The deeper zones of the 37th floor did not welcome travelers; they tolerated them through a suffocating, freezing stillness.
Known throughout Orario as the White Palace, the labyrinthine architecture of this deep floor was comprised of endless, towering walls of smooth, pale stone that resembled polished ivory.
But enough talking.
Yuuya stopped at the precipice of the Throne Room.
The arched entryway was colossal, easily wide enough to accommodate the legendary, multi-story skeleton that usually ruled this floor.
But as Yuuya's dark eyes scanned the vast, circular arena ahead, his breath caught faintly in his throat.
The throne room was not empty. The Monster Rex had already spawned, sitting dead center in the middle of the pale chamber. But it was completely wrong.
There was no towering, colossal mountain of ancient bones. There was no primitive, roaring beast waiting to claw its way out of the earth. Instead, resting upon a massive throne carved from jagged black stone, sat a humanoid figure.
The entity was roughly the size of a tall, exceptionally well built human warrior.
Its entire frame was encased in a sleek, beautifully articulated suit of midnight black armor that seemed to actively absorb the pale light of the room.
Its left hand was casually propped up against the stone armrest of the throne, supporting its tilted head in a posture of profound, chilling boredom.
To its right, resting cleanly on the arm of the throne, was a heavy, enclosed black helmet. To its left, a beautifully crafted longsword—its blade forged from an unknown, obsidian-like material—leaned against the seat, waiting to be drawn.
The creature's face was fully exposed. It was a dark colored skull (what do you expect?) with hollow, pitch black eyes that held no anger, no malice, and no warmth. It was an utter void.
The moment Yuuya stepped into the frame of the entrance, those vacant eyes slowly shifted, locking onto him with the precision of an executioner watching its target step onto the scaffold.
Yuuya pulled his hands out of his coat pockets, his gaze narrowing to thin slits as he took in the sheer, unnatural pressure radiating from the seated knight.
"Hey..." Yuuya murmured into the quiet air, his voice low and cautious beneath his scarf. "That's definitely not Udaeus. System, I'm already standing at the entrance. Can you give me some details? I'd like to be at least a little prepared before I walk into that meat grinder."
[Yeah it should be fine now.] the System replied, its tone noticeably devoid of its usual casual banter. [The entity you are looking at is indeed the unique manifestation of Udaeus. The dungeon's autonomous will recognized that throwing a massive, slow moving target at a pseudo Level 9 anomaly was a mathematically certified waste of resources. It condensed the entire boney mass of the Monster Rex into a single, compact form. As you can see from its design, it has been completely reconstructed into a supreme swordsman.]
Yuuya's hand drifted instinctively toward the hilt of Kurotsuki, his fingers lightly tapping the lacquered wood.
"A compressed swordsman? Well, Udaeus does feel more like a swordsman to me when he has his sword... fine. I can deal with that. Where does its strength scale?"
The System paused for a fraction of a second. The text on the screen blinked slowly.
[...Level 10, Yuuya. A maxed out Level 10.]
The words hung in the cold air of the corridor like a physical weight.
Yuuya's posture stiffened slightly, a genuine spark of surprise flashing deep within his dark eyes.
Even with his Limit Off state actively burning through his veins, pushing his physical capabilities to the absolute apex of what a human body could achieve, he only capped out at a high Level 9.
If it was like the typical adventurer who doesn't max out their stats before levelling up, he would've been fine. But considering the dungeon? It's highly unlikely.
A maxed out Level 10 meant that every single exchange of blows would carry enough force to alter the geography of the floor itself. One clean hit from that obsidian longsword would likely obliterate his defenses entirely.
But the surprise didn't twist into panic. Yuuya let out a slow, steady breath, his lips curving into a dry, incredibly sharp smirk beneath his scarf.
"Outclassed by a whole level, huh?" Yuuya thought back, his mind working with analytical precision. "It's a steep hill. But it's not entirely impossible. Thanks to your structural edits, my stats grow in real time based on combat stress without needing Hestia to manually unlock the Falna. If I can survive the initial exchange, I can adapt to its speed."
[Don't get ahead of yourself.] the System interrupted, its voice dropping into an uncharacteristically grim register. [I'm not done with the updates. I've got some severe bad news to deliver.]
"Of course you do." Yuuya muttered aloud, shaking his head. "Let's hear it."
[First restriction: I will be completely inactive during this entire engagement.] the System stated flatly. [The world's mechanics only allowed me to force this manual respawn on the condition that I do not provide active assistance or parameter updates during the fight. You have to fight this battle entirely alone, Yuuya. Just like a real adventurer who is fighting a newly discovered floor boss, relying solely on the strength they carried through the door.]
Yuuya nodded slowly, his expression remaining perfectly calm.
"Fair enough. What else?"
[Second restriction: The moment your boots clear the threshold of the entrance, the dungeon will permanently seal the chamber. The walls will barricade the exits with reinforced, high density stone. There is no retreat, no safety zone, and no tactical withdrawal. You either kill it and claim the ascension, or your journey ends on this floor.]
The seated knight in the center of the room didn't move. It simply kept its head propped on its hand, its void-like eyes tracking Yuuya's every expression, waiting with a terrifying, absolute patience.
"And the third piece of bad news?" Yuuya asked quietly.
[I cannot disclose its active skills, its magic, or its combat style.] the System replied. [I can't give you its attack patterns or warning alerts. You are fighting completely blind against a historical anomaly.]
Yuuya stood perfectly still on the edge of the pale stone floor.
Any ordinary adventurer, upon learning they were trapped in a blind room with a maxed out Level 10 master swordsman while their primary support system went offline, would have been entirely paralyzed by despair.
But Yuuya's mind was beautifully, dangerously quiet. He had already accepted that the dungeon was going to pull out every single stop to eliminate him the moment he stepped foot into the deep zones.
This wasn't a standard hunt anymore. This was a direct, unfiltered challenge from the world itself.
"Hey, System." Yuuya said softly, his voice echoing cleanly through the vast, quiet corridor. "Before I go... there's something I need to say."
[?]
"Now that I think about it, I haven't actually thanked you yet, have I?" A genuine, incredibly warm smirk broke across Yuuya's face, completely replacing the cold, analytical mask of the vanguard. "Thank you, System. For everything. For your hard work, and for constantly bending the rules and altering the mechanics of this world just so I could have this exact opportunity. I know how much strain it takes to fight against the laws of this world."
His right hand firmly wrapped around the hilt of Kurotsuki, the dark wood conforming perfectly to his grip.
"Don't worry." Yuuya whispered, his dark eyes igniting with a fierce, unyielding intensity. "I won't let it go to waste. You told me I need to fight it like a real adventurer, right? Then that's exactly what I'll do. I'll just be an adventurer conquering a new floor boss."
As Yuuya took his first step towards the chamber, he heard the system's voice one last time.
[Heh. Hey, Yuuya.]
Yuuya didn't stop walking but he listened.
[May The Blessings Of The Gods Be With You.]
∆∆∆∆
Yuuya's boot cleared the threshold, striking the pale marble of the Great Throne Room.
CRASH
Just like the system has said, the dungeon immediately sealed him inside. Trapping him.
Yuuya didn't look back, he just kept his gaze on Udaeus.
"Now that I think about it, in that form of yours, you truly look like a monster rex befitting of the title Solitary King of the Labyrinth."
With a slow, deliberate movement, the boney humanoid manifestation of Udaeus reached out its skeletal left hand.
Its long, slender fingers—composed entirely of polished, pitch black bone—wrapped around the heavy, enclosed helmet resting on the armrest. It lifted the vanguard of iron and bone, smoothly sliding it over its skull.
The hollow, void-like eyes vanished behind a narrow, horizontal visor slit that burned with a faint, chilling crimson ember deep within the shadows.
The dark knight stood up.
As its weight left the dais, the massive stone throne behind it groaned. The jagged black masonry didn't just break; it rapidly dissolved into a cascading wave of dark bone ash, melting away into the floorboards like smoke until the center of the room was completely cleared.
The Monster Rex gripped the hilt of its obsidian blade, drawing it completely from the floor as it walked forward.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
The sound of its approach was sharp, rhythmic metallic. It was the sound of raw, dense strike of pure, condensed bone joints moving in perfect synchronization beneath its outer plates.
The armor wasn't something it wore; it was its very skeleton, grown and molded by the dungeon to mimic the form of a supreme warlord.
Udaeus stopped precisely five paces away from Yuuya.
The two combatants stood perfectly level. They were roughly the same height, their gazes locking in a straight, horizontal line across the pale expanse of the room.
The dark sovereign didn't immediately raise its weapon. It simply stood in a neutral, relaxed stance, its visor fixed entirely on Yuuya's right hand, waiting with a quiet, ancient patience.
It was waiting for the challenger to draw his steel.
Yuuya's fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade. With a smooth, practiced motion, he pulled the weapon from its sheath.
Shiiiiing—
The razor sharp length of Kurotsuki cut through the cold air, its polished, dark steel catching the faint luminescence of the weeping walls.
Yuuya brought the katana up, settling into a low, balanced stance, the tip of his blade pointed directly at the knight's throat.
Udaeus tilted its helmet slightly. Its crimson visor traced the exact length, the subtle curve, and the distinct geometry of Kurotsuki.
After a heavy second of observation, the dark king lifted its own massive obsidian longsword. The weapon was naturally far longer and heavier than Yuuya's Eastern blade, built for sweeping, devastating reaches.
But then, a low, rhythmic vibration hummed through the hilt of the monster's weapon.
Before Yuuya's eyes, the obsidian material began to shift. The dense, compressed black bone of the blade melted and slid inward, retracting into itself as it rearranged its structure.
