Chapter 198: The Hunt Begins at Midnight

Luke had spent the entire day hidden in silence, watching the Beast Lord. The giant serpent roamed the ruins like it owned them, slithering between buildings, occasionally peering inside as if inspecting its domain. But Luke wasn’t here to fight. He was waiting for the perfect moment. That one window of opportunity when the monster would slip into the forest during daylight. That was how he’d been moving across the city, little by little.

“Tch.” He clicked his tongue, annoyed.

It was already night, and the serpent was coiled lazily around a broken tower, scanning the area. Smart creature. But then it moved. Sliding down from the tower, it began slithering toward the forest. That was his cue.

Luke slipped from his hiding spot and began scaling the building he’d camped in, one of the tallest in the area. From the rooftop, he surveyed the ancient city, noting the river that wound through the ruins from the forest’s edge. He followed its path with his eyes, gauging how far it cut through the city, but shoved that thought aside for now.

He leapt.

Activating his Spider Skill mid-air, the jump launched him even higher. As he ascended, he unfurled his cloak and began to glide. The higher he got, the harder it was for the cloak to slow his descent. There was a limit to how much lift it could give before it became useless, but all he needed was to reach the next rooftop.

When his altitude began dropping too fast, he landed on a nearby building, crouched, and jumped again. This was how Luke traveled: glide, jump, repeat. But then… the sound of bells echoed through the capital.

Midnight.

Footsteps echoed across the ruined streets below. The statues were on the move. Luke didn’t slow down. With his [Advanced Stealth] active, he felt practically invisible in the dark, especially now that he traveled above street level. The statues stuck mostly to the ground, his perch gave him an edge.

A scream echoed in the distance. He dove. Slipping through the shattered window of a crumbling house, bow already in hand, he landed in silence. His eyes flicked left—movement. He raised the bow in a single, fluid motion and fired.

[You have slain a Wandering Undead – Lvl 31]

Another emerged from a side room. Luke dropped to one knee, loosed an arrow mid-motion.

[You have slain a Wandering Undead – Lvl 31]

Neither had time to shriek. Neither hit the ground. Before their corpses could fall, he swept them into his storage item. Then he peered through the window again. In the distance, he spotted them, statues crawling up buildings, beginning to take the rooftops. He marked the closest one with [Assassin’s Mark] and leapt from the window. Luke ran. Not a footstep made a sound.

With [Advanced Stealth] cloaking him like a second skin, even his heartbeat felt distant. Silent. Almost nonexistent. He raced through the alleyways, eyes scanning for movement, for threats. The marked statue’s silhouette pulsed red in the corner of his vision, closing in. As she neared his location, Luke vanished into black mist.

The statue entered the street, moving with that eerie, cautious pace. Not slow, just careful. Watching. Listening. She passed. The shadows stirred. Luke reformed behind her, hit the ground running again. The combo was flawless: [Basic Dark Dash], [Advanced Stealth], [Wraith Form], and the ever-useful [Assassin’s Mark]. Layered together, they let him move deeper and deeper into the city, nearly untouchable.

One truth had become crystal clear: daylight was dangerous. The statues watched, waited, unmoving. But at night? They moved. They made noise. And that was his advantage. So he would flip the rules. Travel by night. Hide by day. In this game of cat and mouse with the Watchers, Luke had just taken the lead.

***

The bell tolled. Six a.m. Luke threw himself toward a house, dissolving into mist mid-air, slipping through the keyhole like smoke. Inside, he reformed in silence. No monsters. He moved room to room, checking every corner, every shadow. As he secured each window, the silence of the house slowly became a comfort. Finally satisfied, he exhaled and let the tension drain from his shoulders. He’d been running nonstop through the night, every nerve on edge, every sense alert. Now, he could finally breathe.

“I actually pulled it off,” he murmured, pulling a mattress from his storage and dropping it to the floor with a thud.

Charlie emerged from within his soul, taking her usual post as lookout. Luke collapsed onto the mattress, exhaustion creeping into his bones. After hours of chaining skills together in perfect sync, his mind needed the break even more than his body.

