My body was pinned for a rapid second, as if gravity itself had betrayed the natural order. The strangeness of this place left me disoriented for a moment, the feeling like a headache that pulsed from my forehead to the back of my head.
The sensation was absolutely terrible, something I wouldn’t want to experience again.
I slowly rose to my feet, feeling strength return to my muscles, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dim backdrop of this dungeon.
The corridor stretched endlessly ahead, carved from dark stone that swallowed light instead of reflecting it. Along both sides, ancient walls were engraved with symbols and runes—countless lines of writing layered over one another, as though generations had tried to leave their mark…or warn those who came after.
The runes pulsed seamlessly, like someone had breathed life into them, trying to convey something, but the language was alien to me. The runes twisted, conjoined at certain points, gaps at some, cracks and wounds on some, but they appeared so bizarre.
My gaze slowly went to the dim blue flames that burned atop short stone pillars lining the path just below the runes encased on the walls. They didn’t flicker like fire should. They hovered—unnatural, steady, casting an eerie glow that revealed cracks in the stone floor and grooves worn smooth by time or passage.
Each sound echoed too clearly, the sound traveling farther than it should, as if the corridor wanted me to hear how small I was in here, alone.
The ceiling loomed high above, its stone slabs stitched together like a sealed tomb. Thin roots—or something resembling veins—hung down in places, twitching ever so slightly.
I took a breath, taking a good look around, feeling nothing so far in this long corridor. The dark stretched like a haunting shadow at the far end of the corridor, leaving me with an eerie inkling that something horrible could happen anytime.
I withdrew my sword from my dimensional artifact and hung the black curved blade below my hip, the sole exception to its dark surface was the white guard my master had left me behind.
Somehow, it made the anxiety and pressure not unbearable. A part of master following me in battle after so long.
I couldn’t help but feel a dry pull of my lips, the smile didn’t reach my ears, but it was bittersweet.
A breath settled in my lungs, slow and measured.
I focused ahead, my senses stretched as far as they could but I couldn’t feel anything wrong so far.
Nothing moved ahead.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No sign of the others.
Just that suffocating stillness.
“…Tch.”
My voice sounded smaller than it should have, swallowed almost instantly by the corridor. Even the echo returned too quickly, like the walls didn’t want my presence lingering.
I rolled my shoulders once, forcing the stiffness out, then exhaled.
I was alone here. The jump and that distortion must have separated me from the rest. It felt weird, but things like this happen more than they should.
In situations like these, panicking would only dull the senses and make you easier prey. If the others had been thrown somewhere nearby, wandering blindly would only make things worse.
A thought came my way as I tried to first inspect the area before making any movements.
This was, in fact, an
My eyelids lowered halfway.
‘Mind’s Eye.’ I murmured in my mind.
The skill settled into place like a second pulse beneath my skin.
The world shifted.
Not visibly—no dramatic change—but the flow of everything slowed, stretching just enough for me to slip between moments. The faint flicker of the blue flames elongated. The subtle sway of the hanging root-like veins became deliberate, almost sluggish. Even the sound of my own breathing dragged softly against my ears.
Then the second phase of the skill followed.
My perception deepened and I felt my surroundings more vividly, like the world had gained gravity and my thoughts were finally heavy enough to remain within it.
The colours twisted around me and took a more animated form. Energy.
Everything carried it—living beings, constructs, even residual traces left behind by movement. Normally it appeared as faint signatures, densities layered over reality like heat distortions.
But here—
My brow furrowed, my eyes squinted as I tried to focus.
“…What?”
The corridor wasn’t empty.
Or It didn’t appear to be, it just felt iniquitous.
It was saturated.
Not with a single presence I could isolate, but with something stretched thin—layered over everything like a second skin. The stone walls carried a faint pressure, indistinct and constant. The blue flames along the sconces burned with a signature that felt…unfinished. Even the air itself pressed against my senses with a weight that didn’t belong to mana alone.
My eyes followed a pulse that resonated from all around me and the runes that looked unperturbed so far seem to be doing something.
The glyphs seem to meddle with their surroundings somehow, they were alive, they had a faint but strong essence that was hard to grasp even with Mind’s Eye active.
It was like trying to grasp smoke with numb fingers.
I slowed my breathing and narrowed my perception.
Normally, mana moved. It pulsed, gathered, dispersed. Even dormant formations had rhythm—something that could be followed, unravelled, understood. Patterns existed. Structure existed.
This place didn’t have any.
Everything remained…still.
Not calm.
Not dormant.
Just still.
As if motion itself had been pressed flat against an unseen surface.
A faint discomfort crawled up the back of my neck.
When we entered the dungeon—
My jaw tightened.
That distortion.
