It’s been a rough climb.

  Only a few floors have passed, but I feel stronger. My movements are sharper, my instincts quicker.

  I’m adapting to the raid.

  Stepping onto the next floor, I know something is different. The Abyssal Spire is finally revealing its true nature.

  Every ten floors, the environment shifts. The raid splits into different dimensions, transitioning from the weakest mobs to the strongest creatures ever recorded.

  I follow a narrow corridor and step into a circular room with a lone lever in the center.

  I pull it.

  The entire room shudders as chains groan and pull me upward. The shift in gravity is sudden and brutal, crushing my body like when I first entered the Spire.

  The ascent stops.

  Then, all around me, the walls collapse.

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  The room is gone.

  I stand on a floating stone platform, surrounded by nothingness.

  A vast, dark sky stretches endlessly above me, swirling in shades of gray, black, and deep blue. There are no stars. Only emptiness.

  Then I look down.

  The ground below is a graveyard of carnage.

  Rotting corpses, shattered bones, rivers of dried blood. Even the rocks are twisted into jagged spikes, as if nature itself was designed to kill.

  I exhale sharply.

  This is it.

  The first dimension. Deathmarrow.

  A chill runs down my spine. I can feel it. Dozens of unseen eyes lurking at the edges of this nightmare, watching me, waiting.

  Far in the distance, past the wasteland of bodies, a massive fortress rises from the abyss.

  The boss castle.

  But reaching it won’t be easy.

  I hear the rattling of metal.

  I turn and see them.

  Dozens of armored skeletons emerging from the fog, wielding swords, maces, and bows. Each one moves with purpose, unlike the mindless undead I fought before.

  This time, there’s no bottomless void to toss them into.

  I need a strategy.

  I grab my bow, nock an arrow, and aim.

  I’ve used a bow before. I can do this.

  I release.

  The arrow pierces the head of a skeleton.

  For a moment, I smirk.

  Then my smile disappears.

  The skeleton reaches up and pulls the arrow out.

  It doesn’t fall.

  I curse under my breath. "So after all… they’re just souls, huh?"

  Souls are the remnants of dead beings given a second life. Their bodies are just vessels. Attacking the bones is meaningless.

  The only way to kill a soul—

  Is to attack its essence.

  I grab another arrow and close my eyes, focusing.

  Slowly, my mana seeps into the shaft. The tip begins to glow, a soft, flickering blue.

  I open my eyes and fire.

  The arrow strikes the same skeleton.

  Its soul ignites like a candle, burning in ghostly blue flames for a brief moment before vanishing.

  The bones collapse into a lifeless heap.

  A moment of silence.

  Then—

  The glowing eyes of every remaining skeleton snap toward me.

  I just pulled aggro on all of them.

  "Damn it."

  With a chorus of rattling armor, they charge.