Season 1. Chapter 67: Game V
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CHAPTER: "Amber Hunt – The Illusion Forest Trial"
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Fog hung low beneath the trees, curling like silk around the mossy floor. The Illusion Forest was never silent. Wind carried distant whispers—sometimes your own voice thrown back at you with wrong intent.
At the center of this deceptive grove, the trial had begun.
> "Steal the amber. Survive. Only the stones with the lizard are valid. Others? Decoys."
Dozens of players scattered among thick brush, old ruins, and warped trees that bent subtly when not watched. Each contestant bore a single amber stone, no larger than a closed fist, glowing faintly with Vita energy. The symbol inside could not be altered—but it could be stolen.
Some bore feathers. Some bore flame. Some bark. Only a few contained a faint, curling lizard figure—serpentine and still.
And thus, trust dissolved instantly.
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First Blood – The Gunmen
Two players had taken to higher ground.
One, a lanky sharpshooter in rust-red armor, balanced a sniper rifle atop a vine-wrapped branch. He moved with precision—calculating wind, light, angle. His target: a burly swordsman with an amber dangling from his belt, quietly foraging below.
A soft click echoed.
The shot fired.
But the swordsman never flinched—because a second gunman, crouched in the shadow of a fallen tree, had aimed at the sniper. A clean shot rang out—
Both men collapsed.
Before their bodies hit the ground, a black-feathered arrow hissed from deeper forest, striking the ground between them.
Out from the mist, an archer in forest-gray leather dropped from a branch, grabbed both amber stones, and vanished before the echo faded.
He glanced at the symbols.
Neither were lizards.
> "Bark," he muttered.
He crushed them under his boot, and kept moving.
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Web of Deceit
Elsewhere, a woman with twin curved daggers crept silently toward a mage-like player inspecting his amber. He never saw her—until his own amber burst in a puff of illusion magic.
Fake. Hers was real.
Another duo feigned alliance—then broke into combat the second one's back turned. Knives in ribs. A whisper of regret. The forest swallowed the sounds quickly.
Above them, the trees shifted slightly. Some branches grew or bent, guiding movement. Helping some. Betraying others.
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Hall of Echoes
In a glade ringed with stone faces, four players met without intent.
A short duel broke out. One boy raised a hammer made of condensed Vita; another used a whip of green fire. One woman cast a spell to swap amber stones with someone across the field—but ended up swapping her real lizard for a feather. Her scream was short-lived.
An explosion of air scattered the survivors. One player managed to slink away—his amber now glowing brighter, confirmed lizard symbol intact.
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The Archer Returns
Back in the trees, the same bowman crouched above a high ridge. He had two more fakes on his belt. His own? Still unknown.
He examined it carefully in the moonlight.
A curling, sleeping lizard shimmered inside.
He exhaled.
> "Now the game really starts."
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CHAPTER: "The Amber Hunt – Enchanted Forest Bloodleaf Trial"
Level 5-6 Blue Rank Special Trial: Only the Lost are Chosen
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The Forest Shifts
The forest pulsed faintly in gold and violet hues. Trees arched like cathedral pillars, their trunks glowing with veins of deep blue—not Vita, but something far mystical: Enchanted Magic. Mist swirled with pollen-light. Mushrooms blinked slowly. The wind tasted sweet but heavy.
Over a hundred players—most young adults, all marked with blue-rank insignias—stood at the base of a shimmering root-spiral. They were the unwanted of society. Cast-outs, dropouts, failures. Survivors in another name.
Clad in robes, battle-worn hoodies, patched leathers, and modern fragments of clothing… they bore broadswords, handmade bows, daggers, improvised clubs, and for a lucky few—firearms smuggled from the system backdoors. The tension was hot and metallic.
This was not a trial of fairness.
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🧚♀️ The Great Fairy Appears
A flicker of light coalesced into a towering figure made of silk wings and crown of thorned moonlight—The Great Fairy.
She hovered above, arms outstretched, voice both honeyed and indifferent.
> "Welcome, wanderers of fate... to the Bloodleaf Enchanted Forest. You seek the Amber. Yet some of you... will instead find silence."
A breath.
> "This forest is not Vita-born. It is pure Magic. It does not obey. It does not care. But... it offers gifts. Hidden in its breath, there exists a fruit most rare—The Golden Apple."
The players stirred.
> "One apple. One consumer. Find it, and you may receive:
Strength
Speed
Haste
Fire Immunity
Shield Defense
Regeneration
True Healing."
