Chapter 279: Run First, Panic Later, Think Never

We ran.

No— scratch that. We

bolted

.

Weaving between enormous trees, leaping over thick roots, crashing through overgrown ferns and bushes like a bunch of panicked deer getting chased by an eldritch horror.

We didn’t look back. We didn’t need to.

We knew we were being hunted.

The tsunami of dense white mist surged after us — and we heard that same deep, gurgling, hungry roar roll from it.

That animalistic roar was the only sound audible in the forest anymore — everything else had been drowned by that endless, churning fog.

"What even

is

that thing?!" Vince shouted, sprinting beside me... and somehow still managing to trip every three seconds.

"Does it matter?!" I yelled back. "Just run!"

If I had to guess, this

Mist Monster

— yes, I named it — was probably a low-level

Greater

-grade Spirit Beast. That would put it on the same rank as the

Solbraith

Cyclops we’d slain back at the

Night Sanctuary

.

Unfortunately, it had taken multiple

[C-rank]

and two

[B-rank]

Cadets, plus some extreme luck, to bring that Cyclops down.

There was no way in hell we could take on something that strong, especially when we didn’t even know its abilities, let alone its weaknesses.

"I

am

running!" Vince screamed, nearly tripping again.

"Then run

better

!" I emphasized.

Moments later, the flood of white mist caught up to us and swallowed us whole.

I could barely see a few inches ahead. The fog had completely crippled our visibility.

That creature was breathing this mist

and

controlling it.

"Guys!" I shouted, glancing back. "Left! Go left!"

"Update!" Ray barked into his camera. "We’re being chased by a harrowing Spirit Beast! I think the universe is punishing us for ranking girls, chat! Be better than us! Respect women!"

Juliana shot him a death glare. "So why am

I

being punished?"

I nearly groaned. "Ray! Stop recording and focus on surviving, you idiot!"

Somewhere behind us, Vince screamed again — though this scream was more of a long and drawn-out wail.

I turned just in time to see him slam face-first into a low-hanging branch.

"Leave me!" he coughed, dramatically collapsing to his knees. "Save yourselves!"

That’s what he

said

, at least.

But the look on his face told me he was all but

begging

me not to leave him behind.

I rolled my eyes and transmuted a stone hand from the ground, which grabbed him by the collar and dragged him forward like a grocery bag.

"Thank you, m’lord!" he gasped, running next to me once again. "I swear I’ll stop badmouthing nobles from now on!"

I smacked him on the head. "Shut up and run!"

And we did.

We kept running until the camp was nearly in sight, when all of a sudden—

KHWAAAR—!!

The roar came again, louder and closer than ever.

Something massive slammed into the ground behind us, hard enough to send dirt and mist flying.

Once again, none of us dared to look back. Because looking back is how characters die in horror movies.

"Camp!" Ray shouted, spotting one of the trail markers he’d placed earlier. "We’re almost there!"

"Define

almost

!" Vince wheezed.

"Like — twenty seconds!"

"We’re gonna

die

in twenty seconds!"

I didn’t argue. Because he wasn’t wrong.

That roar was getting closer and closer with each passing second... which meant the Mist Monster would be on us any moment now.

—Fwooo!

Just as that thought crossed my mind, as if on cue, the monster was indeed on us.

...But it didn’t come from behind.

No — it appeared right

ahead

.

Out of nowhere, the mist in front of us warped, and a tall, gaunt silhouette stepped out of it. Its body was black as ink, its limbs far too long, its head twitching in jerky motions.

The creature let out an inhuman screech and swung one of its grotesque arms down on us in a wide arc, its claws slicing the air with enough force to send ripples through the fog.

"What the—!" Ray started a curse, but then thrust his hand forward. "Eat this, you bastard!"

THWOOOM—!!

What erupted from Ray’s palm was a blinding explosion that scorched the forest floor and tore through the mist.

Incinerating fire bloomed in a violent flash, and the shockwave that followed blasted the surrounding trees backward.

The fog scattered, and for a heartbeat, the forest before us was visible again.

Ray gulped, lowering his smoking hand. "Did I get it?"

Vince grimaced. "You jinxed it!"

Yeah. He jinxed it.

Because sure enough, as soon as the smoke cleared, the mist came roaring back — thicker and heavier than earlier, swallowing everything in white.

The fire guttered out, and the light died.

And worst of all... there was no sign of the Mist Monster anywhere.

"Okay," Ray muttered, spinning around, sweating bullets. "Where’d it go? Where’d it go?"

