This Living Hell (5)
When entering the Forest of the Four Seasons, no two people ever started in the exact same place.
Short of holding hands as they crossed the threshold, arrivals were bound to find themselves scattered across entirely different locations—and even if they did clasp hands, there was never any guarantee they would end up together. After all, countless souls had stepped beyond the boundary, yet not a single one had ever walked back out. Only the truly, absurdly fortunate would ever materialize anywhere near someone who had entered ahead of them.
"Ugh..."
A holy knight groaned, pushing himself up from the ground. A full visor concealed his face, but his attire made his allegiance unmistakably clear. He was a senior operative of the Surveillance Unit, forcibly booted into the Forest of the Four Seasons by Ludwig. While typical holy knights proudly donned gleaming white armor, surveillance operatives wore plate blackened to a dull, ink-like shade. Originally, it was the garb reserved for the Heresy Inquisitors, but in recent times, they had been transformed into the Pope's personal private army.
"Dammit. Where the hell am I now?"
The operative spat a curse as he took in his surroundings. Deep down, he already knew the answer, but every instinct screamed to reject the grim reality. He remembered with vivid clarity the searing impact of Ludwig's boot striking his back, hurtling him headlong into the Forest of the Four Seasons.
Bloody hell...
What met his gaze was an environment utterly detached from the verdant woods seen from beyond the barrier. There was no lush canopy, no fertile greenery. Instead, the landscape was choked with barren, skeletal trees stripped to their withered boles. The terrain stretched out in an unbroken expanse of ash and soot, as if smothered beneath volcanic fallout or charred to cinders by an ancient wildfire. And the ground was far worse. The patch of earth where he had landed was one of the few solid spits around; everything else was a festering, bottomless swamp.
Did I get lucky, or what?
Had he plummeted directly into the mire, he would have drowned on impact. Yet surviving the landing hardly guaranteed safety. This was the Forest of the Four Seasons—the living purgatory of the mortal realm, an uncharted abyss from which no survivor had ever returned. The operative swallowed dryly.
No, it's too early to give up. That Grylls bastard was surviving just fine in here.
Nobody had ever escaped, but someone was still breathing inside. That single fact stoked a fragile ember of hope within his chest. He quickly took inventory of his condition, checking for injuries and confirming his armaments were intact. Aside from the dull ache where Ludwig's kick had connected, his body was in working order.
This area does not support connection to the Gallery.
He clicked his tongue in bitter disgust. He was an active Gallery user himself, and having observed Grylls's broadcasts, he knew precisely how invaluable access to the interdimensional board would be in a hostile wild. Yet the prompt coldly denied him entry.
'Accessible,' my ass.
The Pope had weaponized WildGrylls's posts as definitive proof that the Gallery could now be used within the forest, spinning a web of deceit to justify sending in an expeditionary force. Only after setting foot inside did the operative realize the truth: the Pope's words were a brazen, bald-faced lie. There was an old quip among the ranks that everything leaving the Pope's mouth was a falsehood, save for the carbon dioxide he exhaled. The operative found himself nodding in sullen agreement. He had been an idiot to swallow that honeyed propaganda.
I am getting out of here. I'm far stronger than that scamp; there's no way in hell I can't break out!
Grinding his teeth, he vowed to find an exit within days and personally sever Ludwig's head. The architect of his misery was the Pope, but against an untouchable demigod of power, his venom naturally redirected toward the vulnerable Ludwig. It was the quintessential instinct of the cowardly and the selfish—cowering before the strong while lashing out at the weak.
First, check my mana reserves.
Before making a move, he probed the energy dwelling within his core. The fierce clash against Ludwig had drained a considerable portion of his reserves, but a simple diagnostic didn't require initiating a full Mana Cultivation Method.
"...Hm?"
His brow furrowed under the visor. Something was horribly off. Ordinarily, even in a state of rest, a faint trickle of mana should have circulated through his vessels, yet his channels were dead silent. No—it wasn't that the flow had stopped. It was moving at an absurdly, imperceptibly sluggish crawl. Panicking, he forcibly commanded his mana to ignite.
W-What is happening? Why won't it move?!
His energy remained utterly petrified, budging only by fractions of a millimeter under sheer physical exertion. Desperation surging, he attempted to ignite his Aura—nothing. Not a spark coalesced across his gauntlet. Without mana or aura, he was practically naked, his projected survival odds plummeting toward zero.
Wondering if he had sustained some imperceptible internal trauma, he scrutinized his vessels from head to toe, yet found no ruptured veins. Swallowing his dread, he took the gamble and engaged the Mana Cultivation Method.
