The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 298: THE ESCAPE
Chapter 294: The Escape
The Heart-Root Chamber didn’t collapse like a building. It died like a beast.
The massive, subterranean organ of the World Tree spasmed. The golden veins that lined the walls turned a necrotic black, and the bioluminescent moss that provided our light began to wither and flake away into ash.
"Leon, move!" I screamed over the roar of fracturing wood.
I was draped over the Hero’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. My legs refused to work. The [Mana Rebound] from the overclock had turned my muscles into lead and my nerves into fiery wire.
"I’m moving!" Leon grunted.
He didn’t run; he bulldozed. With the [Breaker’s Hammer] in one hand and me secured with the other, he smashed through a falling curtain of vines that tried to block the archway.
CRASH.
We burst out of the Heart Chamber and into the tunnel leading back to the Chasm.
Behind us, the floor of the boss room gave way completely. The pool where the Life Dew had rested, the corpse of the Golem, and the dark tunnel where Ren had vanished—all of it slid downward into the unknowable depths of the earth.
A blast of hot, pressurized air hit us from behind, smelling of sulfur and rot.
"Don’t look back," I wheezed, clutching the hidden pocket where the vial rested. "Just run. The toxicity is rising. If the air doesn’t kill us, the gravity will."
"The Chasm!" Leon shouted, skidding to a halt.
We had reached the edge of the acid pit.
The situation had gone from bad to impossible. The floating root platforms we had used to cross earlier were gone. Most had plummeted into the purple mist below, their suspension webs severed by the tremors.
The gap was thirty meters. The acid fog was rising, bubbling up like a cauldron boiling over.
"There’s no path!" Leon yelled, looking frantically left and right. "The grappling hooks are empty! How do we cross?"
I forced my head up, my vision swimming with black spots. My [Quantum Analysis Mind] was on cooldown, but my survival instinct didn’t need a skill to function.
I looked at the ceiling.
The massive stalactites—the feeder roots—were swaying violently. One of them, a behemoth of timber directly above us, was cracking at the base.
"We make a path," I rasped. "Leon. Twelve o’clock high. The root base. Throw the hammer." 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞
"Throw it?" Leon looked at his beloved weapon. "If I miss..."
"If you miss, we melt. Throw it!"
Leon didn’t hesitate. He planted his feet, roared, and hurled the eighty-five-kilogram block of iron upward.
The hammer spun through the air, a blur of grey metal.
CRACK.
It struck the fractured base of the hanging root.
The massive timber groaned, snapped, and fell.
It didn’t fall straight down. It crashed across the chasm, the tip smashing into the ledge on the far side. It formed a precarious, narrow bridge that angled steeply upward.
"Go!" I shouted.
Leon retrieved me and sprinted onto the makeshift bridge.
The wood was slick with slime. Beneath us, the purple acid mist hissed, spitting droplets that burned holes in Leon’s cape. The bridge shook with every step, the far end crumbling as the acid ate away at it.
"Don’t slip," Leon muttered to himself. "Don’t slip. Don’t slip."
We reached the midpoint. The bridge lurched. The base behind us detached from the ceiling.
We were falling.
"Jump!" I screamed.
Leon launched himself off the falling log.
For a second, we were airborne, suspended over the death pit. I saw the purple fog swirling below, looking like the eye of a demon.
Then we hit solid ground.
Leon rolled, taking the impact on his shoulder to protect me. We slid across the mossy floor of the upper tunnel, crashing into a wall of ferns.
Behind us, the log bridge vanished into the mist. Hiss...
"Safe," Leon panted, lying on his back. "We’re safe."
"Not yet," I groaned, forcing myself to sit up. "We’re still in the lung. We need to get to the throat."
The tunnel around us was shrinking. The roots were contracting, trying to squeeze out the intruders like a splinter. The air pressure was spiking, popping my ears.
"The exit," I pointed to the spiraling chute we had slid down earlier. "It’s a vertical climb."
"I can’t carry you up a vertical slide," Leon said, looking at the smooth, polished walls of the chute. "It’s impossible."
