I looked into the corner of my vision and checked the time, 14:28. It was about an hour earlier than I had originally thought I would escape, which was great, except for the fact that I was farther from my destination than I should’ve been, and I had already alerted the prison wards. It wouldn’t be too much longer before the hunt for me began.

My current location was not ideal, because I would have to travel kilometers just to reach the same starting point I would’ve if I had escaped from the East side of the prison.

It wasn’t all bad though. I didn’t have to travel through the prison complex where I could’ve been caught, and I could mislead my trackers and get them to focus their initial searches Northward rather than Eastward towards my destination.

With these thoughts in mind I set off Northward into the wild jungle terrain, leaving behind less and less traces of my presence as I put some distance between me and the prison walls. After traveling about a kilometer and leaving misleading traces behind me, I turned Eastward towards my destination and started moving.

My destination was actually something that I had felt pop up about 3 years ago. I was only able to feel the slight spatial disturbance of a dungeon entrance appearing because of the unique space in my room that allowed me to sense such minor spatial fluctuations, along with my (Space-Time Sense) Skill that I had gotten after merging my Space, and Time, Sense Skills. After I felt how close the entrance was, I immediately decided that that’s where I would head after I escaped.

I didn’t choose this particular dungeon entrance for any reason other than the fact that I knew where it was, I just needed any dungeon entrance. Once I reached the entrance I would be able to enter the Dungeon of Tribulation, where nobody would be able to find me or know where I was while I was inside.

Having led any trackers away from my planned location, I now did everything I could to leave as few tracks as possible. This did slow me down because I couldn’t move too fast. I would’ve had to move even slower, but I currently didn’t have to worry about magical tracking.

This was because one of the magic circles I drew on my substitute body made any magical detection below a certain Tier target the substitute instead of me. This allowed me to travel through this plant infested jungle fairly easily, because most dangerous plants used magical detection rather than physical senses to detect things. So I was able to focus more on hiding my tracks, rather than watching out for danger.

After an hour of circling about 2 kilometers around the prison walls, I would now have to move away from the relative safety around Lonevista prison, and head deeper into the dense wilderness where a variety of deadly plants and animals, but mostly plants, awaited me.

I could still barely make out the massive walls of the prison through the dense jungle to my right, and as I turned fully away from them I heard sirens start wailing from inside Lonevista prison.

The hunt had started, and I had finally been found out.

The prison wards would’ve detected something was up after I had teleported, but it had taken an hour and a half for anybody to know what was going on. This was because of the other magic circle I had put on my substitute’s body.

While the first magic circle allowed me to avoid most direct magical detection, the second magic circle made any new information recorded about me, within a certain range, into an Anti-Meme. So while the second magic circle was still active, any new information about me would become self-censoring. (An Anti-Meme is to Ideas what Antimatter is to Matter)

This Anti-Meme magic circle wasn’t all powerful though. The biggest downside to it was that it couldn’t bypass even the most basic of protections; which was why everyone was able to see me while inside the prison, because the information about me was being recorded into their mind which had at least basic protections. This was why I still had to be careful about being caught while I was escaping.

Another downside was that the magic circle consumed mana in proportion to how much it had to ‘censor’. So as time went on and more people were trying to figure things out, the magic circle had to spend more and more mana to keep everything working. Eventually the magic circle would run out of the fuel I gave it and shut off.

That was exactly what just happened, and as soon as the Anti-Meme magic wore off, everything it was changing was changed back. This meant that the detection wards that caught my teleportation were finally noticed, and the alarm was sounded.

I couldn’t do anything about it now though, so I turned my back to the prison and headed into the dense jungle. I needed to get as far into the jungle as possible before my first magic circle was deactivated. Now that I had at least an hour and a half lead from the start of my trail, I felt safe to up my pace and focus more on distance than stealth.

I went as fast as I could through the dense foliage consisting of many different colors and plants. There were bushes of dark green leaves, long purple stems with multicolored flowers on the end, white bark trees with black branches, huge trees with extremely tough exteriors, and many more; but within all of this vibrant display of plant life, there were almost no traces of animal life, no birds chirping, no animal calls, no animal trails or marks.

There was only the sound of wind through leaves and creaking trees. This was why the area was called Lonevista, because it was almost devoid of animal life.

So when I heard a sound coming from my right I was alert immediately. I turned towards the sound and saw a 2 meter tall black and white blur coming right at me. I instinctively used my Skill (Physical Augmentation) and threw myself to the side, but the blur still hit my left side.

I felt my left ankle twist painfully as it caught on something on the ground, and sharp claws cut into my left arm. I let out a grunt in pain, but I maintained my calm and used my many virtual minds and accelerated thought as I looked towards what had hit me to determine my next course of action.

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Taking in everything, I saw a black 2 meter tall 4 legged animal, with small and thin white pulsing patterns on its fur. It landed and turned towards me with grace only a cat would have.

I didn’t hesitate as I started to throw half of my mana into forming a mental link at the animal. The 2 meter tall cat tensed its muscles getting ready to attack again, its actions screaming of a confident hunter.

My mana flooded out of me in the general direction of the cat not taking any chances of it avoiding the mental link. Good thing I did too, because it became a blur once again trying to avoid the mana that had distorted the air, and almost making it too. After seeing this, I was certain that there was no way I could win in a physical confrontation with this beast.

Thankfully a connection was formed, and with all of my minds I sent the equivalent of a mental scream into its mind.

