Phantom void carnotaur 1.., p.1
Phantom: Void Carnotaur 1 : A Monster Evolution LitRPG, page 1
Phantom
Void Carnotaur 1
Cypher
Copyright © 2026 Cypher
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Cypher
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Afterword
Books By This Author
Chapter One
Darkness.
Absolute. Heavy. Solid.
I exist.
The thought is sudden. Violent. One moment, there is nothing. The void. The next, there is Me.
And Me is in pain.
I try to stretch. I cannot. My limbs are folded tight against my chest. My knees press into my ribs. My tail is wrapped around my neck like a wet rope. The space is too small.
Claustrophobia strikes instantly. A primal, electric shock.
I thrash. My head hits a wall. My elbow hits a wall. My foot hits a wall.
The world is a circle. A hard, unyielding circle. It presses in on all sides. Smooth. Slick. Cold.
I am trapped.
Panic rises. It bubbles in my chest, hot and sharp. I open my mouth to scream, to roar, to make any sound that proves I am here.
Fluid rushes in.
Thick. Viscous. Tasting of salt and old iron. It chokes me. I gag, my throat convulsing. I swallow the sludge, but there is nowhere for it to go. My stomach is full. My lungs are empty.
No. Not empty. Burning.
A fire starts in the center of my chest. It spreads outward, licking at my muscles, making my nerves twitch.
Need air.
The instinct is louder than the thought. It screams at me. Breathe. Breathe now.
I push against the walls. My legs kick out. Weak. Pathetic. The muscles are soft, unused. They tremble with the effort. The wall does not move. It does not yield. It mocks me.
The fluid swirls around my eyes. It stings.
Then, the darkness breaks.
Not with light from outside. But light from within.
A flash. Blue. Sharp. It sears my retinas, blinding even in the pitch black.
[System Initialization...]
[Error: Temporal Displacement Detected.]
[Recalibrating...]
The symbols float in the fluid. I do not know what they mean. I do not know the words System or User. But I understand the intent.
Something is watching. Something is measuring.
The blue fades, replaced by a pulsing, angry red.
[Status: Asphyxiation]
[HP: 9/10]
The number drops.
[HP: 8/10]
Pain spikes. My vision tunnels. The red text pulses in time with the frantic hammering of the organ in my chest.
Die.
The word is not mine. It comes from the red light. The Red Haze. It tells me what is happening. The circle is a coffin. The fluid is a shroud.
I am dying before I have lived.
No.
Rage.
It surges up, overriding the panic. I will not end here. I will not be the meat that never moved.
I thrash again. Harder. My claws scrape against the smooth interior. They are soft, useless things. They slide off the calcium barrier without leaving a scratch.
[HP: 7/10]
The burning in my lungs turns to agony. My head swims. The darkness at the edges of my vision grows thicker, heavier. The fluid tastes stale. Recycled. Poison.
I have consumed everything this world has to offer. Now it consumes me.
I twist my neck. A spasm of defiance.
My nose strikes the wall.
Clack.
A sound. A vibration. It travels through my skull, rattling my teeth.
Pain. Sharp and focused. Right at the tip of my snout.
I pause. The thrashing stops. I focus on the pain. It is a point. A single, hard point on the end of my face.
I push my face against the wall again. I feel it. A ridge. A spike. Harder than bone. Harder than the rest of me.
The Blue Box returns. It hovers over the point of impact.
[Skill Identified: Egg Tooth]
[Function: Breach]
Breach.
Break. Open. Escape.
The System teaches me. It connects the sensation to the action.
I pull my head back. The fluid resists, thick and heavy like syrup. I snap my neck forward.
Clack.
The sound is louder this time. The vibration rings in my ears.
[Damage Dealt: 1]
A number floats from the wall. A tiny, insignificant chip of white flakes off and drifts in the sludge.
It is not enough.
[HP: 6/10]
The fire in my chest is consuming me. My limbs feel heavy, leaden. The darkness wants to pull me down. It promises sleep. It promises an end to the burning.
Sleep is death.
I reject it.
I strike again.
Clack.
And again.
Clack.
My neck muscles scream. They are not ready for this. They are jelly. But the hunger for air drives them. The fear of the Red Haze whips them into motion.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Rhythm. I find a rhythm.
Strike. Recoil. Strike. Recoil.
The water is murky with debris now. Tiny shards of my prison floating around me.
[HP: 5/10]
Halfway to the end. The System warns me. The red pulse is faster now. Urgent.
Warning. Critical Oxygen Levels.
I know. I know!
I put everything into the next blow. I coil my neck, pressing my spine against the back of the shell to brace myself. I scream a silent roar into the fluid, bubbles escaping my mouth, wasting the last precious dregs of air.
