Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 61: Survive for 10 Minutes

The mechanical hum dissolved into a silence that felt like pressure on Leon’s eardrums. There in the thick blackness, a synthetic voice cut through.

"Welcome, Leon Storm. Survive for 10 minutes."

A digital timer materialized in the center of his vision, glowing in a dense white: 00:10:00. Then, an inexorable countdown began.

Light bled into the world harshly, revealing itself to Leon as he blinked. On his first blink, he saw a flood of butterflies dancing in a beam of sunlight.

His second blink showed him birds that wheeled in the blue sky above him. On his third blink, he swallowed hard as a ground-shaking roar tore through the air.

The earth beneath his boot shook violently. The buildings flanked sideways, causing debris to fall like rain. Windows exploded outward in a glittering cascade.

From the top, chunks of concrete and twisted metal rained down, kicking up dust that swallowed the sky and the ground at large.

Leon’s heart hammered in a frantic rhythm against his ribs as he stumbled backward. "Huh. Huh. Huh." Heavy pants ripped out from his lungs.

Trying to piece through the swirling dirt, his eyes turned watery as he squinted. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

Through the dust fog, pairs of glowing points ignited like embers fanned to life and locked onto him.

A sharp, skittering crunch of metal sounded to his left, causing him to jerk his head. At his front, a lizard-like creature, about a foot long, scuttled toward him with alarming speed.

Its iridescent scales shimmered as the light from the blue sky spun around it, while its maw dripped a viscous fluid.

Leon sidestepped as his instinct took over and raised his left foot after stabilizing himself on the ground.

As the creature lunged, Leon brought his raised boot forward and slammed hard on it.

Splat.

Acidic ichor burst from the creature and sprayed in a wide arc. At every place the droplets landed on the grass, they hissed and smoked, dead.

Leon brushed his hands on his face as a sharp, acrid smell flew to him like a slap. He lifted his boot; the sole sizzled faintly while the synthetic material pitted and bubbled.

"Okay," he whispered.

Slowly, the dust began to settle, revealing a four-way intersection of ruin. "OH, oh." He nodded silently as he scanned his options.

At the front, the road was choked with skeletal remains of trees that had their branches draped with thick, glistening curtains of spiderwebs. Even at a distance, he could feel how the spiderwebs pulsed as if breathing.

Memories of the valley in the Shattered Lands ambushed his brain; the giant creature and the suffocating fear.

"Not that way," he muttered, dismissing it as a growling sound echoed from his stomach.

To his immediate left, the street looked to be littered with the twitching carcasses of more small lizards and the scorched wreck of a blue sedan, its doors ripped off.

It seemed clear, but as his gaze tracked down that road, it landed on a distant, shifting mass.

There, dozens of larger, canine-shaped shadows moved as one pack, their attention unmistakably fixed in his direction - a promise of a gruesome death.

"Shift." He cursed low with a dry exhale.

He turned his back on the pack, his eyes searching for the third path. To his right was a narrow alley, plunged into deep shadow.

The broken walls of the buildings leaned precariously, blocking the sunlight. There was no movement, no obvious threats - just a quiet darkness.

"Hhhhew..." he let out a long, steadying breath, dropped his gaze to the cracked road, then lifted it. "This is the only choice."

Every sense in him screamed as he moved cautiously. After taking ten steps in, his temperature dropped.

His foot nudged something metallic. He looked down. He saw a heavy industrial torch lying on the ground, its casing dented but its lens intact.

"Nice," he murmured and bent down to retrieve it. He wrapped his fingers around it, then lifted it from the ground.

A strong, white beam cut through the gloom, revealing walls scarred with parallel grooves as he thumbed the switch.

The silence started to feel different as he stepped deeper. Then, a deep feeling of being touched on the shoulder fell on him.

He spun, the torch beam slashing wild circles through the stagnant air.

"Who’s there?"

His voice sounded, but was swallowed by the alley.

The light caught the edge of something pale and jagged. It jutted from a shadowed niche, and when he focused the beam on it, it vanished.

"Is someone there?" he screamed, gripping the torch with both hands.

A cellular vibration threatened to buckle him as he took slow steps forward. Suddenly, a strange blue light ignited around him, forming a perfect, silent ring at his chest level.

It cast an eerie glow on his torso. He lowered the torch slightly and peered at the source with a confused expression.

As the torch beam dipped, the blue light winked out. In the space where it had been, the air rippled.

From nothingness, a wolf creature appeared. Not like the ones he’d seen before, this was different. Its fur was obsidian, swallowing the torchlight. Its eyes glowed with the same sickly blue as the strange ring.

Its massive muscles coiled under its dark pelt. It didn’t growl; it opened its jaw and screamed.

White-hot pain detonated in Leon’s skull, which caused blood to seep out from his eardrum.

Outside the virtual world, the chair shuddered violently. The metallic restraint belt strained with a loud sound. A hairline crack appeared along its seam.

Beneath the form-fitting black helmet that encased his head, sweat poured from Leon’s brow and traced paths through the sensors pressed to his skin.

Mr. Lee jerked forward, hands rising instinctively. "The energy signature is off the charts! It wasn’t on the threat list!"

The pale-haired proctor didn’t move from the console. Her eyes remained on the central display, where the obsidian wolf was now outlined.

[Corrupted Canis – Skill Expression Grade E, Existence Grade: RARE]

"I know," she said, her voice sounding almost fascinated. "The system is reacting to him. We cannot intervene."