Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users
Chapter 187: The Calm Before The Storm

Chapter 187: The Calm Before The Storm

And as he did, the sun started to set as the nighttime started to roll in faster than anyone expected.

Ethan didn’t notice it all at once. It wasn’t a sudden drop in light, but a quiet, creeping dimness that thickened around the trees, like a slow breath being held.

The mist didn’t fade—it deepened, folding into itself, wrapping low along the roots and clinging to trunks that had once seemed normal.

He stayed crouched on the rise, watching it move. At first, it looked like fog just rolling through the forest the way it always had.

But then he realized it wasn’t moving with the wind. It wasn’t even drifting. It was crawling sideways, inch by inch, as if it had gained weight.

The birds were gone.

The bugs were gone.

Even the trees had gone still in a way that didn’t feel natural—no swaying branches. No rustling. Just silence thick enough to press against the skin.

Ethan rose slowly, one hand resting near his blade as his eyes scanned the shapes between trees.

His instincts weren’t screaming. But they were alert. The kind of alert that came when a place felt wrong without doing anything obvious.

Then, faintly in the distance, a noise broke through.

Not a beast. Not a voice.

A sound that didn’t belong—like stone cracking under pressure, but stretched out longer than it should’ve been. It came from far away, but it echoed in the ground beneath his feet.

He turned toward it, trying to mark the direction, but the forest had changed too much. There were no clear lines anymore. No sense of what was behind or ahead.

Still, he hadn’t moved yet.

He waited.

Letting the moment pass.

Letting the forest go back to how it was before his presence broke in.

Meanwhile, in the far outer zone, the altar site flickered beneath a haze of distorted air.

There was no fire. No smoke.

Just pressure.

The altar itself—black stone worn smooth over centuries—had begun to pulse with a faint red light, not from heat but from something older. Something deeper.

The high priest stood at the center, arms raised above his head, his staff embedded into the center of the altar’s slab.

The staff wasn’t carved like a weapon or decorated like a symbol. It looked like a root torn from the ground, twisted with age and etched with symbols that writhed faintly under the skin.

Around him, the cultists chanted.

They didn’t speak anymore, just rhythm.

There was a pulse, a beat like a heart trying to push itself through stone.

The wind didn’t move here. The trees around the site didn’t shift. The light didn’t flicker, even though the shadows stretched longer with each passing minute.

Animals in the area had either fled long ago or gone mad.

A small deer near the edge of the site had collapsed mid-run. Its eyes were glassy, its body stiff.

Another creature, a fox with patchy fur, circled endlessly until it bit through its own leg and fell, twitching.

Still, the chanting didn’t stop.

It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t loud.

Just steady.

Back in the mid zone, Sera stood on a slope above a broken trail, her spear resting against one shoulder.

She hadn’t seen any students in a while, and that wasn’t a good thing. Normally, there’d be at least one lost group yelling for help, one flare in the sky, one wounded team trying to drag someone out.

Tonight, there was nothing.

Only silence and marks in the dirt that looked too old to be from this morning and too fresh to be ignored.

She tapped her wristband.

Still working. Still online. Still no signals from nearby groups.

She exhaled softly through her nose, then adjusted her grip on the spear and started moving again.

Mei had stopped walking. Not because she was tired, but because the forest had finally done something even she couldn’t ignore.

A nearby tree had split at the base. Not from lightning. Not from a beast.

It looked like the roots had grown outward too fast, cracking the bark and leaving the tree slumped forward, as if it had tried to crawl away before falling asleep.

She looked at the pattern again. Then she turned and changed course without hesitation.

Evelyn reached the edge of the circle she’d seen from the trees. The twelve birds were gone now, but the air still spun slightly above the clearing, like something unseen was turning slowly in the sky.

The grass here was laid flat in circular streaks. Not crushed by footsteps, but pressed down evenly, like something had hovered there for a long time.

She stepped into the circle.

The pressure hit her immediately.

It didn’t knock her back. Didn’t hurt.

But it pressed against her chest like a hand. Just one firm push—not trying to break her, but to remind her it was there.

She didn’t speak.

She backed out slowly, memorizing the spot before fading into the trees again.

Everly crossed paths with a student, not dead, but close. His shirt was ripped, and blood ran from a cut on his shoulder down to his belt, soaking through.

She crouched and pulled a band from her kit.

"Sit still," she said, pressing the cloth against the wound and wrapping it tightly. "You run, you’ll tear it open again."

He nodded, eyes shaky.

"Are you alone or did you form a team with anyone after the exam started?"

He took a deep breath and then shook his head. "No, I did not join a team as the points you would earn by doing that would go down to 1/3 of what you would earn if you were a solo."

Hearing this, she sighed a little as she asked again, "Then why didn’t you activate the SOS signal so that the examiners could help you?"

I was going to do that before you came here."

This surprised her as she didn’t know why he waited for this long, but she didn’t ask for more.

She helped him stand and pointed to a narrow path off the main trail.

"Go that way. Stay low. Don’t stop unless you see a flare as there are a few people who are waiting to recover, and if you do not feel like you can hold on, then just press the sos so that the examiners can come get you."

He moved. Slow. But steady.

She watched until he was gone.

Then picked up speed.