The realization hit Adam like a physical blow, sharpening the pain in his chest. The vibrations through the ground, the subtle shifts in the air—they were splitting. One group continued after him, but the other, larger contingent had stopped, their energies coalescing and turning sharply… toward the alcove.

'No, no, no! They're targeting them directly! How?! How did they find them? This changes everything!'

His plan to lead them on a merry chase unraveled instantly. If he continued to run, Lilith and Ignis would be swarmed in their most vulnerable state. It would be a slaughter.

"Damn it!" The mental curse was a roar of frustration and fear. He had to go back. Now.

Wheeling in mid-air with a pained grunt, Adam beat his wings hard, ignoring the screaming protest from his muscles and the fresh, hot seep of blood from his chest wound. He pushed his Abyssal Glide to its limit, a streak of obsidian and violet light cutting back through the canyon the way he'd come. But his body, pushed far beyond its limits, rebelled. A wave of dizziness and profound weakness washed over him. His wings faltered. The world spun.

"Ahkk!" With a strangled hiss, he lost control, crashing into a spire of brittle white rock, shattering it and tumbling in a heap of scales and dust onto the hard ground.

'Dammit! Get up! GET UP!'

He forced himself upright, his vision swimming. 'They have a sensor. A tracker. Of course they do. I was too reckless, too obvious. I led them right to us!'

He launched himself back into the air, flying lower and more erratically now, a wounded bird desperate for its nest. That's when the first attack came.

It wasn't heralded by a shout or a flash of light. His Hunter's Tri-Sense screamed a warning a microsecond before a blur of dark motion cut the air where his head had just been. A heavy, armor-piercing arrow, fletched with shadow-stealth feathers, slammed into the canyon wall behind him and exploded into shards of enchanted stone.

Adam twisted violently, his heart hammering. 'An attack? From where? I can't sense them!'

Another projectile, this one a silent bolt of condensed force, whizzed past his flank, grazing a scale and leaving a numbing chill. Then a fireball, not wild and raging, but a compact, superheated sphere of mana, streaked toward him with unnerving accuracy. He barrel-rolled, the heat searing his underside.

'They have stealth. Or negation. Something that masks their presence from my senses. I can't fight what I can't find or sense properly. I can't afford this delay!'

He tried to juke and weave, to put on more speed, but his movements were becoming sluggish, predictable. The next attack was a masterpiece of sniper timing.

A thick, ballista-like bolt, launched from some hidden, enchanted siege weapon, materialized out of the gloom. Adam saw it too late. He jerked his head aside, but not enough.

CRACK.

The sound was sickening, a dry, crystalline snap. A searing pain erupted from his brow as one of his majestic, forward-curving horns was sheared off cleanly halfway up its length. The impact whipped his head to the side and sent him spiraling again, a cry of agony ripped from his throat.

'My horn! They... they broke my horn!'

The loss was more than physical; it was a brutal blow to his draconic majesty, a symbol shattered. But the terror for his companions was greater. He couldn't stop. He couldn't engage.

'Camouflage. It's my only hope. Please, let my mana hold.'

As he righted himself, ignoring the agony in his head and the dripping stump of his horn, Adam poured the last dregs of his mana into Deep Camouflage. His scales and crystalline growths shimmered, their colors and textures flowing to match the pale, striated canyon walls around him.

On a high ledge overlooking the canyon, Ellen lowered her specialized longbow, its string still humming. Her green eyes, enhanced by far-seeing enchantments, scanned the area where the serpent had vanished. Her scouts, equipped with magical sight-gems and sound-dampening gear, shook their heads.

"Visual lost, Captain."

"All magical signatures faded. It just... disappeared into the environment."

"The trail is gone. Completely."

Ellen didn't frown. She analyzed. The serpent had been fleeing erratically, then turned back with desperate purpose after her group split. It took multiple heavy hits, including a direct shot that shattered a horn, and instead of raging or fighting back, it chose to vanish.

"It's not running away anymore," Ellen said, her voice cold and sure. "It's running back. To the other two. Its priority isn't self-preservation; it's pack preservation." A thin, tactical smile touched her lips. "That makes it easier."

She turned to her team. "The serpent will return to defend its kin. We no longer need to chase its trail. We know its destination. Derek's group is moving to intercept the stationary targets. We will now converge on the same coordinates, from this direction. We will catch the serpent in a pincer between our forces and Derek's. Move out."