> "But beware. This is not the Ruby Game, where the Catcher hunts by moonlight..."
> "Here, the real monsters hunt by day. Each other."
She vanished in a ripple of soft laughter.
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🎩 Yarrow Watches
From a high, shattered tower of white petrified bark, Yarrow observed the forest with unreadable eyes behind black sunglasses. His brown hair was neat, his posture straight, a silent authority in his black suit and white-trim gloves. A simple white mouth mask veiled his expression—but not his aura.
Where Zack was a storm of motion, Yarrow was the still air before lightning.
> "Not enough are ready," he muttered quietly. "And yet they play anyway."
His fingers moved slightly. Threads of system permissions flickered across his glove seams.
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🌘 The Bloodleaf Begins
A loud gong echoed through the trees.
The players scattered.
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⚔️ Violence Without Warning
In the opening rush:
A young woman with copper hair stabbed another contestant with a shard of enchanted obsidian before they even drew their blade. No hesitation. Amber stolen.
A trio of friends broke apart instantly—one wielded a sword and betrayed the other two under the cover of confusion. "Fewer competitors," he justified. "More chance for the apple."
A gunshot rang through the violet canopy. A boy in a blue hoodie collapsed. A silver-haired girl took his pack, but didn't notice the trip vine. She vanished into a hidden pit.
One archer, cloaked in moss, hid inside a fallen hollow and loosed two silent arrows—both landed, clean. He stole their amber, checked for the lizard icon, found none, and left them in the dark.
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The Forest Reacts
The deeper players ventured, the more the forest shifted.
Some trees grew backwards.
Others bled golden sap.
A patch of flowers sang lullabies that slowed the pulse.
And somewhere, far from the blood and greed, the Golden Apple grew in silence—veiled by a tree whose leaves whispered the true name of fire.
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End Scene Stinger
Yarrow turned away from the edge of his watchtower.
He spoke softly into a system channel.
> "Well if that green hood Traveler … if he enters this forest, he won't be chasing our white headband Zack anymore."
> "He'll be chasing what he could become."
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CHAPTER: "The Path of Wind and Fire"
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🌕 Yarrow's Toss
High above the glowing canopy of the Bloodleaf Forest, where magic thickened the air and time curled like smoke, Yarrow stood perfectly still. The wind tousled his brown hair only slightly.
In his black-and-white gloved hand sat the Golden Apple.
It shimmered faintly—not golden like sunlight, but like the memory of fire. Its glow pulsed with raw enchantment. A gift of miracles. A weapon of evolution.
Yarrow studied it with no visible emotion beneath his white mouth mask.
> "Too many are chasing it."
He turned his hand, and a spatial rift—thin and sharp like a blade through air—opened beside him with no sound, only pressure.
> "Let fate do the choosing."
With one motion, Yarrow tossed the apple. It spun slowly in the void and vanished.
Somewhere far below—deep within the forest—the apple reappeared in a bed of violet moss, beneath a tree carved with faces no one remembered carving.
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🌾 Afternoon Wind – Oliver & Nico
The grassland rolled in slow waves as if the earth were breathing beneath them. The trees of the enchanted forest stood still in the distance, but the wind carried strange scents—ash, blossoms, and something old.
Oliver and Nico walked side by side, boots brushing soft whitegrass. The sun angled high in a fading blue sky. No other travelers in sight.
> "So," Nico said, flicking his tail. "Tell me why we're chasing a guy we don't know, in a forest full of blade-happy misfits with amber stones and trigger fingers."
Oliver, ever calm, adjusted his white mask over his face. "We're not chasing him. We're following where his actions lead."
Nico made a face. "Which is… the same thing, but with more brooding."
Oliver smirked, just slightly.
> "That Ruby Game wasn't meant to happen. And Zack… he fought differently. Not like he wanted to win. Like he was proving something."
Nico crossed his arms behind his head, thinking. "You mean when he took on Luke Astoria and his cursed dwarves?"
Oliver nodded. "Exactly."
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⚔️ The Tale of the Dwarves
Luke Astoria—the silver-clad tactician once crowned Prince of the Crimson Slope—was on an Adventure Mode trial, accompanied by seven contract-bound dwarves.
Of the seven, three names were whispered more than others:
Marnick – a juggernaut dwarf who wielded two steel slabs instead of blades.
Rindle – a sorcerer dwarf with fireglass eyes, who wove runes in mid-air with fingers.
