novelraw Chapter 245 : Chapter 245
Chapter 245 : Chapter 245
Volume 4 Chapter 33 – Those Who Break the Rules Will Ultimately Be Rejected by Them
“Fill this well… with gold coins?” Astrid’s voice drew everyone’s attention. Soon, all eyes turned toward the faint inscription on the well wall.
“There’s another line down here, meow!” Thanks to Wenfu’s small stature, she noticed what others would have needed to bend down to see.
“Stack gold coins up to the well’s mouth to leave this place.”
To Teresa, the sentence was written in standard Elvish Language, but to everyone else, it appeared in their own native tongues.
It wasn’t just written in a language—it was an embedded meaning, expressed in a universally comprehensible form across species and cultures.
“A toll in gold?” Felicia glanced at the gold coins piling beneath their feet, then upward toward the endlessly distant opening above. “Just how many coins would it take to climb all the way back up?!”
“Can we use something else? Like… stack other stuff instead?” Wenfu asked, puzzled.
“I suspect,” Teresa said, eyeing the precise engravings on the wall, “if we used anything else, we’d never reach the top.”
“But we don’t have that much gold,” Felicia frowned. “We came to explore, not go shopping. No one carries that kind of money, even on vacation.”
“Of course we’re not just going to ‘pay the toll’ as instructed.” Teresa stretched a little and looked up. “I think we’ve arrived at the entrance to the next Demon Territory.”
“This is the entrance? Like the sandstorm and the forest earlier?”
“Exactly.”
“So, how do we pass this trial? Don’t tell me we really have to cough up that much gold…”
“No need to pay. We’ll just break it.”
If you can’t bypass a rule, break the one who made it.
Teresa’s Changsu transformed into a willowwood blade wreathed in flying petals and burning blade-flame, and she swung it at the inner wall of the well.
Crack! A sharp sound rang out—the blade struck true, leaving a clear fracture on the wall.
“It worked?!” Wenfu’s ears perked.
But in the very next instant, Teresa’s expression changed. She slowly retracted the blade, her stance still frozen.
“What’s wrong? You can’t destroy the wall?”
“No,” Teresa shook her head. Destroying it was easy—for her.
But she couldn’t.
The moment her blade entered the wall, she sensed what lay behind it through the blade’s tip.
They weren’t in Ruglian or even the Kaleburn Continent. They were inside a fabricated illusion.
If the well wall were destroyed, that illusion would collapse—and flood the interior. In that moment, space and time would cease to exist. They’d lose their physical forms and be swept away into conceptual oblivion.
They would become one with the current.
Destroying the wall was not an option.
“What about climbing up?” someone suggested. Crude, yes—but at least it sounded doable.
“We can try. But the walls are too smooth. We can’t get a grip.”
“No worries, use this.” Teresa planted a Verdant Fragrance sprout on the gold beneath her. Nourished by the coins, the sprout rapidly grew into a strong, climbable vine.
“Let’s give it a try.” Teresa grabbed hold and began climbing, stepping on a large leaf and pulling herself up.
Astrid and Felicia followed closely behind, leaving Yimi and Wenfu below.
“Um… Teresa?”
“Hm? What is it?” Teresa had been climbing for a while, but hearing Wenfu’s voice struck her as odd. She looked down—and was startled.
Wenfu and Yimi… hadn’t moved at all. Their height was the same as when they started.
“You two… you climbed too?”
“Eh? Us? We didn’t move at all?” Wenfu tilted her head in confusion. “But you’ve been climbing this whole time. It just doesn’t look like you’ve gone any higher…”
Yimi tapped a gold coin beneath her feet, seemingly deep in thought. “It’s not that they’re staying in place. It’s that the pile of coins beneath them… is rising with them.”
“I think the distance between us and the well’s exit… is directly linked to the height of the coin pile.”
“If the number of coins doesn’t increase, if we’re not stacked on gold, we’ll never reach the top.”
“Then… what do we do?” Wenfu’s voice trembled. She hated the dark and didn’t want to be trapped in this gold well forever.
Sure, there were plenty of coins here—but she couldn’t spend any of them!
“If we can’t get out… are we going to be stuck here for life??”
“No, not a lifetime,” Astrid corrected her calmly. “Once the food runs out, humans and demihumans can survive up to seven days without eating. So we’ll starve to death long before then.”
“S-starve?!” Wenfu collapsed onto the coin pile, looking like her soul had left her body. “Wenfu doesn’t want to starve to death, meow…!”
Astrid blinked. Had she said something wrong again?
But she was just stating the truth.
Emotions are contagious. Even though the rest of us were experienced, Wenfu’s sobbing got under our skin. The mood grew heavy.
“…I should’ve written a farewell letter before this,” Yimi muttered, smacking her forehead. “Can’t believe I didn’t plan for this before entering Ruglian. Big oversight.”
Teresa, quiet and calm, swept her gaze over her teammates.
She had brought them here. She was responsible for their lives.
That thought lit a spark in her palm—a void of power began to coalesce.
She had no choice. She had to act.
Even if she now understood that [Sacred Oblivion] came with a price—a cost that escalated with time and use—there was no other way.
Otherwise, they’d never escape this pitch-black trap.
It hadn’t even been five days since she last used it—but Teresa knew she could summon it again.
