The darkness suddenly shattered with a sound that pierced his unconsciousness:
[Mission Complete: Entering the Forest of Death: Evading Capture by the Knights ✅]
[Survival Reward Activated: Complete healing of all internal and external pain. Full restoration of energy and vitality + 120 points.]
The effect was instantaneous and staggering.
The weakness that had seeped into his marrow vanished as if it had never been. The burning pain in his shoulder from the arrow wound—still bleeding underwater—stopped abruptly. The suffocating weight that had been drowning him dissolved. Niklaus opened his crimson eyes beneath the surface. The killing cold no longer touched him, nor did the urge to surrender. Power flooded his limbs like an electric current, reshaping torn muscles, fusing severed tissues, flushing exhaustion's toxins from his blood. With a powerful surge, he swam toward the surface at incredible speed, his renewed body defying the river's freezing current.
"Cough! Hrrrgh!"
He burst from the water, coughing violently, expelling the black river water he'd swallowed. He crawled up the muddy bank with effort, his fingers digging into the cold mud whenever they slipped, muscles trembling from cold and exertion alike. He lay on his back over the cold gravel, his black hair plastered to his forehead, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he breathed that strange air—heavy, stagnant—that filled the forest.
He looked up. The dense canopy of tangled branches and dark mist showed nothing resembling sky. No stars, no light, no movement. He realized he was now inside the Forest of Death. He breathed deliberately, trying to suppress the post-shock tremors. The knights wouldn't follow him here.
Then he remembered. The reason he came here.
A letter. Words written in elegant script addressing him by his true name. "To whoever reads these words... Niklaus... Arthur... no difference."
He looked at his trembling hand. "The letter..." he whispered in a hoarse voice, his words dissolving into the forest's silence. His eyes stared into the void.
"I will know..." he muttered, gathering his strength to stand. "I will know who wrote it, strangle them with my own hands, and find out why I'm in this clichéd novel."
Niklaus rose on unsteady feet, gripping a rotten black tree for support. Its trunk was cold, rough. His feet sank into the damp soil, leaving deep impressions. He looked around.
Silence reigned.
No rustling leaves, no bird calls, no howling wind. Even his own breath, when he held it for a moment, seemed like screaming noise in this vast emptiness. The mist moved—not by wind, but like a living entity, crawling slowly, forming at the edges of vision then vanishing when he turned. The trees rippled at the corners of his eyes—black trunks like drowned hands reaching from the earth, tangled like the ribs of a giant skeleton.
He walked. Every step produced an exaggerated sound—the squelch of wet soil, the snap of a dry branch, the drip of condensed water on a leaf. But the forest didn't respond. There was no echo. As if sound died at birth, swallowed by the killing void.
Questions began piling up in his mind. How would he find the answers the letter spoke of? How would he discover who wrote it? How would he remove this magical seal strangling his abilities?
The wretched System was silent. No hints, no maps, no guidance. He felt like a child thrown into a black cage, expected to find the key in absolute darkness. Or like putting his hand into a rabid dog's mouth, expecting not to be bitten, without knowing if the dog was asleep or ready to tear him apart. This wasn't foreign to him—he was Arthur, after all—but the situation was different. He was in another world, a supernatural one, where the laws he knew didn't apply.
He had no choice but to press forward. But this killing silence? Impossible. A forest that drives people mad and terrifies an entire empire? Surely behind this silence lurked a mad storm waiting to erupt.
An ominous feeling cut through his thoughts.
He stopped.
He felt something before he saw it. That unmistakable instinct for danger—the same instinct that had made Arthur a weapon in every lethal confrontation. It blazed at the back of his neck, cold as a blade against his skin. Something was behind him. Something massive. Something so silent that its silence was louder than any roar.
He didn't turn immediately. Wisdom dictated not provoking it. He took a step forward, slow, trying to appear indifferent, unaware. But the feeling followed. The massive presence remained behind him, watching.
He turned his head.
