Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast
Chapter 80: The Arena

Chapter 80: The Arena

The shadows were thicker here. Denser.

Ash moved low and quiet, freshly shaken from his encounter- the beasts he’d faced earlier were still fresh in his senses.

The ground here felt different beneath his paws- less like forest floor and more like grave-dust.

The path, once flat and dead but forested, had begun to dip steadily, spiraling downward through sloped corridors and crumbling arches. Each step took him deeper beneath the earth, where sunlight no longer reached and the weight of centuries pressed from above.

He glided through a series of winding tunnels carved by time and claw. The path was narrow, walls pressed close enough that his shoulders sometimes scraped stone.

The silence wasn’t empty- it throbbed. Drips of unseen moisture echoed like footsteps from deep below.

His claws disturbed nothing. Each step was measured, absorbed by the mossy floor and layers of time-thick dust.

Suddenly, the tunnel that he was walking through bent sharply and he noticed a strage sigil etched into the wall- pulsing faintly with shadow aether.

It throbbed like a heartbeat, slow and deliberate. The markings weren’t from any summoner language he’d seen before. No clean runes, no script- just lines and spirals that supposedly had been injected with shadow aether, causing it to pulse like veins of something ancient and alive.

Ash stepped closer, compelled as well as curious. With his paw, he traced the outer edge, his claws barely brushing the surface.

In that instant, the lines recoiled, snapping inward. The glow vanished, and the wall pulsed once like something beneath the stone had drawn breath- and held it.

Aether recoiled from his touch. He jolted back, heart pounding as the chill sank through his paw. His claw tingled. Not from pain, but from resonance. Like something had just been alerted to his present.

His stance dropped. Muscles coiled. His tail lashed once. But nothing came.

He stared at the wall, unsure if he had put himself in a bad situation or had simply been rejected by it.

’Look like I’m fi-’

Then, the ground beneath him shifted.

It was subtle- at first, just a tremor, alerting Ash. But in the next fraction of a second, the wall with the sigil pulsed again like a heartbeat returning to life. Ash barely had time to react before the stone beneath his left foot caved in.

The world tilted.

Ash slipped, shadows swallowing him whole as the ground swallowed him up and he slid down a narrow chute of smooth, wet stone. The walls blurred by, a rush of damp air roaring in his ears.

He tried to slow his descent, claws scraping but finding no hold.

But the- his eyes caught something. A break in the stone to the side about ten metres down the chute. A narrow fissure, barely wider than his frame.

Without hesitation, Ash called on the shadows within him.

Shadow Sprint!

In a flicker of darkness, he lunged forward, his muscles exploding with power as he jumped. His momentum hurled him through the gap- barely clearing the jagged stone edges. He tumbled, hitting the ground hard on his side before rolling to a stop.

Ash rose slowly, brushing grit from his limbs. He turned back to the cute with only a thought in his head, ’Where in the world was that chute leading to?’

What if he hadn’t seen that gap? WHat if he had fallen straight through- into whatever that mechanism had summoned?’

The thought of it left his pulse unsettled. He wasn’t just lucky- he had narrowly escaped something. But what exactly did he escape?

Shaking the disturbing mystery off, he turned around to see where he was.

’Another tunnel...’ he mused, ’Just great...’

The tunnel ahead pulsed faintly with aether though, drawing him deeper. He shook off the dust and pressed forward.

’Where in the void am I now?’ he thought as he observed his surroundings, trying to get any marking or signs to tell him if he had gotten somewhere different or even remotely interesting.

It was colder here. Tighter. The scent of aether was thicker- pressing against his lungs.

Just as he started to ready his stance again, a breeze curled around his frame- not air, but something else. Sharper. It was aether. The same aether that he had felt outside the tunnel that led him into this darn place.

It brushed along his spine in slow, seemingly deliberate wisps like long fingers mapping his silhouette. The sudden chill made his hackles rise.

He turned quickly, scanning the dark, narrow corridor for a source, but instead saw only shadows within shadows.

Ash’s claws flexed as even with his aether sensitivity and heightened senses, he could not sense anything past the shadows.

Suddenly, he heard something- the drip of distant water...

He exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing...

