised himself to be more calculating, more deliberate, and yet he'd thrown away the element of surprise like some greenhorn still fumbling through the early stages of the System.

Mistakes like this weren't just embarrassing. They could be fatal. One day he would face incursion leaders, perhaps several at once. In battles of that magnitude, perfection would be the only standard worth living by. And he didn't just want survival. He wanted ascension. Godhood. Nothing less than becoming the most powerful god in existence would suffice. There was no room for rookie blunders.

But the mantis wasn't about to give him time to wallow in self-recrimination. With a sudden lurch, it launched itself at him. Thalion had studied mantises before. They were patient ambush predators, usually waiting motionless until prey wandered within reach before striking with lightning speed. What they didn't do was hurl their massive bodies many times their own length through the air. Yet this one did. Its speed blurred the world into green and silver as its scythe-arms cleaved toward him.

For a heartbeat Thalion thought he was safe, just beyond its reach. But then one scythe shot forward like a whip, extending further than seemed possible. Shock jolted through him, and instinct took over. He channeled mana into his claws, summoning shadow as quickly as his body would allow. Darkness coiled around his arm as he slashed upward with Shadow Claw, even as he unleashed his full aura in a suffocating wave of malevolence.

But instead of meeting his strike, the mantis twisted. With a thunderous snap its wings unfolded, buzzing like a swarm of hornets, and it vaulted into the air. Its body spun with unnerving grace, legs latching onto a thick branch above. Now it clung upside down, staring directly at Thalion, mandibles twitching with eerie calm. His shadow claw ripped through empty air, slashing a tree in the background instead.

"Impressive," Thalion admitted inwardly, almost awed. He had fought insects before, dangerous ones like the termites, and most of all, the Eleventh Daughter. That battle had been though. She had been monstrously powerful, her skills overwhelming. But even she hadn't fought with such precision, such cold, adaptive cunning. The mantis didn't just fight. Its movement was art. Its feints made him look like an amateur fumbling with a blade.

Thalion's expression hardened. He couldn't lose sight of it. A predator like this, once hidden, could strike from anywhere, and in the jungle canopy that meant death. With deliberate focus, he exhaled, releasing a cloud of Umbral Miasma. Shadows fanned out like a storm, cloaking him in his own domain of darkness. Within that cover, he charged mana into his own shadow, shaping it into massive spikes and firing two at the mantis.

The creature responded instantly. It scuttled around the branch, vanishing from sight, only its legs visible for a brief moment before slipping into concealment. The spikes obliterated the wood, splintering it into shards, but the mantis was already gone, vanished like a phantom.

"Really? You need to make me look this bad?" Thalion cursed under his breath, though his lips quirked into a grin. Frustration mingled with exhilaration. This was good. This was exactly what he needed. The mantis wasn't simply powerful, it was intelligent. Calculating. Flexible. It adapted to every move, discarding plans and creating new ones in an instant. That kind of fluidity should have been his specialty as a shapeshifter. Yet here he was, outclassed in his own domain.

But he still had one advantage: intuition. His passive skill guided him like whispers in the dark, telling him where the mantis moved, even as it tried to disappear into the branches. Following directly would have been suicide, though too obvious, too predictable. The mantis would expect that. No, he would outthink it.

Thalion crouched low, building his power. Around him, spikes of festering darkness swelled, jagged and hungry. The mantis wasn't retreating, it was waiting. Setting the stage for its next ambush. And Thalion intended to be ready when the predator tried to make him prey.

The camouflage worked disturbingly well. Even with his sharpened senses, Thalion needed a moment to spot it and sometimes, a moment was all a mantis needed to end a fight. Let's see how you deal with this, he thought with a toothy grin, his needle-like fangs glinting as he unleashed more than twenty spikes from the swirling umbral miasma around him.

The barrage tore through the canopy with explosive force. Massive branches splintered and crashed to the ground, the air filled with the sharp crack of wood breaking. For an instant, it looked as though he had fired a shotgun into the jungle itself. Yet when the dust cleared, the mantis was nowhere to be seen. Through his intuition, Thalion felt the shift of mana in the air, it had already slipped away.

That was when suspicion crept in. Is it reading my mind? Or does it have some absurd advantage I don't see? Instead of expecting him to hesitate, fearing an ambush, the mantis simply fled. Or perhaps… it was afraid? No, probably not. A creature this cunning wasn't running out of fear. It was waiting. Watching. Patiently setting the stage for the perfect strike.

Thalion clicked his tongue. Enough of this game. Insects like mantises had a nearly unmatched field of vision, which usually gave them a lethal advantage. But he had a counter. One their alien sight would never withstand. Without hesitation, he shifted into his human form. Crimson flames erupted from his body, burning with the raw essence of his bloodline. He let them flare only for a breath before retracting his aura and snuffing the flames out. The scorched air filled with the acrid scent of charred wood and smoky earth.

He turned toward the direction the mantis had vanished and activated Crimson Gaze. At first nothing. He scanned up, down, left, right. His patience frayed, and just as he considered abandoning it, the ability struck home. The sensation was visceral, as though he had punched something with all his strength. Eighty meters away, the mantis lost its grip on a thick trunk and dropped, its body seizing in unnatural paralysis. With a heavy thud and the splintering crack of bark, it hit the ground.

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Thalion tilted his head. Should he spare it? It was a worthy opponent, one that could provide valuable practice. But if he let it live, next time it would likely flee on sight and prey on weaker humans instead. No, this creature's life ended here.

