Bloodbound Codex: I Grow Stronger in Secret

Atlas’s eyes stayed on the Muxical as it growled and chewed the flesh it had ripped from his back.

’Damn bastard...’

This was not the Hybrid Muxical he had fought in the Eternal-Class Ruin. That one had been a derived species, something that had branched off from the original at some point. What stood in front of him now was the original species itself, the one the Hybrid had come from.

It was bigger. Not just slightly, but noticeably larger in every part of its body. It had six tails behind it instead of the hybrid’s count, and the claws were longer and thicker, the kind that explained why the wound on his back had been as deep as it was.

Atlas narrowed his eyes.

Even when he had lived in the outer slums of Ormolio, he had heard about Muxicals. Stories passed between explorers at rest stops and near ruin entrances had a way of reaching even the people who had no business being near ruins.

The Muxical was one of the most talked about monsters in the entire Human Continent. Explorers who had returned from ruins where they encountered one rarely stayed quiet about it. Both the hybrid and the original were considered dangerous regardless of where they appeared, and they ranged from B-rank to peak B-rank. For monsters that didn’t even reach A-rank, the reputation they carried was disproportionately large.

But the original’s reputation did not come from its size or its six tails.

It came from one specific reason.

No guild had formally recorded or named the ability. There was no entry in any official explorer documentation that described what the original Muxical could do. The knowledge existed entirely through word of mouth, passed from explorer to explorer over time, spreading through stories the same way Atlas had first heard about the monster itself while living in the slums.

The name those explorers had given it was Sense Nullification.

The original Muxical carried a Trait that could nullify senses entirely. Not reduce them or create interference, but cut them off completely. Spirit sense, natural perception, any method a person used to detect what was around them could be affected. That was the reason Spirit Instinct had not registered the monster before the attack landed. The Trait had been working the entire time Atlas was walking through the corridor and stepping into the chamber. His senses had been fully active, but the Muxical had been nullifying what they picked up. The information simply had not been there to receive. There was no warning because the Trait had removed the conditions that would have produced one.

That distinction mattered. A blocked sense still told you something was wrong. A nullified sense gave you nothing at all.

The Trait did not work against S-rank explorers. At that level, the Spirit reserve and the degree of control over it were too large for the nullification to take hold properly. But A-rank explorers could still be affected, and Atlas’s cultivation rank, whatever his actual combat ability was, still fell within the range the Trait could work on.

Atlas gripped the scythe.

’If it were me before my attributes became thirty, I would have had a hard time against this even with all my Traits...’

He didn’t think further.

His feet pushed him forward. The acceleration was immediate and the distance between him and the Muxical closed in under a second. The monster’s body jolted, startled by how fast he had moved. It tried to dodge with everything it had, its six tails spreading behind it as its legs pushed off the ground to the side. But Atlas was already there before the dodge could complete. The scythe had been moving from behind him before the Muxical had even finished processing that he had closed the distance.

"Bastard of a monster... Die."

The blade swept through in one clean motion. The Muxical’s eyes went to the scythe for a single moment, and what showed in them was the same thing that had shown in every monster in the first chamber. Horror. Then its throat separated from its head and the body dropped. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

THUD.

The head rolled across the stone floor.

Atlas immediately jumped back. Something felt off. Not about the kill itself, but about the chamber. The Muxical had been standing there chewing flesh when he entered, which meant it had been comfortable enough to eat in the open. Monsters that behaved that way in the middle of a ruin chamber rarely did so alone. Eating in the open meant they felt no threat from anything nearby, and the only reason a Muxical would feel no threat was because the things nearby were the same species.

He was right.

As he landed several feet back, more Muxicals came out from where they had been staying still and hidden. They emerged slowly, each one appearing from a different position around the chamber, spreading out as they moved and beginning to surround him from multiple angles. Atlas looked around at all of them with the scythe still in hand.

