Chapter 197: Trapped

Evren strained against the rubbery purple resin wrapping his body, but the casing didn’t budge an inch.

His arms were pinned flat against his ribs, and the tight cocoon clamped around his chest and legs like hardened rubber. He couldn’t reach his pockets, summon a weapon from his spatial ring, or even turn his wrist to check the screen of his tactical pad.

Worse, an icy, hollow pull dragged steadily at the center of his chest.

Dozens of thin, glowing violet tendrils were rooted through the resin, piercing straight through his jacket and into his skin. With every passing second, a steady stream of his mana was being siphoned away, flowing through the glowing roots and down into the dark expanse below.

’I need to get out of this right now,’ Evren thought.

He focused on his mana pool and triggered Umbral Blink.

Nothing happened.

The moment his mana flared to initiate the phase-shift, the violet tendrils pulsed violently, greedily swallowing the surge of energy before the spell could even form. The shadow phase fizzled out into a puff of harmless gray smoke, leaving him dangling in place.

Evren gritted his teeth.

’Regular casting won’t work,’ he realized quickly. ’As long as my mana flows freely, those tendrils act like a sponge. They drain it faster than I can shape it.’

He closed his eyes and clamped down on his internal mana circulation.

Using the dense physical control of his Titan Body Density, Evren forcefully locked his pores and tightened every muscle in his chest, cutting off the outward leakage by sheer physical pressure.

He gathered whatever mana remained in his core, compressing it inward until it was no larger than the tip of a sewing needle. The energy fought against the compression, heating up like a miniature white-hot sun beneath his sternum.

Once the density reached its limit, Evren didn’t cast a spell. He simply released the lock in a single, explosive burst directed outward through his chest and shoulders.

CRACK!

A deafening shockwave of raw concussive force and blue lightning detonated inside the pod.

The rubbery purple resin shattered outward like blown glass. The violet feeding tendrils snapped with sharp pops, spraying black fluid across the empty air.

Evren broke free from the shell, dropping twenty feet through the darkness.

He landed on both boots, his knees bending to absorb the impact as his heels dug into the cold stone floor.

Evren exhaled a ragged breath, immediately checking his left forearm. The screen of his tactical wrist-pad was blinking with a rapid red warning light.

The emergence countdown had dropped drastically. There were only eighteen minutes left on the clock.

Evren looked up and swept his gaze across the massive cavern.

The chamber was hug, stretching hundreds of feet wide beneath a jagged, vaulted ceiling.

Floating in the exact center of the cavern floor was the true cocoon... a terrifying obsidian-and-violet mass the size of a six-story building, throbbing with suffocating Level 100 mana.

Thick, glowing bio-cables spread out from the base of the cocoon like giant roots, snaking up the stone walls of the cavern.

Suspended along the rock walls, wrapped in dozens of identical purple resin pods, were the rest of the incursion force.

Evren spotted Silas Drake hanging thirty feet up to his right, golden armor dull beneath the slimy resin, his head slumped forward in deep, unmoving sleep. Further down the wall hung the thirty-plus A-Rank and S-Rank guild masters, all trapped in the same psychic stasis.

Just fifteen feet to Evren’s left, hanging side by side from a jagged stone outcrop, were Amber and Zephyra.

Evren didn’t waste a second.

He summoned the Frost-Bane Cleaver into his grip. With the siphon broken, his mana flowed smoothly once more.

He activated Umbral Blink, phasing up to the stone outcrop beside the two pods.

With two clean horizontal slashes, the razor-sharp blade sliced through the rubbery resin. The pods split open, and Amber and Zephyra tumbled out into the air.

Evren dropped his cleaver, catching Amber with his right arm and scooping Zephyra against his chest with his left, leaping down to land safely on the cavern floor.

Both women were limp; their skin was pale and their breathing shallow.

Evren placed his palms flat against their chests, immediately tapping into their soul-bonds. He forced a surge of his own warm, dense mana straight into their hearts, sending a shockwave through their stagnant mana circuits.

"Amber! Zephyra! Wake up!" Evren commanded through their mental link.

Amber’s eyes snapped open first.

She let out a sharp, violent gasp, coughing up a mouthful of thin purple vapor as her body jolted against his arm.

A fraction of a second later, Zephyra choked on a breath, her fingers instinctively digging into Evren’s jacket as she scrambled to find her footing.

"Evren...?" Amber stammered, shaking her head violently as her vision cleared. "Where... where are we? The ridge... the archway..."

"It was a trap," Evren said, helping them steady their feet. "The mana wave knocked all forty of us out the second we entered the rift. We’ve been hanging in stasis pods while that thing fed on us."

Zephyra looked around the cavern, her eyes widening as she felt the true, burning warmth flowing between their souls.

"The ones on the ridge..." Zephyra breathed in a raspy voice. "Those were phantoms."

"Yeah," Evren said, picking up his cleaver. "I killed them. But we only have eighteen minutes left before that cocoon hatches."

Amber’s gaze snapped toward the giant wall of sleeping hunters. "Silas Drake... all the guild masters... they’re still trapped."

"We need to cut them down right now," Evren said, turning toward Drake’s pod. "If we don’t have forty high-rank hunters on their feet when that Level 100 monster breaks out, District One is gone."

Evren took two steps toward the wall, but before he could leap, the cocoon in the center of the cavern let out a deep, furious groan.

The ground violently lurched.

With three pods severed, the creature felt the sudden drop in its mana intake.

The cocoon wasn’t ready to emerge yet... its thick shell was still hardening, requiring the final eighteen minutes to complete its transformation.

Instead, four large circular vents split open along the base of the shell.

A thick wave of foul purple mist hissed into the air, and heavy, thudding footsteps echoed from within the fog.

Four towering figures stepped out onto the cavern floor, blocking the path between Evren and the wall of sleeping hunters.

They stood eight feet tall, covered from head to toe in shiny black shell armor that looked like polished beetle shells. Each creature had four thick, strong legs and two huge scythe-like arms that vibrated so fast they blurred the surrounding air.

A cold digital readout flashed across Evren’s wrist-pad:

[THREAT DETECTED: VOID ROYAL GUARDIAN — LEVEL 82 (S-RANK)]

[QUANTITY: 4 UNITS]

The four guardians lowered their heads, their multi-faceted crimson eyes locking directly onto Evren, Amber, and Zephyra.

"They’re guarding the feeding lines," Amber said, her crimson wings snapping open behind her back with a loud crack. She drew both dragon-bone sabers, her eyes blazing with fury. "They don’t want us waking the others."

"Let them try to stop us," Zephyra whispered, drawing out her whip-blade as dark shadows swirled around her boots.

Evren stepped to the front of their formation, leveling the Frost-Bane Cleaver.

Both the Glacial Wyvern core and Heavenly Lightning roared to life along the steel blade, bathing the dark cavern in brilliant blue light.

"We kill these four fast," Evren ordered. "Then we wake the rest."