strictlysupreme Chapter 52: A pragmatist
Chapter 52: A pragmatist
Veythor, Shimi, and Raika ran. They tore through the suffocating blackness of the primeval canopy, their feet sinking into the treacherous mire before tearing free, over and over, without a single moment of rest. The frantic, ragged rhythm of their gasps deepened, turning into a harsh, uniform wheeze that echoed through the hollow trunks of the jungle, yet they refused to slow down.
Veythor kept his head locked forward, his eyes burning as they pierced the gloom ahead. He ground his teeth together with such force his jaw ached—not out of anger, but out of sheer, mechanical desperation to force his failing muscles to comply.
Fucking hell... my lungs are burning. The thought rasped through his skull like dry kindling. What should I do? We’ve been sprinting blindly for nearly ten minutes. If I keep pushing them at this pace, their hearts will burst before the tribesmen even catch our scent.
Without warning, Veythor planted his heels into the damp moss, coming to a dead halt.
The sudden deceleration caught the others completely off guard. Shimi and Raika, running on pure, blind adrenaline right behind him, collided violently into his back. The impact sent all three of them crashing down into the brush, collapsing into a tangled heap of limbs and mud.
"Owww!" Shimi hissed, a sharp cry of pain escaping her raw throat.
They lay trapped beneath one another’s dead weight. Veythor didn’t even attempt to move; he simply remained pinned beneath them, his chest heaving violently. All three of them gasped for air, the sound hollow and desperate, sounding exactly like lungs that had been brutally punctured by iron spikes.
"Get off me, Raika... I can’t breathe," Shimi wheezed, her eyelids clamped shut as she fought against the suffocating exhaustion threatening to drag her into unconsciousness.
Hearing her strained panic, Raika scrambled frantically, his weak limbs flailing as he tried to untangle himself from the pile. "Oh—umm, yeah! Sorry, sorry!" he stammered, his voice trembling as he rolled off them, collapsing flat onto his back against the damp, cold grass.
Veythor’s eyes closed, the darkness behind his lids offering a brief respite from the dizzying rotation of the canopy above.
By now, the fire must be dead, Veythor calculated, his heartbeat a frantic drum against his ribs. Darius has found the clearing. He has found the girl. If everything has gone according to my layout... Haha. They are going to start the manhunt. Every single tracker, hunter, and hound will be unleashed into these woods.
Lying there in the filth, surrounded by the predatory murmurs of the deep jungle, Veythor’s lips slowly curled into a small, chilling smile.
Can we escape? No... can I escape?
Meanwhile, the damp, oppressive air of the jungle fractured under a wave of heavy, running footsteps. Distant murmurs bled through the thicket as dozens of armed tribesmen sprinted toward the shadows of the colossal deity statue, drawn by the agonizing, monstrous shrieks tearing out of the clearing.
"DASHA...!"
Darius’s throat tore as he screamed her name into the unheeding canopy. He gathered her cold, stiffening corpse into his arms, pulling her blood-soaked torso against his chest. He stared down at her ruined face, his body racking with deep, violent dynamic dry-heaves as his grief mutated into something entirely unhinged. His jaw clamped shut, his teeth grinding so hard the enamel threatened to crack, his mind completely flooded with a blinding, toxic fury.
By the time the bulk of the tribal warriors breached the clearing, the scene froze them in their tracks. Gazes flicked from the pool of blood to the broken silver sword, and knuckles whitened across weapon hilts. A low, dangerous whisper rippled through the gathering. Though they did not weep or scream like their commander, a cold, predatory rage began to simmer within the collective crowd.
Suddenly, a young warrior broke the tension, his voice sharp with a sudden realization. "Don’t tell me... the sacrifices? Did those foreign runts slaughter Dasha and escape?"
A collective, suffocating silence fell over the clearing. The tribesmen visibly swallowed hard, a sudden chill cutting through their fury. If the foreign sacrifices had truly vanished, it meant only one thing: the covenant with Lord Dogundra was unfulfilled. To appease the beast-god’s wrath before dawn, children from their own bloodlines would have to be dragged to the altar.
