Chapter 299: Forged In Suppression

Another wave surged from deeper within the crystal plains. The swarm density was absurd, the Labyrinth truly was dominated by this species, the air itself seeming to belong to them. They reformed in massive spirals, attempting to overwhelm through sheer volume. Coordination patterns shifted, wing vibrations altering frequency as they adapted.

Bruce expanded his awareness further.

’Heal.’

A cooling sensation threaded through his mind, stabilizing the strain building behind his eyes.

[You’ve healed.] [Your mental strength has increased.]

Suppressing Frost Fang Monkeys had already pushed him. But these were S-Ranked targets in massive numbers, and each required finer control, greater precision, more mental allocation. The Authority didn’t cost mana, but it demanded something else entirely. Will. Focus. Endurance.

The pressure behind his eyes intensified again, sharp and pulsing. His range trembled faintly, as if testing its own limits.

But instead of irritation, excitement flared.

His lips curved. “This is perfect.”

Another pulse of Vitality Sovereign. Another airborne collapse. Another rain of bodies.

Heal. Heal. Heal.

His consciousness expanded and sharpened with every cycle. The more he strained it, the more it responded, like steel tempered by repeated hammer strikes. Each wave pressed him closer to the threshold of overload, and each time he stabilized through Heal, his mental lattice grew thicker. Denser. Layered.

The swarm kept coming. And he kept suppressing.

More and more S-Ranked signatures flickered weakly and fell from the sky. The crystalline terrain below was carpeted in inert beetle bodies now, their shard-like shells reflecting fractured light in every direction. It was like running across a field of shattered stars.

His head throbbed. His vision sharpened strangely at the edges.

Heal.

Stabilized. Expanded.

His perception deepened. He could feel the swarm’s coordination patterns now, the subtle modulation of wing frequency that functioned as communication, the synchronized pulses of vitality that rose and fell like shared breath. He sensed the ripple of fear spreading among them as thousands of their kind collapsed mid-flight without understanding why.

Bruce’s breathing remained steady.

He wasn’t using mana. Authority required none. Only will. Only mental fortitude. And the more he pushed, the stronger that fortitude became. He could feel it distinctly now, his consciousness thickening, reinforcing, forming layered structures around his core. If someone attempted a soul-based intrusion at this moment, they would not find an unguarded mind.

They would meet resistance.

He laughed lightly under his breath. “This Labyrinth is generous.”

Ahead, Duke shook his head faintly, though the corner of his mouth betrayed amusement. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

Bruce didn’t deny it. “Multitarget suppression. Continuous pressure. Immediate recovery. There’s no safer environment to temper mental strength.”

Isolde glanced at him sidelong, frost light reflecting in her eyes. “You’re using this siege as cultivation.”

“Efficient cultivation,” he corrected.

Another massive wave surged toward him, the air screaming as tens of thousands of crystal-edged wings sliced forward.

And fell.

Crushed mid-flight as his Authority pressed their vitality to its last flicker.

The sky began to clear. Not because the swarm had ended, but because the ground could no longer support more fallen bodies.

Bruce continued forward without pause, stepping over fields of weakened S-Ranked beasts. Each step crunched faintly against crystal and chitin. His mind burned now, truly burned, but beneath the pain was growth.

Heal. Heal. Heal.

Each pulse restructured him. His range expanded again. He felt more stable. More expansive. More dangerous.

The Labyrinth stretched endlessly ahead, crystalline plains fading into distant frost horizons. Bruce pressed forward, Authority rolling outward in continuous waves, and the sheer scale of suppression drained his mental strength to the brink again and again, but he kept healing, kept pushing, kept growing.

Because this relentless cycle of strain and recovery, this forging of consciousness under pressure, was the most direct path to strengthening his mental fortitude, sharpening his awareness, and hardening his soul against intrusion.

Vitality Sovereign remained active. Constant. Unrelenting, invisible dominance rippling outward from him in a vast sphere as he tore through the Everwhite Abyss behind Isolde and Duke.

The first shift in pressure came from below.

The frozen ground ahead trembled. Then it exploded.

Shardback Beetles.

Dog-sized bodies erupted upward in violent bursts of ice and shattered stone, their carapaces jagged and layered in translucent crystalline plates that reflected the pale sky like broken mirrors. Each movement scraped the air with a metallic hiss as razor-edged shards along their backs ground against one another. They didn’t screech. They didn’t roar. They simply emerged, in hundreds.

Their strategy was environmental destruction. The ground destabilized wherever they burrowed. Ice shelves cracked and fractured. Sinkholes opened beneath running beasts. And then they surged toward Bruce in a tide of slicing carapaces.

He didn’t slow.

Vitality Sovereign pressed outward.

The beetles mid-charge stuttered, segmented legs twitching violently as vitality drained from their musculature. The crystalline sheen of their shells dulled. Momentum died. They collapsed in place, limbs splayed, bodies shriveling as if the cold had finally claimed them.

But even dying, they were dangerous.

Their shells fractured.

And burst.

Thousands of ice shards exploded outward in a spinning cloud of laceration, a death-rattle built into their biology, turning every fallen beetle into a fragmentation grenade.

Duke glanced back. “Careful!”

Bruce didn’t need the warning. He was already adjusting, angling his Authority with finer precision, targeting structural integrity of their vitality rather than total collapse. The next wave fell, but this time their shells didn’t shatter violently. They simply crumbled inward, like brittle statues losing support from within.

Quiet. Controlled. Harmless.

Bruce exhaled slowly.

“That’s new,” Duke muttered faintly ahead.

Bruce smirked. “Control.”

Not just suppression anymore. But calibrated suppression, choosing not only how much vitality to drain, but which systems to drain it from. Musculature first, so they couldn’t move. Structural integrity preserved, so they didn’t explode. It was a finer instrument than brute force, and he’d learned to play it in real time.

The beetle fields gave way to wide, open snow plains.

And there they saw them.

Hollowborn Elk.

They stood tall and eerily silent against the frozen horizon. Massive bodies, translucent frost-blue skin stretched thin over visible skeletal frames, rib structures, marrow channels glowing faintly with pale light, all of it on display like anatomical diagrams given breath. Their antlers branched outward like trees made of frozen lightning.

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