Space hadn’t simply shifted. It had compressed. For a single instant, it felt like my body had been dragged through something far too narrow to exist, as if the world itself had folded inward and forced me through its seam.
And those colours…
My hand went to rest at my sword, my mind trying to focus on those fleeting images that rushed through my mind like a flash seen through a kaleidoscope and then a brief pulse of memory surfaced.
Red. Yellow. Green. Blue.
Then...Crimson.
But it wasn’t odd, because, these motes felt familiar somehow because mana could be their shape. And that corrupted presence from those crimson particles.
The thing I couldn’t put my head around were the iridescent fragments sliding over one another too quickly to follow.
Not mana.
I clicked my tongue softly.
“...What the hell was that?”
Some kind of spatial transfer? A high-tier formation? I’d experienced teleportation before—clean displacements, structured arrays. This had been different. There’d been too much pressure. Too much…friction. Like passing between two surfaces that weren’t meant to touch.
It couldn’t even compare to when I walked through a portal or when I used my skill ‘Leap’, to teleport myself from one place to another.
My gaze drifted faintly through the corridor ahead.
Nothing visible.
Still—when I focused, truly focused, I could catch traces.
Mana signatures only appeared where they gathered in abundance. The blue flames ahead burned brightly enough that their presence bled into my perception. Around each flame hovered a thin red veil—a faint aura engulfing the blue, like heat distortion given colour. Not the mana itself, but its signature. Its excess.
Every living thing carried it. Every object steeped in mana bled excess.
Everything else remained muted. Distant. Half-felt.
It was like standing before a canvas painted on both sides.
On one side—mana.
Familiar. Tangible. Something I could feel, even if my sight only caught it when it overflowed.
On the other—
Something else pressed against the surface. Or that’s how I felt right now in this place. Perhaps, it was playing tricks on me, or maybe I was just working too paranoid since the moment I’d entered this place.
I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t touch it. But there seem to be a barrier between the two things. Too thin. Like a wall made of glass I hadn’t yet learned how to look through.
“…There’s something wrong with this place.” The words came out low, more observation than complaint.
My fingers flexed at my side. Letting a slow breath release from me as I decided to take a step forward.
The corridor stretched forward, silent. The shadows stretched farther as I moved, there didn’t seem to be an end to this corridor.
Seconds turned into minutes as I walked a slow stride, keeping my guard up, my hand resting on the pommel of my sword.
Each step echoed with uncomfortable clarity. Even with Mind’s Eye active, I couldn’t pick up any clear signatures of the others. No residual trails. No lingering mana disturbances from recent movement.
It was as if I had been placed here alone from the start.
That…wasn’t a comforting thought.
My gaze swept across the engraved walls as I moved. Symbols layered over symbols, carved deep enough to survive centuries. Some were worn down, others sharp and deliberate, as though added long after the first.
Warnings?
Records?
Instructions?
I couldn’t tell even if I wanted to.
A subtle unease settled deeper in my chest.
This dungeon wasn’t behaving like any I’d entered before. No immediate hostility. No guardians. No obvious path forward.
Just observation.
As if the place itself were waiting for something to happen.
“First regroup,” I muttered quietly to myself as I took a cautious step forward.
Speculation could come later. Being alone in an unknown corridor helped no one. If the others had been scattered, they’d likely be searching just as I was.
I adjusted my breathing and kept moving forward, Mind’s Eye still active, senses stretched thin across the oppressive stillness.
Yet even as I walked—a faint, unshakable thought lingered at the edge of my mind.
That distortion at the entrance…
Those impossible colours…
Those fleeting, living motes…
Whatever I’d witnessed—it wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
The longer I walked in here, the more of a bad feeling I got in here. After a while, a slight headache throbbed faintly behind my eyes as I tried to maintain Mind’s Eye longer, like my mind refused to hold the skill for longer. This pain was a consequence of the skill, it put a strain over my mind whenever I used it for a prolonged period.
I slowly reached inward and pulled back my mana from the skill. As soon as the mana settled in place, the skill fell back and deactivated.
By the time the headache was about to disappear, I found myself at the end of the dark corridor.
It widened suddenly into a dim with two diverging paths. I barely had time to register the change before a shadowy, clawed creature lunged from the darkness from the right path. Its form was indistinct, writhing in the shadows, but the weight in its grip pressed against me like iron chains. The claw wrapped around my leg, pulling me forward, dragging me into the inky void ahead.
“Shit!”
I drew my curved blade in a flash. I slashed blindly at the thing, trying to reclaim my movements, to take flight. But my strike glanced harmlessly off the mass. Its shadow shifted and writhed with unnatural speed, and the corridor around me seemed to swallow all light.
There was no time left for me to hesitate. My muscles coiled, every tendon and sinew tightening, mana surging through me until my arms burned with raw power. I steadied my grip on the hilt and drew a deep focus into the rhythm of Crescent Moon Style instantly.
