Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast
Chapter 79: Into The Fog

Chapter 79: Into The Fog

Ash stood upon the ridge, the wind curling gently around him. Behind him stretched the Lushwood Expanse- a living canvas of greens and golds, where the morning dew clung to leaves and birdsong still dared to exist.

Sunlight pierced through the high canopy, casting warm dapples across moss-covered stone and ancient roots.

The land here was alive and thriving.

But ahead everything changed.

It began slowly- so subtle that it could almost be missed. The vibrant greens faded to a sickly gray, and the golden light was swallowed by a deepening gloom. Vines that once wound gracefully now twisted in knots, pulsing like veins clogged with shadow. Trees, once proud and tall, became hunchbacked and warped, their bark split open like blistered skin.

The scent shifted too.

The ridge marked a boundary.

A fracture between two biomes.

’It’s like the land has been drained of its colour and life,’ Ash mused.

He then made his way down the ridge and the world changed.

The air reeked of ozone and rot- a scent sharp and electric, laced with the faint bitterness of scorched flesh and decaying leaves. It hung heavy, clinging to the back of Ash’s throat like smoke from an ancient fire that refused to die.

Ash stepped over the broken remains of a withered tree, its bark blackened as though burned from the inside. And in the distance in front of him, a thick misty fog- heavy, swirling and unnaturally still.

The borderlands of the Umbral nest. He had arrived.

He scanned the land ahead, where light seemed to fade before touching the earth. The ground had darkened, not just in colour, but in essence- as if something beneath it hungered. And beyond that, deep within the murk, something watched.

Ash’s tail flicked sharply, and his ears rotated like radar dishes.

Something about the air made his hackles rise. Not just the stench, or the silence. It was the feeling- the land itself was testing him to see if he was able.

Ash’s ears twitched.

’This quiet... it’s not right. Something’s holding its breath, it’s not stillness,’ Ash thought.

Instincts flared.

Something was actually watching him.

His eyes narrowed as he turned in a slow circle. The unnaturally at the edge of his vision. He didn’t see anything, but every hair on his body stood on end.

Then, the silence shattered.

Three shadows lunged from the mist, teeth bared, claws gleaming.

’They’re fast,’ he thought, claws tightening reflexively. He didn’t hesitate.

Shadow Sprint!

In an instant, he blurred sideways narrowly dodging a set of claws that would’ve torn into his neck.

The second beast came low from the side.

Ash hurriedly countered with a swift kick, but the third was clearly circling behind him.

’They’re coordinated?’ he thought in surprise as he did not expect to see them move with such impressive chemistry.

Ash ducked low under a wicked slash, claws raking up sparks as he twisted past its reach.

In that moment, he had created an opening and was not going to let it go by.

Wisps of shadows began to emerge from his mouth as a dark glow coated his mouth.

Eclipsing Fang!

Clean, fast, brutal.

In that instant, Ash had managed to strike a clean bit on the back of the neck of one of the beats. Black ichor sprayed as it recoiled, screeching loudly.

Another lunged from the side in that instant, Ash twisted mid-dash, just barely able to dodge the attack.

However, before he could counter attack the second one, the third had attacked.

A shoulder slammed hard into him from the blind spot.

Ash hit the ground hard, ribs screaming.

Rolling with the momentum, he flipped up and launched into a low sprint just as two of them pounced together. Their claws slashed air where he’d been a second ago.

Ash skidded to a halt and instead manipulated the shadow aether in his body.

Shadows of the Pack!

From the darkness beneath him, three shadowy replicas surged forth, identical in movement and aggression. The beasts hesitated- the copies darted in different directions, weaving between the dead trees, separating the attention of the shadow beasts.

And that small span of distraction was all that Ash needed.

Using Shadow Sprint, he dashed up to the three beasts before they could reach and slammed a paw that was glowing with shadow energy towards the ground.

Umbral Bind!

Black tendrils erupted from the earth, snaring the front legs of the three beasts as it kept them rooted on the floor.

The three howled in unison as they panicked and hurriedly struggle to get away.

But Ash was not going to wait and let them continue struggling.

From the sides, his three clones immediately appeared, fangs bared with shadow energy basically flowing out of their mouths.

Eclipsing Fang!

