CHAPTER 77: WILD WAVES (3)

Lucen’s feet pounded the fractured floor as he pushed into the side tunnel, breath sharp in his throat but not ragged. He wasn’t panicking. Yet. He just didn’t like being hunted by something that didn’t need to run.

The walls around him began to close in, literally. The tunnel narrowed with every few meters, ancient stone flaring at odd angles, glyph scars etched into corners from gods knew how long ago.

The deeper he ran, the more he felt it: the air itself pressing down. Not from exhaustion, but from proximity.

That thing was still behind him, and it wasn’t moving fast, it didn’t have to. The weight of its presence felt like it was pouring into the stone, leaking ahead of it like black ink soaking into old paper.

Lucen skidded around a jut of collapsed wall and flung himself sideways behind a tall slab of mineral-veined rubble.

The stone hissed faintly beneath his gloves. Cold. Charged. At one point, this must’ve been part of the zone core’s shielding system, before it had been chewed apart by time or something worse.

His system chimed again.

[Mana: 41 / 120]

[Corruption Threshold: 7%]

[Status: Breath Suppression Active]

He crouched low, back pressed to the stone, and waited. The corridor behind him was still shrouded in fog, thick as cloth.

But he knew it was there. The thing wasn’t breathing like a normal predator. It didn’t scent the air or snarl. It simply waited until you slowed. Then it watched. Then it moved.

Lucen’s mind ticked through options. His current spells were worthless. Half of them weren’t even landing. And if the anti-magic field extended too much farther, he’d lose recovery too.

He tapped into the system interface, not to cast, but to silently prepare a manual override. If it got too close, he’d detonate everything.

All his remaining mana into one unstable trace. It wouldn’t kill it. But it might take part of the floor with them and give him a—

A sound interrupted the thought.

Not a footstep.

Not a growl.

Just... a shift in weight. Not his own. Something heavy landing nearby, the way wind slaps fabric when something large passes too close.

Lucen’s heart stuttered once.

Then he heard a voice.

Flat. Measured.

"Don’t move."

He blinked hard.

Then leaned slightly to the left, peering over the broken stone.

Varik stood in the corridor, coat unbuttoned, one hand raised with two fingers extended, like he was about to flick water from his nails. The creature had stopped advancing.

It stood completely still at the edge of the open path, all three eye-slits fixed on the man like it recognized him. Not with fear. But with hesitation.

Lucen let out a very quiet breath.

’I’ve never been so happy to hear that smug voice.’

Varik took a single step forward. He didn’t draw a weapon. Didn’t cast. Didn’t ask Lucen anything.

He just said, "You shouldn’t be this deep yet."

Lucen muttered, still crouched, "I didn’t exactly walk in here on purpose."

The creature twitched. Its arms unfolded slowly, those strange, hooked joints unhinging again, but it didn’t strike. Lucen realized what it was doing a half-second too late.

It was charging a spell.

He didn’t know how he knew. He just felt it. The way the air flexed, how the corridor seemed to warp around its body. Whatever it was about to unleash wasn’t for chasing or maiming. It was to erase something.

Lucen started to rise.

But Varik moved first.

He didn’t cast.

He didn’t shout.

He just opened his hand, and light exploded in the shape of a fractal blade.

Not physical. Not steel. Just structure, pure spell architecture in motion, a glyph made tangible and humming with energy that didn’t belong in any human archive.

Lucen had seen high-tier spells before. He’d studied beam constructions and multi-thread vectors.

This wasn’t that.

This was something that didn’t look like it should exist.

Varik shifted his wrist once.

And then he vanished.

Not blinked. Not teleported.

Just... skipped.

The way bad footage skips a frame.

When he reappeared, he was behind the creature, and the blade had already passed through.

No sound.

No gore.

Just light.

The monster stopped moving.

Then the three eye-slits dimmed one by one.

Its arms curled inward like a flower folding at night.

And it collapsed in on itself, skin caving, limbs folding in unnatural directions, body crumpling into a neat, silent pile of itself like someone had pressed rewind on its biology.

Lucen stood fully now, halfway between stunned and impressed. Mostly impressed.

Varik adjusted his coat sleeve, then looked down at the steaming corpse.

"I told you not to move."

Lucen stepped out from behind the slab, brushing a streak of soot from his shoulder.

"You know, next time, maybe just say there’s a reality-tier predator stalking the subzones. Could save me a few heart attacks."

Varik gave him a look that wasn’t quite a smirk.

"I wanted to see if you’d panic."

Lucen narrowed his eyes.

"Well. I didn’t."

"You ran."

"Tactically."

Varik finally turned toward him. "You wouldn’t have survived another minute."

Lucen opened his mouth, then thought better of it.

He just shrugged. "Would’ve been an expensive minute."

Varik walked over to the remains and crouched beside them, examining the collapsed form. Whatever that thing had been, it wasn’t normal.

Even in death, its body looked wrong, less like a corpse and more like the concept of a creature that had been forcibly compacted into a shape the zone no longer permitted. The glow inside its skin was fading in slow, uneven pulses.

Lucen stepped closer and muttered, "So what was that?"

"Something that shouldn’t be this far from a core." Varik didn’t look up. "And definitely shouldn’t be awake."

He stood again and dusted off his hands.

"You’re not ready for this depth yet. You’ve seen how the zone starts to shift once you cross pressure thresholds. The mana stops acting like fuel. Starts acting like opinion."

Lucen blinked. "Opinion?"

Varik tilted his head, then nodded once at the fading monster.

"It doesn’t just resist spells down here. It argues with them. Decides which ones deserve to work."

Lucen frowned and crossed his arms. "You could’ve mentioned that earlier."

Varik’s tone didn’t change. "You wouldn’t have believed it."

There was a long pause. No more fog movement. No growls in the distance.

Just the two of them standing in the corridor, and the faint crackle of the zone’s edges continuing to adjust, as if the rift itself was mildly annoyed that its most promising snack had just been snatched away.

Lucen looked back at the path he’d run from, then up at Varik.

"So what now?"

Varik adjusted his gloves, then turned toward a break in the far wall.

"Now we go deeper."