Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 202: Ch200. [Dark Forest] (4) - Into parchment pages and moths

Chapter 202: Ch200. [Dark Forest] (4) - Into parchment pages and moths

After the monster’s destruction, the camp moved like a wounded creature. Cautious, slow, and determined not to die.

Mages redrew wards in the dirt with shaky hands, warriors gathered their gear, sorted the wounded, and cleared the battlefield of broken constructs, and the scattered corpses of the [Card Soldiers] were being studied by a rotating circle of arcanists under Victor’s command.

"You’re going to tell them, Miles?" Sarissa hushed, looking at the arcanists with the [Card Soldiers].

"I don’t think they need the gods talk right now." Miles let out a wistful sigh. "Even more now, with the war approaching. It’s just a gut feeling but... I think they’ll find out when the time is right."

Cass oversaw the reformation of the defensive lines. Jake, Alric, and Elise took up sentry duties. Riven helped a collapsed barrier specialist back to the healer’s tent, his shirt torn and burnt.

Sarissa stood near the central firepit, adjusting the fastenings of her gauntlet. The silver glow in her eyes was dim now, not from fatigue, but refrain.

Miles sat on a flat stone beside the fire, a bowl of ration stew in one hand and a metal spoon in the other. He stirred slowly, watching the flames more than the food.

The broth was hot, spiced with something vaguely cinnamon, maybe added to mask the taste of dried protein. It didn’t matter, he barely tasted it anyway.

That was when he heard it.

A whisper. Soft, deliberate, old.

"Miles."

He froze inwardly, feeling the cold finger of a shiver run down his spine.

Putting the bowl down, Miles wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and stood. His katana was already resting against the log beside him, after he chose not to dismiss it into whatever he had instead of an inventory now.

He lifted it and slung it on his belt.

Sarissa caught the movement and looked at him with furrowed brows.

"You good?"

"Yeah." He said. "Just stretching my legs."

"Stretching where, exactly?" Her frown deepened.

"Into the forest." Miles hushed, trying his best to not be overheard above the watchful silence that spread across the camp.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. And I need you to stay here."

"Miles-"

He raised a hand, a flat palm.

"If anything happens, they’ll need someone who can hold the line."

She looked like she wanted to argue, her mouth opening and closing, but after a few seconds, she nodded.

"I’ll keep them safe." She said in a firm tone.

"I know."

Without another word, he turned and walked into the trees.

***

The [Dark Forest] swallowed him like a secret.

Each step he took was a descent. The roots curled around his boots, the branches overhead like twisted ribs. His breath fogged faintly in the air, even though it wasn’t cold.

Stories pulsed in the trees.

He could see them now. Veins of memory and purpose running through the barks, faint whispers of forgotten dungeons, slain beasts, victories, losses. They whispered to him like a ghost symphony.

And more than that...

He saw them in the earth, in the moss, in the shattered remnants of [Card Soldiers] that probably were too wounded to carry on after the battle, and ended up dying before reaching their lair.

Everything was alive with something older.

Older than the System.

Older than the Dungeons.

He paused before a tree larger than the rest, its trunk split wide like a mouth.

The Stories inside it writhed. Twisting, unspooling. They didn’t follow any cohesive line, just like the thing in the heart of the [Mouth of the Abyss]...

They crawled.

"[The Crawling Chaos]..." Miles whispered.

It was the name he had firstly known nearly a year ago. A concept only hinted at in the margins of the two dungeons. The one he and Sarissa had cleared at the expense of Dee’s life, and at the [Chamber of Whispers], when he arrived in Germany.

A term that refused definition. Not a monster, not a god. Something like a phenomenon. A force...

A cancer in the Story itself.

And it was here.

"I see you." He said.

And the forest answered.

The trees groaned, the branches rustled with breath, and shapes peeled from the bark ahead. But they were not monsters.

Humanoids with smooth faces and mouths stitched shut, their arms too long, fingers tipped with writing quills instead of claws. Their torsos rippled with half-written runes that never settled, never finished.

Miles drew his blade, and the nearest thing lunged.

He moved to meet it, a clean horizontal slash catching its midsection, making ink spray instead of blood.

It hissed, the runes on its body scrambled, and then it exploded in a flurry of shredded parchment and moths.

Then, another followed, faster this time.

Miles ducked, spun, and cut, and there was another spray of ink.

He carved through three more before the last backed away, twitching, as if rewriting itself to match his movements.

"They’re adapting..." He muttered, letting out a bored sigh.

Which meant they were connected to it. To the whatever the source of power was.

[The Crawling Chaos] wasn’t just there, in the unique Dungeons, anymore.

It was spreading.

Infecting the other Dungeons through their Stories.

He looked down at the ink on his coat, and it looked like it was burning, faintly. Not hot, though.

It was cold, trying to crawl into the fibers of the fabric.

He carved a glyph into the air, a seal of banishment he had learned months ago, and the ink hissed, recoiling.

"So it can be fought..." Miles whispered, a smirk curling his lips upward.

But not by steel alone.

He sheathed the katana and reached into his coat, pulling out the blackened notebook he’d been keeping.

After the [Mouth of the Abyss], deciding to keep note of everything unusual that happened proved to be the best idea he ever had.

Miles opened it, found the last page, and began writing.

[Entry 74]

It’s here. It’s real. [The Crawling Chaos] is not theoretical, although I still don’t know what kind of... being it is, but it’s in the Stories. In the space between intent and outcome. It’s corrupting by suggestion, not contact.

These creatures... They rewrite themselves in combat. Not learning, but reframing. As if the fight is a page and they are the pen.

I just need to figure out what Shinji has to do with all this.

He looked up, and the forest shifted. The ink-horrors had gone, but the pressure remained.

And deeper in the dark, something watched him.

It wasn’t Shinji, though.

"What are you trying to write?" Miles whispered.

He turned back and walked deeper into the dark.