Dawn broke slowly over the swamp, bleeding a pale, sickly gray light through the thick canopy. The heavy mist that had hung over the bog all night began to stir, swirling lazily around the roots of the giant trees as a damp, biting chill settled over the camp.

Rohan dropped silently from his branch, landing without a sound on the muddy earth. His red eyes scanned the campsite. The fire was nothing but a pile of cold, dark ash.

One by one, the rest of the team began to move. Eric was the first to sit up, groaning loudly as he rubbed his lower back, his leather gear stiff from the swamp water. Barry followed, immediately checking the alignment of his backup daggers, his face grim as he remembered his destroyed iron spear. Dominion sat quietly against a mossy root, her eyes bloodshot but her posture steady. Her essence pool had stabilized overnight, but she was still far from peak condition.

Priscilla was already standing. Her black sword was buckled securely to her hip, and her sharp eyes immediately locked onto Rohan the moment he hit the ground.

"Pack up," Priscilla commanded, her voice cutting through the morning silence like a blade. "We move toward the rocky ridges immediately. Keep your eyes sharp and your steps light. We are here to finish our quota, nothing else."

Rohan faked a slight, nervous shiver, pulling his damp Ironhide Vest tighter around his chest to play the part of a fragile, Common Class hunter.

"Right behind you," he muttered, offering a weak, compliant smile.

As the party aligned themselves into a cautious marching formation, Rohan fell into his usual spot near the rear. Internally, his mind was completely detached from the act. The time for hiding in the mud was drawing to a close.

Up on those ridges, away from the swamp’s obscuring terrain, he would find the perfect opportunity to secure the remaining 1.5% experience he needed to break this pavilion’s chains.

With Priscilla watching his every move, the final hunt of the First Pavilion had officially begun.

The ridges were located roughly three miles north of the bog, rising sharply from the mud like the jagged teeth of an ancient, sleeping beast. As the party marched, the thick, suffocating canopy of the swamp gradually thinned, giving way to steep, gravel-strewn slopes and massive pillars of gray granite that loomed over the trail.

Their journey through the ridges was tedious. They battled a few weak monsters, but the fights were much harder than they seemed; the rugged terrain made it extremely difficult to fight cleanly. While the open terrain offered better visibility, it also meant there were fewer places to hide.

"Watch your footing," Eric muttered from the front, his boots skidding slightly on a patch of loose shale. "If we trigger a rockslide here, every predator within five leagues will know our position."

Priscilla remained at the head of the formation, her hand resting naturally near the hilt of her black sword. Her pace was deliberate, but her focus was split. Every few sequences, her gaze would drift backward, cutting through the line of hunters to fix squarely on Rohan.

Rohan played his part flawlessly. He stumbled slightly over a protruding root, catching himself with an undignified grunt, and panted heavily as if the incline were draining his meager stamina. To the rest of the team, he was just a liability barely keeping up. To Priscilla, he was a puzzle she was desperate to solve.

But Rohan wasn’t looking at Priscilla. His sharp, hidden focus was tracking the faint, shifting pressure in the atmosphere. The higher they climbed, the thinner the air became, and the more distinct the scent of ozone and dry stone grew.

His expression darkened as confusion surfaced on his face. ’Something is wrong.’

Nevertheless, he continued forward, watching the team’s back.

Suddenly, he remembered one of the Frontier Beasts his brother, Xuiyang, had mentioned battling to claim the First Jianghu. He wasn’t exactly sure if it had died, though.

He tried to recall the beast’s name, and surprisingly, it came to him with ease.

Zul’Kharath.

A Superior Dangerous Beast.

If he remembered correctly—which he did—it possessed human features, having once been a human until the realm fell to the unknown corruption that swallowed everything.

’Wait! How am I remembering everything so accurately?’ Rohan’s mind reeled.

He knew this was almost impossible. His memory wasn’t sharp enough to recall such vivid details about Zul’Kharath, yet information kept popping into his mind every second. In fact, he was no longer sure if Xuiyang had even told him any of this.

’If anything, the creature is pulling its own files right into my skull,’ Rohan realized, a cold sweat breaking out across his neck.

The details were too vivid and precise. He now knew Zul’Kharath’s exact height, the texture of its decaying robes, and its most terrifying trait: the ability to anchor space, cutting off all spatial tethers back to Earth.

Then, a jagged piece of information slammed into his mind, making his heart drop.

’The beast survives its own execution by forcibly embedding its blueprint into the memories of those who cross its path, using their minds as a catalyst to signal its survival and accelerate its return.’

’It’s playing with my mind,’ Rohan thought, his red eyes widening in the shadows of his hood. ’Xuiyang never told me this. The creature isn’t a memory. It’s an active infection. It’s... it’s not dead.’

Before he could act on the terrifying realization, the steep gorge suddenly opened up into a massive, elevated stone platform. The air here was entirely dead, devoid of any wind, and frozen in an unnatural silence.

Floating directly in the center of the platform was a large, translucent blue orb, pulsing with a rhythmic, mesmerizing glow that looked exactly like a standard dimensional Anchor Point.

Anchor Points were rare orbs within a Region that allowed a Hunter to exit the area from any location. They could also be carried around, enabling the user to return to or leave the Region whenever they wished.

Although the team hadn’t reached their ten percent quota yet, finding an Anchor Point was an incredible stroke of luck. It meant they could return home from anywhere without the grueling trek back to the pavilion to use the public Anchor Point.

"An Anchor Point!" Eric gasped, his exhausted face lighting up with absolute relief. "We found one. We can finally get out of this hellhole."

The team instantly picked up their pace, practically rushing toward the floating sphere.

"Wait! Stop!" Rohan shouted, dropping his fragile act entirely. His voice boomed across the stone platform, sharp and commanding enough to make Priscilla’s hand instinctively fly to her hilt. He stepped forward, trying to physically block their path and push the team back.

"Don’t go near it! We need to turn around right now!"

Barry stopped, blinking in utter confusion, a bitter scowl forming on his face. "Huh? What’s wrong with you, Rohan? Weren’t you the one most excited to go back to Earth? You’ve been dragging your feet this entire trip, and now that the exit is right here, you’re losing your mind?"

"Don’t touch it," Rohan hissed, his eyes locked on the subtle, unnatural dark fractures swirling inside the blue light. "That is not an Anchor Point."

"Get out of the way, dead weight," Barry snapped. Ignoring the warning entirely, he stepped around Rohan and lunged toward the orb.

"Barry, wait—!" Priscilla called out, finally noticing the dark ripples Rohan had warned them about, but it was already too late.

Barry reached out and pressed his palm against the smooth surface of the orb.

A sound like fracturing glass echoed through the canyon. The blue light instantly warped into a sickening, violent violet. Tiny fissures webbed across the sphere before it suddenly exploded in a shockwave of localized spatial energy, throwing Barry, Eric, and the others violently backward onto the hard stone.

From the heart of the shattered explosion, the air warped and twisted. A tall, deceptively human silhouette materialized, draped in tattered, ancient fabrics that seemed to float despite the lack of wind. Its skin was the color of old ash, and its hollow, featureless face slowly turned toward the trembling hunters. In its hand was a long crude odachi, nearly the same height as Rohan.

When it spoke, its voice echoed directly inside their skulls...cold, raspy, and heavy with ancient malice.

"Mercy be unto the one that woke me. Death be unto the ones that killed me. Mercy taken from the ones that woke me from death. They shall know death too."