My hands coiled around the hilt tightly and without a second wasted I released the built-up tension in my arms and swung the sword, releasing Horizon’s Edge.
The world slowed in my perception. Hands moved in perfect symmetry; the sword became an extension of everything I knew about speed, strength, and the compression of mana. I layered every ounce of energy I had into the blade, compressing it into a force far beyond what my body could normally achieve. The air around me began to hum, particles of wind converging like invisible tendrils, spiralling along the arc of the strike.
“Second Movement: Horizon’s Edge.”
The slash erupted, a horizontal sweep of force that distorted space itself. The creature reeled back, tendrils of shadow snapping defensively, smoke of darkness curling as if scalded. The shockwave lifted dust and debris, rattling the stone walls, sending shards of shadow screaming across the room. My arms ached, bones crying under the unnatural pressure of the movement, but the sword didn’t falter.
For a heartbeat, it seemed to work. The shadow recoiled, retreating from the slash with an almost sentient caution. But the victory was brief.
The creature reformed in an instant, its mass twisting and knotting back into shape, indestructible in this place.
But that wasn’t the last of my worries, I felt the mana move around me, hell, it felt like it was crying and screaming while it drove itself insane and some alien force tired to press it on itself. The mana was wrapping in on itself.
A trap! I thought, my instincts screamed in panic.
The corridor shrank around me, the air thickening as if reality itself pressed in, compressing and diverging in impossible angles.
I tried to take flight, creating as much distance I could from the shadowy beast and myself as I lunged myself to the entrance of this void where I could still see specks of light.
I pumped all of my mana and focus into it, but it just wasn’t enough.
I barely had time to react, the beast was ready to attack again, the space shrinking every second that bled past me. Instinct seized me instantly. I summoned Leap.
Tendrils of lightning cracked before my eyes, stretching into the darkness ahead, each one connecting to floating motes that shimmered faintly like distant stars. My mind traced the image of the entrance I had just passed—the two diverging paths—and anchored my focus there. The motes flared, forming threads between the present and the location I needed.
A fraction of a second later, I poured my mana into the vision, feeling it pulse through me, the sharp headache came with me, feeding me so much information I could feel like my head could explode any moment now but I held on and propelled myself.
The world blurred around me, space bending and twisting. I felt the creature swipe at the empty air where I had been only moments ago. My body hurtled through the compressed corridor, the wind screaming in my ears, shadows tearing past my vision like jagged curtains.
And then—I landed. Just outside the entrance of the two paths. My chest heaved, heart pounding like a drum in my ears.
For a moment, there was silence.
I looked at the path on my right again, my eyes tried to focus, but the beast never came. It felt like the space inside it had been trapped and twisted into compressing into nothing and the beast trapped inside it.
The shadows did remain in the distance, reforming, moving in ways hard to my mere words , but it couldn’t follow me. I had survived.
I panted for air, feeling the dull ache leaving my muscles as I took a breath of relief.
I clenched my sword, my palms slick with sweat.
I hesitated to move from my spot for a moment, the left path didn’t look too promising after what had just happened.
My brows slowly knit together. My eyes went to the darkness reforming into something less of a darkness.
“…That thing.”
Horizon’s Edge had landed perfectly. I hadn’t misjudged the strike—of that much I was certain.
And yet…
The beast had taken it head-on and walked away with nothing more than a momentary collapse of its form.
I closed my eyes briefly, recalling the exact sensation when the blade had connected.
For the briefest instant, the strike had worked.
The shadowy body had scattered like smoke struck by a violent gust, its shape breaking apart under the force of the slash.
But the moment the pressure dispersed, something unseen had drawn the fragments back together.
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Not regeneration. Not the actual sense, there was no snapping of bone or knitting of muscles that indicated that.
But looked more like...reconstruction.
My fingers tightened slightly around the hilt of my sword.
The blade hadn’t failed me. My strength was more than enough to kill a beast that size, but it didn’t.
It had simply struck the wrong thing.
The body I’d cut…wasn’t the creature itself. Just a shape it wore. Something I had never witnessed before.
The beast that can be cut, but not killed.
Something deeper had absorbed the impact—something my strike could disturb, but not destroy.
My gaze drifted toward the darkness behind the corridor entrance.
“A beast that can reconstruct itself. That’s troublesome.”
If every monster in this dungeon behaved like that, brute force alone wouldn’t solve anything.
And somehow—
I had the uneasy feeling sprout from within me that whatever I’d encountered back there…wasn’t even the worst thing lurking in this place.
My brows finally relaxed as I had no choice but to take the path to my left. Compared to the right, it looked less terrifying, had signatures of mana I could feel but not identify perfectly, whether they belonged to human to monster.
