The instant the blade cut into the eye, the entire world fell silent.
There was no sound, no light, no deathly aura.
There was only a pure, thick darkness.
Lu Chen felt as though he had sunk to the bottom of the sea, surrounded by icy water pressing against his chest until it was about to burst.
The silver-white radiance on the sword was swallowed by the darkness. The light on his armor was swallowed as well. His entire body became a part of that darkness.
Then the eye closed.
The darkness was squeezed, twisted, torn apart, contracting from every direction toward a single point.
That point was where the blade met the eye, like a spring compressed to its limit, ready to snap loose at any moment.
Lu Chen tried to pull the sword out, but the blade was stuck inside the eye as if tangled in countless steel wires. It would not budge.
The monster neither screamed nor struggled. It did not even move. It merely closed that eye, trapping Lu Chen and his sword between its eyelids.
The inside of the eyelids was not soft flesh, but hard bone engraved with dense runes.
The runes gave off a ghostly green glow in the darkness, like countless snakes slithering along the blade and climbing upward, trying to burrow into his arm.
The silver armor flashed once, shattering the nearest few runes.
But more runes surged forward, packed thick as a rising tide.
The armor's light gradually dimmed beneath the runes' erosion, retreating from his chest to his shoulders, from his shoulders to his arms, from his arms to his wrists.
Lu Chen released his right hand and switched to gripping the sword with his left.
His left hand had no armor to protect it. The instant the runes