The Vengeful Extra's Ascension-Chapter 262: Hard Work!

The moment they crossed the fractured archway, reality broke its own rules.

There was no sensation of movement. No falling, no pulling, no wrenching displacement like a teleport gone wrong. One instant they were inside the warped forest, trees leaning at impossible angles, shadows folding over themselves, and the next, they were somewhere else entirely.

The transition was silent.

Albedo staggered half a step as the mana drain spiked violently, not gradually, not experimentally, but all at once, like a fist closing around his core. The air thickened, pressing against his skin, his lungs, his thoughts. Even at Mid Amethyst, it hurt.

Around him, several students gasped audibly.

The space they stood in was vast and empty, yet somehow claustrophobic. A circular expanse of smooth obsidian-black ground stretched outward in all directions, fractured by glowing sigils embedded beneath the surface like veins of molten glass.

Above them, there was no sky, only a roiling canopy of layered distortion, colors folding into one another in slow, nauseating spirals.

And at the far end of the expanse was a portal.

It stood upright, oval-shaped, suspended in midair by nothing at all. Its surface was a smooth plane of pale, shifting light, calm and inviting in a way that immediately set every instinct Albedo possessed on edge.

"This is worse that I expected," Halen muttered.

Albedo nodded, "Definitely,"

The mana drain here was no longer subtle. It was aggressive, invasive, actively clawing at their reserves. Even standing still cost them something. The space wasn’t trying to weaken them anymore.

It was trying to break them.

Before anyone could move, the ground rippled.

Then the monsters came.

They didn’t emerge from shadows or foliage, there was none. Instead, they phased directly out of the air itself, their forms resolving mid-motion. Dozens at once. Then more.

These were different.

Humanoid silhouettes twisted into wrong shapes, limbs too long, joints bending backward, faces smooth and featureless except for hollow impressions where eyes should have been. Their bodies flickered constantly, as if struggling to decide what form they were meant to hold.

Illusions layered over constructs.

Or constructs wearing illusions like skin.

"Defensive formation!" one of the Professors barked instantly.

The response was immediate.

Students were pulled into the center, shields raised, not magical barriers, but physical ones reinforced with minimal mana. Professors spread outward in a protective ring, their presences flaring for the first time since the crash.

And when they flared, the difference was terrifying.

Halen planted his staff into the obsidian ground, and the sigils beneath his feet ignited. A pressure wave rolled outward, not mana-heavy, but impossibly dense, like gravity being rewritten. The first wave of monsters slammed into it and simply... stopped.

"Albedo!" Halen shouted over the rising distortion. "The portal is a lie! Find the real exit!"

"I know!" Albedo snapped back.

He was already moving.

The monsters surged again, phasing through the pinned ones as if they were nothing more than reflections. A Professor with ash-blond hair raised her hand, fingers curling slowly. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

The air screamed. A field of compressed force detonated outward, not exploding, but folding space inward on itself. Half a dozen creatures were crushed into nothingness, erased without sound.

Another Professor stepped forward, eyes glowing faintly gold, and spoke a command. The ground beneath a cluster of monsters liquefied, then solidified instantly, trapping them mid-step like insects in amber.

The students stared in stunned silence.

This was what true high-rank power looked like when unleashed without restraint.

Albedo ignored it all, activating Source Code.

Lines of causality, threads of spatial logic, layers of falsehood stacked over reality like bad code written by a very clever, very cruel architect.

The monsters lit up immediately. Not as enemies, but as processes. Loops. Subroutines meant to delay and exhaust them.

The portal blazed brighter than anything else, and that alone confirmed his suspicion.

"Of course," he muttered. "You want us to run."

He moved sideways, deliberately away from the portal.

The mana drain surged in response, punishing the deviation. His teeth clenched, but he kept moving, tracking the invisible gradients only Source Code revealed.

False pressure points. Redirected vectors. Spatial echoes that didn’t quite align.

"Albedo!" someone shouted as a monster broke through the defensive line.

He didn’t look back.

A Professor intercepted it, her aura flaring violently as she drove a blade of condensed light straight through its core, dispersing the illusion and the construct beneath in one decisive strike.

"Focus!" she barked. "He’s working!"

Albedo reached the edge of the expanse, or what looked like the edge.

There was nothing there, but the code screamed wrongness. He crouched, pressing his hand to the obsidian ground, ignoring the way the mana drain bit deeper the longer he stayed still.

"This space is recursive," he said aloud, more to himself than anyone else. "It’s folding perception inward. The portal is an attractor."

The real exit would be where the creators of this thing didn’t want attention. He stood and walked past the illusion of emptiness, protected by the Professors.

The world resisted him violently. Pressure slammed into his core, harder than anything before. His vision blurred. For a moment, even Perfect Adaptation groaned under the strain.

Behind him, the Professors felt it too.

"What are you doing?!" Halen shouted.

"Finding the Exit!" Albedo yelled back.

The obsidian ground fractured under his feet, inward. A seam tore open, thin as a blade, running vertically through the air itself. Unlike the portal, it didn’t glow. It didn’t beckon.

It hid from all of them.

"There!" Albedo shouted, pointing. "That’s it! That’s the real exit!"

The space reacted instantly. The illusions went berserk. Every remaining monster surged toward him at once, abandoning the defensive lines entirely.

The Professors didn’t hesitate.

"All units, full suppression!" Halen roared.

Power erupted.

Waves of elemental force tore through the swarm, fire that burned concepts instead of flesh, ice that froze motion itself, gravity wells that crushed illusions into nothing. The obsidian ground shattered and reformed repeatedly under the assault.

Albedo stood at the seam, hands shaking, Source Code blazing in his eyes as he forced the tear wider.

"NOW!" he yelled.

The Professors moved as one.

They grabbed students, shoved them forward, shielded them with their own bodies as they crossed the seam. Monsters slammed into the Professors’ backs, claws scraping against hastily raised barriers.

Halen was the last to move.

He glanced back once, staff blazing, then grinned grimly at Albedo.

"Let’s hope this is all over,"

Then he stepped through.

Albedo followed an instant later.