Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast
Chapter 83: Frostborn Tyrant

Chapter 83: Frostborn Tyrant

Ash turned his eyes to the gate.

The fourth gate groaned- low, drawn out, and reluctant. It wasn’t just noise; it was dread manifest. The massive slab of stone creaked open inch by painful inch, metal grinding on metal like a dirge being played too slowly. Symbols embedded in the archway flickered with unstable light, pulsing with tension.

Ash’s fur bristled. Something was different. The very air tasted sharper.

The gate trembled.

From the shadowy archway came a sound like old bones grinding on obsidian—dry, sharp, and unnatural. The gate cracked open just slightly, but it was enough.

He stepped back instinctively.

The first of the tendrils slid into view.

They were nightmarish, the color of midnight oil and shaped like serpents made of muscle and razors. Where they touched the ground, the stone hissed faintly. One dragged itself over a crack, and as it passed, that fissure deepened—widened—as if the arena itself was trying to avoid contact.

They didn’t burst forth—they slithered, creeping across the floor with slow, surgical precision. They moved like sentient cables, slick and sheened with a glistening black oil. Barbs glinted along their lengths, thin and curved like a butcher’s fillet hooks. Each tendril twisted unnaturally, not merely probing the air but tasting it, testing it.

One tendril reared up like a snake, its hooked tip split into three prongs, each twitching. Then, as if on command, more followed—five, six, ten in total—curling like black fire above the threshold.

They didn’t lash out immediately—they were patient. Then suddenly, with eerie precision, all the tendrils paused mid-air, as if a signal had been given. Each one twisted toward Ash in perfect unison.

Their pronged tips quivered, hungry, before they launched- ten serpentine limbs slicing through the air towards Ash, every one of them locked onto his exact position.

The first cracked towards his chest- Ash twisted aside. Another sliced across his shoulder, tearing fabric and drawing more blood. Two more came in unison, one low, one high.

He vaulted over both, landing hard and skidding back but by then, the tendrils have come rushing in again. Ash bolted to the side, a blur of motion. One tendril struck the earth where he’d stood, rupturing stone. Another came in and grazed his flank.

He ducked under one, flipped over two more, and spun away from a final strike. He moved like a liquid shadow, every instinct on fire.

’It’s trying to pull me in,’ his eyes narrowed as he glanced toward the gate. The inside was a swirling mire of black mist, tendrils writhing like serpents in heat. He couldn’t see what lurked in there, couldn’t trust what terrain awaited him beyond the threshold.

’No way I’m fighting you in your domain...’ He slid backward, luring the tendrils out farther, dodging between them with calculated grace. His mind clicked into place like clockwork.

’I’ll drag it out instead. If you want to fight me then come out. Here in the open.’

Ash continued retreating until he saw something different.

His eyes snapped to the others- each one still probing, twitching- but not advancing. He narrowed his eyes. They had reached their limit.

’They can’t stretch further,’ he realised, ’This is as far as they go...’

A smirk appeared on his face. Then, without warning, he twisted and lunged forward. His claws, glowing with crackling shadow energy, slashed upward—one clean, savage strike.

The tendril closest to him jerked violently as the blade carved through it. Black ichor sprayed, the severed length twitching before falling still.

Ash bared his fangs and let out a low, guttural growl—part defiance, part challenge, all beast.

Challenge issued.

At this moment, the tendrils all froze—almost stunned. Silence carpeted the whole arena. Gasps of breaths echoed from the shadowed rows above. All eyes turned to Ash- not as prey, not even as a contestant, but as an anomaly.

Then, all at once, the tendrils began to convulse, as if struck by an invisible force.

Ash looked up. He exhaled as he was the tense expressions of all the beasts, clearly they had not been expecting him to survive this long.

A low tremor rippled through the stone beneath Ash’s feet.

Suddenly, the air pressure dropped. The shadows recoiled, folding away like leaves in a storm.

A low tremor rippled through the stone beneath Ash’s feet. One by one, the tendrils recoiled violently, slamming back into the gate with a shriek of tortured air. Ash’s ears twitched.

Ash’s smirk vanished. His stance tensed.

A deep, guttural rumble vibrated through the stone beneath his feet.

