Chapter 135 - Conquering the Dungeon.
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The domain battle began in the third exchange.
Lady Achillia planted Socrates' feet and expanded the Yin element outward — not a projection but a domain, the cold of it spreading from her position through the corridor floor, up the walls, across the ceiling, claiming every surface the way the Ancient Frost River had claimed the Frost Stream. The temperature dropped in a way that had a color — deep white, the white of absolute cold, the white of the Goddess of Death expressing her nature through the most powerful body she had ever occupied.
The Frost Castle began to freeze.
Not the ordinary frost that had given it its name — something underneath that. The stone itself dropping to a temperature that stone was not supposed to reach, the ancient Asura construction that had stood for decades responding to Lady Achillia's domain the way all things responded to death.
By stopping.
The King Tier consciousness drove its own domain outward in response — the white freezing flame expanding from the possessed Asura King's body through the same surfaces, claiming the same stone, the castle becoming the battleground for two King Tier domains fighting for the same territory.
The Frost Castle couldn't hold it.
The upper towers went first — the competing domains tearing through the ancient stone from below, the towers cracking and falling outward into the inner city in slow massive sections that hit the ground and shook everything within a kilometer. The walls of the corridor they were standing in compressed inward as the structural integrity of the castle failed around the two forces pulling it in opposite directions.
The Northern Gladiator moved — earth energy forming a shield above himself and Sun Wukong as the ceiling began to drop, the stone coming down in chunks that the shield deflected.
He watched through the falling debris.
Lady Achillia driving forward through the domain clash — the five element Dantian blazing, the Yin element dominant, the cold consuming the corridor in expanding rings that froze everything they touched. The possessed Asura King meeting every advance — the white flame holding its own territory, the domain war grinding forward and back.
Both of them bleeding through their vessels.
The Asura King's body showing the accumulated damage of the fight — the Northern Gladiator's earth sword wound still present, the impact from Lady Achillia's Heavenly Toppling Art strike visible in the way the possessed body was carrying itself. The King Tier consciousness maintaining control but the vessel it occupied paying the price of the fight.
Socrates' body showing it differently — the meridians pushed past their current development, the Dantian cycling at a rate it had never been asked to sustain, the Heavenly Rank Physique that was the strongest physical foundation in the world being asked to channel energies that belonged to a soul several tiers above its cultivation base.
Cracks were appearing.
Not in the stone. In Socrates' skin — the same hairline fractures that had appeared during the five element war in the Ancient Frost River, returning now as the output demanded of his body exceeded what it could cleanly contain.
Lady Achillia saw them.
And pushed harder anyway.
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The final exchange happened in the ruins of the corridor.
The Frost Castle's central structure had come down around them — the domain battle having destroyed the ancient construction more thoroughly than any planned demolition could have managed, the stone and frost and Asura craftsmanship that had stood for decades reduced to rubble in the space of minutes by two King Tier souls fighting for control of it.
They were standing in the open now — the inner city visible around them through the gaps where the walls had been, the surviving disciples and the Asura clan members frozen in their positions watching from the edges of what had become the most significant fight the underworld had seen in generations.
The possessed Asura King came forward — everything it had, the King Tier consciousness pouring maximum output through the Grandmaster vessel, the white freezing flame a total projection that left nothing uncovered.
Lady Achillia raised both of Socrates' hands.
The five element Dantian went to absolute output.
Earth. Poison. Water. Ice. Fire.
All five — not in sequence, simultaneously, the Heavenly Toppling Art running through every muscle in Socrates' body as the vehicle for the combined output, his Heavenly Rank Physique channeling what no other human body could have channeled without disintegrating immediately.
The cracks across his skin deepened.
Blood ran from them — not from injury, from the simple fact of his body trying to contain what was moving through it and succeeding at the cost of its own structural integrity.
Lady Achillia drove both hands forward.
Into the white freezing flame. Through it. The combined five element output burning a channel through the King Tier consciousness's projection by the specific method of being five different things simultaneously, each one finding a different gap in what the white flame could counter.
Her hands found the possessed Asura King's chest.
Both of them. Flat against the ancient body. The five elements going in simultaneously through both palms — earth breaking down the internal structure, poison dissolving the cellular integrity, water finding every crack and filling it, ice freezing the dissolution in place, fire burning what remained.
The King Tier consciousness felt all five.
For the first time in the fight its response wasn't immediate.
