"We have to move forward," Jake muttered, his eyes locked on the looming silhouette of the castle.
Jay followed his gaze. After a beat, he gave a short, resigned nod. Together, they trudged on.
The ruined gates rose before them like the gaping jaws of some ancient beast. Crumbled stone, twisted iron, moss feeding on decay, and yet, none of it was what made their expressions sour.
"Ah, shit."
"Give me a break."
Jay cursed first, Jake echoed after, both voices low and grim.
A man sat slumped before the gate. His body was ragged, clothes torn to tatters, skin pale and drawn. He looked half-dead, and yet not for a single breath did either of them believe he was ordinary.
The aura bleeding from his presence told the truth. It was suffocating, thick, deranged, gnawing at the edges of sanity itself. But worse than the madness was the weight buried beneath it.
Sword will.
It saturated the air, pressed into their lungs, crawled across their skin. The atmosphere itself was his domain, and nothing within it could escape his perception.
Jake's throat tightened. He recognized this intimately. His [Knight]'s body was a pinnacle swordsman in his own realm, and that unique, crushing sensation could never be mistaken.
But the truth was simpler, and far more terrifying.
This man was a Foe. A Perma-Existence.
Someone who had already stepped beyond the fragile boundary of mortality. Against such a being, fighting was suicide. A flicker of power, a careless swing, even a breath of raw physical strength, any of it would erase them utterly.
Jay's jaw clenched, his gauntlet flexing nervously at his side, silver rippling like disturbed water. "Why did it have to be like this," he muttered under his breath, eyes never leaving the figure at the gate.
Jake looked away, toward the treeline, mind whirring. After a pause, he spoke."Let's map out the forest."
Jay glanced at him, studied him for a moment, then gave a tight nod. Without another word, they turned back, melting into the wilderness.
The days that followed were restless. Together they sketched crude maps across dirt and parchment scraps, tracing every path, clearing ground where they could.
"This whole thing is a twisted mess," Jay muttered one evening, frowning down at their rough chart.
Jake lay nearby, chewing idly on a stalk of grass, expression unreadable. His indifference only deepened Jay's scowl, but he swallowed his irritation and kept working.
The forest yielded its secrets slowly. One truth stood above the rest: the area surrounding the swordsman's resting place was utterly devoid of monsters. His sheer existence had scoured the land clean, as though even the beasts of this world knew better than to tread within his shadow.
And so, in that unnatural stillness, Jake and Jay carved out a precarious foothold. They grew familiar with the terrain, even comfortable in its silence.
And that was when they found an odd thing that stuck out of this forest.
The southern stretch of the forest was heavier than the rest, air thick, silence unnatural. That was where they found it.
An altar, half-buried in moss and fractured stone. Its edges were cracked, surface veined with time, but even broken it radiated a presence that made the skin crawl.
"The hell is this?" Jake muttered.
Jay stepped closer, gauntlet humming faintly. A tap on the silver surface, and dozens of tiny orbs floated free, drifting like lazy fireflies as they swept over the altar and the ground around it. Their glow painted the ruin in cold light.
Jay frowned. "A tribute. Something old, something malignant. The readings say it covers a radius of fifty meters. Whatever was worshiped here… it still distorts reality."
Jake's eyes narrowed. He whispered a chant, fingers curling into a gesture of command. Two golden spheres flared into existence and shot into the underbrush. Shrill screams split the quiet. With a sharp yank, Jake pulled his hand back—and two stunted, green-skinned creatures were dragged forward, bound in radiant chains.
The goblins thrashed, gnashing, their limbs straining against the bindings. Futile.
Jake glanced at Jay, who was staring at the altar with unease.
"It looks sealed," Jay murmured. "But…" His hesitation spoke louder than words.
Jake's jaw clenched. Hesitant or not, they both knew they couldn't afford to idle forever. Opportunities didn't wait.
Together, they dragged the captives onto the altar. The green-skins shrieked as their flesh was torn apart, blood splashing against the cold stone. The altar drank it greedily. Not a drop was spared, not even bone left behind.
The ruin quivered, black and crimson light bleeding from the cracks. Jake and Jay backed away fast, eyes fixed on the stone as the air thickened, heavy with iron and rot. Slowly, smoke gathered, shaping itself into the silhouette of something… smiling. Something that had been waiting.
They didn't linger to greet it.
Days later, deeper into the wilderness, they found another horror.
It was a tree.
Or at least, it wore the shape of one.
Its massive trunk rose like a pillar of flesh disguised in bark, its branches spread wide, and from them hung countless floating seeds, drifting lazily in the air like predatory lanterns.
"The hell is this thing?" Jay muttered, his jaw tight as he watched one of the seeds hover close. A clone stepped out from the shadows, a perfect mirror of himself. The double's eyes were cold, expression unreadable.
When Jay's orbs tried to approach, the seeds lashed out, slicing through the silver constructs with merciless precision.
Nearby, Jake sat cross-legged, body wreathed in a strange green glow. His eyes opened slowly, and when they fixed on the tree, he saw not wood and leaves, but muscle, sinew, veins running like roots. A living organism made of flesh.
The realization knotted his stomach.
It wasn't just dangerous. It was a Foe. The same kind of being as the swordsman who sat before the castle gates.
Even now, a clone of himself knelt before the monstrous trunk, mimicking his meditative pose. It tried, clumsily, to block his senses, to interfere with his mana perception. But Jake's Tome of Prophecy wasn't something that coul
ld be copied so easily. The doppelgänger's spells faltered, weaker echoes of what he and the Game had forged.
Still, the presence of such a being, another Perma-Existence, hiding in the shell of a tree, was enough to weigh on both of them.
Jake and Jay stood before the abomination in silence, their gazes locked on its endless branches and swarming seeds.
They looked at each other, and slowly, a spark seemed to come alive in their eyes.
They were cooking something.