Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 209: Ch207. [Dark Forest] (11) - Sword

Chapter 209: Ch207. [Dark Forest] (11) - Sword

The ruins exhaled cold.

Miles stepped past the threshold and felt the temperature drop like a blade sliding across his skin. Behind him, the [Dark Forest] whispered its constant, oppressive murmur.

Before him, the shattered bones of something long lost loomed, half-consumed by moss and time.

He exhaled, watching his breath mist in the air. Fog curled around his boots like curious spirits, tracing circles before slithering deeper inside.

The architecture was ancient. Not just old, but even older than the definition of the word ’old’ itself.

It looked like it was built in in an era when magic was still young and raw, when runes were carved in desperation instead of understanding.

The walls were hewn from black stone veined with pale light, each block massive, carved with fading glyphs that pulsed faintly in Miles’ peripheral vision but dimmed when stared at directly.

It felt like the entire place was taken from somewhere else and... Placed there for him to find. Or for someone to find, at least.

He held the pistol low, scythe slung across his back, footsteps muffled by the thick dust coating the stone floor, and the silence inside was absolute. Too absolute.

It wasn’t like the lack of sound, but more like a suppression of it.

Like the air itself was choking noise.

"Still with me?" He asked, glancing at the bracelet.

"Barely." Mara replied, her voice crackling. "Something in there is fighting the link. I’ll stay on as long as I can."

Miles nodded, even though it seemed like she couldn’t see him now.

The corridor ahead narrowed, funneling him deeper. The stonework became more refined the further he went, less ruined, more preserved. It looked and felt like time itself had failed to rot this place.

His fingers trailed over a wall as he passed, and the stone hissed at his touch, faint blue veins lighting up briefly beneath his skin.

He stopped, noticing how the wall had reacted to him.

The runes weren’t just remnants of something.

They were still active.

"Mara, this place—"

Static, his heart tightened.

"Mara?"

But there was no reply, the sleek stone bracelet was dead around his wrist.

He swore under his breath and pressed on.

The air grew denser with each step, like walking through the bottom of a lake. Every breath was an effort. Every motion was deliberate, and soon, the tunnel opened into a chamber.

Vast and circular.

Columns surrounded him like sentinels, carved in the likeness of things not quite human. Their faces were elongated, eyes replaced by jagged holes, mouths covered by layered metal plates. Each column bled shadow, despite the faint ambient glow.

In the center of the room was a spiral staircase descending into the black nothingness deeper within it.

Miles stared at it, and a sudden feeling stuck him like memory.

Something about the spiral felt... Wrong. The angle, the symmetry. His eyes refused to settle on it for more than a few seconds.

It didn’t feel like a living creature, like the [Mouth of the Abyss], but still... Something about these ruins sent a shiver down Miles’ spine, making him remember the sensation of walking through the pulsing corridors of the First Dungeon.

But he moved anyway. One step, and then another.

Each footfall was swallowed by the silence.

The staircase twisted like a corkscrew into the earth. The deeper he went, the more the air buzzed, pressure mounting in his skull like a pile of rocks. The glyphs on his pistol flickered, ready to come to life.

After a while, he passed by some alcoves, and checked its contents. Each of them held something. Broken armor, shattered weapons, bones of things too large to be human.

The deeper Miles went, the more impossible everything around him became to describe with human language, until finally, the spiral ended.

Before him stretched a hallway, impossibly long, lined with cracked mirrors. But the reflections didn’t match reality. They showed him from different angles. Different versions.

In one, he was younger. In another, older. In another even, dead, and in another one, monstrous like his version that had succumbed to the Mad Hatter.

He looked away and kept walking.

The hallway ended, and he stepped into a throne room.

The ceiling stretched high above, lost in shadows, the walls curved inward like a ribcage. And at the center, on a raised platform of stone and bones, sat a throne.

It was carved from a single piece of obsidian, veins of crimson crystal running through it like dried blood. Chains the color of rusted iron wound around its arms and legs, their ends disappearing into the floor.

And on the throne, bound by the rusted chains, sat a figure.

Slumped, and still.

Wrapped in rotting robes that might once have been regal. Its skin was tight and grey, papery and dry, stretched across bones that barely held together.

Long fingers rested on the arms of the throne, nails like blackened talons. Its face was obscured by a metal mask shaped like a mourning veil, though tufts of white hair peeked from behind it.

Before it, stabbed into the stone floor, was a sword. Ancient, long as Miles was tall. Its blade was dull but unbroken, runes etched into its fuller, flickering with faint red.

And then, the figure moved.

Slowly.

Its head creaked upward with a sound like branches breaking, and the mask that was its face tilted toward Miles.

"Welcome... Miles... I... Waited... Long..." It spoke.

The voice was dry wind across bone. Ancient, older than language. And it knew his name.

Miles gripped the pistol tighter.

"Who are you?"

The figure didn’t answer. Its head tilted farther, the mask gleaming dully in the ambient light.

Miles stepped forward, ignoring the protests of his ribs, his muscles, the remnants of pain still clinging to him like cobwebs.

The throne’s presence pressed against him like gravity, his heartbeat slowed, his breathing shallowed.

But he did not stop.

The figure raised a hand with one finger extended, pointing at the sword.

Then, the hand dropped again, almost as if it had no energy left to do anything else.

And Miles approached the blade.