Chapter 258: More Chaos!

Albedo stood at the edge of the clearing for a long time after the laughter faded.

The sound had felt wrong in his throat, too sharp in a space that punished excess. He let it die naturally and returned to stillness, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed.

The distortion at the center of the clearing did not react, and that confirmed to him that the gate wasn’t keyed to any emotion or intent. It responded to his force, such as mana pressure.

Which meant subtlety wasn’t just encouraged, it was required for him to succeed in his goal of escaping this place.

Albedo stepped back from the clearing and sat down on the bare earth, crossing one leg over the other. He closed his eyes again to catalog all he had learned.

The mana drain was omnipresent now, no longer fluctuating wildly. It had settled into a steady, irritating bleed, like water seeping through cracked stone.

Perfect Adaptation kept it from escalating, but even that wasn’t free. The technique tightened his internal circulation, increasing efficiency, but efficiency still consumed fuel.

Every mistake would cost him twice. He breathed in through his nose, slow and measured, and began reconstructing the forest in his mind.

The way it behaved. Where pressure increased. Where it eased. How shadows reacted. How sound bent. Where illusions flaked and where they held. The forest wasn’t random. It was reactive, yes, but within constraints.

Which meant it had rules that he could potentially exploit.

He opened his eyes and stood, leaving the clearing behind without another glance. If it was a lock, then it wasn’t meant to be opened yet.

Whoever built this hadn’t relied on a single failpoint. They’d layered redundancy. Which meant exits wouldn’t look like exits. They’d look like mistakes.

Albedo moved again, adjusting his pace to the baseline he’d discovered earlier. Not fast. Not slow. The exact rhythm the space tolerated. Each footstep placed with intent, heel then toe, weight distributed smoothly.

As he walked, he began to test the forest.

He brushed his fingers against certain trunks and ignored others. He stepped over roots that wanted him to trip and deliberately kicked pebbles that seemed inert. He altered his breathing when the pressure increased, slowed his heart when the drain sharpened.

Minutes passed quickly. Albedo noticed it first in the air. It felt marginally thinner, less resistant, as though the space were stretched just a fraction more in one direction than the others. Then in sound, his footsteps echoed forward more clearly than behind him.

Perspective bias, and Spacial Gradient.

Albedo stopped and crouched, pressing his palm flat against the ground. The soil was cool, granular, and real, not a projection.

This patch of forest existed more strongly than the rest.

He smiled faintly.

“There you are.”

He followed the gradient.

The trees grew sparser, their forms less warped, shadows more obedient to the implied light source. The mana drain did not vanish, but it softened, less aggressive, as though the system were uncertain how much pressure to apply.

Uncertainty was good. Uncertainty meant he was doing something it hadn’t been optimized to handle.

Then he smelled it. The scent of iron, old blood and decay layered with something much sharper.

He halted instantly. The forest ahead opened into a wide, uneven basin, sloping downward like a shallow crater.

The ground there was torn and churned, as though something massive had been dragged across it repeatedly. Broken stone jutted from the earth at odd angles. A few dead trees lay splintered, their trunks snapped rather than cut.

And scattered throughout the basin was bones, but not Human bones. There were too large too many joints as well.

Albedo stayed at the edge, scanning carefully. This was a collection point.

As he was thinking of all of this, something moved, beginning to unfold.

From behind one of the stone slabs, a shape rose, pulling itself upright with a wet, grinding sound. It was vaguely quadrupedal, but its limbs bent the wrong way, joints rotating far beyond anything natural.

Its hide looked like layered bark and sinew fused together, striated with dull gray veins that pulsed faintly.

No eyes. Just a ring of sensory nodules around its skull, twitching as it oriented toward him. Then another rose, and another.

Albedo counted automatically, seven of them.

They didn’t rush him. They spread out, slow and deliberate, positioning themselves to cut off retreat. Their movements were cautious, almost… restrained.

As if they, too, were conserving something.

“Constructs,” Albedo murmured, “Or bound fauna.”

Either way, they weren’t natural predators. They were tools, a

nd tools were meant to be expended.

