Chapter 60: Black Snake Ravine: No Signal

Then—

Lucian stopped.

His boots froze against the wet stone.

The temperature inside the narrow corridor didn’t merely fall.

It plummeted.

Within three seconds, the ambient heat had dropped by nearly thirty degrees.

Condensation dripping from the high cliff ledges froze in midair, forming long, jagged icicles along the rock face. The damp brown earth beneath Lucian’s boots hardened, a thin layer of frost spreading rapidly across its surface.

Then—

BUZZZZZZ—!

The solitary military surveillance drone hovering above the canopy emitted a shrill, dying screech.

Its red optical lens flickered violently.

Then shattered.

CRACK!

Tiny fragments of black glass scattered through the mist.

Thin trails of black smoke poured from its anti-gravity thrusters as the machine spun wildly out of control.

It plunged from the canopy.

CRUNCH!

The drone slammed into the rocks thirty feet from Lucian, its metal frame twisting under the impact.

Lucian slowly turned his head.

Something was wrong.

The white fog filling the ravine had begun to change.

From narrow cracks in the mountain walls and the deep sinkholes beneath the ancient roots, a thick, sickly-green mist started seeping outward.

It crawled across the ground like something alive.

A suffocatingly sweet odor followed it.

Rotted lilies.

Stale blood.

Ancient burial soil.

The green moss covering the surrounding rocks withered the instant the mist touched it.

Within seconds, it had turned pitch-black.

THUM.

THUM.

THUM.

A deep vibration rolled through the ground.

Lucian’s eyes narrowed.

The sound hadn’t come from the entrance.

It was coming from above.

From the high ledges overlooking the ravine.

His silver-tinged irises sharpened as his spatial perception expanded to its limit.

The world changed.

Space became visible to him—not as something solid, but as countless invisible threads woven throughout the environment.

And every single one of them was wrong.

The entire five-kilometer region had been distorted.

The spatial threads twisted over one another in a chaotic, tangled web, forming an invisible dome around the ravine.

Signals couldn’t pass through it.

Light was being distorted.

Even sound was being suppressed.

Lucian’s expression hardened.

The drone didn’t fail because of iron ore.

His fingers slowly tightened around the leather-wrapped grip of his steel blade.

The relaxed air that had surrounded him moments ago disappeared completely.

This wasn’t Eric’s childish revenge.

It wasn’t an academy rivalry.

Someone else had entered the game.

Someone who had prepared the battlefield long before Lucian arrived.

A third party had just pulled the curtain shut over Black Snake Ravine.

Lucian raised his eyes toward the fog-shrouded cliffs.

For the first time since entering the ravine, his gaze carried something colder than calm.

Focus.

Lethal focus.

The hunt had changed.

And the real hunt was only beginning.

The green mist continued to spread.

Lucian stood alone at the center of Black Snake Ravine, his hand resting on the hilt of his steel blade.

Above him, the distorted space hummed almost imperceptibly.

Somewhere beyond the fog, something moved.

Not one presence.

Several.

Lucian’s silver-tinged eyes narrowed.

The real hunt had begun.

MILITARY COMMAND CENTER — MAIN OBSERVATION DECK

Inside the heavily armored control bridge of the airborne flagship Vanguard-1, suspended two thousand feet above the Thousand Mountain Forest, disciplined composure dissolved into chaos within seconds.

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Shrill klaxons tore through the steady hum of tactical machinery.

Across the central holographic map, a vast three-dimensional grid displayed every major tree line, ravine, surveillance drone, and registered student beacon across Sector 4.

Then a massive circular region suddenly went black.

It wasn’t a gradual signal degradation.

It wasn’t a minor telemetry malfunction.

The entire region had simply vanished from the network.

"Report!"

General Vance slammed his leather-gloved fist against the primary tactical console.

His cold gray eyes narrowed as he stared at the expanding dark sphere on the holographic display.

"What just happened to Sector 4, Quadrant Delta?"

"General!"

A senior communications officer shouted over the alarms, her fingers flying across the glowing control array as violent static crackled through her headset.

"Drone Units 12 through 19 have gone completely dark! Visual telemetry was severed simultaneously across a five-kilometer radius. The signal loss was instantaneous!"

"Did the local atmospheric mineral deposits spike?"

A tactical officer leaned over the console.

"We received magnetic interference warnings near Black Snake Ravine twenty minutes ago—"

"This isn’t magnetic interference!"

The communications chief cut him off.

Her voice was tight with barely contained panic.

"The emergency beacon network for the entire quadrant is dead!"

She pointed toward the holographic display.

"More than thirty student locator signals have vanished from the system. We’re not receiving weak signals..."

Her face tightened.

"We’re receiving nothing."

She swallowed.

"It’s as if the entire gorge has been severed from the mountain."

Principal Warren stood beside General Vance.

His heavy dark mantle hung motionlessly from his shoulders, while his weathered face remained carved in stern concentration.

He stepped toward the holographic array.

Then he raised his right hand.

A faint pulse of refined golden mana radiated from his fingertips.

The energy spread outward, probing the edge of the blackened region across thirty miles of open sky.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

Then Principal Warren’s expression changed.

His fingers slowly curled.

"The interference isn’t coming from the ground," he said.

General Vance’s gaze snapped toward him.

"Then where?"

Warren stared at the dead sector.

"From inside it."

The command deck fell silent.

Even the alarms seemed distant for a moment.

General Vance looked back at the map.

Black Snake Ravine sat almost directly at the center of the expanding void.

His expression hardened.

"How long until we restore the surveillance network?"

The communications chief hesitated.

"We’re attempting to reroute through secondary relays, General, but the interference is actively disrupting every frequency we send into the sector."

"Estimated recovery?"

"Ten minutes at minimum."

General Vance’s jaw tightened.

"Ten minutes..."

His eyes remained fixed on the black void.

For an ordinary equipment failure, ten minutes meant nothing.

For students trapped inside a forest filled with corrupted beasts—

Ten minutes could mean everything.