Re:Ant Lord-Chapter 165: Hazards of the Vein

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Cobalt panes, fractured by time and scarred by millennia of storms, stretched out in every direction like a battlefield frozen mid explosion. The glass shimmered not with beauty, but with threat. Each broken plate caught flickers of distant lightning overhead, refracting pale arcs of silver and white across the uneven ground.

As Kai stepped forward, the soles of his feet rang with eerie clarity.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Every step sounded like a blacksmith tapping crystal, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Hairline fractures spidered outward from each footfall, and in the silence, tiny sparks danced away into the distance. It was filaments of raw static, skittering like phantom insects into the webbed veins below.

A soft chime echoed in his vision.

[Ding! System Message: Region Hazard of Storm Glass Field detected.

Aura Saturation: 125%

Static Discharge Probability: High

Tip: Ground your aura. Avoid running. Avoid high jumps. Sudden motion increases discharge risk. Host be careful!]

Kai narrowed his gaze.

He felt it. The pressure of electric tension in the air, crawling like invisible bugs across his face and the fine hairs on his arms. His skin itched. His chest buzzed with trapped heat. The very air tasted of ozone and dusted glass. If he ran, or made a careless leap, the storm that loomed above would not hesitate to strike him to death.

"It would strike. And it would strike hard. I better be careful."

Kai exhaled slowly, taming the spike of nervous instinct and anchoring his breath to a steady cadence. The world here demanded focus. Every movement mattered.

His hand moved in a small, deliberate gesture.

Two hundred points of hard earned aura flowed downward, threading into his Adaptive Armor. His exoskeleton shivered as the change took root. The plates along his calves thickened and changed composition, darkening to a dull, almost matte gray, a low conductivity channel that would siphon excess static downward, dispersing it safely into the terrain.

It wasn’t perfect protection. But it would be enough. If he respected the storm. A flash bloomed to his right.

KABOOM!

Lightning, pure and hateful, knifed through the heavens and struck the side of a broken ridge. It vaporizes stone in a heartbeat. The blast’s thunder arrived a breath later, a wall of sound that slammed against Kai’s chest like a war drum. He flinched—not out of fear, but out of awe. Shards of cobalt glass burst into the air, then descended like glittering knives, embedding themselves in the already fractured field.

Had he been just ten meters to the right... had he sprinted... He would’ve died.

Instead, he walked. Steady. Deliberate. His Predator instinct was calm. He can’t make any mistakes. All his footsteps were measured.

His shoulders relaxed. His hair swept the air in slow pulses, tuning to micro vibrations. His body was not large compared to apex beasts, but his mind was sharper. In this place, it wasn’t power that earned survival. It was discipline.

And behind him... far enough to stay safe from being discovered by Kai’s predator instinct, yet close enough to mimic his rhythm, was another person. It was Azhara from the savage rabbit clan. She was still following Kai. The last of the savage rabbit clan.

She was a black silhouette against the ghost glass, her tall ears twitching at every static ripple. Bone plates coated her back, half melted in places from the last battle. Burn scars traced her ribs and thighs. Yet she moved with a kind of primal grace, tail low, feet careful, eyes fixed entirely on him.

She did not speak. She watched. She learned. When she gets closer...

Kai felt her presence as much as he heard it, the slight scrape of bone claw on tempered glass, the brief fizzle of static discharging along her limb tips. Her foot pressed against a patch of cracked cobalt, and the web like lines surged with light for a brief moment.

She paused. Waited.

Static arced along her shoulder. One spark landed on her whiskers, snapping like a whip. She twitched with an involuntary jolt but made no sound. Painful, perhaps, but she didn’t retreat.

Lesson received.

Kai permitted himself the faintest nod. No words were needed. This was a place of natural instruction, a crucible that taught through risk and silence. If she had ignored his method and tried to run, she would have been glassed—another skeleton fused into the storm field’s sparkling tombs.

He continued walking thinking, "You think you are clever. Follow as much as you want. If she attacks me, I will make sure that this mad bitch is dead. I didn’t settle the score with her. Because of her my four subordinates died."

The horizon remained a blur of shifting thunderclouds and slanted rain, lightning veins pulsing like the arteries of a dying god. No visible beasts. No obvious threats.

But Kai knew better. This place wasn’t empty. It was hungry for life.

The region’s aura was thick enough to chew through lesser minds. Static storms didn’t just fry the body but they corroded awareness. More than one beast had likely gone mad from extended exposure, their bones now lying just below the glass, scorched into ash outlines.

Kai paused at a flat stretch of fused terrain. A field of undisturbed glass shimmered ahead. It was wide, reflective, and eerily still. No cracks. No sparks.

That made it more dangerous, not less.

The smoothest sections were where lightning lingered, waiting. Silent buildup zones which are triggered by sudden motion or high aura resonance.

He turned to glance over his shoulder. Azhara stopped the moment his gaze met hers.

Her crimson ember eyes flickered. Still wild. Still untamed. But not unwise.

She looked away as if she didn’t see Kai, barely perceptible. Her claws flexed as she recalibrated her balance.

Together, they stepped onto the clear field. The temperature dropped.

Tiny arcs of light raced beneath the glass, forming rings beneath Kai’s feet as if the land itself were marking him. The Adaptive Armor flickered faintly, its conductive pattern glowing with every discharge absorbed.