I didn’t have a lot of choices here, knowing I could die any moment inside this dungeon.
No! I determined myself.
I can’t die in here. I had promised Rachael that I will come back to her. I needed to do that for her.
***
Gabriel Katz
The moment my boots touched the ground, the first thing that struck me wasn’t the sight of the chamber.
It was the silence.
Not the natural quiet of a large hall, nor the uneasy hush that follows the arrival of dozens of hunters in hostile territory. This silence had a strange quality to it, as though the air itself had been thickened—absorbing sound before it could travel too far.
I straightened slowly, my cloak shifting against the stone floor as I rose.
Before me stretched an enormous chamber.
Pillars the size of towers climbed upward into a ceiling veiled by a pale layer of drifting mist. Every surface—walls, columns, even the edges of the floor—was carved with impossibly dense engravings. Figures, symbols, lines intersecting circles, spiralling glyphs layered over one another as if countless civilizations had tried to leave their mark upon the same canvas.
The carvings weren’t decorative.
They seemed deliberate. Maybe they had some purpose.
I leaned closer, tracing the shallow grooves etched into the stone.
I wasn’t an expert, but I had studied epigraphy enough to recognize a pattern when I saw one.
These weren’t symbols for decoration.
They were writing.
These weren’t random glyphs.
They were a language. One I couldn’t understand.
Candles burned quietly at the base of each pillar as I focused more, their flames thin and steady. Too steady. Not a single flicker betrayed the currents of air that should have moved through such a vast space.
Dozens of hunters were already gathering themselves around the chamber. Some stood cautiously with weapons drawn, others murmured in low voices as they tried to make sense of their surroundings.
Armour shifted. Steel clicked softly.
Yet even those sounds felt muted, as if the hall itself refused to let noise linger any longer than it was allowed to.
I exhaled slowly, my gaze sweeping across the room as instinct took over.
Counting.
Observing.
Tracking.
Forty-two.
All gathered in the same chamber.
That alone was strange.
Most high-rank dungeons scattered entrants across multiple zones in order to isolate and test them individually. Yet here we had all been deposited into a single hall, contained within the same massive structure.
My eyes drifted toward the far end of the chamber.
A single stone doorway stood there.
Tall.
Ancient.
Sealed by an immense slab of carved rock that resembled the entrance to a tomb.
No other exits.
No corridors branching away.
Just one path forward.
A boss gate.
Which meant this chamber was a staging ground of sorts.
Or perhaps a waiting room.
My attention shifted again, this time toward the air itself.
Mana filled the hall.
Dense enough that even a novice mage would feel it pressing faintly against their skin.
But something about it felt wrong.
Mana naturally moved, even in still environments. It circulated through space like currents in water—subtle, but always flowing.
Here it didn’t. It simply existed.
Suspended.
My brow knitted slightly as I raised my hand, letting a small thread of gravitational energy coil between my fingers. It wasn’t a spell—just a probe, a minor manipulation meant to test how responsive the surrounding mana was.
The moment the gravitational ripple touched the air—
The mana—the energies in the air pushed back, not violently, just simply. Like creating a simple ripple effect on the surface of water which didn’t disturb the mana or demonic energy around us.
But the remarkable thing was the reaction. It was immediate.
The small distortion collapsed inward before it could stabilize, snapping apart like a fragile structure struck from within. The force rebounded through my palm with a dull thud, forcing my fingers to twitch as the spell unravelled completely.
I stared at my hand for a moment.
“That’s strange.”
I tried again, this time weaving a slightly more complex structure. Gravity threads spiralled outward, attempting to take hold of the surrounding earth mana and bend it to my will.
For half a second the weave formed, holding firmly against whatever force was working out there.
Then, just as quickly as my intent to charge this spell had come, the ambient mana rejected it.
Not violently.
But decisively.
The structure simply…disassembled.
Like two magnets forced together from the wrong polarity.
My hand lowered slowly as the realization settled into place.
Mana could be touched here.
Felt.
Even drawn slightly closer.
But the moment someone tried to shape it into a structured spell—the environment pushed back.
Like a consciousness that made these strict structures to be followed inside this hall.
A quiet exhale slipped past my lips as the realization dawned upon me. A challenge that I had yet to face, that this dungeon offered
“So that’s how it is.”
Simple manipulation might still work.
But large-scale casting? Complex spell structures?
Impossible.
The dungeon itself was suppressing it.
Impressive. I thought, feeling a curios expression growing over my face. Rather than worry, I was intrigued that a dungeon which shouldn’t have any sentience in its form as a whole—not just the beasts it contained—to have set such traps and limitations on the person who entered.
For most hunters that would be an inconvenience. Because they relied heavily on mana to fight, conjures or augmenters.