Realizing the horrific math of the situation, a seasoned hunter stepped forward, his face contorted in panic. "Lady Emata swore to us! She said this time, no child of the Nagarono would have to bleed! They gave us hope... and now the hope is gone!"
"It’s all Dasha’s fault!" another voice barked from the crowd, the fear quickly turning into a venomous scapegoating. "How does an initiated warrior get herself butchered by starving runts? She was weak! She slacked off! We are not giving up our sons and daughters for her failure!"
A low roar of agreement rippled through the mob. The tribesmen nodded in unison, their panic transforming Dasha from a fallen comrade into a hated pariah within seconds.
Amidst the rising tide of angry voices, Darius’s weeping stopped.
He fell completely still, his head bowed over the corpse so that the shadows entirely concealed his expression. He sat like stone as the people he commanded began to ruthlessly thrash Dasha’s memory with their words. Each cruel sentence, each accusation of incompetence, echoed like a hammer blow inside his fractured mind.
None of them knew. None of them could possibly understand that the girl had died precisely because she was trying to save them. She had been cruelly tricked, manipulated by a monster in a child’s skin, but her final heartbeat had been spent trying to protect this very tribe from the fire. They didn’t know. No one in the world knew the truth—except Veythor.
This was the ultimate, mocking jest of fate. It didn’t matter what you sacrificed for your people, and it didn’t matter if you gave your life to shield them from the dark. In the end, the crowd would always find it easier to curse your corpse and trample your memory if it meant saving their own skin. That was the absolute, unvarnished reality of the world.
Veythor remained flat on the damp earth, refusing to waste a single calorie of energy on movement until the violent, spasmodic heaving of his chest finally began to stabilize. Beside him, Shimi and Raika lay in identical states of physical ruin, pinned down by the sheer weight of their exhaustion.
With his eyes closed, Veythor tuned his senses to the oppressive symphony of the primeval jungle. The humid air was thick with the frenzied chirping of invisible birds and the loud, rhythmic droning of nocturnal insects. Yet, slicing beneath that mundane noise, low and dangerously resonant howling rippled through the distant valleys—a stark reminder of the apex predators that claimed these woods.
What now? Veythor asked himself, his internal voice entirely devoid of panic.
I have successfully broken out of that nest of cannibals. Their morale should be entirely fractured. If everything has gone according to my layout, organizing a coherent tracking party will be a bureaucratic nightmare for them. But ’difficult’ is not a guarantee. There is still a margin of error.
He began to mentally map the surrounding topography, calculating trajectories, resource points, and defensive perimeters. Yet, no matter how many permutations his mind ran, the math always yielded the same result: in this uncharted hellscape, there was absolutely no guaranteed path of survival.
A soft, mocking laugh rippled through his consciousness.
So what if I die this time, too? What will actually happen? In the end, the cycle will simply reset. I will be reborn again. Nothing truly changes.
The existential weight that would have driven an ordinary child mad acted as a soothing balm for his mind. His internal smile faded, replaced by a cold, objective truth.
If I am good enough, I will survive. It is as simple as that.
Veythor slowly pushed himself up from the dirt. Standing at his full, fragile height, he locked his gaze onto the path ahead. The dense foliage and swirling mountain mist offered nothing but a clouded, impenetrable veil. His small hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, his pupils dilating as they focused into the gloom. He stood entirely determined to ruthlessly dismantle whatever disaster the universe decided to throw at him next.
Without spare glance at Shimi or Raika, Veythor turned and began to walk.
Shimi’s face instantly paled, the cold blood draining from her cheeks as she realized the monster who had engineered their escape was simply leaving them behind without a word. Just as the terror peaked in her chest, Veythor spoke, his voice a low, flat rasp that barely carried over the wind.
"Follow me."
He didn’t slow his pace. Shimi did not waste a single millisecond. She scrambled to her feet, her joints popping, and frantically sprinted after his receding shadow.
Raika, however, remained seated in the muck, staring blankly into the dark. His fingers instinctively curled inward, burying themselves deep into the mire. When he pulled his hand back, he realized he had unconsciously torn away a heavy, thick clump of the black earth, his fingernails caked in filth. He stood up with agonizing slowness, staring intently at the void in the ground for a long, silent moment. Then, masking his expression in the shadows, he quietly stepped into their wake.