Chapter 358:Finally.

Chapter 358: 358:Finally.

Far above, the opening he’d jumped from was barely visible, the queen remained near it. Silver could just make out movement.

"Stay up there."

The queen couldn’t hear him but hr hoped it could. He lay beneath the tree for several minutes, his body desperately wanting sleep but he refused, not yet.

He was outside the cave system but that didn’t mean he was safe. The worms had developed flying forms. The queen knew there were routes close to the surface.

The Association had his warning, hopefully. His beacon...

Silver touched his equipment, still there. The device had survived. Its casing was scratched badly but the indicator remained active.

[Emergency Survival Beacon Active.]

He stared at it for a few seconds, then smiled.

"You’re officially worth every point."

He deactivated Spatial Sense completely. His reserves needed recovery. He reached into storage, taking out medicine and water.

He drank first, then took another recovery medicine. His supply had become considerably smaller, but he didn’t care anymore.

He had a system shop and he had AP. Most importantly, he was outside. Silver remained seated against the tree until the shaking in his legs stopped.

Then he slowly stood. His knees almost gave out but primal Strength stabilized him. He leaned against the trunk and looked around.

Something about the landscape seemed wrong, not dangerous per say but familiar. He climbed onto a nearby rock formation to get a better view.

The valley spread beneath him. He stared in disbelief, but then, realization arrived. He had climbed too far up.

Silver had entered the underground system from much lower in Death Row Valley.

After falling into the deepest sections and spending days following tunnels, climbing the queen’s routes, taking the stream detour and continuing upward, he’d passed the elevation of the original expedition entrance entirely and emerged high on the valley wall.

"You’re kidding."

He looked down. Far below were sections of the route Larry’s convoy had originally travelled. He recognized a rocky formation, then another.

Silver searched.

His eyesight wasn’t enough. He used the binocular function on a surviving piece of equipment. There was the road, vegetation, clearing and... vehicles.

Silver froze.

He adjusted the magnification. He saw his car. It was tiny from this distance but unmistakable.

The vehicle he and Ravenna had arrived in remained where they’d left it before entering the deeper valley.

Silver lowered the device.

He stared downhill, then back uphill where the queen’s opening remained far above. He looked downhill again.

For days, his objective had been impossibly complicated. To survive, escape the queen,navigate the tunnels, find a route upward, recover enough spatial energy, get a signal, warn Ravenna, warn the Association and find the surface.

Now the objective was wonderfully simple. Just get down the mountain and reach the car. Silver adjusted his equipment.

His sword was gone, that hurt more than he wanted to admit but he still had his handgun. The suppressor was damaged but attached.

His climbing kit had lost part of its rope. His phone was somewhere inside the mountain. His clothes looked like he’d fought the mountain itself.

Silver looked terrible and felt even worse. He smiled anyway.

"Ravenna is going to kill me."

He started downhill.

Getting out of the mountain had solved his largest problem, but as he stood halfway up the side of Death Row Valley and looked toward the distant ground below, he quickly discovered that being outside and being somewhere safe were two very different things.

The car looked tiny from where he stood, little more than a dark speck beside the old expedition route, and the terrain separating him from it wasn’t exactly designed for someone in his condition.

The valley wall wasn’t completely vertical here, which was the only reason he could even consider descending without specialized equipment, but sections of exposed rock were broken by loose soil, narrow ledges, clusters of stubborn trees and slopes steep enough that one careless step could send him tumbling several dozen meters before anything stopped him.

He leaned against a tree and stared downward for several seconds before releasing a tired breath. "I suppose expecting the mountain to provide stairs after everything else would have been unreasonable."

The Emergency Survival Beacon remained secured to his equipment and continued transmitting, although now that there were no kilometers of stone obstructing it, the device no longer struggled nearly as much.

[Emergency Survival Beacon: ACTIVE.]

[External Emergency Infrastructure Detected.]

[Transmission Stability: High.]

[Approximate Surface Location Successfully Updated.]

That was reassuring. Silver didn’t know what the observation center intended to do with his warning about the Sky-Borers, and he had no idea whether anyone was actively tracking his beacon, but at least someone outside now had a reasonably accurate indication that he had reached the surface.

He considered remaining where he was and waiting for rescue... the thought lasted perhaps ten seconds.

The worms had developed a flying stage, the queen knew he had escaped, plus he had absolutely no desire to discover whether the Sky-Borers could find the same opening he’d used.

More importantly, waiting meant surrendering control of his situation after spending days fighting to regain it.

His car was down there, food was available through the system, medicine was available through the system, and he could still walk; that was enough.

Silver began descending.

The first several hundred meters were painfully slow. He used tree trunks whenever possible, lowered himself between rock formations rather than jumping, and occasionally sat down before sliding across particularly steep sections.

His remaining climbing equipment helped whenever the slope became dangerous enough to justify using it, although after the cliff escape he had considerably less rope than he’d started with.

Something strange became apparent after the first hour.

He was feeling better. It was not merely because the medicine he’d taken after landing was working. His body was recovering noticeably faster than he’d expected.

The deep ache around his ribs had already weakened. His shoulder still hurt whenever he lifted his arm too high, but the sharp pain from the queen’s attacks had become a manageable soreness.

Even his legs, which had felt close to useless immediately after the fall, were supporting him increasingly well.