Chapter 158: Submerged In Darkness

Kael’s confusion was at its peak, he couldn’t act, move or do anything but wait.

It wasn’t the kind of confusion that came from not understanding a spell or a system window. This was worse, this was sensory betrayal.

The room existed, he knew it existed, he could feel the cold of the metal door behind his shoulders and the damp air on his skin, yet his eyes gave him nothing but darkness. No edges. No light. No depth. Just void, like someone had poured ink directly into his skull.

His fingers tightened around the basilisk eye without thinking, then he forced himself to loosen them. Crushing it would be idiotic. Panicking would be idiotic. And yet his body wanted to do both. Not while he was still going through the awakening. He had to simply suck it up, and live with it. Long enough until the words Trial Complete showed up.

He watched the map intently, as it was one of the only two things he could see right now, and then looked at his Internal Energy bar.

The map was the only “world” left to him, colored dots and lines floating in nothingness. It felt almost insulting that the Tower could take his sight and still show him a clean little interface like a pity prize. The blue bar under it was worse. It wasn’t just information. It was a countdown to whether he lived.

It began rising, slow, painfully so.

Not the comforting kind of recovery either. More like watching water drip into a cracked cup while a fire crawled toward you. One tick at a time. One miserable sliver.

It would take it two hours at this rate to max out, Kael didn’t have two hours, he barely had one. And even that One wasn’t good enough, the red circle would close the only path he had left out of this maze before the hour is done, and will consume him inside this room once it ticked its last seconds.

He didn’t need to see the circle to feel it. He imagined the city outside shrinking, flames eating streets and tunnels like a slow jaw closing.

The Ifrit’s territory wasn’t just danger, it was inevitability. Walls didn’t matter. Doors didn’t matter. Hiding didn’t matter. If the red zone reached him, he’d cook in place like the basilisk did, only with less dignity and far more heat.

“I’ll have to move, even blinded…” he cursed inwardly as he realized he didn’t have a choice.

The words in his head tasted bitter. Blind meant slower. Blind meant tripping. Blind meant his own gear turning into a hazard. But “not moving” meant dying in a room with a door that was already being tested by zombies like a drum.

Kael tried to stand up, as it felt like he needed to start recognizing his surrounding fast and familiarize himself with blindness, until a new notification hit the part between his mind and sight.

The message didn’t appear on the wall. It appeared in him, like an overlay pasted onto the darkness.

[You’re currently suffering from Minor Petrification]

Movement Speed slowed by 60%

“Fuck, how is this is minor!” Kael slurred his own words.

The insult of “minor” made his teeth grind. Sixty percent wasn’t minor. Sixty percent was the difference between slipping away and getting grabbed.

Sixty percent was the difference between reaching a door before the circle closed and getting trapped behind it. The Tower loved minimizing pain with labels.

It wasn’t even his body, it was everything, even breathing felt slow, painfully slow.

His chest rose like it was pushing through mud. Air dragged into his lungs reluctantly, like the world had decided he didn’t deserve oxygen anymore. His tongue felt thick in his mouth. His fingers, still on the door frame, stiffened as if joints were being packed with sand. Even swallowing felt delayed, like his throat had to “load” the action.

Kael began panicking, and his heartbeat began rising up, high, fast, powerful, fully ignoring the petrification ’curse’ and suddenly, like always, like every time, whenever it hit an invisible ceiling, the rapid heartthrobs suddenly slowed and calmed down.

The spike came first, hot, violent, immediate. Then the throttle kicked in like some internal governor.

His heart didn’t keep racing. It clicked into a steadier rhythm, the way a machine stabilized after threatening to rip itself apart.

That strange effect, that involuntary calm after the peak, washed a thin layer of control back over his thoughts.

This brought Kael’s mind back to the present and chased away the panic.

He swallowed once, forcing himself to focus on what he could control. Breath. Timing. The map. The bar. The fact that the door behind him was still intact. The fact that he wasn’t being torn apart yet.

He took a deep breath and realized that the petrification was gone.

It didn’t vanish dramatically. It simply… let go. Like a hand unclenching from his organs. His limbs loosened, the sluggishness lifting enough that he could feel his own weight again.

It wasn’t meant to be permanent, but occasional.

“Good,” he said as he stood up, making sure his hands were on the door behind him.

He didn’t trust his balance in the dark, so he anchored himself with touch. Palm flat on cold metal. Gloved fingers finding the seam of the door frame. He moved like a man in smoke, except there was no smoke, only blindness and the constant knowledge that zombies were stacked outside like furniture.

The small blue internal energy bar was moving. He needed that, if he wanted to leave, it was imperative that it was at least half full, no, even a third full would be enough.

He checked it again, forcing his eyes, useless for the room, to stay on the overlay. The bar crawled up by another tiny notch. Not generous. Not kind. Just barely functional. Like the Tower wanted him alive, but only if he bled for it.

So, he cannot waste any energy. Still, he had something to do before the timer closed in on his throat.

To check the Epic Rune he obtained earlier.

The Darkness Rune

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