The Vengeful Extra's Ascension-Chapter 259: Working Together!

The two remaining creatures held their ground. They did not charge but also didn’t retreat further, instead deciding to wait for Albedo to make a move or for something to happen.

Albedo recognized the posture immediately. It was not a posture out of instinct or even fear, but conditional execution. They were buying time. Either for the space to react, or for something else to arrive.

His jaw tightened.

"Of course," he muttered. "You’re not the end of the equation."

The mana drain sharpened again, a thin spike of pressure pressing against his skin like static before a storm. Not enough to cripple him, but enough to warn him to finish this quickly.

The two constructs advanced in a staggered pattern, one slow and deliberate, the other circling wide, claws dragging through soil and stone with a sound like tearing fabric. They were forcing him toward the shimmer without actually allowing him to reach it.

Guardians indeed.

Albedo rolled his shoulders once, loosening tension. His body ached faintly now, not injury, just cumulative strain. He could feel the edge of fatigue pressing at his muscles, the warning signs of pushing too long without release.

Still well within limits.

He stepped forward.

The nearer creature lunged low, sweeping its forelimbs outward in a wide arc meant to trip, pin, and crush. Albedo vaulted cleanly over the attack, planting one foot briefly on its shoulder ridge and using the momentum to spin behind it.

He landed hard, skidding across loose gravel, and immediately threw himself sideways as the second creature struck from above, slamming into the ground where he’d been a heartbeat earlier. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The impact shattered stone and various fragments flew through the air. Albedo seized one mid-flight, but he didn’t throw it, deciding to wait.

The first creature recovered, pivoting with disturbing smoothness, limbs rotating to reorient its body in a way no spine should allow. The sensory nodules around its skull flared faintly as it recalibrated.

That was the opening.

Albedo hurled the stone, not at the creature’s body, but past its head, toward the shimmer. The creature reacted instantly, twisting to intercept.

And in doing so, it turned its back.

Albedo was already moving.

He sprinted, leapt, and drove both knees into the creature’s rear joint, forcing it forward and off-balance. As it stumbled, he grabbed one of its upper limbs, twisted sharply, and used the creature itself as a bludgeon, slamming its head into the second construct’s chest.

The collision rang like a struck bell.

Spatial distortion rippled violently and both constructs staggered but Albedo didn’t let them recover.

He seized a broken slab of stone with both hands, far heavier than any weapon he’d used so far, and swung it in a brutal, horizontal arc, smashing it across the first creature’s skull-ring.

The slab shattered. The creature collapsed, its internal lattice destabilizing rapidly as its form lost cohesion and disintegrated into ash.

One left.

The final construct screeched through pressure. The mana drain spiked in response, biting deeper, as if the space itself were urging it to finish the job.

The creature charged.Albedo met it head-on. They collided in a spray of dirt and stone, his shoulder slamming into its chest while its limbs wrapped around him with crushing force. He felt ribs creak as pressure mounted.

He grit his teeth.

Too slow to break it physically.

He shifted tactics instantly.

Albedo twisted his body sharply, forcing one of the creature’s limbs to overextend, then jammed his forearm into the gap between plates where he’d seen the lattice exposed earlier. He drove his fingers in with raw force, digging until he felt resistance give way.

The creature convulsed violently.

Spatial feedback surged.

Albedo was thrown backward, skidding across the ground, coughing as dust filled his lungs. He rolled onto one knee, vision swimming for half a second, and froze.

Because the creature hadn’t finished disintegrating.

It staggered forward, half-collapsed, one limb dragging uselessly, but still moving. Albedo cursed softly.

He pushed himself up, ignoring the burn in his muscles, and reached for another stone,

"NOW!"

The shout echoed across the basin.

A bolt of condensed ice slammed into the creature’s side, encasing half its body in jagged frost. A second later, a blade of compressed wind sheared through its neck-ring.

The construct shattered completely, collapsing into ash and frozen debris.

Albedo turned sharply.

At the edge of the basin, half-hidden among broken stone and sparse trees, stood a group of figures, students clustered together, weapons raised, expressions tight with exhaustion and relief.

And behind them,

Three Professors.

One of them stepped forward, lowering his staff.

"Albedo," Professor Halen said grimly, "You really don’t know how to stay out of trouble."

Albedo exhaled slowly, tension bleeding from his shoulders as the mana drain eased a fraction, no longer under immediate combat stress.

"...You weren’t supposed to follow."

"We tried not to," another Professor said, a woman with ash-blond hair and a bloodied sleeve. "The space didn’t care."

The students gathered closer now, eyes wide as they took in the basin—the bones, the ash, the shimmer at the far end.

"We were attacked too," a third Professor added. "Multiple times. Smaller groups got hit first. We lost track of paths. Every time we thought we were heading back, the forest shifted."

One of the students swallowed. "We almost ran into one of those things blind."

Albedo nodded slowly.

"That confirms it," he said. "The space is accelerating its cycles."

Halen frowned. "Meaning?"

"It’s compressing time between responses. Repositioning threats faster. Shifting geometry more aggressively." Albedo looked back toward the shimmer. "Which means it’s nearing a transition point."

"Collapse?" someone asked tensely.

"Or reset," Albedo replied. "Either way, we don’t want to be scattered when it happens."

He turned fully toward the group now, posture straightening.

"We move together from here on," he said calmly. "No exceptions. No scouting alone. No splitting paths, even if the terrain encourages it."

One of the Professors hesitated. "And you know where we’re going?"

Albedo nodded once.

"There’s an exit," he said. "Or at least a release zone. That shimmer."

The students’ eyes lit up instantly.

"Really?!"

"But," Albedo continued, holding up a hand, "it’s guarded, keyed to force, and likely not the final step. It tolerated me because I didn’t push it."

He met Halen’s gaze.

"With a group, it’ll react differently."

Halen grimaced. "Meaning?"

"Meaning we don’t rush it," Albedo said. "We approach slowly. No large spells. No surges. If anything attacks, we use terrain first, magic second."

The Professor nodded slowly. "You’ve thought this through."

"I had time," Albedo replied dryly.