The cat fumbled as if hit by a heavy blow to the head. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to kill the cat with my mental link, so I started to prepare an earth spike attack spell. I was still inexperienced with earth magic and so it took me 30 seconds to convert my mana and finish casting the spell.

During the time I was preparing the spell, I was constantly bombarding the mental link and keeping the cat on the verge of passing out.

The cat seemed to know it couldn’t continue the fight and started to stumble and try to get away. But before it could get very far my spell was completed with the rest of my mana, and an earth spike came up from the ground and pierced the animal’s skull from below, killing it instantly.

Adrenaline was coursing through my veins, allowing me to ignore the pain I was in. I looked down at my left arm and saw my blood flowing out of where the cat had grazed me. It wasn’t too deep of a cut, and I could only imagine what I would’ve looked like if I hadn’t dodged.

I tore off the left sleeve of my prison uniform and used it to bandage my arm. With that taken care of I started to move in the direction of the cat, but when I went to move my left foot I winced in pain.

I could tell through the Cloud that nothing was broken, but my ankle was definitely sprained very badly and had already started to swell up. There was nothing I could do about my injuries at the moment with my mana bottomed out, so I just had to deal with it for now.

While favoring my injured foot, I made my way over to the cat and took a closer look at it. Its smooth fur was mostly black but had thin white lines that looked like lightning running through it. I had noticed during the fight that these white lines were pulsing with light, but now they lacked the light show they had previously.

After getting a closer look I was fairly certain that this was a juvenile Raijū. Normally a Raijū, even a baby one, would be powerful enough to take on 100 of the current me, but unfortunately for it, and fortunately for me, this Raijū was in Lonevista.

I couldn’t tell if I was lucky or unlucky to have come across what was probably the top predator within many kilometers of my location. On the one hand I was now injured which would slow me down greatly. On the other hand I would have never been able to kill this creature outside of Lonevista. While having these thoughts I used my (Basic Space Control) Skill to move the body of the Raijū into my Internal World.

I didn’t linger and continued on my way towards my destination. I no longer bothered to hide any sound of my movements or care about the traces I left as I walked. Any decent tracker would be able to know what direction I was headed if they followed me to this point. The mana left from my battle would be a dead giveaway in this silent jungle.

Lonevista was a dangerous place, yes, but it wasn’t because it was home to dangerous monsters or terrifying plants, though it did have some of those things, it was because the land of Lonevista was ‘cursed’. It wasn’t actually cursed, but the effect it had was called a curse. Everything within Lonevista would have its strength suppressed to Tier 9. This meant that everything was on an equal playing field Stats wise and could potentially kill you. This was an advantage for me though, because there was no way I would be able to escape from my pursuers if they weren’t suppressed.

I continued my trek through the jungle. Along the way I gathered some of the fruits and other edible things I came across and stored them. I didn’t know how long the Dungeon of Tribulation would take to complete, so I needed to stock up on food while I could. This did slow me down a little, but after an hour I had regenerated enough mana to mostly heal my ankle, it still hurt but I was able to speed up my pace considerably.

A few hours later I was beginning to near my destination and was at a much higher elevation than the prison. The sun was almost fully set now, leaving the area much darker than before.

Through the darkness I was able to see some lights coming in my direction, maybe an hour behind me. By this point I was starting to get tired after hours of intense travel and exertion. Even with my partial TechnicMorph body giving me increased endurance, and (Physical Recovery II), I was starting to reach my limits. I could feel that I was very close to my destination though, so I pushed through my exhaustion and forced myself to continue.

Before long I reached a sheer cliff that stopped my progress forward. Sensing the dungeon entrance, I could feel that it was somewhere at the bottom of the around 10-12 meter drop in front of me. The cliff stretched into the distance beyond what I could see in the darkness, and I didn’t have the time to find a way down the cliff before my pursuers caught up to me. I could already hear the sounds of people moving towards me in the distance in the otherwise quiet jungle.

Not having time for indecision, I reinforced my body with (Physical Augmentation) and jumped down to the hard ground below, and the ground raced to meet me.

My bent legs met the ground and caused a great shock to shoot through my legs. I tried to absorb as much of the impact as I could before my right shoulder met the ground as I rolled to disperse the impact.

I rolled a few times before coming to a stop face down. I didn’t feel anything at first, but after I tried to move, my legs and right shoulder started screaming in pain. It felt like they had been set on fire.

I wanted to use my mana and heal myself right away, but I stopped myself before I could. I had to use it for something else.

I looked towards where I felt the dungeon entrance was and saw a crack in the cliff barely big enough for a Human to get through. Using my left arm, the only limb not in pain, I dragged my body towards the crevice.

My skin started to get paler, and my breathing became more shallow and rapid as I moved. I used my Power to ignore the pain and made my way into the opening in the cliff.

Inside of the crevice there was a black rift in space. This was what I was looking for. Before I entered it though, I needed to get rid of my traces leading to this place. If the prison knew I had entered this dungeon then they would probably station people to guard it until I came out, which I didn’t want.

So, to prevent that, I used up the rest of my mana on a time spell I had created that would rewind any traces I had made over the last 10 minutes. The spell could do more than that, but with the amount of mana I had that was all I could manage.

With that finished I turned toward the dungeon entrance and reached out with my left hand to touch the portal. Immediately after I touched the portal a system prompt appeared in front of me.

[Detected that you are ready to undergo your first Tribulation]

[Enter the Dungeon of Tribulation instead of the current dungeon]

[YES] [NO]

I was relieved when I saw this message and without hesitation I said “Yes.”

After I said that, I felt space warp around me, and I disappeared from the jungle without a trace.