Chapter 159: Sixty Seconds Later

Kael couldn’t just stumble out blind and petrified on a guess. He needed information. A tool. A plan. Anything to reduce the odds of him walking into a wall and dying like an idiot. And the rune sounded like a possibility in these trying times. A little possibility, but one nevertheless.

“Inspect Darkness Rune”

He forced the words out, testing whether the system would obey him even without sight. The prompt answered immediately, like the Tower was happy to show him something terrifying.

***

-ᚦᛖᚩᛋᛏᚩᚱ – [Darkness Rune]-

-Manifestation of nothingness

-Temporary Devouring of matter and non-matter.

-Extreme Energy Drain.

-Unstable Reality

Lore:

Darkness is not the absence of light.

It is the absence of all things.

It is eternal, ancient beyond reckoning.

Darkness existed before the first light was ever kindled,

and it will remain long after the final light fades.

It surrounds us always. Everywhere.

We do not fail to see darkness.

It is darkness that refuses to be perceived.

***

“God damn…” Kael couldn’t help but utter those words in the dark.

The lore hit different when you couldn’t see. It felt less like poetry and more like a threat being whispered directly into his skull. Darkness refuses to be perceived.

’Yeah. No kidding.’

He couldn’t fully understand what each of those effect do. Well, besides one. The Extreme Energy Drain. That one was pretty damn obvious.

After all, for something to ’Devour matter and non matter’ even if temporary, that stuff must require monstrous energy to use.

He pictured it instinctively, something like a hole in reality, swallowing not just objects but concepts. And the Tower casually slapped “temporary” on it like that, making it safe. Temporary didn’t mean harmless. Temporary meant it only ruined you for a short time before it ruined you permanently.

But with the [Excise] rune… would the Extreme become less extreme?

And how does Darkness interact with Fire?

Or Heft? Can something that has no substance become something with substance?

The questions made Kael’s head spin, in a good way.

There were possibilities here, a lot of them, dangerous ones sure, but possibilities for growth, for power, for a dangerous type of magic.

But…

He sighed as he looked at the blue bar, barely at the quarter mark.

He couldn’t dare try anything here. The Extreme Energy Drain was a dangerous side effect.

Using the Darkness Rune would undoubtedly exhaust his energy completely, not to mention that even if it didn’t, he was as blind as a bat. He won’t even be able to see its effects.

And in a closed room with zombies outside and a collapsing zone, “exhausting energy completely” wasn’t a gamble. It was suicide with extra steps.

He sighed as he leaned against the door, “I gotta get out of here,” he looked at the map again, the circle was closing in hot, quite literally on the only path, and the momentum rune zombie was among the few dozen, close to a hundred Zombies packed behind the small door shielding him from their claws.

The dots were a nightmare cluster. A living wall of red on the other side of one piece of metal. And somewhere in that cluster was the one he needed, the Momentum rune carrier, a single moving threat with a treasure inside it, approaching like a slow executioner.

“There is only one way out,” Kael thought. “But for now, I need to figure something out first.”

He couldn’t just charge blindly. He needed to understand the petrification. If it hit mid-run, he’d die. If it hit mid-doorway, he’d die. If it hit while he was surrounded, he’d die quietly. Unable to even scream for help.

He began by twirling his index finger. And counting.

In the dark, it felt ridiculous, like some nervous habit. But it wasn’t.

This wasn’t just haphazard play or anything. He had a goal behind this ’strange’ action.

Once his count hit thirty, he felt his finger stiffening.

The stiffness crept in like frost. It started at the joint, then spread, turning motion into resistance. His finger didn’t freeze completely, but it slowed enough to make him clench his jaw.

And once his finger unstiffened, he began counting again.

Sixty this time.

Then, he began again.

Sixty again.

He continued doing that until he realized that the petrification happens every sixty seconds or so. And the petrification lasted for about ten seconds.

The pattern locked into place in his mind like a timer he could exploit. Not random. Not malicious whim. Just an interval. That meant he could plan. And planning was the only advantage left when your eyes were useless.

Now he had a timeframe to work with.

The map showed that the circle was about to hit the only passage out of this maze.

He had to move soon, blind and unable to see anything.

But his real-time map was a grand help right now.

If he couldn’t move using his eyes, he would move using the map.

He focused on the overlay like it was the only world that mattered, memorizing the corridor bends and door positions, counting turns and distances as if he could translate lines into steps. Left, right, straight, door, junction. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than panic.

Looking at the blue bar at the bottom, it just ticked past a third.

“Alright, it’s good enough, let’s get out of here,” he muttered as he faced the door and had his hand on the handle.

He waited a half second more, feeling the timing in his bones. Petrification had just faded. He had a window, less than a minute, before the next stiffening. That was his runway. He couldn’t waste it.

“Presence,” Kael muttered and pulled the door open for the Zombies to walk in.

The moment the latch gave, cold corridor air spilled into the room, carrying the stink of a hundred bodies. The sound hit him next, scraping feet, wet breaths, the faint clicking of teeth. He couldn’t see them, but he felt them. A pressure of approaching mass, a hunger leaning toward him.

Presence dulled him again, thinned him, made him less “real.”

And then the swarm walked in, hungry, reeling, wanting to feast and wanting to find the one that hid away.

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