Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 146: Barely a Few Centimeters
I lay flat on my stomach at the bottom of the steep decline, panting through gritted teeth while the black goo actively burned into my cheek.
Warm blood trickled down my temple, dripping straight into my stinging eye, but I didn’t blink. I just stared through the concussive haze, watching hundreds of chaotic, overlapping golden shimmers paint the dark stone ahead of me.
Human footprints.
[I wasn’t crazy...] I thought, letting out a ragged, painful breath. [Entropy is actually down here...]
My paranoia was completely validated, but the victory tasted like copper and bile.
And before I could even try to push myself up off the slippery ground, the noise in the cavern shifted.
The steady ta-ta-ta clicking echoing from the depths accelerated. The wet, rhythmic tapping abruptly fractured into a frantic, high-pitched chattering, while the low, guttural snarls twisted into raw, deafening shrieks that physically vibrated against my teeth.
The sickening slaps of heavy limbs dragging against stone became entirely chaotic, violently beating against the cavern walls in a sudden, explosive frenzy as the noise grew louder and louder by the second.
Through my swimming vision, Eyes of Relevance flared, catching a new pulse of light.
It wasn’t on the ground.
It was a massive, curved wall of shimmering gold rapidly expanding outward from the depths of the cave, stretching from the rocky floor all the way to the ceiling, moving like a solid, glowing shockwave directly toward me.
And my stomach instantly dropped.
Every single survival instinct in my brain instantly screamed in pure panic. I didn’t need the System to explain what I was looking at.
That expanding golden wall was their domain.
If that shimmering barrier touched me, I was entering their detection range. And my mind would be theirs.
[SHIT!]
With panic completely short-circuiting my brain, I desperately scrambled to my feet, but I found zero friction on the slick ground, sending me slamming face-first right back into the stinging goo.
The acidic slime burned my lips and nose, but the deafening shrieks echoing up the tunnel entirely drowned out the pain.
I needed traction.
Gritting my teeth, I abruptly cut the mana feeding Eyes of Relevance.
The glowing golden wall and the high-contrast grey world vanished in a snap, plunging the tunnel into pitch-black darkness with only the faint, natural daylight shining at the very top of the steep exit to guide me.
I violently shoved 60 MP/s straight into Ice Reinforcement.
Freezing magic exploded through my veins the very next second as thick slabs of jagged ice instantly crusted over my bare hands and the soles of my boots, forming makeshift cleats.
And the second they did, I launched myself at the steep incline in reckless, blind abandon.
Slamming my strengthened and frozen palms into the ground, I let the ice bite right through the slippery goo to find a solid grip before hauling my weight up. My boots dug into the stone just enough to push me forward as I crawled and scrambled up the slope like a panicked animal.
The shotgun violently beat against my chest with every frantic heave, sending fresh spikes of agony through my chest.
My lungs burned, and my concussed brain violently throbbed against my skull, but I just kept climbing, not daring to look back.
All the while, the wet, chaotic slapping of limbs against the stone grew deafeningly loud right behind me, and the shrieks were so close that I felt the foul air push against my back, chasing me straight toward the light.
My frozen hands finally grabbed the rough stone near the exit as I hauled myself over the ledge and scrambled right out of the dark, crashing onto the sunlit dirt, but I didn’t stop at the threshold.
I dragged my battered body across the shredded ground for another ten meters before my arms completely gave out.
I collapsed onto my back, heaving and pulling in the cool forest air, desperately trying to cleanse the foul rot out.
The bright sunlight beat down on my face as I squeezed my stinging eyes shut, panting through the concussive throbbing in my skull.
[I made it...] I thought, a desperate, shaky laugh escaping my lips. [I actually got out...]
But the chaotic shrieks echoing from the cave didn’t fade.
They were getting louder.
I forced my eyes open, pushing through the dizzying nausea and activating Eyes of Relevance to be absolutely sure.
The vibrant forest instantly drained back into high-contrast grey, and my short-lived relief shattered into a million pieces.
The glowing domain hadn’t stopped at the tunnel entrance. It was spilling right out of the cave, and it was coming straight for me.
Pure, icy terror gripped my chest all over again.
I instantly cut the ocular skill, snapping the world back to color, before dumping all my freed mana back into the Ice Reinforcement as I scrambled up from the dirt and bolted.
I booked it through the mutilated forest with reckless abandon, vaulting over shattered tree trunks and dodging deep trenches in the ground while the frantic slapping of limbs kept echoing behind me.
But I couldn’t just run blind. I needed to know how close the domain was.
Gritting my teeth, I forced my concussed brain to multitask, using spell splicing to quickly pulse my mana.
-Flash.
The grey world flared for a fraction of a second, highlighting the shimmering golden wall tearing through the trees just a few yards back.
-Fade.
Color returned as I pushed my burning legs harder, sprinting until my ribs felt like they were going to snap.
-Flash.
The golden wall was closer.
-Fade.
I ducked under a broken branch, ignoring the acidic goo slowly slipping into my eyes.
-Flash.
The grey world flared, but before I could register anything, a towering silhouette eclipsed the canopy right above me.
Before my brain could even process the threat, a massive mass of dense muscle slammed directly into my chest, violently crashing my back into the ground, blasting the air out of my lungs in a hollow, desperate wheeze.
Hot, rancid breath washed over my face, instantly followed by the sickening snap of jaws as thick fangs tore straight through my jacket and sank deep into my left shoulder.
-Ahh-ACK-!
Searing agony ripped straight through my body like lightning, tearing a scream out of me which instantly turned into a bloody choke as the teeth shoved right through my collarbone. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
-Grrr-!
A deep, vibrating growl rattled my skull, and just as I opened my mouth to cough the blood out, a heavy, furred paw pressed down on the center of my chest.
-Crack.
And my ribs instantly caved under the pressure, sending a blinding spike of pain straight into my brain that sent the blood out of my throat spraying out in a shower.
Through the blurry haze of my watering eyes, I caught the blur of a lion-like maw, gnawing at my shoulder.
[Fuck my life!]
I was pinned, bleeding out, and that mind-wiping barrier was seconds away.
And that’s when it clicked. I was outside the cave... outside that eldritch god’s domain.
-Temporal Step
The crushing weight vanished, instantly sending me through the outer fringes of time, before snapping me back into reality 10 meters away.
Instinctively, I brought my left foot down to catch my momentum, but the limb just folded under me like wet paper.
-AHH!
I screamed as a mind-rending explosion of agony tore straight up my shin, completely whiting out my vision as I instantly collapsed, hitting the dirt in a useless, broken heap.
Gasping for air through the blinding pain, I forced my throbbing head up to look down.
The ankle was twisted backward at a grotesque angle, with a piece of white bone jutting straight through my blood-soaked pants.
[When the hell did that happen!?]
Through the sheer adrenaline and the crushing pressure of the attack, I hadn’t even registered the beast’s massive hind legs violently snapping my bones when it pinned me to the dirt.
I dragged my heavy head up, gasping through the blinding agony radiating from the open wound.
My vision swam, blurring the trees ahead, but right there, just a few feet away, stood the massive lion.
Every muscle in my broken body seized, bracing for the final pounce of the magic beast, just waiting for those jaws to snap my neck.
But it didn’t move.
The beast stood completely still, frozen mid-stride like a glitched statue. I blinked through the blood and goo dripping into my eyes, forcing my focus onto its face.
The life in its eyes was gone, replaced by a lifeless grey, staring blankly ahead into nothing.
Coughing blood, my concussed brain frantically connected the dots, and with trembling fingers, I dragged my battered body, forcing myself to flip onto my back.
Forcing my body to stare up at the canopy, I shove mana back into Eyes of Relevance, and the vibrant greens of the forest washed away into that high-contrast charcoal, and what I saw caught me by the throat.
The shimmering, golden wall of the domain hung barely a few centimeters from the tips of my feet.
The wall pulsed with a soft light, and behind it stood the magic beast with its wide, dead eyes locked onto the empty space right above my head.
I didn’t dare breathe. I didn’t even dare blink.
The sheer horror of the situation paralyzed my very being. One slight lean forward, and I would be an empty husk standing right next to the beast.
My heart hammered against my cracked ribs so violently that a deep, burning ache began to spread through my left shoulder, radiating down my arm, while a terrifying numbness warned me of something going really wrong inside my chest.
I lay there, utterly broken, watching the golden wall pulse mere centimeters before me.
Slowly, the grey-eyed beast turned around.
Its movements were rigid and mindless, lacking all the feral grace it possessed just a minute ago.
It took a step, and then another, beginning a slow, dragging march back toward the dark cave.
And as it moved, the golden wall began to slowly recede right along with it.
I watched the glowing boundary pull away, creeping backward through the trees until it finally faded out of my visual range.
The second the threat vanished, all the residual adrenaline in my veins completely evaporated.
I lost all power in my body, my head falling back against the dirt as I cut the ocular magic.
Color flooded back into the sky while I lay there, helplessly panting and coughing through the blood choking my throat.
-Ding!
{Told you it was a bad idea.}
I stared up at the canopy, my vision going dark at the edges as the agony finally swallowed me whole.
[Just... buy me a healing potion.]
