Chapter 354: Pressure

The enormous creature continued charging for half a second, then its body split cleanly down the middle and exploded into a violent mist of blood, bark, and shattered crystal that painted the forest floor behind them. Valeria reappeared ahead of the group without breaking stride, her sword resting casually at her side.

Nobody stopped. Nobody even slowed down.

Boren made a choking sound as he ran past the remains. "That thing was bigger than my uncle’s carriage."

Brutus grunted, leaping over a broken crystal tusk embedded in the ground. "And now it’s soup."

Mina’s eyes sparkled despite the danger. "Big sister really hates things blocking the road."

Sage looked at Valeria’s backand felt the same complicated mixture of relief and terror he always felt when she moved like that. She was not fighting for victory right now. She was clearing obstacles.

There was a difference, and that difference was frightening. Every creature that appeared before them was not treated as an enemy worthy of combat, but as a delay that needed to be removed.

A winged lizard the size of a wagon swooped down from above, its jaws opening wide to release a spray of purple venom. Valeria’s figure blurred upward, her sword cutting through the venom cloud before splitting the beast’s head from its neck.

A serpent with bone-white scales lunged from beneath a root system, only for her fist to slam into its skull and turn the entire head into blood mist.

A pack of six-legged wolves covered in silver fur and glowing red markings surrounded the right side of their escape path, snarling as they prepared to pounce, but Gregor and Brutus finally joined in that time, Gregor releasing a compressed wind slash that took out three while Brutus crushed another beneath his axe. Valeria finished the remaining two without looking, her blade passing through them as she ran.

The wilderness became a blur of motion and destruction. Giant trees cracked and fell behind them. Roots shattered under heavy footsteps.

Ancient beasts roared from the canopy, theground, the cliffs, and the shadows, drawn by the chaos spilling from the treasury and the mana pressure leaking behind the group. Sage used wind magic to lighten the steps of the slowest adventurers, pushing them forward whenever exhaustion threatened to drag them down.

Lyana summoned vines only when necessary, pulling someone over a gap, yanking another away from snapping jaws, or wrapping around Boren’s waist to haul him forward whenever his legs began to betray him.

Caelis kept looking over the group with sharp eyes, calling out weak points in their formation and warning Sage whenever someone began falling behind.

Even Mina, who had every right to be terrified, kept her pouch of coins tuckedclose while pointing out movement in the trees whenever her sharp little eyes caught something before the others did.

The deeper they ran, the more the wilderness seemed to reject them. Strange flowers opened along the path and released clouds of sleep-inducing pollen, forcing Sage to scatter them with wind before anyone breathed too much in.

Thorny vines snapped at their ankles like living traps, only for Lyana to forcefully suppress them with her own plant magic. Insects the size of shields buzzed out of holes in the trees, their stingers glowing with venom, but Valeria swept through them in passing and turned the swarm into a rain of dark blood.

A gigantic ape-like beast dropped from the canopy directly in front of the group, its four arms raised and its mouth wide open in a roar, but Valeria’s sword came down before its feet properly touched the ground.

BOOM!

The beast vanished into a burst of red mist and broken bones, the shockwave clearing the path ahead for several dozen meters.

Gregor’s breathing had become harsh, but he still forced a grin as he ran beside Sage. "Guildmaster, remind me again why we left the treasury? I think I preferred stealing treasure over being hunted by an entire forest."

Sage kept his eyes forward, jaw tight. "Because something worse than this is behind us."

Boren let out a broken laugh that sounded dangerously close to crying. "Boss, that is not encouraging. That is the opposite of encouraging."

"It is the truth."

"I hate the truth."

Their banter barely covered the fear pressing down on all of them. The roar from the treasury had not faded. It followed them, growing distant one moment and terrifyingly close the next, as if the space inside the Vault did not obey normal distance.

The ancient wilderness around them shookevery time that unseen thing cried out, and several times Sage felt the mana in the air twist violently, making the trees bend away from the direction of the treasury as though even the forest wanted nothing to do with what was coming.

He did not know whether the beast inside had escaped yet. He did not know if they were running toward safety or deeper into another trap. All he knew was that stopping meant death, and that was enough.

They had been running for what felt like an eternity when the light above them changed.

At first Sage thought the canopy had simply thickened, cutting off the strange sky beyond the ancient forest, but the darkness that fell over them was too sudden and too wide.

It rolled across the ground ahead of them like the shadow of a mountain passing overhead. The beasts in the surrounding forest went silent all at once. Even the leaves stopped shaking. Valeria, who had been clearing the path ahead with ruthless efficiency, slowed for the first time since they escaped the treasury. Her crimson eyes lifted toward the sky, and the grip on her sword tightened slightly.

Sage felt it a heartbeat later. Hw felt an intense pressure, not from behind this time but from above.

Mina slowly looked upward, her small fingers clutching Sage’s robe so tightly that the fabric twisted under her grip. Gregor, Brutus, Caelis, Lyana, Boren,Vanthrice and the rest of the adventurers followed her gaze one by one, their exhausted faces gradually losing color as the massive shadow stretched over them and swallowed the light filtering through the canopy.

High above the ancient wilderness, something enormous moved.