He activated Mistform, dashing forward. His charge slammed headfirst into the tree where the mantis had clung only moments earlier. The impact shook the trunk violently, rattling it as if a storm had struck. If it had been an apple tree, every fruit would have fallen in one go. Thalion winced at the dizzying sensation. His head tingled, a thousand phantom ants crawling beneath his skin. His bloodline made his skills far stronger than before, sometimes too strong to control.

"Ah, anyway. Good fight. Just not good enough," Thalion said quietly, eyes narrowing on the paralyzed mantis. Its soul-shape writhed and twisted grotesquely, bent into impossible positions. Thalion unsheathed the Sword of the Blooded Templar from his back. Crimson flames licked along its blade as he activated Mana Slash. This time, instead of the usual crimson arc, the slash burned with an overwhelming inferno of bloodline fire.

At first, he feared it had lost its cutting edge. But as the flaming arc struck, the mantis was cleaved in two as effortlessly as parchment. The searing flames devoured the remains, reducing the massive insect to little more than ash and scattered chunks. The attack was less a slice and more a cosmic flyswatter, an obliteration in two stages. First cut, then consumed by fire.

Thalion sheathed the blade with a flourish and descended in a Telekinetic Dash. He landed with an impact that cracked the earth, his knees bent in a classic superman landing despite his effort to soften the fall. From the ground, he reached for the largest chunks of the mantis's flesh and invoked Acquire Form, hoping to claim its body. But despite repeated attempts, the skill failed. There was simply not enough left intact.

Still, it had been a fight worth remembering. He exhaled slowly, let the fires die, then shifted back into the crippled Eclipsari. Bowing his head, he gave a deep, solemn nod toward the scattered blood and flesh.

"Thank you for the fight. To battle like this… that will be my inspiration from now on."

With that, he fully concealed his aura and leapt back into the branches above. The jungle stretched endlessly before him, the setting sun staining the canopy in shifting hues. He was far from his base and he would need Eagly's eyes to guide him back. Without a token, compass, or proper landmark, he was hopelessly lost.

He mused idly. Would a compass even work here? If the planet had more than one magnetic pole, the needle would spin uselessly. He had never been good at science, nor had he needed such things before. For now, none of that mattered. The hunt was far from over, and the light was already fading. The sun itself glowed strangely blue on the horizon, yet the light it cast remained white, almost invisible in its purity. A world of contradictions, dangerous and beautiful, lay waiting for him.

And Thalion intended to carve his legend into it, one hunt at a time.

Thalion shook his head. Enough pointless thoughts about physics, it was time to explore and hunt. He didn't have to wait long. The echoes of his battle with the mantis must have carried far, for soon he sensed movement nearby. Strangers. Outsiders. And from the look of them, they could only be incursion folk.

At first glance, they resembled humans, but on closer inspection, their features twisted into something alien. They were taller and broader, like test subjects from the lab of a deranged doctor attempting to splice human and orc together. Their skin was mostly human in tone but marred with irregular green patches, as though something unnatural pulsed beneath. Their skulls seemed slightly too large, the bone structure dense and heavy, while their eyes were pools of pure black, glassy and inhuman, giving them a predatory, alien stare. Their lips were swollen and unnaturally red, as though stuffed with grotesque amounts of botox.

They wore tight blue overalls, the strange material hugging the contours of their bodies. Thalion realized, with some amusement, that the fabric wasn't fabric at all, but some kind of tanned leather, stretched unnervingly taut. The cut reminded him of astronaut suits, though twisted in design, alien in both style and function. Beneath the suits, muscles rippled with every step dense, powerful cords of flesh shifting like coils of steel. There were five of them, moving in a loose formation toward the shattered corpse of the mantis.

From the shadows, Thalion studied them carefully. None carried weapons. That could mean they were brawlers who fought with their fists, or spellcasters who needed no steel to kill. Either way, their builds suggested strength, resilience, and a dangerous confidence. Their auras were masked, but Thalion's instincts, sharpened by his title and passive skill, told him enough. These weren't F-grade stragglers. No, they were E-grade. Strong, seasoned, and sure of themselves. The way they strode through the jungle calm, unhurried, utterly fearless, spoke volumes. They didn't even seem concerned that survivors from the tutorial might already lurk nearby.

For a moment, Thalion hesitated. Should he strike before they reached the mantis remains, or wait and risk being spotted while they examined the battlefield? His claws flexed as he considered the possibilities. They all faced roughly the same direction, unaware of his presence. This was his chance.

He slipped silently down the trunk of the tree, shadows draping over him like a second skin. Every step was careful, precise. When he was finally within thirty meters, he tensed and then exploded forward in a blur of speed.

The first slash was merciless. His claws ripped across the back of the alien in the center, nearly severing it in two, while the two on the right were bisected outright, their bodies collapsing in bloody halves. Before the remaining pair could react, Thalion was already upon them, tearing through flesh and bone as though they were paper. One dodged twice, agile in desperation, but a spear of darkness erupted from its own shadow and impaled it from behind, pinning it twitching to the ground.

Only the one in the center still clung to life. Badly wounded, it staggered back, clutching a vial in its mouth. A healing potion, its lips glistened as it prepared to swallow. Thalion's shadow claw slashed faster than thought, tearing through the alien's arm and reducing it to shredded pulp before it could act. The vial dropped, shattering.

Despite its hulking, musclebound frame, the alien's scream was shrill high-pitched, like that of a terrified girl. The sound was grotesquely out of place, grating in its dissonance. It thrashed, eyes wild and lips quivering, but Thalion loomed over it with predatory calm, his aura sinking into its very soul. Darkness seeped into its essence, burrowing deep, squeezing the fear from its heart. Cold sweat—tinged faintly blue, beaded and dripped from its forehead.

Thalion tilted his head, his voice calm but heavy with malice. "Now tell me… are you from an incursion?"

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