Chapter 14: Csh of Darkness and BloodInside the cave, where they had expected safety, the atmosphere grew suffocating with fear. The flickering fmes cast dancing shadows on the stone walls, but the darkness surrounding them was far deeper than just the absence of light.

  The Shadow Stalker—the predator they had been hunting—had been stalking them all along. They were not the hunters… they were the prey.

  Lucas, despite the fear gripping his heart, knew that he couldn't afford to back down now. He wasn’t strong enough to fight directly, but he refused to be mere cannon fodder while Elena and Lisa faced a battle of life and death alone.

  "Elena!" he shouted, eyes locked on the lurking beast before them. "This is an emergency! We need to kill it quickly! Otherwise…" He swallowed hard before finishing firmly, "Lisa and I are no match for it. We'll just be cannon fodder."

  Elena didn’t reply immediately, but after a brief moment of thought, she nodded. "Understood. Do you have a pn?"

  Lucas took a deep breath before looking at Lisa, who was breathing heavily, her eyes full of tension. "Lisa, you’ll be the key."

  "W-what?!" she gasped, still not fully comprehending.

  "We’ll use ourselves as bait," he said seriously before turning to Elena. "I’ll lure it and force it to chase me. Meanwhile, Lisa will overcharge a mana stone until it explodes in a blinding fsh, temporarily blinding it."

  Elena raised an eyebrow, quickly evaluating the pn. "Then?"

  "Then you take the opportunity and strike its weak point," Lucas said, narrowing his eyes at the beast. "The back of its neck, where there’s no fur armor. It has to be a swift, killing blow."

  Lisa swallowed hard. "But… what if the light isn’t enough?"

  Lucas grinned despite the danger. "That’s why you have your ice spikes. If it tries to retreat, you’ll block its escape."

  Lisa looked at him in shock, then at Elena, who gripped her sword tightly. Despite her fear, Lucas’s calm confidence gave her strength.

  "...Alright, let’s do this."

  And so, the battle for survival began.

  Lucas moved first. With reckless abandon, he dashed toward the cave entrance, immediately drawing the beast’s focus.

  A sharp screech tore through the air, like the wind slicing through the night, and then—faster than Lucas expected—the Shadow Stalker lunged at him!

  "Damn it! It's too fast!" he thought as he barely managed to roll to the side, narrowly avoiding the razor-sharp cws that sliced through the air where he had just been.

  But he didn’t need to defeat it… just to make it chase him.

  "Come on, you ugly bastard! Is that all you've got?!" he shouted, taunting it.

  The Shadow Stalker, despite its intelligence, couldn’t resist its killer instinct. Seeing weak prey running ahead of it only made it more determined to strike.

  Exactly as Lucas had pnned.

  "Lisa, now!"

  In the corner, hiding behind some rocks, Lisa shut her eyes, pced both hands on the mana stone, and focused. A faint blue glow pulsed from the stone, but it wasn’t enough yet.

  "Faster, faster!" she thought, biting her lip as she poured all her mana into it. Timing was everything.

  And just as the beast coiled its muscles to pounce on Lucas—

  —the stone erupted in a blinding fsh!

  "KIIIIIEEEEEEEEH!"

  A monstrous shriek of pain echoed as the Shadow Stalker recoiled, its glowing red eyes burning from the sudden burst of light.

  "Elena!"

  Like lightning, Elena moved.

  She didn’t hesitate for even a second. She leaped into the air, gripping her sword with both hands, and aimed straight for the spot Lucas had pointed out.

  "DIE!"

  With a silver fsh, the bde pierced deep into the back of the monster’s neck.

  The Shadow Stalker froze. Its entire body trembled, and then—with one final, choked gasp—it colpsed to the ground, lifeless.

  For a few seconds, no one moved. Only the sound of their heavy breathing and the crackling of the campfire remained.

  Then, Lucas exhaled and slumped to the ground. "We… did it?"

  Elena pulled her sword from the beast’s corpse and nodded. "We did."

  Lisa, still clutching the burnt-out mana stone in her hands, looked from the corpse to her brother before falling back onto the ground, ughing nervously. "We were so close to dying!"

  "But we didn’t," Lucas said with a weak smile before letting out a deep breath.

  This time, they had been the hunters… but just barely.

  And this was only the beginning of the challenges to come.