I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 406: To The Boundary

They slammed down with explosive force, earth cracking outward in a violent shockwave. Debris and purple fog burst upward in spiraling clouds.

Eirene reacted instantly.

Before Gojo’s body fully settled, she grabbed Victor and leapt away from the impact zone.

Her feet barely touched the ground as she sprinted.

She didn’t know where she was running but she kept at it, trying to get Victor away from danger.

The terrain made no sense... Paths curved unnaturally and trees shifted positions subtly when not directly observed.

Roots tried to entangle her ankles while rocks shifted like living creatures.

Behind her, the Sylrith descended calmly, chasing after her.

She fired more corruption blasts backward, saturating the air with destructive waves.

Most were nullified while some were redirected.

None struck cleanly.

Her frustration increased as Victor remained unconscious in her arms like a dead weight.

The fog thickened and her vision distorted but she pushed harder.

Unfortunately, despite how quick she was moving, the two Sylrith beings had drawn so close that they were only a few feet away.

Eirene suddenly stopped abruptly, planted her feet to the ground as corrupted Mana spread violently outward...

Darkness gathered in spiraling layers around her, compressing inward.

She poured immense magical energy into a single point and the ground beneath her cracked.

The two Sylrith slowed slightly upon sensing the gathering of energy...

They instantly knew that this wasn’t a casual attack.

In the next moment, Eirene screamed as she released the build up of energy.

Booooom!

A massive burst of concentrated darkness detonated outward in a violent sphere, consuming everything within several dozen meters. Trees disintegrated, ground vaporized and purple fog scattered violently.

The Sylrith reacted instantly raising their hands.

Complex sigils layered in front of them as a powerful shield expanded outward, shimmering like distorted glass.

The darkness crashed into it and the impact sent shockwaves through the forest.

For a few seconds there was darkness, debris and silence...

Then slowly, the dust and darkness cleared.

The shield flickered twice but it managed to hold.

The Sylrith lowered their hands afterwards and frowned.

Eirene was gone.

She had used the chaos to escape.

The two exchanged glances and one clicked its tongue softly.

"She’s clever."

The other’s gaze shifted toward where Gojo lay, struggling weakly within a shallow crater.

"...And reckless."

One of them descended and placed a hand against Gojo’s massive frame.

Sigils flared and bindings formed instantly like glowing chains, coiling around his wings and limbs.

Gojo roared weakly but was suppressed as the Sylrith lifted him effortlessly like he weighed nothing.

The other hovered above the shattered clearing, scanning.

...

...

The sky remained swollen and suffocating like an endless canopy of churning purple fog that devoured light and distorted distance.

There was no sun... nor stars... nor sense of time.

Eirene had long since abandoned trying to measure it.

She had been running without pause or direction.

Her one and only one objective was to get Victor to safety.

Right now her form was no longer humanoid.

She had taken the form of a massive dark beast, towering at nearly twenty feet at the shoulder. Her limbs were elongated and powerful with claws digging into the warped earth with every bound. Horn-like protrusions curved back from her skull, and her eyes glowed with cold violet light.

Victor’s unconscious body lay secured against her back, wrapped in bands of condensed darkness that acted like restraints.

Each leap carried her over a hundred feet and each landing cracked ground.

Yet no matter how far she ran, the terrain never seemed to thin.

The forest twisted endlessly.

Trees grew in impossible spirals, splitting open occasionally at the bark to reveal blinking eyes that tracked her movement.

Roots slithered like serpents beneath the soil. Some even lashed upward unexpectedly, attempting to entangle her limbs.

The region itself resisted her escape.

More than once, the ground had shifted just as she landed, sending her sliding into clusters of spiky stone that hadn’t been there seconds before.

More than once, pathways she had memorized vanished when she looked away.

Suddenly a root shot upward from the earth with predatory precision and coiled around Victor’s unconscious torso, yanking him violently from her back.

The bands of darkness snapped.

Victor’s limp body was dragged across the ground toward the base of a massive tree whose trunk throbbed faintly like a beating heart.

