Free Web NovelChapter 98: The Polluted Zone Collapsing
Just outside the Polluted Zone of the Erdtree, a bright red warning sign was planted in an open stretch of land. A crowd had gathered at a safe distance, choosing to stay clear of the zone. Some were awaiting the return of friends who had ventured into the hazardous area, while others were there just to observe the unfolding events.
An unusually large group had entered the Polluted Zone this time around. The question on everyone’s lips was if they could unlock the portal of this zone—a feat that hadn’t been achieved in centuries.
"It’s been days. No one’s come out yet. With this many people in there, they can’t all be dead, can they?" one person asked aloud.
"What’s the point of having so many people? Over hundreds of years, how many who’ve gone into the Erdtree’s Polluted Zone have come back?" another shot back.
"They’re all daredevils, willing to risk their lives for cash. It just goes to show the old saying - ’animals die for food; and people, money’."
Brandon of the Royal Guard lounged atop a vehicle, a coat slung over his shoulders and glasses perched on his nose. His clean fingers tapped steadily, showing no sign of worry or impatience.
An alpha approached him. "It’s been days, those folks who went in..."
Brandon raised a hand to stop him, "Just wait a little longer."
The image in the sky flickered.
Suddenly, a dark, rectangular void materialized in mid-air, slowly growing larger.
"A portal!"
"It’s a portal!"
"The portal has opened."
Whispers of excitement filled the air as the observing alphas began to stand.
A portal had opened in the sky—an escape route.
Everyone watched, eyes wide.
The threatening black door hung in the air, yet no one emerged immediately. It was as if someone inside the Polluted Zone had unlocked the door, but the person responsible was nowhere in sight.
After a tense wait, an alpha eventually peered out from the door, then stumbled out fully. His face was smeared with blood, and it looked as though something had torn off half of it. But despite this, he was alive and conscious, not driven to madness.
Gazing around in a daze, his face reflected disbelief. Eventually, it dawned on him that he had escaped, left the hellish zone behind, and returned to the safety of the real world.
The alpha sat, shaking, hand covering his face. A throng gathered around him, questioning him about the situation inside, about how the portal was opened.
"I don’t know. I didn’t open the portal," the alpha replied, shaking his head, showing no willingness to revisit his experiences. "It was an alpha, with an orca as his psychic incarnation."
After him, alphas stumbled out of the door one by one, each sporting visible injuries and confused expressions. One was overrun with spores, half his body nearly eaten away. As soon as he fell out of the door, his companions caught him and rushed him to a healing pod nearby.
Close to this site was a base outfitted with healing pods. Alphas, blessed with strong physical resilience, stood a good chance of survival if they made it to the door alive and could afford the cost of a healing pod.
As more Alphas emerged, they brought with them tales of the Polluted Zone:
Inside this Polluted Zone, the Erdtree would spring up every night. By sunrise, all its leaves and branches would turn to ash and vanish in the daylight.
This tree, born at nightfall and dead by daybreak, was untouchable. Any attempts to cut off branches, even in desperate situations, proved useless. The golden branches would instantly crumble into ash, impossible to take out of the zone. freewebnovel.cσ๓
The creatures in the Polluted Zone were particularly vicious. They hunted alphas relentlessly, but instead of killing them, they confined humans in specific areas for extended periods of torment.
The key was secured by a beta, the same lone beta seen at the Vedanta outpost. Amid the chaos, several fleeing individuals saw her hand over the key to an alpha, who rode a gigantic killer whale, and opened the door that provided everyone an escape.
Word of this spread amongst the onlookers.
"It’s remarkable that a beta saved us."
"Are there really such powerful individuals amongst the betas? I thought they were only good for dancing."
"There indeed are such betas. I heard about one in the East Shore who would go into the Polluted Zone with a team."
"A few months ago, I heard about betas showing up at several other outposts. They didn’t just make a brief appearance but stayed for a while, actively involved in the healing process."
"So such betas do exist in this world..."
Near the Royal Guard vehicles, Brandon collected the shared information.
"Has anyone from our team come out yet?"
"So far, no one has come out alive," the reporting officer replied solemnly. "But someone inside saw Ren. They say he was the one who opened the door."
Brandon adjusted his glasses, staring at the dark door.
Ren had opened the door but hadn’t come out. Brandon wondered about his current state inside.
"I hope Ren could retrieve what the Queen seeks," Brandon thought.
The rectangular black doorway wobbled slightly. The sky’s clouds started to quiver subtly, prompting all the alphas to immediately stand and scramble onto the vehicles. The rumble of countless engines echoed in the air.
"Is it expanding again? The Polluted Zone of the Erdtree just grew once," everyone wondered, alert.
The expansion of the Polluted Zone was a highly dangerous event. Everyone present focused on the sky nearby, ready to run at a moment’s notice.
The sky flickered once, twice. Then, a chunk of it fell, exposing a gap. Like a vast canvas made up of tiles, pieces of the scenery began to peel and drop from the sky. Eventually, with a crash, it shattered like a massive glass screen.
The world began to fracture, to crumble...
"Is it collapsing?"
"Is the Polluted Zone of the Erdtree... disappearing?" The fleeing vehicles stopped suddenly. Everyone, both inside and outside the vehicles, gaped in disbelief at the slowly crumbling screen.
The fake sky slowly crumbled from top to bottom, unveiling the world it had cloaked for centuries.
A barren wilderness and abandoned streets quietly emerged under the sunlight. Modern homes sat on the fringes, encircling buildings from a decade or a hundred years ago. At the very center, a four-hundred-year-old town reappeared in the world.
This long nightmare had finally ended, and the land swallowed by darkness returned. The immense barrier peeled back slowly, sunlight warming the long-forgotten earth, a gentle breeze sweeping into this space sealed off for centuries.
Countless ashes were picked up by the wind, floating towards the sky, like thousands of souls escaping from the nightmare, riding the wind towards the heavens in the dim depths.
In that centuries-old town, the blood vessels squirming on the ground in the cave’s depths finally died. They rapidly hardened, decayed, and crumbled into ashes.
The entire world was falling apart, disintegrating.
The red blood vessels turned into dust. Everything they had controlled for centuries, interconnected by their veins, also vanished into thin air.
The horrifying figures wearing masks disappeared one by one, and the eerie wailing gradually fell silent.
At the crevice’s center, Ren held a beta in his arms. It might have been a minute, but it felt like an eternity, as he felt the body in his arms growing cold. He saw the person slowly closing their eyes.
He thought he heard her telling him to find another beta. Ren knew he would never find another beta in his life. He would never allow anyone to delve into his secrets again.
Even if the absence of a beta’s mental care would turn him into a monster, he wouldn’t mind. To be a thoughtless monster might be better than his current state.
He tightened his grip, hoping the body in his arms wouldn’t grow cold so quickly, that it would linger a bit longer to keep him company in this world.
The ashes in the sky drifted down like snow, and the golden tree next to him rotted and collapsed. The golden branches, trunk, long roots, all disappeared, and a small portion of a human body fell from the trunk.
He was without hands and legs, wearing half a golden mask. A piece of wreckage fell to the ground, stirring up a flurry of white ashes, amid which, faintly, a soft song from a young girl could be heard.
The mutant, reduced to just a torso and head, lay on the ground, a golden mask covering his eyes and forehead, leaving half a pale jaw exposed. He woke from a long nightmare, lying on his back, watching the countless flurries soaring to the sky, listening to the farewell song in the air.
"There’s a healing pod," he said softly.