I slam the Hard-Point forward.
CRACK.
A different sound. Not a clack. A snap.
A spiderweb of white lines appears on the wall in front of me. I can feel the texture change with my nose. It is no longer smooth. It is jagged. Broken.
Victory.
But the wall still holds. It is cracked, not open.
I am dizzy. The world spins. The Red Haze is everywhere now, blinding me.
[HP: 4/10]
My strength is fading. The burst of rage is burning out, leaving only cold exhaustion.
I nudge the crack. It gives slightly.
I need to push. Not strike. Push.
I jam the Hard-Point into the center of the fracture. I drive my legs against the back of the shell. My claws tear at the soft lining of the egg, finding purchase in the membrane.
I shove.
My spine bows. My knees pop. The pressure in my head is immense.
Give. Way.
The shell groans. A high-pitched whine of stressed calcium.
[HP: 3/10]
My vision is going black. The red text is the only thing left.
Push.
I scream internally. I pour every ounce of the Biomass I possess into this single movement.
CRUNCH.
My head flies forward. The wall shatters.
Shards of shell explode outward.
The fluid drains away instantly, rushing out into the unknown.
I fall.
Gravity grabs me. It is rude. Violent.
One moment, I am suspended in the thick, comforting sludge. The next, the support vanishes. The world flips.
I tumble out of the shattered calcium prison.
Splat.
I hit the ground. It is hard. Unyielding. Not like the shell. This is stone. Wet, slick, jagged stone.
My limbs tangle. I slide through a puddle of my own birth-fluid. It is cooling rapidly, turning from a warm embrace into a freezing sheet of slime.
Cold.
It hits me like a physical blow. A hammer made of ice. It bites into my wet skin. It seeps into my muscles.
I shiver.
The spasm starts at the base of my neck and ripples down my spine. My tail twitches uncontrollably. My jaw chatters. Click-click-click.
I gasp.
Air rushes in.
It is not the thick, recycled liquid I am used to. It is thin. Dry. Sharp.
It burns my throat. My lungs inflate with a wet crack. They s tretch. They scream.
I cough. A convulsive retch that bends my spine. Thick mucus splatters onto the gray stone in front of my snout.
I suck in another breath. Desperate. Greedy.
The taste hits my tongue.
Rot.
Heavy. Sweet. Cloying. The smell of things that were once alive and are now turning into black mush. Wet leaves. Fungi. Decaying meat.
Ozone.
Sharp. Metallic. Spicy. It tastes like the air before a lightning strike, but constant. It fizzes on my tongue. It makes the scales on my neck itch.
I lay there. Panting. Shivering. A wet heap of scales and bones.
[HP: 3/10]
The red text hovers in the air, drifting like smoke. It is faint. The urgency is gone, replaced by a dull warning.
I am alive. But I am weak.
I try to see.
I open my eyelids. They are heavy, gummed shut with slime. I force them apart.
Blurry. Gray. Useless.
Shapes bleed into each other. Shadows merge with stone. I cannot tell where the ground ends and the air begins. I am blind to this world.
Panic spikes. A cold needle in my gut. If I cannot see, I cannot fight. If I cannot fight, I am meat.
Look. Look harder.
I strain. I push my senses outward.
Pressure builds in my snout. Right between my eyes and my nostrils. A throbbing heat. Two pits, dormant until now, flare to life.
Click.
The world shifts.
The gray fog vanishes. The blur sharpens.
Color is gone. There is no green, no brown, no gray. There is only Heat.
The world rebuilds itself in wireframes of temperature.
The ground is a deep, abyssal blue. Cold. Dead. It sucks the warmth from my belly.
The air is a swirling mist of cyan and faint purple. Currents of wind move like slow rivers.
And the smells... the smells have shapes now. The Rot is a low-hanging fog of slightly warmer air rising from the cracks in the stone. The Ozone is a crackling static that doesn't register as heat, but as interference.
I look at myself.
White.
I am glowing. A beacon of pure, radiant white in a world of blue shadow. My blood pumps hot beneath my skin. My heart is a frantic star in my chest.
I am loud. I am visible.
Danger.
The instinct is immediate. In this cold world, heat is life. And I am showing everyone exactly where the life is.
I need to move. I need to hide.
I plant my front claws against the stone. They are small. Useless little hooks. My arms are short, withered things compared to the power I feel coiled in my legs.
I push.
My back legs scramble.
Slip.
The slime is treacherous. My feet slide out from under me. My chin slams into the rock.
Thud.
[HP: 2/10]
Pain flares in my jaw. A dull throb.
[Physical Trauma Detected.]
[Durability Check: Failed.]