Doltin – a defensive specialist, known for blocking meteors with his blackstone tower shield.
Zack had intercepted them mid-objective during the Ruby Game. And somehow, he won—not with brute force, but with misdirection, illusion, and silence.
No one knew the full details. Only that Zack walked away untouched.
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🎯 Back to the Present
> "So you're thinking," Nico said, tail twitching, "if we find Zack, we'll find a clue to something bigger?"
Oliver paused. "No. I think if we find Zack… we find out what the System is hiding."
A gust of wind swept past them—carrying a soft chime, like laughter underwater.
They had reached the first ring of the Enchanted Forest.
The trees watched in silence.
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CHAPTER: "Walk Straight, Think Crooked"
Within the Enchanted Forest, direction is just another lie.
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Mist coiled at their feet.
Not the kind that crept in slowly. This fog moved with intention, clinging like soft vines around Oliver's boots and trailing Nico's tail like a curious shadow.
And just ahead—beyond the first grove of firefly-lit trees—Zack waited.
He stood like a black statue beneath a bent oak, arms folded. His white headband flicked in the breeze, and his calm eyes stayed fixed on the trail.
> "Took you long enough," Zack said, voice dry but without bite.
Oliver emerged from the shimmer, Nico trailing behind, teeth chewing on a stick for no particular reason.
> "Didn't think you'd wait," Oliver replied.
Zack shrugged. "Didn't plan to. Path didn't let me move."
Nico raised an eyebrow. "Wait. The path didn't let you?"
Zack tilted his head toward the forest. "Try turning back."
Oliver turned.
The trail behind them—wide, green, sunlit just moments ago—was gone. In its place stood a wall of trees so tightly packed they looked fused. Twisting bark, bark that glistened faintly like glass in sunlight.
He blinked.
Now it was a cliff.
Another blink.
A shallow pond filled with white lilies.
Nico whistled low. "Okay. So that's what you meant."
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🌲 Forest of Shifting Lies
They walked for ten minutes. Then twenty.
Then thirty.
No bird calls. No insects. Only the faint hum of tree roots beneath the soil, and the occasional tinkle of unseen bells.
Each path looked safe. Each step logical.
Until you turned your head.
> "This tree," Zack said, halting mid-step, "has grown out of the same rock four times in the last twenty minutes."
Oliver didn't argue. His own memory agreed. The tree had changed positions—but always stayed ahead of them.
They stopped. Turned back. Behind them, the trail had become a sunken staircase of spiral stone steps leading into a flooded crypt.
> "We didn't come from there," Oliver whispered.
> "We didn't come from anywhere," Zack replied. "We've only been going."
> "And it's not enough."
> "We have to stop looking back."
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🧚♀️ Unseen Manipulators
What neither of them could see—flitting high above, invisible to their mortal eyes—were the Fairies of the Crooked Path.
Tiny things. Barely larger than dragonflies. Some wore petal cloaks, others wielded vines like staffs. They giggled soundlessly, tracing the air with their fingers—rewriting the map behind the humans each time they blinked, each time they doubted.
One particularly playful fairy held a piece of chalk dipped in shimmerdust and scratched a rune across the trail just as Oliver looked away.
The moment he glanced back—it was a bridge over a chasm instead of a tree tunnel.
The fairies exploded into a dance.
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😵💫 Confusion Reigns
Zack was usually calm.
But when they circled the same set of mossy rocks three times, even he frowned.
> "We haven't stopped walking forward."
> "We've been allowed to believe we are," Oliver muttered.
He looked down.
His bootprints had vanished. The grass below was untouched. As if he'd never walked here.
> "We're not moving," Zack realized aloud.
> "We're being shown the illusion of movement."
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🧠 The Fixation Rule
Then Oliver did something strange.
He picked a single tree in the far distance—one with five glowing beetles crawling across its base—and said aloud, "We don't look away from that tree. Not for a second."
Zack blinked once.
> "If we do?"
> "It moves."
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So they walked, both heads locked toward the tree.
The forest twisted. Paths tried to curve, but they stepped over brush and vine, ignoring what looked like trails to the left and right.
A sound echoed behind them—a human scream.
They didn't turn.
The scent of fresh bread drifted in from their left.
They didn't turn.
A voice whispered, "Oliver..." soft as a heartbeat.
He clenched his teeth.
> "You heard that too?" Zack asked.
> "Ignore it."