It paused — a fraction of a second, the ancient awareness processing five simultaneous intrusions in a system built to handle one — and in that fraction Lady Achillia compressed everything she had left into a single point and released it.
The explosion was cold.
Not hot — cold, the deep white of absolute zero, the specific temperature of a Goddess of Death expressing her full nature through the best vessel she had ever found. It expanded outward from the point of contact in a perfect sphere that consumed the possessed Asura King from the inside out — the white freezing flame dying as the cold reached it, the King Tier consciousness expressing itself in the frequency that had called it awake as it was forced back out of the vessel it had occupied.
Back down.
Through the rubble. Through the stone. Through the underworld's deep foundations.
Gone.
The Asura King's body stood for a moment after — empty, the King Tier consciousness departed, the Grandmaster cultivation that had sustained it for decades having nothing left to sustain. Then it went down — slowly, the way things go down when the thing holding them upright has simply stopped.
It hit the rubble.
The curved horn rolled away from its hand.
A cascade of items followed — the Asura King's storage releasing as its cultivation dispersed, the accumulated treasures of decades in the underworld's highest position pouring out across the rubble in a spread of light and energy that the surviving disciples watched with wide eyes from the edges of the destroyed castle.
Monster cores. Weapons. Formation scrolls. Artifacts whose quality pressed against the air around them with the specific weight of things that had been refined at Grandmaster level. Crystals in quantities that made the team's 1230 from the outer dungeon look like pocket change.
The Frost Castle — what remained of it — settled into the rubble it had become.
The inner city was quiet.
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Lady Achillia looked at the loot spread across the rubble through Socrates' eyes.
Then at the Northern Gladiator against what remained of the wall — his cracked Dantian, his burned armor, the expression on his face carrying something that had replaced arrogance entirely.
He was staring at Socrates' body.
At the white hair. The cracked skin. The five element halos still faintly present behind the shoulders of a first stage Master Realm cultivator who had just channeled King Tier output.
His mouth was open slightly.
Lady Achillia looked at him for a moment.
Then retracted her gaze —
'Useful boy.' She said — to no one, to Socrates somewhere behind his own eyes, to herself. 'Don't die io me.'
She withdrew.
The sea of consciousness received her back — the throne, the blue sea, the island, all of it settling around her soul form as she released the body's direction and let it return to its owner.
Socrates came back to himself.
The body's full report arrived simultaneously — every crack, every strained meridian, every pathway pushed past its development, the Dantian cycling down from absolute output to the specific exhaustion of something that had been asked to be more than it was and had complied at cost.
His legs made their decision.
He didn't fight it.
He went down into the rubble of the Frost Castle slowly — the ruins of the underworld's highest structure receiving him the way ruins receive everything eventually — and his eyes closed before he finished falling.
Sun Wukong caught him.
The Monkey King's scorched arms finding his master before he hit the stone, the golden armor gone, just the small form of the reduced Monkey King holding the white haired unconscious body of the Son of Trueblood in the middle of what used to be the Frost Castle.
The Northern Gladiator looked at both of them.
At the loot spread across the rubble.
At the destroyed castle.
He had come prepared to conquer this dungeon..
He had arrived with confidence... Who would have thought that he'll face such a challenge that will almost cost him his life...
Now, he's not the Conquerer of this dungeon... But a boy that happens to be his disciple...
This boy... He remembers him....
He's the Son of Trueblood....
The Boy he had brought personally into the guild ..
"Good good .. your name will be known to the whole world.... Socrates Trueblood - The first Dungeon Conquerer in decades..."
The Northern Gladiator laughed out loud as he started piling the loots while preparing to leave this space before the dungeon disappear..
He frantically search for the dungeon core but he couldn't see...
Instead... What he see was a treasure chest....
And the moment he opened it ...
A golden token flew out of it .... A blinding light that exuded a majestic aura ....
"This is an imperial token ..... The token that can only belongs to a King ..... The Hellenic Republic is only a Republic because we don't have the Imperial token to have a King which can give us a Kingdom... We only have the Imperial family which other family recognized as the leader... With this token ... I can be the King of the Hellenic Republic..." The Nothern Gladiator eyes shine with greed and enthusiasm as he reached out for the golden token which dodged his grip and then flew directly into Socrates body.
"What? Why is he the one chosen ?" The Nothern Gladiator cried out....