Chapter 289: Forest Of Death And An Artist
One of my fractured minds controlled the power within the arrows, maintaining the charge, the Essence tension inside them. The other fracture focused entirely on their direction—every angle, every possible trajectory accounted for.
I raised a finger and gave the command.
"Go."
The arrows obeyed.
They shrieked as they tore through the air, a golden rainstorm hurtling toward the forest below. The first one struck a crawler from the side, exploding through its skull. Bone, flesh, and black ichor sprayed outward—but the arrow didn’t dissipate.
Instead, I curved its path.
With a flick of intent, it twisted mid-air and buried itself into another crawler behind it. And another. One arrow—three kills.
All across the valley, golden streaks began to dance.
Heads burst like melons. Limbs were severed before they could twitch. The Dead Crawlers never even got the chance to scream. The arrows zipped between trees, ricocheted off rocks, slid across the forest floor only to rise again and strike from below.
My perception tracked them all, but I didn’t need to watch. My fractured mind was doing the work. One handled the orchestration. The other, the slaughter.
Small explosions echoed through the range—crisp, clean, and rhythmic.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
It sounded like a string of fireworks going off across the forest.
The best part? None of the arrows had stopped moving. I didn’t let them vanish. They just kept flying—redirecting, twisting, diving, rising again like predators hunting prey.
I felt the Essence surge through my channels again as I maintained the storm.
"Now that," I muttered with a smirk, "is a light show."
The forest below turned into a war zone of golden light and carnage.
One of the crawlers barely had time to lift its head. A golden arrow streaked from above and pierced straight through its crown. Its body convulsed once—then collapsed, limbs twitching uselessly.
Another crawler, this one with multiple arms and glowing pustules, screeched and tried to run. It managed three awkward steps before four arrows slammed into its back one after the other. The explosions snapped its spine into a sharp curve, and the creature crumpled like a broken puppet.
All across the range, the golden arrows moved like sentient hunters—diving through the trees, arcing through gaps in the branches, spiraling around trunks to find their targets. Each kill sent a small burst of energy crackling in the air.
Bright streaks danced between the shadows, weaving patterns across the green canopy like shooting stars refusing to fall.
Some arrows zipped horizontally just above the ground, decapitating three, four, even five crawlers in a line.
The creatures howled and screeched, their sounds lost beneath the constant crack and thud of exploding skulls and bursting torsos.
The golden arrows kept moving, relentless, weaving through the trees like judgment given form.
I watched from the peak, arms folded, watching the forest shimmer with light and death.
The golden glow made it almost beautiful...Almost.
Multiple notifications rang out in my mind.
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Skill Level Up!]
[Sanctum of Judgment Level 1 -> Level 2]
[Level Up!]
They just kept coming.
I tuned them out, still basking in the golden silence left in the wake of my light arrow storm. Hundreds of crawlers lay in broken heaps across the forest floor, smoke rising from burst heads and charred limbs. The mist had cleared, and for a brief moment, the whole mountain range felt... peaceful.
Then I decided to observe Lyrate again.
And my jaw dropped slightly, again.
Not because she was killing—no, I expected that.
It was how she was killing that made me pause.
Her crimson mist surged forward again, diving into a new cluster of crawlers. They noticed her too late. Before they could twitch a muscle, the ground beneath them exploded as thorny roots erupted upward and skewered every single one of them through the stomach or head. Some were raised high into the air like grotesque scarecrows.
And then—because apparently murder wasn’t artistic enough—Lyrate snapped her fingers.
The roots shifted.
Bent.
Twisted.
Arranged .
Seven pierced crawlers were now hanging mid-air in the shape of a blooming lotus. One of the crawler’s decapitated heads served as the "pollen center."
"What... the hell?" I muttered.
Lyrate, unfazed, moved like a drifting shadow to the next group. This time, she spun once midair, crimson strands following her like a ribbon dance. Her sword didn’t even swing visibly—it just shimmered.
Four crawler heads dropped from their bodies like petals falling off a dying flower.
The bodies stood for a second, confused, before they slumped in unison—and then, roots again.
Snap! Crack!
Within seconds, she’d planted the corpses vertically and bent their limbs into a perfect spiral staircase shape. A vine wrapped around them like a railing.
A crawler corpse spiral staircase.
Was she making architecture now?
"Oh my god." I muttered.
She didn’t stop. One by one, clusters of Abominations fell under her strange, choreographed executions.
A group of three was flung into the air, sliced midair, and then neatly stacked into the shape of a palm tree—limbs arranged as leaves, guts drooping like vines.
Another bunch was pulled into a triangle formation and then split from top to bottom by a single root bursting through all of them, leaving a trail of blood.
A moment later, she stood calmly in the middle of her latest piece—nine dead crawlers laid out to resemble a blooming weird flower, with roots making the petals.
She tilted her head and examined it.
Then she casually adjusted one corpse’s arm by about five degrees.
For symmetry.
"I take it back," I muttered. "She’s not crazy. She’s possessed by a murderous florist. Or maybe an interior designer who took one too many life-drawing classes."
I stood up, gave one last look at her latest ’installation’—this one resembled a bleeding mandala made of limbs—and casually flared my wings.
"Nope. Not dealing with that," I said as I launched myself into the air.
Evening had begun to settle in, casting the peaks in long shadows and painting the sky with soft orange streaks.
I landed on another peak, some distance away from my previous peak. The mountaintop was relatively clear—just a few corpses from my last sweep—and I sat down again, crossing my legs with practiced ease.
"Alright, let’s get back to it."
I raised my hand, and a familiar ripple spread through the space above me. Light began to condense, spinning faster and faster as it gathered into a brilliant sphere. It pulsed like a mini-sun, warm and steady, and I pushed more Essence into it.
My mind fractured again with a snap.
One half directed the formation—five hundred golden arrows spun into shape, each one sharp, sleek, humming with contained destruction.
The other half?
Trajectory.
"Let’s see how efficient I can be this time."
"Go."
The arrows shot downward like judgment itself, weaving through the forest like guided missiles.
Each found its mark with pinpoint precision—one arrow pierced the eye of a crawler, then burst out the back of its skull only to arc sideways and pierce another. Then another. Some bounced off trees, rebounded from rocks, then pierced necks, spines, stomachs.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The sound echoed like distant firecrackers in a festival of death.
I smirked as I watched one arrow zigzag through the trees, impaling four crawlers before finally embedding itself into a stump and detonating.
"Now that’s efficiency."
The golden streaks danced through the forest like threads of divine light stitching their way across a canvas of darkness and decay.
Another wave of corpses fell to the forest floor.
[Skill Level Up!]
[Sanctum of Judgement Level 2 -> Level 3]
"Nice."
I leaned back. Below, the forest was quiet again, a graveyard of light-touched corpses. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air.
Another solid sweep.
And I hadn’t even broken a sweat.