Chapter 109
The group didn't stop again until they reached a small rise beyond the corrupted clearing. A wide ring of ancient stones encircled a patch of dry earth, neutral ground. Daniel chose it instantly.
"This will do," he said, stepping to the center. "We'll camp here tonight, but not to rest."
The five students exchanged tired glances, most still reeling from the vine attack.
Thalen dropped onto a stone, rubbing his leg where the vine had gripped him. "We barely escaped back there, and now you want us to train?"
"Especially now," Daniel said calmly. "Because this isn't over. That swamp watches even when you think it doesn't. You sleep unprepared here, and you don't wake up."
He looked at each of them.
"You've all passed dozens of simulations at the Academy. You know how to fight… when it's safe, when the system responds to your commands, and when there's a whistle to pause and a healer standing by."
He stepped closer. "But this isn't the Academy. This is a real quest."
Melgil stood a few paces away, scanning the treeline with quiet focus. She hadn't spoken much, but her presence said enough. She was ready if something broke the line again. Always ready.
Daniel unslung a bag from his shoulder and dropped it in the center. Out poured trap wires, rune chalk, old smoke bombs, dried ash bark, and a broken piece of a thorned vine.
"Tonight," Daniel said, "you'll learn three things: how to detect movement without vision, how to set a basic ward, and how to kill something that regrows."
The five hesitated.
Then stood.
They practiced fast—but poorly. Galen fumbled his trigger rune, causing it to spark too early. Lora's sigil faded halfway through her chalk line. Ormin placed his traps facing the wrong direction. Even Thalen's spells, which were usually sharp and efficient, fizzled in the thickened, corrupted mana.
"Why isn't it working?" he muttered in frustration.
"Because this mana fights you," Daniel explained. "It twists intention. Out here, spells need force of will, not just clean runes."
Sweat rolled down Ysil's brow as she tried again—this time tracing the chalk slowly and breathing as Daniel taught. The ward shimmered, then held.
"Better," he said. "Keep pressure on the outer ring. Anchor with breath."
The real lesson came an hour later.
The wind shifted.
Vines snapped in the distance.
And something charged through the trees.
This time it wasn't just a single vine—it was three, moving like snakes, darting low to the ground and heading straight for Ormin, who had wandered too far from the formation.
He shouted.
The group scattered into position—just like they were taught.
Except it didn't go how they trained.
Galen threw his spear, but the creature dodged mid-move. Lora's spell shot wide. Thalen shouted for everyone to regroup, but his own feet tangled in a root that hadn't been there seconds ago. One vine knocked Ysil to the ground; another slammed into Galen's shoulder hard enough to send him crashing into a tree.
Chaos.
Panic.
The air was filled with shouts, breaking branches, flaring spells—and pain.
Then
A clean arc of light.
Melgil stepped in.
One swipe from her glowing staff severed a vine completely. Her movements were precise, silent, efficient—nothing wasted. A second vine shot toward her, but Daniel was already there. His blade cut through it in a flash, leaving only twitching plant matter in the dirt.
He didn't yell.
He didn't panic.
He moved like someone who had done this too many times before.
Within seconds, the threat was gone.
Silence returned.
The students were breathing hard, bruised, scraped, and shaken.
Ormin leaned against a tree, chest heaving. "That… was not like training."
"No," Daniel said, calmly sheathing his blade. "That was the point."
They all looked at him now, eyes wide, faces pale. The last bits of comfort—the last traces of control—were gone.
"Simulations give you patterns," Daniel continued. "But real fights don't follow patterns. Out here, the enemy doesn't wait for you to be ready. It doesn't pause if you mess up your footing or drop your spell."
Melgil finally spoke. Her voice was quiet but sharp. "You make one mistake, and it doesn't get counted. It gets buried."
The five didn't speak.
They just nodded.
That night, under Daniel's guidance, they set their traps again. Slowly. Carefully. This time, they listened.
And when they finally lay down to rest—beneath the watchful stars and the heavy forest air—they didn't feel safe.
But they were more prepared. And they knew now, this isn't a lesson but a battle for their life.
In a room of dull white and blinking screens, Dane Lazarus sat hunched over his desk, sleeves rolled up, the light from his screen dancing across his glasses. Lines of code scrolled endlessly—interwoven branches of logic, emotion, randomness, and cause-effect loops.
He was designing Floor One.
More specifically, the Hallowtree Swamp and the entire Land of the Weeping Vines are supposed to have more than just a dozen different tribes residing inside the wetlands.
He'd coded its growth patterns personally, how it absorbed trauma from the land, how it stored old deaths, and how it remembered. A biome built not just as a quest zone, but as a living memory archive of war, famine, and forgotten grief.
It was supposed to teach players something: that nature fights back. That not all threats are loud. Some grow quietly in the soil.
But the swamp didn't behave as intended anymore.
Not like tonight. The vines weren't just mimicking movement—they were adapting. Using corpses in a way he never programmed. They were evolving behaviors, rewriting sections of the code with unapproved permissions. That level of override? It required an administrator.
Behind him, Melgil approached quietly, her daggers still sheathed, her expression unreadable.
"You recognized it, didn't you?" she said softly.
Daniel didn't answer right away. But he knew what she meant.
"The way the vines moved," she continued. "Not random. Not even animalistic. They understood us. Watched us from the moment we stepped near the Hallowtree."
Daniel nodded slowly. "They moved like code rewriting itself. That's not wild corruption. That's directed evolution."
Melgil stared into the fire. "And it responded to your presence like you were a threat it knew."
He looked at her. "Because I am."
Silence.
She sat beside him, folding her arms.
"When I first woke in the Gorge, I thought the world was broken," she said quietly. "But then I met you, and I realized i wasn't broken b missing something."
Across the clearing, the students were quiet—but they weren't resting. They watched Daniel and Melgil from a distance, whispering among themselves.
"I don't think he's normal," Thalen said. "Not in a bad way… but it's like he knows everything before it happens."
"He's not guessing," Ysil added. "He's remembering."
Ormin glanced toward the sword at Daniel's side. "And Melgil… she follows him, but not like a student. More like someone who's seen what he really is."
Galen muttered, "What if the world's not what we think it is?"
No one replied.
Because in their hearts… they already knew.
Far beneath the roots of the Hallowtree, unseen by any of them, a pulse of dark green light flickered through the soil like a heartbeat.
"This is where the training ends," Daniel told Melgil, his voice barely above a whisper. "We need to eliminate what is causing this here before it's too late." The swamp had become something far more dangerous than they could have ever imagined. It s intention was not to challenge, but kill without hesitation and with a purpose.