Dex stood for a few brief seconds and studied the Shadow Wolf's massive carcass as it began to decompose slowly, dissolving into black ash as the Mana bled out of it. He wiped the viscous black blood from his hands on broad leaves, then placed the pulsing violet Mana Core with meticulous care into the inner pocket of his tattered coat. He wasted no further time. The scent of blood in this forest was an open invitation to a feast, and he was its main course.
Dex slipped away quietly and swiftly, retreating to the small cave he had adopted as shelter since waking in this world. The moment he entered, he rolled a heavy stone to partially seal the entrance, leaving a narrow gap for ventilation and surveillance. He slid his back down the cold stone wall until he sat on the earthen floor, and released a long, trembling exhale. The adrenaline was draining from his veins, leaving behind brutal muscle pain and an exhaustion that threatened to snuff out his consciousness entirely.
But his mind refused to yield to rest. Time was the greatest enemy now. Having ruled out the first path, the Holy Empire, and the second, the dragons of Kayrot, on account of impossible distances and overwhelming barriers of power, Dex's focus shifted entirely to the third option: the one that led him toward the oldest and most deeply insular race on the world of Ekarthas, the Masters of Nature, the Elf.
"The third method…" Dex whispered into the darkness, his eyes widening as he summoned images he had absorbed from the second volume of the novel.
At the continent's far southern reaches, where the earth meets the clouds, lay the great Elf Kingdom of Silvandria. At the heart of this realm, fortified by thousands of illusion wards, stood the Sacred World Tree, Yggdrasil. It was no mere plant; it was an eternal entity that bound the Mana veins of the earth to the energy of the heavens. Its roots stretched into the planet's core, and its branches embraced the stars.
Every few decades, during a rare celestial alignment, the crown of this immense tree would bloom and produce a few drops only of a glowing golden liquid known as the Royal Nectar. This Nectar, as the legends described it, was life itself in its purest cosmic form. No organic disease, no magical curse, and no demonic poison, including the Beelzebub's Tear devouring his father, was beyond this Nectar's power to erase within seconds. A single drop was capable of rebuilding dead cells and restoring shattered Mana Cores as though nothing had ever touched them.
"In theory, it is the closest and most perfect cure," Dex thought, but he bit his lower lip almost immediately with bitter clarity. "In practice… obtaining it from the Elf is harder than stealing the Emperor's crown."
The Elf were a people of terrifying religious and racial fanaticism. To them, the World Tree was their goddess made manifest, and the Royal Nectar was this goddess's own blood. They hoarded it with a murderous possessiveness and used it solely to save their kings or great sages in times of catastrophe. The Elf would sooner annihilate entire human cities, would sooner die a thousand deaths beneath an enemy's blade, than surrender a single drop of that Nectar to a "defiled human" from outside their race. Diplomacy with them was an impossibility, and infiltrating their capital to steal it was a tasteless joke that even a Rank S assassin would not dare to attempt.
"All three paths appear impossible…" Dex murmured, and despair, cold and viscous, began to coil around his heart like a serpent.
Without Lord Marcus, every plan he had for the future would evaporate like a drop of water on a scorching iron plate. He needed the political leverage of House Williams, the treasure-filled vaults, and the fearsome family pedigree that would afford him protection upon entering Horizon Academy. Silvester would strip him of everything the moment the Lord's death was announced. Marcus had to live. His life was the shield that guaranteed Dex's own survival.
Then, suddenly, in the middle of that current of dark thought, Dex stopped. A fleeting memory flickered in his analytical mind, a very small piece of information, mentioned between the lines of the novel as historical background for a minor character. It was the kind of detail that ordinary readers glossed over, but that a devoted, obsessive reader remembered perfectly.
"Wait…" Dex's eyes widened in the dark, and his heart surged. "The Commander… Commander Okonnor."
He began to weave together the threads of the forgotten story. One hundred years ago precisely, an unprecedented political and security earthquake had shaken the ordinarily tranquil Elf Kingdom. Commander Okonnor, the supreme general of the Royal Guard, a member of the sub-lineage known as the Dark Elf, had committed what his people considered the greatest act of infamy in their recorded history.
For reasons that remained largely unknown and were never made explicit in the novel, Okonnor had exploited his position, breached the sacred barriers, stolen a crystal vial containing drops of the Royal Nectar, and vanished like a ghost into the shadows of the night. The theft had not passed quietly. It had driven the Council of Sages to madness and triggered a bloody campaign of ethnic purging. The entire Dark Elf lineage was collectively accused of high treason. Okonnor's comrades were imprisoned, hundreds were executed, and the Night Battalion, the pride of the Elf army, was disbanded. Overnight, the Dark Elf had fallen from an elite warrior-aristocracy to second-class outcasts, treated no better than servants.
"Okonnor fled… and they never caught him," Dex recalled the details, his voice trembling with mounting excitement. "And in the original novel, this legendary commander appeared only once, a single time, in the Falus Forest arc in the second volume, to offer the hero a cryptic and pivotal form of assistance."
