Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 384: Last Chance

The hours passed as Thalion hurled himself through the dense swamp, and he was really starting to hate this stage. There were beasts everywhere, far more aggressive than the first Poisonous Swampdweller, and many would actually chase him across several ponds. The danger wasn’t limited to the ground either. The air itself was alive with swarms of mosquitoes.Thalion kept a layer of Umbral Miasma swirling around him to ensure that none of the smaller ones could get close. The largest mosquitoes, though—those could grow to the size of a lion and would probably drain him dry in a single bite. Those didn’t last long; a single slap was enough to make their bodies explode into a bloody mist. Toughness and endurance clearly weren’t their strengths.

In truth, Thalion wasn’t sure what their strength . They weren’t especially fast—he could easily outpace them with his tendrils propelling him through the air. Maybe it was their reproduction rate, or their resistance to poison. Either way, they were an annoyance more than a real threat.

Another problem was the mist. It was so dense that he couldn’t see more than two hundred meters ahead, and that was on a good stretch. For all he knew, he could be passing antidotes without even noticing them. This wasn’t going well at all, and it annoyed him deeply. If they had just been given a map or even a vague direction, he could deal with it—but this stage seemed entirely based on luck, and that was something Thalion hated.

He killed everything in his path without slowing down, but the hours still slipped away without any sign of a dungeon or a strong enough beast that might carry an antidote. His panic grew with each passing hour. The monsters gave good leaderboard points, but that didn’t matter anymore. Without an antidote, he was dead in four hours.

He needed direction—any direction—or he’d be lost in this swamp forever. His life, his ambitions, everything stood on the line.

Thalion had gone through every option he could think of, and there was only one possibility left. His title.

It was far more than a danger sense. Through it, he could feel the energies around him and even faintly sense the emotions of others. But that was only scratching the surface. Over time, he had learned a lot about the so-called . If he meditated deeply enough, he might be able to perceive fate or karma itself—a force that connected everything. Through that connection, he might be able to locate the antidote. After all, the antidote had to be bound to his fate, right?

The problem was that he had never managed to feel it clearly before, and to even attempt it, he needed absolute silence and at least an hour of concentration. That was impossible here, surrounded by swarms of beasts and insects.

At least, it would be impossible in his Crippled Eclipsari form. His darkness might keep the weaker ones away, but the stronger monsters would still reach him eventually.

Realizing that his title was his only hope, Thalion shifted back into his human form and gave a mental order to the Sanguis Impera.

“Kill everything that comes even remotely close. I cannot be disturbed—or this could cripple our entire path.”

The seriousness in his tone startled the Sanguis Impera for a moment, but then its aura surged outward, filled with hunger and killing intent. The wave of power was so intense that even some of the larger beasts in the area froze in place, unwilling to move closer.

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Thalion didn’t notice that he was now enclosed inside a massive crimson flower slowly rising from the swamp. Red mist spread outward as vines and blood-colored jungle flora burst into life around him, consuming the poisonous haze as if it were nothing. The vines lashed out at every beast foolish enough to approach the growing patch of crimson wilderness centered on the flower.

Thalion sat within it, already sinking into meditation.

There was one other option—he could use the active effect of Eclipsar’s Intuition—but the ominous warnings in its description made that a last resort.

The most dangerous part of meditating now, with only a few hours left, was losing his sense of time. A few minutes or a few hours could feel the same. In this trial, that might mean death.

He just hoped his danger sense would wake him before that happened.

Thalion had only ever entered this kind of deep meditation once before—back in the golden palace. Then, he had been trying to calculate how much time he had left before Garrick and the others broke into his room to trigger the failsafe that would drag his soul back into his real body.

But back then, it had been easier. That time, the danger had been immediate, tangible. Now, it was distant, creeping closer with every tick of the clock.

Now he had two theories for how to find a rough direction.

The first was that the stronger beasts carrying antidotes might radiate a stronger sense of danger — something his title could detect if he focused enough. The second was to search for the antidotes themselves. His reasoning there was that the antidotes should have a powerful connection to fate, since every trialtaker needed them. That collective link might make them easier to sense.

The hardest part for Thalion was pushing away the panic and desperation long enough to reach the deep meditation needed to fully merge with his title. Calming down while a death timer ticked away in the corner of his mind was no easy feat. Every passing second made focusing harder.

After what felt like an eternity, Thalion finally reached a state of deep comprehension. His awareness expanded, and he could feel his divine skill overlaying existence like a thin curtain, tinting every flame into the .

For a brief moment, he froze in awe. The fact that he could feel his divine passive at all meant that his title might also help him it — a discovery far greater than he had expected.

He tried to push his awareness further, but failed. There was simply too much happening all around him — countless energies tangled together in an incomprehensible web. Everything seemed connected to everything else, and Thalion couldn’t see through the chaos.

Then, suddenly, something stood out.

A massive threat pulsed in the distance, and slightly to the right of it he felt something else — a faint whisper, something trying to call him. Before he could investigate further, a sharp pain ripped him out of his trance.

The Sanguis Impera had impaled his right hand with a thorn.

It hurt like hell.

When Thalion opened his eyes and saw the timer floating before him, his anger flared — but he swallowed it. His entire aura burst outward as he rose, releasing every ounce of power he had. He couldn’t afford restraint anymore.

There were eighteen minutes and six seconds left until the poison killed him.

The crimson jungle that had surrounded him vanished instantly, absorbed back into the Sanguis Impera. The dead beasts nearby were pulled into his spatial amulet in the same motion. The Sanguis Impera had already stored most of the corpses over the past hours, but it had missed a few and Thalion was faster at it anyway.

A second later, he transformed into Eagly and blasted forward toward the distant sense of danger. He didn’t know what the whispering presence had been, but the threat had to be a strong beast — hopefully one carrying an antidote. If not, he was utterly doomed.

The green mist corroded his feathers as he flew, hissing where it made contact. Thalion activated Tempest Glide and used Skydive repeatedly for speed boosts, pushing his body to its limits. He kept low to the ground to minimize the damage, but the acid mist still ate away at his wings.

When he lost vision in both eyes and most of his forward feathers burned away, he switched back to human form and activated his bloodline skill, Emberform – Breath of the Pyre, to regenerate completely. The moment his body was restored, he returned to Eagly and shot forward again, faster than before.

Nine minutes and one second remained when Thalion finally spotted the source of danger — a massive, green-scaled wyvern rising from the swamp below, its eyes glowing as they locked onto him.