Chapter 165: Treadmill

Jaxir made it out of Marr Town without anyone jumping him or following him. Once the town walls were a good distance behind him, he stepped off the road and continued until the surrounding forest swallowed most of the light coming from Marr Town. Then he pulled the oversized coin from his Inventory and held it beneath the moon.

For several seconds, absolutely nothing happened, and Jaxir began wondering whether there was some other stupid condition the shadow had neglected to mention. Then the markings across the coin flashed, moonlight gathered across its surface, and a brilliant column of pale light dropped from the sky directly onto him.

It looked almost like sunlight being focused through a magnifying glass, except there was no heat involved and it was considerably more obnoxious when the entire forest had been dark a moment earlier.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me." Jaxir stared upward as the beam continued pouring down around him, probably announcing his location to anyone within several kilometers who happened to have functional eyes. "Gasini, you could’ve mentioned the giant beacon."

The light suddenly tightened around him before he could decide whether he should move, and the forest vanished without so much as a warning. Jaxir felt his stomach shift for half a heartbeat before solid ground returned beneath his boots, followed by a dim glow coming from every direction. He remained still for several seconds before slowly opening his eyes.

Black crystal surrounded him.

The cave walls, floor, and ceiling were all made from the same dark material, smooth in some places and jagged in others, while tiny points of yellow-white light remained trapped inside the crystal overhead. They reminded Jaxir of fireflies sealed inside glass, bright enough to reveal a narrow passage stretching forward without showing where it ended. Jaxir closed his eyes again and released a long sigh.

"I had a feeling."

The shadow had made it sound like the coin would lead him toward a Mage-level creature, which Jaxir had interpreted as some variation of magical compass rather than being teleported directly into what looked painfully similar to a dungeon.

There hadn’t been any mention of additional trials, monsters, traps, or whatever else people liked hiding between the entrance and the thing you actually came for. Somehow, Jaxir doubted this was going to involve walking fifty meters forward and politely killing one creature.

The government hadn’t even included Mage-grade threats in the information it freely shared, and that alone told him how uncommon this sort of thing had to be. Whatever waited inside this cave was probably dangerous enough that people normally needed a much better reason than satisfying their curiosity to come here. Jaxir rolled the coin once across his fingers before returning it to his Inventory.

By the end of tonight, there would only be two days left before his uncle’s deadline.

That thought was enough to clear away most of his irritation, because whether the Gasini had undersold the test no longer mattered. Jaxir needed every advantage he could get before the Chance Corporation forced the issue, and standing around complaining wasn’t going to make the cave any less troublesome. He took a breath, released it slowly, and started walking.

Five minutes later, Jaxir stopped.

He hadn’t encountered a single monster, trap, door, turn, or even a meaningful change in the crystal around him. The passage remained the same width and height no matter how far he walked, with the same scattered lights caught above him and the same black surface stretching behind him when he looked back. Jaxir frowned and turned in a slow circle.

"There’s no way this hallway is this long."

He began moving again, but this time his attention stayed on the walls instead of the path ahead. The last dungeon had contained an entire maze capable of moving around him, so assuming this place was honest about something as basic as distance felt unnecessarily trusting. Jaxir slowed until his fingertips brushed against the crystal beside him.

At first, he sensed almost nothing.

The surface resisted his mana far more than ordinary stone, and when Jaxir pushed against it, the crystal seemed to scatter his awareness before it penetrated more than a shallow layer. He adjusted the mana instead of adding more force, matching it closer to the faint rhythm already present inside the wall. Something shifted.

A pulse answered him from deeper within.

Jaxir stopped walking entirely and pressed his palm flat against the crystal, focusing on that faint sensation until the mana behind the surface became clearer. It wasn’t gathered in one place, nor did it sit still like some buried reservoir. It flowed.

Attune Lv50 > Attune Lv51

Jaxir’s eyes flickered toward the notification before returning to the wall.

Attune had always reduced how much mana his abilities required, but its name had never actually meant "use less mana." The deeper his understanding became, the more it seemed to help him match himself to mana, whether that meant spending it efficiently, sensing how it moved, or directing it without fighting against its natural behavior. Jaxir pushed his awareness deeper and finally caught the current properly.

The mana inside the crystal was moving in one continuous direction.

Jaxir walked several steps with his hand still sliding across the wall, following the flow while making sure it wasn’t some brief pulse or coincidence. It never changed speed, never scattered, and never reversed even when the crystal around him changed shape. That wasn’t how natural mana behaved.

Mana in the world moved according to too many influences to remain this clean without something guiding it. Wind, living creatures, different materials, mana characteristics, and even the terrain itself could distort the flow, yet the current inside these walls remained steady enough that Jaxir could almost predict exactly where each pulse would go next. Someone had either placed it under active control or built something that forced it to continue this pattern automatically.

"A magic circle?"

Jaxir didn’t know enough about formations to say whether they were different from magic circles, another name for the same thing, or something related but more complicated. What he did understand was that the circles he’d encountered until now forced otherwise chaotic mana to follow predetermined routes. The wall felt suspiciously similar.

He crouched and placed one hand against the floor.

The same current moved beneath his feet.

Jaxir’s gaze shifted forward, then backward, and he finally stopped thinking of the hallway as a hallway at all. If the mana was constantly flowing in one direction through the walls, floor, and ceiling, then perhaps the crystal itself was doing the same thing. The idea sounded ridiculous until he remembered where he was.

Jaxir scratched a shallow mark into the wall with the end of his staff and started walking.

He counted his steps this time while watching the mana instead of the scenery, and after several minutes, something familiar appeared along the wall ahead. The scratch was gone by the time he reached where it should’ve been, but the pattern of mana beneath that section of crystal was identical to what he’d felt when he made it. Jaxir’s mouth slowly curled upward.

The corridor wasn’t stretching forever. It was moving.

Crystal disappeared somewhere behind him while identical sections were being carried forward and placed ahead, keeping the hallway wrapped around him like a treadmill. Jaxir could walk until morning and never reach anything because the path itself was simply recycling beneath his feet. The steady current wasn’t guiding him through the cave. It was running the mechanism keeping him trapped inside it.

Jaxir pressed one finger against the sidewall and gathered mana into a narrow point, matching the current just long enough to slip through the resistant crystal instead of smashing against it. He waited until another pulse approached, then fired the thin beam sideways directly through the flow. The mana buckled.

CRACK.

The sound of shattering glass raced through the entire hallway as fractures exploded across the black crystal beneath Jaxir’s hand. The floor vanished before he could take another step.

Jaxir fell.