I Can Only Cultivate In A Game-Chapter 411: Middle Rims

Kharzug’s white eyes widened in disbelief while Victor looked down slowly at the blade pressed against his sternum.

There was no blood or wound.

Before Kharzug could process what had happened, Aria’s dagger reached him.

It pierced cleanly through his left shoulder and the force spun him slightly.

He roared in pain while staggering backwards but before he could figure out his next step, Victor moved immediately.

He grabbed the dagger’s hilt where it protruded from Kharzug’s shoulder and yanked it free brutally.

Blood jetted outward and before Kharzug could retaliate—

Victor stepped in close and drove the blade straight into his neck.

Krrruukkkk~

Kharzug’s body convulsed twice before collapsing.

He fell onto his back with blood pooling beneath him and his eyes still wide with stunned confusion.

Victor stood over him with his chest rising slowly.

Aria rushed to his side.

"Are you okay?" she demanded while grabbing his shoulders and scanning his chest.

Victor nodded.

"I’m fine."

She stared at him.

"What the hell was that?"

Her eyes flicked to the bent blade.

"How did his weapon not pierce you?"

Victor was still processing it himself.

Then it clicked.

Peak Bronze Physique... due to his cultivation.

Even without channeling qi or activating anything... his physique had been tempered to a level far beyond ordinary human durability.

Weapons below a certain threshold simply couldn’t harm him easily.

He didn’t need to channel power... it was built into his body naturally.

He exhaled slowly.

"I’m... durable," he stated.

Aria blinked.

"Durable?" she repeated incredulously. "That blade didn’t even dent you."

He shrugged lightly.

"Warrior class."

His usual lie.

She stared at him longer this time.

"That makes no sense," she said slowly. "Even Berserkers don’t have durability like that. Not without active reinforcement. You didn’t channel anything."

Victor just shrugged again without saying another word.

The forest did not celebrate the dead.

It did not howl or tremble or recoil at the blood soaking into its roots. It simply absorbed it.

Victor wiped Kharzug’s blade clean on the fallen warrior’s tattered clothing before handing it back to Aria. She caught it smoothly and slid it into her grip alongside the second dagger she had recovered earlier.

She had two blades now... one reverse-gripped and one standard. Her breathing was steady again, though faint lines of pain crossed her expression from the spear wound at her side.

Victor bent and retrieved Gruuk’s fallen spear.

Up close, it was heavier than it had looked during the fight. The shaft was a dark metallic wood, dense and faintly warm to the touch. Thin veins of dim green light occasionally flickered along its length, fizzling like dying lightning. The spearhead was broad and leaf-shaped, serrated along one edge.

Victor twirled it experimentally.

The weapon made a low tinging sound as if acknowledging him.

"This will have to do," he muttered. "Until I find my legacy sword."

Aria gave him a sidelong look. "Legacy sword?"

"Long story," he said lightly. "Very important. Very powerful."

They didn’t linger any further. The scent of blood would draw something. In this place, it always did.

Together, they moved deeper through the Veilwood Playground.

~ Hours Later ~

The forest began to change subtly.

The towering trees grew closer together with their trunks arching overhead in unnatural symmetry. The undergrowth thinned until the ground was covered in a thick carpet of dark moss that swallowed their footsteps. The air became cooler and stiller.

"Feels wrong," Aria murmured.

Victor nodded. He felt that there was almost an architectural precision to the arrangement of trees. The path they followed narrowed gradually until it split...

Then split again...

Then again.

Within minutes, they realized it wasn’t a forest anymore.

It was a labyrinth.

The trees formed walls with their trunks interwoven and grown together so tightly that even light struggled to pass through. Thorny vines wrapped around them like barbed wire. Above, the canopy sealed most escape routes.

Victor stopped at a junction and glanced behind.

The path they had taken curved out of sight in a way he didn’t remember it curving.

"A maze?" he muttered.

Aria frowned. "What?"

"Nothing."

---

Far from them, high above the forest canopy in a floating pavilion woven from living branches and luminous petals, a group of Sylrith watched in amusement.

A massive circular screen of shimmering green light hovered before them. It displayed the Veilwood Playground from shifting angles.