But, for someone like me—
It meant a significant portion of my arsenal had just become useless. While others might be more reliant on smaller spells, my spells had a more area of effect on the battlefield.
I wasn’t saying I didn’t have spell that could be used in a more modern fashion. But, if I needed to use my stronger spells, that would be a problem here.
Let’s just hope the place beyond those doors doesn’t apply the same rules and limitations on us.
My focus went back to the faint murmurs of voices behind me pulling me back to the crowd of hunters gathered here.
The
While they equally divided hunters from each appropriate rank to fill the formations to keep every squad balanced.
I was supposed to be in the vanguard as the only
But my brows knitted instantly, my eyes began scanning faces.
Automatically.
Searching. Tracking.
One face. Then another. And another. My eyes jumped from one person to the next instantly.
The tension in my shoulders tightened gradually as the realization crept into my mind.
I scanned the chamber again.
Slower this time.
More carefully. Still nothing.
My jaw clenched in panic. I felt a chill run down my spine for a split second.
No!
That wasn’t possible.
I began moving through the crowd, my steps quickening as hunters instinctively parted to make way.
Where the hell was he?
“Amanda.”
She turned the moment she heard my voice.
Even in the dim candlelight her auburn hair was unmistakable. Beside her stood Alaric, the long barrel of his rifle resting against his shoulder, two pistols hanging inside the holsters by his waist, while his calm gaze swept across the chamber like a hunter surveying distant prey.
Amanda frowned slightly when she saw my expression. She didn’t need to recognise me, we had already been aquatinted before this dungeon raid.
“What happened?”
My eyes moved between them.
“Where’s Shun?”
For a brief moment she simply blinked. Like she needed to remember who’s name I’d asked.
“Shun?”
Alaric tilted his head slightly.
“The gloomy kid?” He asked, his dull eyes moving with speed, but the nonchalance in them seem to tick away at me.
Amanda glanced at him, seemingly remembering something from memory.
“The one who visited headquarters once?”
Alaric nodded casually. His shoulder still as he adjusted the rifle from his shoulder.
“Yeah. That one. Quiet kid. Looked like the world had already tried to kill him twice.”
His gaze drifted toward me and then he spoke.
“The same one who carried most of the Singapore raid.”
Amanda’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh.”
Her gaze swept the chamber quickly. Trying to find Shun amongst the crowd, but alas for not. I had already done a thorough search myself, but I couldn’t be completely sure.
“Now that you mention it.” She looked back at me, her brows slightly knitted. “I haven’t seen him since we entered.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
A slow breath entered my lungs.
Then left, hard enough, that the realization was like a punch to my gut that could choke the air from my lungs.
My hands curled slightly at my sides as my gaze moved across the hall once more, searching every corner, every cluster of hunters.
Nothing.
The memory surfaced suddenly.
Unwelcome.
A voice from years ago. Warm.
Tired.
Trusting.
“Hey Gabriel.”
My jaw tightened instinctively.
“Won’t you look after Shun?”
The image of his master standing beside me flashed through my mind.
A man I had respected more than most.
A friend.
“Don’t let him die even if I’m not here.”
My teeth grounded together. Damn it.
I turned sharply, scanning the chamber again as irritation and unease twisted together in my chest.
Everyone else had been transported here.
Every single hunter.
Except him.
Which meant this dungeon hadn’t simply scattered us randomly.
It had separated Shun deliberately.
My gaze slowly drifted back to the massive stone door waiting silently at the far end of the chamber.
Something about this place had already begun its trial.
And the one person missing—
Was the one person I had promised to keep alive.
I exhaled slowly, the pressure behind my eyes sharpening.
“…That kid better not be dead already.”
I felt my shoulders tighten, my mind already turning each gear for answers or possibilities, but I couldn’t do anything for the time being.
All I could do was hope that Shun was alright by himself in some part of this dungeon.
Before I could say anything else, I saw Alger at the front of the crowd. Other hunters already covering his sides.
They had decided to move to the place beyond those doors.
Damn it, kid. Just be safe.
***
Amamiya Shun
The corridor gradually widened as I walked, the suffocating narrow stone passage slowly giving way to a space so vast that for a moment I wondered if I had stepped into an entirely different part of the dungeon.
My footsteps slowed. My breath caught as I gazed it n the sun got before me. It was unbelievable.
The passage opened into an enormous hall.
The first thing I noticed was the ceiling. It rose so high above me that the uppermost reaches dissolved into a faint bluish haze, as though the air itself had grown thicker with age. Rows of stone braziers stretched along the floor in symmetrical lines, their flames flickering quietly, casting wavering shadows that crawled along the engraved walls.
The chamber felt ancient.
Oppressively ancient.
