CHAPTER 39: CRIMSON GRAVEYARD

**[Quest Updated]**

**[New Quest Generated: SURVIVE]**

Alex’s consciousness returned slowly, like surfacing from deep, dark water. The first thing that hit him wasn’t sight or sound—it was the smell. The overwhelming stench of decay and stagnant blood filled his nostrils, so thick and putrid it made his stomach lurch violently.

He forced his eyes open and immediately wished he hadn’t.

A sea of death stretched before him as far as his eye could seep. Under a crimson sky that seemed to bleed its own light, the landscape was nothing but corpses. Beast corpses, piled upon each other in grotesque mountains of rotting flesh and shattered bone. The ground beneath his feet squelched with every step, a nauseating mixture of mud and coagulated blood that had seeped so deeply into the earth it had turned the very soil into a crimson marsh.

Alex tried to take a step forward and immediately regretted it. His foot sank ankle-deep into a pool of stagnant blood, the cold liquid seeping through his academy boots with a disgusting squelch.

The sensation triggered something primal in his mind. Suddenly he was back on that surgical table, feeling his own blood trickling down his ribs, pooling beneath his shoulder blades. The wet, organic sounds of the retractors. The clinical voices discussing his body parts like inventory.

Alex doubled over and vomited violently, his stomach heaving until there was nothing left but bile. His hands shook uncontrollably as flashes of memory—Haley’s cold eyes, the surgeon’s bloody gloves, the sound of his own screaming—crashed over him like waves.

*Blood. So much blood. Just like...*

He stumbled backward, nearly falling as his legs threatened to give out. This wasn’t just disgust at the carnage—this was his body remembering trauma, his mind unable to separate past horror from present reality. The stench of decay mixed with phantom sensations of surgical instruments, making him gag again.

"Get it together," he whispered harshly to himself, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand. "You’re alive now. That’s... that’s over."

But his heart was racing, his breathing shallow and rapid. The sight of torn flesh and spilled blood was too familiar, too close to what had been done to him. He forced himself to look up at the crimson sky instead of the carnage, fighting to regain control.

*The others.* The thought hit him suddenly, cutting through his disgust. Where were they?

The rift should have transported everyone to the same location—that was basic dimensional theory, wasn’t it? When a spatial tear pulls objects through, they typically emerge in the same general area on the other side. But looking around this hellish wasteland, Alex saw no sign of his fellow students, no trace of the professors who had been consumed alongside him.

Were they scattered across this nightmare landscape? Were they even alive?

A chill that had nothing to do with the blood around his feet ran down Alex’s spine. If the rift had somehow separated them, if everyone had been deposited in different locations across this beast graveyard... how would any of them survive? Most of the students were barely awakened, still learning to control their abilities. In a place like this, alone and unprepared...

Alex forced himself to stop. Panic wouldn’t help anyone, least of all himself. He needed to focus on his immediate situation, gather information, and figure out what had happened here.

He paused and exhaled deeply, trying to push down the rising nausea as he surveyed the carnage more methodically. The crimson sky above cast everything in an ominous red glow, making it impossible to tell if it was day or night. The horizon stretched endlessly in all directions, an unbroken vista of death that merged the blood-soaked earth with the bleeding heavens.

The sheer scale of destruction was staggering. These weren’t just random beast deaths—this looked like the aftermath of a massive war. Creatures of all sizes lay twisted and broken among each other. Some were barely recognizable as anything that had once lived, reduced to scattered chunks of meat and splintered bone. Others retained enough of their form to be truly disturbing—massive claws still extended in their final attacks, jaws frozen open in eternal roars of rage and pain.

Blood pooled everywhere, creating small lakes of crimson that reflected the red sky above. Severed limbs jutted from the carnage at impossible angles, and the ground was littered with organs that had burst from torn bodies, now rotting in the open air. The stench was overwhelming—not just death, but decay that had been festering for who knew how long.

As Alex carefully picked his way through the macabre landscape, fighting down waves of nausea and flashbacks with each step, something caught his eye. A faint glimmer among the remains of what looked like a massive, reptilian creature.