Eirene’s roar split the air.

The beast turned instantly with shadows erupting violently around her claws as she slammed into the tree. The trunk cracked under her blow and black sap spilled like blood.

The root tightened around Victor but she bit down crushing through the writhing tendril with her jaw and severing it in a spray of dark ichor.

Victor fell and she caught him before he struck the ground.

For a brief second, she stood there, breathing heavily as her massive chest rose and fell.

The forest seemed to whisper but she wasted no more time...

Once Victor was secured again, she ran.

Hours passed...

Or what felt like hours.

It was impossible to truly know since the sky never changed and time had no rhythm here.

On the bright side, she had avoided pursuit.

For the last stretch of her escape, she had not sensed the immediate presence of the Sylrith chasing her earlier.

That did not mean they weren’t searching.

It only meant she had managed to slip through blind spots.

Several times she had slowed, shrinking her aura and hiding behind warped rock formations or within dense thickets when she spotted Sylrith moving through the region.

They were not scattered savages... they were organized.

This was a civilization, after all.

She had seen clusters of them standing atop elevated wooden platforms grown from trees. Others walked along suspended pathways, bridges formed from interwoven bone-like structures stretching high above the forest floor.

There were dwellings.... structured gathering areas and places that resembled marketplaces.

Children-like Sylrith darted through open areas while older ones observed calmly.

This was their domain and she was prey inside it.

Whenever she overheard them speaking, she listened carefully.

That was how she learned about the boundary.

"...The boundary remains stable."

"...Nothing passes beyond the veil without sanction."

"...Vaelun’s directive still stands."

The boundary...

That word had repeated more than once.

It meant there was an edge.

An end to this region.

And if there was an end... there had to be a way out.

So she moved toward where the mana felt thinner... toward where the terrain subtly shifted.

She did not once consider going back for Gojo, all she cared about right now was Victor.

She could not turn around or Victor would be lost too.

Hours after continuously running forward, something changed.

The forest thinned slightly...

The twisted trees grew shorter and less dense while the fog which was still thick above, seemed to disperse slightly near the horizon.

All of a suddenly, she spotted strange horizontal lines of light suspended in the distance, stretching across the air like faint cracks in reality.

Eirene slowed as her beast-form’s nostrils flared.

That had to be the edge...

The boundary... which meant, she could finally take Victor out of this eerie region.

Hope flared for the first time since this nightmare began.

She adjusted Victor’s weight on her back and sped forward with renewed speed.

The ground trembled beneath her as she drew closer and closer.

The lines of light grew brighter, forming an enormous arc that extended as far as she could see in both directions.

It was vast.

Her heart pounded as she closed in further on it.

Just a little more—

She had almost gotten there when a voice rang out.

"There you are..."

Her entire body tensed.

She did not stop nor turn but she felt them behind her.

Multiple signatures of energy...

The same one from earlier.

That was the voice of the Sylrith who had chased her before.

Unfortunately... he was not alone this time.

More presences flickered into existence behind her, descending from above and rising from the forest floor.

She risked a glance and spotted at least ten of them and more approaching from the sides.

Just one of them had been so much of a problem... how difficult would it be confronting ten?

One of them spoke calmly, gliding effortlessly as they kept pace.

"Is this the strange powerful girl you mentioned?"

"Yes," the earlier Sylrith replied. "I do not think she is human. But the one she carries is certainly human."

Another voice chimed in with a thoughtful tone.

"Do you think they are the ones Vaelun mentioned before?"

There was a brief pause before a response came.

"They must be."

A simple command followed.

"Get them."

Eirene roared and accelerated violently.

Darkness erupted behind her in chaotic waves, explosive bursts aimed to disorient and slow pursuit.

The Sylrith scattered effortlessly, weaving between her attacks with almost easily.

She leapt onto one of the elevated bridge-like paths extending high above the forest—a long, narrow structure made from hardened organic material.

With a swipe of her claws, she shattered a massive section of it.

The structure cracked and collapsed in a cascading avalanche of debris.