Within a fraction of a heartbeat, the longsword shortened, its edge thinning and curving slightly until it perfectly mirrored the exact length, width, and proportions of Yuuya's katana.
Yuuya's brow raised slightly beneath his scarf, a genuine, amused spark lighting up his dark eyes.
"Chivalry, huh?" Yuuya murmured, his voice dry but carrying a distinct note of respect. He adjusted his grip on Kurotsuki, his muscles tensing as his center of gravity dropped. "An equal length for an equal duel. I didn't think the dungeon's will carried a sense of sportsmanship, but I won't complain. Let's see if your form matches your manners."
The space between them became an oppressive vacuum.
Neither of them blinked. Neither of them shifted their weight. The air grew so heavy that the ambient frost on the floor began to crack and splinter under the sheer, unreleased pressure of their auras.
Then, the world exploded.
There was no visual transition. There was no middle ground. In the span of a blink of an eye, the space where the two had been standing was suddenly vacant, replaced only by two violent, concussive craters where the stone floor disintegrated under the force of their simultaneous takeoffs.
CLANG!
The collision in the exact center of the arena was catastrophic.
Kurotsuki met the shortened obsidian bone blade with a deafening, metallic shriek that tore through the vaulted chamber.
A massive, circular shockwave of displaced energy blasted outward from the point of impact, tearing through the floorboards and ripping deep gouges into the pale ivory walls fifty yards away.
A brilliant, blinding cascade of silver and orange sparks erupted into the air, illuminating the dark lines of Udaeus's helmet and the fierce, unyielding focus in Yuuya's eyes.
The duel has officially begun. The strongest floor boss of the current era—possibly, the entire history even— against the strongest adventurer of today.
The shockwave from the initial clash had barely faded before the arena turned into a blinding blur of violence.
To any outside observer, the duel would have been entirely invisible.
There were no broad, sweeping theatrical movements—only a terrifying, claustrophobic exchange of absolute martial perfection. Every micro-second was a lethal chess match played at ten times the speed of sound.
Udaeus fought with the cold, unyielding efficiency of a sovereign war machine. Having no flesh to tire, no lungs to burn, and no tendons to strain, its movements were flawless.
It pivoted on the pale stone with absolute zero wasted energy, its black armored form sliding forward like a phantom as its shortened obsidian blade whipped through the air in a series of lethal, intersecting arcs.
Every single strike carried the crushing, cataclysmic weight of its Level 10 strength.
But where the monster possessed the pinnacle of raw power and evolutionary design, Yuuya held something entirely different.
He held a body born purely for combat.
The tattered edges of his long Goliath scarf, trailing down just above his knees, snapped like a whip in the vacuum generated by their movements.
Yuuya wasn't trying to directly block the dark king's strikes; meeting a Level 10 impact head on would be been too much for his current strength, regardless of his Limit Off state. Instead, he was operating entirely within The Zone.
Where Yuuya lack in stats, he compensated with his talent.
Inside the focused spaced of his consciousness, the world had slowed down to a crawling, monochrome drift.
The deafening rings of clashing swords became low, rhythmic thuds. Yuuya wasn't reacting to the blade—he was predicting the entity's entire internal biology.
He read the microscopic friction of the black bone armor plating sliding over the inner skeletal joints. He calculated the subtle, millimetric shift of weight in the monster's left calcaneus before a step was even taken. He watched the slight, almost imperceptible angle change of the crimson visor slit.
Before Udaeus could even initiate a horizontal decapitation strike, Yuuya was already moving.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Yuuya slid inside the monster's guard, his torso tilting at a physics defying angle. Kurotsuki danced in his grip, the dark steel angling precisely at forty five degrees to catch the oncoming obsidian blade, deflecting the catastrophic force harmlessly into the ivory floorboards behind him.
The ground erupted into a geyser of pulverized rock, but Yuuya was already utilizing the momentum. He spun on his heel, his Goliath scarf flaring outward like a dark cloud as he executed a lightning fast reverse handed parry, knocking the monster's weapon off its trajectory by a mere fraction of an inch.
Udaeus immediately recognized the shift in the defensive grid. Without a single heartbeat of hesitation, the skeletal knight aborted its follow through, using its hyper-dense bone structure to violently brake its own momentum.
It then transitioned instantly into a brutal, thrusting stance, the tip of its blade aimed directly at Yuuya's exposed sternum.
Yuuya's dark eyes didn't even widen. He had already seen the spinal alignment shift through the armor seams.
Instead of stepping back, Yuuya leaned forward into the danger zone.
He twisted his shoulders, letting the obsidian blade pass so close to his chest that the sheer wind pressure tore a neat slit into his clothes.
In the same fluid motion, Yuuya brought the hilt of Kurotsuki upward, executing a perfect, short range deflection that completely shattered Udaeus's balance for a single, microscopic window.
An opening.
With a silent, explosive burst of his agility, Yuuya capitalized on the vacancy. Kurotsuki drew a brilliant, dark crescent through the dim light of the throne room.
CHCK.
The strike was clean, precise, and executed with the best of Yuuya's ability. The dark katana bit deep into the left side of Udaeus's torso, carving cleanly through the reinforced black armor plating and severing the underlying skeletal ribs.
A cloud of dark bone dust erupted from the wound, and the sheer force of the pseudo Level 9 blow caused the massive knight to stumble back three heavy paces, its sabatons scraping loudly against the stone.
Yuuya didn't pursue. He smoothly slid back into a low, defensive guard, his breathing perfectly steady beneath his scarf, his eyes locked onto the damage.
He wanted to see how the dungeon's customized monster rex handled a structural breach.
The answer arrived instantly.
From the deep, jagged laceration along the monster's flank, there was no blood, no marrow, and no pain.
Instead, a thick, swirling vortex of dark violet energy and liquid obsidian surged out from the core of its frame. The bone ash violently reversed its trajectory, pulling itself back into the wound. Within a single fraction of a second, the severed skeletal ribs knitted themselves back together with a series of sickening, metallic snaps.
The outer black armor plates flowed together like molten iron, hardening instantly until the surface was entirely flawless once again.
It healed the entire devastating wound as if it were absolutely nothing.
Yuuya stood perfectly still, his katana held level before him. He didn't curse. He didn't show panic or frustration. A small, deeply tired, and thoroughly amused sigh escaped his lips, blowing the fabric of his Goliath scarf forward slightly.
"So that's one of your active abilities. I'm really starting to get sick of regenerating floor boss." Yuuya murmured, his dry voice echoing cleanly through the sealed, silent chamber. He adjusted the set of his shoulders, his fingers lightly shifting on the hilt of his sword to reset his grip. "But then of course. The dungeon just really loves making my life as miserable as physically possible. Well, one down I guess."
He looked up, his dark eyes meeting the burning crimson embers behind the monster's visor.
"And I seriously wish there was no more to go after this." Yuuya whispered, a sharp, dangerous smirk finally breaking beneath his scarf. "But knowing my luck, we're just getting started."
Udaeus didn't answer with words. The dark knight simply reset its stance, its shortened blade mirroring Yuuya's exact angle once again, the liquid obsidian along its edge humming with a fresh, volatile aura of Level 10 power.
BOOM.
The floorboards vanished again. The two phantoms collided in the center of the white palace, the frantic, blinding symphony of clashing steel resuming with even greater ferocity than before.
But as the fight goes on, the more clear it becomes that the dark king's defense was a nightmare.
Every single trajectory Yuuya calculated, every small opening he managed to squeeze out through the absolute limit of his reflexes, amounted to nothing more than wound.
Kurotsuki would bite through the dense, midnight black bone plating, leaving a jagged fissure that poured dark energy, only for the sovereign's internal mechanics to instantly heal the damage.
The liquid obsidian would flow, the plates would knit, and the Level 10 engine would resume its relentless, terrifying rhythm without losing a single fraction of its momentum.
Clang! Clang!
Yuuya parried a blistering pair of horizontal slashes, the sheer kinetic backlash vibrating violently through his arm.
His boots skidded across the fractured marble, the tattered edges of his long Goliath scarf snapping like a flag in a tempest as it trailed just above his knees.
He couldn't win this way. A standard war of attrition against a fleshless, tireless entity that possessed a literal reset button was a direct ticket to his demise.
He didn't just need to cut the king; he needed to erase it. He needed a single, devastating blow, leaving absolutely nothing behind to regenerate.
His dark eyes narrowed behind his bangs. Inside the absolute silence of the zone, his mind split cleanly into two distinct, independently operating tracks.
He didn't just step back to breathe. He threw himself straight back into the meat grinder, his blade dancing in a desperate, defensive web as his lungs forced out the first heavy, resonant words of Genos Angelus.
Yuuya began concurrent chanting without losing a single small space of spacing in a lethal, high speed sword duel against a Level 10 master.
•Blessing of the root of evil, curse of birth.•
Yuuya whispered, his voice low and raspy beneath his scarf, perfectly steady even as he dipped his torso beneath a lethal thrust that sheared the air inches from his ear.
Udaeus didn't pause.
The crimson visor tracked the motion, the shortened obsidian blade reversing instantly into a brutal, rising diagonal slash meant to cleave Yuuya from hip to shoulder.
•My original sin that devoured half of my body.•
Yuuya continued, the words slipping past his lips in perfect sync with his movements. He brought the flat of Kurotsuki down against the flat of the monster's blade, using the sheer weight of the king's own rising strike to launch his entire body backward in a tight, controlled aerial flip.
•Its not hard. There is no purification. There is no salvation.•
The moment his boots touched the shattered flagstones thirty yards away, the air inside the sealed throne room shifted.
The cold, mechanical vibe of the dungeon was suddenly invaded by a heavy, suffocating divine pressure that smelled faintly of static and ozone.
