Then, instead of continuing north, Etzel sat down on a fallen log.
DK watched him.
"You are stopping."
"I'm preparing."
"You usually call preparing boring."
Etzel checked the bandage wrapped around his ribs. The fabric was already stained with fresh blood from the Hooktail's claws.
"Nearly being cut in half has broadened my interests."
That earned him the smallest pause from DK. Etzel took it as approval.
He drank water. Checked the bandage. Retied one loose section. Cleaned the dried blood from the edge of his hatchet. Then he studied the crude public map on his device again.
Dungeon east. Outer trail south. Unknown influence north.
Etzel traced the topographical lines with his thumb. The forest wasn't just flat terrain; it was a series of ridges, valleys, and natural funnels.
"DK," Etzel said, not looking up. "Look at the elevation."
The knight stepped closer, his silver armor catching the dappled sunlight. He looked at the screen.
"The creatures are moving downhill," DK observed.
"Not just downhill," Etzel corrected. "They're moving toward the lowest point in the valley. The old riverbed." He tapped the screen. "It's not a random scattering. It's a funnel."
DK's expression tightened. "A funnel forces movement."
"Exactly. Whatever is herding them isn't just scaring them. It's using the terrain to push them toward a specific exit." Etzel looked up, his eyes meeting the knight's visor. "The southern access point we secured yesterday? It's at the exact mouth of that funnel."
DK's hand moved instinctively to his sword hilt. "It is directing them toward the civilians."
"Or toward the city's outer perimeter," Etzel said. "If enough of them hit the barrier at once, they'll overwhelm the low-rank patrols. It's a siege tactic. But executed by something that doesn't even need to fight."
Etzel closed the map. The screen went dark, reflecting his own tired face. He looked older than eighteen. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, the set of his jaw harder.
He summoned his interface.
[SYSTEM DEBRIEF: AUTHOR'S NOTE]STATUS: Chapter 7 Complete
He stared at the words. Limited Necromancer.
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He had been so focused on the physical mechanics of survival—the footwork, the terrain, the hatchet—that he had ignored the spiritual mechanics of his own ability. He reached inward, probing the edge of his soul.
The sensation was immediate.
It wasn't pain. It was weight.
A heavy, cold pressure sat at the base of his sternum. It felt like swallowing a stone. The System called it "Soul Load," though the tutorial had been frustratingly vague about what that actually meant. Now, feeling it, Etzel understood.
Every time he used his ability, every time he bound a soul or even just opened the interface to command one, he was adding mass to his own spiritual structure. If he pushed too hard, if he tried to summon something his soul couldn't structurally support, the weight would crush him from the inside out.
Level measures capacity, he thought. Rank measures mastery. But Soul Load measures the cost.
He dismissed the interface. The cold pressure faded, but the awareness remained.
"We can't track the center," Etzel said, standing up. His ribs protested, but he ignored it. "If we go straight north into the funnel, we'll get caught in the stampede. We need to track the edge. The margin."
DK nodded. "The perimeter of the influence."
"Exactly. We find where the herding stops. Where the monsters stop being afraid and start acting normal. That boundary line will tell us exactly how far the anomaly reaches."
"And then?"
"And then we go back to the Authority," Etzel said. "Because this isn't a forest problem anymore. It's a city problem."
They moved differently now.
Before, they had been hunters tracking prey. Now, they were scouts mapping a warzone.
Etzel stayed low, using the dense underbrush to mask his movement. DK moved with him, his heavy armor somehow making almost no sound against the forest floor. It was a terrifying display of physical control.
For an hour, they followed the eastern ridge, staying parallel to the funnel but well outside the main flow of tracks.
The forest changed.
It wasn't a sudden shift. It was a gradient.
The deeper they went north, the quieter it became. The birds stopped singing. The insects vanished. The wind seemed to die in the canopy. The air grew cold, carrying a faint, metallic tang that made Etzel's teeth ache.
Then, they found the boundary.
It wasn't a physical wall. It was a line in the dirt.
On the south side of the line, the soil was rich, dark, and covered in moss. A few feet north, the soil was gray. Ashen. Dead.
Etzel crouched beside the demarcation line. He reached out, stopping an inch above the gray soil. The air above it felt wrong. Not cold. Just... empty. Like the space where a sound should be, but wasn't.
"System residue," Etzel whispered.
DK knelt beside him. "The anomaly's reach."
"It's not just herding them," Etzel said, his voice tight. "It's altering the environment. It's pushing its own rules into the forest." He looked at the gray soil. "This isn't a monster, DK. This is an infection."
DK stood slowly, his hand resting on his Greatblade. He looked north, into the dead zone.
"Can we kill an infection?" he asked.
Etzel stood too. He looked at the endless stretch of gray earth, vanishing into the mist. He thought of the Level 0 boy who had touched the Ancient Tree just three days ago. He thought of the F-Rank ability, the terrible footwork, the bleeding ribs.
He had several Levels to gain before he was even remotely ready for this.
More importantly, he had a soul that needed to be capable of surviving the weight of what was coming.
"No," Etzel said softly. "But we can quarantine it. And then we can cut it out."
He turned south, toward the city.
"Come on," Etzel said. "We have a report to file."