The conclusion was lightning-clear in its logic: Commander Okonnor was here. In this cursed forest. He was hiding with whatever remained of his loyal men in the one place on the continent where neither the Elf's official patrols nor the Empire's armies dared to conduct a thorough sweep. Falus Forest, or, as seasoned adventurers in northern taverns called it: the Third Continent.
Dex looked toward the narrow gap in the cave entrance, where the faint rays of midday sun filtered through the perpetual fog. He regarded it with a fresh reverence, like someone who realises for the first time that they are standing inside the mouth of a sleeping dragon. The place he occupied was not merely a dense gathering of trees. It was a world unto itself, a living entity that breathed death and pulsed with dread.
Falus Forest sprawled across tens of millions of square kilometres, a vast enough expanse to swallow entire nations and empires whole. More than sixty percent of its territory had never been recorded as having felt a human footfall, and the expeditions that had attempted to map it returned either in coffins or as pieces too mangled to identify. The ecological system here was not random; it was divided, with grim precision, like the circles of hell, into three primary zones.
Zone One , The Safe Zone (The Deceptive Crust):
This was the zone where Dex currently found himself. It extended as a circular belt reaching up to three thousand kilometres inward from the outer fringes. Adventurers called it "the Garden" or simply "the Safe Zone", not because it was free of danger (Dex had nearly died just moments ago) but because its dangers were predictable and measurable. On the surface it resembled an ordinary, dense forest: tall trees that still permitted the golden sun to filter through and paint beautiful patterns on the ground. The grass here was green, and the streams appeared clear and sweet. Ordinary predatory animals and lower-ranked Mana beasts inhabited this belt, their power rarely exceeding Rank D or C−. A novice hunter, or a reasonably armed mercenary company, could hunt here and leave with their lives intact. But to Dex, who read between every line, this zone was nothing more than a tastefully decorated waiting room before the entrance to the true slaughterhouse.
Zone Two , The Danger Zone (The Sea of Despair):
The moment one crossed the three-thousand-kilometre threshold, the forest's character shifted with dramatic, terrifying abruptness. Here, sunlight ceased to exist entirely, blotted out behind an endless black canopy of interlocking branches. The Mana in the air became heavier, denser, and sharper, sharp enough to lacerate the lungs of anyone who breathed it without sufficient magical resistance. An ocean of colossal, poison-weeping trees stretched for tens of thousands of kilometres in every direction. Here, the laws of physics and magic themselves began to warp. This zone was the true source of the continent's immense wealth: legendary herbs grew in its shadows, and deposits of pure Mana stone, which powered the continent's entire economy, were embedded in its earth. But the danger here lay not only in the raw physical power of the beasts. It lay in their intelligence. The creatures of this zone, ranging between Rank C and Rank A, possessed a vicious primitive consciousness and a terrifying capacity for coordinated ambushes and complex tactical traps. And worse still: the ever-present possibility of encountering a Zone Sovereign, a Rank S beast that ruled vast territories like a private fiefdom, possessed innate sorcery capable of annihilating entire battalions of armoured knights in a single strike.
Zone Three , The Death Zone (The Black Hole):
The pulsing heart of hell, located at the absolute centre of the forest. It was an internationally forbidden zone by treaty signed by every kingdom. Geographers called it the Black Hole of Ekarthas. A visible aura of turbulent Mana surrounded it, preventing even wyverns from flying overhead and disrupting instantaneous teleportation wards entirely. No one knew with certainty what lay within, only what the most deranged legends suggested. Here dwelt creatures whose power transcended the boundaries of human comprehension: entities ranging between Rank SS and Rank SSS. Beasts that could no longer be described as animals but as ancient gods, banished demons, or catastrophically failed magical experiments from before recorded history. The legends whispered in the novel hinted that the Rank SSS creatures at the forest's core did not take bestial forms at all. They were said to appear as hauntingly beautiful humanoids, speaking in long-dead magical tongues, dwelling in lost cities built from glowing crystal and pure gold, hidden beneath the roots of trees as large as mountains. No one had ever returned to confirm or deny these accounts, for whoever crossed the boundary into the Death Zone was erased from the fabric of reality entirely.
"Okonnor and his Dark Elf followers are hiding in the Danger Zone, that much is strategically certain," Dex reasoned, stroking his chin in thought. "They wouldn't remain in the Safe Zone for fear of being discovered by humans. And they couldn't survive in the Death Zone. They are somewhere in the middle of this hell."
A faint smile crossed Dex's face. "He has the Nectar he stole. It is the only antidote available on this continent for my father's condition. I must reach him and broker a deal."
But the joy of that realisation faded rapidly and collided with brutal force against the unyielding wall of reality.
"The Danger Zone…" Dex repeated the words, feeling a knot tighten in his throat. "The beasts there begin at Rank C and possess tactical intelligence. To enter that place with my current power, no, with my current weakness, is not bravery and it is not a gamble. It is pure, irredeemable stupidity."
He was forced to confront the most uncomfortable truth since his arrival in this world. He had to look into the metaphorical mirror that would show him, with unflinching clarity, exactly how wretched his situation truly was.
Dex whispered a single word, the word that summoned the system governing this world:
"Status."