Absolute Cheater - Chapter 320

Chapter 320: Veyra Survival
Veyra Varnis had been born beneath a sky drenched in crimson light, a phenomenon her family believed to be an omen—either of greatness or disaster. Within the ancient halls of House Varnis, where portraits of long-dead Sovereigns adorned the walls and where every bloodline bore the markings of conquest and mastery over the Blood Laws, her birth had been celebrated with both awe and silent trepidation. She was the youngest daughter of Lord Varnius, and her blood was thought to be among the purest in generations.

From the moment she could walk, her life was not her own.

House Varnis, for all its grandeur and age, was a clan driven by necessity, fear, and legacy. Every child born into its fold was viewed less as a person and more as an investment—an heir to carry forward the might of their Law, or a sacrificial token to maintain the family’s grip on influence. Veyra, at first, had been promised everything. Tutors from across the continent were summoned to hone her mind. She learned the ancient blood sigils by the age of six and could recite every Varnis war campaign by seven. Her first bloodletting rite occurred at eight, when her fingertips were sliced open to extract pure lineage essence, tested for potential.

Veyra’s life took its most pivotal turn during the Age of Evocation—when every child in the realm, upon reaching ten years of age, was given a skill book to awaken their innate power. Like everyone else, she held her breath as she absorbed the book’s contents. On the surface, her awakening seemed ordinary. But what no one noticed—not the elders, nor even her own father—was the faint glimmer of a hidden fragment: a small, spectral egg embedded in the pages. An ancient seed of something long-forgotten… something waiting.

At the time, Veyra inherited what appeared to be a typical Blood-based skill, one aligned with her house’s legacy. Everyone was pleased—at least outwardly. Her training began in earnest, and for several years she progressed just as expected. But then, at the age of twenty, her cultivation began to falter. Despite her diligence, she could not ascend through the ranks. Her peers surpassed her. Even younger cousins who once looked up to her now outpaced her. Then came the illness.

No one could explain it. Her body began to deteriorate—slowly, painfully—as if something inside her soul was feeding on her life. She grew weaker by the day. Medicines failed. Healing techniques bounced off her like wind against stone. Some whispered that her very skill was cursed, that something tainted her awakening. Her once bright path dimmed into shadow. She lost her position, her pride, and in many ways, her will to continue.

For over a year, Veyra was bedridden. Her hair thinned. Her skin lost its color. Her family, unsure of what else to do, simply waited for her to fade.

And then… someone arrived.

She remembered the voice before she saw the face. Calm, quiet, but resonant like the toll of a distant bell.

“You’re Veyra… right? My name is Asher. I’m here to help you.”

She had heard those words before. So many healers, alchemists, and frauds had said the same—offering cures, false hopes, hollow dreams. She didn’t believe him. But something in his eyes cut through her doubt. Not warmth. Not pity. Just understanding.

And then—he did help her.

With a power she could not describe, Asher entered the core of her sickness and unraveled it, piece by piece. It wasn’t a disease eating her from within. It was that egg—the spectral seed from the Skill Book—awakening far too slowly, its growth twisting her cultivation until it nearly broke her. Asher severed the chains that bound it, and what emerged was not her old skill at all, but something new. Something entirely hers.

The Bloodroot of the Crimson Bloom.

Her skill had evolved, or perhaps had always been something else waiting to emerge. It fused blood and life, thorns and bloom, the violent and the beautiful. She could feel its hunger, yes—but also its strength. A gift born of struggle.

Veyra thought that was the turning point—that she would reclaim her place, begin anew. But even with her skill restored, the world did not welcome her with open arms. Her cousin challenged her for her rightful place and defeated her, brutally. The pain of that loss still lingered—more than physical. It reminded her of how fragile her standing was, how easily it could all be stripped away again.

And then came the final twist of fate.

Her father, the man who once shielded her from the cruelest judgments of their kin, told her the truth. That she was to leave. That he could no longer protect her within the Varnis household. That this path—the one leading away from power, pride, and position—was, perhaps, the only way she could become herself.

She hadn’t understood it then. His voice had been distant, tired, but resolute.

