Chapter 99: Chapter 99: A Buffet "Vurok," he spat the name into the humid air. He visualized the bully’s face with high-definition clarity. He saw the bully’s face. He saw the glob of spit landing near his face. He saw Vurok’s rough hand grabbing Lyra. He saw the leering, hungry faces of the lackeys as they laughed about dragging Nia and Lira into the dark woods. It wasn’t the hot, frantic fear of the prey. It wasn’t the red-hot anger of a tantrum. It was something older. It was the chilling, absolute desire for dominance. The desire to crush the thing that threatened him. The desire to reach out and wrap his hand around the throat of the world and force it to stop. He opened his eyes. The world seemed sharper, drained of color, viewed through a filter of grey ash. He looked at the snake, and extended his hand, palm facing the reptile. He grabbed that eruption of emotion and channeled it through the ash-grey thread, screaming a silent, violent command into the creature’s primitive mind. "SUBMIT!" Sol roared. The air between them seemed to shimmer with grey dust. An invisible wave crashed into the snake. It was instantaneous. One moment, it was a blur of lethal motion; the next, it was a statue. Its mouth was locked open, fangs dripping venom, but its muscles locked up as if turned to stone. The chaotic hiss died in its throat. Its eyes, previously filled with predatory hunger, glazed over, the pupils dilating until they were black voids. Sol stood there, chest heaving, his hand still outstretched. The silence was deafening. "It worked..." He felt a drain in his chest... a significant chunk of energy vanishing to establish the connection. But now that it was established... the connection held. It was solid. Even though a bit of energy was still being consumed, but it was negligible. He was absolutely ecstatic. The rush of success was intoxicating. He finally knew the key. It wasn’t just energy; it was intent fueled by overwhelming emotion. He carefully inspected the snake from a distance. He could feel a tangible tether of ash-grey light stretching from his hollow cavity to the snake’s brainstem. He quickly checked his internal reserves. The energy pool, which had been full that morning, was now half-empty. Establishing the connection had taken a massive toll—a 50% upfront cost. "Half," Sol muttered, analyzing the data. "Establishing the connection took a massive, upfront toll. But now..." He watched the levels as seconds ticked by. The drain was negligible. It was slowly being consumed, but at a rate so slow it was barely perceptible. "Maintenance is cheap," Sol concluded. "High startup cost, low running cost." He calculated quickly. At this trickle rate, combined with my natural recovery... I could keep this thing enslaved for ten, maybe twelve hours before I run dry. He stepped right up to the snake. It was a surreal experience. The creature that had tried to kill him three times in the last minute was now as harmless as a rock. "Hello?" Sol waved his hand directly in front of the snake’s unblinking eyes. "Anyone home?" No reaction. Not a flinch. Not a hiss. "Total subjugation," Sol analyzed aloud. "The reptile brain is simple. Eat, sleep, kill. It has no complex thoughts to fight back with. Once I overwrote the ’kill’ command, the system crashed." He looked at the dripping fangs. The venom hissed faintly where it hit the stone. "Alright, friend," Sol said, his voice dropping to a clinical, cold tone. "You have one last job." Hel reached into his pouch and pulled out a small, empty clay vial... meant for sap he found along the way. He reached out and grabbed the snake firmly behind the head. The scales were dry and cool to the touch. The muscles were rock hard, locked in tetany. He forced the snake’s jaws open over the rim. He massaged the poison glands. Drip. Drip. A thick, clear liquid oozed from the hollow fangs, pooling in the bottom of the clay container. It looked like water, but it smelled of acid and death. "Generous," Sol noted. He filled the vial halfway before pulling it back and corking it tight. It was potent. He had seen where its spit had withered a fern leaf earlier during the fight. Sol corked the vial carefully. He looked at the snake. For a brief moment, he considered keeping it, perhaps as a pet?A guardian? He could walk into the village with this nightmare wrapped around his arm. It would scare the hell out of everyone. But then he looked at his energy reserves. "No. Too risky." If his