Chapter 382: The Wedge in the Skull

"Can you see it?"

"Maybe?" Yvon rubbed his eyes, then realized it wasn't a vision problem; the thing itself was indistinct, like an absurd dream that felt coherent and natural while experienced but utterly unrecallable in detail afterward.

The priest suspended in midair crashed to the ground, life or death unknown; Benny, preparing to trade injury for injury, lunged at empty air, his sword tip piercing only a wisp of wind.

Mutually unrelated nightmares seemed to be entering reality, collapsing into a more tangible existence.

It appeared to sense the change in state; its scales fluttered faster, like a fish out of water opening its gills and flapping its fins.

Even so, by sheer size and hard scales, it remained a creature beyond mortal resistance. It showed no sign of abandoning its nearly caught prey; after a brief circling observation, it locked onto the only target that had harmed it and launched another attack.

Naturally, normal creatures rarely target the smallest present, nor would they notice her quietly picking up a handy shard of rock.

Wings spread, it swooped toward Kup in a low-altitude glide of terrifying ferocity, faster yet more intuitive; if a giant bird several times human size truly existed, its predatory posture would likely be just like this.

Possessing heaviness yet lightness, its wing membrane blotted out half the night sky, the view filled with unfocusable, blurred shapes.

Violent currents, carrying sand, stones, and fallen leaves, formed a surging turbid wave, making it impossible to stare directly at the writhing mirror-like strips within.

Kup wisely abandoned any extraneous thoughts, curling up tightly to minimize his hit area and ducking behind the nearest rock.

Ten thousand bone-gouging daggers, ten thousand shattered silver mirrors, scraping out a heart-scratching, ear-piercing noise; the rock was shaved down a layer by sheer force, the excavated stone dust choking his nose and mouth.

Unimaginable what the consequences of a direct hit would be; perhaps one would need a basket to carry it back, and not one with too-large mesh.

Its influence on the material plane had significantly strengthened; or rather, this was its proper power, capable of lifting weights several times an adult's into the high air and moving with ease.

Anyone facing its might would admit that dragon-slaying is indeed a miracle achievable only by those blessed by the Lord. Normally, only a squad carrying several winch crossbows could pose any threat to it.

Amidst the deafening clamor, a sound breaking the air drew almost no attention.

Only Benny, at the battlefield's edge and rushing to support, noticed something slightly: a straight gray shadow. At the line's starting point, Yvon had just finished his throwing posture.

In the chaotic situation, the existence of a standard straight line was so abrupt and unreal. And so it was; it flickered for an extremely brief instant before vanishing completely, so short that one had reason to doubt whether it ever appeared or if it was an illusion.

Doubt lasted only half a thought.

The winding outline formed by mirror reflections suddenly stiffened; the connection to the wing twisted unnaturally, presenting an arc inconsistent with the overall motion.

Immediately, a terrifying cracking sound, like a ship's mast snapping, occurred; the left wing dropped limply, tendons lacking skeletal support spasming and contracting, acting on their own to resist and worsen the damage, dragging the cloud-like wing membrane in convulsing thrashes.

Turbulent air pressure was no longer a flight aid but a destructive accomplice, carrying its own generated kinetic energy back onto the wound, further folding the break and transmitting a dull sound of soft tissue inside the joint cavity being pulverized.

That thing deviated from its flight path, making an unbuffered hard contact with the ground, writhing and emitting a scream never heard before.

At first nearly inaudible, like snake scales or dry leaves rubbing on the ground, warm liquid spraying from a torn gap; then it rapidly overlapped and elongated, the vocal line resembling dozens of reptiles wriggling, entangling and devouring each other, finally merging into an inexplicable vibration.

Compared to a venting of pain and frenzy, it was closer to boundless language, liquidly pouring into hearing and consciousness; without the receiver needing to understand, it split into vague, fragmented words and perspectives, describing and praising some existence from imaginable and unimaginable angles.

Like a grain of salt describing the ocean, a wisp of wind describing the sky; it was merely an insignificant scale on a grand existence, and even if temporarily annihilated, it would sooner or later be reborn in the future.

Just the tip of the iceberg revealed by indirect information displayed a scale the consciousness could not bear. Some excessively long concept beyond the limits of understanding crawled from the senses into the brain, winding and coiling, squeezing reason into corners where it could hardly stretch.

Kup tried to cover his ears but found he seemed to have forgotten how to mobilize his limbs, able only to slowly and clumsily issue simple commands to raise his shoulders and bend his arms.

And that creature did not seize the opportunity to attack; instead, it showed obvious signs of exhaustion. Scales closed, body coiled and contracted; it seemed the roaring scream just unleashed did not come from a vocal organ but from its own components, similar to blood or other things sustaining life.

The manifested body also blurred again, like smoke from a gradually dying furnace, becoming thin and illusory.

They were competing in recovery speed: physical wounds versus mental wounds.

This might be the first time in years this creature had suffered such severe injury; relying on a structure inexplicable to common sense, it gradually recovered, slowly raising its upper body.

But this was not Kup's first time suffering a similar shock. He rose first, stumbling forward to charge, swinging his page-hammer to smash the most obvious spot in his intuition—that arrowhead.

The arrowhead, pushed out halfway, re-pierced the wing membrane; a furious counterattack arrived instantly. Before he noticed how he had been struck, his body was launched into the air at a speed pain could not catch up to.

But the objective had been achieved.

He saw Yvon rise from a half-kneeling position; the blacksmith's hammer in his hand was gone, replaced in the air by a perfect circular shadow.

A combination of metal block and solid wood, once used to forge weapons and tools, thus far sturdier and more reliable than ordinary ironware.

Due to its center of gravity, its trajectory was not as straight as an arrow's but driven by brute force, spinning and tumbling in a ferocious posture, scattering alternating bright and dim silver lines, possessing an incredible sense of lightness and flutter.

In fear, Yvon clearly used all his strength. His eyes could barely track the projectile's path, catching only the flickering near-circular outline; it seemed not to be flying but tearing, ripping a channel straight to the impact point.

At the moment of impact, the scales lost their hard texture, rippling concentrically like water waves, trembling and spreading, then shattering from the inside out.

Light fragments shot out in a rush, extinguishing like sparks in midair, decomposing into mist resembling butterfly scales; the mirage-like images dimmed and vanished before they could even form.

And the creature itself faded from perception just as it had arrived; only something fell from midair, rolling to their feet.

White and semi-transparent, similar in texture to the arrowhead, shaped like a butterfly with spread wings, concave in the center, like an altar designed for some object.

Kup curiously prodded it with the hammer handle, flipped it over, and realized he knew this thing.

"Butterfly bone?"