Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 204: Ch202. [Dark Forest] (6) - Ecloding

Chapter 204: Ch202. [Dark Forest] (6) - Ecloding

The world narrowed to one breath, one heartbeat.

Miles surged forward, sword in hand, into the writhing maw of the abhorrent amalgam of cultists that had become the winged beast. More of them appeared, after a while, howling without mouths, their bodies convulsing in tandem with the pulsing cocoon.

The ink in the air thickened, clinging to his coat and blade like tar, and with every step, the pressure grew.

This wasn’t just corruption. The air around Miles did not feel like air anymore.

It was as if the [Dark Forest] had become nothing but a womb to allow that... Thing, to grow and evolve, its inky fluid serving as nourishment for the abominable Stories that were about to take shape and come to life.

It was gestation.

The cocoon was not dormant anymore.

The Son of the Crawling Chaos was waking.

The beast screeched and dived at Miles. It moved too fast for something so large, limbs telescoping out in bursts that defied narrative logic and broke the rules of momentum.

Anything and everything in that place seemed to defy everything Miles knew to be true.

He ducked low and slid beneath its first strike, and the claws tore a trench through the mossy soil behind him, ink steaming from their wake, hissing like corrosive acid.

He turned, leapt, and slashed across its back, activating one of his whole Stories, [The One Who Defied The Odds], putting the strength of his own Story into the attack.

The katana bit deep, cleaving through script-bound flesh, making light and ink spray from the wound. But still, it wasn’t enough.

The creature twisted and lashed out with one wing. Miles tried to catch the edge of the blow, but the movement was far stronger than anything carrying simple momentum, and threw him sideways like a ragdoll.

He hit the earth and rolled hard, breath torn from his lungs along with a mouthful of blood that he spat.

He landed gracelessly over a bunch of protruding roots that looked like veins, only adding to the damage he had started to pile up. And before he could get up, a swarm of moths flew at him like he was a fresh, bloody meal.

Scrambling upright, he drew the banishing glyph he’d etched into his memory, and the moths ignited in silver flame, ceasing to exist as soon as the glyph’s energy touched them, surrounding Miles like an invisible dome.

The beast shrieked, its wings unfurling into pages torn from forgotten tomes. It dove again, but Miles was ready this time, his [Story’s Eye] glowing with a red-obsidian light that was unnatural even in that forest, its light biting deep into the air itself, like a clawed beast ravaging a wounded prey.

He held his katana low at his side and whispered.

"Lonely Cherry Blossom of the Mountain... Second Form, Petal Storm!"

The slash came not from his blade, but from the moment he moved, scratching the tip of the katana’s blade into the inky ground, and raising it in an upward diagonal cut infused with something that Miles had tried to figure out how to use without the [Harbinger’s Scythe].

Time.

Reality stopped at Miles’ motion, even if for less than a breath, and when it resumed its movement...

The creature split mid-air.

Ink and parchment exploded outward as the creature was split in half, but even as it fell, the fragments twitched, clumped, reformed. Like a sentence refusing to meet its end.

A story too stubborn to reach its last word.

The remains of the cultists gathered around it and chanted with their stitched lips, reshaping it, their unmoving mouths silent as bloodless wounds, their voices glowing across the air like words made manifest.

"Of course..." Miles spat blood from his lip, watching the beast’s pieces come together. "They don’t care if it dies. All they need is to buy time."

The cocoon shuddered behind them, cracks running down its length, glowing with that same impossible hue, like ink turned foggy darkness.

Miles charged, he couldn’t let it finish ecloding.

He leapt over the beast’s newly formed claws and landed near the base of the cocoon, dodging a swipe of the beast and focusing all his attention on striking the cocoon down. The heat of its birth hit him like standing next to the sun.

He could see fragments floating off of it now, like discarded drafts, and he understood.

It was choosing its form.

It was not a matter of survival now.

It was a matter of killing that thing before it could come to the world, even if at the expense of Miles’ life. Or else...

If it finished choosing, it would stabilize, and if it stabilized, it would gain purchase in the world. It wouldn’t be part of the metaphorical world between the Dungeon and whatever lay beyond it anymore.

It would be part of reality.

Miles stabbed his blade into the cocoon. It hissed, but the blade didn’t cut.

The katana, forged from whatever metal Mara had in store in her forge, couldn’t pierce it, because the cocoon wasn’t made from a Story.

It was being written by whatever lay within the cocoon itself.

And whatever it was, it held a power greater than Miles’ over that narrative.

Miles’ eyes widened as he saw his blade drain color into the shell. The ink pulsed brighter, and the cocoon trembled.

Because even if it was a somewhat ordinary katana, it had a Story.

"No... no, no, no!"

The guardian-beast crashed down behind him, and Miles barely dodged, rolling to the side as claws dug trenches where he had stood.

His katana cracked, breaking in half, and he coughed, dragging himself upright. His coat was torn in several places, his energy slowly bleeding away.

One cultist approached, not in aggression, but in reverence.

"You have fulfilled your part, Miles Thorn." He said, words echoing from nothing.

"What the hell does that mean?" Miles grunted.

"The Son required a shape. A Story, and you gave him one."

Miles froze.

"He chose you." The cultist pointed at the cocoon. "He was always supposed to choose you."

Cracks bloomed across the surface of the cocoon, the ink boiled, Stories howled from within, the basin groaned, and then, silence.

The final rupture came with a whisper, like the turning of a page inside a library.

And the cocoon opened, but what stepped out was not a monster.

It was a man.

Clothed in remnants of armor and purple silk, dark hair, skin like glossy shadow, eyes the color of forgotten ink.

And a face that stopped Miles in his tracks, because he knew it.

Because it was him.

No, not him. Not anymore.

The figure smiled.

"Hello, Miles." Shinji – Or what looked like Shinji, but not – said, his voice quiet, elegant, and dripping with unhinged malice. "It’s been a while."