Chapter 134: Into the Mist

7:00 AM. Inside the underground air-raid shelter, the stagnant gloom had given way to a bustle of morning activity.

The night of profound transformation had passed. Inside the newly expanded Survival Space, the sheer vastness of one hundred thousand square meters of dark soil and the shimmering surface of the one-thousand-square-meter lake had left the women awestruck. Knowing the cramped air-raid shelter was becoming an intolerable choke point, Ethan had already transferred Debbie, her young daughter Nina, and three other non-combatants into the newly shielded interior to rest in clean air.

The remaining women in the bunker gathered in small clusters, their voices animated as they discussed the changes. Daisy sat quietly near the wall, a delicate, healthy flush lingering on her cheeks and a newfound sharpness radiating from her spiritual aura after consolidating her peak A-Rank psychic breakthrough.

Yet Ethan paid little attention to the chatter. His thoughts were fixed on immediate survival.

The Survival Space was vast, but its soil remained largely barren. Without five thousand square meters of tall, living vegetation, the realm could not produce its own passive oxygen. Victoria’s newly awakened Air Control could supply an emergency burst of air for twenty people in a crisis, but it demanded full energy exhaustion and carried a six-day cooldown. To truly make the dimensional world a self-sustaining haven, he needed a living ecological engine.

He needed to awaken Rose. And to dissolve the psychic damage locking her in her coma, he required a high-tier Mental Ability Core.

His primary objective this morning was clear: hunt down the wounded Red-Haired Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey that had vanished near Century Skyline, or track down another beast within its troop that carried a mental crystal.

Ethan checked the cord wrapping on his combat sword, secured his tactical belt, and turned toward the group gathered near the reinforced doorway.

"I’m heading out on a sweep around the library perimeter," Ethan announced, his voice cutting through the murmurs with quiet authority. "Everyone who remains behind stays inside the shelter. Keep the outer blast door bolted and the perimeter sensors monitored. Do not leave under any circumstances."

Elena nodded firmly from where she was packing medical supplies, while Tessa gave him an encouraging smile.

A few paces away, Victoria stood beside an iron pillar, her slender fingers nervously clutching the folds of her white dress.

She had barely slept the previous night. The relief of being reunited with Aria and the miraculous haven Ethan possessed had only amplified the guilt gnawing at her conscience. She had lied to him on the staircase of the Century Skyline villa. She had panicked and begged him not to follow her into that dark cellar crawlspace, hoarding a bizarre, dangerous reality behind a fragile excuse. All morning, the deception had felt like a lead weight pressing into her chest.

She took a small, hesitant step forward, her dark eyes fixed on him with earnest resolve.

"Ethan... there’s something I need to tell you. About the basement~"

Before she could finish the sentence, Ethan’s focus had already shifted to his spatial senses. His figure blurred into a translucent outline.

A faint, velvet ripple distorted the subterranean air, and he vanished on the spot.

Victoria’s words caught in her throat. She stared at the empty patch of concrete where he had been standing less than a second ago, the cold draft left behind by his departure brushing against her skin.

Her shoulders drooped, and she released a long, trembling sigh, lowering her head in defeat.

"I’ll tell him the moment he comes back," she whispered softly to herself, clutching her hands against her heart. "I have to."

Three seconds later, Ethan materialized within the fractured concrete jungle flanking the city library.

The morning sun was a pale, bloodless disc hanging low over the skyline, its weak rays struggling to pierce through the thick blankets of gray mist drifting between the ruins. The residential towers surrounding the district had been reduced to cracked, skeletal husks following the apocalyptic clash between the Snake King and the mutant beast that had leveled the avenues days prior.

Shattered concrete slabs lay strewn across four-lane boulevards like broken gravestones. Twisted, rusted steel rebars jutted from sheared support pillars, and black soot from old fires still stained the asphalt. Over the past month of humanity’s absence, wild mutant weeds had burst through the asphalt cracks, growing thick, tangled roots and tall stalks that rose past Ethan’s knees.

The area was eerily, unnaturally silent. Not even the hum of insects disturbed the dead air.

