Vyus took a slow, deliberate breath. The waterfall, the pool, the area immediately around it — it felt hunted out.
The scent of the rhino, ape, and now goblin blood made it a charnel ground, unlikely to hold the powerful beasts he now sought.
"Killing those pathetic goblins was necessary pest control, perhaps, but it offered no real challenge," Vyus said to himself, as he dived deep into his thoughts.
It wasn't a true step towards becoming the apex predator he sought, no, needed to be.
His gaze lifted, drawn towards the deeper, tangled woods away from the relative openess of the waterfall clearing — an area he hadn't yet explored.
'This looks interesting. Might as well check it out,' Vyus thought, as he tried to get a better look at it.
It seemed darker there, the gnarled trees pressing closer together, which was different from the trees that Vyus was now normal with.
There was an unknown quality to it, a sense of deeper wilderness that promised greater dangers, and therefore, greater opportunities.
That was where a true predator would lurk. That was where Vyus needed to go.
Vyus gave out a final dismissive glance at the goblin corpses, before turning and heading towards the deeper woods, with a newfound confident.
The claw-dagger felt balanced in his good hand. His injured hand, wrapped in the crude fur bandage, was quite the opposite, but Vyus paid no attention to it.
Pain was just another sensation to him Vyus considered it a fuel, for the 'hell' he now embraced.
As he stepped under the thicker canopy, the light that he was squinting from faded, plunging him into near-total darkness.
But for Vyus, the last Deep One, this was not a hindrance. His silver eyes adapted instantly, as he had the vision capable of seeing the dark.
His entire village was underground, so everything was dark. Due to this, he had adapted long ago. However, this begged a daring question.
'How did those Crest assassins see us...?'
Vyus continued to think further, 'They had scars on their eyes, which could mean that they had surgery, that allowed them to have the same eye-sight as us...'
But, it wasn't time to worry about that, as Vyus experienced the different air here. It was cooler, damper, carried the scent of deep earth, wet stone, and something else.
A faint odor that hinted at large creatures somewhere ahead. Vyus slowed his pace slightly. He was ready to prove his dominance in this dark reflection of his soul.
Then, the sounds of the deeper woods abruptly ceased, replaced by an unnerving vacuum of silence.
Suddenly, from the shadowed depths behind Vyus, two points of light pierced the gloom behind Vyus.
They were eyes, but, they didn't have the predatory gleam of a wild hunter, which usually symbolizes sharpness and focus.
Instead, these were softer, and more diffuse, which reminded Vyus of polished stone catching a faint light.
Vyus froze his place, his hand tightening on the claw-dagger. His vision strained to pierce the darkness, trying to discern the shape that these unusual eyes belonged to.
The air itself felt different, heavier, charged with a subtle energy he couldn't quite comprehend. The scent was familiar to that of a freshly broken rock.
'Whoever this creature is, he has quite the presence,' Vyus thoughtfully commented.
He didn't turn immediately. His instincts screamed at him to remain still, to analyze the threat before revealing his position.
Whatever these eyes belonged to, it wasn't behaving like any creature he had encountered before.
Then, he began to shift his weight slightly, preparing to whirl around swiftly. As his eyes discover new parts of what was behind him.
His silver eyes continued to scan the surrounding darkness, attempting to pick up any other sign of movement.
As he completed a full 180-degree turn, he was met with something unusual.
'Minerals...?' The thought echoed through Vyus's head.
'What kind of creature possessed eyes that resembled polished stone?'
It defied Vyus's understanding of the natural world. Even within this twisted version of the world that he now inhabits in, it was still unusual.
Then, it revealed itself. The source of the mineral-like eyes became visible.
What stood before Vyus was a golem, with tangled roots around it.
Its form was roughly humanoid, but instead of flesh and blood, it had interlocking stones of various types — granite, obsidian, you name it.
The texture of the golem felt somewhat smooth, which was strange to Vyus in a sense.
Despite the golem's formidable size and the general reputation of its kind as cruel and destructive beasts, this particular one emitted an unexpected pleasant aura.
There was no immediate threat from its stance, no aggression, nothing.
Its mineral eyes, whilst undeniably alien, held a curious, almost gentle quality, as it stared right into Vyus's eyes.
A flicker of surprise crossed Vyus's face. He had braced himsef for a ferocious predator.
But, the acting of the golem was unexpected. This caused the tension in Vyus's shoulders to ease slightly.
The golem made no move, its gaze steady and seemingly friendly.