He drove it clean into the trapped beasts’ necks, biting down hard as they snapped the bone before pulling out a large chunk of flesh from each.

A final screech that quickly sounded like it was drowning towards the end echoed, then silence.

[Ding! Killed a E+ rank Shadowborn Hound. 180 exp gained. +30AP]

[Ding! Killed a E+ rank Shadowborn Hound. 180 exp gained. +30AP]

[Ding! Killed a E+ rank Shadowborn Hound. 180 exp gained. +30AP]

Ash stood there for a moment, breath steaming in the chill air.

"Hell of a welcome," he muttered, glancing down at the dark twitching corpses.

Ash crouched, narrowing his eyes at the beasts’ remains. The creatures were gaunt and stretched unnaturally, their skin tough and mottled like melted charcoal. Bones jutted outwards at odd angles under their taut flesh, and their claws were blackened down to the marrow.

Their faces still bore a snarl even in death- jaws lined with serrateth that shimmered faintly with residue aether.

Ash frowned, "I’ve never seen anything like them before..."

He then looked deeper into the fog, as if realising something, ’These guys... are they a native to Umbral Nest?’

The thought settled in his chest like stone, ’It would make sense that it would be like this.’

He crouched lower, observing the corpse again. Gently, he prodded the edge of the crystal-veined bone. It rang with a metallic hum- hollow, as though it had been partially hollowed out or infused with some unstable force. Nearby, a severed limb twitched faintly, and black blood began to crystalise at the edges.

’Its blood... is turning into fragments?’ His eyes lit up with confusion.

’It’s not decaying like regular summons would,’ he noted, his eyebrows furrowing as he observed everything, ’I don’t know what it’s converting into... or why.’

Ash leaned in closer, the metallic hum in the bone vibrating faintly through his claw, ’I am going to need to find more. I don’t know if it is just how this species decomposes or if it is actually something weird.’

Just as he said this, a swarm of pale-blue luminescent insects burst from beneath one of the corpses, scattering into the fog like a miniature explosion of light. Ash instinctively flinched, then tracked their erratic flight.

He then took in a deep breath, ’Looks like this place will bring a lot of new experience for me. I need to be ready and adapt.’

Ash continued walking, the thick mist curling around his legs with each step.

It didn’t drift- it clung, dense and deliberate. The further he ventured, the darker the trees became, warped trunks looking like silent sentinels.

His eyes scanned constantly, but nothing moved. No rustle. No whisper. Only the quiet crunch of his paws against dead leaves.

For a moment, he allowed himself to take in the strange scenery. Despite the tension coiled in his chest, a small part of him couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the eerie beauty of it all—twisting trees, glowing fungi clinging to roots, and the surreal shadows cast by unseen sources.

Then, he froze.

His ears twitched- not to a sound, but a shift.

The aether.

It was a ripple-subtle, unnatural-that ran beneath the skin of the world itself.

Ash’s hackles rose. His head turned slowly toward the dark ridge ahead.

There was something there. The air pulse differently now- thick with aether, but not like before. It was distorted and unclean.

’Looks like something big is happening here...’

Ash moved towards the source of the scent, his claws clicking softly against the ground as he crested a small rise.

Unbeknownst to Ash, across the ridge and veiled by the thick veil of fog, another presence stirred.

From the other side of the fight scene, a creature stepped out from behind a gnarled trunk twisted in spirals of black moss. Its form was lean, built for speed, with sinewy limbs and violet-glinting eyes that shimmered with intelligence.

The beast was darker than the mist around it, and despite its size, had hidden itself flawlessly until now.

It padded silently to the corpse of the Shadowborn Hounds, head low, nostrils flaring. One clawed paw pressed lightly against the ground beside one of the corpses, and its snout dipped, inspecting the puncture wounds left by Ash’s fangs.

"Three dead... all in seconds," it murmured in a low, gravelly voice.

Its gaze shifted toward the direction Ash had gone, a slow grin curling on its face.

The beast’s limbs tensed as it slunk forward, each step silent and deliberate.

Fog parted around it like obedient servants, veiling its form even as it began to follow the path Ash had taken.

Its violet eyes glimmered with something unreadable—curiosity, perhaps... or hunger.