•The resonance of this heavenly sound is my sin.•
Yuuya chanted, his fingers locked around the hilt of his katana in an iron clad grip, his eyes tracing the dark knight as it closed the distance in a literal heartbeat, its sabatons fracturing the stone with every step.
•The trumpet of gods, the lyre of spirits.•
The space directly above Yuuya's head began to warp. A brilliant, ethereal silver light fractured the gloom of the white palace, bleeding out from the fabric of reality itself.
•The melody of light, that is, the mark of my sins. Loved by the miniature garden, my destiny is shattered.•
Halfway through the final stanza, the silver light coalesced, hardening into a massive grand bell.
Udaeus reached the perimeter of his guard. The shortened obsidian blade descended in a blinding, vertical executioner's strike, carrying enough concentrated mass to flatten a block of Babel itself.
Yuuya didn't move his blade to block. He stood perfectly upright, his dark eyes reflecting the brilliant silver glow of the relic above, his voice rising to a clear, commanding tone that echoed through the vaulted cathedral.
•I hate you. The compensation is here. Destroy everything with the proof of my sin.•
The obsidian blade stopped mere millimeters above the bridge of his nose, caught entirely within a dense, swirling vortex of silver mana that erupted outward from his skin like a solar flare.
•Cry, holy bell tower.•
•GENOS ANGELUS!•
BOOM.
The first toll of the grand bell created a massive, circular shockwave of pure acoustic destruction detonated from the silver rim, rippling outward through the entire room.
The pale ivory walls of the 37th floor immediately buckled. Deep, jagged trenches tore through the solid bedrock of the arena, the masonry grinding and pulverizing into fine, white powder within a fraction of a second.
The air itself turned into a visual distortion of high frequency pressure, a wall of raw magical output designed to cleanly disconnect the molecular bonds of anything caught within its radius.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The bell did not stop. It tolled continuously, a rapid, rhythmic succession of devastating shockwaves that cascaded through every square inch of the sealed chamber.
But amid the roaring, blinding tempest of devastation, Yuuya's eyes remained completely locked forward.
His pupils narrowed. The smirk beneath his scarf slowly dissolved into a flat, look of utter disbelief.
Udaeus hadn't moved a single millimeter.
Throughout the entire ten seconds, as the floorboards beneath its feet were literally vaporized into dust and the pale columns around the room shattered into falling boulders, the dark knight remained standing in its exact, offensive posture.
The shockwaves washed over its midnight black armor plating like water against solid granite. There was no cracking of its bone structure. There was no liquid obsidian flowing to repair a breach.
The magic wasn't even touching it—the moment the shockwave made physical contact with the outer perimeter of its armor, the raw mana simply vanished, dissolving into nothingness as if it had never existed in the first place.
The entity was completely, entirely unbothered. It just stood there in the center of the ruins, its crimson visor burning steadily through the silver haze, patiently waiting for the storm to clear so it could resume the duel.
The ten seconds finally passed.
The ethereal grand bell slowly fractured into shimmering silver dust before dissolving. The absolute silence returned to the throne room, broken only by the rhythmic, distant crackle of settling stone.
Yuuya lowered his stance slightly, his katana held loosely at his side as he looked around at the absolute devastation of the environment—and then back at the perfectly pristine, unblemished armor of the sovereign.
A low, involuntary chuckle escaped his lips. It wasn't a laugh born of despair or madness, but the dry, thoroughly amused reaction of a veteran gambler who had just watched the dealer pull a fifth ace out of a standard deck.
"Great." Yuuya murmured, his voice level and entirely casual as he adjusted the folds of his Goliath scarf, shaking a layer of white stone dust from the dark fabric. "First, the death snake on the 27th floor deflected my spell. Now we have magic nullification? Perfect."
He raised Kurotsuki once again, the dark steel humming in the quiet room as his center of gravity dropped back into the zone.
"The dungeon really didn't want me taking any shortcuts today, did it?" Yuuya whispered, a sharp, dangerous smirk returning beneath his scarf. "Fine then. No shortcuts. Let's do this the hard way."
The absolute stillness that followed the dissipation of the grand bell didn't last a single heartbeat.
Udaeus had played the role of the patient defender long enough. Now that Yuuya used a move other than the sword, it's only fair that it also uses its own arsenal.
The crimson embers behind the dark sovereign's visor flared with a sudden, predatory brilliance. The dungeon's ultimate swordsman was ready to show its own cards.
BOOM.
The dark knight lunged. The sheer velocity of its acceleration instantly converts the space between them into a vacuum.
Its shortened obsidian blade whipped through the air in a vicious, blinding diagonal slash.
Inside the hyper-accelerated perception of the zone, Yuuya's instincts screamed. He didn't try to parry; he violently wrenched his upper torso backward.
The pitch black edge cleaved the air so closely that the trailing fringe of his long Goliath scarf was cleanly sheared away, the severed dark fabric dissolving into the wind.
Before Yuuya could even reset his feet, the sovereign capitalized on the opening.
Udaeus raised its fleshless left hand, the black bone joints popping like gunfire, and drove its fist straight down toward Yuuya's skull with the force of a falling meteor.
Yuuya coiled his legs and launched himself backward, his boots scraping across the fractured marble as he narrowly cleared the impact zone.
The fist struck the floor, instantly pulverizing a ten yard crater into the bedrock and sending a deadly hail of sharp stone shrapnel flying in all directions.
But the assault didn't pause. While still crouched from the ground strike, Udaeus raised its left hand once again.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—
A sickening, rapid succession of structural snaps echoed through the chamber. The human sized skeletal arm didn't just move; it violently expanded.
Within a fraction of a second, the mass of the compressed black bone multiplied exponentially, ballooning outward until it reclaimed the terrifying, colossal proportions of the standard, multi-story Udaeus as it's massive hand loomed over the entire sector of the arena.
The massive, mountain sized fist descended like a falling fortress, intending to utterly crush Yuuya into an unrecognizable smear against the floorboards.
"Tch...!"
Yuuya's dark eyes narrowed to pinpricks. Channeling every ounce of his agility, he threw his body into a desperate, horizontal roll.
The titanic skeletal fist slammed into the earth a millisecond later, generating a massive seismic shockwave that literally tossed Yuuya into the air, the sheer wind pressure threatening to rip the breath straight from his lungs.
As Yuuya twisted mid-air and executed a clumsy, one handed vault to regain his footing, the dark sovereign unleashed another one of its capability.
Udaeus drove its right heel violently into the ground.
SHNK-SHNK-SHNK-SHNK!
Instantly, the shattered marble around Yuuya's landing zone began to erupt. Jagged, spear-like spikes of high density black bone shot up from the earth like a row of malicious jaws, snapping at his heels.
Yuuya didn't hesitate; he broke into a frantic, zigzagging sprint, his long Goliath scarf snapping wildly behind him as he threaded the needle through a rapidly growing labyrinth of lethal obsidian thorns.
Every single step was a calculated gamble. He ran along the collapsing debris, his eyes tracking the floor ahead, predicting the structural tremors beneath the masonry to avoid being impaled from below.
He was managing the distance, holding the line through sheer martial genius—until the dungeon itself actively rewrote the terrain.
As Yuuya lunged forward to plant his right boot onto a seemingly stable piece of pale stone, the floorboards didn't just tremble; they actively transformed.
The very marble beneath his descending sole liquefied into a nest of miniature, interlocking bone teeth that snapped shut around his boot with the force of an iron vice.
The jagged black points bit deep into the leather, anchoring his foot immovably to the core bedrock of the floor.
"Damn it—!"
Yuuya's forward momentum was instantly, violently arrested. He was completely immobilized, his center of gravity shattered, his body trapped out in the open like a tethered target.
In that exact micro-second of vulnerability, Udaeus entered its final phase.
The colossal left arm rapidly contracted, snapping back into its sleek, humanoid proportions in the blink of an eye.
The dark sovereign stood twenty paces away, its crimson visor locked onto the trapped vanguard.
It dropped into a terrifyingly low, compressed swordsman's stance—its knees bent at an impossible angle, its left hand gripping the hilt of the obsidian katana as the entire frame gathered every single shred of its Level 10 strength and speed.
From Yuuya's point of view, the world went entirely silent.
The monster didn't just run. It didn't just dash. The moment Udaeus initiated the launch, its entire silhouette simply vanished from Yuuya's vision.
There was no afterimage. There was no distortion in the air. The absolute pinnacle of Level 10 velocity had surpassed the processing speed of the human optic nerve entirely.
'He's gone—'
A cold, primal spike of absolute dread pierced straight through Yuuya's chest. The zone couldn't predict a target that didn't exist in the visual field.
Then, a sudden, heavy pressure materialized directly behind him.
Yuuya's head snapped around instinctively, his dark eyes widening as he looked over his shoulder.
A few paces behind his locked position, Udaeus was already standing perfectly upright. The dark knight's back was turned to him, its obsidian blade held loosely out to the side, dripping with a faint, wispy trail of dark smoke.
The posture was absolute, chilling perfection—the stance of a master executioner who had already completed the strike and walked away before the target could even comprehend their own demise.
Before Yuuya's brain could even register the sequence of events, reality caught up.
SPLURT.
A single, massive diagonal line of agony erupted violently across Yuuya's torso.
The fabric of his clothes parted instantly, followed by a deep, horrific tearing of flesh and muscle. A heavy, brilliant spray of crimson blood erupted into the cold air of the white palace, painting the shattered marble in a grim, visceral arc.
"GAHH—!"
The sheer trauma of the Level 10 strike hit his nervous system like a lightning bolt. Yuuya's grip on Kurotsuki faltered, the dark katana slipping from his fingers as his knees violently buckled beneath him.
He crashed heavily against the stone, his hands instinctively clutching at his chest as a massive surge of blood pools on the floor.
His vision blurred, the edges of his consciousness fraying as the agonizing heat of the wound threatened to drop him into shock.
'He got me...' Yuuya thought, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps that caused the blood on his lips to bubble. 'The speed... it wasn't even something I could react to.'
He looked down at his trembling, blood soaked hands. The diagonal laceration stretched cleanly from his left shoulder down to his right hip.
The flesh had been parted with terrifying precision.
But as his cold, analytical mind forced its way through the blinding fog of pain, a realization dawned on him—a realization that sent a genuine chill down his spine.
During that microscopic window of surprise, right when he was a bit surprised because Udaeus was about to launch, his upper body had instinctively leaned back by a mere fraction of an inch.
And that small act saved his life.
If he hadn't leaned back in that exact, nameless fraction of a second...
The obsidian blade wouldn't have just carved through his chest muscles. It would have sliced cleanly through his abdominal wall, and right now, his intestines would be spilling out across the ruined floor of the Throne Room.
He was alive by a margin sheerly out of luck.
Across the ruined arena, the humanoid Udaeus slowly turned around, its skeletal joints clacking softly in the silence.
The crimson visor slit burned steadily through the haze of blood and stone dust, looking down at the kneeling, bleeding anomaly with the cold, absolute certainty of a sovereign who knew the execution was nearly complete.
The moment the dark sovereign's attack sequence concluded, the jagged black bone teeth binding Yuuya's right boot instantly dissolved. They shattered into a fine, weightless ash, vanishing back into the fractured bedrock as quickly as they had appeared. The trap had served its purpose.
Yuuya lay on his side, his breath hitching as a cold sweat mixed with the pooling crimson on the floor. Deep within his status, his passive Regen skill was already working overtime, flickering with a dull warmth as it desperately tried to knit the wound.
But against a wound of that level, the passive healing was entirely too slow. At this rate, he would bleed out long before the tissue could even close.
With a trembling right hand, Yuuya forced his thoughts to breach the fog of pain, reaching out for his system storage.
A small, familiar ripple in space manifested above his palm. A single, heavy glass vial filled with a brilliant, swirling elixir dropped into his grip. He didn't waste a fraction of a second. Yuuya violently ripped the cork away with his teeth and downed the entire contents in a single, desperate gulp.
Luckily, even though the System itself is offline, it's storage function is still working.
The high-grade healing potion hit his system like liquid fire. A violent, agonizing hiss echoed from his chest as the raw, concentrated medicine forced his flesh to bind.
The severed blood vessels closed, the deep laceration over his sternum stitched itself together, and the burning agony receded into a dull, throbbing ache.
Yuuya let out a long, ragged exhale, wiping a smear of dark blood from his lips with the back of his hand. He looked down at the empty vial before shattering it against the stone. That was it. His absolute last potion.
He had plunged into the lower zones of the dungeon in such a frantic, unholy hurry that he hadn't given himself a single hour to properly stock his inventory. He was entirely out of safety nets.
Across the ruined arena, Udaeus didn't move.
The dark knight stood perfectly still, its obsidian blade held loosely at its side, its crimson visor burning steadily through the dust.
It didn't capitalize on his weakness. It didn't strike while he was down. Out of that same bizarre, ancient chivalry it had displayed when modifying its weapon, the sovereign simply stood watch, allowing its challenger the necessary time to stand and reclaim his steel.
"Heh... a monster with a code of honor." Yuuya muttered, his voice raspy as he reached down, his fingers wrapping firmly around the familiar, lacquered hilt of Kurotsuki. "I wish the dungeon is the same as you, it really went all out when it built you."
Yuuya forced his legs to straighten, pushing himself up from the blood stained masonry until he stood perfectly level once again. He adjusted the tattered, shortened remains of his long Goliath scarf, letting the dark fabric settle just above his knees.
The two combatants locked eyes—one pair dark and fiercely alive, the other a hidden, crimson ember within a hollow skull.
Slowly, instinctively, they began to circle one another. They moved in a wide radius around the pulverized center of the Throne Room. Neither raised their weapon into an active guard just yet.
Instead, Yuuya let the tip of Kurotsuki drop to the earth, the dark steel dragging heavily against the fractured marble. A pace away, Udaeus mirrored the gesture perfectly, its shortened obsidian bone-blade scraping along the stone.
Screeeeech—
The dual, high pitched grating of metal and compressed bone slicing through rock echoed through the sealed chamber like a funeral dirge.
A thin, continuous trail of bright orange sparks danced behind their heels as they walked, maintaining an absolute, unchanging distance between them.
Inside the quiet sanctuary of the zone, Yuuya's mind was spinning with cold, ruthless calculation. He was analyzing every single frame of the disaster that had just occurred.
'The conclusion is simple.' Yuuya thought, his eyes tracking the micro-movements of the knight's armored shoulders. 'With my current speed and strength, that sequence is completely inescapable. The floor trap, the sudden mass expansion of its arm, the zero frame acceleration... it's a flawless, certified checkmate. The dungeon engineered that entire combo specifically to execute me in the one area where I excel the most—the domain of the blade.'
If Udaeus initiated that exact phase again, Yuuya knew with absolute certainty that he wouldn't survive a second time. The survival reflex that had saved him before wouldn't work twice against a Level 10 master swordsman.
He couldn't dodge it. He couldn't outrun it.
If he wanted to defeat Udaeus, he needs to fight it with his blade. He needed a single, catastrophic output of offensive power that could bypass the monster's defenses, healing properties, and vaporize its core in a single hit—just like the desperate, two-stage gospel he had used to solo the Black Goliath in his past.
Then, an idea flashed through the dark recesses of his mind. A technical application of combat mechanics he had been turning over in his head for a long time.
Afterglow.
A technique developed by the Zeus and Hera familia.
In which the user utilizes a strengthening magic or skill on a bladed weapon to create a shockwave slash that can reach a target far away.
But Yuuya isn't fighting a long range opponent, he planned to use it for it's firepower.
More than that, Afterglow is purely a weapon attack; classified as a technique, not a magic.
Meaning, Udaeus's magic nullifying ability won't work on it, because it was never a magic to begin with.
But the question weighed heavily on his mind.
"Can I even pull it off right now? Can I pull it off on the first try?'
He had zero time left to contemplate the theory.
Udaeus stopped its stride. The grating sound of its obsidian blade ceased instantly.
It dropped its stance, signifying that it was about to attack. And it looks like the monster was gonna do its sequence of attack again.
Yuuya didn't try to run. A cold, fierce clarity washed over his features, and a sharp, dangerous smile broke beneath his scarf.
'I guess I'll find out the hard way.' his final thoughts raced as his fingers locked onto Kurotsuki with an iron-clad grip. 'I will either master it right here, or I'll die trying. If I can't dodge the sequence, then I won't even try. I'll meet it head on. I'll counter-attack at the exact moment of impact.'
In that final, quiet second, Yuuya finally understood the true depth of what the System had told him before going dark. This wasn't just a standard floor boss encounter. This was a direct challenge issued by the autonomous will of the dungeon and the world itself.
The labyrinth had brought forth its ultimate creation, using its ultimate, customized sequence to erase him from existence.
And in return, it was demanding that he answer with his own—the absolute peak of his current ability, synthesized into a single, flawless stroke of the sword.
Udaeus's silhouette began to blur, the air around its frame distorting as it prepared to vanish from reality.
Yuuya stepped forward into the path of destruction.
"Let's see whose blade is stronger then, shall we, king?" Yuuya whispered.
Then at that instant, the Udaeus shifted its weight, the midnight black plates of its compressed armor sliding together with a sequence of heavy, mechanical clicks that signaled the reopening of its absolute execution loop. It was resetting the inescapable phase.
Yuuya stood twenty paces away, his dark eyes fixed entirely on the crimson visor slit of the dark king.
He didn't raise Kurotsuki into a defensive guard. He didn't prepare a counter parry. Instead, with a slow, deliberate movement that defied every basic survival instinct of an adventurer, he slid the dark steel back into its scabbard.
Clack.
The clean, solitary sound of the guard meeting the throat of the sheath echoed through the white ruins. He already concluded that trying to fight Udaeus during his sequence of attacks is nothing short of a distant dream. So why even bother drawing the blade.
Just then, Udaeus began its onslaught.
Udaeus lunged. The velocity of its takeoff tore a vacuum through the center of the arena, its shortened obsidian blade whipping forward in a vicious, blinding diagonal slash.
Inside the hyper-focused space of the zone, Yuuya's instincts flared; he violently wrenched his upper body back, the pitch black edge shearing the air so close to his chin that the wind pressure drew a faint line of crimson across his cheek.
The monster didn't waste a single frame. It raised its fleshless left hand, and drove its fist straight down into the shattered masonry.
Yuuya leaped backward, his feet clearing the ground a millisecond before the impact pulverized a ten yard crater into the bedrock, sending a deadly cloud of stone shrapnel flying outward.
While he was still mid-air, the sovereign's left arm violently expanded again. The compressed black bone mass multiplied exponentially, ballooning into terrifying, colossal proportions. Looming over the entire sector of the arena as it descended like a falling fortress to flatten him into a smear.
Yuuya twisted his torso, using every ounce of his pseudo Level 9 agility to execute a desperate, horizontal dive. The fist slammed into the earth, generating a massive seismic tremor that literally tossed him back onto his feet.
Udaeus drove its right heel into the ground, triggering its ability once more.
SHNK-SHNK-SHNK-SHNK!
Jagged, spear-like spikes of high-density black bone shot up from the earth like rows of snapping jaws. Yuuya broke into a frantic, zigzagging sprint, the tattered remains of his long Goliath scarf snapping wildly as he threaded the needle through the growing labyrinth of obsidian thorns.
He ran, his eyes tracking the floor ahead, predicting the structural tremors beneath the masonry to avoid being impaled from below.
And then, the fated moment has arrived.
As his right boot descended onto a seemingly stable flagstone, the marble liquefied into a nest of interlocking bone teeth that snapped shut around his boot with the force of an iron vice, anchoring his foot immovably to the core bedrock.
He was completely trapped. The inescapable sequence had reached its conclusion.
But this time, Yuuya didn't panic. He didn't struggle against the bone vice.
If the dungeon demanded that he beat its ultimate creation through a display of his own absolute peak, then he would give it exactly what it asked for. His ultimate would, and shall, strike true. For if he cut, it would cut.
He had allowed himself to be trapped while already down in a low, compressed, iron clad stance.
His left hand firmly gripped the scabbard, tilting it at a precise angle against his hip, while his right fingers rested lightly, unyieldingly, upon the lacquered hilt of Kurotsuki.
Deep within the quiet sanctuary of his mind, the memory of his past trials flowed past like a calm river. Back in the forge of Hephaestus, under the expectant eyes of the gods, he had turned over the fundamental philosophy of the blade in his head.
'In the battlefield, bladed weapons such as swords are usually stored in their scabbard for simple and sometimes obvious reasons.' Yuuya had thought back then, his breathing slowing to an absolute crawl. 'But, once the opponents do appear, the first course of action is, simply drawing your weapon out of its scabbard. In my country, there is a martial art that specializes in this motion. It's called "Iaijutsu", the martial arts of quickly drawing a sword. Simply put, a quick draw.'
He closed his eyes against the looming shadow of the dark king.
'Drawing your sword is the most basic way of starting a combat. A quick draw uses that motion as an attack as well. Some will argue that the main purpose of Iaijutsu is to respond to surprise attacks. But—for me, I take the act of putting a sword back to its scabbard as a reset and ultimately, a way to attack. A way to prepare yourself for one, singular sword stroke with all of your technique and strength behind it.'
It was a motion he had kept on perfecting until the day he graduated high school. And now, backed by the terrifying, burning weight of a pseudo Level 9 strength, it was no longer a human martial art. It was a tool. A tool for his victory.
If he cuts, it will cut.
Yuuya forced his mind to focus past its absolute limits. His consciousness split into a dozen independent tracks, ignoring the screaming of his muscles as he prepared his armament.
•Gospel.•
Yuuya casted Satanas Verion into his blade, intending to enhance his weapon through it. He needed every single ounce of firepower available in his arsenal right now..
Then came the final, untested application. Afterglow.
'Normally, Afterglow needed some sort of strengthening magic or skill for it to work.' Yuuya thought. 'Unfortunately, I don't have one right now. But I think my mana should compensate for it just fine.'
Drawing upon his extensive past experience with shaping and manipulating his raw mana blade and two-stage gospel before Kurotsuki had been forged, Yuuya visualized his mana again.
Using the dark katana as a primary medium, he forced his pure, raw mana outward through the seams of the scabbard.
An ethereal blue aura manifested over his hands, coating the sheathed weapon in a flickering shroud of celestial light. But he didn't let it sit as a loose flame.
Yuuya clamped down on the energy with the absolute weight of his willpower, forcing the ethereal blue mana to violently condense, solidify, and sharpen.
He compressed the mana down, shaving away the excess energy until it formed a microscopic, hyper-dense, and utterly flat line of absolute, unstoppable force resting right along the leading edge of the blade.
It wasn't a wide shockwave anymore; it was an invisible, razor-thin wire of pure devastation waiting to be unleashed through the velocity of the draw.
In his forward sight, Udaeus entered its final phase of attack.
The colossal left arm of the titan snapped back into its sleek, humanoid proportions in a fraction of a heartbeat.
The dark sovereign stood twenty paces away, dropping into its ultra low, compressed swordsman's stance. The crimson visor slit burned through the darkness like a death sentence.
And then finally—
BOOM.
Udaeus launched. The absolute pinnacle of Level 10 velocity shattered the air, the dark king converting into a looming, instantaneous specter of death as its obsidian blade cut a zero frame trajectory toward Yuuya's throat.
At the exact same micro-second, before Udaeus even launched itself, Yuuya began his draw.
Pulling Kurotsuki from its sheath in a flawless, perfect technique with a velocity that caused the surrounding air and space to violently distort, warping the light around the two blades into a fractured mirror.
Then, the absolute horror of reality pierced through the zone.
Even after all of his preparation, Yuuya only boosted his firepower while his speed remained the same.
Meanwhile, Udaeus still remained faster than him. The reality of the level difference was unyielding—the dark king's obsidian blade was moving at a velocity that would clear the distance and cleave Yuuya's skull open a fraction of a second before Kurotsuki could fully clear the mouth of the scabbard.
He was going to lose the race by a millisecond.
'No... I'm not letting it end here.' Yuuya's soul roared in the silence of the vacuum.
He didn't lose hope. He didn't falter. In that final, desperate boundary between life and death, Yuuya mustered every single shred of strength remaining within his frame.
He willingly sacrificed and put everything into this one, singular swing.
With a brutal, internal snap of his consciousness, he completely shut down his secondary systems. He sacrificed his sense of smell. He sacrificed his sense of taste. He abandoned his hearing, his peripheral vision, and his very perception of pain—funneling the entirely redirected neural energy straight into this one swing.
The sheer, unholy strain of forcing a human body to exceed it's limit caused his physiology to violently fracture.
The blood vessels throughout his entire body and right forearm violently burst beneath the skin, painting his arm in a sudden, dark sheath of crimson as his flesh cracked open under the immense pressure.
A heavy, dark stream of blood began to pour from his eyes, his nose, and his ears, splashing across the collar of his Goliath scarf.
He didn't need his senses. He didn't need to see the world. He didn't need to witness anything past this moment.
All he needed was this one, solitary strike. He didn't need a second longer, he needed only one second.
One second is enough.
The cue left his blood-slicked lips in a silent, commanding roar that shook the foundations of his soul.
"Strike True — Afterglow!"
The dark katana cleared the sheath, the compressed, solidified blue wire of Afterglow and Satanas Verion reinforced blade—slices through the fabric of space itself as it arched forward to meet the oncoming darkness.
The two ultimates collided. An ultimate against an ultimate; an unstoppable force colliding against another unstoppable force.
The sheer, cataclysmic force of their strongest attack clashing head on generated a blinding white explosion of raw energy that instantly engulfed the entire throne room, vaporizing the falling stone and swallowing both Yuuya and the king in a silent, all consuming void of pure destruction.
Eventually, the blinding light of raw mana and kinetic impact slowly receded, peeling back from the center of the Great Throne Room like a dying star.
The violent tempest of silver light and dark energy dissolved into a heavy, swirling fog of pulverized ivory dust and ozone, leaving behind an absolute, suffocating silence.
As the light finally settled, the grim reality of the exchange manifested in the center of the ruins.
Yuuya stood perfectly frozen in the definitive finishing posture of his quick draw. His right arm was extended fully to his side, the dark steel of Kurotsuki held low and angled toward the earth, tracing the precise trajectory his blade had taken through the vacuum.
He was completely broken.
The physical sacrifice he needed to do to compensate for the difference in speed, is heavy to say the least.
Dark, heavy drops of blood bubbled from his nostrils, his lips, and his ears, dripping steadily onto the shattered flagstones below. His forearms were completely painted in a slick curtain of crimson where the subcutaneous blood vessels had violently ruptured under the torque of the swing.
The sleek, dark armor he wore was entirely shredded into jagged fragments, his clothes torn to ribbons along his torso that expose some of the bare skin of his upper body.
Across his chest and shoulders, his skin looked like cracked porcelain, deep crimson fissures weeping blood where his muscle fibers had threatened to tear themselves away from the bone.
His eyes were wide, but they held no focus. A thick layer of blood continued to struggle through his tear ducts, completely obscuring his vision and leaving him temporarily, totally blind.
He couldn't see the arena. He couldn't see his opponent. He could only hear the ragged, desperate, and agonizingly heavy sound of his own lungs fighting for air beneath the tattered remains of his Goliath scarf.
Inside the dark, sensory vacuum of his mind, Yuuya couldn't even tell if he was still standing. He didn't know if his blade had found its mark, or if the dark king's obsidian edge was currently resting inside his skull. He was simply suspended in a void of pure exhaustion, waiting for the world to claim him.
But, he had succeeded.
A few paces ahead of him, the humanoid manifestation of Udaeus stood completely motionless.
To a blind eye, the dark sovereign appeared entirely whole. Its obsidian blade was frozen halfway through its descent, the razor-sharp edge hovering exactly an entire palm's width away from the dark fabric of Yuuya's Goliath scarf.
The crimson visor slit burned with a faint, static hum, its posture locked in the final frame of its ultimate.
But the environment behind the monster told a completely different story.
Far past Udaeus's position, stretching across the entire width of the colossal chamber, the reinforced ivory wall of the 37th floor had been permanently changed.
A massive, deep horizontal fissure had been violently etched into the bedrock, cutting a straight, clean line through the ancient masonry that reached dozens of yards deep.
It was the monstrous, lingering byproduct of the Afterglow—a line of absolute annihilation that had sliced through everything in its path.
Slide.
A sharp, grating sound of bone armor shifting broke the quiet.
Slowly, structurally, the dark king's upper torso began to tilt. It slid diagonally off the axis of its hips, completely separated from its lower half by a perfectly flat, horizontal plane. As the top half of the skeleton parted from its legs, the interior core of its frame was briefly exposed to the dim light of the palace.
Nestled deep within the midnight black ribcage, the massive, violet Monster Rex magic stone had been cut cleanly in two.
CRASH.
The two halves of the armor struck the pulverized marble floor. The moment the severed magic stone made contact with the earth, the internal energy network of the sovereign completely collapsed.
The midnight black bone plate bursts into a colossal wave of thick, weightless gray ash, cascading across the ruins of the throne room like a dark winter snow.
The pressure vanished almost instantly. The suffocating Level 10 gravity evaporated from the room in a single breath.
Yuuya's legs finally gave out. With the target eliminated and the adrenaline violently draining from his system, his knees buckled.
Kurotsuki slipped from his numbed, blood soaked fingers, clattering softly against the stone as he collapsed heavily onto his side, his chest heaving.
The fight was done. He had dethroned the king.
"Take that... you insufferable... Dungeon..." Yuuya muttered, catching his breath in between his words, his voice barely a raspy whisper beneath his scarf.
Then suddenly, a voice—or rather, his voice echoed in his mind.
[You crazy bastard. You actually pulled it off. For a second, I thought you were finished there.] The System said. [But we can do "wows" later. First of all, congratulations, Yuuya. You have successfully conquered the unique manifestation of Udaeus and since I can now communicate with you again, that also means I can now update your falna.]
The moment the transmission registered, an immense, overwhelming torrent of Excelia—the accumulated experience of slaying a maxed out Level 10 entity alone and blind while also completing a unofficial quest—flooded straight into his back.
[It is now done, Yuuya. You're now a Level 6.] The System said. [And now that I think about it, you liked a hammered shi—I mean, goblin. Yeah. Here, the level up actually caused your passive skill
Instantly, the dull, flickering warmth of his old healing skill was replaced by a roaring, emerald green fire that ignited deep within his bone marrow.
The effect of his newly upgraded skill was immediate and terrifyingly efficient. Across his exposed chest and arms, the deep, bleeding fissures began to hiss loudly as clouds of white steam rose from his skin.
The ruptured blood vessels beneath his forearms knitted themselves back together in a matter of seconds, the purple bruising fading rapidly as fresh, oxygenated blood was forced back into his limbs. The torn muscle fibers along his torso re-aligned with a series of deep, internal clicks.
The thick curtain of blood obscuring his eyes was rapidly absorbed and purged by his closing tear ducts. His vision flickered, the heavy blur clearing away until the pale, ash covered ruins of the Throne Room came back into sharp, pristine focus.
Yuuya lay flat on his back for several long minutes, staring up at the vaulted ivory ceiling as he heals.
With a brutal, groaning effort, he rolled onto his stomach, pushing himself off the ash strewn marble. He reached down, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of Kurotsuki, puts it back in its sheath, then uses the sheathed weapon like a cane to force himself back up.
He didn't wait around for a response. Holding Kurotsuki tightly, Yuuya began the long, agonizing trek back toward the surface.
He braced himself for the inevitable onslaught of monsters, knowing that a single group of Spartoi or a stray Skull Sheep could easily finish what Udaeus started. But as he cleared the shattered throne room and entered the grand corridors of the 37th floor, the expected roars never came.
The labyrinth was dead silent.
Yuuya walked through the polished ivory halls. Not a single monster materialized from the pale walls. A dry, exhausted chuckle escaped his lips as he figured out the reason behind the eerie peace.
The dungeon wasn't showing him mercy; it was simply bankrupt.
Between condensing its entire energy into a maxed out Level 10 Udaeus and attempting to repair the catastrophic structural damage caused by his Afterglow slash, the Dungeon had completely drained its immediate pool of resources. Or as Yuuya likes to call it; the Dungeon hesistantly accepting it's defeat.
Yuuya eventually reached the 18th floor, but as the ambient warmth of the safety zone hit his face, but it brought no comfort.
A sudden, cold spike of anxiety pierced through his exhaustion. He stopped by the edge of a crystal clear lake, his reflection showing a haggard, blood splattered ghost.
'Hey.' Yuuya called out internally, his mind straining to connect with his mental interface. 'What's the clock looking like on the surface? How much time do we have left?'
A heavy sigh echoed directly within his consciousness.
[It's bad, Yuuya.] the System said, its voice low and heavy. [Ever since the Dian Cecht Familia diagnosed Bell's condition, we are currently hours away from the fifteen day deadline. As we speak, he is currently in his room on the Heart Manor, currently suffering from a high fever.]
Yuuya's heart hammered violently against his ribs. The news washed away the last traces of his combat-induced numbness, replaced by a cold, driving panic. He had hours. Not days. Hours.
The travel way back up took him longer than expected.
'No more waiting.' Yuuya commanded, his mental voice cutting through the fog with absolute, terrifying authority. 'We do it right now. Start up the
[Are you sure?] the System asked, its tone laced with concern. [Look at yourself man, you just dragged your soul back from all of that and you still haven't recovered properly. If I initiate the creation sequence now, the mana consumption...]
'It's fine. Nothing I can't handle.' Yuuya replied as he forced his body into a frantic, limping stride toward the upper tunnels. 'But I do have a favor to ask. I don't care if my total pool runs dry. No matter what happens, you are not allowed to let me succumb to Mind Down. Do whatever it takes to keep me awake. If I pass out down here and waste a single—worse, two days sleeping off a mana drought, Bell dies. I won't allow it.'
There was a long, agonizing pause within his head. The System remained silent for several heartbeats, the sheer weight of Yuuya's resolve pressing down on its operational parameters.
[It's going to be absolute agony, Yuuya.] the System whispered, its voice laced with a deep, tragic reluctance.
"Do it." Yuuya replied, his dark eyes burning with an unyielding intensity. "I didn't climb out of that pit to fail at the finish line."
[Alright then, brace yourself.]
The reaction was instantaneous and horrifying.
Yuuya didn't just feel a drain; he felt as though his very soul was being pulled through a meat grinder. The newly evolved Greater Regeneration skill, which had just finished sealing the wounds from his duel with Udaeus, shuts down as a payment for staying awake despite a mind down.
Across his chest, shoulders, and forearms, the newly formed scar tissue ruptured. The skin cracked open along the exact same diagonal lines of his previous injuries, bright crimson blood immediately welling up and staining his shredded clothes.
The pain was blinding—a tearing sensation that felt as if someone were pouring molten iron directly into his open veins.
He stumbled, his vision swimming with a violent cascade of white spots, but he refused to fall. He clamped his teeth together so hard a molar cracked, forcing his legs to keep moving forward, one bloody step at a time.
Inside his mind, a brilliant, blinding blue script began to write itself across his consciousness, burning away his thoughts until only the definitive structure of the magic remained.
[Magic/Skill Creation: Successful.]
[Designation: Soul Heal (New Magic).]
The moment the spell was finalized, the internal tearing sensation ceased, leaving behind a hollow, terrifyingly empty void where his mana pool used to be.
His magic reservoir was completely bottomed out, sitting at an absolute zero. Yet, true to his desperate command, the System held his consciousness in, artificially forcing his brain to remain functional, preventing the defensive slumber of a Mind Down from claiming his senses.
As he walks, Yuuya eventually realized just how exhausted he really was. For fourteen consecutive days, he had not stopped moving. Not once during those two weeks had he sat down for a proper, warm meal. Not once had he allowed himself a single hour of real, uninterrupted sleep.
The only real rest he has so far, if it can even be called a rest, was back when Bell rescued Haruhime.
All that just to reach level 6 under two weeks. Just so that he can heal Bell.
"Haha..." Yuuya laughed weakly. "How the hell am I even still standing..."
∆∆∆∆
The twilight air of the surface world should have been a relief, but to Yuuya, it felt heavy, thick, and suffocating.
The moment his blood soaked boots stepped out of Babel's grand entrance and onto the bustling streets of Orario, the ambient noise of the city seemed to briefly falter.
Passersby, merchants, and adventurers stopped in their tracks, turning to look at him with expressions of sheer horror and deep concern due to his current state.
He looked like a ghost dragging its own corpse through the streets.
He didn't care about the stares. He didn't care about the trail of blood he was leaving behind on the cobblestones.
His eyes, though heavy and bloodshot, were fixed entirely on the path leading to the Hearth Manor.
Inside his mind, the countdown was screaming. Bell was running out of time. The high fever currently ravaging the boy's body wasn't just a symptom; it was a sign that his incurable disease is about to give his body a beating.
'Just a little further...'Yuuya thought, his vision violently tilting as his knee buckled, forcing him to catch himself against the stone wall of an alley. 'Don't drop now.'
"Y-Yuuya-kun?!"
A sharp, incredibly loud gasp shattered the haze in his mind. From the edge of the street, a familiar figure with dark skin and short black hair came sprinting toward him.
Tiona's cheerful demeanor was entirely gone, her Amazonian features completely twisted with an overwhelming sense of panic and concern as she looked at his shredded body.
She reached out, her hands hovering over his bleeding shoulders, terrified that touching him might break whatever was keeping him upright.
"Yuuya-kun, what happened to you?! What did you do down there?!" Tiona cried, her voice trembling as she looked into his hollow eyes. "You're... you're falling apart! We need to get you to Airmid or a clinic right now!"
Yuuya slowly raised his head, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps beneath the tattered remains of his scarf. He looked at her, his expression carrying a mix of urgency and a desperate, burning spark of hope that he had never shown to anyone before.
"Tiona..." Yuuya rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "I don't have time for a clinic. Bell... I need to get to the Manor. Right now."
He felt his muscles violently misfire, his balance slipping entirely.
"I'm going to collapse. Please... do me a favor. Carry me."
Seeing the sheer, unyielding urgency and the desperate hope cutting through his exhaustion, Tiona didn't waste a single second asking further questions. She immediately stepped in front of him, dropping into a low crouch.
"Hold on tight!" she said, her tone uncharacteristically solemn.
Yuuya leaned his weight forward, his bloodied arms draping over her shoulders.
With the effortless grace of a Level 6, Tiona launched herself forward, carrying him on her back as she sprinted through the winding streets of Orario, carefully navigating the turns to minimize the jarring impact on his fractured body.
Within minutes, the familiar, grand gates of the Hearth Manor loomed ahead. Tiona skidded to a halt right at the doorstep, gently lowering her legs so Yuuya could slide down from her back.
Yuuya's boots hit the stone with a dull thud. He leaned heavily against the wooden frame of the door, his breath hitching as the sudden shift in weight sent a fresh spike of agony through his cracked skin. He looked at the Amazon, his dark eyes softening with a profound, bone-deep gratitude.
"Thank you, Tiona." Yuuya murmured, his hand resting on the door handle to stabilize himself. "Whenever you have a favor to ask... anything at all... I will immediately repay it. I swear it. You can... you can go now. I can take it from here."
Tiona stood on the steps, her fingers twisting together anxiously as she looked at the fresh blood soaking into his tattered clothes.
"Yuuya... is it really fine? You look like you're going to die if you take another step. Let me go inside with you. Let me help."
Yuuya paused. He forced his shattered facial muscles to move, lifting the corners of his lips beneath his scarf to fashion the most genuine, reassuring smile he could possibly muster through the absolute fog of his exhaustion. He didn't want her carrying this weight. He wanted to ease her worries, even if only a little bit.
"It's fine, Tiona. Really." Yuuya whispered, his smile steady despite the blood on his teeth. "The hard part is over. I just have to deliver the cure."
Tiona stared at his smile for a long moment, the sheer sincerity of it causing her to slowly step back, though the deep concern in her eyes never truly faded.
"Okay... but if I hear that something bad happens to you, I won't be able to forgive myself, then I'll punch you, and then I would spend all of your valis as the repayment for my favor okay?"
"Got it." Yuuya replied softly.
He turned away from the twilight air, pushing the heavy wooden door open, entering inside before closing it.
As Yuuya entered inside the manor, a familiar voice broke through the silence.
"Yuuya-sama?!"
A sharp, horrified shriek shattered the quiet of the foyer. Lilli dropped the wooden basin she was carrying, the water splashing wildly across the floorboards as she stared at him. Her small hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with absolute terror.
The commotion instantly pulled the rest of the manor's occupants from their vigil. Heavy, frantic footsteps echoed from the stairs and the adjacent hallways.
Welf rushed into the hall first, his body freezing instantly as his jaw dropped in sheer disbelief.
From the doorway of Bell's room, Hestia, Mikoto, and Haruhime emerged, their faces pale from days of worry—only to turn completely translucent at the sight before them.
Yuuya was a tapestry of violence and ruin. The deep, jagged cracks across his upper body were actively weeping crimson, staining the tattered shreds of his clothes. His skin looked like parchment that had been held over a fire, and the scent of burnt ozone and iron rolled off his frame in suffocating waves.
"Y-Yuuya..." Hestia choked out, her hands trembling as she took a tentative step forward, her divine aura flaring in pure panic. "What... what in the world...?"
"Lili..." Yuuya interrupted, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that cut right through the rising hysteria in the room. "Don't just stand there. Bring me a mind recovery potion, a healing potion, and a stamina potion if we currently have one. Right now, please."
His exhausted plead snapped Lili out of her paralysis.
"R-Right away, please wait a moment!" she cried, her small boots skidding on the wet floor as she turned and bolted down the basement corridor like a gale wind.
With Lili gone, the heavy silence returned, thick and suffocating. Welf stepped forward, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"Hey... man... what did you do to yourself?" the smith asked, his voice shaking with a rare, raw emotion. "You look like you fought an entire army by yourself..."
Hestia rushed to his side, tears already welling in her eyes as she reached out, wanting to touch him but terrified of worsening the horrific lacerations tracing his skin.
"Yuuya, talk to me! What happened down there?! Why are you so injured?! What did you do?!"
Despite the blinding fog of exhaustion threatening to pull his consciousness into the abyss, the corner of Yuuya's mouth twitched upward beneath his blood stained scarf. He let out a weak, raspy huff that was supposed to be a laugh.
"Calm down, Goddess..." Yuuya murmured, his hand tightening on the hilt of his katana to keep his balance from completely failing. "It's nothing major. Just... took a little stroll through the middle floors. Ended up falling down the stairs." He paused, his breath hitching as a sharp spark of pain flared in his chest. "A really long... exceptionally thorny set of stairs."
"This isn't the time for jokes!" Hestia cried, a tear finally spilling over her cheek. "You're bleeding from your eyes and ears! You have been in the dungeon for two weeks without even spending a single night of rest here!"
Yuuya's smile slowly faded, replaced by an expression of unyielding, absolute gravity.
He looked past Hestia, his gaze landing on the partially open door of Bell's room.
He took a heavy, deliberate step forward, his boots leaving a faint, smear of crimson on the floorboards.
"I'm not joking about the result, Goddess." Yuuya said, his voice dropping into a tone that carried the definitive weight of a man who had conquered hell itself. He looked directly into Hestia's eyes. "I can cure him. Right now. I have the capability to save Bell."
Hestia's breath hitched in her throat, her hands freezing mid-air.
"C-Cure him? Yuuya, that's impossible... Airmid clearly said that it's incurable—"
"Master Yuuya! I have them!"
Lili's frantic cry cut through the Goddess's spiral of panic.
The small prum burst back into the foyer, her chest heaving as she held three distinct, glowing glass vials out in her trembling hands.
Without a single word, Yuuya took the bottles from her grip. He popped the corks in rapid succession and drank it all.
The effect was immediate. The deep, weeping cracks along his chest and forearms. His deathly pale complexion regained a fraction of its natural color, and the violent tremors racking his limbs slowly smoothed out into a stable, functional rhythm.
He wasn't fully healed—not by a long shot—but the ghost had finally been anchored back to the realm of the living.
Yuuya wiped a lingering trail of blue potion residue from his lips, his dark eyes sharpening as he turned his back on the stunned crowd.
"Haruhime, open the door."
The fox girl nodded, her tail fluffing out in anxiety as she slid the wooden door to Bell's room fully open. Yuuya stepped inside, his boots no longer dragging, but his posture still bearing the exhaustion of his two week crusade.
When Yuuya entered the room, the vibe was heavy. On the center bed, Bell lay buried beneath a white sheet.
The boy's white hair was plastered against his forehead with sweat, his skin flushed a deep, unnatural crimson as his body tried to fight the disease.
Hearing the heavy footsteps, Bell's eyelids fluttered open, his red eyes struggling to focus on the silhouette towering over his bed.
Yuuya stood at the foot of the mattress, leaning his hip casually against the wooden frame. He looked down at the writhing protagonist, a dry, genuinely amused chuckle escaping his lips despite the lingering ache in his own ribs.
"Bell..." Yuuya murmured, his voice carrying a familiar, witty edge beneath his tattered scarf. "You look like you've got hit by a very angry minotaur... and then got hit again for good measure."
Bell's cracked lips twitched, a faint, incredibly weak grin breaking through the haze of his fever. He took a shallow, rattling breath, his eyes tracing the shredded armor, the stained bandages, and the raw, glowing scars covering Yuuya's exposed chest.
"You too... Yuuya-bro..." Bell whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the room.
Yuuya's smirk widened slightly.
"Yeah. Fair enough."
Turning his attention away from the bed, Yuuya closed his eyes and summoned his status screen. He intended to look at his spell, especially the chant. But then, an interesting detail caught his eye.
~~~~
Soul Heal
Remaining Use: 2
~~~~
Yuuya blinked, his internal thoughts grinding to a sudden halt.
'Hold on.' Yuuya thought, his mind racing through the calculations. 'When I asked the sequence back on the 18th floor, I designed this to be a strict, one time use. The absolute maximum my current Level 6 could allow. Why are there two slots?'
[Honestly? I'm just as baffled as you are.] the System's voice echoed within his mind, sounding distinctly amused and thoroughly surprised. [By all the laws of your spell, it should've obeyed your instruction. It must be a total bug or... I don't know, maybe just a reward for your hard work from the universe. Consider it a bonus I guess.]
"Well, who am I to complain." Yuuya replied mentally, a small smirk playing on his lips. "I'll take it."
He then glanced down at the written chant required to manifest the spell, it was long. A testament to it's power of absolute healing that could even cure a soul bound disease. But that wasn't the part that catch Yuuya's attention.
It's the words that are used.
A quiet, pleasant chuckle escaped his throat.
The syntax, the rhythm, the deliberate structure of the words... it had actively inverted Alfia's chant for her Genos Angelus. Where her melody brought an end to everything, this chant was designed to actively force the world to rewrite the prologue.
Yuuya snapped his eyes open, the system window dissolving into light as he turned his gaze toward the small crowd gathered at the entrance of the room. Hestia stood at the front, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and desperate anticipation.
"Goddessm" Yuuya called. "Come here. I need a single drop of your blood."
Hestia didn't ask questions. She didn't hesitate. The absolute, unyielding clarity in Yuuya's expression left no room for doubt. She rushed to his side, biting the tip of her index finger until a single, brilliant bead of divine ichor welled up against her skin.