His first instinct, burn them, collapse the basin, overwhelm the system, was immediately discarded. One spell would spike the drain and he couldn’t risk that.

He flexed his fingers instead.

“Fine,” he whispered. “We do this the hard way.”

He scanned the basin again, this time not for enemies, but for resources.

Broken stone. Jagged edges. Uneven ground. Fallen trunks with splintered ends. Loose debris. Height differences. Narrow channels where the earth had collapsed inward.

He backed up one step, just one, testing.

The pressure didn’t increase.

Good.

The monsters advanced towards him. The closest one lunged without warning, its front limbs extending unnaturally, claws slamming into the ground where he’d stood a moment earlier.

Albedo was already moving.

He dodged through.Sliding low beneath the creature’s overextended limb, he grabbed one of the jagged stone shards embedded in the ground and drove it upward with both hands, aiming not for mass, but for connection.

The shard punched through the creature’s chest cavity, striking something dense inside. The monster shrieked, not in pain, but in feedback, its body spasming violently as spatial distortion rippled along its frame.

Albedo didn’t linger. He twisted the shard sideways, tearing whatever internal lattice held it together, then rolled free as the creature collapsed, its limbs locking mid-motion before disintegrating into gray ash.

Mana expenditure was negligible while his physical exertion was within acceptable ranges.

The others reacted instantly. Two rushed him head-on while another circled wide, climbing the angled stone wall of the basin with disturbing ease.

Albedo sprinted up. He vaulted onto a fallen trunk, ran its length, and kicked off at the end, launching himself toward the stone wall just as one of the creatures leapt beneath him.

He grabbed a protruding rock, swung his body around, and slammed both boots into the creature’s skull-ring, snapping nodules and driving it downward. It hit the ground hard, limbs folding awkwardly.

Before it could recover, Albedo dropped onto its back, seized one of its rear limbs, and wrenched it sideways into a sharp stone spike.

The limb impaled cleanly.

The creature howled, body convulsing.

Albedo used the momentum to twist, levering the creature’s own weight against the spike until its internal structure tore itself apart.

Another ashfall.

He rolled free just as the circling monster struck, its mass slamming into the wall where he’d been a second earlier, stone cracking under the impact.

Three down.

Four left.

His breathing had quickened, but not dangerously. Heart rate elevated, but controlled. The mana drain ticked slightly higher, responding to sustained exertion, but still within tolerable limits.

The creatures adapted. They stopped charging. Instead, they began to herd him. Two advanced slowly from the front, forcing him backward, while the others positioned themselves near choke points, cutting off paths that would give him leverage.

Albedo smiled grimly.

“Bad move.”

He feigned retreat, backing toward a narrow channel between two collapsed stone slabs. The monsters followed, sensing advantage.

At the last second, he pivoted and ran straight up the slab, boots finding just enough traction on uneven stone. He leapt at the peak, grabbed a broken tree trunk wedged between the slabs, and pulled.

The trunk came loose with a grinding roar.

It fell behind the monsters. Blocking the channel completely. The creatures reacted instantly, but too late. They turned just as Albedo dropped behind them, landing hard, rolling, and coming up with a long, narrow stone spike clutched in both hands.

He charged, the first creature barely had time to pivot before the spike punched through its neck-ring, severing sensory nodes and collapsing its spatial cohesion. It disintegrated mid-step.

The second tried to counter, limbs flailing, but Albedo slid inside its reach, drove his shoulder into its core, and slammed its head repeatedly into the stone slab until cracks spiderwebbed across its skull.

On the third impact, something inside ruptured.

Only two left.

They actually retreated, backing away toward the far end of the basin, where the ground dipped sharply and the air shimmered faintly.

Albedo slowed, eyes narrowing.

That shimmer, it wasn’t the same as the gate’s distortion. This one felt thinner. Less guarded, sort of like a pressure release rather than a lock.

The monsters positioned themselves in front of it, bodies low, limbs spread, forming a living barrier.

Guardians, which meant he was close to finding the solution to all of these issues.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep