Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 144: Let’s Just Take A Quick Peek Inside
I pulled the shotgun off my shoulder and channeled my mana straight into it, charging the shotgun to a clean 100 grams of Virtual Mass.
The process cost 200 MP, and with my MP capacity sitting at 65, my infinite regeneration covered the bill in under two seconds before locking in the upkeep, dedicating exactly ten MP per second to maintain the stable charge.
Next came the background layers. I allocated 2 MP/s to a 2-second precognition window, 1 MP/s to keep my ten-meter domain active, and another 2 MP/s for a focused cognitive boost through Ice Reinforcement.
That left me with exactly 50 MP.
Just enough to run Eyes of Relevance.
With my brain overclocked and my spatial awareness dialed to the max, I was fully prepared to pull the trigger the millisecond anything tried to jump me.
And with that, I pushed deeper into the West, leaving the safe migration paths far behind.
As I pushed forward, the sounds of the woods faded. No birds chirped, nor did any leaves rustle in the wind, as a suffocating silence slowly settled over the canopy, and the temperature plummeted so fast my breath started pluming in the air.
It didn’t take long to come across the first sign of Outsiders.
I paused next to a tall tree, letting my eyes trace the damage near its base while I ran a gloved finger along the wood to feel the splinters.
Deep, violent gashes had torn straight through the trunk, even shredding the surrounding dirt.
The tracks looked like a crew of lumberjacks had come through swinging industrial chainsaws at everything in sight.
And these traces were everywhere.
From what I understood, Outsiders were invisible ten-meter-wide spheres, covered entirely by thick, serrated tentacles.
And they moved by violently beating those heavy limbs against the ground to drag or launch themselves forward. Every Full Moon, they swept through the woods, slaughtering and infecting every living thing they touched to spread their curse. They were basically zombies that didn’t care about eating, only spreading the infection.
[Let’s just get this out of the way...] Sighing, I stood back up and stepped into a wide clearing, my steps crunching on the dead leaves.
Stopping dead in the center, I just stood there, leaving my back entirely exposed to the tree lines.
"This is the perfect time to do it, guys," I muttered to the empty air, keeping my finger resting right near the trigger.
If the Entropy assassins were following me, this was their golden opportunity.
The squishy me wandering alone into one of the deadliest forests in Fugen and mysteriously disappearing would raise absolutely no eyebrows. Nobody back at the mine would even care. It was the ultimate cover for a quiet murder.
So, I waited, letting my two seconds of precognition keep my mind completely at ease for a solid 15 minutes.
But nothing happened.
[Guess they aren’t here yet...] I sighed, [Or they’re just too disciplined to take obvious bait. Let’s move on.]
I hadn’t just come out here to play target practice. I came to recon the board, so I wouldn’t be reacting blindly if Entropy actually decided to make an enemy out of me.
I primarily came for clues.
"I really hope I don’t find any..." I whispered, and the world instantly drained of color, shifting into a high-contrast spectrum of charcoal and ash as I activated Eyes of Relevance.
I focused my intent on a very specific set of traces.
I wanted signs of human activity. The Iron Vanguard had zero reason to patrol this close to the Nexus, and magic beasts instinctively avoided the area entirely.
So if I found human footprints or something like an abandoned campsite out here, I could assume with seventy percent certainty that they belonged to Entropy.
[System, just to confirm my math...] I started tracking the glowing golden gouges leading deeper into the territory. [Entropy worships an Eldritch God, and the Outsiders are an Eldritch curse. Let’s say I do find human activity... can I safely assume the Outsiders will ignore the cultists, making this territory a perfectly safe haven for them?]
-Ding!
{Affirmative. A symbiotic ignorance. The cultists would be free to operate within the containment zone undisturbed.}
[And since Fugen’s military destroyed all the other Nexuses on the mainland to herd the Outsiders into this specific region, they inadvertently built Entropy a government-sanctioned fortress.]
-Ding!
{A tactical necessity by the government. The Nexus is the central spawn point. Killing an Outsider merely forces it to respawn here within two minutes.
If the military destroys this final Nexus, the thousands of entities stationed here will scatter. If even a single unit escapes, it will form a new Nexus elsewhere, drawing the remaining horde directly to it, or start over. Containment is the only viable strategy.}
[Yeah, I got that part figured out...] I nodded, keeping my eyes peeled for human tracks as I followed the golden shimmering trails of the gashes.
I kept walking for hours, letting the golden shimmer in my monochrome vision guide me through the dead woods.
By the time the midday sun reached its peak, the glowing tracks finally converged.
I stopped at the edge of a small, heavily mutilated clearing.
The ground here was completely shredded by thousands of overlapping, violent gashes that had reduced the soil to a fine, pulverized dirt.
Every single tree around the perimeter had been violently ripped up by the roots or snapped entirely in half, and sitting dead center at the far end of the clearing was the entrance to the Nexus.
It was a jagged, ugly tear in the side of a rocky hill, angling steeply underground, and despite it being high noon, the sunlight seemed to just die right at the threshold, leaving the interior pitch black.
I crept closer, and the oppressive silence that had been my only company finally broke.
A cold draft drifted up from the steep tunnel, carrying a foul, stagnant stench of rot, and along with it came the sounds that made my stomach drop.
-Ta-ta-ta...
A rapid, wet clicking echoed from deep inside, followed by low, guttural snarls, mixing with the sickening wet slaps of thick limbs dragging against stone.
The noise resembled a writhing, pulsing hive of nightmares crawling over each other in the dark, endlessly shifting just out of sight.
Just hearing it made every hair on my body stand on end. I could feel my heart ramming against my chest, feel the cold sweat dampening my back.
Hell, I had infinite mana regen. I had a loaded divine shotgun, charged with 100 grams of Virtual Mass. I had precognition and a spatial domain running at full capacity.
And yet, standing even at a distance in front of that pitch-black cave filled with thousands of invisible, mind-controlling things still triggered a kind of raw, primal terror that made my hands tremble, saliva thicken in my throat, and my wide-blown eyes sting, for I didn’t even blink.
Tightening my grip on the gun, I swallowed the lump in my throat before switching my intent to focus only on human activity.
"I hadn’t come across anything abnormal so far..." I whispered to myself, my voice barely carrying over the clicking echoing from the dark. "Let’s just take a quick peek inside and get out of here..."
