After Dex's decision to move at maximum possible speed, Falus Forest was no longer merely a natural obstacle or a hostile environment. It had literally transformed into a minefield pulsing with death in every corner. Dex ran in quick, studied, mathematically precise strides, as though reading the faint heartbeat of the ground beneath his feet. His blue eyes, flashing with a faint golden shimmer, never ceased for a moment their sweep of the terrain, the twisted tree trunks, the hanging vines, searching for magical or mechanical traps the mercenaries might have left in their wake. Meanwhile Lumia followed him with breathtaking lightness, moving like a phantom of pure silver, gliding between the trees as though her bare feet barely touched the wet, thorn-riddled earth, floating above it by millimetres, carried by her Celestial aura.
Dex and Lumia kept up this brutal pace for long hours, covering kilometres into the depths of the Forbidden Zone, passing the remains of ancient battles and marshes that bubbled with toxic gases. They did not stop to rest, exchanging no more than a few brief gestures, for speed was now the dividing line between life and death, between reaching the World Tree elixir and finding Okonnor's plundered corpse.
But however mighty Dex's will, the warped laws of nature in this forest eventually imposed themselves. A pitch-black night descended over the Danger Zone, a night that bore no resemblance to the nights of human cities or even ordinary open country. It was not merely the absence of the sun. It was a thick, heavy darkness, as though a viscous material that sealed the pores of skin and suffocated breath. The enormous trees rising hundreds of metres had fused their crowns into a black wooden shield, blocking the moon and stars entirely, preventing any celestial ray of light from piercing this subterranean hell. Nothing remained in this surrounding blackness save a very faint and frighteningly alien glimmer from the Mana-radiating parasitic plants and toxic fungi growing on the rotting trunks, emitting a sickly green and purple phosphorescence that deepened the desolation rather than illuminating it.
Dex understood with his combat instinct that continuing to run would be certain suicide. He raised his hand to signal Lumia. To keep running blindly in terrain of unknown topography after this absolute darkness had descended would be madness: a single wrong step could plunge him into a bottomless pit, or deliver him into the mouth of a carnivorous giant plant.
He began moving with extreme caution, slowing his pace, and reduced the blazing of the Phoenix fire in his veins to its lowest possible level. He drew the Mana inward to his chest, bearing the pain of suppressing it, to ensure his body was not a thermal beacon drawing the attention of the forest's night catastrophes. Lumia moved directly beside him in her customary silence, but her silver eyes were widening in the darkness, absorbing the frequencies invisible to human perception.
Then, something in the texture of the air changed. Dex stopped walking, and the muscles of his jaw set hard. It was not a sound. It was not the smell of a predatory beast. It was a physical alteration in the surrounding environment.
"The air is charged…" Dex whispered very quietly, raising his hand to examine the hair on his forearm. It was standing completely upright. He felt a strange, stinging and uncomfortable prickling across the surface of his skin, as though thousands of invisible fine needles were driving into his pores. At first he thought it was the cold of Lumia's 'void' aura that sometimes seeped outward. But he recognised quickly that this prickling was different. It was static electricity: dense and heavy, beginning to fill the air gradually, until the bitter metallic taste of ozone overtook the smell of rot in his mouth.
Then Lumia stopped entirely. She froze like an ice statue, her silver eyes widening to an unprecedented degree, reflecting flashes invisible to Dex as she stared directly upward, toward the dark wooden ceiling formed by the treetops.
"Dex…" Lumia whispered in a tone carrying a rare urgency, "the sky is falling."
Dex raised his head swiftly toward the darkness and readied his fire, but what he saw was not a collapsing sky.
From between the enormous black branches, dozens of eyes glinted. But these were no ordinary eyes: they were paired side by side, flashing in blue and white like malfunctioning neon signs. The sky was not falling. What fell were the Double-Headed Lightning Hounds.
Six terrifying Rank B− beasts, a rank capable of annihilating an entire squad of armoured knights. These creatures were the hideous offspring of the Forbidden Zone's warped Mana. Their bodies were enormous, the size of warhorse, covered in rough dark blue fur that constantly glimmered as white and blue electrical sparks ran across it like pulsing veins of energy. But the most terrifying aspect was not their size, it was their mutilated anatomy: each creature possessed two complete heads erupting from a massively muscular neck. Each head was lined with jaws full of fangs resembling steel rivets, and the saliva dripping from them evaporated in the air with a crackling electrical sound. The presence of two heads was not merely a physical deformity, it meant two separate consciousnesses processing the battle simultaneously and coordinating attacks with lethal synchronisation.
The six hounds lunged from the high branches like living masses of thunder, descending at speeds beyond ordinary human sight. What made it most terrifying was that there was no roar or howl preceding the attack, as wolves would. These beasts were biologically silent. The only sound that split the suffocating night's silence was a violent crackling, a deep, ear-shredding 'TSSSSHH' resembling the sound of a high-voltage current severing from a massive power station. The attack had begun, and darkness had become an illuminated execution ground.