Th-This makes no sense...!
The moment the breathing technique activated, the grim truth slammed into him. The fault lay not within his body, but in the ambient air. The atmospheric mana was thick—catastrophically, unnaturally dense. The sheer weight of the ambient pressure was suffocating his internal reserves, pinning them down like the crushing abyss of an ocean trench collapsing a submerged tin can.
Impossible! How the hell was Grylls using his mana like water?!
Disbelief shook him to the core. Grylls had casually hurled around aura and spells across the boards as if it were child's play, yet here he was, an elite knight, unable to muster a flicker. Still, he forced down the rising panic.
No. If I just have enough time...
It was too early to despair. If his internal mana was pinned down by the environment, all he needed to do was assimilate the external energy and replace it. He had no idea how long such acclimation would take, but in theory, it was not impossible.
I need to find high ground. Somewhere defensible.
His tactical instincts reasserted themselves. Staying in this bog was suicide; there was no telling what horrors lurked beneath the murky waters. Even the deep woods Grylls inhabited would be vastly safer than this foul quagmire. Making up his mind, he took his first cautious steps across the muck.
Clack—shing.
Drawing his blade to be ready for an ambush, he drew solace from his physical training. Even stripped of mana, his raw strength and swordsmanship were honed to a razor's edge. He wouldn't go down easy.
Archbishop Odon tumbled in before me... Where could he be?
The operative recalled the portly cleric who had also been kicked over the border by Ludwig. Unlike himself, Odon was a backline support specialist with virtually no martial prowess. On top of that, if the region suppressed all mana, Odon's survival chances dropped by the minute.
Even if the Archbishop is done for, I need to regroup with the others.
Cold pragmatism settled over him: unless fate dropped Odon directly in his lap, he would write the cleric off. His own combat capacity was halved; babysitting a useless deadweight was a luxury he couldn't afford. Clerics depended entirely on Holy Power to weave healing miracles, but Odon's genuine piety was practically nonexistent. The man had climbed to the rank of archbishop purely through sycophancy, factional politics, and kissing the Pope's boots. To claw his way out of this living nightmare, the knight needed allies who could swing a blade, not a leech dragging him down.
Still... if I happen to run into him, I can't just leave him behind to rot...
Just as he finished rationalizing his choices, a faint murmur brushed against his ear.
"...P-Please..."
The operative froze, his boots sinking an inch into the mire as he strained his senses.
"...S-Save me..."
The voice echoed again, thin and trembling through the stagnant mist. He whipped his head around, scanning the dead timber.
"Who's there?! Speak louder!"
Shouting in an open swamp was reckless—it could draw every apex carnivore in the territory straight to his location. But given the circumstances, he had no alternative. He hollered at the top of his lungs, praying for an answer.
"Over here! Here! I am right here!"
This time the reply came through loud and clear. The operative snapped his attention toward the origin of the sound. The voice carried a strange, hollow reverb, but he didn't care. What mattered was the dialect—it wasn't a foreign tongue, but the unmistakable, refined language of El Dorado.
Wait... that voice... Archbishop Odon?!
The knight broke into a sprint through the shallows. Miraculously, it seemed he had landed within earshot of the fallen prelate. Just moments ago he had dismissed the cleric as useless baggage, but facing the terror of total isolation, another human being was an invaluable asset.
If worst comes to worst, I can always use him as a meat shield.
It was a callous, venomous thought, but desperation laid bare the rawest ugliness of human nature.
"Over here! Is anyone there?!"
The pleading grew closer. Murky water swirled past the knight's greaves, rising toward his ankles, but he ignored the damp chill, his gaze locked ahead.
Breaking through a curtain of weeping, ash-caked branches, he found him.
"A-Archbishop?! You survived?!"
"Oh... Oh, thank the heavens, you have arrived...!"
There stood Odon, looking remarkably unscathed. His cadence sounded slightly unnatural, flat and mechanical, but his round silhouette and ornate robes were pristine.
"Come this way. I believe the exit lies just ahead."
"The exit... you say?"
"Indeed. Another kind soul guided me this far."
Odon offered a warm, benevolent smile, gesturing toward the fog. Yet a cold prickle of dread slithered down the operative's spine. The path Odon pointed toward wasn't a clearing—it was a stagnant, ink-black trench of bottomless marsh. Even where the knight stood, the water crept past his ankles, but the pool ahead was clearly deep enough to swallow a horse whole.
Wait...
A fatal discrepancy struck him, freezing the blood in his veins.
