High on a jagged stone ledge overlooking the ravine, Veyra the ashscale viper matriarch coiled tight, her slit-pupiled eyes glinting with vicious triumph as she watched a fleck of dark mother venom seep through the huntress's sleeve and into her skin. It had worked. The oldest, most insidious trick of the abyss was in her blood now.
Rorgoth the shadowfang worg paced beside her, claws scraping loose shale off the ledge, his voice a low, rumbling growl. "You're sure this will work? What if it doesn't take? Then what?"
Veyra hissed, slow and smug, her forked tongue flicking out to taste the mist. "Coward. This is the mother venom—known across all the deep abyss as the deadliest corruption known to divinity. At full strength, it can erode even a God Emperor's hold on their realm. We do not have the refined ingredients for that, of course, but even this diluted strain will bring a Sixth Tier god to their knees. Mark my words."
She tilted her head, watching Laia stack carcasses and check her ammunition like she hadn't a care in the world. "A single day in the mortal realm is a full year inside a divine realm. We will not have to wait long. Her farms will rot. Her forests will turn against her. Her subjects will doubt her. Her realm will crumble from the inside out, and she will be trapped here, forever, as food for the deep ones."
Rorgoth rumbled deep in his chest, pleased, and settled in to wait.
Deep in Laia's divine realm, Vorath the Old One and King Theron stood at the edge of the southern orchard, staring up at the gnarled fruit trees with matching scowls. The branches were thick and healthy, but they bore barely a handful of small, bitter, stunted fruit apiece.
It was the old, persistent problem of the realm: too many gaps in its foundational laws. Even with fertilizer, grafting, and heated greenhouse frames, they could never push crop yields past a bare subsistence level. The soil was thin. The rules of growth were weak. Nothing ever grew quite as well as it should.
"Still nothing," Vorath grumbled, his tail swishing a furrow in the dirt. "We should find a way back to that tournament realm. The supplies there were fat. I have been craving cream cake for months."
Theron shot him a dry, unimpressed look. "The wheat still has a bitter aftertaste even after three cycles of soil refinement. Livestock is even more resource-intensive. Do you have any idea how much grain a single dairy cow eats? Forget cream. Focus on what we actually have."
Vorath huffed, his gaze drifting longingly toward the locked storage cavern where the tournament supply crates were kept. He quickly snapped his head back forward, jaw set. Not yet. The edict was clear. Luxury was for special occasions only.
A thin wisp of purple venom mist drifted between the tree trunks, unnoticed, and seeped into the roots of the largest fruit tree.
Vorath blinked, one golden eye narrowing. "Did you see that?" Theron's hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, instantly wary.
Before either could speak, the tree shuddered. It swelled outward, doubling, tripling in size, its bark turning dark and gnarled, its branches sprouting long, needle-sharp thorns. With a dry, cracking sound, three thick limbs lashed out at the two of them.
Vorath didn't even move. The thorns slammed into his scaled shoulder and shattered like dry twigs. Theron drew his sword in one smooth motion, flicked his wrist twice, and the attacking limbs fell to the ground in cleanly sliced pieces.
Neither of them was particularly concerned about the attack. Vorath was leaning forward, his nostrils flaring, staring wide-eyed at the large, plump, glowing fruit now hanging heavy from the tree's upper branches. He was practically salivating.
"Are those edible?" he said, fast.
Theron stroked his beard, stepping closer to examine one of the fallen branches. "Likely. We will run tests, of course. If they are unfit for human consumption, we can feed them to livestock. If they are toxic to livestock, we can refine them for alchemical reagents. If even that fails, we can graft their cuttings onto our native stock to boost growth rates. There is always a use."
Vorath's tail was wagging so fast it was kicking up clouds of dust. "Does this mean we can finally start proper herding? Dairy cows? Sheep?" A faint, rare smile tugged at the corner of Theron's mouth. "Managed properly? Yes. I believe we can."
"Hell yes!" Vorath boomed, so loud the birds took off from the treetops. "When the first harvest comes in, we throw a feast! Everyone brings their own food, obviously." Theron's smile flattened into an eye roll. "That is a potluck, Vorath. Not a feast."