It wasn't a beast. It was something else. A mass of dark mist and flashes of deeper shadow, ten times larger than a bear. Formless, yet undeniably there—its presence heavier than any physical entity. In the center of that mass, voids blacker than darkness: eyes. They stared at him with cold, almost conscious awareness, as if studying a rare specimen, trying to read what lay beneath his skin.
It didn't attack. It just stood. And watched.
Niklaus turned his back and ran. Damp earth flew from under his feet, mist rushing around him like torn curtains. He glanced back quickly. The beast hadn't moved. It was still there, in its place, watching from afar through the mist.
Then the copies appeared.
Not copies of the beast. Copies of him.
To his right: a version of himself bleeding from a sword wound in the chest, smiling a dead smile like the one he'd seen in his nightmares. To his left: a version digging into the earth with bloody hands, sinking into mud and despair. And ahead, a child version—with glossy black hair and wide red eyes—weeping silently.
"Why did you do this?" the child whispered directly into his mind, without moving lips. "You were wrong... it's your fault... you're a coward..."
"Shut up!" Niklaus shouted, his voice a mix of anger and pain. He lunged at the child copy. His dagger passed through it like air. It didn't disappear. It kept crying, its eyes following him. He tried again, then a third time. Every strike was like stabbing shadow. "All of you, shut up!"
"Fault for what?" The thought struck him harshly. That stupid child was a copy of young Niklaus—but Arthur, trapped in this body, would never forget he was a stranger. He had never cared what others thought of him. In his past life, he had no luxury of emotions or family. Emptiness was his only possession. Even under torture in the laboratories, he never tried to survive... never cared. Death was a welcome companion.
"Why did the original Niklaus care about all this?" he thought with contempt. An ignoring Emperor father, a distant brother... why seek their recognition? "How clichéd this story is!" he muttered. Arthur never understood this need for approval. No one was obligated to love him. Just as he was obligated to cling to no one. True freedom was not caring.
But the copies multiplied. Hundreds, thousands—copies from every stage of his life, Arthur and Niklaus together—appeared among the trees, in the voids, within the mist itself. Some blamed him, some looked with sorrow, some carried unbearable expressions of despair. Their noise in his head escalated into maddening chaos, as if his skull would explode.
Ding.
The System window appeared:
[Critical System Warning: User approaching mental breakdown threshold!]
[Emergency Mission: Defeat the beast "Arath Bis, the Silent Shadow" and discover its weakness.]
[Objective: Preserve your sanity.]
[Reward: Integrate the beast into Shadow Summoning skill +200 points.]
"You wretched System!" Niklaus snarled internally as he dodged another copy trying to grab him. "Orders! Missions! Nothing useful!" How could he defeat something that didn't attack physically? How could he discover the weakness of an entity made of mist and shadow?
But in a moment of desperation, he stopped.
He stood still, surrounded by a circle of his copies. He closed his eyes for a moment. He placed his hands over his ears. He began breathing slowly, deeply, focusing every remaining ounce of will: "Not real... ignore... ignore..."
The copies began to fade. The voices in his head quieted—not completely, but became like distant whispers. He understood: ignoring. The beast's weakness was forgetting it, denying it. Its power fed on attention, on fear, on acknowledging its existence.
He opened his eyes. The copies were ghostly, nearly transparent. He began walking—not quickly, but with quiet confidence, heading toward where the beast had first appeared, ignoring the remaining copies. The beast itself appeared before him suddenly, closer this time. Those black eyes stared at him, searching for a crack in his will. But Niklaus lifted his chin slightly and looked through the beast as if it were passing mist. He kept walking. One step. Two. He passed through the beast's shadow. A killing cold touched his skin for a moment, then vanished.
[Emergency Mission Complete]
[The beast "Arath Bis" has been integrated into the Shadow Summoning skill. Cannot be summoned currently. Level insufficient.]
Niklaus read the notification with cold sarcasm. "Useless," he muttered, then collapsed onto a cold rock, exhausted not just physically but mentally. He put his hands on his head, trying to stop the spinning.
"Can the beasts leave the forest?" he whispered to himself, his voice lost in the silence.
Before he could find an answer, the pain pierced him.