Only four figures glowed on the map now.

Seventeen had entered but only four remained.

"Only four survivors left out of the initial seventeen," one Sylrith said lazily, reclining against a throne of braided vines. "The games have been interesting so far."

His voice was melodic but edged with something sharp.

Another Sylrith leaned forward with their slender fingers resting on the railing. His pale white eyes fixed on Victor’s image as it flickered across the screen.

"But he is amongst the survivors..."

There was no pleasure in his tone.

The first speaker’s lips curved faintly. "Lord Seirath, worry not. He might have survived by some stroke of luck... but they have reached the middle rims of the Playground."

The screen shifted, zooming outward to reveal the labyrinthine structure from above. Its design resembled a coiled serpent.

"It shall be their tomb."

Lord Seirath did not respond immediately. His gaze lingered on Victor and Aria running side by side.

Beside him stood another Sylrith... Vaelun.

---

Back in the labyrinth, Victor and Aria advanced cautiously.

They turned left. Then right. Then right again.

Every corridor looked nearly identical with dark bark walls, faintly glowing moss, narrow sky slits above. Occasionally, faint whispering drifted through the air, too soft to interpret.

"How long have we been walking?" Aria asked quietly.

"No idea."

There was no sun visible. No reliable measure of time.

Victor tightened his grip on the spear and sensed something up ahead.

He suddenly grabbed Aria’s wrist and pulled her back behind a tree wall.

"Hey—"

"Shh."

He peered around the corner and at the end of the corridor stood a figure... an humanoid figure...

Its entire body was wrapped in dark vines, layered so densely they formed a sort of natural armor. Pale, bioluminescent flowers sprouted from its shoulders, neck, and even the crown of its head. Petals shimmered in shades of violet and sickly blue.

Its "face" was obscured beneath overlapping leaves, but faint light glowed where eyes might have been.

Slowly, it reached up and plucked one of the flowers growing from its head.

It extended the flower outward as if offering it.

There was no doubt that it had spotted them.

Victor blinked.

"...You seeing this?"

"Yes," Aria whispered.

The creature tilted its head slightly with its arm still extended.

Victor and Aria stepped cautiously into view but the being did not advance.

It simply held out the flower again.

Victor scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Uh... thanks, buddy. But we’re good. We’re gonna go now."

The creature did not respond.

Its arm stretched forward a little further as if insisting they accepted its gift.

The flower quivered slightly, releasing faint glowing pollen into the air.

Victor instinctively took a step back and Aria did the same.

They began retreating slowly down the corridor.

The creature did not follow... it simply remained there with its arm extended.

When they reached the junction behind them, Victor exhaled. "Okay. That was weird."

"Don’t turn your back," Aria murmured.

They rounded the corner— and froze.

The creature stood at the far end of this new corridor as well with its arm extended, offering the same flower

Victor’s stomach dropped as they whipped around to check out the previous path—

It was gone...

Where there had been an open corridor moments ago, there was now only a solid wall of interwoven tree trunks.

"Yeah," Victor muttered with a disturbed look. "That’s not creepy at all."

The creature’s arm extended further this time.

The flower nearly brushed the air between them.

It made no sound or movement beyond that subtle insistence.

Victor swallowed.

"I feel like just accepting the flower so it’ll leave us alone."

Aria shot him a look. "You’re too naive. No way it ends at just accepting the flower."

Victor frowned. "Then what do you propose?"

She shifted her stance slightly, scanning for alternative exits. "Right now? We run. We don’t really know what that creature can do."

The creature’s head tilted again as the petals on its body shimmered.

Victor tightened his grip on the spear.

"On three?" he whispered.

"On three."

"One—"

The creature suddenly took one smooth step forward and the vines across its body shifted like muscle beneath skin.

The flower glowed brighter...

"Two—"

A faint sound began emanating from it that sounded... hypnotic.

"Three."

They immediately ran as soon as the strange hypnotic humming intensified.

The labyrinth walls seemed to transform around them as they sprinted. Victor dared not look back.

Left. Right. Straight.

The moss underfoot felt spongier, almost trying to slow them down.

"Don’t breathe too deeply!" Aria shouted. "That pollen—!"