Dark Parasyte
Chapter 63: The Hunt Begins

Chapter 63: The Hunt Begins

Corvin filled his underground warehouses to the brim with the final harvest. Crates of wheat, exotic fruits, dried herbs, enchanted honey, and arcane plant stock were now sealed and hidden beneath his domain behind reinforced, sigil locked doors. With everything secured, he gave final instructions to his newly designated agricultural unit. An ensemble of undead farmers, plant and life mages. Their orders were simple, maintain crop growth at natural pace, without magical acceleration, until he returned.

He was leaving Raven’s Nest.

Before departing, he informed Valyne and Kaelyn with his usual casualness over breakfast. "I’ll be gone for a couple of days," he said while sipping tea.

Kaelyn nearly dropped her fork. "Gone where? Wait, without us?"

Valyne’s eyes narrowed immediately. "You’re leaving? Alone?"

"Yes."

"You will not ditch me like a sack of potatoes in this feather covered hellhole!" Valyne snapped, practically launching from her seat.

"First of all my castle is not feather covered. Secondly, I’m not ditching you," Corvin replied with a ghost of a smile. "I’m strategically leaving my.. castle mates... while I travel to a place you two lovely ladies are not invited."

Kaelyn pouted. "I’m your arcane shadow! What if you need a space mage?!"

"I’ll use actual space magic." He deadpanned. "You keep working on the theory," Corvin said, then vanished mid sentence, just like the Synod Shadows.

By the time his presence faded from the dining hall, Valyne was fuming, eyes twitching.

"He did the thing! He Shadow’d out again! That smug, glorious bastard!"

"I wanted to come..." Kaelyn muttered, now angrily stabbing her eggs.

Valyne threw her hands in the air. "I crossed half the damn Veilborn Expanse on a Synod ship filled with creeps hiding under my pillow to get here! And he just, leaves me?!"

"I think he does it on purpose," Kaelyn offered ’helpfully’.

Valyne glared. "I will salt his bath. And lace his tea with ghost pepper oil."

Kaelyn nodded solemnly. "And sage. Make it bitter. Real bitter."

Meanwhile, Corvin walked alone along the southern edge of Raven’s Nest, eventually reaching the rocky cliffside where the land kissed the vast sea of Duskwell Reach. He didn’t stop. He stepped forward and walked straight into the surf.

When the water rose to his neck, his body shimmered. Muscles tightened, bones shifted, skin textured and thickened, his legs fused and lengthened into a powerful serpentine tail, sleek and dark with azure scaling. His ears elongated into fin like ridges. His gills opened under his chin.

He was no ordinary merman. Even among the beastkin of the sea, Corvin’s transformed form was massive, almost double the size of typical males. His physique was imposing, arms like underwater siege weapons, his tail long enough to coil around war horses. His eyes glowed with bluish light in the deep.

He dived.

Pressure compressed around him as he descended. Light bent above, fading into green, then midnight blue. Coral gardens burst in blooms of bio luminescent life around him. He passed through kelp forests where undead merfolk patrolled silently. Their eyes were dim, their movements coordinated with military grace. The deeper he swam, the more his senses attuned to the pulse of the sea. Aether flowed like invisible currents beneath the coral reefs, drawing old magic into the bones of the structure they had built.

The habitat was a fortress beneath the waves. A massive dome of enchanted coral sat atop a shelf of obsidian rock. Schools of fish darted through rib like archways. Anchor pylons held skeletal gates to direct sea flow. Coral towers lined the dome, pulsing with faint, synchronized glows each tower a node for communication, defense, and filtration.

Satisfied, Corvin swam upward. He launched from the depth in a smooth spiral, tail thrashing through the currents. The moment he breached the surface, he activated his magic. Light swallowed him and with a pulse of spatial manipulation, he teleported high into the sky.

Air crackling around him. His body shifted back to his primary form, hair billowing in the strong wids. Below him, the Veilborn Expanse stretched like a sleeping giant. Blue gray and endless.

Corvin started to chain teleport toward the southeast. Clouds swirled in unnatural patterns far beyond the horizon.

Nefrath.

A place where fire kissed bone and ambition bled freely. He didn’t need a map. He followed instinct.

He could have gone to Korvath. The proud Archdemon had made himself very visible lately. Public proclamations, demonic sieges, chest beating. But Corvin had no interest in theatrics today.

He wanted surprises. He wanted the unknown. Other Archdemons lingered in Nefrath’s cracked heart.

And he was coming for them.