He focused on the carcass, and his Adept Eyes skill activated automatically:

**[Crimson Scale Drake]**

**[Rank: C-Class Beast**

**[Notable Features: Fire-resistant scales, venomous claws]**

**[Core Present: Yes]**

Alex blinked in surprise. His Adept Eyes were working on beast corpses too, not just living beings and objects. The information was oddly reassuring, giving structure to the chaos around him. He frowned, his mind seizing on this new data source.

*Focus on the task. Don’t think about the blood. Don’t think about the table.*

Alex tapped his academy badge lightly, feeling the familiar tug in his chest as he accessed the pocket dimension within. Thankfully, it was still functional despite the dimensional travel. He withdrew a small utility knife from the backpack-sized space. The blade gleamed clean and sharp, and for a moment he froze, staring at it. The memory of surgical instruments flashed through his mind, metal gleaming under harsh lights.

He knelt beside the creature’s carcass with deliberate, controlled movements. Most of its bones were completely shattered, reduced to fragments embedded in rotting flesh—wounds that reminded him too much of his own chest cavity being pried open. Alex gritted his teeth and forced himself to work methodically, cutting away tissue despite the way his hands wanted to shake.

Alex worked methodically, cutting away tissue and clearing debris despite the nauseating work. Whatever had killed these monsters had done so with devastating force. The damage patterns were unlike anything he’d studied at the Academy. This looked like the result of raw, overwhelming power unleashed without restraint.

After several minutes of careful excavation—each cut deliberate, each motion a small victory over the phantom pain in his chest—his efforts were rewarded. Two monster cores sat in the palm of his hand, still faintly glowing with residual energy despite their owners’ deaths.

*Two cores, just as I expected from a C-Class beast,* he thought, studying the glowing orbs. In his previous life, he’d never even known such things existed. Now they represented survival, strength, the difference between being prey and predator.

*Never again,* he thought fiercely, closing his fist around the cores. *Never again will I be helpless.*

He tapped his academy badge and carefully placed the cores into the pocket dimension. The small space was getting more cramped now—he’d need to be selective about what else he collected.

As he stood and brushed the worst of the gore from his hands, Alex began systematically scanning the battlefield with his Adept Eyes. Information flooded his vision as he focused on different carcasses:

**[Shadowmaw Wolf]**

**[Rank: B-Class Beast]**

**[Core Present: Yes]**

**[Iron-Hide Boar]**

**[Rank: D-Class Beast]**

**[Core Present: Yes]**

**[Thornback Viper]**

**[Rank: C-Class Beast]**

**[Core Present: No ]**

**[Granite Bear]**

**[Rank: B-Class Beast]**

**[Core Present: Yes]**

Alex’s eyes widened as the information flooded his vision with each corpse he examined. His Adept Eyes were like having an encyclopedia of beast, giving him crucial data about threat levels and, most importantly, which carcasses still held unclaimed cores.

A realization struck him as more identification data appeared with each sweep of his gaze. His eyes swept across the endless battlefield with new understanding and growing excitement.

This was definitely the site of a massive beast war. The evidence was everywhere once he looked for it—creatures that had clearly been fighting each other, not humans. Claw marks on scales, bite patterns that matched other monsters’ teeth, defensive wounds where beasts had tried to protect themselves from their own kind.

But if that was the case...

Alex’s lips curved into the first genuine smile he’d felt since arriving in this hellish place. In a battle this chaotic, this massive, there was no way every monster would have had time to harvest cores from their fallen enemies. The fighting had been too intense, too desperate. And afterward, any survivors would have been focused on escape or tending their own wounds, not scavenging.

That meant there could be hundreds, maybe thousands of unclaimed monster cores scattered throughout this graveyard.

But as his gaze swept across the battlefield one more time, a troubling thought began to take shape. He’d identified dozens of different species now—B-Class Shadowmaw Wolves, C-Class Crimson Scale Drakes, D-Class Iron-Hide Boars, even what looked like an A-Class Thunder Wyvern in the distance.

All of them were dead. All of them had been slaughtered.

But by what?

Alex’s smile faded as the implications sank in. If these were the losers of some massive battle, then somewhere in this wasteland were the winners. Whatever creature or creatures had emerged victorious from this carnage would be exponentially more powerful than anything his Adept Eyes had identified so far.

And if they were still alive...

A chill ran down Alex’s spine that had nothing to do with the blood around his feet. In his excitement over the cores, he’d forgotten the most important question of all.

What kind of beast could cause this level of devastation?