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They passed through a tunnel of branches, still staring forward. The tree grew larger. The beetles crawled upward.
Then:
They passed through the tree.
Not around it.
Not beside it.
Through.
A flash. Like light through closed eyelids.
Then—quiet.
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🌀 The Zone Break
The air cleared.
A clearing opened—real this time. They could feel it. No shifting bark. No twisting grass.
Just silence. A shallow spring. The sun above, high and honest.
They both sat down.
Nico, behind them, appeared two seconds later as if skipping time. His ears twitched. "Why... was there a giant rabbit with a crown yelling riddles at me?"
Zack and Oliver just looked at him.
Then all three exhaled.
> "Let's never turn around again," Nico muttered.
> "Agreed," Zack said.
Oliver just stared ahead, eyes narrowed.
In the distance, there was a new glow. Not from Vita. But a golden hue, pulsing faintly from beneath a patch of moss.
They weren't alone.
And the game wasn't over.
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CHAPTER: "Fire Solves Nothing"
In a forest born from infinite Vita, destruction is a polite suggestion—not a rule.
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The forest hummed with patience.
It had no need to hurry. No need to answer. It watched, it breathed, and it endured.
For Nico Finnikin Faelwyn, that made it the most infuriating thing in the world.
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🌲 The Plan
"You two can keep solving puzzles with your brains," Nico huffed, unslinging the small flint box from his belt. "But I'm done walking in loops."
Oliver and Zack stood nearby, watching quietly as Nico dragged a crude line of dried moss and cloth along the grass. He struck the flint once, twice—until a small flame caught, licking the edge of his trail.
The fire crept toward the trees.
> "You know this won't work," Zack said plainly.
> "I hope it doesn't," Oliver added, adjusting his white mask. "Because if the forest does burn, we'd probably burn with it."
> "Trust the fox, boys," Nico grinned as he backed away. "Sometimes chaos does what logic can't."
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🔥 The Fire Takes
The flame met bark.
And for one breathless moment—it worked.
The tree ignited, flames licking up its ancient skin. Smoke swirled high, biting the leaves above. The fire moved quickly, spreading to branches, logs, even climbing through the mist like a beast finally unchained.
Crackling. Brightness. Heat.
> "Hah!" Nico threw his hands up triumphantly. "Take that, you smug magical lumber—"
Then the wind stopped.
And the flames… paused.
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🌿 The Vita Responds
From the blackened earth, roots surged upward. Fresh bark coiled over the scorched remains like muscles rebuilding tissue. New branches burst out, full-grown in seconds, flowering wildly with luminous blue leaves.
The fire died with a hiss—not from water, but from sheer rejection.
The trees had healed faster than they had burned.
The clearing that had begun to form closed again, tighter than before. The mist thickened. Flowers sprouted where ash had landed.
It was as if nothing had happened.
No.
It was worse than that—
The forest had become even denser.
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😤 Nico Loses It
Nico stared, slack-jawed.
> "No—no no no. That's illegal. That's cheating. That tree was ash. I saw it! It screamed!"
Oliver crouched near a fresh sprout. He gently pressed two fingers to it. It pulsed softly—alive with Vita.
> "This place runs on raw life energy. If it's surrounded by aether-saturated Vita, it can't die. Not in any lasting way."
Zack crossed his arms. "It's not a forest. It's a living ecosystem with infinite hit points."
> "I hate this place," Nico muttered, slumping to the ground. "Burning things usually works."
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🧚♀️ The Forest Laughs
Somewhere just beyond sight, tiny voices giggled.
High above, fairies sat along branch-thrones and wove tiny wreaths of flame-resistant petals, watching the players like children watching a confused cat in a mirror box.
One plucked a leaf from a nearby vine and blew across it, sending a ripple of soundless laughter through the trees.
The flame Nico had created sparked again…
…but this time in a circle around him.
The fire hissed upward—not burning, but forming a ring of blue light. Then it sank into the earth like ink being pulled into cloth.
Just a warning.
Just a reminder.
> "I really hate this place," Nico muttered.
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🌫️ Moving Forward
Eventually, Zack stepped over the fire's last embers and pointed east.
> "There's no shortcut here. The forest doesn't want to be beaten."
> "So what, we follow the rules?" Nico scoffed. "Hope the fairies get bored and let us win?"
Oliver stood and dusted off his jacket.
> "We don't follow the rules," he said.
> "We follow the intent behind them."
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They walked again.
But this time, Nico kept his fire tools pocketed.
