We had reached the midpoint—the very heart of the Pass.
"Dead pixels" kept flashing across my vision, and the drone in my ears grew so dense it felt almost tangible. Every step was an absolute ordeal, not just because of the steep climb, but because the mana in the air was actively resisting our movement.
"Quiet," Zeno mouthed, pointing to a stretch of fine gravel ahead. "On that garbage, we'll sound like a herd of monsters."
I stopped, eyeing the scattered stones.
My brain, spurred on by the "Will to Live", instinctively began analyzing the situation. Lecture notes on acoustics flashed through my mind. Sound is a mechanical wave. And any wave can be canceled out.
"Zeno, hold up," I whispered, focusing. "I think I can try something. If I calculate the impulse of my foot striking the ground..."
I tried to visualize the process. When the sole touches the gravel, it generates a wave of a specific frequency and amplitude. If, within that same microscopic window of time, I generate a magical impulse of the exact same amplitude but in antiphase—they should cancel each other out. I'd done it once before; I figured it would work.
Mathematically, it was flawless.
I concentrated on my foot, trying to feel out the density of the stones ahead. "Will to Live" obligingly highlighted the vectors, calculating the required downward force.
I took a step.
Crunch.
The sound was brief, but in the dead silence of the Pass, it rang out like a gunshot. I cursed inwardly. The surrounding mana was so unstable that my "anti-impulse" was completely smeared across space. No resonance occurred—instead, I caught a double dose of vibration that flared as a sharp pain in my knee.
"You absolute genius," Zeno smirked without malice, catching me by the elbow. "Beautifully conceived, but out here, your logic only works half the time."
I felt a cool breeze swirl around my feet. Zeno had conjured a thin cushion of compressed wind beneath our soles.
"My magic is an instinct, Iron," he said quietly, guiding me across the treacherous patch. "As long as your control is weak and your mana is unstable, you won't be able to pin your calculations to this world. Learn not just to calculate, but to breathe in time with this madness."
Meanwhile...
Richter brought up the rear of the main column, keeping his distance.
He stopped beside an inconspicuous pile of rocks. The fog here was particularly dense, and the scent... had changed. Intermingled with the ozone and rot was the distinct, metallic tang of fresh blood.
Richter signaled to two guardsmen, who raised their shields and stepped toward the thick brush. A second later, one of them recoiled, fighting back a gag.
"Lord Richter... It's our men. From the advance scout detachment."
Richter approached. Two bodies lay at the base of the boulders. The soft tissue had been gnawed away, the armor ripped open by talons like tin cans. Small scavengers, resembling mangy foxes with too many joints, scattered with sharp squeals at his approach.
Richter crouched, ignoring the stench. He carefully nudged the torn cloak of one of the dead men with the tip of his blade.
"Look closely," he said without turning around. "Monsters were here, but they didn't cause the deaths."
He pointed to the soldier's neck. Even through the bite marks, a distinct, unnatural angle was visible.
"A broken neck. And for the second one, a ruptured skull base. Zeno."
One of the nearby officers frowned. "So they wounded them and left them to be torn apart by monsters? Such brutality..."
Richter stared ahead, where the trail vanished into the gray haze. His face remained impassive, but a cold fire began to kindle in his eyes.
"They are here. Incredibly close. Zeno is getting desperate if he's chosen to directly engage our scouts. Pursuit unit—prepare for an accelerated push. Disregard caution. If monsters attack, burn them to the root. We need Subject Alpha."
I felt them before I heard them.
Zeno reacted instantly: he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into a narrow cleft between two sheer cliffs. We froze, blending into the gray stone.
A second later, twelve men emerged from the fog. Order officers in heavy half-armor covered in engravings that glowed dimly in the Pass's haze. They moved in a tight, perfectly synchronized formation. Every step they took resonated through the ground with a heavy thud.
I held my breath, terrified that even my heartbeat would give us away. How? How had they reached the midpoint of the Pass so quickly? Zeno and I thought we had shaken them.
They passed a mere five meters from our hiding spot. Once the last man dissolved into the fog, I finally dared to take a breath.
"We need to move," Zeno whispered, his voice tense. "They're flanking us. If they trap us in this gorge, we're done."
We began to crawl out of the crevice, trying to stay downwind and using every rocky outcrop for cover. We had to make a wide detour, scrambling over slick boulders to bypass the squad of officers. My muscles screamed with exhaustion, and my consciousness kept registering bizarre local anomalies.
Then, suddenly, everything changed.
I stopped so abruptly that Zeno nearly plowed into my back. I looked around, a sudden chill rippling across my skin.
"Zeno..." I called out in a low, trembling voice. "Do you feel that?"
The drone that had been torturing my ears for the past few hours was gone. The constant vibration of the air, the dead pixels in my vision, the chaotic flares of mana—everything had vanished. The mana around us stopped glitching.
I looked at a tree branch nearby. It wasn't shaking or turning translucent anymore; it was just a branch in a normal forest.
"Zeno..." I turned to him, a cold, sticky dread creeping up my chest. "Don't you think the chaotic nature of the Pass just became... normal?"
The old man stood motionless, his knuckles turning white against the shaft of his staff. He slowly scanned our surroundings.
The silence was absolute. No rustle of wind, no crackle of fracturing reality. Only our ragged breathing.
"It seems... you're right," he finally replied.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter