Chapter 163: Into the Fray

Kael kept running, fingers sliding along the wall while his boots hammered the floor beneath him. The concrete was rough and damp, flaking in places where water had crept in and chewed at it for years, and the cold grit scraped under his nails every time his hand slipped and he had to re-find the edge. He couldn’t see a damn thing, so touch became his eyes, wall on the right, open space on the left, and the occasional jut of pipe or broken panel that threatened to snag his sleeve and make him eat the floor.

His lungs burned and his legs felt like they were full of sand, but he forced himself to keep moving anyway. Every breath tasted like stale metal and old smoke. The air down here wasn’t meant for sprinting; it was meant for hiding and rotting.

His chest heaved, ribs protesting, and his boots slapped hard enough that in any normal situation he would’ve been screaming at himself to be quieter. But quiet was already dead. Quiet died the moment he dropped Presence and became a scent again.

The map in his mind was the only thing guiding him now. He clung to it like a lifeline, one straight corridor. A sharp turn to the left. Then another stretch before the exit of the maze.

He pictured it as lines rather than space, like one of those ugly engineering diagrams where everything makes sense until you’re the one inside it. Left turn. Don’t miss it. Miss it and you’re running into a furnace.

Behind him the zombies had fully awakened. Their howls filled the corridor and their footsteps were no longer the sluggish shuffles they had before.

Now they were running. The sound was wrong, too eager, too coordinated for creatures with brains turned to mush. It was a stampede of feet that didn’t care about joints or pain, just momentum and hunger.

Dozens of red dots on the map surged forward like a wave. Not scattered. Not hesitant. A mass. Like the floor itself had decided to chase him.

His internal energy bar dipped further.

5%.

The number sat there like a bad joke. Five percent wasn’t “almost empty.” Five percent was already empty with the Tower’s habit of charging interest when you needed something most. Kael clenched his jaw hard enough that his teeth ached and kept moving. He couldn’t afford to think about what five percent meant in seconds. If he started counting that, he’d start counting his own death.

The heat ahead was becoming more noticeable with every step. At first it felt like warm air brushing against his face, like someone had cracked open an oven door far away. But it quickly turned into something harsher. The warmth stopped being a hint and became pressure, thickening until it felt like he was breathing through cloth held over a flame.

The closer he got, the more the heat thickened, pressing against his skin like he was walking toward an open furnace. It crept under his collar and into the seams of his clothes, drying sweat before it could even cool him. His throat tightened; each inhale came hotter than the last, and the air started to taste… wrong. Not smoke exactly. Something scorched and dry, like stone baking.

“That must be the edge…” he muttered.

The words came out thin, more to keep his brain anchored than to announce anything. Even without sight he could feel it now. The Ifrit’s red circle was close enough that the air itself felt wrong, like the world on the other side was a different climate that didn’t allow lungs. Another few steps and he would touch it, and he didn’t need a system window to tell him what touching it meant.

He pushed forward anyway. Because behind him was teeth. Ahead was heat. And the only difference between those two options was that one of them might still have a gap to slip through.

Then his body locked.

The petrification hit again.

It was instant and cruel, no warning, no easing into it. One second his foot was leaving the ground, the next his entire frame seized like someone had thrown a switch inside his bones. Kael froze mid-stride with one hand still pressed against the wall and one foot lifted from the ground, trapped in the worst possible pose: half-running, half-falling, like a statue designed to be mocked.

“Not now…Shit,” he cursed under his breath.

The words came out slow, dragged through stiff lips. He couldn’t even turn his head. Couldn’t even brace properly. His fingers stayed welded to the wall, his lifted boot trembling in place because the motion was trapped halfway through his muscles.

He didn’t need the map to know what was happening behind him. The pounding footsteps were already close. The zombies had seen him run this way and now they were following the only living thing in the maze. Their breath came in wet, animal huffs, and he could hear the scrape of nails on concrete as they followed the corridor, closing distance.

Kael swallowed slowly and forced himself to think. Panic would be easy. Panic would also be pointless.

If they reached him while he was frozen, the result would be obvious.

Hands would grab.

Teeth would find skin.

And he’d get to discover how fast a “minor” status effect turns into a major corpse.

So he used the only thing he could.

“Presence…”

The rune activated again, and the energy bar dipped sharply the moment it did. It wasn’t the gentle drain from before. It was like yanking power out of a dead battery, violent, desperate, inefficient. The strain was worse than before because it wasn’t just hiding him from one set of senses; it was trying to convince an entire mob, already primed, already locked onto his last known position, that he’d simply stopped existing.

Too many creatures had already locked onto him.

3%.

The number hit like a punch. Three percent. That wasn’t a resource. That was a sneeze away from collapse.

The first zombie slammed into him seconds later.

Its shoulder crashed into his side as it stumbled forward, confused by the sudden disappearance of its prey. The hit jolted through Kael’s ribs, pain flaring bright even through the sluggish petrification, and if he’d been able to move properly he would’ve staggered. Instead he just absorbed it, rigid, unable to even flinch.

Another one bumped into his back, then another. The impacts stacked, a crowd piling into the space where they knew the living thing should be. They didn’t hit him because they saw him; they hit him because they were too packed and too stupid to stop.

Rotten hands scraped against his jacket and claws brushed across his gauntlet. Fingers snagged fabric. Nails dragged along metal with that awful squeal. One hand actually slid down his forearm and squeezed, hard enough that if he’d been bare-skinned it would’ve left bruises.

None of them understood where he had gone.

Their heads jerked, noses working, jaws snapping at air. They sniffed the corridor, the wall, each other. They pressed forward, then hesitated, then pressed again, like a tide that kept forgetting what it was chasing. Presence didn’t make him “safe.” It made him uncertain, and uncertainty was still terrifying when you were surrounded by bodies close enough to touch.

But they were close.

Too close.

Kael could feel their heat, wrong, stale heat that didn’t belong in living flesh, pressing into him from all sides. He could feel breath hitting his cheek. He could smell mouths opening and closing near his shoulder. And he couldn’t move, couldn’t swat, couldn’t shove them away while petrification held him in place like a cruel joke.

Kael watched his energy drop as the rune struggled to maintain the concealment.

1%.

The bar was almost gone. He could feel it, too, the way his body started to hollow out, that slippery exhaustion spreading through his limbs, the kind that made your joints feel like they were unbolting. If Presence failed now, he wouldn’t just be seen. He wouldn’t even be able to run.

Ten seconds had never felt longer in his life.

Every heartbeat became a count. Every scrape of a zombie’s hand against his gear became a possible bite. Every bump was a reminder that the only thing between him and being torn apart was a single percent of energy and the Tower’s willingness to let his “existence” stay blurred a fraction longer.

And finally the timer on his petrification hit zero.

He didn’t hesitate to force himself forward, ripping himself from all that was clasping and grasping him.

“Remove Presence!”

Risky, deadly, mortal even. To remove it this close. But he did so anyway, because if he didn’t, it would undo itself at 0% and he would instantly drop.

Thankfully, his forced separation made a few zombies that gripped too hard fall down, clustering forward, slowing down the ones behind it.

Precious seconds earned.

Those were the seconds he needed.

The red circle was a few inches away from covering the corridor he needed to turn to. So he did what any sane man would do in his case.

Held both hands together in front of him, and jumped into the fire.

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