My eyes moved slowly across the room, taking in the scale of it. The hall was easily large enough to house an entire cathedral, maybe larger. Even if I sprinted with mana reinforcing my legs, it would take close to a minute to reach the opposite end where another doorway stood framed by towering stone pillars.
But that wasn’t what held my attention.
It was the figures lining the hall.
Dozens of them.
Armoured knights stood in perfect stillness between the braziers, arranged in rows that extended the entire length of the chamber. Their armour was massive, far larger than anything a human could wear, each figure easily towering over me by a full head. The plates were thick and layered, reminiscent of ancient paladin armour, though far heavier and more brutal in design.
The metal was dark, almost black, its surface engraved with unfamiliar symbols that glimmered faintly under the light of the flames.
But the metal plates didn’t look like metal. It had a sheen that made it stand out even when the knights unadorned the look of his place.
Weapons rested in their hands tightly.
Great swords as tall and broad as I was.
Long spears planted firmly against the floor.
Claymores with blades so wide they resembled slabs of iron.
There was one with a crossbow, but it was empty.
One even carried a strange firearm—long-barrelled and archaic in design, its metal body covered in runic etchings. It didn’t look like a normal gun, but the barrel shape resembled a gun.
It was weird. How come this one knight had something that only existed outside the dungeon gate.
I stopped a few steps into the hall, my brows knitting together as I studied them.
“Constructs?” I muttered under my breath. ‘This might be a trap.’ I thought.
The moment I enter the hall, perhaps they start moving.
But they didn’t move.
Not a twitch.
Not a sound.
Even so, something about them made the hairs on the back of my neck stand upright. My gaze swept across the chamber again, slowly counting the rows.
There were too many.
Dozens.
Maybe over a hundred.
And every single one of them stood directly along the path leading to the exit.
I exhaled quietly, rolling my shoulders as I adjusted my grip on the sword.
“Great. I can’t be careful enough.” I murmured slowly, feeling my shoulders tighten in caution.
My instincts told me something here was wrong. Just like the corridor before, this place couldn’t be any safer than the place before.
But the one that ate away at me was that, normally constructs had some detectable core of mana—some formation or magical signature that gave away their function. But as I extended my senses slightly, probing the surrounding air, I felt nothing from the knights.
Nothing at all.
It was like trying to read a wall.
Still…the silence stretched too long. No traps triggered. No reaction.
Just the steady crackle of braziers and the faint echo of my own breathing.
I narrowed my eyes.
If they were inactive constructs, waiting here for a trigger, then the safest option was obvious.
Move fast.
I shifted my stance slightly and let mana flow through my body.
The energy surged through my veins in a familiar rush, reinforcing muscle and bone as it spread through my limbs.
And then—
A metallic sound echoed through the hall.
Click.
My head snapped to the side.
One of the armoured knights had moved. Just slightly.
The fingers of its gauntlet twitched where they gripped the hilt of its sword.
For a moment I thought I had imagined it. I held my breath and released it after a second as I rushed through the enormous hall.
Then another sound followed. A very faint clank. Something that was that shied away as soon as it had came.
Then, across the chamber, another knight shifted.
Stone dust slid from the overlapping plates of its armour as its head slowly lifted, the helmet covering its face slowly turned in my direction.
The scene felt dramatic, almost as if time itself was moving slower from my perspective as the knight tightened its grip over its great sword.
Then, a dull, almost white iridescent glow flickered behind the narrow slit of its helmet, the visor attached to it shifted and I saw a rapid change of aura.
My stomach dropped, panic rushed through my body, each muscle kicking into gear as I reinforced my body with all the mana I could and rushed through the hall, my boots loudly clicking against the floor.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The sound spread instantly as I swallowed hard as I pumped my mana, feeling the presence of the mana and making way for myself as I took flight.
I heard metal grinding against metal.
Ancient joints awakening after centuries of stillness.
One by one, the knights began to move. Helmets lifted. Weapons tightened in their grasp.
Dozens of glowing eyes ignited across the hall as the constructs turned toward me in eerie unison.
Every single one of them. And I could already feel what was on their mind—or even if they had one. Kill me.
My mind raced for answers—what could’ve triggered them? I didn’t even hit some hidden mechanism on the floor and done anything to make them awake.
Just then it hit me.
The mana.
The moment I had reinforced my body.
My jaw clenched, brows knitted in annoyance.
“They react to mana.”
Before I could even finish processing the thought, the nearest knight stepped forward.
The impact of its armoured foot hitting the ground echoed like a hammer strike.
Then another moved. And another.
Within seconds the entire formation began advancing.
Heavy weapons lifted as the constructs started marching toward me in synchronized motion, their steps sending tremors through the stone floor.