Now, she was alone in Shardrift Valley—a place even World Rankers avoided unless desperate. A cursed land of eternal dusk, haunted by predators that thrived on fear and blood. She had been left there to survive… or die.

And yet, for the first time in years, Veyra did not feel hollow.

Something had changed in her. Whether it was Asher’s intervention, the evolution of her skill, or simply the accumulated fire of all she had endured—she didn’t know. But she was no longer the girl who accepted her fate. No longer the patient in bed, waiting for death.

Now, she had roots.

Now, she had thorns.

And now… she would fight to live—not just survive, but live, fully and fiercely. Whatever lay ahead in the valley, in the world, in herself—she would face it with eyes open and vines ready to bloom in blood.

Now she lived in the dirt, alone—just as Valeris had told her she would.

The first hours had been strange. Too quiet at times, too loud at others. The eternal dusk of Shardrift Valley played tricks on her eyes and her sense of time. The sky never brightened, never dimmed—it simply hung there in a dull grey-orange haze like a wound that refused to heal. A strange twilight mist drifted between broken trees, and the air always carried a scent of damp rot and something ghastly.

Veyra didn’t cry. She didn’t panic. She didn’t even speak—not aloud. But her breath trembled more than once. She remembered Valeris’s last words before vanishing with Asher into the shadows: “Find shelter. Let the land know your roots before the predators find your scent. If you can’t hide, then fight. And if you can’t fight—trap.”

So she did what she was told.

A half mile north from where she had first arrived, Veyra found what seemed like an ancient ironwood tree, gnarled and towering with massive, ridged bark and a canopy like a skeletal umbrella. Its roots coiled into the earth like writhing serpents, and between two of them was a hollow crevice barely large enough for her to squeeze into. She checked it first for signs of other predators—old bones, claw marks, shed fur. Nothing recent. That would have to do.

And so, she claimed it as her den.

Before dusk fell further—or rather, deepened—she used her skill.

The Bloodroot of the Crimson Bloom responded to her will with eerie grace. From the slit across her palm where she let blood seep, a single vine burst from the soil, then another, and another, dark red and green with thorny bulbs and slitted petals that opened like eyes. She directed them with intent, weaving a mesh of vine and bloom across the mouth of her shelter like a net.

But it was not merely a blind wall of bramble.

The crimson blossoms nestled within the vines pulsed with something more—something alive. From each petal came a faint pheromonal mist, undetectable to humans but sharply irritating to the nasal senses of low-tier monsters. A deterrent. And more than that, the inner vines had a thin line of blood-scent running across them, so subtle that if anything brushed the weave too roughly—whether claw, paw, or foot—it would trigger a reflex detonation of thorns and constriction vines. Enough to disable or kill a low-rank beast, or at least give her time to flee.

Then, at the center of the net, she formed a single bloom unlike the others. Larger, with a black-red core and translucent petals.

A watcher.

It would stay open through the night, feeding slightly off her essence to maintain vision and awareness. Anything it saw, she would feel.

It wasn’t comfort. But it was safety.

She curled into the shallow den beneath the tree, knees to her chest, clutching the handle of the bone-blade she’d fashioned from the tusk of a beast Asher had gifted her before they arrived. A ceremonial relic more than a weapon, but it would hold if used right.

The valley sang around her.

Crickets that sounded like grinding stones. Low howls that echoed without origin. The distant, rhythmic pulsing of something massive walking somewhere far away—perhaps across another ridge, or perhaps through her dreams.

She didn’t sleep that night. Or the next. But on the third night, she finally did.

By then, her watcher bloom had already caught two creatures in its trap—a crawling, skinless fox-thing with too many eyes, and a feathered predator with a beak like a bone hook. She ate both. Carefully. Messily. She plucked their corpses from the vines and roasted them in a pitfire she’d buried under moss and used flint to spark.

Their taste made her gag at first—one too bitter, the other too metallic—but she forced it down. She had to. Her energy reserves were burning fast, and unlike in her old life, there were no servants here, no nutrient pills, no elixirs to keep her strong. Just raw instinct and what she could kill.

And yet, she survived.