The Blue Box mocks me. It tells me what I already know. I am soft. I am breakable.
I growl. A low, wet gurgle in my throat.
I will not die here. Not in the mud. Not like a worm.
I try again.
I splay my toes. The talons are soft, not yet hardened to black iron, but they can grip. I dig them into the moss growing on the stone. I feel the fibers tear.
I push.
My knees tremble. They are jelly. Tubes of water held together by hope. They shake violently as I lift my weight.
Up. Up.
My tail drags behind me. Heavy. A counterweight I do not know how to use yet. It pulls me backward.
I sway.
The world spins. The wireframe lines of the ravine walls loom over me. They are jagged teeth of ice-blue rock, stretching up into the nothingness above.
I lock my knees.
I stand.
I am unsteady. I wobble like a leaf in the wind. But I am off my belly.
[New Posture: Bipedal]
[Dexterity +1]
The reward is small. A drop of water in a drought. But it feels good. A tiny hit of pleasure in the back of my brain.
Then, the headache starts.
It is not a pain of the body. It is deeper. It is inside the skull, weaving through the gray matter.
Thrummmm.
A sound.
No, not a sound. A vibration.
It comes from everywhere. The air. The stone. The sky.
It pulses.
Thrummmm.
Thrummmm.
It matches the beat of my heart. It syncs with my blood.
My head feels like it is splitting open. I shake it, trying to dislodge the noise. It does not stop. It gets louder.
Blue light bleeds into my thermal vision. Not heat. Something else.
It pulses in time with the headache.
Throb. Flash. Throb. Flash.
The System.
I do not know how I know this. The knowledge is just there. Implanted.
The Blue Pulse is the heartbeat of this place.
I squeeze my eyes shut. It doesn't help. The Blue Pulse is not seen with eyes. It is felt.
[System Synchronization: 12%]
[Loading Local Maps...]
[Error: No Data.]
[Loading Bestiary...]
[Error: No Data.]
[Initializing Interface...]
The text scrolls across my mind, overlaid on the darkness of my eyelids. It is fast. Too fast.
I open my eyes again. The wireframe world returns.
I take a step.
My foot lands heavy. Slap.
The vibration travels up my leg.
I take another.
Slap.
Walking is hard. My center of gravity is wrong. My head is too big. My tail is too heavy. I have to lean forward, using my neck to balance the weight of my hips.
I am a seesaw of meat and bone.
I look around.
The ravine is narrow here. A scar in the earth. The walls are high, blocking out the sky.
To my left, a cluster of heat signatures.
I freeze.
Small. Oval. Stationary.
Eggs.
They glow a dull, fading orange. Cooler than me. Much cooler.
I stumble toward them. Curiosity? No. Instinct.
I reach the nearest one. It is cracked. A jagged hole in the side.
I peer inside with my thermal pits.
Blue.
Cold.
Empty.
The fluid is gone. Dried up.
I look at the next one.
Cracked. Empty. Cold.
And the next.
Panic rises again. Not for myself this time. For the silence.
I am the only white-hot thing here.
I check the ground.
Tracks.
Heat lingers. Even after the maker is gone, the heat remains for a time. Ghost footprints.
I see them.
Small, three-toed prints. Glowing a faint, dying red. They lead away. Down the ravine. Into the mist.
They left.
My siblings. They hatched. They walked. They left.
Why am I here?
I look at my own shell. The one I just destroyed.
It is smaller than the others. The curve is tighter. The calcium was thinner.
Runt.
The word floats up from the instinct-brain.
I was last. I am smallest.
I am alone.
The realization is heavy. Heavier than gravity.
The headache spikes. The Blue Pulse screams.
[Quest Generated: Survive the Nursery]
[Objective: Survive.]
[Reward: Evolution Progress.]
Simple. Brutal.
I like it.
I turn away from the empty shells. They are the past. Dead calcium.
I look down the ravine. Into the dark. Into the swirling cyan mist where the ghost-tracks fade.
The mist swirls. Cyan. Toxic.
It calls to me.
But my legs refuse.
They lock. They tremble. The strength I found a moment ago evaporates like water on hot stone.
A cramp seizes my stomach. It twists. A wet towel being rung out by invisible hands.
Pain.
Sharp. Hollow.
[Status: Starvation]
The Red Haze returns. It pulses at the corners of my vision. Urgent. Demanding.
Feed.
The command overrides the brain. It hot-wires the muscles.
I turn away from the mist. Away from the ghost-tracks of my siblings. They are gone. They are fast. I am slow. I cannot hunt them.
I look back at the nursery.
Broken shells. Jagged white shards scattered on the blue-black stone.
I stumble toward the nearest fragment. I sniff it.
Chalk. Dust. Nothing.