For a fleeting moment, Vyus allowed his guard to completely drop. The sheer killing of a seemingly gentle beast was disarming to him. Perhaps this deeper parts of the woods held more surprises than just dangerous beasts.
"I guess I got worked up for nothing, huh?" Vyus questioned himself, giving out a sigh of relief.
However, a split-second realization pierced through Vyus's consciousness.
Manipulation. He had heard whispers, and tales passed down through the fragmented memories of the Deep Ones.
The golem's cruelty was often masked by an initial calmness, a deception, before unleashing their might.
"Shit..." Vyus fixed his gaze onto the golem, as if he knew something about it.
The gentle light in the golem's mineral eyes seemed to flicker, replaced by a hard intensity.
Even as the realization solidified in Vyus's mind, the golem's massive stone arm began to move with startling speed.
It swung in a wide, devastating arc, a colossal hammer of rock aimed directly at Vyus's chest.
Time seemed to slow. Vyus's silver eyes widened, his instincts screaming.
It finally revealed its true self. There was no time for thought, only reaction.
With a desperate surge of power, Vyus launched himself sideways, narrowly avoiding the strike.
The golem's stone fist slammed into the ground where Vyus had stood moments before, the impact shaking the very earth.
Vyus landed in a crouch, his good hand gripping the claw-dagger, the fur bandage on his injured hand a forgotten thing.
"This guy... that blow would've killed me," Vyus shakingly commented, whilst breaking a sweat.
"You'll be my toughest opponent yet, you damn stone beast!"
The golem's initial surprise vanquished. It responded with a mechanical roar that echoed through the entire surrounding area.
It lunged forward, its massive stone arms swinging in a wide arc.
Vyus, despite his size, dodged and weaved, his dagger flashing like a serpent as he parried the golem's attacks.
The clash of stone and steel rang out through the deep forest, which drowned out the very sounds of nature.
Vyus, his body moving in a flow, danced around the golem, finding openings in its lumbering movements.
He struck with swift precision, each blow aimed at the golem's vulnerable spots.
Eventually, cracks began to appear in its rocky armor.
"So, you're not invincible, eh?" Vyus questioned, as he backed out of the golem's field of authoritical attacking, "seems like you understand the gravity of your situation, stone beast."
The golem relied on its primal understanding, rather than strategic thinking. Due to this, it knew that, despite its size and strength, it was no match for Vyus's agility and experience.
Vyus's claw-dagger, honed to a razor edge, found its mark.
It delved deep into the golem's stone skin. The cracks spread through its form, with each of Vyus's strikes weakening its structure.
The golem roared in pain, its movements become more frantic.
It lashed out with its stone fists, sending shockwaves through the air.
Vyus parried the blows, his dagger deflecting them with eases. He knew he had to strike quickly, before the golem could recover its strength.
With swift movement, Vyus leaped into the air, his body twisting in mid-air. His dagger was plunged into the golems exposed eye socket.
A piercing shriek occured through the deep woods, as the golem's vision was disrupted.
"Another victory for me," Vyus commented, satisfied by the golem's painful experience that it was going through.
The golem made effort to maintain its footing, but, it was unsteady. Vyus, taking advantage of its momentary vulnerability, launched himself at the golem's exposed chest.
His dagger, driven by the fury of a thousand battles, pierced the golem's stony heart.
The golem's body shuddered, its massive form collapsing to the ground.
The earth trembled as the golem's lifeless form lay still, its mineral eyes extinguished, but not fully.
Vyus, panting heavily, stood over the fallen golem. He had triumphed, with minimum effort, which raised an eye-brow for him.
'He's... that weak?'
Vyus fixed his gaze upon the golem's mineral eyes, with light still emitting from it.
'No...he's not dead.'
He made an attempt to leap away, unfortunately, the golem managed to make contact from its hand to Vyus's foot.
With great force, that could tear an entire tree apart, it smashed Vyus to the ground a multitude of times.
Fortunately however, Vyus, with enough struggle, broke out of the golem's dominion, as he gently lands onto the ground.
Then, a bizarre transformation began to unfold. The golem started to grind and shift.
Large chunks of its outer stony armor began to flake off and crumble away, revealing an entirely new layer beneath.
This inner layer was composed of a darker, denser rock, with veins of what looked like molten gold, pulsing with an inner heat.
This new armor looked significantly more resilient and powerful than the previous one.
"No one told me golems had layers to them. No wonder why you were so easy to defeat at first," Vyus remarked, as he prepared a stance for what was to come.
"Lets continue this. No matter how many layers, I'll unsheathe them all! Until, you have nothing to hide."