14 - LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

As darkness, devoid of love and warmth, incessantly endeavored to sink into the furthest depths of his mind, Edgar was learning things, bit by bit.

In a place where light rarely ever shone, the creatures living there moved and hunted in a lot of intriguing ways. Worms used the sense of touch to not only detect the vibrations to spot the prey, but also figured out which rocks were easy to pass through. As Edgar used the holes made by these worms, he began to unravel more and more about their proceedings.

He had seen shrimps feed on snails and worms at sea shore, but it was the opposite in these underground tunnels. The worms ganged up on the cave shrimps. The predator would become the prey itself more often than not.

Back in shushui mountains, great-backed sloths also used to swing on healthy tree branches and avoided embarrassing falls. Edgar had overheard one of the old slaves say that sloths could even smell the faintest of whiffs and tell if the branches were safe for use or not. Sapless branches were prone to breaking, after all. Edgar had seen them swing freely through the forest with their eyes closed. They always stayed at scary heights in the trees and rarely came down, as they could even quench their thirst from licking leaves and what not.

As Edgar strolled forth with a plate and a core in tow, his sense of smell heightened like never before. He could pinpoint some of the holes in the walls by the moderately fresh trail of scent the worms left in their wake.

His hair had grown into a dirty, puffy mess, but having never coiffed before, it never even crossed his mind. He was more than a little bothered about finding a dress, as it felt quite weird to walk around butt-naked even though it was utterly dark all around, and there was little to no wind his skin could feel. Above all, it was the thirst that kept him on the edge. He could only drink the worms’ distasteful blood for so long. And the smells wafting into his nose were anything but enticing.

And then something tickled his naked belly. He felt like he pushed himself into a string, and though it felt a bit sticky, it quickly snapped, but there was no sound. Thoughts bounced off as he tried to decipher what just happened. He waved his hand upfront. More and more string-like things tried to wrap around his arm. He yanked his arm, but to his surprise, he got pulled to the front. The next second, his whole body got stuck to something. It was a silky web.

Edgar had already realized the mistake he had made and released the drive out of his whole body. Red drive naturally had excessive heat, and the web began to melt, but it was slower than he thought.

And a big black spider speedily rushed there. Its body was smaller than him, but its legs were a different story. As a whole, it could barely fit in that tunnel. Nevertheless, it was fast and hungry. Thanks to its blatant screeching noises, Edgar could hear it coming. He, too, screamed back. The spider didn’t even flinch and went to bury its fangs in Edgar’s face.

The hot energy blasting from Edgar’s body was plenty enough to not only push the beast back but injure its face. It screeched, but driven by a great hunger, it hastily attacked again. Edgar this time broke loose from the web and roared louder. Along with the drive, blue thunder poured out of his fist and thwacked the spider, destroying its fangs and head in one blow. Edgar wasn’t sure if he had killed the beast or not because of the darkness and because the blue light covering his fist vanished after just one strike, so he kept on going until its body blasted to smithereens.

He was huffing and puffing by the end of it. But he was proud of what he had achieved. And his hand was now covered by lightning again. “The heck? You come back now after I’m done with the beast?” He clenched his lightning-shrouded fist that had a core inside, “Anyway, the red drive sure gave me the strength of a bear, but I think this lightning makes things easier.” Because of the lightning, he could now see in the darkness. However, the issue was that he couldn’t yet bring out lightning every time he wanted.

With lightning flowing through his fist, Edgar felt like he was overflowing with strength, like he could destroy anything in his path.

Given the terrible ordeal he had gone through when he had absorbed the core, at least this much of an advancement was necessary. And the core of the thunderbird beast didn’t disappoint him, even though he was only in the very beginning stages of experiencing its powers.

HISS~~!!

A sound he had grown decently familiar with in this valley now reached his ears. Just from the heaviness of the voice washing over his body, he could straight away tell that this serpent was no joke.

And it was indeed a viper almost as big as that tunnel.

Edgar regretted not leaving much of the spider’s body parts as that would have bought him some time to escape. Fighting a viper was completely different from fighting a worm. The chances of him getting devoured in a second were relatively high.

Before the viper got to him, Edgar rushed forth, wanting to deal some damage to the beast before his lightning faded away.

The snake was fast, but Edgar was faster. His Flying Flash Step gave him grace of the deer, and its sheer speed added all the more weight into his attack. The viper couldn’t quite open its mouth wide because of the limited size of the tunnel. Edgar jumped at the last second, avoiding its venomous fangs. His lightning fist pounded into its nose. “Cannon Bolt!”

CRACKLE~! BOOM~!

The viper’s mouth shut hard. A human-head sized dent formed on the scales of the beast’s mouth. Edgar dropped the copper plate he had been holding in his other hand. Lightning covered his second hand as well, as he had wished. He then went on thrashing the viper’s face left and right with all he got. “Cannon Bolt Course!”

There was no space for the snake to move and dodge his attacks. It got utterly pummeled and wasn’t allowed to work its fangs on the opponent.

The viper suddenly slithered backwards, causing Edgar to miss a couple of hits. And while he was in midair, the viper twisted its face so that its mouth was diagonal to the floor, so it could swallow the human being by just rushing forth.

Edgar’s eyes widened at the frightening sight of the beast’s mouth. Having lived in a viper’s body for a little while in the past, Edgar’s body reacted on its own. A blast of white light cast through his whole body, and a humongous explosion followed.

The whole tunnel shook. Walls cracked, and blocks of rocks fell from the ceiling. As the dust settled, Edgar found his whole body covered with crackling lightning. As for the viper snake, it suffered a nasty injury to the head, and so it slithered back and ran away.

Even though he just made a viper retreat, he didn’t seem happy. He knew that this viper was much smaller compared to the one he first encountered after being sent to this valley, or the one that had killed the immature thunderbird.

“These vipers are too damn tough,” Edgar thought, gritting his teeth. He was yet to defeat a single viper, after all. “If I end up running into a group of them, I’m as good as dead. But I do want to beat at least one, even though my Master told me that my priority should be leaving this valley alive.”