With extra caution, he moved forward. Eyes sharp. Mind sharper. With each step, the shadows retreated further, revealing slowly what they had been hiding.

A pit of bones, brittle and crumbled, lay in a recess to his left. They were scorched... but not burned. Something had drained them clean.

’The smell is still lingering...’ Ash noted as his hackles rose, his senses fully activated as his ears twitched, ’It could still be nearby...’

The trail bent downward, and as he slipped through a split in the stone, the world beneath opened.

A massive hollow basin lay before him.

Ash took a cautious step forward, his eyes scanning every angle. The sheer scale of the basin stole his breath, making him instinctively lower his body- hundreds of metres across, the pit sank into the earth as if the land itself had given way under the weight of violence. The surrounding stone pillars jutted up like fangs from a predator’s maw, some broken, others scorched by long-dead fires.

Ash moved, crouched low, letting his breathing settle as he sensed the aether. The ground seemed to pulse with it- like the after shocks of something vibrating through the stone.

The ground around the structure below was uneven, worn with the passage of uncounted beasts. Bones littered the ledges like offerings left to rot, and the lingering scent of blood was thick enough to choke.

Statues ringed the rim—some of the beasts mid-roar, others kneeling. All had suffered the erosion of time and power. Moss obscured many of their faces, but not their presence.

At the center lay a basin etched deep into the earth—circular, ringed with stones, and stained with layered history. It looked like an arena, but its vibe gave off nothing of the sort.

Ash crouched behind a weathered pillar, his breath caught somewhere between awe and suspicion. The massive hollow ahead of him thrummed with layered tension. The basin below wasn’t just old—it was ancient, a place saturated with the scent of blood and memory.

His eyes landed on the center.

Hundreds of beasts loomed around the pit’s edge. Some perched like gargoyles on jagged stone, others crouched in the shadows. None of them moved. All their eyes were fixed on the combat below.

A panther-like creature danced low across the ground, its movement coiled and spring-loaded.

Its opponent—a tusked brute of immense bulk—charged forward again and again, recklessly trying to crush its faster foe.

Ash then turned his attention to the spectating shadow beasts. Some bore unsettling intelligence, others twitched with feral brokenness, but all radiated focus. He felt the weight of their stillness press into his bones. It wasn’t reverence—it was judgment.

As the thought settled like stone in his gut, the panther-beast dipped low—a feint—and spun with blinding speed. Its claw raked upward and crunched through the tusked beast’s spine.

Ash barely breathed.

The brute collapsed. Silent. Final.

Ash’s claws twitched as he committed the moment to memory.

It didn’t fight for dominance. It fought to live. And here, survival is the only prize worth chasing.

The winner stood, bloodied but proud.

Then the earth shook.

From the far end of the Arena, beneath a crag of darkened bone, a massive gate opened. The victorious beast roared in triumph—then went still.

From the darkness within, a low, droning growl rolled outward. A shadow surged and the panther-beast was dragged inside.

No celebration. No return.

Ash blinked. Once. Twice. His mouth hung slightly open, unable to close around any coherent thought. What in the void had he just seen?

His stomach knotted. The weight of the moment pressed against his ribs, like invisible walls closing in. What kind of place glorified this kind of violence, only to erase the victor like a pawn swept off a board?Since when did the culture of arena fighting turn into public executions for both... The way the panther-beast had been dragged away without resistance, the absolute silence of the watching crowd... There was basically no incentive for winning...

He swallowed dryly.

What is this place?

His pulse throbbed in his ears, not from exertion—but disbelief. He barely registered that his claws were still half-raised, body caught between instinct and paralysis.

He exhaled shakily, gaze flicking to where the panther had vanished.

He was so focused, he didn’t sense the beast until it was too late.

A looming figure rose behind him—seven feet tall, plated in chitin and shadows. Its mouth did not move, but a voice rang inside Ash’s mind.

"The challenger has arrived."

Immediately, Ash spun, claws raised, muscles coiled to strike—but the chitin plated beast didn’t attack. It stood unnervingly still, cloaked in motionless shadows, as if the act of moving might disturb something older than time itself. Its eyes, black as obsidian, locked onto Ash’s.

And then—pressure.