"The dungeon is rejecting us," I said, feeling the tremors intensify. "It’s trying to vomit us out. We just need to ride the peristalsis."
"The what?"
"Just hold on tight!"
I grabbed Leon’s armor.
The floor beneath us buckled. A massive wave of muscle-like wood rippled through the tunnel floor.
It threw us upward.
We were launched into the chute like bullets in a gun barrel. We tumbled through the dark, spiraling passage, bouncing off the walls. Speed blurred everything. Up, up, up.
The humid, cloying heat of the Under-Roots began to fade. The smell of rot was replaced by the biting, sterile scent of ozone.
And then, light.
Not the teal glow of the dungeon, but the harsh, blinding grey of the surface world.
WHOOSH.
We were spat out of the hollow tree trunk, landing hard in a snowdrift.
The cold hit me like a physical blow. Instantly, the sweat on my skin froze. The mana overload that had been fueling my body vanished, severed by the Zone of Silence.
I gasped, my lungs seizing in the minus-forty-degree air.
"We’re... out," Leon coughed, pulling himself out of the snow. He looked terrible. His armor was dented, etched with acid scars. His face was pale from the poison and the cold.
But he was alive.
I reached into my pocket. My fingers were numb, but I felt the shape of the vial.
It was warm. The Tear of Gaia generated its own heat.
"We have it," I whispered.
"Nox?" Leon asked, looking around.
My collar wriggled. A small, frozen violet head poked out, sneezed a puff of smoke, and retreated back inside.
"He’s here," I said. "Help me up. We need to get back to the train."
Leon hauled me to my feet.
"The coordinates," Leon said, checking his compass, which was spinning wildly. "Which way?"
I didn’t need a compass. I pointed.
"That way."
We trudged out of the Ironwood treeline and onto the ridge overlooking the crash site.
And then we stopped.
The relief of escaping the dungeon evaporated instantly, replaced by a cold dread that had nothing to do with the weather.
"Michael," Leon whispered. "Look."
Below us, in the white expanse of the tundra, the Iron-Horse lay stranded. It looked like a broken toy half-buried in sugar.
But the snow around it wasn’t white.
It was grey. A moving, shifting grey.
Hundreds of shapes circled the train. Wolves the size of ponies. Bears with ice-armor plating. Frost-Wyverns circling in the low clouds.
They weren’t attacking. They were waiting. They stood in perfect, disciplined concentric circles, a siege line that stretched for a mile.
And standing in front of the formation, directly facing the train, was a solitary figure. Even from this distance, his presence was overwhelming. He wore a cloak made of white wolf pelts and held a spear that gleamed with blood-red runes.
General Vargr. The Beastmaster of the Demon Cult.
He wasn’t hiding anymore.
"They’re surrounded," Leon said, his voice hallow. "There’s... there’s an army down there."
"They’re waiting for us," I said, my mind calculating the odds.
Twelve students inside a metal can. No mana. Limited ammo. And outside, a legion of monsters led by an A-Rank villain.
I looked at the vial in my pocket. The cure.
If we didn’t get this to the train, Maria and Selena would die. If we tried to break through, we would be torn to shreds.
"Status check," I muttered to myself.
[STATUS]
[Mana: 0 (Sealed)]
[HP: 20%]
[Stamina: Critical]
"We have to go down there," Leon said, gripping the handle of his hammer. "My friends are in that train."
"We can’t fight an army, Leon," I said. "Not like this."
"Then what do we do?"
I looked at the slope leading down to the train. I looked at the formation of the wolves.
"We don’t fight," I said, a desperate plan forming in the dregs of my consciousness. "We crash."
I pointed to a large, flat sheet of metal—debris from the Dwarven outpost ruins nearby.
" sled," I said.
"A sled?"
"Gravity is the only weapon we have left," I said, limping toward the metal sheet. "Get on. We’re going to break the siege."
I looked down at the Beastmaster one last time.
You wanted a hunt, Vargr?
Fine.
Here comes the avalanche.
(To be Continued)