Their speed something abnormal for their size and weight that sent tremors through the stone floor. Making the hall quake with heavy shocks.
I clicked my tongue, drawing my sword fully for any unexpected attack to parry as I made way deeper.
“Crap.”
Mana surged again as I prepared to burst forward, every tendons and muscle reinforced to the brim as I flew without looking back.
But I was too late, the ones in front of me had already taken action, the first strike nearly took my head off.
I barely ducked in time, the enormous claymore shrieking through the air above me before crashing into the stone floor with enough force to fracture the tiles and leave fissures on the floor around it.
The impact sent a shock through my legs. Even with mana tightly wrapping itself around my body like an armour, I still felt the shock reach deep into my bones.
Before I could regain my footing, another construct moved.
A spear lunged toward my ribs.
I twisted sideways, intercepting the blade with my sword that still scrapped along my side instead of piercing through it, but the impact still sent a sharp burst of pain through my torso.
“Tch! Fuck!” I cursed loudly as I felt blood drip through from the gash.
I pushed off the ground and slid back several steps, boots grinding against the stone as my breathing grew heavier.
They were faster than they looked.
Far faster. This was almost like cheating. These knights, they always me were strong enough to give a single
The golems moved with mechanical precision, their heavy armour grinding and clanking as they advanced in formation. Weapons lifted in perfect coordination, glowing faintly with an eerie iridescent light that pulsed beneath the seams of their armour.
My grip tightened around the hilt of my sword.
Fine.
If they wanted a fight—
Mana surged through my body as I reinforced my muscles and kicked forward.
The nearest knight raised its sword. The movement fast, but with Mind’s Eye supporting my sight and with its first phase everything appeared slow as a snail in my vision.
Too slow. I read through its movements, predicting where it might land the next strike.
My blade flashed upward, cutting through the gap beneath its arm, a clean strike, my blade connected with machine like precision.
But...
The strike should have severed the joint cleanly.
Instead—
The metal barely dented. But my sword had hit something hard, something viscose and sticky as I pulled my sword back. Black slug gushed out as the knight roared, shaking the hall by it’s grotesque scream as I felt the shockwave resonate deal within me.
My eyes widened in horror as I felt a pulse of energy converging behind me and movement from my left flank.
“Gkh—!”
A gauntleted fist slammed into my chest before I could react.
The impact felt like being struck by a collapsing wall.
The air blasted out of my lungs as my body was hurled backward across the floor. I skidded several meters before crashing into one of the stone braziers, the flames scattering as I hit the ground hard.
Pain exploded through my ribs. The heat from the scattered fire sizzled my skin, blood dripping all across the floor.
I coughed violently, warm blood spilling from my mouth as I forced myself up onto one knee.
“…Damn it…”
The knights were already advancing again.
Relentless.
Their steps echoed through the enormous hall as the formation closed in around me, weapons lifting in silent synchronization.
Then, I heard a sound. It was not steel.
It was a crack.
A sharp mechanical snap echoed through the hall, followed by a thunderous discharge that made the air shudder.
My instincts screamed.
I threw myself sideways.
A streak of bright light tore past my head, slamming into the stone behind me with explosive force. The impact shattered the wall in a burst of sparks and dust.
“—!”
I rolled across the floor and barely managed to rise before another shot rang out.
Two knights standing farther back had raised strange elongated weapons—firearms mounted beneath thick armoured arms.
A second blast erupted. The projectile grazed my shoulder as I twisted away.
Agony burst across my skin.
It felt less like a bullet and more like a piece of burning metal scraping across my flesh—but it wasn’t, it was energy, compressed so much that when it hit, the impact felt worse than a bullet. My sleeve disintegrated where it passed, and the exposed skin beneath it sizzled violently, smoke rising faintly from the scorched wound.
My teeth clenched tightly, fighting against the agony.
“Tch—!”
Before I could recover or try to take a record very potion, another weapon lifted.
Not a gun this time. A crossbow.
The knight raised it with mechanical precision, without another second wasted, it pulled the trigger and the arrows which was burning with an iridescent sheen snapped at it.
The bolt struck before I could move.
A lance of condensed energy slammed straight into my thigh.
“Ghk!”
My leg buckled instantly, hot searing pain erupted through my body as I staggered violently.
The arrow didn’t remain lodged like a normal projectile. Instead it dissolved into fragments of light the moment it struck—but the damage remained.
A deep wound tore through the muscle.
Blood spilled down my leg immediately, warm and heavy, dripping onto the stone floor.
I staggered, catching myself with my sword before collapsing completely.
Damn it.
They weren’t just strong. They were coordinated.
My breathing grew rough as I forced myself upright again, my wounded leg trembling under the strain.
The knights advanced without hesitation.
Rows of armoured figures closing in from every direction.
I couldn’t let them surround me.
