Chương 99: Chapter 98 - Where is Lucid

Garfield, Mary, and Brian landed together in a heap, not on hard, cracked ground, but with a soft, unsettling thud onto something springy and alive. The disorienting light of the rift faded, not to a bruised orange sky, but to a blinding, uniform white. The air was not dry and metallic, but cool, sterile, and carried the faint, sweet scent of paper and old glue. They untangled themselves, blinking against the sheer brightness. They were not in a canyon. They were in a field.

A field of vibrant, impossible purple grass that stretched to a stark white horizon. And rising from this field, in perfectly straight, endless rows, were shelves. Massive, pristine white bookshelves, each one reaching up to a curved, vaulted ceiling of pure white so high it seemed to be the sky itself. Books of every color and size lined the shelves, a silent, orderly riot against the white and purple. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and utterly, profoundly wrong.

"Eureka...?" Garfield whispered, the word dying in his throat. There was no echo. The vast space swallowed sound.

"Where are we?" Brian breathed, pushing himself up from the soft purple turf. He looked down at his hands, stained with faint violet from the grass. Mary slowly got to her feet, her patched glasses reflecting the endless rows.

"This... this isn't the Scorched Archive," she said, her analytical mind struggling to categorize the sight.

"The environmental data is all wrong. The atmospheric essence signature is... calm. Too calm." They stood together in the center of a silent, infinite library under a white sky, the only color the purple grass beneath their feet and the rainbow of book spines on the endless shelves They moved out, sticking together. The rift, called the 'Scorched Archive,' felt nothing like the archive they were in just now, it was pristine white and clean. It was quieter, but the silence felt heavy and watchful.

They hadn't gone far when the attack came. A swarm of bat-like creatures with leathery wings and shrieking cries swooped down from a rocky ledge. D-rank Unfaithfuls.

'Grifters,' Mary identified from her studies, scavengers that fed on scattered fate essence.

"Shield!" Brian yelled, hefting his massive, rectangular shield. He planted his feet, a solid wall of muscle and metal. The creatures slammed into the barrier with dull, meaty thuds.

"Now, Garfield!" Mary called out. She raised her hands. This time, no relic glowed. Instead, she focused her own will, the new power humming inside her. A shimmering wave of pale blue force erupted from her palms, a basic repulsion spell, but stronger now. It hit the dazed creatures, knocking them back and bunching them together in a disorganized heap.

"With pleasure! The stage is set!" Garfield cried, leaping from behind Brian's shield. His movements were not the clumsy swings of a novice. He weaved between the stunned bats, his large sword moving in precise, controlled arcs. It was a performance, but a deadly one. Each thrust and parry was efficient, practiced. He was fighting with skill, not just brute force. Together, they worked. Brian was the unbreakable wall. Mary was the disrupting force. Garfield was the sharp, finishing blade.

The swarm dissolved into fading grey motes. They paused, catching their breath. A new feeling bloomed among them, not just relief, but a fragile confidence. They were a team. They could handle this. they were calling Lucid's name into the echoing silence. They encountered more D-rank threats, skittering rock-scorpions that spat acid, patches of aggressive, flaming moss. Each time, they adapted. Brian learned to angle his shield to deflect the acidic sprays.

Mary refined her repulsion spells into tighter, concussive blasts. Garfield's swordplay became a fluid, almost artistic dance of death. With each small victory, the sharp worry for Lucid was softened by the satisfaction of their own growing competence. They were holding their own. That feeling shattered when they rounded a narrow bend in the endless shelves and came face-to-face with another group. It was Alaric. His nose was still bandaged from his encounter with Lucid.

He was with two of his usual followers, including the silver-haired girl, Clarissa. Her eyes, when they found Mary, were like chips of ice.

"Well, well," Alaric drawled, his gaze crawling over them with open disgust.

"Look what the rift scraped off its boot. The bookworm, the barn animal, and the failed artist. A complete set of silver trash." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Did you lose your keeper, pig?" Clarissa asked Brian, her voice sweet and poisonous.

"Or did he finally get tired of dragging your blubber around?" Garfield's face flushed a dark red. He stepped forward, his knuckles white on his sword hilt.

"You pretentious, vile little—" Brian's large hand clamped down on Garfield's shoulder, hard.

"Don't," Brian said, his voice low. He wasn't looking at Alaric. He was looking at Garfield, his eyes serious.

"Think. What would Lucid do?" The question hung in the dry, tense air. Garfield froze. He thought of Lucid's cold, calculating silence, his refusal to rise to obvious bait. Slowly, the tension bled from his shoulders. He forced his grip on the sword to loosen. Mary said nothing. She just met Clarissa's glare with a steady, silent stare of her own. She remembered the hex in the forest. She remembered the dead boy. This was no coincidence.