One teleport after another, he surged across the sky like a blade cutting through silk. The air thickened the closer he drew. The skies dimmed. Even the clouds seemed bruised, tinged in ember and ash.

He passed over floating mountain ranges tethered by black lightning. Over bone fields where towering war machines, long dead and rusted in pools of toxic glass. The further he moved, the more surreal the landscape became. A world in agony. A continent forged from trauma.

And he smiled.

"Let’s see what else you’ve been hiding..."

--

Corvin landed in a spiraling arc of shadow, his boots striking the charred obsidian ground like a dropped warhammer. The moment his aura rippled through the terrain, the crust itself groaned. A low, hollow response to the foreign godlike presence. Around him, infernal winds moaned through ruined spires and bone towers. This was no borderland. He was in the heart of an Archdemon’s territory.

Almost immediately, the ground cracked with marching force. From multiple sides emerged a gathering of demonic elites. Hellborns, their hagged horns curving like like daggers; Infernal Warriors, tall and clad in armor that hissed with molten heat; and flanking them, three Abyssal Champions, weapons already pulsing with war intent.

Corvin didn’t flinch. He let them come.

The battle lasted seconds.

He tore through them not with rage but with precision. Lightning strikes hit them before thhey smell the charged ozone, ice spikes tore through armor and flesh, metal shards sinking into skulls. He devoured each one he killed, pulling memory, knowledge, command structures, and positions of the hordes from their minds.

From them, he learned where he was.

This was Tharn Karog, central dominion of Nurrak the Severed Crown, Archdemon of Wrath.

And more:

Nurrak commanded four Dark Sovereigns.

Above them, three Demon Lords ruled over.

Each lord possessed keeps and hosts spanning molten valleys and ruinous craters.

Corvin’s eyes gleamed. He smiled.

A hunt was coming.

He took a moment to fully absorb the landscape. Scorched stone stretched in every direction, spiked with bones like blackened fangs. Winds howled between jagged peaks formed from long dead titans and collapsed fortress spires. Above, the sky itself was fractured, rivers of magma flowing through the land like veins of a titan.

He stood amidst the scorched remnants of the warband, now lifeless husks crumpled against stone. The wind carried the scent of sulfur and singed flesh, but it did not bother him. His eyes, glowing faintly with the residual arcane hum of stolen knowledge, turned toward the blackened horizon.

The locations of the four Dark Sovereigns burned in his mind, seared into his consciousness by the echoes of the Demon’s dying memories. Their presences were like heavy stones pressing on his senses. Distant, vast, and steeped in ancient fury. Their names hissed across his awareness like a curse.

A spire of black iron and bone. A hollowed crater keep where the skies bled embers and the ground roared with chained souls.

That was where the first Dark Sovereign resided.

Corvin rose to his full height, cloak billowing as infernal wind tore past. The molten ground shifted as if even the earth refused to bear his steps. Above, thunder rolled through crimson clouds. Flaming ash began to fall like snow, settling in glowing drifts.

He smiled without fear, without hesitation.

Only hunger.

And the hunt had begun.

He blinked forward, teleportation seamless, his body parting space like parchment.

Within seconds, he dropped through the upper air, landing like a meteor at the edge of the crater. A legion’s worth of Abyssal Champions and Infernal Warriors were stationed outside the broken gate of the stronghold. They froze. Not in fear, demons did not fear but in confusion. In insult.

Who would dare arrive unannounced in a Dark Sovereign’s domain?

Corvin answered their question with action.

Space folded. The sky cracked.

Dozens vanished before they could scream. Imploded, folded into pinpoints of nothing, erased from Nefrath like smudges from parchment.

The rest charged.

Flamekin and Hellborn poured from the ruins, roaring and casting, claws and molten blades drawn. He allowed them a moment to believe in their fury.

Then he broke them.

His hands drew circular glyphs in the air, runes etched in vacuum and brilliance. Shields shattered. Bodies bent inward. Fire turned cold. Their coordination fractured as he wove manipulation into the ground beneath them, warping their balance, their speed, their breath.

He walked forward with calm, each step a quiet sentence in a death etched litany.

Abyssal Champions tried to rally.

He devoured their cohesion.

Their minds faltered as he slipped through their war threads and took their formations apart with pure spatial manipulation. He left no survivors. Not for cruelty, but because each body was a key.

He consumed knowledge with each corpse.

And soon he understood more.

This was not merely one of the four Dark Sovereigns. It was Fyrgax the Bastion, Warden of the Iron Cradle, second oldest general of Nurrak. His citadel was layered with deathwards, molten traps, and something else. A warded nexus, kept sealed since the last invasion.