’I knew it... these bastards always stay in groups. But this many? Just in the middle chamber?’

Something about the number didn’t sit right with him. He frowned and thought it through. Then a conclusion formed and he exhaled slowly.

’Is this one of those ruins where there is no boss? Only the second highest rank monsters, but in a large pack...’

He had heard about this type of ruin before. Some Abyss-rank ruins didn’t follow the structure of progressing chambers leading to a single high-rank boss at the end. Instead the danger was distributed across the ruin itself. No single peak threat waiting at the final chamber, but a large concentration of strong monsters grouped together that compensated for the absence of a boss through sheer number and the difficulty of dealing with all of them at once.

’It’s good and bad both for me. I wanted an A-rank Trait, but... I can’t do anything about this anyway. Let’s just clear it.’

He counted them with just a single glance.

More than twenty Muxicals.

Atlas took his stance. Then he thought about something he had been wanting to try for a long time. There had always been a reason not to before. Either the situation hadn’t allowed it, or his Spirit reserves hadn’t been large enough to support it properly. Neither of those problems existed right now. His reserves after hitting 30 across all attributes were at a level where attempting it made sense, and a chamber full of peak B-rank monsters was exactly the kind of situation that justified using everything available.

"Crowbeast Wings."

He said it quietly behind his mask.

The moment the words came out, Spirit surged from his back. Phantom wings emerged, black in color, large enough that the span of them filled a significant portion of the space around him. They were not physical wings. They had no feathers or solid structure. But they moved with the same function, responding to his body’s intent the way a limb responds to a decision to move. Spirit Instinct was already active, and with the Trait adjusting his body’s balance and spatial awareness from the inside, lifting off the ground came without any awkwardness. He rose smoothly.

The wings beat once behind him.

Dust rose from the ruin floor below.

Atlas looked down at the Muxicals. They were growling up at him with their heads tilted back, bodies tense, all six tails on each of them moving. The chamber’s ceiling was high enough that he had room to move without restriction, which meant the advantage of being airborne was real and not just positional.

He looked at the wings for a moment.

’This is the most ridiculous Trait I have ever gotten.’

Then another thought followed immediately.

’What if I use Velgrath’s Spirit Sphere as well? Take all of them down at once...’

He shifted the scythe to his left hand. His right hand extended outward with the palm open. This was the first time he was attempting to use the Spirit Sphere with one hand while maintaining another S-rank Trait simultaneously. Two S-rank Traits running at the same time drew from the same reserves. He understood that. The consumption would not simply be the cost of one added to the cost of the other.

Running two at once meant the drain would be way too fast and less predictable than either one alone. There was also a possibility he could lose his consciousness.

He still wanted to try it.

If not here, where? A chamber full of monsters that couldn’t reach him while he was airborne was the safest possible condition to test a combination like this. If the drain was too much and he passed out, the wings would drop him to the floor, but the Muxicals would be dead or mostly dead and some heavily injured by then. The risk was manageable.

Spirit surged out from his veins and gathered in front of his open palm. It condensed steadily. The sphere that formed was slightly larger than the ones he had produced before his attributes reached 30. The growth in his reserves had changed how much Spirit came out in the initial surge, and the result was a denser formation than what he was used to seeing.

The Muxicals did not stay still and watch.

Their instincts had already processed the danger. Even though the scythe had put fear into them, the thing forming in Atlas’s palm registered as a more immediate threat. They moved, jumping to the walls and using the surface to push themselves upward toward him, bodies reinforced with Spirit, mouths open, moving with the kind of committed speed that came from pushing everything into a single coordinated lunge.

All of them at once.

Atlas looked at every one of them rising toward him with the sphere charged in his palm. A faint smile formed behind his mask.

’So this is how it feels to look down on everyone...’

He held the thought for exactly one moment.

’It feels strangely good... I think now I understand why those nobles did it all the time.’

Then without wasting any second he released the Sphere toward them.

And─

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.