Seeing they wouldn't take the hook, Alaric's smirk twisted into a sneer of pure disappointment.

"Pathetic," he spat.

"Let's go. They're not worth the air." He and his group shoved past them. Alaric made sure to shoulder-check Brian as he went. Clarissa shot Mary a final, withering glance that promised this wasn't over. They walked away, their mocking laughter bouncing off the canyon walls. Garfield trembled with rage he couldn't release. Brian let out a long, slow breath. Mary's grip on her staff was so tight her fingers ached. It was as they were turning to leave the narrow pass that Mary saw it.

A flicker of motion, too quick, too deliberate. As Alaric had brushed past Brian, his hand had dipped. He had pressed something small, dark, and metallic into a crack in purple grass burying it. A hidden motion. Something planted. Alaric paused at the mouth of the pass and looked back over his shoulder, his smirk returning, wider and more vicious than before.

"Oh, and be careful," he called out, his voice dripping with false kindness.

"There are B-grade Unfaithfuls around this area. Nasty things. Lucid wouldn't want you guys to get eaten up." He shot them a final, cruel wink, then he and his group vanished around the bend. A heavy, dread-filled silence fell. The insults were one thing. The planted device was another. The specific, pointed mention of Lucid's name tied it all together with a bow of pure malice.

"He planted a lure," Mary said, her voice hollow.

"A pheromone emitter or an essence beacon. It will draw the stronger predators right to us." Garfield stared at the spot on the wall, all his theatrical bravado gone, replaced by cold, sick understanding.

"He's trying to get us killed. Again." Brian looked from the fissure to the empty path Alaric had taken, his normally friendly face set in hard, grim lines.

"So," he said, his voice a low rumble.

"What do we do now?"

"We remove it," Mary said, her voice firm. She knelt on the strange purple grass and placed her hands flat against the ground where Alaric's device was hidden. The moment her fingers made contact, the small, dark object flared with a harsh, violent light. It was so bright they all winced and looked away. Mary held on, her face tight with concentration. She could feel it—a cold, invasive signal pulsing out, calling for predators. She focused her own will, the new latent power inside her, and pushed.

She didn't try to disable it. She forced her own raw, unstable energy into it. The device glowed hotter, whined like a trapped insect, and then she ripped it from the ground and hurled it into the air. A moment later, it shattered with a small, sharp pop, the fragments dissolving into nothingness before they could hit the purple grass.

"Done," Mary said, brushing her hands together.

"Let's go." As they continued further down the endless, eerie aisle between the white shelves, a quiet worry grew among them. Mary could fight a mind hex or a simple lure, but that couldn't be said for Garfield and Brian. They were still unawakened, vulnerable in ways she was just beginning to understand. They hadn't even turned the next left at a towering bookcase when a massive, ear-splitting screech tore through the silent library. It wasn't a sound that belonged among books.

It was raw, furious, and far too close.

"I'll check it out!" Garfield said, already moving before they could argue. With a quick, practiced efficiency that belied his theatrical nature, he scaled one of the tall shelves, using the shelves themselves as a ladder. He pulled himself to the top and looked out across the impossible landscape. In the distance, he could see a small, distinct building—another archive structure, the first distinct landmark they'd seen.

The sky beyond it was a sickly grey, tinged with ominous streaks of orange, like a fading bruise over the white world.

'What the...' Then he looked behind him, towards the source of the screech. What he saw froze the blood in his veins. It was a mass of four enormous, multi-jointed limbs, each tipped with savage claws, connected to a central body that was a shifting, blurry nightmare of shadows and jagged edges. It had no distinct head, only a cluster of blinding white eyes that fixed directly on his position. It wasn't just an Unfaithful. It looked wrong, like a mistake, something they were never supposed to lay eyes on.

It radiated a pure, mindless hunger that made his stomach turn. He didn't think. He just moved.

"RUN!" he screamed, leaping down from the shelf and landing in a crouch.

"TOWARDS THE NORTH! WHERE THE BUILDING IS!" They ran. The purple grass whipped at their ankles. The endless shelves became a blur of white and colored spines. Behind them, the screech came again, closer this time, shaking the very shelves and making the books tremble. The sound of massive, clawed feet tearing through the soft ground thundered after them. It was behind them, and it was gaining. It was beyond anything they could hope to fight.

It was pure, predatory pursuit, and they were the only prey in its perfect, white, and purple world.