concentration slipped, or if he slept, the bond might break. He couldn’t bring a biological time bomb back to the hut, and he didn’t know what would happen when the effect wore off. "Sorry, friend," Sol said, his voice devoid of pity. "Loose ends and all that." He threw the head down and picked a big rock, he smashed it on its head, not just once, but again and again, until he didn’t hear the crunch of its skull. The connection in his mind snapped, the ash-grey tether dissolving instantly. The snake’s body went limp, the unnatural tension vanishing, leaving only dead weight. But just as the life fled the creature’s eyes... something rushed back, like a shockwave. It traveled up his arm... not through his nerves or veins, but along the invisible, vibrating path of the ash-grey tether that he hadn’t severed quickly enough. It hit his mind like a physical impact, but without the pain. Instead, it was a rush of pure, crystalline cold. Sol gasped, his eyes flying wide open, his chest heaving as if he had just surfaced from deep water. The sensation was simply overwhelming. If he had to describe it, It was the feeling of chugging a bottle of ice-cold cola after trekking through a scorching desert for three days... that sharp, effervescent bite that wakes up every synapse in the brain. But this was even deeper. It washed over his exhausted consciousness, scrubbing away the mental fatigue of the intense fight, the lingering headache from the skull-splitting concentration required to establish the link and even the fog of fear. His spirit felt lighter, unburdened. His senses, already sharp, felt honed to a razor’s edge. The world seemed to snap into a higher resolution, the colors of the forest slightly more vivid, the sounds crisp and distinct. He looked down at his hands, then at the lifeless carcass of the snake, his expression morphing from triumph to utter bewilderment. "What... what the hell is this?" Sol whispered, his voice trembling not with exhaustion, but with a sudden, vibrating energy. "Why do I feel... boosted?" He quickly turned his gaze inward, inspecting his internal state with the panic of a scientist seeing an anomaly in the data. He checked the "hollow cavity" in his chest. The Ash-Grey energy level was still hovering at exactly 50%. The kill hadn’t replenished his fuel. But his mind... his mind felt like a blade that had just been whetted. "The tether," Sol realized, his eyes narrowing as he replayed the sensation. "It was the tether." He hadn’t cut the connection before the death. He had crushed the skull while the line was still taut. The moment the creature’s biological function ceased, the energy that animated it... its spirit, its soul, its primitive life force... had nowhere to go. It had surged back along the path of least resistance: the ash-grey link Sol had established. He had inadvertently acted as a vacuum. "I didn’t just kill it," Sol murmured, a chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the forest air. "I... I absorbed it. I ate its ghost." He didn’t know the terminology. Was it Soul Power? Spirit Essence? Mental Energy? The primitive world didn’t come with a manual. But the effect was undeniable. The "muscle" of his mind... the very thing he had lamented earlier as being too weak, too untrained... felt infinitesimally stronger. Earlier that morning, standing in the river, he had agonized over how to strengthen his mind without cultivation techniques or meditation. He had wondered how to increase the duration and potency of his Ash-Grey energy, knowing that his mental endurance was the bottleneck. He looked at the dead snake, and then at the vast, teeming jungle around him. The answer wasn’t in a cave or under a waterfall. It was here, in the blood and the mud. "This is it," Sol breathed, a dark, hungry realization dawning on him. "This is the cultivation method." If he killed while connected, he didn’t just remove an enemy. He harvested their mental energy. He could feed his own mind with the scattered souls of the wild. This meant he could grow. He could expand his mental capacity, which in turn meant he could hold the Ash-Grey connections longer, control more complex beasts, and perhaps... perhaps eventually control things far more dangerous than snakes. He looked at the small clay vial of venom, and then back at the dead snake. The fear of the Annual Hunting Rite evaporated, replaced by a cold, predatory anticipation. The forest wasn’t just a threat anymore. It was a buffet.