And every so often, the fairies above danced—amused, disappointed, and ever watching.
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CHAPTER: "When Reality Refuses"
If it isn't an illusion, and it isn't magic… what's left to fight?
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The air in the enchanted forest had gone still.
Not quiet—still. As if even the wind had forgotten how to move.
Nico stopped mid-step, his foot hovering an inch over a mossy stone that wasn't there before. His orange tail flicked as his brow furrowed.
> "Alright," he said, glancing sideways at Zack. "I thought you were immune to this kind of stuff."
Zack didn't answer immediately. He simply kept walking—eyes ahead, steps unshaken. His long white headband fluttered behind him as he moved between two oddly identical trees.
Oliver, a few paces behind, studied the path. It had split again. Once more. Again. He turned, just slightly—and the split was gone.
> "Zack?" Oliver asked. "Are you seeing any of this?"
Zack stopped at the edge of a fern-wrapped log, resting one hand lightly on the hilt of his side blade.
> "Yes," Zack answered quietly. "But I'm not being affected by it."
> "Then why do we keep looping?"
> "Because it's not illusion. It's not magic either."
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⚫ The Darkness Immunity
Zack finally turned, facing them. His shadow stretched too far—longer than the sun should allow.
> "As a Darkness user, I'm immune to magical influence. Illusions, compulsion, memory warping, enchantments—all useless."
He looked up into the canopy, past the layer of blinking mushrooms and suspended spores. His eyes narrowed.
> "But this isn't traditional magic. These aren't illusions projected into the mind. The terrain is physically shifting. The forest is rearranging its geography."
> "How?" Nico asked, already rubbing his temple. "There's no Vita being used. No elemental triggers. The air's clean."
Zack folded his arms. "That's the part that bothers me."
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🧚♀️ What the Fairies Are Really Doing
Oliver knelt beside a sprouting root and whispered a scan command. No magic signature. No Vita trail. Nothing.
> "It's like the paths just… rewrite themselves while we're blinking."
> "Not rewrite," Zack corrected. "Replace."
> "You mean like illusion layering?"
> "No," Zack said firmly. "I mean: it's gone. One moment it exists, the next moment it never did."
Oliver's brow furrowed. "That's—"
> "Low-tier reality warping," Zack finished. "Selective spatial reassembly. Probably instinctive. Probably ambient."
> "From the fairies?" Nico asked, voice rising. "You're telling me sparkly, winged berry thieves can casually rewrite reality?"
Zack didn't answer.
Oliver did.
> "Not all fairies are equal," he muttered. "Some operate on pure elemental contract law, others were born from world anomalies."
Zack gave a slow nod. "There are levels to it. This isn't like conjuring fire or stone. This is changing the underlying logic of space."
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🌹 The Rosefield Flame
Zack's gaze drifted as he spoke again.
> "There was a girl once... from the Rosefield line. A noble with flame affinity."
> "She didn't burn things," Zack said. "She changed the outcome of her flames."
> "Fire would bloom into flowers. Ash became perfume. Reality didn't resist her. It cooperated. No Vita cost. No magic circle. It just happened."
Oliver glanced over. "How?"
Zack looked back at him.
> "No one knows."
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❓ The Impossible Question
The three stood beneath a vine-covered arch where three paths had opened—and already collapsed.
Nico, now visibly frustrated, threw his hands in the air.
> "So how do you beat that?!" he asked. "If they're changing reality itself—what are we supposed to do? Trick the forest into believing we're already at the exit?"
> "Fight the concept of geography?!"
The silence that followed wasn't awkward.
It was thoughtful.
Even Zack paused.
Oliver said nothing at first. His mind churned—not toward battle or reaction, but philosophy.
> "You don't beat reality warping," Oliver finally said.
> "You either become part of its logic... or you find the one who's writing it."
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🌫️ A Glimpse Ahead
Suddenly, all three of them stiffened.
Just ahead—a flicker.
Not an illusion.
Not a person.
But a thread of gold, running through the air like silk. It pulsed.
Zack's eyes sharpened.
> "They're not rewriting everything. Only patches."
> "Which means... there's a fixed route hidden beneath the warping."
Oliver stepped forward. "A core path?"
Zack nodded. "One that hasn't been overwritten."
Nico clapped his hands. "So we find the spine and walk along it before the forest changes it!"
Zack's eyes narrowed. "Before whoever controls this place notices we're onto them."
