Chapter 3: The Edge (2)
There was no ground beneath them anymore. There was no sky either. Just a churning grey nothing that swallowed the campus whole the instant the world rumbled, and then Lucas was falling.
Not dropping, falling. The real kind, wind screaming past his ears loud enough to drown out his pulse.
"LUCAS!"
Eleanor’s voice cut through the roar somewhere to his left. He twisted in the air to find her
Her hands were crackling with small unstable sparks of every element she hadn’t learned to control yet, like her own power was panicking along with her.
"Over here!" he shouted back, though he wasn’t sure the words made it past his own throat.
Around them, hundreds of students fell through the same grey static, screens and system windows blinking open and shut across the swarm of falling bodies.
Some students had already summoned weapons out of pure reflex. A girl nearby clutched a spear that hadn’t finished manifesting, and a boy below them was screaming words that might have been a skill activation or might have just been screaming.
[Edgewalk: Descent Phase]
[Do not resist the fall.]
The system window flickered into Lucas’s vision sideways, upside down, refusing to sit still no matter which way his body tumbled.
"Mark!" Eleanor’s voice again, sharper now, edged with real panic. "Where’s Mark?!"
Lucas found him a second later, below and slightly ahead, arms thrown wide, gauntlets already half-formed around his fists. "I’m RIGHT HERE, I’m fine, why is everyone SCREAMING—"
"Because we’re FALLING, Mark!"
"I NOTICED, ELEANOR!"
Even now. Even here, mid-fall through a tear in reality, the two of them found the energy to bicker, and something about that steadied Lucas more than he thought was possible.
He kicked against the air, trying to angle his body toward them, and for a few seconds it worked — the gap closed, close enough that he could see the exact moment Eleanor reached her hand out toward him.
"Grab on!"
Lucas reached back.
His fingers were an inch from hers when his own system window seized.
[Regression Stat calibration incomplete]
[Ignition: Unstable output detected]
[COMPATIBILITY: UN—]
"Shit—!"
Heat exploded behind his ribs, sudden and violent.
The window in front of him didn’t just flicker this time — it tore, the same way the sky had torn on the rooftop, a jagged seam of white-hot light splitting down the center of his vision.
"Lucas?" Eleanor’s hand was still reaching. "Lucas, what’s—"
"I don’t know!" He screamed back. There was no pain exactly, not the kind he recognized, just pressure and heat and the horrible sensation of being pulled, like his own skill had reached out and grabbed the back of his collar.
[ERROR]
[Player trajectory diverging from designated Edgewalk path]
[Recalculating—]
"ELEANOR, GRAB HIS HAND—"
Mark’s voice—real fear laced in it.
Eleanor lunged, fingers stretching, close enough that Lucas actually felt the graze of her skin against his...
And then the world behind his eyes went white, and the fall changed shape entirely. Not down anymore — sideways, like gravity itself had glitched along with his skill, and the grey static around him warped into streaks of orange light that had nothing to do with the Edgewalk’s usual descent.
"LUCAS—!!"
Eleanor’s scream ripped away from him, swallowed instantly, distance opening between them faster than should have been physically possible. Mark was shouting something too, something with his name in it, but the sound stretched and thinned and finally snapped like a rope pulled too tight.
[Player separated from designated cohort]
[Cause: Unauthorized skill interference]
[Rerouting—]
"No, no, no—" Lucas clawed at nothing, at empty rushing air, twisting to look for them and finding only more orange, more streaking light, no sign of Eleanor’s sparking hands or Mark’s half-formed gauntlets anywhere in the churn.
"ELEANOR! MARK!"
Nothing answered him but the system.
[Rerouting complete.]
[New destination: ??????]
The heat behind his ribs finally settled—and the orange around him began to dissolve into something like a sunset.
Green, first. Then brown. Then the unmistakable shape of trees rushing up to meet him far too fast.
Lucas didn’t have time to brace.
He slammed hard into the ground.
***
"Lucas! Lucas!"
The moment they landed, Eleanor began searching. She turned and shouted his name hoping for an answer.
However, it proved useless as they were the only ones here.
"Elle, I don’t think he’s here... I don’t think anyone’s here."
Eleanor clenched her fists. "Yeah. We’ve been separated from the others."
[Ding!]
[You have completed the descent phase.]
[Number of survivors remaining: 342]
[Main objective: Reach the Gateway.]
Mark walked up to her. "He’s fine. We’ll find him. For now, let’s look for a place to stay. It’s getting dark."
She gritted her teeth. "Yeah. Let’s do that."
***
"Fucking hell..." Lucas stood up, dusting himself.
"If it weren’t for those trees I would’ve died on impact."
[Ding!]
The system seemed to display something, then it stuttered and went blank.
Soon, it flickered again.
[Main Objective: Reach the Gateway]
"Stupid system. You’re really going to make my life hell, aren’t you?"
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, that simple malfunction had cost him dearly. If he wasn’t carefully he could really die.
"Well, not like it’s something I should worry about"
[Ding!]
[Head to the designated zone]
Right before his eyes, a map formed. It showed the topography of the place he stayed. It even had an option to zoom in and out and doing that, he realised just how vast this forest is.
"Well then, better start walking..."
.
.
.
.
.
He walked for hours... his feet were muddied. His mouth was dry and he was hungry.
The screen stuttered again.
[Y—you have received a utili—y]
"Utility?"
In his hand, a small water bottle appeared.
[Item: Water Bearer.]
[Description: This small bottle can hold water three times it’s size. Best for survival runs and purifies any kind of water.]
"This is actually helpful." He took the bottle to the nearest stream.
Dipping it into the water, he waited till the water stopped pouring in and removed it from the water.
Waiting for a moment, he greedily drank from it allowing the cool water to flood his insides.
Just as he finished and put the bottle away, he heard a growl.
Not from his stomach, but from a part of the lake nearby.
[Warning: Makara Class entity detected]
[Objective: Slay the beast]
A creature soon crawled out of the water. Teeth bared and three horns protruding from it’s head.
It’s entire skin was black as weird patterns ran across its body.
[Survival probability: 62%]
"Okay, this should be easy."
[You have activated skill: Ignition]
"Okay. Let’s—"
**CHING**
**SPLAT**
**THUD**
It happened in an instant. His vision was suddenly tilted and the next thing he felt was the muddied floor on his face.
’wha—what?’
[You have died.]
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