Mana surged through my body once again in a desperate attempt to survive. Instinct took over me and I moved with choked breaths.
Fine. If subtlety wouldn’t work—then I’d carve a path through them.
My hands moved.
The blade slid free from its scabbard in one smooth motion.
My stance lowered just a little as the knight rushed me from in front.
“First Movement…”
My arms rose together, drawing the sword upward in a perfect vertical line as mana gathered along the blade.
“Moon Split.”
I stepped forward.
The sword rose high—then tore upward.
The vertical strike erupted through the air like a detonating fault line.
The floor beneath the blade split open with a violent tremor, stone cracking apart as the force surged forward. Several knights in front of me were lifted off their feet as the shockwave carved a jagged line through the hall.
Before the motion finished, my body flowed into the second half of the technique.
The blade descended. A crushing downward arc.
The force of the strike slammed into the nearest knight, cleaving straight through its armoured torso and driving the shattered remains into the ground.
The construct collapsed.
For a brief second—
It lay still.
Then the next row stepped forward.
Dozens of them.
My breath caught like a bitch. My body refused to move with all the wounds and the blood I’d already lost.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
They didn’t hesitate, they simply replaced the fallen.
I couldn’t do anything, even if I wanted to escape, the knights wouldn’t let me, the doors were just there but they stood in my path, so I did what I could, I shifted my stance instantly.
Mana condensed again, tighter this time, the pressure gathering along the blade until the air around it began to tremble.
“Third Movement…” I exhaled slowly. “Space Cleaver.”
The sword moved. The horizontal slash came first.
A perfect arc that hummed through the air with terrifying speed.
The pressure alone made the hall shudder. Even the knights seem to feel it as the space around them screamed.
For an instant, a thin line formed in the air where the blade passed—like a fracture drawn across reality itself.
Before the distortion could settle, my wrist twisted.
The second strike followed instantly.
A diagonal cut so fast it became invisible.
The transition was seamless—too fast for the eye.
The pressure between the two movements crushed the air together, and the space before me rippled violently—as though the world itself struggled to withstand the speed of the blade.
Light bent.
Shadows twisted around the periphery.
For a brief moment, the very fabric of space seemed to warp beneath the strike.
Then the wave erupted outward.
Several knights were torn apart instantly, their armoured bodies splitting along invisible lines as the force of the strike carved through the formation.
But it wasn’t enough, more of them advanced. They were unrelenting. Stubbornly annoying.
My breathing grew heavier.
Blood continued dripping from my thigh, my leg growing weaker with every step.
Another spear struck my shoulder.
A blade carved across my ribs.
A gauntleted fist slammed into my chest.
The impact threw me backward across the floor.
I crashed hard against the stone, my sword slipping from my grasp as pain exploded through my body.
Blood pooled beneath me as my vision blurred.
The knights closed in, dozens of them now. Weapons raised.
The nearest one stepped forward, lifting its massive great-sword slowly above its head.
I stared up at it, breathing ragged.
My fingers twitched weakly against the stone.
So this is—
I gave a weak timid laugh, mocking and condescending, directed at myself.
In that split second, I seem to remove the people who I was fighting for. The people who had risked their lives for mine. I owned them to live.
So, I forced myself to stand.
Blood dripped steadily from a deep cut across my side, soaking into my clothes as my breathing became ragged, each one strained down my throat.
There were too many.
Even if I destroyed one, another blade came down.
I forced my legs to move as I barely dodged the upcoming attack. My muscles screamed from the pain and weaknesses slowly encompassing my body.
The impact drove me to one knee.
Another struck with its whip, a strangled gasp tore from my throat as the weapon ripped free again, leaving burning agony behind.
The hall spun slightly around me.
The knights raised their weapons again.
I was surrounded, my back to the wall. The knights ready to attack.
Even if I persisted, I couldn’t take down this many of them. There were still hundreds of these things left. I had barely taken a few down.
Just as despair was about to kick in, I heard a voice speak.
It was soft. Thin. So faint I almost thought it was my imagination. But, it seemed laboured, ghastly and devoid of anything that could be a voice.
It must be my imagination. The final moments of a dying man.
My vision blurred as I felt darkness taking hold of my vision, but before I could release myself to the darkness, I felt a warm and gentle sensation envelope me and when I focused ahead.
Like sunlight touching cold skin. It felt similar to the sensation I had in my childhood when I was fighting those wolf mana beasts.
I saw a blurred silhouette of a tall individual standing in front of me—perhaps my mind playing tricks on me. I couldn’t make out its face or features perfectly, but it looked behind at me and all I saw were two bright suns looking at me with an unfamiliar fondness.
“You p-promised...to—go b...ack, Ji—" just before the words ended, my mind gave way and I collapsed.