Archbishop Odon was a squat, stubby man. The waterline where he stood should have submerged him to his knees, yet the prelate's slippers were resting serenely atop the rippling surface of the water.
A grandmaster of aura could tread upon water like solid stone, but Odon was a paper-pusher who couldn't even run a league without wheezing. There was no divine grace here, no miracle.
It was wrong. Terrifyingly, horrifically wrong.
"Wh-Who in the hell are you?!"
"Pardon? Whatever do you mean...?"
"You vile monstrosity! Reveal yourself!"
The operative retreated three hurried paces, leveling his longsword with trembling hands. His panic echoed nakedly across the stagnant bog—and hearing the raw terror in his voice, the thing mimicking Odon dropped the facade.
Shhhhk—
The illusion dissolved like grease in water. The rosy, plump likeness of the Archbishop melted away, replaced by the grim reality underneath: a desiccated, leathery corpse. It was Odon's body, drained of all moisture and withered like ancient jerky, suspended by a thick, fleshy tentacle coiled tightly around his crushed throat.
The knight gasped, horror seizing his lungs.
Wh-What in Aris's name—!
Rumbleeee!
Before his mind could process the grotesque puppet, the swamp erupted. The sodden earth shuddered violently as if torn by an earthquake. Had Grylls been here, he would have bolted without wasting a fraction of a second. But the operative was a novice to the nightmares of this forest. Paralyzed by disbelief, he stood rooted to the spot.
SPLASH!
A colossal hand breached the black water, planting its palm onto the muddy bank. It possessed five digits like a human hand, but the skin was unnervingly smooth, slick with translucent amphibian slime and mottled in putrid shades of rotting bark.
ROOOOOAAAR!
With an earth-shaking lurch, the colossus hauled its bulk from the trench. The operative stared upward, his breath hitching in pure despair. The beast loomed towering over him, a bloated, nightmarish hybrid of salamander and deep-sea horror. Jaws lined with needle-sharp, overlapping fangs stretched wide beneath dull, milky eyes. And protruding from the crown of its slimy skull was a long, sinuous cephalic tentacle—the angler's lure.
Dangling from the tip of that fleshy appendage was the shriveled corpse of Archbishop Odon.
The Swamp Angler swept its amphibian arm through the air, claws whistling toward the knight. Jolted back to reality, the operative frantically leapt backward—a fatal miscalculation. This was not solid ground; it was a hungry, treacherous bog.
Squish!
"Guh!"
His boots sank deep into the sucking mud, snapping his balance. As the knight tumbled onto his back, the predator seized the opening.
CRUNCH!
"Aaaaargh!"
The massive, slick hand clamped around his torso like an iron vice. The operative flailed, screaming in agony as his ribs groaned under immense pressure, but his mundane struggles were pitiful against the behemoth. Stripped of mana, he was nothing more than raw meat.
Chomp... crunch...
Above him, the Swamp Angler whipped its cephalic lure downward, casually dropping Odon's husk into its gaping maw. Needle teeth ground bone and leather to dust, swallowing the prelate in a single gulp. Then, the writhing tentacle snaked forward, wrapping its muscular coils around the pinned knight's neck.
Squeeze!
"Hrrk... g-gahhh..."
A wet hiss escaped the knight's lips as the strength rapidly bled from his limbs. His frantic thrashing grew sluggish, his iron helmet rattling loose and tumbling into the muck. Beneath the visor lay no longer a living soldier, but a desiccated, hollow-eyed husk.
Plop.
Releasing its grip, the Swamp Angler let the new corpse dangle limply from its cephalic lure. Having drained its victim's vital essence dry, the predator slowly sank backward into the suffocating depths of the trench, leaving only the lure and its freshly minted marionette swaying above the surface.
"A-Archbishop?!"
The mummified lips of the surveillance knight twitched, parting to emit a raspy, perfect mimicry of his final panicked words. The tentacle pulsed beneath the skin, puppeteering the head in an eerie, mechanical nod.
"You vile monstrosity! Reveal yourself!"
It didn't merely mimic the voice.
"Is anyone there?! There is a survivor here! I need help!"
It had extracted the deceased man's memories, weaving them into a flawless, predatory song.
"Someone... anyone, please save me...!"
The Forest of the Four Seasons was, in every sense of the word, hell on earth.
Thwack! Thwack! Bam!
"Phew. That ought to do it."
I wiped the sweat from my brow, stepping back to admire the sturdy wooden signpost I had driven deep into the dirt. Carving and erecting these directional markers had eaten up an absurd chunk of my time, but looking at the finished craft gave me a swell of honest satisfaction.
I really hope they manage to stay alive out there.