Ethan kept his hand lightly resting on the pommel of his sword, his heightened senses sweeping outward across a fifty-meter radius. His daily combat reserves were at their absolute peak; the dawn reset had replenished his enhanced spatial pool, leaving him with fifty charges of long-range Teleportation, a hundred uses of Spatial Cut, and twenty devastating fractures of Space Fissure.

He knew this district well. Before the battle at the amusement park, he had spotted several groups of Mutant Golden Snub-Nosed Monkeys moving along these rooftops. Their repeated presence strongly suggested their primary foraging routes or communal nests were anchored somewhere in the dense greenery surrounding the library’s central courtyard.

Moreover, the wounded Red-Haired Monkey he had pursued to Century Skyline had originated from this exact sector. If that specific creature possessed an innate psychic talent, the troop’s matriarch or alpha likely harbored an even denser Mental Core.

With quiet, measured steps, Ethan began an exhaustive sweep along the library’s outer ring.

He slipped through the hollowed ground floors of collapsed apartment complexes, skirted the edges of overgrown public parks, and parted the dew-drenched elephant grass with the flat of his blade, searching for signs of passage.

Evidence of the troop was scattered across the sector. Dark, resinous droppings dotted the damp gravel beneath several withered willow trees. Freshly sheared branches hung limp from upper boughs, their bark stripped by small, clawed hands. In a sheltered entryway beneath a parking garage, he found the picked-clean ribcage of an infected hound~the telltale foraging work of omnivorous mutant primates.

Yet the troop itself was gone.

Ethan pressed forward, vaulting over crushed sedans and navigating through narrow alleys choked with masonry.

One hour drifted past.

Then a second.

The pale morning sun climbed higher, burning away the low-lying mist and revealing the grim, jagged silhouette of Silvermont City’s ruins. The morning heat began to rise, turning the air humid and sticky, yet despite combing through six square blocks, not a single golden fur or chattering primate cry rewarded his patience.

Ethan came to a halt beside the sheared remnants of a brick wall, resting one hand against the rough masonry as his brow furrowed in irritation.

Where the hell did they go?

Primate mutant beasts were inherently territorial. They did not abandon a bountiful foraging zone unless a superior predator had forcefully driven them out or slaughtered the vanguard. If the entire troop had migrated beyond the river, scouring this rubble on foot was an exercise in futility.

He shook his head, exhaling a quiet breath. No point wasting energy here. I’ll teleport back to the villa at Century Skyline, check the perimeter anchor, and question Victoria about what she saw in the western district.

He raised his hand, channeling a thread of spiritual power to trigger his dimensional coordinate.

Suddenly, an unexpected scuff of gravel from an alley fifty meters down the boulevard caught his ears.

Ethan paused, immediately withdrawing his energy and sinking low behind the broken brick wall.

Through a gap in the masonry, three figures crept cautiously along the edge of the shattered pavement.

Ethan’s dark eyes narrowed into cold slits.

Leading the trio was Penny. She was gripping a broad-bladed steel machete with both hands, crouching low in her combat jeans as she peered around the corner of a ruined convenience store. Directly behind her were Susan and Linda, two ordinary survivors from the air-raid shelter, each clutching a crude, rusted iron pipe scavenged from the bunker’s maintenance tunnels.

The three women were moving in a hurried, clumsy crouch toward the eastern wing of the library, casting frantic, guilty glances over their shoulders as if terrified of being seen.

Their furtive, nervous posture reminded Ethan entirely of petty thieves sneaking out a back window.

His jaw tightened, a cold shadow descending over his features.

What do they think they’re doing out here?

Before stepping through the portal at dawn, he had issued a crystal-clear, non-negotiable directive: nobody leaves the shelter under any circumstances. The urban ruins were teeming with evolved abominations, stalker beasts, and rogue survivors far deadlier than anything civilians understood.

Yet before his tracks were even cold, these three had taken weapons and sneaked right past the threshold.

Ethan’s grip on h his hilt tightened. He prepared to blink across the street to drag them back by their collars, but before his foot touched the gravel, a chorus of guttural, wet snarls tore through the quiet morning.