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CHAPTER: "What Cannot Be Rewritten"
To fight what bends reality… use what doesn't exist at all.
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🌿 The Core Path
They had finally found it.
A line of untouched terrain. Trees that didn't blink or twist when turned away from. A trail that stayed firm beneath their boots no matter how the mist curled or how long they blinked.
Zack was the one to spot it first—the gold thread in the air, invisible to most but not to his darkness-attuned vision. He traced it through the woods with slow, deliberate steps.
> "Don't stray," Zack warned. "It's not fixed forever."
Oliver nodded silently, reading energy patterns with his eyes half-closed. Nico trailed behind, muttering and twisting sparks between his fingers just in case.
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👹 The Wooden Demon Appears
Then—
From the trees ahead, it bloomed.
Not walked. Bloomed.
The Wooden Demon was twice their size, its limbs made of barked flesh and its ribs flowering into jagged branches. It had no eyes, only a wide hollow face with pulsing amber light behind it. Mushrooms grew from its collarbones, dripping dark sap that hissed into the ground.
It opened its jaw and reality flexed.
The trees around it twisted away.
The path ahead split and realigned.
The spine they'd been following began to shiver as if it were aware of the threat.
> "Blue+ rank," Oliver whispered. "That's a demon partially born from magic anomalies."
> "It's tied to the forest," Zack muttered. "So it's wrapped in the same warping effect."
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🔥 Nico's Fire
> "Return to the ash!," Nico growled.
He reached outward, forming fire the natural way—drawing in oxygen, pulling carbon from the bark and air, shaping it with blue Vita that suddenly turned red-hot in his palm.
The flames hissed to life like a furious comet.
> "Here! Have your calories back, freak!"
He hurled the flame sphere into the demon's chest—
It exploded, fire roaring into bark, mushrooms bursting.
The demon shrieked.
It burned—
—and then reversed.
The flames pulled backward. The charring wood turned green again. Ash reassembled. The demon leaned forward, as if nothing had happened.
> "That—" Nico took a step back, "That's not fair."
> "It's not reversing time," Oliver noted grimly. "The attack was rewritten. Like it was a line of text."
> "So what now?!" Nico snapped. "We can't win if reality itself is editing our hits!"
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🧵 Zack's Turn – The Nonexistent Threads
Zack had been watching.
Quiet. Still.
Calculating.
> "Then we don't write anything," he murmured. "We erase."
With a small gesture, he lifted his right hand—and the air darkened.
From his fingers unfurled thin, faint threads. Not black. Not translucent. Not even visible, really. The world bent faintly around where they were.
> "What is that?" Nico asked.
> "Nonexistent threads," Zack replied softly. "Tied to the Void. To Nothingness."
> "So…?"
> "Nothing can be rewritten if it was never there to begin with."
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He flicked his fingers.
The threads danced—soundless, weightless, untouchable.
They looped around the Wooden Demon's limbs and chest, hovering between reality and non-being.
The demon reared back—
And stopped.
The threads pulled tight.
The creature tried to move—but nothing responded. No law of physics. No command of magic. Nothing.
Because the parts the threads touched?
No longer existed in context.
They weren't broken. They weren't injured.
They were absent.
The demon convulsed—and began to unravel, from within.
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⚫ Aftermath
The demon dissolved—not in fire, not in ash, but in non-presence.
Leaves settled.
The mist drew back.
The core path shimmered brighter, no longer under pressure.
Oliver exhaled.
> "So... your threads are beyond the forest's reach."
Zack nodded slowly. "The forest can warp things that exist. It can't edit what's outside the draft."
Nico dropped to the grass, wiping sweat. "We finally have an answer to all this reality nonsense. You had that this whole time?!"
> "I didn't know it would work," Zack said honestly. "Void techniques usually fail if something has a defined structure. But this forest's warping is sloppy. It bends logic, not rules."
> "So I went beneath the rules."
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🌫️ The Fairies Stir
High above, the fairies stopped laughing.
A few blinked in confusion. Others scattered.
The demon they had nurtured—their "guardian" of the core path—hadn't just been defeated.
It had been removed.
They felt something unfamiliar: not fear... but uncertainty.
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🌀 Forward Once Again
The path solidified.
Ahead, the golden thread widened, forming what looked like a ribbon of dawnlight twisting between the trees.
Oliver looked at Zack.
> "You might be the only thing here that isn't part of this world's equation."
Zack gave a rare smirk. "Then maybe I can help rewrite it."
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