Reborn as an Adventurer: I Gain a Skill From Every Monster I Eat

Chapter 100: Chapter 100 — The Heart of It

They found it just past midday — a clearing unlike anything Arlen had encountered in either Millbrook or the Broodmother’s valley, the crystallized ground here spreading in dense, jagged formations that jutted up from the earth like frozen, glassy thorns, the air thick with a metallic haze that made every breath feel deliberate and effortful.

At the clearing’s center stood the ruins of something ancient — worn, angular stonework, half-swallowed by the crystallized growth, carved with symbols that immediately reminded Arlen of the fragment Eldrin had shown him months ago, though considerably more extensive, more clearly deliberate in its construction.

”This is it,” Maren said, her voice carrying none of her usual composed certainty. ”The epicenter. I can feel the corruption’s density from here, stronger than anything I’ve encountered before.”

”How do you want to proceed?” Ilyana asked.

”Same formation as Millbrook, but tighter,” Maren said. ”Given what we’ve faced these past two days, I expect immediate, sustained contest the moment I begin.”

The party arranged itself with practiced efficiency, Iron Vanguard and the capital team forming the primary defensive ring, Arlen and Halvard positioned along the secondary perimeter, Osric’s wards already gathering at the formation’s edges before Maren had even taken her first step toward the ruins.

She knelt at the center, pressed her palms against the ancient stone, and the golden light of her purification began gathering almost immediately — brighter, more intense than Millbrook’s gentler beginning, as though the sheer density of corruption demanded a correspondingly greater effort from the very start.

The ground shuddered within seconds.

”Contact!” Rurik shouted, and the crystallized earth around the clearing’s edge split open in a dozen places at once, twisted shapes emerging with a speed and coordination that made every previous encounter feel, in retrospect, like careful preparation for exactly this moment.

”Full engagement!” Ilyana called. ”Hold the ring!”

She moved first, her blade wreathed in a shimmer of frost-touched Aura, driving into the nearest creature with a precision that split it cleanly before it could fully clear the crystallized ground. Grennig, wound still bandaged but stubbornly upright, planted his shield and called on his own Aura, stone-gray light hardening across its surface as he anchored the formation’s weakest point.

”Selene, cover the western gap!” Doran shouted, his shield already flaring blue-white as he absorbed a glancing strike meant for Aria.

Selene’s hands wove through rapid, practiced motions, ice lancing outward to pin two of the creatures mid-charge, buying Kaelis the half-second he needed to dart between them, twin blades flashing in a blur that opened both their flanks in a single, fluid pass.

Osric’s magic filled the space between combatants, a rotating shield of arcane force deflecting a creature’s leaping strike away from Priya’s healing position, while Kess moved low and fast along the ring’s edge, her own Aura sheathing her claws in something that hissed faintly against the air — acid-touched, Arlen realized, watching one creature shriek as her strike bit deep and kept burning.

”Rurik, left flank!” Ilyana called.

Rurik answered with a guttural roar, Aura surging around him in a feral, bristling aura that visibly hardened the muscle along his forearms, and he tore into the encroaching creatures with raw, brutal strength, driving two of them back bodily before Doran’s shield finished what his charge had started.

Arlen fought at the secondary line alongside Halvard, driving Edgeline Strike into every opening the primary ring’s shifting formation revealed, Aura Ward gathering instinctively whenever a creature’s attack came in faster than he could properly dodge. He called on Storm Step twice, closing gaps the moment he saw them forming, and found himself, in the chaos, grateful beyond words for the sheer, coordinated competence of everyone fighting around him.

”They keep coming!” Halvard shouted, driving his blade through another creature only to see three more emerge from the crystallized earth behind it.

”Maren’s not stopping!” Osric called, glancing toward the golden light still steadily intensifying at the clearing’s heart. ”Hold, whatever it costs!”

The fighting stretched on, wave after wave of twisted creatures emerging from the corrupted ground, and Arlen understood, watching the primary ring’s disciplined, coordinated defense begin to show real strain despite its evident skill, that this fight was unlike anything the expedition had faced so far — not a contest to be won quickly, but a war of attrition against something that seemed capable of producing enemies faster than the party could reasonably dispatch them.

Garrick moved through the worst of it with the same unhurried, economical authority Arlen had glimpsed the previous night, his blade finding decisive strikes wherever the line grew thinnest, though even his evident skill couldn’t fully stem the accumulating tide.

”Second wave incoming!” Kess called, her voice carrying genuine alarm now. ”More than the first!”

The crystallized ground split open again, considerably more widely this time, and Arlen felt his chest tighten watching easily twice the previous number of twisted creatures emerge, converging on the party’s already-strained formation with the same coordinated, adaptive aggression that had characterized the previous night’s attack.

”Tighten the ring!” Ilyana shouted, her own blade a blur of frost and steel as she fought to hold her section against the mounting pressure. ”Don’t let them separate us from Sister Ashwood!”

Selene’s ice magic flared brighter, buying precious seconds as she froze a section of the encroaching wave solid, and Doran drove forward to shatter them before they could recover, his shield-strikes falling with grim, exhausted determination.

Arlen found himself pulled deeper into the fighting as the secondary line began absorbing overflow from the primary ring, Halvard beside him the whole way, both of them trading position and cover with the same practiced coordination they’d built across months of shared work.

”How long has she been at this?” Halvard called, breathless, driving a creature back with a clean Aura-infused strike.

”No idea,” Arlen admitted. ”Feels like hours. Might only be minutes.”

The golden light at the clearing’s center continued its slow, steady work, undisturbed by the chaos raging around it, and Arlen caught, in fragments between his own desperate engagements, glimpses of Maren’s expression — locked in absolute, unbroken concentration, sweat streaking her face despite the process’s apparently unhurried pace.

A third wave began emerging even as the party fought to clear the second, and Arlen felt, for the first time since this expedition began, a genuine, cold thread of doubt settle into his chest.

This isn’t slowing down, he thought, driving Edgeline Strike into another twisted shape even as two more emerged to replace it. It’s escalating. And I don’t know how much longer any of us can keep pace with that.

”Formation’s holding!” Garrick called, his voice carrying steady, deliberate reassurance even as the strain in his own movements grew increasingly evident. ”Everyone, stay disciplined! We finish this properly, together!”

Arlen drew on every reserve he had left, Enduring Vitality’s steady warmth the only thing keeping genuine exhaustion at bay, and pressed back into the fighting alongside everyone else — Ilyana’s frost, Selene’s ice, Doran’s shield, Grennig’s stubborn stone-Aura defense, Kess’s acid-touched claws, Rurik’s feral strength, Osric’s shifting wards, Kaelis’s blurred speed, all of it woven together into a single, desperate, coordinated effort to hold the line long enough for Maren’s slow, patient work to finally, properly finish what it had begun.

The golden light pulsed once, brighter, and Arlen understood, catching the sudden shift even amid the chaos, that whatever came next would likely determine everything this desperate, costly fight had been building toward.