"Rule number one of horror movies, Ray!" Vince hissed. "Never ask that question! Let’s just run!"

Ray looked at him, waited for half a second, and nodded once. Then, both of them turned tail and immediately bolted toward the camp again.

"Wait! Don’t run off!" I shouted. "This mist muffles all sound and it’s so dense that you can’t see anything in it! You’ll get separated—!"

But it was too late. The two morons had already vanished into the fog.

"Gods damn it," I clicked my tongue, tightening my grip on Scorched Oath and preparing to run after them.

But right then...

Thap—

I faintly heard something — or some

one

— dully hit the ground behind me.

"Juli?" I whipped around.

She was on one knee, breath hissing between her teeth.

My stomach dropped when I saw that one of her legs was caught — something dark and slick was coiled tightly around her ankle, emerging out from the mist.

The monster...

It was reforming again, rising from the fog like a corpse clawing its way out of the grave.

And that’s when the realization hit me.

This creature wasn’t moving

through

the mist.

It really

was

the mist.

The entire forest fog was its body. It could disappear and reappear

anywhere

within it, also making itself intangible against any physical attacks.

Juliana gritted her teeth. "Why... is it always the same leg?"

She took out a kunai, looking only

mildly

annoyed even as the towering creature fully materialized above her, raising one massive claw.

But before it could swing, I hurled Scorched Oath straight at it.

My axe spun through the air like a cartwheel...

and passed right through the monster’s body without any impact or resistance.

The blade literally

phased

through its inky torso and struck a nearby tree instead, slicing a deep scar across its broad trunk before embedding itself there.

The Mist Monster dissolved instantly, vanishing into the fog again.

I dismissed Scorched Oath and rushed over to my

Shadow

, crouching beside her to inspect her leg.

The skin around her ankle was slightly swollen and tinted blue, looking slightly frostbitten — nothing serious, but still enough to make me worry.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

Juliana waved a dismissive hand at my concern, her tone as dry as ever. "It’s fine. Just a sprain. I can still run."

That was all I needed to hear.

But just as I helped her to her feet, several loud noises resounded from somewhere far in front of us in the mist, snapping my attention taut.

There was a thunderous

BOOM!

of an explosion from the right, its sound muffled by the fog.

Then, there was a sharp

CLANG!

of a sword striking something hard and tough from the left.

Vince and Ray.

It seemed like they were fighting that creature

separately

.

I gritted my teeth. "That beast is splitting us up."

The mist wasn’t just messing with our senses of sound, sight, and direction — it was

dividing

us. It was

isolating

us on purpose.

...It was toying with us.

And I’d had enough of that.

So I slammed my hand onto the ground and activated my Origin Card.

The earth started shuddering almost immediately, trembling as if hit by a localized earthquake.

The ground cracked, massive trees around us toppled and roots wrenched free. An entire section of the forest floor itself buckled and heaved

upward

.

A circular platform of stone and dirt shot up from the ground, rising fast, uprooting underbush and tossing debris aside.

The mist broke apart against our ascent as the platform kept rising.

And there — on opposite edges of the rising platform — I saw two familiar idiots.

Ray on the right. Vince on the left.

Both panting, both bloodied, and both looking like they’d just been in the middle of a hellish fight.

Ray was bleeding profusely from a long gash across his back, and Vince seemed to have taken a blunt hit on the left side of his ribs by the way he was limping a little.

They had drawn multiple Cards from their Arsenal. But both of them froze mid-attack as the ground beneath them started rocketing skyward.

Ray blinked, looking around confusedly, jaw slack.

Vince lowered his short sword with a groan. "I hate this place."

"I told you both to stop!" I yelled at them. "Don’t let the monster separate us! We have the numbers advantage! Even if we can’t hit it, we can cover each other’s backs! Do not run off in panic! There’s never a need to panic!"

Juliana tapped my shoulder.

"What?" I gazed at her.

She silently pointed downward.

The circular platform we were on was about twenty-five feet in diameter and more than eighty feet high. It looked like a lone island of stone adrift atop an ocean of thick, white mist.

The fog was thinner up here, allowing us to see and hear better.

For a brief moment, I let myself believe we were safe.

Because if the monster

itself

was the mist... and we were

above

the mist... then it couldn’t reach us here. It couldn’t harm us here.

That made sense. It was a perfectly logical, absolutely foolproof plan.

...Right?

Yeah, no.

Because the very next moment, the ocean of mist below us... began to rise like a ghostly tide.

Ray turned to me expectantly. "Can we panic now?"

I sighed. "Sure."