She held her hand over his palm. The crimson drop detached, falling through the heavy, humid air of the sickroom.
The moment the divine blood fell, Yuuya's posture shifted entirely. His dark eyes flared with a brilliant, silver luminescence, and his voice rose to a deep, resonant pitch that completely filled the wooden architecture of the manor.
•O Primordial Silence, the canvas upon which the Gods first carved the world, hear the plea of the child who was born in shadow.•
Hestia's blood was absorbed by the spell while the air inside the bedroom instantly lost its heat. A cold, majestic pressure descended from the ceiling, the ambient light fracturing into a thousand shimmering, silver particles that began to dance around Bell's bed.
•I call upon the Root of the Great Tree and the source of the silver river that flows through every soul. The vessel is young, yet the rot of the beginning seeks to claim the future. O Great Spirit of the Beginning, lend me the ink to rewrite the prologue of this existence.•
Welf and Lili stepped back instinctively, their breath catching in their throats as they felt the sheer magnitude of the incantation. It didn't feel like standard mortal magic—it felt like a rewrite of reality.
•I look upon the 'Curse of Birth' and I name it a Trial that is now Concluded. The sickness that clings to the lungs shall be cast into the abyss. It is no longer hard. There is now purification. There is now salvation.•
As the exact inversion of Alfia's original sin echoed through the room, the deep, bleeding cracks across Yuuya's forearms and chest violently split open once more.
He was casting a spell whose chant is longer than Genos Angelus with a pool of mana that probably wasn't even halfway full. So there's bound to be a price to pay.
Fresh, bright crimson blood sprayed into the air, but he didn't flinch. He didn't break the cadence of his voice by a single millisecond. The sacrifice had to be paid.
•The heartbeat of the innocent is no longer a countdown, but a symphony of life. I sever the link between your breath and your mortality. I tear the shroud of the 'Shattered Destiny' and weave a cloak of eternal health.•
The shimmering silver particles coalesced directly above Bell's chest, hardening into the translucent, ethereal shape of a miniature, magnificent bell tower. The runes etched into its ghostly structure flared with a brilliant, blinding blue light.
•Through my intent, the compass of this first miracle; through my words, the light for this first path. Through my spirit, the spark that allows the small flame to become a sun. For the boy who carries the name of the Bell—let the silence of the sickroom be replaced by the roar of the living.•
Yuuya raised his right hand high, his fingers locked together as he drove his palm straight down toward the center of the spectral tower.
•I offer a fragment of my power to grant you your tomorrow. Collapse, O walls of fate! Arise, O Unbound Child!•
•Soul Heal!•
As Yuuya completed the spell, blinding white light engulfed the room for a second.
Then, the blinding radiance of the spell eventually faded. Though it didn't fade so much as it gently dissolved into a warm, shimmering mist.
The spectral bell tower fractured into a thousand weightless particles of light, raining down over Bell's form and sinking deep beneath his skin.
Almost instantly, the oppressive, stifling heat in the medical room began to recede.
Bell's erratic, shallow breathing hitched once, twice, and then smoothed out into a deep, perfectly rhythmic cadence. The violent, unnatural crimson flush that had been ravaging his face receded, replaced by the healthy, pristine complexion of a boy who had simply fallen into a deep, restorative sleep.
He was cured. The incurable disease had been entirely eradicated from his soul.
Standing at the foot of the bed, Yuuya watched the steady, peaceful rise and fall of Bell's chest. The moment his mind fully registered the boy's safety, an overwhelming, cataclysmic wave of relief washed over him.
Instantly, the desperate, driving adrenaline that had kept him upright through fourteen days of absolute hell evaporated in a single heartbeat.
His fingers completely lost their grip on the hilt of Kurotsuki. The dark katana slipped away, clattering loudly against the floorboards.
"Yuuya?!"
Hestia's voice was the first to cut through the sudden quiet, sharp with a fresh, terrifying panic. Welf lunged forward, his hands reaching out as Yuuya's knees completely buckled beneath him.
But Yuuya didn't feel the impact when his body struck the floor. He was finally, truly allowed to rest. The frantic, overlapping shouts of his Familia—Hestia crying his name, Lili's weeping panic, Haruhime's gasps—all of it began to rapidly warp and distort, sounding like muffled, underwater murmurs before dissolving entirely into the absolute dark at the very back of his mind.
He closed his eyes, letting the blackness claim him.
Though his physical senses had completely shut down, the quiet sanctuary of his internal consciousness remained faintly lit.
Inside that dark, peaceful void, a familiar, deeply fond voice echoed through the silence.
[Hey. Look at you, still technically breathing.] the System said, its tone warm as it metaphorically sat down beside him in the dark. [First off, congratulations, partner. You actually pulled it off. You dragged that kid back from the edge of a grave, and you forced the labyrinth to hand over a Level 6 rank ascension while you were at it. Well, not that you have a choice anyways.]
Yuuya's fading consciousness could only offer a faint, mental hum of acknowledgment. He was too tired to even forge a thought, but the System wasn't done talking.
[Since you're currently a literal puddle on the floor, I figured I'd drop some additional news on you. The kind of news you might actually find good.] the System continued, a cheerful tilt entering its voice. [Do you remember what I told you back when you first arrived in this world? I mentioned that unlike in the lore where the sequence of events happened in just a matter of a few days, on this one, we have time gaps between the major arcs and events. That we could exploit and use those windows to get you as strong as possible as preparation.]
A faint spark of curiosity flickered within Yuuya's quiet mind.
[Well, the first major gap just opened up.] the System revealed. [The part of the script where the Xenos are first discovered? The whole business with the talking monsters? That sequence isn't scheduled to initiate for another six months. The timeline is completely clear until then. Which means, the very second you finally open your eyes, you have a half-year window to do whatever the hell you want.]
Hearing the revelation, a profound sense of happiness rippled through Yuuya's resting soul. Six months. A massive, beautiful stretch of uninterrupted time.
After two solid weeks of non-stop slaughter, starvation, sleep deprivation, and fighting a literal god tier floor boss, the sheer concept of a half-year break felt like a divine blessing.
He could finally, truly let go.
Slowly, as his mind prepared to sink into a deep slumber, Yuuya found himself idly drifting through the plans he would execute once he awoke.
He hadn't forgotten his ultimate, driving purpose for traversing this world. He wasn't planning on staying in Orario forever. His eyes were still fixed on his true home—on the past world he had left behind, and on Akari.
To get back to her, he needed to amass an unholy, unprecedented amount of raw power. He needed to become strong enough to eventually break the dimensional boundaries of the world itself, utilizing his
Now that he thinks about it, during the Xenos arc, he plans to leave during that time. As for the details on how he'll do it, he can think about it later. He plans to use that opening to dive into the dungeon and practically stay there until he gains the necessary level to create a world hopping spell.
Though, he didn't plan on leaving silently either. He would cause some chaos in the name of tomfoolery and acting. Yuuya plans to scare Orario by making it appear that a second Dark Age would happen because of him terrorizing.
And no, he won't kill anyone. Traumatize? Maybe. Kill? Waste of time.
But that was the long term goal. For the immediate future, his plans were much more simple.
'When I wake up... I am taking a full, consecutive month off.' Yuuya thought, a lazy, thoroughly satisfied grin forming within his mind. 'No training. No swords. No dungeon. I'm just going to lie around the manor, eat whatever luxury food Welf and Lili buy, and be completely, unapologetically lazy.'
But after that month of absolute indulgence? He was going to turn his gaze back toward the depths.
Six months was more than enough time to cause some serious chaos.
Once his body was fully restored to its new Level 6 peak, he intended to dive straight back into the deep floors. He wouldn't just stop at the lower zones; he wanted to push past the known boundaries of the current era. He wanted to cross beyond the 62nd floor, and perhaps even challenge the legendary, unclimbed records left behind by the Zeus and Hera Familias at the 71st floor.
He had already even established his methodology. He was going to continue and intentionally, beef with the Dungeon. He would vandalize the architecture, commit arson, slaughter its spawns, and actively antagonize the labyrinth until it became completely incensed, forcing it to throw powerful monsters just like the Udaeus he fought.
He would use the dungeon's collective rage as a personal forge, using them as challenges so that he can level up.
He could die because of the stupid plan? Probably.
Will he have fun while doing it? Well, with the amount of times the dungeon has been screwing him and making his life miserable, hell yes. He will enjoy it.
Within the dark void, a soft, thoroughly amused chuckle echoed from the System.
[Yeah yeah, we can do all of that once you wake up, partner.] the System said. [You want to pick a fight with the entire planet? You want to commit terrorism? I'm right behind you. But for now? Just shut your brain down and sleep. You've earned it.]
Yuuya didn't need to be told twice.
He let his consciousness slip away entirely, falling into the deepest, most peaceful and well deserved sleep of his life.
∆∆∆∆
Author:
Ah finally got this part done.
Now for some fun fact: I actually used three different anime for Yuuya's fight against Udaeus.
First, is that the idea for making Udaeus's take the form of a humanoid knight was based on Igris from Solo Leveling. From the pose to the chivalry, it was based on that.
Second, Udaeus's move set was inspired by Weathermon the Tomb Guard from the anime Sharing La Frontier. The move that wounded Yuuya severely? That was supposed to Sky Clear but obviously, Monster Rex's don't speak (as far as I'm aware.) So Udaeus won't just be saying "Sky Clear" or it's version of it everytime it's about to turn Yuuya into a sashimi.
Last but not the least, the part where Yuuya sacrifices all of his senses to overcome the difference in speed between him and Udaeus? The 'one second is enough' part? That was inspired from Kurogane Ikki from the anime Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry or it's in english name, Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Specifically the fight between him and Todo Toka's Raikiri