Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 300. The Boundary Broke From the Side It Wasn’t Built to Withstand

Chapter 300: 300. The Boundary Broke From the Side It Wasn’t Built to Withstand

He tried to walk to the front door of the mansion, but Carmilla got in his way. She didn’t seem dangerous.

She looked just like Carmilla walking down a hallway to stop someone, which was something the real Carmilla did occasionally. But the lines of corruption that ran through her were still there, and they got brighter as he got closer to the exit.

He tried Sovereign’s Command, but the corruption took it in before it got to her. The bond’s power dissolved into the network like sound into water.

He tried Dragon’s Presence, and the space around him changed. The corruption currents moved to make up for it, and the weight of the partial dragon transformation was contained and redirected before it could grow.

He tried to move to the side, and everyone else in the hallway moved with him, keeping their positions relative to him. Carmilla was in front of him, Zara was at the left junction, and Sylvia was at the right.

The more he pushed, the more the corruption pushed back. Not in a mean way. Adjusting, compensating, and containing are all ways that a well-designed space keeps sound from bouncing off of it.

Rick stopped pushing.

He stood in the hallway, breathing and thinking about what he knew: that this was a corruption architecture built on the Archon’s infrastructure and shaped around him specifically, using the faith network, the bond network, and the socket as anchor points.

It had been getting worse while the simulation was going on, indicating that the corruption was intensifying and potentially threatening the stability of the entire system. Before the simulation started, the corruption may have been building.

He thought about the socket, which was the space where the Eye of the Demon King used to be. It was an artifact with pre-coalition resonance that the grief construct now lived in, serving as a vessel for its power and memories of the past.

He remembered the girl with white hair at the edge of the ward.

He thought about what it meant to be recognized.

"I need to get to the edge," he said, speaking to no one, to everyone, and to the entity that was watching through the eyes of his bonded partners.

He took off running.

Valdris was a lot bigger under the corruption than the real city was. The streets and buildings were all in the right places, but the scale was off; everything was a little too big, like a space built to hold things instead of living in them.

The corrupt currents flowed through the streets like water flows through channels, with a purpose and a plan. As Rick ran, everyone in the city turned to face him.

Carmilla, Zara, and Sylvia, the bonded partners in the mansion, did not turn to face him. Everyone in Valdris. Thousands of figures, all with purple-black lines running through them, were turning as he walked by.

He kept on running.

The socket burned continuously at the same intensity it had when the Archon attempted to reclaim it. While it wasn’t as agonizing as during the Severance Rite, it remained demanding and relentless, sending a constant signal that something was tainting everything it observed, as corruption was pervasive in its view.

He hit the edge of what he knew was the city’s border, where the streets ended and the road opened up toward the temple route. The corruption grew stronger there.

Not a wall nor a gradient.

The corruption architecture was thickest at the edge, like a container is thickest at its rim. Moving through it felt like walking through something that had weight, direction, and purpose.

He took his time.

He pushed harder and slowed down even more. The currents of corruption coiled around him in long, slow loops that weren’t aggressive; they simply provided a steady, gentle resistance that increased in strength at the same rate he pushed against it.

His legs moved in the right rhythm, and the ground felt solid beneath him. With each step, he slowed down further.

He turned to face the city, which remained unchanged. Every person within it was oriented toward the spot where he stood, and the lines of corruption connecting them were all active, leading back to the same distant source.

He looked ahead at the boundary that was thickening, realizing he wouldn’t be able to breach it. He could not breach it while the network was integrating Sovereign’s Command.

The architecture designed to hold back Dragon’s Presence was intended to prevent unauthorized access and protect critical systems from breaches. Additionally, Sebastian was operating at full capacity, being connected to the same network.

Not by himself and not with any of the tools he had, which included advanced hacking software and physical devices designed to counteract such corruption.

The corruption wrapped around his legs, and the slowing sensation transformed into a gentle but firm pulling, similar to how a strong current pulls rather than pushes. His feet left the ground.

Still, he kept his arms out in front of him. He dug his fingers into the corruption architecture and crawled through it to the edge.

It wasn’t air or stone; it was something that had weight and texture and responded to the pressure of his hands.

The people in the city had moved. They were now behind him, close by, and the corruption lines between them were running straight into the coils around his body, adding their weight to the pull and the bond network’s specific pressure against him.

He kept going.

His fingers found the edge, where the gradient was at its thickest, and beyond that was something that wasn’t the built space. He pushed against it, and the edge pushed back.

He lost his grip.

"Fuck...!"

His arms, which had been holding up his weight against the pull of the whole corruption network of a built Valdris, gave one centimeter and then another.

"No...! I can’t...! I can’t let it...!"

The pull got stronger with each centimeter to make up for it.

He thought, "I can’t do this by myself."

And then he was surprised to see a hand grab his wrist.

The small, warm hand grasped his wrist, radiating an amber-blue light. He had encountered this light twice before: once at the ward boundary of the Golden Temple and again over Sophia’s hands in the east wing.

The glow enveloped his palm.

Rick’s eyes slowly focused on a girl with white hair pulled back.

The boundary shattered.

It didn’t break, give, or bend. It broke in the precise manner expected of a structure designed to withstand force from one direction while neglecting the impact from the opposite side.

The sound wasn’t a sound; it was a feeling, like a huge structured thing falling apart at its organizational principle.

Rick and the girl went through together, and there was nothing on the other side of the line.

White. There is no surface, ceiling, walls, distance, or direction except for the white itself, which goes in all directions without any edges or features.

They landed in it like you do when you walk on deep snow, not on a surface but in a medium that held them.

He got up and examined his hands. They were unmistakably his own. His coat felt familiar, a tangible reminder of his identity.

The socket was quiet for the first time since the simulation failed. The grief construct was sitting in it, its warmth settling in, and the corruption signal was finally gone. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

He stared at her.

She was short, and her white hair was the same white it had always been when he’d seen her. It caught light that didn’t come from anywhere, and the glow in her palms was fading as she let go of his wrist.

There was the almost-smile.

"Uhh..." Rick said, "Hi...?"

She didn’t say anything.

What she showed him didn’t come in words.

It manifested as a memory, yet it wasn’t his own.

It was like being in a series of events while also knowing that you were outside of them, watching them from the point of view of someone who has seen them happen and is now showing someone else how they fit together.

He saw Meridian. And then he observed the bond network grow, with each thread establishing itself in a manner similar to how he had previously experienced it—not as a system event, but as something real and unique to each individual.

He looked at the Eye of the Demon King, which he had gotten and had started out as a power but had been something else since the first day. In the cases that mattered, the Archon’s corruption didn’t work by directly infecting people.

The corruption operated through repeated exposure, with the Eye serving as a delivery system established from the moment of acquisition. It built a certain corruption pattern inside the socket that he couldn’t see, because the socket was the part that the corruption used to show him what it wanted him to see.

He saw Cthulhu. He saw the fight for what it really was, not how it felt from the inside.

The corruption in the socket had been working the whole time, taking advantage of the fight’s intensity and the mind’s openness when it was in crisis to speed up exposure.

The Eye had been getting worse during the fight, not because it was being used up, but because the architecture inside it was finishing.

He witnessed the moment the building reached its conclusion.