Oblivion's Throne-Chapter 101: Stygareth’s Olfaction

Orion crouched low, his breathing shallow, his presence a mere ripple in the dense underbrush. The jungle pressed in around him, the humid air thick with the scent of damp earth and blood.

Twenty meters ahead, the panther-beast slinked through the foliage, its muscles coiling and uncoiling beneath its adaptive coat, shifting colors with every step. It moved with eerie grace, a predator engineered for perfection, but it wasn't the only one.

It should have smelled him. The beast's olfactory senses were unrivaled, capable of detecting the faintest shift in pheromones from kilometers away. But Orion had prepared for this.

The air here reeked of death.

Three carcasses lay rotting in the undergrowth, their metallic tang saturating the surroundings. The beast wasn't alarmed by it—this was a feeding ground. A place where scavengers gathered, where predators like it feasted.

Where it felt safe.

Orion's grip tightened around his blade. Four meters.

The beast hesitated. Its ears flicked, and the sleek lines of its body went rigid. Some primal instinct whispered to it—danger.

Orion didn't give it time to listen.

He moved.

A single, explosive step.

Orion surged forward, crossing the distance before the beast could react. His Wraith's tip pierced into its ribs with brutal precision. The steel bit deep, carving through reinforced muscle and bone like paper.

A screech tore through the jungle—raw, primal, enraged.

The Stygareth's body whipped sideways with unnatural speed, its powerful limbs a blur as it lashed out. Claws raked through the air—too close.

Orion twisted, narrowly avoiding the claws that sought to rip him apart. No hesitation. No wasted movement. He let the momentum carry him, wrenching his blade sideways as he landed.

Then in a wide arch his Wraith's side blade met the creature's lung.

The beast choked, its snarl turning into a garbled wheeze. Foam and blood sprayed from its gaping maw. Its back legs buckled, but instinct drove it forward. One last desperate lunge—

Orion was faster.

His blade flashed in a clean arc—across the throat.

A deep slice.

The Stygareth gurgled. A final, rasping breath. Then—silence.

The predator collapsed. Blood pooled beneath it, steaming in the cool underbrush.

Orion didn't linger. He wiped his blade clean against his sleeve, then grabbed the beast's carcass by the scruff, hauling its dead weight with a grunt. It was heavier than it looked, dense with raw muscle.

He adjusted his grip, dragging it toward his hideout. The jungle had no paths—he chose to mark the paths around his hideout.

Every beast in this place was a resource.

His mother had probably made this place a testing ground for the Pythia System. He was starting to understand why.

Then, the world exploded.

This content is taken from freёnovelkiss.com.

BOOM.

The sound detonated through the jungle.

The shockwave hit like a hammer, rippling through the earth, shaking the trees to their roots. The dense canopy trembled, leaves ripping free like they'd been torn by invisible hands.

Orion's Tyrradic Hearing screamed in protest.

He staggered, his senses flooded—air displacements, sonic compressions, velocity shifts. A tsunami of sound threatened to split his skull.

Through the haze, his eyes snapped upward.

Through the gaps in the canopy, he saw it—

A dropship.

It was descending fast, kicking up a cyclone of debris, its thrusters glowing white-hot.

This was ahead of schedule.

Orion's fingers curled tighter around the beast's fur.

Orion clenched his jaw, forcing his senses to recalibrate. The lingering effects of the sonic blast still echoed in his skull, but his focus remained razor-sharp.

The dropship's thrusters cooled, the air thick with the stench of scorched ozone and displaced earth. Its armored hull gleamed under the fractured canopy light, a stark contrast to the primal wilderness.

The hatch hissed open.

A lone figure stepped out—Varun.

He moved with an unhurried grace, as if he were stepping off a personal transport rather than landing in the middle of a testing ground. His long coat billowed slightly from the residual heat of the thrusters, and his piercing gaze locked onto Orion with quiet expectation.

He took a single step forward, then spoke.

"Time's up."

Orion straightened, dropping the carcass unceremoniously at his feet. Something about Varun's tone told him everything was about to change.

"We need to move now."

Orion exhaled slowly. His mind shifted gears.

Six months of training. Six months of being forged under Varun's relentless discipline, under Irma's brutal conditioning, under Aryan's mastery of Hekatryon.

Every lesson had been drilled into his body until his movements were second nature.

Orion knelt beside the beast's still-warm corpse, his fingers pressing against the coagulating wound at its chest. The Stygareth had fought well—its razor-sharp claws and hyper-adaptive musculature had nearly torn him apart more than once.

Varun stood a few meters away, arms crossed, watching with a half-lidded stare. His voice was edged with boredom. "Took you long enough."

Orion ignored him. He was too focused on the Pythea Interface unfolding in his mind's eye. The system was already dissecting the Stygareth's genetic lattice, isolating viable trait markers for extraction.

He activated the sequence.

The corpse shuddered.

A deep, visceral vibration ran through its flesh. The Stygareth's dying cells compressed and disassembled.

The process wasn't painless.

Searing heat surged through his sensory nodes, followed by an overwhelming flood of olfactory information—not just smells, but chemical compositions, the emotional imprints of creatures that had passed through the area, even the subtle decay of plant life in different stages of decomposition.

His Pythia System processed the influx.

「Stygareth's Olfaction」

Effect: Heightened olfactory perception, capable of distinguishing individual pheromones, chemical compositions, and airborne particles. Allows tracking targets over vast distances and detecting emotions through scent changes.

Drawback: Overwhelming sensitivity to strong odors can cause nausea, dizziness, or temporary sensory overload in dense environments.

Orion sucked in a breath, steadying himself.

After forty minutes of extraction, Orion pushed himself up, shaking off the lingering strain. The world hadn't changed, but his perception had.

Scents layered over each other, distinct yet interwoven. Varun came first—boredom laced with the faintest hint of sweat, the dried blood on his gloves adding a sharp, metallic note. The jungle was a chaotic mix—damp soil, crushed vegetation, the musky scent of some unseen predator stalking nearby. But what stood out most was the artificial imprint hanging in the air—the sterile tang of the dropship's polymers, faint but undeniable, even from this distance.

Varun clicked his tongue. "About time. You done playing with the corpse?"

Orion rolled his eyes, flexing his hands. "So any changes to the trial?" he asked, already anticipating the answer.

Varun's eyes flickered with something unreadable—perhaps satisfaction that Orion wasn't surprised at the abrupt change.

"Yup."

"The Academy changed its admission process," Varun continued. "No longer reserved for the confederacy. Now, anyone potential across the human domain to reach the summit has a chance."

Orion absorbed the words. He already knew what was coming next.

"And the format?"

Varun smirked slightly, but there was no humor in it.

"Selection War."

A free-for-all elimination. Thousands would enter. Only the top 50% would survive.