Chapter 323: Something Wrong [II]

At last, we decided to camp for the night. So I erected a few walls and a roof to make a quick shelter.

With no tinder in stock, there was no way to start a campfire. So we let it go and simply went to sleep.

Well, everyone else did.

I

went for a walk instead.

Once out, I found Juliana leaning against one of the stone walls.

Her coat fluttered faintly at her waist, otherwise unmoving, as if she hadn’t noticed the cold at all.

She was staring back toward the caldera again.

"Couldn’t sleep?" I asked, stopping a few steps away.

She didn’t answer right away. For a moment, I thought she might ignore me entirely.

Then she did. "No. I

can

sleep. I just didn’t want to."

That made me frown.

I moved to rest my back against the stone wall right beside her.

From here, the Valley looked endless — layer upon layer of broken earth, all bathed in the same dull crimson glow.

"You’ve been staring that way all day," I said. "Are you expecting Kevin to crawl back out of the caldera?"

Her fingers twitched. But this time, there was no reply.

I sighed and changed the topic. "I’m thinking of scaling the cliff tomorrow. Alone, I mean. There have to be some beasts up there. I could hunt one, bring it back, and we’d have something to eat."

Juliana immediately turned to me and grabbed my hand, though her face remained stern. "You can’t."

I blinked, slightly taken aback.

Was she worried about me?

If we scaled the canyon cliffs, we’d enter the forest.

The reason no beast from the jungle dared enter this valley was because this was the hunting ground of a far deadlier creature — a fallen god currently in slumber.

The only way to enter this valley was through the caldera of the Moon Eater. Otherwise, you’d have to circumvent the caldera and risk encountering either the Worm or the Skeleton — both

Ancient

Spirit Beasts.

The chances of surviving them were far lower than surviving Vaeghar, who, despite being one of the strongest beings in existence, was currently weakened to a state comparable to a low [

B

] or high [

A

] ranked Hunter.

So entering the valley through the caldera had been the smarter choice.

But the problem was that once we were inside the valley, scaling the cliffs to go back into the forest wasn’t just difficult — it was suicidal.

Because every single predator there was a

Greater

Spirit Beast, all in the same league as that Solbraith Cyclops we’d faced back at the

Night Sanctuary

.

In the game, the main characters never took this valley in any route. They went around the caldera and braved the last stretch of the forest instead.

And that arc was so hard, so brutally unforgiving, that most players quit the game during it simply because it was too hard to keep every main character alive.

The only way to get through was by letting Xaldreth take control of the protagonist’s body to win some unwinnable boss battles. But that came at the cost of severely deteriorating Michael’s will to resist the demon in the future, and—

...Wait.

What?

Who... was I talking about?

The game? The... protagonist?

I furrowed my brows, trying to make sense of the thoughts tumbling through my own mind.

Before I could, Juliana’s grip tightened around my hand.

"You can’t," she repeated, seeing me lost in thought and mistaking my confusion for hesitation.

My eyes fluttered back to her as I regained focus and exhaled. "Juli, I know it’s dangerous, but we’re dying here—"

"It’s not just that!" she cut me off through barred teeth. "I know you’ve noticed it too. Our speed has slowed down unnaturally over the past few days. It’s not just exhaustion. It’s like...

something

is hindering our path. Like an unseen obstacle. Like... like..."

I stared at her as she struggled to continue without sounding insane.

But she

didn’t

sound insane.

If anything, she made too much sense to my ears.

The truth was, I had noticed it too.

The end of this journey wasn’t supposed to take this long.

Sure, we weren’t moving anywhere near our top speed, but six full days had passed and the end of the canyon was still nowhere in sight.

On top of that, exhaustion was catching up to us far faster than I’d expected. It felt like we were constantly straining ourselves well past our limits.

Don’t get me wrong, we

were

. But we were just walking. Yet my body pained like I was fighting to the inch of my life every single day.

Something

was

wrong.

Juli

was

right.

It felt like we were facing something unexplainable. Something as natural as a flood or a thunderstorm. Something supernatural.

Something like... like—

"Like a god," I finished.

Juli went still, her glacial blue gazing into the depths of mine. "Wha—!?"

Thump—

But that was as far as our conversation went.

Because right then, a dark silhouette appeared around the corner of the wall we were leaning against.

We barely had time to widen our eyes before—

Thwaack—!!

—Something massive and solid, like a warhammer, slammed squarely into my ribs and flung me aside.

I hadn’t even hit the ground when Juliana moved to retaliate, drawing a few Cards... only to be smashed straight through the stone wall as the silhouette struck her next with the same warhammer without breaking motion.

I hit the ground with a grunt and curled up the pain as I peered ahead, quickly calling upon my Origin Card. If I hadn’t reinforced my body with Essence at the very last moment, I’d have been left with broken ribs and punctured lungs.

Now, I was left with only

possibly

fractured ribs.

When the dust cleared, the figure was revealed... and the sight of it made my stomach drop.

It was huge, at least nine feet tall, its frame humanoid but grotesquely disproportionate.

Six arms jutted from its torso in uneven pairs, each wielding a different weapon, and each weapon humming with impossibly unbearable power.

Three faces adorned its head. Two were exposed — elongated and alien, their mouths moving in unison as they chanted

something

in a language I didn’t understand.

The middle face was covered behind a smooth, featureless white mask, yet I felt it piercing straight into my mind.

The creature’s skin — if it could be called that — was a mottled canvas of gray and ochre. And in one of its six hands, it held a massive obsidian needle that gleamed ominously.

A shimmering white thread poured from that needle’s pointed tip and led straight to a black-haired boy kneeling on the ground nearby, his head hanging low. The thread disappeared into his chest as it rose and fell in shallow, gasping breaths.

That boy... I recognized him.

But the one who truly seized my attention was the creature itself.

It was none other than the

God Who Eats Is

.

And contrary to what I had believed...

He wasn’t slumbering.