....
Virgil leaned his back heavily against one of the ash-black trees, his head tilted back as his chest heaved in shallow gasps.
He closed his eyes.
Even without a healing potion, his body could already begin piecing him back together. Mana naturally drifted through the atmosphere, absorbing into the skin and accelerating every internal function.
An awakened’s body could either absorb the ambient mana in the environment slowly, or much more quickly through meditation.
It wasn’t a miracle cure, however. The process was long and much slower than it would be if he had a healing potion in the first place.
His wounds were manageable now, that was all that mattered.
He pushed himself off the rough bark and opened his eyes.
’It still isn’t doing anything.’
Just some time ago, the forest had been intent on killing him, yet during the time he spent resting, it had gone silent.
If the forest truly wanted to kill him and take his soul, why did it suddenly stop attacking?
His boots crunched against the ground as he kept a steady pace, holding a hand against his side to support his ribs.
After a few minutes of movement, Virgil slowed down.
There it was---a jagged, uneven circle carved into the tree.
He went up closer to examine it. He was sure it was the one he had just put into a tree before he started walking.
He was sure that he hadn’t gone off course. He had walked in a straight line, dragging his feet enough to leave a trail behind him. Yet, the very same tree was in front of him.
He forced himself to think.
What could possibly explain his current situation?
"..."
His gaze remained fixed on the trunk, his mind traveled back to when he watched the handprint correct itself.
The forest seemed endless, however he had managed to see a way out of it.
’A spatial loop?’
A folded dimension.
They were territories that often warped physical space to keep intruders walking endlessly, until they either died from exhaustion or killed themselves after realizing it.
Higher tier spatial loops could even deploy creatures the creator made to assist in the process.
But there was a fatal problem.
The creator had to remain inside the spatial loop, burning an enormous stream of concentration to keep the dimension stable.
He had likely been trapped inside it the moment he stepped through the portal.
’It’s a bubble,’ he realized, ’it only projects the environment as far as I can see.’
The rest was just the exact same terrain, mirrored over and over infinitely.
The puzzle pieces were beginning to snap together.
The forest had stopped attacking him because it choked.
Actively maintaining the distortion, controlling a horde of monsters and commanding roots had pushed it to its limits.
"Ah."
Breaking a loop required either killing the caster or outrunning the boundary—both impossible in his current state. But every folded dimension needed a tether, a hyper-dense anchor of mana connecting the illusion to the creator’s mind. To prevent victims from breaking it, creators always hid that anchor at the absolute edge of the domain, miles out of reach.
However, there was a third option.
And it seemed the most doable.
A spatial loop wasn’t a self-sustaining world. It required a constant, unbroken tether of mana from the creator’s mind to the projected environment. If that tether was severed, even if it was for a fraction of a second, the dimension would collapse.
His lips twisted into a grim smile.
It devoured.
He just needed to find the tether and bite down.
Even if he couldn’t get the job done properly, he could still keep the connection severed for long enough to leave this place.
"I think that’ll work. Destroying the tether. My mana should be able to cover it." He muttered to himself.
Before he could take a step, the tree he had been observing let out an agonizing groan.
He jumped.
The circle he had carved stretched outwards, forming two hollow pitch-black eyes.
Below them, the bark cracked open into a toothless maw.
"You think you can escape... There is no escape."
Virgil stepped back, making distance between himself and the tree.
"You were supposed to walk until your heart burst."
"And how does that work?"
The forest didn’t answer him.
The air pressure dropped violently. The mana in the environment spiked to a sickening density as the forest abandoned all subtlety, aiming to crush him before it could strike the tether.
The ground convulsed.
Dozens of Night Crawlers appeared out of nowhere, their jaws snapping as they lunged towards him.
Thorned roots burst from the ground, aiming to not only hold him down, but to rip him apart this time.
They were attacking from every single angle, more frantic than they had ever been, leaving no room for evasion.
Virgil allowed himself a small smirk.
To project an infinite forest, the creator could not afford to distribute their magic and concentration equally, they were forced to use an anchor.
The place where the most mana was located acted as the anchor.
So, to prevent people trapped in a spatial loop from ever being able to reach it, the tether usually formed only at its absolute edge. .
It was only under dire circumstances that the creator of the loop would create another anchor.
He had claimed that his Shadow could reach it.
Later down the line, it be able to reach it, provided he gained enough mastery of it to spread it out to the very edge.
And if his bluff had failed, he would have been forced to do so.
Lucky for him, in its panic, it had pulled the tether away from the edge of the domain and brought the hyper-dense anchor to him.
He directed every bit of mana he could outwards, letting it go freely in the air.
The familiar cold spread outwards, enveloping everything in its vicinity.
His chest tightened as pain stabbed through his ribs.
He could feel it. A thin strand of energy that was almost invisible to him.
He wrapped his mana around it.
"Shatter."
His mana reacted, turning into Shadow like gasoline to a fire.
The Shadow condensed as the tether began to crack.
A strange sound echoed through the forest, akin to a chain being pulled apart.
’Fragile...’
The ink-black shadow devouring the tether inverted, collapsing into gray static as it sucked the surrounding purple mist into its vacuum.
The numerous trees began vanishing into nothingness.
The snarling Night Crawlers and the thorned branches paused, flattening into hollow silhouettes before disappearing from existence.
A few miles ahead, a path cut through the forest.
The exit.
As soon as it caught his eyes, he launched into a full sprint.
---Crack
Virgil collapsed onto his knees mid-sprint, his body convulsing violently.
The divine curse flared up inside him, but this time it was different.
A wet gasp escaped his throat as blood sprayed across the soil.
He felt something inside him.
A fracture spread through the darkness inside him.
It wasn’t his bones, neither was it his mana core.
It was his soul.
He could see it.
Thin cracks that spread across the surface of his soul.
Because he had forced his channels over and over, drawing mana and overexerting himself without giving the curse time to settle, the backlash began to grow stronger.
It was starting to become more like what the reaper had told him.
An infection that ate away and corrupted his soul.
"No."
He didn’t have enough time to wait around until the curse eventually stopped hurting.
It was only a matter of time before the trees began stabilizing the spatial loop, and if he was still in it by then, he wouldn’t have a way out anymore.
He dug his fingers into the soil, forcing his trembling legs to push him upward.
Virgil broke into a heavy, staggering sprint just as the space around him began to contort.
A massive black tree to his left suddenly snapped at a perfect right angle before vanishing completely.
The ground beneath his boots heaved and buckled, folding upwards like a crumpled carpet.
’It’s getting smaller!’
The exit was beginning to shrink.
That meant he didn’t have much time.
He tried moving as fast as possible.
A surviving Night Crawler lunged at his flank from a collapsing bush, mid-leap, a jagged fissure of absolute nothingness ripped open in the air between them, swallowing the monster without a single sound.
’Almost there.’ He encouraged himself.
His vision whited at the edges, his lungs completely locked.
’Just a little more.’
Just then, the rate the portal closed began accelerating.
The forest let out a final, deafening mechanical shriek.
The exit was closing in from all sides.
Virgil didn’t look back.
He threw his battered frame forward, diving shoulder first just as the exit was about to close.
---WHOOSH
Cold, dead air rushed over him. He slammed hard onto the rough stone floor, his momentum sending him sliding until he rolled to a stop.
Behind him, the portal sealed with a deafening crack, cutting off the shrieking void.
He looked up, seeing the familiar red sky, and a smile formed on his lips.
He had broken the loop.