Chapter 188: Beast Riot

Words : 1046 Updated : Sep 21st, 2025

Chapter 188: Beast Riot Meanwhile, by now, Ethan had left the ridge behind. He moved through the thickening trees at a controlled pace, letting his footsteps land on solid ground, even though the earth felt soft and strange in places, as if it had swollen slightly from underneath. He didn’t ask the system for updates. It wouldn’t matter now. The peace had passed. And something big was coming. He could feel it in the way the forest, which was supposed to be teeming with beasts and insects, now felt empty and quiet around him. Then, in the far distance, a crack echoed out across the zone. It wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t a beast. It was something else. The sky above him shifted slightly—just a ripple, like someone had run their fingers across a still pond. Ethan paused for a moment, his body still but alert, eyes tracking the sky even though the trees blocked most of it. The ripple didn’t come again. There was no light. No pressure. Just a strange absence. The kind that didn’t make sense until it was too late to do anything about it. Then, without any warning, the ground gave a faint lurch beneath his feet. Not enough to knock him off balance, but enough to make him step differently. The soil sagged in places it hadn’t before. Roots cracked and shifted, not under his weight but as if something deeper was pushing upward. And then the forest broke. There was no warning howl. No roar of a beast. Just a tremor, long and low, followed by an explosion of noise that didn’t come from a single source. It came from everywhere. Beasts began to scream. Some from the deep zone. Some closer than expected. The sound didn’t come in waves—it hit all at once, like the entire forbidden zone exhaled the breath it had been holding. Trees cracked as something massive tore through the underbrush to the east. To the west, a series of short, sharp snaps echoed in rhythm with heavy footfalls. The birds that had vanished returned only to fly away in frantic patterns, diving between branches and vanishing into the dark sky. Ethan didn’t run. He didn’t freeze either. He simply took a breath and shifted into motion, adjusting his direction toward higher ground. Not to escape. To see, to understand what was happening before it reached him. He climbed a small slope and looked back down across the zone, and what he saw confirmed what he already felt. The beasts weren’t hunting. They were fleeing. But not from him. Not from each other. From something worse. Meanwhile, near the outer gates, the boundaries of the zone began to flicker. Invisible walls that had always kept the inner territories sealed off were cracking. Thin blue veins of light traced along the edges of tall pylons that were never meant to fail. Two of the support towers sputtered. One went dark. And in the silence that followed, something crossed over. The first wave came not in formation, but in chaos. Large shapes—horned, scaled, furred—charged into zones where mid-tier students were still setting up camp for the night. No patterns, no coordination, just force, raw, wild, desperate force. Students screamed. Not out of fear, but shock. No one had been told this was possible. In the southwest corner, three students managed to light a flare before being scattered by a bear-sized beast with curved bone plating along its back. One student rolled down a hill, another was slammed into a tree, and the third was still trying to draw his blade when he was tackled off a ridge. The flare burned for two seconds. Then vanished. Sera saw it from her location just above a ledge and changed course immediately. She didn’t shout. Didn’t call for help. She just moved, faster than before, her legs eating up the trail with no wasted motion. Mei heard the distant crash of trees and adjusted without needing confirmation. Her eyes narrowed as she took in a split in the canopy ahead, one that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. She leapt to a higher path and disappeared into the fog. Evelyn stopped running and crouched low, pressing her hand to the ground. The vibrations were spreading. Not like footsteps, it was a tide, wide, heavy, relentless. She stood up and vanished into the mist, heading for the students she had marked earlier. Everly didn’t change pace. She’d already started moving in the right direction. A different kind of calm set into her expression—not the kind meant for rest, but the kind that came before impact. Near the examination headquarters, the control team scrambled. Several comms feeds began to glitch. The outermost camera feeds flickered, then cut to black. Dozens of student trackers began flashing red or vanishing from the interface entirely. The lead supervisor swore under his breath and slammed his fist against the console. "Drop pods out to sectors 3, 5, and 8 now. Priority on any group under four." An assistant beside him looked up, pale. "Some of the pods aren’t responding." "What do you mean they aren’t responding?" "They’re gone, sir." The room went quiet. Then another screen blinked out. And another. By the time they regained control of one sector’s feed, the image was a blur of motion, beasts tearing through tents, a shield flaring before collapsing, and one student dragging another across the ground with blood soaking through their uniform. It was no longer an exam. It was survival. And far from the chaos, still in the forest, Ethan stood still again. He didn’t need to guess anymore. This wasn’t a moment. This was the beginning of something large. Something that was not planned. The ripple in the sky. The shift in the trees. The timing of the beasts. All of this feel like a sudden beast tide, but he knew that this was not an accident. He exhaled slowly, his hand resting lightly against his side. The system didn’t speak. There was no prompt. No direction. That was fine. He didn’t need a goal right now. He just needed to keep moving. And protect whoever he found along the way. The riot hadn’t started officially. But it didn’t need to. Because it was already here.

Chapter 188: Beast Riot

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