Inertia: Beneath The Starlit Veil Chapter 34: Chapter 34

Read chapter 34 of Inertia: Beneath The Starlit Veil by Ken Kaizen on NovelPedia.

Chapter 34 Cyrus POV With the door closed on the right-hand side and my wounds relatively healed, it was time for me to make a choice. I heard the noise of something shifting again behind the passages, making me question my next decision once more. My gut was telling me to just go ahead and pick the middle rune. In times like this, I had nothing else to trust, so I placed my hand on it and expelled cosmic energy into it. The door slid open like every other time. This time, something felt off. I could sense a bloodthirsty intent coming from the depths of this passage. There was no hiding it. “I must’ve pissed those shadow hounds off,” I thought to myself. Before stepping into the pitch-black pathway, I enveloped my body with cosmic energy. Even though they were weak individually, they were dangerous in a group. I couldn’t afford to get caught off guard again. My pace was slow as I walked down the pathway. I had to take this approach—I wasn’t skilled enough in cosmic energy control to maintain a protective layer while also boosting my speed. With every step, the growls became deeper, making my body tense up. It was only a matter of time before they finally lashed out. I tried to read the cosmic energy fluctuations as I continued my descent, but like before, everything felt erratic, bombarding my senses with too much information. “Why are they just stalking me?” I thought as I heard the increased noise of the pack. I started replaying past events in my head and noticed a pattern. The hounds only attacked once I realized I had made the wrong choice and started to backtrack. “So does this labyrinth have a set condition for them?” I murmured to myself. It wasn’t long before I reached the end of the path, and just like last time, there was no rune. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I sighed in disappointment. “Let’s hurry up and get this over with.” I turned back toward the entrance. I could feel the bloodlust of the hounds intensifying with every step. It was clear—they wanted me dead. I had escaped them one too many times, and now, they were pissed. But this time, I wasn’t going to be caught off guard. I understood their game, and I knew their weakness. When the hounds jumped from the walls, I didn’t falter. I stood my ground and let them attack. Two of the hounds bit at my ankles, trying to immobilize me like before. Their bite wasn’t strong enough to pierce my layer of cosmic energy. “Just like I thought—you guys are nothing,” I said to the shadow behemoths. “It only took a little trial and error. Now get the hell off me!” I yelled, releasing a pulse of cosmic energy. The impulse sent the hounds flying, crashing into a few others lurking nearby. I let out a chuckle because all I could hear in my head was my dad’s voice telling me, I told you so. I was always known to be a little too impatient and reckless—often getting in my own way because I wanted things quickly and without delay. My father, on the other hand, was always the slow and methodical one. “Look at me… I guess it took getting trapped in a shadow labyrinth to finally understand his reasoning.” Walking slowly down the path, I periodically released small impulses to ensure I wouldn’t be attacked. Each time I repelled them, their pursuit became increasingly frantic. I felt like I was playing keep-away with a toddler. Now that I had a full grasp of the situation, my attention shifted to more pressing matters. One glaring thought kept reappearing in my mind: why weren’t there any shadow hounds in the pathways that had runes at the end of them? If the hounds were meant to be some type of guardians or protectors of the next exit, shouldn’t they be in the pathways that actually led somewhere other than the entrance? This really bothered me. It made me question the real purpose of this labyrinth. “Is there something I’m missing in these dead ends? No… there couldn’t be. I just picked the wrong path, that’s all,” I told myself as I finally reached the entrance. But then I remembered