The fissure was over three meters wide. Draven mounted his Nightmare Horse and slowly rose into the air.
From above, the crack looked unnaturally regular—stretching three or four kilometers long and consistently three meters wide—like a giant sword had pierced the earth and left behind a gaping wound.
By now, he had accepted the existence of gods, so such bizarre phenomena within his territory no longer surprised him.
Still, staring into that seemingly bottomless chasm, he couldn't shake a sense of unease. He decided not to bring Liliana with him, managing to persuade her to stay at the top while he investigated alone.
He called over the worker bee and ordered it to descend first into the depths. Then, riding his Nightmare Horse, he cautiously followed.
His suspicions weren't unfounded—the tunnel on the hillside pointed directly to this location. If all paths converged here, he had to see for himself what lay below.
As the Nightmare Horse descended, the light within the fissure grew dimmer, and a creeping chill set in.
The Nightmare Horse began acting strangely excited—something Draven had never seen from it before.
His heart tensed. Creatures like the Nightmare Horse, born from ancient battlefields and burial grounds, were extremely sensitive to death energy.
Clearly, whatever lay below wasn't ordinary.
Sure enough, after descending a certain distance, the worker bee began transmitting increasingly strong feelings of resistance.
Draven didn't force it further. Instead, he had the Nightmare Horse hover at the same level.
Peering downward, he saw that beneath the bee, a dense mass of black mist swirled ominously. Judging by the behavior of the Nightmare Horse, it was unmistakably death energy.
Draven hesitated for a moment, then guided the Nightmare Horse close to the rock wall of the fissure. He pulled out his Spear of Slaughter and drove it deep into the stone.
After confirming it could bear his weight, he leapt from the saddle and landed firmly on the embedded spear.
He ordered the Nightmare Horse to absorb the death energy and scout the layer beneath it.
The steed neighed with excitement and plunged into the black mist, its form instantly engulfed.
Draven narrowed his eyes and watched closely. After a short while, the Nightmare Horse emerged again, its hooves pawing at the air impatiently—clearly frustrated that it hadn't been allowed to explore more.
Draven rolled his eyes. Through their bond, he understood that the death energy layer wasn't as thick as it looked.
Deciding that the worker bee had served its purpose, he dismissed it and let it fly back on its own.
Then, activating his bloodline power, a crimson glow enveloped his body.
He swung back into the saddle, gripped the Spear of Slaughter tightly, and pointed it downward.
The Nightmare Horse got the signal and dove headlong into the mist.
Draven, wrapped in bloodline energy, plunged with his mount into the layer of death energy like a droplet of water splashing into boiling oil.
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The mist churned violently, and his energy was rapidly consumed.
Thankfully, as the Nightmare Horse had indicated, the layer wasn't very thick. In mere moments, they broke through and emerged into a dim underworld.
If not for the faint glow of a few bioluminescent blue plants clinging to the cliffs, even Draven's night vision wouldn't have been enough to make out his surroundings.
He guided the Nightmare Horse toward one of the glowing plants.
It resembled some kind of fern—completely devoid of magical energy aside from the faint light it emitted.
Likely a mutation caused by the perpetual darkness. Even so, Draven carefully picked a sample and stored it in his wristband, intending to give it to Viola for study.
He continued his descent. As they went deeper, more glowing plants appeared along the walls.
He collected a few more samples, focusing intently on the ground below.
Eventually, the temperature dropped further, and the bottom of the chasm came into view.
The floor was littered with rubble, and the glowing flora was much denser here.
Aside from these things, there wasn't much else of note around.
Nightmare Horse landed steadily at the bottom of the chasm, its hooves striking the rocks with crisp, echoing sounds that seemed unusually sharp in the vast emptiness.
Draven gripped the Slaughter Spear, released his perception, and gently tapped the horse's flank, signaling it to begin scouting the area.
It wasn't long before something unusual entered his senses—several peculiar ants caught his attention.
To find living creatures beneath a layer of death energy was strange enough. But these ants were even more bizarre: each one had a pair of wings on its back and measured over ten centimeters in length.
Though they gave off no magical fluctuations, their sheer size alone put Draven on high alert.
He didn't approach recklessly. Instead, he commanded Nightmare Horse to slowly retreat and maintain a safe distance.
The flying ants had dark, metallic shells dotted with rust-like speckles.
If not for the wings, Draven wouldn't have thought much of them. Riding Nightmare Horse, he could easily ascend and dodge any ground-based attacks.
But the presence of wings changed everything.
He dismounted and instructed Nightmare Horse to stay put.
Draping himself in the Basilisk Cloak, he suppressed his aura and crept forward cautiously.
As he got closer, the number of flying ants grew. They seemed to be assembling, converging in a single direction.
Draven even spotted larger variants among them—flying ants of magical beast class.
While the ordinary ones were around fifteen centimeters long, these larger ones exceeded thirty centimeters.
Their shells were more heavily spotted, and their mandibles looked particularly fierce. However, as low-tier magical beasts, they posed no real threat to Draven.
Cloaked and invisible to the insects' senses, he simply had to avoid stepping on them.
But a question gnawed at him:
So many massive flying ants—what were they feeding on in this desolate abyss?
The answer came soon.
A deafening rumble echoed from ahead, and Draven's eyes narrowed sharply.
He had finally found the old hive of the Violet Carpenter Bee! And at the same time, he understood why the flying ants had gathered.
As he pressed onward, the scene within his perception grew clearer.
At the bottom of the chasm, two enormous armies were assembling.
One was the flying ant legion, the other was composed of the very Violet Carpenter Bees he had been searching for.
The two forces faced each other across a wide space. Between them lay a mound of sizable bones—long petrified, now covered with tiny pale-blue flowers.
Could it be that these creatures were fighting over the flowers?
Draven frowned in confusion. He could understand why Violet Carpenter Bees needed pollen, but did the flying ants also use the flowers to make honey?
As he pondered this, the battle began.
Ignoring the foot soldiers around him, Draven focused entirely on the leaders of each faction.
The Violet Carpenter Bee queen radiated a power comparable to a high-tier commander.
The mysterious flying ant queen, equally fearsome, wasn't far behind. In Draven's understanding, queens and hive mothers usually stayed out of combat and focused on laying eggs.
But the rules of this otherworld were clearly different.
After all, a single Violet Carpenter Bee was as large as a watermelon, and a flying ant could grow over a meter long.
Applying Earth logic here simply didn't work.
As the two queens clashed, the bottom of the chasm erupted into chaos.
The hum of beating wings filled the air—monotonous, yet laced with deadly intent.
The Violet Carpenter Bees darted through the air with incredible speed, their movements erratic and hard to follow.
But the flying ants had extremely tough exoskeletons and vicious mandibles. For now, the battle was deadlocked.
Draven stood at a distance and didn't intervene, watching the entire battle unfold through perception alone.
