Single Mother of a Werewolf Baby novel Chapter 294

Chapter 294: Oxygen Deprivation

It didn’t take long for Eleanor to descend into the valley, cutting down the Ogres and Ironhide Ogres that were scrambling up the slope to reach her along the way. Behind them loomed the Stone Golems and towering Stonehorn Behemoths, moving ponderously in their heavy ranks. It took her some time to finish them all, but when she finally glanced at the timer... eight minutes. She let out a quiet sigh of relief.

She pressed forward along the length of the valley, intent on reaching the next door. Yet after only a few moments, she frowned. There was no sign of it.

It might be at the end of this valley, she thought. But there’s little time left. I need to move faster.

She broke into a sprint, heading towards the far end where the volcanic mountain rose sharply into the crimson sky. With every step, the heat intensified. The air grew thick with the corroded stench of molten metal and lava. Black sand crunched beneath her boots, and jagged rocks jutted from the uneven ground.

A faint haze began to cloud the air, but still there was no sign of the door. Then, without warning, a cluster of Bloodstone Gargants lunged at her from the side. Startled by the sudden ambush... her focus still fixed on finding the exit. She reacted instantly, blades flashing as she tore through them.

Before she could recover, dozens of Magma Fiends burst from a nearby lava pool, shrieking as they hurled themselves at her.

Realising the battle might drag on, Eleanor reactivated Overdrive. Her movements blurred; her strikes crackled with speed and fury. One by one, the monsters fell, disintegrating in flashes of molten ash.

When the last creature collapsed, a door materialised in the centre of the valley, shimmering faintly in the rising heat. She glanced at the timer... over nine minutes. Without hesitation, Eleanor dashed towards it and stepped through.

She immediately regretted her haste as her body was swallowed by a dizzying vacuum. The moment she entered, a suffocating emptiness pressed against her lungs. She tried to draw breath, but the air offered no relief... only a hollow burn spreading through her chest. Glancing back, she found the door she had just passed through was gone, vanished without a trace.

A sharp ringing filled her ears. Her heart was usually stronger than most thanks to her passive Storm Heart ability, was now utterly useless. This level permitted no abilities of any kind. Her pulse grew erratic, hammering as it fought to push what little oxygen remained through her veins. Her limbs grew heavy, her muscles sluggish, as though her own body were turning to stone.

She remembered reading about this place. This level is called the Level of Oxygen Deprivation. It was designed to enhance lung capacity, enforce breath control, and force the body to adapt to minimal oxygen. The regenerative powers of supernatural beings were pushed to their limits here, compelled to mend the constant microdamage from hypoxia... an ordeal meant to forge endurance and vitality through suffering.

The room itself was deceptively simple. A vast, endless expanse of white stretched out before her, featureless and cold. At the far end shimmered an exit door, its soft, inviting glow mocking her from a distance. There were no obstacles, no puzzles, no enemies... only the suffocating vacuum, the gnawing weakness, and the rebellion of her own lungs.

Eleanor forced herself to exhale completely, a long, controlled release that emptied her chest of useless air. The next inhale was slow and deliberate, drawing in what thin oxygen she could find. It wasn’t enough, but she accepted the failure, forcing her body to adjust. Every panicked signal, every desperate plea from her instincts, was a distraction she had to conquer.

She couldn’t fight the atmosphere, so she had to master her body’s response to it. Her exhale came long and slow... a deliberate, controlled leak while resisting the primal urge to gasp. The next inhale was measured, deep, and steady. She held the thin, worthless air for a count of three, trying to wring every last molecule of life from it.

She began to move forward, her pace solemn and heavy, like a funeral march. Each step was an act of pure will... a battle between the commands of her mind and the stubborn refusal of her faltering muscles. The exit door shimmered in the distance, wavering as though caught between mirage and reality... at times impossibly far, at others cruelly close. The silence of the chamber was broken only by the ragged, uneven sound of her breathing and the relentless thunder of her pulse echoing in her skull.

She was like an engine running on fumes. Her supernatural regeneration worked ceaselessly, repairing the minute cellular damage inflicted by hypoxia... a silent, desperate war fought within her very blood. Her world shrank to the rhythm of breath and motion. Left. Right. Breathe. Left. Right. Breathe.

The exit door was there, looked like an unassuming outline of grey stone... but it behaved like a chameleon, flickering in and out of sight. At times it stood distinct and solid; at others, it vanished completely, swallowed by the chaotic riot of colour that painted the walls. It was only a few feet away, yet it might as well have been a mile through a hurricane.

Eleanor forced her hands down from her ears, accepting the auditory assault as an inevitable pain. Fixing her gaze on the spot where the door had last appeared, she refused to let the strobing lights claim her focus. The smells came and went... sickly sweet, then acrid and burning, but she denied them meaning, denied them power.

The treacherous floor was the true challenge. It shifted and tilted beneath her, never the same for more than a heartbeat. She stopped resisting it. Instead, she loosened her knees, letting her body move like a vessel adrift on violent seas, adjusting with each unpredictable lurch.

Left. Right. Her steps were no longer the steady marches of discipline, but tentative, instinctive placements. The noise pounded against her skull... a wall of agony, each sound a spike driving deeper into her temples. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

She narrowed her existence to a single point: the door. That faint, flickering shape became her anchor amid the chaos. She didn’t attempt to comprehend the chamber or fight against its madness. She simply accepted it as the current state of her world... and moved through it, one trembling, resolute step at a time.

Her progress was a slow, wavering dance against the bedlam. This place wasn’t testing her strength; it was testing her sanity. And with every inch she gained toward the shimmering door, she had proved that her will could carve silence out of the storm.

Finally, when she stood before the door to the next level, the chaos fell away. Silence descended so completely it felt as though the world itself had stopped... or perhaps she had slipped beyond its reach entirely.

Eleanor drew a long, steady breath, the first that didn’t burn or tremble, and stepped forward. Her fingers brushed the cool surface of the stone door. With a quiet exhale, she pushed it open and crossed the threshold into the seventy-eighth level.