Beyond The System
Chapter 183: Evolving

I spent some time explaining the conversation with Wyrem in order to avoid the kind of passionate resistance I knew would come otherwise. Convincing Griffith to actually listen, though took some extra effort though. You’d think a guy so obsessed with knowledge would leap at the mention of dragons.

Probably shouldn’t have mentioned how much Wyrem sounded like a compulsive liar dressed up in poetic nonsense, masquerading his words often as ancient wisdom. Still, once I got through the whole story, everyone seemed cautiously onboard.

But there was still the matter of Griffith's past. As he stood up, brushing sand off his undergarments and retrieving his now-dry clothes, it struck me that he had conveniently forgotten to tell us the rest of the tale. It was really off character for a person like him, usually meticulous, and deeply thinking.

And yet, here he was, intentionally holding back.

“Sir,” I called, prompting him to glance back. “What about what you were saying earlier? The labyrinth. When you were younger.”

“Mmm.” He made a thoughtful hum. “I’ll tell you on the way. And it’s younger, not young. Everyone up. We’re moving out. The faster we take that thing down, the better.”

Knowing that he wasn’t totally keeping the information from us, we all stood, brushed ourselves off, and headed deeper into the forest. Just like before, the weight of the air shifted almost instantly with the pressure pressing on our bodies. We tensed, but no one slowed.

“The labyrinth I entered wasn’t like the ones you’re thinking of,” Griffith began. “It’s not a twisting cave or shifting maze that appears and disappears. It’s a phenomenon. A doorway. Flickering with golden energy, hidden somewhere inside the Royal Palace.”

“Where exactly?” Elric asked, brow furrowed. “I mean, I haven’t seen every part of it, but—”

“Haven’t been everywhere?” Thea cut in, echoing the question before Griffith could respond.

Elric nodded solemnly. “The Royal Palace is massive. The quarters I stayed in, my mother’s wing, were probably the smallest section. Maybe... slightly smaller than the Town of the Fallen.”

Despite all my progress. My strength, my training, the improved control over my own body, my foot still caught on a root causing me to stumble, barely catching myself.

It wasn’t just the words. It was how he said them. So casually like the information was obvious. Two fingers resting under his chin, one arm across the other. Like we were discussing our next meal.

“Elric,” I asked, still processing, “how many buildings are that size?”

He shook his head. “None.”

I let out a breath of relief. “Okay, good, because if there were more—”

“They’re usually much bigger,” he said, staring me dead in the eyes with a slow, deliberate smile.

He knew. That jerk knew I found the idea outrageous. Waiting for a brief reprieve to strike before taking me down… It was a good idea to make him head of torture. No one could possibly stand against such dark behavior.

Well maybe Lyra. Sia, too, if only because Lyra liked her.

Griffith nodded thoughtfully. “The Royal Palace is larger than any city I’ve visited. The royal family is huge. The former king—maybe twice former now, had a lot of children.”

Elric wiped sweat from his neck and shirt, sighing. “And my father never had a reason to get rid of my aunts and uncles... Unfortunately. Overwhelming power makes for overwhelming obedience.”

He kicked a pebble down the path, and it zipped forward with a shrill whistle, vanishing between the trees.

Silence followed, footsteps falling in rhythm with the rising pressure. Gradually, one by one, all eyes turned back to Griffith. All except the little green-armored slime still busy scanning the forest with sharp, focused vigilance, watching for any threat it could see coming.

“I don’t know exactly where it was,” Griffith admitted. “We weren’t told. We weren’t meant to know. The only reason I’m certain it’s somewhere in the palace is because of an ability I kept hidden.”

All of us snapped our attention to him, our collective curiosity now aimed like a spotlight on the large man in front of us.

“Good grief,” he muttered, eyes flicking toward Thea and me. “Didn’t either of you ever wonder how I kept finding you two sneaking off to mess around—”

“YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT DID YOU!?” Thea exploded, face flushing red so fast I started to get worried she might overheat. That, and the fact that she just dropped her head into the little slime creature’s squishy body, hiding in embarrassment as if it were a pillow instead of something that digested food through its skin.

“Thea!” Elric hissed through gritted teeth. “Not the time to scream like that!”

Oh, and that too.

Griffith, on the other hand, just blinked in confusion. “What? I mean back at the tents, during training. Y'think I would let a group of kids run wild through a dangerous forest? You could’ve been killed.”