An aura began to leak through the gap—a dread-soaked presence, heavy and ancient. The kind of aura that made the air thicker, harder to breathe.

Then came the roar.

A sound so violent and absolute it split the quiet like a cleaver. The walls trembled. Dust rained from above. Torches flickered madly.

The gate snapped fully open. Stone grated against itself. Dust cascaded in thin sheets while the symbols and sigils on the archway began to fizzle out one by one- pulsing as if to show that whatever was held inside could now, no longer be contained.

From deep within, a shape emerged- no mad charge, no roaring entrance. Just slow methodical steps that screamed command.

The creature stepped forward and was unlike anything before.

Its frame was serpentine yet brutishly solid- sleek obsidian exoskeleton laced with icy ridges that steamed with cold fury. Plates of blackened frost-layered skin overlapped along its limbs and spine, emitting a constant hiss as the surrounding air seemed to crystalise on contact. Its breath came in bursts of mist, curling with glacial vapor.

Runic veins-blue and silver- webbed across its body, glowing like buried veins of aether-ice. Each movement cracked frozen air, sending hairline fractures into the stone beneath its feet. Its elongated tail, ending in a jagged hook of rime-crystal, dragged gouges wherever it passed.

Two massive horns, spiraled and glimmering like frostbitten obsidian, arced back from its head, each etched with sigils that shimmered with cold light. Its eyes were glacial voids- black, rimmed with a silver-blue gleam that pulsed like the heat of a blizzard.

Fresh bloodstains marked the corners of its jaws, faint streaks of crimson already beginning to freeze along its maw. It was clearly the blood from the panther that had been taken in earlier.

It stopped, claws clicking once against the stone, the sound echoing like a hammer on frozen steel. Every breath it took sent a freezing ripple into the dust, turning it to frost.

Ash inhaled sharply, but it didn’t steady him. The emergence of the beast and its appearance and aura hit like a hammer.

’C rank...’ his breath caught, ’This... this thing isn’t just stronger than the others by a small degree.’

There was intelligence behind those glacial eyes- cruel, calculating. There was clear anger and rage in those eyes.

Ash felt his mouth go dry. That aura- it wasn’t just power. It was dominance.

A flicker of unease crept into his gut.

And then, it snarled.

The low, guttural sound came again. This time more felt than heard. A rumble from the depths of its frozen chest that made the very ground beneath Ash tremble. Ash had wounded its pride.

Their eyes locked again. Ash immediately felt the shivers in his body as a whisper of bloodlust passed between them, coiled and silent. The air itself vibrated with challenge as if the beast was saying, ’You dared to challenge me?’

’Can I even take down a C rank?’ the thought brushed his mind.

Then he shoved it down. Hard.

’So be it... What’s done is done.’

The tyrant launched first.

Ash had barely settled into his stance before the creature exploded forward. No wind-up, no warning- just motion. One second it stood like an icebound statue, and the next it was upon him, a comet of frost and hatred.

Its claws lashed out, leaving trails of hoarfrost behind. Ash barely dodged to the side, but now fast enough as the claw came in faster than he could have expected- a glancing blow clipped shoulder, striking at the place where he had already been struck. A burst of pain flared down his body. Ice instantly spread from the wound, chilling the muscle, slowing it.

Ash gritted his teeth and spun away, shadow trailing behind him.

’So fast. No hesitation.’

The tyrant turned with him, unrelenting. It lunged again, tail arcing like a scythe, cracking the ground where Ash had just stood. He leapt back, drawing on shadow.

Eclipsing Fang burst into form- his fangs elongating with dark energy. He dashed low, aiming to strike beneath the tyrant’s armoured plating.

But the beast anticipated it. With a twisting snarl, it pivoted, sidestepped with bone-snapping speed, and struck again. One limb caught Ash mid-motion, flinging him across the arena.

He crashed into a half-buried pillar, stone erupting around him. Groaning, he staggered up.

Ash then bolted forward, shifting tactics. Umbral Bind erupted from the floor- tendrils grasping at the tyrant’s legs. For a breath, they held and as soon as he realised that it had latched on, Ash leapt forward, claws reared back.

But then the beast’s body flared with frost.