The so-called “restrictions” were meaningless to someone who had remembered who she was.
But the consequences… the backlash… would they be worse this time?
Would [Sacred Oblivion] be able to destroy both the well and the surrounding illusion-space?
She didn’t know.
But she had to try.
“You’re going to… again?” Astrid’s expression twisted with concern and hesitation. Only Teresa’s miracle weapon had a shot at solving this—but…
Even Astrid could tell something was wrong with that weapon.
She couldn’t say exactly what. Just a deep, unsettling instinct.
Still, there was no other option.
“Everyone, back away.” Teresa’s tone was light.
The black halberd formed in her pale, luminous hands. World-ending power flooded the narrow well, squeezing everyone like a ghostly hand clenching their throats.
Astrid and the others instinctively retreated, pressing their backs to the wall.
Teresa stood lightly on a leaf. The halberd came down in a sweeping arc, carving a black, deathly line through the air.
The well wall—fragile as paper before the embodiment of destruction—cracked instantly.
From the fractured stone came a pure black flood, a tide of oblivion surging forth, seeking to consume and dissolve everything into nothing.
It was conceptual energy—not just physical force. Anything it touched would be broken down, rearranged, and eventually devoured.
Yet that black line of destruction Teresa had cleaved did not discriminate. It welcomed the conceptual tide as if it were the gateway to the underworld—granting even concepts the fate of annihilation.
All of that suffocating darkness that had threatened to engulf them was devoured by [Sacred Oblivion], poured entirely into that abyssal scar.
Astrid felt the world quake. Coins trembled violently. Bricks on the wall twisted, then collapsed into a vortex that spiraled into the black gash.
Light poured through the opening.
Darkness faded.
Wenfu shielded her eyes, the sudden brightness stinging after so long. As she adjusted to the light, she realized—they were standing in the middle of a ruined landscape.
“Eh?” She frantically looked around—her teammates were all there. No one was left behind.
She let out a deep sigh of relief.
Still the same useless self…
“We’re… out?” Felicia groaned, rubbing her sore head, barely able to believe it.
Astrid, however, didn’t celebrate. She looked toward Teresa with clear worry.
The golden-haired Elf Girl stood silently. Expression calm. Nothing seemed wrong.
But no one knew what she was really feeling.
“Teresa?”
“Yes, Astrid? Something wrong?” Teresa turned back and smiled—just as she always did.
“…No, nothing.” Seeing that serene, composed smile, Astrid swallowed her real question—“Are you okay?”
Besides, even if something was wrong, she doubted she could help.
“I was right. The volcano was the gate to the next Demon Territory.”
“Now we’re likely in the deepest reaches of Ruglian,” Teresa said, glancing around at the moss-covered ruins.
Wenfu opened her mouth to speak—but thought better of it.
Sure, surviving this far should’ve been a reason to celebrate.
But all she could think about was a simple, terrifying truth:
How were they going to get back to Kaleburn? To Coleman Academy?
It was a question everyone must’ve had.
Yet no one voiced it.
So Wenfu wisely kept her mouth shut.
BOOM—BOOM!
A thunderous sound shattered the silence.
A crumbling pillar fell and slammed into the ground, sending tremors through the earth.
“Tch, can we not get a moment of peace?” Felicia snapped.
Her condition had clearly deteriorated. Elves could go several nights without sleep. Demihumans needed less than humans. But Felicia?
She was human—and hadn’t had proper rest in three days.
Her temper was fraying. Her body was slowing down. Her mind dulled.
From the Wolfman Territory to here—it had been nonstop.
Through the wreckage, a three-meter-tall brute burst forward, demolishing everything in its path.
It looked humanoid—bulky and pinkish, its skin wrinkled like a corpse left too long in water. Bald. Monstrous.
A red cloth hung from a string around its forehead, covering its face. And strangest of all…
On top of its head—a stack of gold coins.
The coins were jammed into its headband. For what purpose, none could say.
This creature… wasn’t in any Demon Race Guidebook.
The group instinctively prepared for battle.
BOOM! Another one appeared on the opposite side—trapping them between the two.
A resonating, throat-rumbling growl echoed from the newcomers. They didn’t seem to have mouths.
They charged forward on all fours, each step smashing the stone floor beneath them.
And then…
…just as the group braced for combat…
The monsters… ignored them entirely.
Instead—they pounced on each other.
The girls stared, dumbfounded, as the two beasts wrestled—tearing down more ruins in the process.
…What??
The two beasts went at it like mortal enemies. Every move aimed to kill. There was no doubt—this wasn’t a greeting ritual. This was a brutal deathmatch.
Were they more offended by each other’s presence than ours?
Apparently, yes.
The group was… awkwardly ignored.
They exchanged glances, watching as the fight unfolded.
The larger one gained the upper hand. The smaller one had its arm snapped, was lifted overhead, and slammed to the ground.
Then the winner mounted it—punching its skull in over and over, each strike shaking the earth.
Even after the loser stopped moving, the punches continued.
Dozens of strikes later, the other beast’s head had turned to pulp.
The victor finally rose—and claimed its prize: the loser’s gold coins.
It shoved them into its headband with satisfaction, then finally looked at the girls.
Just as they tensed—it shook its head like a bobblehead doll.
As if saying: You’re not worth it.
Then it walked away.