I tilted my head, trying to line up the logic. “I figured you were just using one of those map cubes Miss Star handed out.”

He shook his head, matter-of-fact. “With me, there’s no need. I am one.”

That revelation hit me like a bag of bricks. Suddenly, I was replaying every moment he’d managed to sneak up on me. When I accidentally invented the Blasting Wave instead of a basic fireball, even the time in his private tent when I tried to sell him my initial Body Refinement. Every time, he just appeared.

“Anyway,” Griffith said, tone shifting as he picked the story back up. “Once we arrived, the group entered together. It was disorienting. My mind twisted so many times I stopped counting. Then we dropped into a massive body of water.”

He blinked slowly, the memory pulling something heavier out of him. “Thankfully, the nausea passed quickly.”

He drew a deeper breath, pausing. “I lived alone, mostly, but I was well cared for. My family taught me kindness, and because of them, I became the person I am today.”

Elric slapped him on the back. “That’s rare. Especially where we’re from.”

Griffith nodded once. “Too rare. I was naïve. And that cost me.”

His arms were coated in sweat now, not just from the pressure, panting a bit too, his body giving away what he wasn’t saying aloud. Exhaustion was dancing over us both, and I'm sure recalling the memories wasn't helping.

Of course I was listening, but other parts of me, sharpened by training, stayed alert. I noticed something. Something small, but I didn’t say anything. I figured Thea and Elric already noticed it themselves. It was their bodies after all.

“That camp,” Griffith went on, “was nothing like yours. There weren’t any rewards or punishments based on performance. Just a test. If you made it through the other doorway, you passed and received the prize. That was it.”

My stomach twisted slightly. “They killed each other?”

He nodded again, face solemn, gaze distant. “Sometimes I wonder. If they'd been trained differently, taught to work together, maybe more would’ve made it.”

Ahead of us, the stone ruins came into view, forgotten buildings barely holding form.

I pointed toward them. “We should stop here. We’re still a good distance from the beast, but I’d rather not risk drawing it in. The pressure only ticks up slightly from here.”

Everyone agreed with a quiet nod, and we adjusted courses. Griffith wasn’t finished.

“I could handle myself as most tanks can, but even so, I wasn’t alone. A few of us made it to a beach. We were stunned, speechless, at what we’d seen. Most of us had blood on our hands or on our clothes, at least. But there was one...”

His brow furrowed, voice softening.

“A boy. Maybe a little less than eighteen. Not a single drop of blood on him. No dirt. Somehow, not even water. His clothes were pristine, and he walked past us like we weren’t there.”

We stepped into the edge of the ruins, the sound of our boots scraping across old stone echoing faintly around us.

Griffith started to laugh, nostalgic. “I didn’t learn who he was until years later when his little brother was born. He was so young in the training, but even then, decades having passed, nothing about him had changed.”

Elric turned sharply. “Griffith?”

We stepped into a partially standing structure, a small home with a roof that looked like it might just barely hold.

“Lucan,” Griffith continued, settling into the shadows of memory. “Even at the beginning, he had this… presence. And when Drake was born, I happened to be nearby. Lucan looked at him once. Just one glance. I stood there, frozen, hardly able to believe it was the same person.”

Elric leaned forward, disbelief tightening his features. “Th—that’s not possible. I saw Lucan once. He can’t be that much older than Drake, and Drake’s, what? Twenty-five? Lucan’s maybe—”

“Fifty-five,” Griffith said flatly, cutting him off. “That’s how old I am. He was tall then, but still young. No older than eighteen. None of us were permitted to be. But now? He’s at least in his fifties.”

Elric fell back a step, head down, processing. But Griffith wasn’t done.

“The trial was the first time I saw him. After we all saw him on the beach? Nothing. My guess is that he cleared the labyrinth quickly. Avoided the danger, maybe even bypassed it entirely. The rest of us formed a team, a fragile temporary alliance. Everyone was paranoid. Some died in various ways. Poisonous insects, hidden beasts, betrayal... You name it, it was in there, and no one had your back.”

His voice dropped to a whisper, rough and quiet, heavy with memory.

“There was one more thing. A creature. It just sat there, silent, undisturbed, and ignoring us. Right up until we arrived. Until we attacked it.”

His gaze drifted to the cracked floor as if he could still see it all.

“And before our eyes… it evolved. Became something else, and it killed everyone. No survivors. One by one, everyone present was consumed.”

He paused. Just for a second.

“All but me.”