Adam, who was still flying, continued to use his mana which had reached its limit.

Adam's will held the Deep Camouflage together by a thread. He was a ghost, a smear of color against stone, his very scent and sound swallowed by the skill. But the thread was fraying. The mana sustaining it wasn't just low, it was scraping the bottom of an empty well, burned out by the desperate flight.

He felt it start to fail not as a sudden collapse, but as a slow, inevitable unraveling. The perfect harmony between his scales and the canyon wall began to stutter. For a split second, his outline flickered—a glimpse of obsidian black and violet crystal against the pale white. He poured every last drop of focus into stabilizing it, his mind screaming in protest.

'No, no, not yet! Just a little farther!'

The Deep Camouflage sputtered and died, draining the last vestiges of mana from Adam's core. The world snapped back into sharp, painful focus. 'Shit…' he thought, despair clawing at him. He was exposed, hobbling, and defenseless in the magical sense.

That's when it hit.

A searing, brutal impact slammed between his shoulder blades. Not an arrow meant for stealth, but a heavy, armor-piercing projectile designed to kill wyverns. His Monarch's Aegis, strained to its limit and deprived of sustaining mana, cracked. The projectile punched through his legendary scales, tore through muscle, and lodged deep, scraping against bone. White-hot, debilitating agony exploded through his nervous system.

"AHHGG!!" A choked roar was forced from his lungs. His legs buckled. The world spun, the canyon floor rushing up to meet him. He hit the ground hard, the impact driving the projectile even deeper. Each ragged breath sent fresh waves of torment through his body. His vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges. He could feel warm blood, his blood, pooling beneath him.

Through the haze of pain, he heard footsteps. Cautious, approaching. Then voices, dripping with a contempt that was somehow more chilling than the void entity's silence.

"Heh. All that fuss for this? I thought it was supposed to be a threat to humanity," a male knight sneered, his boot nudging Adam's limp tail. "Looks like just another overgrown lizard to me."

"Don't underestimate it. Its file lists high intelligence and adaptive combat skills. We should end it now. A clean kill," advised another, the sound of a sword being drawn clear in the tense air.

Then, the crisp, authoritative voice of Ellen cut through. "A quick kill would be wasteful. You're right about the intelligence." Her boots came into Adam's blurry field of view, stopping right before his head. He could feel her gaze upon him. "That means it can understand me, can't you, beast? You know what we are. You know what defeat is."

The pressure of her boot came down on the side of his head, pinning him to the stone. It wasn't just physical; it was the ultimate humiliation. "A specimen like this, with confirmed tactical prowess and evolution capability... the Monster Tamers' Guild would pay a king's ransom. Alive. We can cripple its magic, cage it, and—"

She never finished her sentence.

A surge of pure, undiluted defiance—the last reserve of strength from a soul that had survived cannibal siblings, dungeon lords, and void horrors erupted within Adam. His body, which moments ago had been a broken vessel of pain, became a weapon of desperate opportunity.

His massive tail, coiled weakly on the ground, became a whip of scaled muscle. It didn't strike. It flowed. With a speed that belied his condition, it shot upward and wrapped around Ellen's torso and arms in a brutal, vice-like Constrict. The air left her lungs in a shocked gasp. Her bow clattered to the ground.

"ELLEN!" her team screamed, weapons snapping up. But they froze, horrified.

Adam, with a guttural growl of effort, used the last of his physical strength to lift his upper body off the ground, hauling the stunned and struggling human with him. He positioned her tightly against his neck and chest, his coils tightening just enough to make her choke, turning her into a living, breathing shield. Her armored form covered his most vital areas.

Panic turned to frantic indecision among the soldiers. Swords and bows wavered. They couldn't get a clear shot. A magical attack risked hitting their commander.

A pained, bloody smile touched Adam's serpentine maw. His mind, though foggy with pain, was crystal clear on one point of human psychology he remembered from his past life: their morality. They would hesitate to sacrifice one of their own. It was a weakness he could exploit. It was his only ticket to survival.

'You won't kill your friend,' he thought, his single remaining horn gleaming dully in the faint light. 'And as long as I have her, you can't kill me. This shield… will get me home.'

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