chsdbacks Chapter 214: Forbidden Zone
Chapter 214: Forbidden Zone
Monster Paradise welcomed them back with open skies and the low, familiar hum of a world that had missed its master.The first full day back was spent doing nothing at all, by John’s direct order. Terravax soaked in a restorative pool Selenroot maintained near the Forging Island’s edge, his cracked shell already knitting itself back together under layered healing. Emberlune slept nearly eighteen hours straight, curled in a sunbeam with all nine tails wrapped around herself. Azelis flexed her regrown arm now and then, testing it, though the flesh had settled fully and the only thing left of the wound was the memory.
By the second day, John couldn’t sit still anymore.
The Eldritch Gear Forge stood on the Forging Island like a cathedral of black metal and slow-turning rings, each ring inscribed with runework that shifted when observed too long. John laid out their haul across its central platform, the Titancore Duskstone, the Chorusglass Shards, the Fractured Hourglass Core, the Sableborn Heartstone, the three wild soul cores, and a small mountain of crystallized Eldritch Energy.
Chuthulos floated beside him, eyes gleaming as he took inventory.
"Good materials," he said. "Genuinely good. You could forge four solid Eldritch Gears from this."
"I’m hearing a ’but,’" John said.
"But," Chuthulos agreed cheerfully, "solid isn’t what you want, is it? You want gears that grow with all of you into Calamity-rank and beyond. And for that, the frame materials are fine, the attribute materials are fine, but the ignition component is missing entirely."
"Ignition component?"
"A living core." Chuthulos spread his small hands. "Every top-tier Eldritch Gear needs a monster core taken from something that stood at the very peak of mortal existence. Ninth-calamity. Nothing lower will do, because the gear’s ceiling is set by the strongest thing that went into it. Feed it a Legendary core and it caps at Legendary. Feed it a ninth-calamity core..."
"And it grows with us all the way up," John finished slowly. "Of course it does."
"Nothing worth having comes cheap, brother John."
John dragged a hand down his face. Calamity-9 monsters. Creatures with a hundred thousand points in every physical stat, the absolute apex of what this layer of existence allowed. He’d fled from the mere presence of a regular Calamity-rank monster not long ago.
Then again, that was before Vaelkyrn. Before the Anchor. Before he’d learned that the gap between him and Calamity-rank wasn’t a wall, it was a puzzle.
He opened a Magic Whisper channel.
’Max. Got a question for you.’
’Bro! Twice in two weeks, I’m honored. What do you need?’
’Calamity-9 monsters. Wild ones. Where do I find them?’
There was a long pause on the other end.
’Okay, first of all, what,’ Max said. ’Second of all, WHAT. Third of all... actually, you know what, I stopped being surprised by you around the time you ate a dimension. Give me a second, I’ve been collecting intel on exactly this kind of thing.’
John waited, sorting materials absently while Max rummaged through whatever records his organization kept.
’Alright. There’s one place,’ Max said finally, his voice dropping into something more serious. ’The Godsgrave Expanse. It’s a massive crater region in the far northwest of Dranvok territory, past the Cindral Mountains. Story goes, some ancestor-level powerhouse fell there ages ago while attempting the climb to Demi-God, and whatever leaked out of them when they died soaked into the land itself. The whole region is saturated with energy so dense that ordinary monsters evolve just by living there. The deepest parts breed Calamity-ranks like a swamp breeds mosquitoes, and the oldest things in the center are ninth-calamity, easy.’
’Sounds perfect.’
’Sounds SUICIDAL,’ Max corrected. ’And there’s a catch. The Dranvok Empire has the whole Expanse marked as a Forbidden Zone. Officially, nobody’s allowed in. Unofficially, they don’t post guards because they don’t need to, the place kills trespassers on its own. But their strong people go in all the time. War-generals, royal disciples, their beast-breaker corps. They treat it like a private hunting ground, dragging out resources and force-taming anything they can chain down.’
John’s expression flattened at that last part.
’Force-taming.’
’Yeah. Dranvok’s whole taming doctrine is domination. Break the monster’s will first, contract second. It’s ugly, bro. Their beast-breakers are famous for it. Some of the things that come out of that place in chains...’ Max trailed off. ’Anyway. If you go in, sooner or later you’ll cross paths with Dranvok elites, and they will not be happy to see an outsider in their pantry.’
John was quiet for a moment.
Then he grinned, slow and wide, and even across the Whisper channel, Max groaned.
’You’re making the face. I can HEAR the face.’
’A Forbidden Zone stuffed with apex monsters, rare resources nobody else can touch, and the occasional Dranvok elite wandering around force-taming things,’ John said. ’Max, you just handed me a hunting ground, a treasure vault, and a moral justification all in one location. This is the best gift you’ve ever given me.’
’Please don’t start a war before I finish building my spy network,’ Max said. ’Please. I’m asking nicely.’
’No promises. Keep your ears open, I’ll be in touch.’
*
Preparation took the rest of the day.
John stood in the heart of Monster Paradise and poured Molding Essence out in rivers, shaping it with the precision of long practice. What formed around him, one after another, were cages, though calling them cages undersold them badly.
Each one was a lattice of interlocking spatial anchors and suppression runes, layered with Voidspace to fold escape routes closed and Chronolight to slow anything inside to a crawl, the whole structure reinforced with Feralsteel-pattern density until the bars could shrug off a hundred-thousand-stat blow long enough for the suppression to take hold. Built not to hurt, but to hold. To stop something apex-tier from moving long enough for a conversation to happen.
Twelve of them, when he finished. The counter on his Molding Essence had dropped by just over three hundred million.
"Expensive conversation starters," Azelis observed, walking a slow circle around one of the completed cages.
"Every negotiation goes smoother when nobody can storm out of the room," John said. "That’s all these are. A closed door."
"And if what’s inside doesn’t want to talk even after the door closes?"
"Then I open the door and let it leave." John shrugged. "I’m not Dranvok. Nothing joins my family in chains. The cage buys me time to make an offer, that’s it. What they do with the offer is up to them."
Azelis smiled faintly at that, saying nothing more.
That evening, he gathered everyone and laid out the plan in full, the Godsgrave Expanse, the resource-rich zones, the Calamity-9 cores the Eldritch Gears demanded, and the strong likelihood of running into Dranvok elites doing things to wild monsters that none of them were going to enjoy watching.
"So the goals are simple," John finished. "One, we strip that place of every rare resource we can carry, and everyone gets stronger, Tamers and pets both. Two, we find monsters worth talking to, and I make my offer. Three, we collect the cores we need from the ones that want to fight instead of talk. And four..."
"If we see beast-breakers force-taming something," Yuna said quietly, "we stop them."
"We stop them," John agreed, and there was nothing casual in his voice at all.
*
They left at dawn.
Pymon had grown large enough over his evolutions that carrying four Tamers was closer to an insult than a burden, and he tore across the sky of Temeraat World like a golden spear, wind bending around his wings in shimmering currents. Below them, Dranvok territory unrolled in endless stretches of fortress-cities and mountain ranges, and John kept them high enough and cloaked enough that not a single watchtower stirred as they passed.
Two hours after departure, the Cindral Mountains fell away behind them, and the horizon opened up into something that made even Pymon slow his flight.
The Godsgrave Expanse was less a crater than a wound. A depression in the world hundreds of kilometers across, its rim ringed by mountains that leaned outward as if still recoiling from an ancient impact. Mist churned in slow spirals over its depths, glowing faintly from beneath, and even from this distance, this altitude, every one of them could feel it, a pressure in the air like the land itself was still holding its breath around whatever had died here.
Somewhere down in that mist, apex monsters had been growing old and strong for centuries, untouched by everything except Dranvok’s chains.
John stood on Pymon’s back, wind whipping through his blue-purple hair, violet eyes bright as he took it all in.
"Alright, everyone," he said, grinning as Pymon began his descent toward the glowing mist below. "Let’s go make some new family members."