In the Whispering Woods, the same thin purple mist drifted through the undergrowth. Most of the native flora, already adapted to faint abyssal energy from the thin veil, was entirely unaffected. Barely one in every thousand plants reacted, twisting and mutating, exuding a pale, glowing blue mist that would have seared the lungs of any ordinary mortal.
Elowen walked slowly through the newly transformed grove, bare feet stepping soft over moss and wildflowers, and smiled. The ancient elven blood in her veins granted her total immunity to all plant-based toxins; the blue mist curled around her ankles like a friendly cat, harmless as summer fog.
She lifted a hand, letting soft, warm nature magic seep into the mutated bluebells and thicket brambles, pruning away the violent, corrupted edge of their transformation while leaving their toxic defense intact. Bit by bit, the grove settled into a new, gentle balance. By the time she was done, the whole western edge of the forest would be wrapped in a wall of soft blue mist: beautiful, quiet, and completely impassable to any intruder foolish enough to trespass. A perfect natural barrier.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and kept walking, admiring her handiwork.
Three hours dragged by.
Rorgoth was pacing furiously now, his hackles raised, as Laia pushed deeper and deeper into abyssal territory, wiping out entire scouting packs one after another without breaking a sweat. "Still nothing?" he snarled. "At this rate she'll find the core den before the venom even does anything. We need to fall back."
"Patience," Veyra hissed, though her own voice was tight with unease. "The wraiths are still working at her subjects' faith. The venom is eating through her agricultural and forest lands. Corrupted flora turns on the inhabitants, poisons their water, drains their stores. A god does not fall from the front line. They fall from the back, when their supply lines rot out from under them. Give it time."
Rorgoth snapped his jaws and said nothing. A quiet, bad feeling was coiling in his gut, sharp and cold. He hoped it was just nerves.
Down in the ravine, Laia knelt beside a freshly killed third-tier stinger beast, tallying her merit count in her head, and nodded firmly. The deeper she went, the more beasts there were. Perfect. She had the next two days off from garrison drill. She could grind nonstop, knock out a huge chunk of the fifty thousand merits she needed, and get the Box of Avarice that much sooner.
She slung her rifle higher on her shoulder and looked toward the dark, winding gorge that led to the abyssal creatures' core nesting grounds. Her eyes gleamed. All that free merit, just waiting for her. She was coming for it.
The poor beasts had no idea their most feared weapon had just given their enemy better crops, better livestock, and a brand new forest defense system. They had no idea the realm's population was about to boom, all thanks to their so-called unbeatable mother venom.
Back at the garrison, Tobias was sprawled on the couch of his private villa, picking crumbs off his shirt after a very generous second breakfast, when his communication rune blared to life on the side table. He groaned, leaned over, and prodded it awake.
His father's furious face filled the glowing screen.
"Dad," Tobias said, already sighing. "I've told you a hundred times. I'm fine out here. You don't have to check in every single day."
"You little fool," Lord Hale Liu snapped, his face red with rage. "You get back here this instant. Just because you lucked into Abyss Resistance doesn't mean you can run off to the border like some common sellsword. The abyss is not just mist and beasts. It gets in your head. It unravels realms. Now come home before I assemble a personal guard and come drag you back myself!"
Any passerby who recognized the name would have dropped their jaw on the spot. House Liu was the wealthiest mercantile dynasty in the entire empire, controlling nearly half the kingdom's mineral trade, grain supply lines, and banking houses. Lord Hale Liu was one of the richest men in the divine realms. And his only son and heir was hiding out in a border garrison, eating unlimited chicken wings and hunting abyssal beasts for fun.
Tobias just rolled his eyes, flopped back against the couch cushions, and took another bite of honey cake. "Sure, Dad," he said, mouth full. "I'll think about it. Talk later."
He tapped the rune to end the call, tossed it onto the coffee table, and went back to his snack. He had no intention of leaving. The food was great. The work was easy. The merits added up fast. And best of all, there were no stuffy noble dinners, no endless business lectures, no one breathing down his neck about inheriting the family business.
Why would he ever leave?