CHAPTER 29: ADAPTATION

By afternoon the Ashroad no longer seemed as dangerous. They had learned a new trick, experience had thought them patterns and trends.

They had adapted.

Hours of walking through the corrupted highway taught them patterns, and they learned to avoid places that they shouldn’t be. Suddenly, the Ashroad felt kind.

Maybe kind was the wrong word. The heat still breathed, the horizon still wavered like a fever, but the corridor of mirage-pillars thinned and the glass flattened into long, black lanes that reflected a bruised sky.

They had bled enough here that the road now seemed content to watch like a pitiless audience, amused to see what they’d do next.

They did what survivors do best, they got good at not dying.

Holt’s palm skimmed the air inches above the glass as he walked point with Reid, reading dirt flows, the drag of heat, and even the hairline seams that hinted at false turns.

Twice he halted them with a sharp, quiet "loop," and Ethan flicked Vector Nails to stitch a straight seam through distortion.

The combination of Holt’s special ability and Ethan’s improvisation was a match made in heaven. It helped them progress through the highway that should have never been passed during the apocalypse.

When mirage-pillars leaned into a maze, Mira braided a ribbon of wind behind them to guard them, a tail that said this way is ours, so their line didn’t snag on the Ashroad’s whims.

Threat panels blinked like distant lightning and were ignored.

~----~

[WARNING: Apex Predator Ahead!]

...

Moments later...

DING!

...

[Apex Predators Avoided: Stilt Wasp Cluster]

[Rank: E]

...

[Apex Predator Avoided: Heat- Mirage Leviathan]

[Rank: D]

...

[Apex Predators Avoided: Shard Serpents]

[Rank: E]

~----~

That was the very first D Rank monster that they encountered.

They didn’t dare follow the same trial, as with Reid’s calm leadership, Holt reacted fast and with Ethan’s improvisation help, mapped a quick detour route that led them around the D Rank monster’s territory.

They were so close to death that it felt like threading a needle.

"Leviathan?" Travis whispered, his voice cracking with dark humor and fear. "W-we’re just... we’re just walking past a letter of the alphabet you only say in nightmares?"

"We’re not walking past," Holt murmured. "We’re walking where it isn’t, there’s a subtle difference between both".

Travis nodded without saying a single word more.

It was not all smooth sailing for them though. They still fought, but only when the road insisted. At some point, a pair of F Rank Glass Jackals tried flanking them only to pay the price.

Kara cut one mid-leap, bone-dense legs absorbing the impact as she spun the spear through a clean arc.

Just beside her as the vanguard, Jonas shoulder-checked the other so hard it rang like a struck bowl, regeneration knitting a shallow rake across his ribs before it finished bleeding.

Ethan didn’t have to draw often; he had competent companions.

When he did though, it was the small stuff like a Heat-Sink Spike to collapse a pocket of shimmer, or a Laminar Veil to turn a drifting glitter cloud into harmless rain. The Exo-Spike Gauntlet stayed quiet and unused, just a weight in his bones.

But as the sun tilted, the mood tilted with it.

They were still taut on the rope line, still scanning, still counting breaths. But a thing like good luck had crept between them. It was hesitant at first, then bolder with every avoided ping.

Travis started humming under his breath. Mira, pale for days, smiled once without realizing. Holt muttered fewer curses, clearly in a great mood. Kara let her shoulders drop half an inch.

And Jonas? Jonas wouldn’t shut up.

"I mean did you see it?" he said for the third time, hands painting lazy arcs as they walked. "Crack, and Warden’s chest caves like bad ice, crazy man!"

"Then Reid shoots through your knuckles like he’s threading a needle he invented. And just like that, the bug was dead. It was beautiful and disgusting in an unsettling way, but I loved it."

Ethan huffed. "You were busy turning jackals into gravel."

"Meh," Jonas said, waving his hands dismissively. "I’m a hammer. You?" He jabbed a thumb toward Ethan’s sternum. "You’re the toolbox God forgot to lock."

Travis snorted. "I’m just saying, if we can record whatever Ethan did and slap a label on it, something like ’Punch Grenade’, trust me guys, we’ll retire rich."

"Into what economy?" Holt asked without looking back.

"The one with fewer murder monsters," Travis said.

"Don’t jinx us," Kara warned.

Reid didn’t laugh, but the line of his mouth softened.

He walked a half-step ahead, rifle strap snug across his chest, and turned his head just enough that Ethan caught the look. It was a look of both approval and recognition of Ethan’s ability.

For the space of twenty minutes, the Ashroad almost felt like a road.

They passed a melted median where scrub had started to reclaim the edge; comprising half-burned grasses, and a stubborn gray-green carpet clinging to cracks that had cooled enough to drink dew.

Shadows pooled under the stunted tufts, and the heat’s hiss faded to something like breath with a cold.

"Good place for a breather," Reid said. "Let’s rest and drink some water. Two minutes".

They knelt in the patched shade of a collapsed sign post, its letters blistered into nonsense. Jonas dumped a cap of water over his hair and sighed like a man being baptized.

Kara dabbed a cut on her wrist with alcohol and didn’t flinch, while Mira spun a coin-sized cyclone to keep soot and dirt off their mouths while they drank.

While the others relaxed, Holt sketched a quick route with a charcoal stub on the glass comprising angles and edges, a tracker’s shorthand.

Travis sank to a sit and leaned back, exhaling, eyes closed. "Anybody else notice the part where we didn’t die for an hour straight?"

"Shh," Kara and Holt said at the same time.

Ethan let himself feel it for one breath, the serenity of safety. The Wheel hummed gently, not greedy, not urgent, but like a coin flipping itself for the fun of it and landing on its edge every time.

It was the right moment for the Ashroad to smile.

A breeze rolled off the scrub. It was sweet, unnaturally so, like fruit rotting into sugar and that was when Mira’s eyes snapped open.

"That’s wrong," she said, rising. "The wind doesn’t smell like..."

She didn’t finish when Holt’s head suddenly jerked. He stared at the scrub for a moment and went very still. "Up!"

No one had time to ask why as the ground three paces in front of Reid caved in like an abyss. And then, what looked like roadside scrub split down the middle of the road into a blooming mouth.

From inside the mouth, six thick petals of black-green meat slick with dew poked out, each ribbed with glassy spines.

At their center, a throat unrolled, white and wet and lined with backward hooks. The sweet air boiled out of it in a visible shimmer, a lure the color of heat.

The system didn’t hesitate.

DING!

~----~

[WARNING! You have stumbled upon the home of an Ambush Predator Plant: Glass Maw Flytrap!]

[Rank: E]

~----~

"..."

For a moment, there was just shocked silence, and then...

"Move!" Reid barked, already bringing his rifle up.