The slow movement, the pain, the concentration on the tentacle, and the fear of the Assassin made Ren distract too much, and his foot hit a loose stone.
The sound, barely louder than a whisper, seemed to resound like thunder in the tunnel’s silence. The Deep Assassin turned instantly, its matte black body moving with unnatural fluidity.
With no time to think, Ren threw the tentacle.
The improvised projectile flew straight toward one of the Assassin’s legs, beginning to absorb mana at the moment of impact.
The beast recoiled, more from surprise than damage.
Its senses, adapted to darkness and vibrations, hadn’t expected an aerial attack. The sensation of its energy being drained at a specific point made it focus on that area.
Ren didn’t waste a second.
His hands were already knotting the thread while the Assassin was distracted. A quick jump and his body hung far from the ground.
The training with Lin and his extra bit of strength gave him enough capacity to reach quite high.
The thread began to turn slowly, the tension from the initial launch creating a circular movement. Ren held his breath while the Assassin searched for its attacker, its proboscis extended and ready.
But Ren kept slowly rotating…
That’s when he saw it.
The chamber opened about ten meters below, illuminated by the glow of a colossal crystal. The formation was both beautiful and terrifying, its facets reflecting mana light in a way that made it seem alive.
In the center, a hollow, the vein itself. Pure mana flowed in a silent geyser that fed the crystal’s growth. And there, on a ledge near the base…
Two eggs.
The first wasn’t a surprise. A hunter bug, exactly one of the two he expected to find if he found anything.
The egg had the characteristic pattern of its species, promise of a silent and lethal predator.
But the second…
Ren had to contain an exclamation that would have been fatal. His eyes couldn’t be seeing correctly.
It was impossible.
The egg had the unmistakable design of a lesser carbon shark. What could one day evolve into a diamond hydra.
Knowledge flowed frantically while he rotated in silence, the Assassin still searching below. Diamond hydras were legendary Silver rank 3 creatures, so rare in history that many doubted their existence.
‘It makes no sense,’ he thought while the thread kept turning. Hydras form much deeper than bugs or beetles, close to their dragon ‘mothers’ in the depths.
An egg like this shouldn’t be here, so high up in such a small vein.
The probability of a hydra egg not hatching before reaching here was infinitesimal.
Unless…
Knowledge whispered a possibility.
The core of an adult hydra, collected by the highest level of Assassins, passed from one to another in their territorial battles. A core that was finally released when its last possessor reached golden or platinum rank, and somehow managed to ascend high enough to be reborn.
But it was speculation…
It was as if there was a void in the information, a mystery his mushrooms couldn’t decipher at this rank.
What he did know was that he wanted it: a diamond hydra’s skill set in its early levels was exceptional.
Though primarily defensive, it didn’t lack offensive capabilities, and its versatility far surpassed that of a hunter bug or digger beetle.
While slowly rotating on the thread, Ren considered his options. If he sought speed and offensive power, the mirror mantis remained his best choice. But a hydra…
Even if he didn’t choose it as his first, it could be perfect as a second battle beast in the future.
A movement in the chamber interrupted his thoughts.
A creature emerged silently from a side opening. Its body was elegant but alien: a long sinuous neck supported two heads that had jaws reminiscent of sharks.
It moved on two powerful legs, and its scales… Its scales were transparent, shining like living diamonds under the crystal’s light.
Knowledge couldn’t confirm its identity, but it was obvious, it had to be an evolved diamond hydra.
Its presence radiated gold rank power, which raised a disturbing question: how could a beast of that level survive in an environment with so little mana?
The answer came immediately.
The hydra approached the geyser, extending one of its heads directly into the flow of pure mana. It began absorbing energy directly from the source.
The pieces started fitting together in Ren’s mind.
A silver rank hydra with a single head, must have been expelled from its territory. By luck or instinct, it found this vein.
The constant flow of pure mana allowed it to survive and evolve, completing all silver ranks until reaching gold.
The beast finished feeding and moved languidly toward the egg. Its body coiled around it in a protective gesture, but its movements were slow, almost lethargic. Despite the geyser, the vein was too small to keep it truly active at this superior rank.
Soon it would need to return to the depths but…
As he watched the beast settle, Ren understood something more: the cycle of hydras at higher ranks must be very different from Deep Assassins, worms, or beetles.
That was his assumption seeing the protective behavior with the egg.
It seemed that egg dynamics were more complex than he had expected.
Knowledge revealed more: the colored eggs containing the three known evolutionary line possibilities only formed when veins passed near the “mothers,” the dragons of each evolutionary line dwelling much deeper below.
That’s where brown eggs formed, for example, having bugs, beetles and moles as options.
What arrived here was different.
They were cores returning to the cycle thanks to the Deep Assassins.
These creatures collected the complete cores of their prey, displaying them as trophies on their backs. As they evolved, they fought among themselves for these collections. But upon reaching gold or platinum rank, something changed, they discarded their trophies, casting them into the depths.
Most of these discarded cores were reborn as basic iron evolution in the lower levels only to be devoured again.
But some managed to ascend, transformed by their journey through mana-saturated zones. That’s why most hunter bugs and digger beetles became Living Tunnels or Deep Assassins, the dense mana shaped them during their ascent.
‘That’s why there are so few young stages at this height,’ Ren understood. Those who managed to climb high enough had the chance to evolve along the way.
It was a perpetual cycle: the Assassins collected, fought, evolved, and finally released.
The cores fell, were reborn, ascended or were hunted to try again. And occasionally, very occasionally, one reached high enough without evolving.
Worms were slightly different.
They weren’t born from eggs like other beasts. They emerged from the depths, fleeing from even deeper zones in the same way.
Those who managed to reach higher levels were the survivors of a deadly race from the abyss.
It was a cycle generated by the mother worm, the devourer dragon of the depths… From its skin thousands of worms were constantly born, or so they said in his stories… His knowledge didn’t reach that far yet.
But where worms had no parental care, nor beetles… Where Assassins began collecting cores from bronze rank, hydras clearly had different behaviors beyond gold rank.
Perhaps it was parental care that allowed them not to need to rise to high levels to evolve and made them so rare…
But as these were behaviors of creatures not within his knowledge range…
It was a missing piece of the puzzle, an aspect of the cycle that current knowledge couldn’t reveal. What did hydras do in their highest ranks? Why would an egg be here, next to one of higher rank, when most beasts abandoned their eggs to the cycle?
The Deep Assassin kept searching, and Ren hung between two mysteries: the predator that couldn’t see him, and the hydra that defied everything he thought he knew about the beast egg cycle.
With careful movements, Ren extracted the flask with the potion Zhao had given him.
The green liquid glowed softly as he uncorked it. It was his last defense against mana overload.