SOLAK Chapter 16

The world of darkness.

Day five.

At the break of dawn.

Mist Zone No. 4.

At the edge of the forest, the tall trees gradually shrank into stunted growth.

Here, scattered stones dotted the landscape. Between the cracks in the rocks grew withered weeds, and coarse gravel spread everywhere.

Even in the damp, chilly light of dawn, the place looked desolate.

Perhaps because the land yielded so little, almost no survivors came here to scavenge.

He Huan once again pulled out the compass, studying the quivering needle carefully, then adjusted her direction.

As she walked, the needle—originally trembling faintly—suddenly began to twitch madly, as if struck by some unseen force.

She froze, scanning her surroundings.

A barren wasteland stretched before her. No trees, no boulders large enough to hide behind. No rippling air currents, no suspicious shadows.

In a place like this, how could a treasure—let alone a secret realm’s entrance—possibly hide?

Yet the compass needle thrashed wildly, insisting something was here.

[Secret Realm Compass: Fine Quality (Blue). Can accurately locate unexplored secret realm entrances below Level 10. May be activated once every 24 hours. Function persists until an entrance is found. Remaining uses: 3.]

Yes, this was the very compass she’d taken from He Liang’s pocket.

Taishan Mutual Aid could spin whatever lies they wanted—claiming they were hunting her down as a “red-name menace” to protect the people of District E7.

But the truth? They only posted the bounty after they realized this item was missing.

In this world, a flood of “love” might be false, but hatred—no matter how well hidden—was always real.

They might never utter the word “hatred,” but their every action reeked of fear and loathing toward her.

And so He Huan knew: this compass was genuine.

More importantly, it still had three uses left.

When she first looted it yesterday, it had four. By dawn, when she left her shelter, one had already been consumed.

Normally, tools came with either three or five charges, or clean numbers like ten.

Never four.

So clearly, Taishan Mutual Aid had already used it once.

Couple that with the intel she had—that there was a secret realm in Fog Zone No. 3—and the deduction was simple.

This compass was their hidden tool for locating secret realms.

As for why it ended up with He Liang, she didn’t know. What mattered was that losing it had left the association rattled.

Time ticked by, but still He Huan saw no clue of an entrance. Meanwhile, the compass needle jerked so violently it looked ready to snap.

10:00.

A faint gleam streaked across the sky—the morning star.

And just then, He Huan noticed a faint line shimmering directly ahead. Its glow was so weak that, had she not honed her senses as a mercenary, she’d never have spotted it.

Adjusting her angle, she finally saw it clearly: a dull silver crack stretched before her, its side-on view what had appeared as the faint line.

Without the compass, and without being this close, she would have walked right past.

So this was the secret realm entrance?

Without hesitation, He Huan stepped forward, lifted her hand, and touched the crack.

A tremendous force yanked her inside.

In the blink of an eye, the scenery changed.

Outside the realm it had still been dawn-dark; within, the sun was just rising.

Time ran differently inside, but the environment mirrored the exterior.

The barren, stony wilderness of Mist Zone No. 4 stretched here as well.

She turned and glanced back. Unlike the nearly invisible crack she’d entered through, the exit was glaringly obvious.

It was… a door.

Yes—a plain, out-of-place door, and above it hung two gleaming golden characters: Exit.

Impossible to ignore.

Ahead lay more wasteland. Yet at the far edge of her vision shimmered a patch of green, vivid and tempting against the barrenness—tempting, and dangerous.

As she pulled her gaze back, system prompts began scrolling across her vision:

[At 11 meters directly ahead: three sand scorpions guard a Bronze Chest. Danger Rating: 3 Stars]

[Seven meters left, beneath the gravel: a hungry man-eating plant. Slaying it may drop medicine, weapons, or gear. Danger Rating: 3 Stars]

[Forty-five degrees right, under the rocks: a desiccated corpse with a lost satchel worth searching. Danger Rating: 4 Stars]

[Sixty degrees left: four clumps of dry grass. Slaying them may yield drinkable water. Danger Rating: 4 Stars]

…

Every prompt screamed “danger.” Almost all three stars or higher.

She rubbed her nose, hesitated, then picked the only one flagged with two stars. Carefully, she crept in that direction.

Question: Why would the world’s top mercenary choose a two-star challenge first?

Answer: Because she was cautious.

Her profession had always been high-risk, high-consumption. That she’d survived fifteen years—almost long enough to retire—was thanks to caution.

She had no idea what metric this system used for its danger ratings. Why gamble blind?

If she hadn’t seen the warnings, she might have fought whatever she stumbled across and prayed luck was on her side.

But with this cheat sheet? Playing it safe cost her nothing.

After all, staying alive was what mattered.

The two-star “threat” turned out to be… a tumbleweed.

It sensed her presence before she even reached it and came rolling with glee.

From a distance, it looked like a giant ball charging toward her. She had half a mind to dash forward, land a clean melee combo, and knock it flat.

But one look at that momentum—and she instead raised her crossbow, loosed a bolt.

The arrow whistled cleanly through the whirling mass, leaving only a neat little…

Miss.

He Huan: …

She turned and ran.

It was just a giant ball of hollow plant matter. Weapons barely scratched it.

But she wasn’t fleeing blindly. She carefully retraced her exact steps back along the safe path she’d taken in.

This wasteland was full of traps—every patch of gravel, every dry weed could hide monsters. One wrong step could mean adding another enemy to her chase.

And just this one tumbleweed was already troublesome enough.

Infuriated by her attack, thrilled by her retreat, the tumbleweed only rolled faster. Along the way, it swept up more dry grass and thorns, growing bigger and bigger.

Soon it had chased her all the way back to the exit door, hissing and howling with eerie excitement.

Then He Huan suddenly stopped.

She turned to face it, finally seeing clearly the dark shapes tangled within its body.

Human corpses.

Swallowed whole.

The tumbleweed surged closer, less than ten meters away now, its huge body splitting open to reveal shriveled blackened cadavers inside.

Another roll, and she too would be swallowed—joining those husks forever.

In that instant, He Huan’s hands, which had hung loose at her sides, suddenly snapped upward. Something flew from her grasp.

It traced a long arc through the dry air, landing squarely inside the creature’s gaping maw.

Boom!

The brittle weeds ignited at once. Fire raced across its dry frame, flames leaping hungrily from strand to strand.

As the saying goes: a single spark can start a prairie fire.

The massive, truck-sized tumbleweed was engulfed, blazing like a bonfire against the barren land.