“We just need to wait until midnight now, Charlie,” he said, eyes half-closed.

***

Midnight. Luke was on the move again, slipping through the shadows of the ruined city. He crept up the side of a crumbling building, movements fluid and soundless. Once at the top, he reached over his shoulder, summoned an arrow into his hand, and pulled Angelica’s bow from his inventory.

Time for the plan. He pulled out an empty potion vial, tied it tightly to the arrow using a strip of cloth.

“This is so stupid. Wasting a perfectly good vial for this…”

Grimacing, he held the arrow up, vial dangling beneath it. Drawing the bowstring back, he poured stamina into his arms and infused the arrow with as much force as he could without risking a break.

Then he fired it skyward. The arrow vanished into the night. Somewhere out there, the vial would crash and shatter—loud enough to draw attention. He sat down near the edge of the rooftop, eyes on the street below. And waited.

***

Not even thirty minutes had passed when it began. Statues sprinted toward the sound, drawn by the crash. Luke could see more of them organizing from afar, swarming the area. Kicking in doors. Flooding buildings. Searching.

A slow grin formed across his face. He vaulted off the rooftop, hit the street below, and started running. The way was clear. The statues that usually patrolled near the root-wall were now miles away, chasing phantoms.

***

The wall rose before him—roots, vines, packed earth, and trees twisted together into a barricade of nature. Towering trunks curved upward, forming arch-like supports. It looked more like a cathedral than a forest. Only instead of sacred, it felt cursed.

“This is practically screaming ‘Danger ahead.’ All that’s missing is a skull-and-crossbones sign,” Artemis muttered. “No offense, Charlie.”

“I’m going to have to climb it,” Luke said, eyeing the structure from bottom to top.

Something was back there. Hidden beyond the forest inside the capital. And he intended to find out what.

“Why don’t you try chatting with your leafy little friends? Or use that plant-sensing thing of yours?” Artemis suggested.

“I can’t. These things don’t even have the bare minimum of intelligence. Just raw plant matter. And I can’t use the sensor properly with that wall in the way.”

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Luke kept moving along the root-covered barricade, scanning for any weak spot—an opening, a break, anything. But the structure was relentlessly dense, woven tight like the forest itself was alive and intent on keeping whatever secrets lay inside.

He had to be quick. Sooner or later, the statues would return to patrol this area. A flicker on his plant sensor caught his attention nearby. He stepped closer to an herb with pale green-gray leaves, shaped oddly like a curled tongue. Curious, he activated his Identify skill.

[Stomach’s Tear (Uncommon)]:

Description: A wild herb infused by mana, enhancing its natural traits. The sap extracted from its stem serves as a base for a variety of antidotes.
Mother Freya’s Note: “The antidote made from this herb induces violent vomiting almost instantly. Good for clearing ingested poisons from the stomach.”

“Only useful if I happen to eat something poisoned… Still, I might be able to use this to craft other kinds of antidotes. Worth a shot.”

He cupped the plant gently in his hands. A soft green glow spread from his fingertips, and the herb began to retract, folding in on itself until it vanished, leaving behind a single glowing seed.

[Seed Conversion].

Even with his skill level, the process demanded focus—and a solid chunk of mana. He wiped the sweat from his brow. There was no way he could use the same technique on the wall. The vines here were just one part of a much larger ecosystem. Too vast. Too chaotic.

Gripping both kukris, he pulled them from his inventory and stabbed one into the living wall. He was preparing to climb. That’s when the roots began to shift. They writhed like serpents, slithering apart, untangling and twisting until a tunnel opened within the wall itself. A dark corridor stretched forward, gaping like the maw of some ancient predator.

Luke instinctively took two steps back. Then, the system chimed.

**Special Quest: Sanctuary of the Stone Echoes!**

You stand at the threshold of a place forgotten by time, where matter has been reshaped by curses and the pain of those who came before. Before you lies the Sanctuary of the Stone Echoes — a graveyard of lost ages, where silence weighs heavier than the air itself.