Aether raged beneath it.

And Fyrgax was there.

Corvin’s eyes narrowed. His voice was soft.

"Let’s see if you’re worth your name."

Then he stepped forward and vanished again, this time into the heart of the bastion.

The Sovereign was waiting.

--

Fyrgax the Bastion sat upon a throne carved from slagged obsidian, the curved horns of ancient war beasts adorning the backrest like trophies. His immense frame pulsed with ambient heat, each breath releasing a low rumble through the chamber walls. Charred banners bearing the sigil of Wrath hung like burned parchment in the dim red light. The floor beneath him was cracked, littered with fragments of shattered chains and burnt armor. A testament to centuries of executions and challenges lost.

The moment Corvin stepped into the throne chamber, Fyrgax opened his eyes.

"An elf," the Sovereign rumbled, voice layered with molten disdain. "In my domain. Have you lost your way, little thing? Or have you come to throw your life into the furnace of Wrath?"

Corvin didn’t answer. He simply stepped forward, calm, expression unreadable. His eyes swept the chamber once, absorbing every structural flaw and magical resonance.

Fyrgax grinned, rows of dagger like teeth gleaming. "It has been ages since I tasted your kind. How kind of you to deliver yourself to my care."

Corvin tilted his head slightly, eyes gleaming with controlled hunger.

"You look appetizing yourself, demon," he said softly, voice cutting through the heat like ice. "Let’s see who gets to feed."

Then he vanished.

Fyrgax’s grin widened into something feral. The sudden thrill surged through his chest. It had been decades since anything dared challenge him in his own bastion. He rose from the throne. His shadow lengthened unnaturally behind him.

"Run, then," he growled. "Let me feel the thrill before I skin you."

The chamber trembled with anticipation as the duel erupted.

Corvin appeared from the shadows, launching a volley of condensed lightning toward the demon’s side. Fyrgax roared, raising an armored forearm and deflecting the blast with a molten shield. Sparks danced through the thick air, illuminating the scorched walls.

Corvin shifted position instantly, flames crackling from his other hand as he unleashed a wave of white fire, pyromancy refined with essence of thousands of siphon. The blaze hissed against Fyrgax’s thick carapace, boiling flesh but not breaking through.

Fyrgax responded with a backhand swing that could split towers. Corvin blinked out of the way and reappeared above him, forming a spear of frost mid air. He hurled it down, piercing the demon’s shoulder with a crack of steam and howling ice. Blood, glowing like molten gold, sprayed across the floor.

"Clever," Fyrgax snarled, wrenching the shard from his flesh and crushing it in his fist. "But not enough."

He stomped, and the ground erupted into a pillar of magma. Corvin vanished again, reappearing in a whirl of wind on the demon’s flank, slicing with a blade of pure air. The cut sizzled against Fyrgax’s ribs, leaving a glowing gash.

Their duel twisted through the chamber, flashes of light, thunder, frost, fire. Walls shattered. Braziers exploded into sparks. Each movement was deadly precision, every strike honed not just by power, but by intelligence.

Fyrgax bellowed and summoned a torrent of flame from his maw, sweeping it like a river across the floor. Corvin erected a shield of crystallized ice, absorbing the blaze before countering with a barrage of molten stone shards summoned from the cracked floor. View the correct content at NovelFire)

Fyrgax began to slow. His breathing grew heavier, steps more labored. Each injury Corvin dealt was not severe, but they added up, bleeding stamina and patience from the Sovereign.

Corvin did not slow. His eyes remained locked, analytical and cold.

Then, in a flicker he was gone again.

Fyrgax turned, anticipating another frontal assault, flames coiling around his fists.

But instead..

A whisper behind his ear: NovelFire

"Bye."

Fyrgax gasped.

Corvin’s arm pierced through his ribs, hand wrapped around the infernal heart. It still pulsed in his palm, beating like a war drum against his skin.

The demon turned his head slowly, eyes wide, mouth parted in disbelief.

Corvin pulled the heart free.

The Sovereign staggered. His life blood poured from his chest as his strength crumbled beneath him. He clawed weakly at the air, his voice a low, guttural rasp. The light in his molten eyes began to flicker.

Corvin stepped back, watching.

Silent. Calm.

As Fyrgax the Bastion fell, his titanic frame crashing to the ground, the throne chamber dimmed. Its soul extinguished with its lord. The heart in Corvin’s hand pulsed once more... and stopped.

The hunt had claimed its first Sovereign.