Golden Giant

The Lord of the Abyss looked at the outside world through the closing eyes of Luan and narrowed his metaphorical eyes.

"A fortuitous opportunity like this should not be wasted due to weakness!"

Using his superior consciousness, he forced Luan's subconscious to remain awake to take in everything it saw with its "eyes."

Therefore, when Luan wakes up, he wouldn't remember watching the giant's moves, but he would know the giant's moves as if he had seen them before.

Meanwhile, as Luan's body lay prone and motionless, a golden line illuminated the foggy forest for a brief second, lighting up every nook and cranny of a large area of the forest.

The giant's voice reverberated in the surroundings, making the earth shake and tremble.

"SPLIT!"

As the sword cleaved down, the fog churned and rumbled furiously as a force of wind strong enough to topple many normal trees blew from the sword.

The myriad footsteps and faces let out a sharp scream that generated vibrations in front of them, creating a dome made entirely of sound waves.

The blade landed on the dome, causing vibrations to ripple outwards and shattering the area around them due to the resonance achieved with the vegetation's frequency, and destroyed the dome, slicing through the bizarre entity with the efficiency of a hot knife slicing through butter.

A shrill howl that clearly transmitted how much pain the bizarre entity felt erupted from the faces and footsteps that had now reduced in number, causing chaotic sound waves to ripple about.

Thus, destroying even more of the vegetation.

Totally as uncaring as a carved giant should be, the golden statue raised its sword and locked onto the howling bizarre entity.

Then, its guttural voice rumbled once more.

"SUNDER!"

The sword made a sharp slice in the air, and a bright light erupted, turning the dark night into bright day for a few seconds.

An extremely loud booming sound that was accompanied by the spilling of an extremely large amount of soil and uprooting if too many trees to count occurred in the forest.

When the light disappeared, all that was left of the myriad footsteps and faces was nothing but a disappearing black wisp.

The wisp moved frantically, panicking as it felt itself begin to fade from the world.

Then, it spotted Luan, the thing it was supposed to devour earlier.

The boy was the cause of its current predicament, so it was only fitting if he was the one who brought an end to the predicament.

A teeny wave of avarice and malice erupted from it as it decided to possess Luan's body.

Unfortunately, before it could finish that thought, the Abyss opened up and devoured it.

In Luan's consciousness, the Lord of the Abyss snorted in derision.

"This may just be my consciousness, but it's vastly more powerful than anything that's below a certain threshold, the threshold of gods!

"A mere wisp of existence should know its place!"

With that, everything went quiet. The fog was still there and the cold, everpresent, but nothing else happened.

All the bizarre entities that had been terrorising the forest that night went silent, and not even the crickets dared to make a sound.

And like that, the night passed.

The fog churned and receded, and the coldness disappeared.

Throughout all this, Luan lay prone on the floor, motionless like a corpse.

This lasted until the first rays of the sun hit his face.

Luan stirred, then his eyes opened, revealing corneas with burst blood vessels.

"Aarrghh… what the hell?!"

His words were first slurred, but they regained their fluidity the moment all the wounds he had incurred the last night started throbbing in pain.

His left shoulder –of which nothing remained, and his ears –that were no more, were especially painful.

Cursing out as many profanities a fourteen-year-old could know, he leaned on his cane to stand up.

Then, remembering what happened last night, a shiver ran up his spine and his wounds suddenly seemed to ache less.

Of course, this was just his perception, but it didn't matter either way.

'I have to find an actual shelter today! Or else…'

The myriad footsteps and faces and the jawed vines revealed themselves in his memories, causing cold sweat to run down his back.

He didn't bother looking for the book, meat sack and bow he had lost.

Only someone who had many lives would worry about such matters in his situation.

'Well, I'm pretty sure I have more than one, but I'm not sure that matters when facing such bizarre entities.'

Without any more time wasting, Luan set out to look for any shelter that wasn't a tree or a cave.

It was quite unrealistic, but he had heard stories from the gossiping women of his village that the village chief once discovered a temple in the dreaded forest.

Normally, he didn't believe them, but he searched for it anyway, holding to the faintest ray of hope.

Finally, Luan stopped.

In front of him was a structure with walls as high as the village chief's residence and many towering rectangular structures covered by domes with a pointed tip.

Tears almost fell from his eyes as he rejoiced over the luckiest thing that had happened to him in four days.

Then, he went inside.