[Last Episode: He held out his hand, and she took it, and together they turned toward the path leading back to the Eastern World, the day's noise finally settling into something quiet and certain behind them.]
Chapter 132, Episode 132
[The dimension tore open at the edge of the capital's central plaza, and Leo stepped through it with Luna a half-step behind him, both of them still catching their breath from the crossing]
[The response was immediate]
[Every subordinate in the plaza — goblins, slimes, beast-folk, dwarves, wolf-clan warriors, wyverns still furling their wings from mid-flight patrol — dropped to their knees at once, a wave of motion spreading outward from the center like ripples on water]
[A chorus of voices rose together]
『Everyone』
「Welcome home, Lord Leo!」
[Luna stared at the sheer scale of it — the plaza stretching out in every direction, the buildings beyond it built from something between crystal and living wood, the sheer number of species bowed in the same direction, all facing him]
Luna: You built all of this.
Leo: Most of it. A lot of them built the rest themselves once they had somewhere safe to build it.
Luna: You have a kingdom??
Leo: I have a home. Kingdom sounds so formal.
[He raised his hands, and his voice carried easily across the plaza, warm and familiar.]
Leo: Lift your heads. All of you. You know I don't like the bowing.
[The plaza rose as one, and the formal hush broke instantly into noise — cheering, chattering, several younger goblins darting forward just to get a look at him before being gently herded back by older members of the crowd.]
Luna: This is — Leo, this is a lot.
Leo: You get used to it.
Luna: I don't think I will.
[Jeannette and Pandorami arrived first, cutting through the crowd with the practiced efficiency of people used to managing exactly this kind of arrival, and behind them came Tiamat and Karnak, both in human form, both drawing curious stares from every direction]
Leo: Everyone — I want you to formally welcome two new subordinates.
[He gestured toward them.]
Leo: Tiamat Nava and Karnak would be joining us today from now on and Tiamat rank would be Grand Marshal and Karnak will be Grand Overlord.
[A ripple of surprise moved through the assembled crowd — those ranks weren't handed out lightly, and everyone present knew it.]
[Tiamat stepped forward first, inclining her head with easy confidence]
Tiamat: Pleasure. I imagine we'll get along.
[Karnak, beside her, more measured]
Karnak: We intend to serve well. Your lord earned our loyalty properly. We don't take that lightly.
[Jeannette studied them both for a moment, then extended a hand.]
Jeannette: Grand Marshal, Grand Overlord. High ranks for new arrivals.
Tiamat: We were dragons who fought the Hyper species toe to toe and lost only to scale, not skill. I'd like to think we've earned a little trust in advance.
Jeannette: Fair enough.
Pandorami: Welcome to the Guardians.
[Antoinette arrived a moment later, moving through the crowd with the specific unhurried warmth of someone every species in the plaza clearly adored — several goblin children waved at her as she passed, and she waved back without breaking stride, Martha trailing a step behind her as always]
Antoinette: Lord Leo.
Leo: Antoinette.
Antoinette: You brought someone new.
[Her eyes moved to Luna, curious, warm, immediately reading something in the way Luna stood a half-step closer to Leo than casual proximity would explain.]
Antoinette: And who's this?
Luna: Luna Roseveltie. Force Light Guild.
Antoinette: I know the name.
[A pause, and a small, knowing smile crept across her face]
Luna: I guess I don't need to introduce myself then..
Antoinette: is she your girlfriend, my Lord?
[Luna's entire face went scarlet instantly.]
Luna: We're not— I mean, we haven't— it's not officially—
[She was stammering now, hands waving vaguely, clearly torn between wanting the truth and being mortified by the question.]
[Antoinette, smiling wider, watching the blush with open delight]
Antoinette: That's not a no.
Luna: It's not a—! I mean—
Leo: Yes.
[The plaza went quiet for half a second.]
Luna: —what?
Leo: Yes, she's my girlfriend.
[He said it plainly, without hesitation, and Luna's blush somehow deepened even further while her expression cracked into something dazed and thrilled all at once — the specific internal explosion of someone hearing something confirmed out loud for the very first time and not quite believing her own ears.]
[Luna, internally]
Luna: He said it. He actually said it. In front of everyone. Boyfriend. He's my—
[Externally, all she managed was a small, strangled sound and an even deeper blush.]
[Laxcarseel, arriving just in time to catch the tail end of it, raised an eyebrow]
Laxcarseel: Our Lord has a girlfriend.
[Jairulioyo, beside him]
Jairulioyo: That's new information.
Laxcarseel: I did not have that on my list of things to expect today.
Antoinette: Neither did I, and I usually know everything.
[Several nearby wyverns and a cluster of younger beast-folk were already whispering to each other, not-so-subtly glancing at Luna]
[A young beast-woman, not quite quiet enough:]
「She's really pretty.」
[Another, equally unsubtle]
「Really pretty. Lord Leo's got good taste.」
[Luna caught the whispers and went, somehow, even redder, pulling her hood slightly forward despite not actually wearing one.]
Luna: Can we please move on.
[Leo, smirking]
Leo: Sure.
[Lilura arrived last, sweeping in with her usual bright energy, immediately launching into conversation before anyone had a chance to greet her properly]
Lilura: Lord Leo! You're back! And you brought a girlfriend, apparently, which is huge, genuinely huge, I have so many questions, does this mean there's going to be a wedding eventually, I've always wanted to plan—
Leo: Lilura.
Lilura: —because the Eastern World doesn't really have proper venues yet, but I could absolutely design something, moonlight terraces, maybe something with the crystal groves near the eastern ridge—
Leo: Lilura.
Lilura: —and obviously the guest list would need to include every major subordinate, though logistics for that many species attending one event might actually be a nightmare, but a good nightmare, the fun kind—
[Leo, louder, with the specific exhausted fondness of someone who'd had this exact conversation a dozen times before]
Leo: Lilura!
[She finally paused, blinking.]
Lilura: Yes my Lord??
Leo: We have business.
Lilura: Right! Right, business. Sorry. I get excited.
[Luna, despite the mortification of the last several minutes, was laughing quietly now, charmed despite herself.]
Luna: I like her.
Leo: Everyone likes her. She's also exhausting.
Lilura: I heard that.
Leo: You were meant to.
[The group settled into the central hall, a wide chamber with maps carved directly into stone walls, and Leo pulled up a floating projection of one particular map with a flick of his hand]
Leo: Rain of Dungeon.
[The projection expanded — a vertical shaft descending impossibly deep, marked in tiers.]
Leo: A hundred floors. The deeper you go, the stronger what's waiting for you gets. It's not linear, either — floor forty is a different kind of dangerous than floor sixty, which is different again from floor eighty. Whoever built this thing wanted it to keep testing whoever came through it in new ways, not just scale up the same threat.
Laxcarseel: And the boss.
Leo: Floor one hundred. WraithLord.
[A murmur moved through the gathered Guardians.]
Leo: But you don't get to WraithLord without going through floor ninety-nine first, and floor ninety-nine isn't a floor so much as a gauntlet. Six guards. Each one built entirely around a single element — fire, earth, wind, time, water, ice — and each one uses full enchantment and incantation magic behind that element. But these are just raw elemental force. They are structured, layered spellwork. These aren't simple gatekeepers.
Jairulioyo: And WraithLord himself?
Leo: He possesses all six of those elements combined, plus abilities beyond them that nobody's fully catalogued yet. But his primary discipline is shadow magic — that's the core of what he actually is.
Infinite: The name wraithlord sounds like a unprecedented name.. is he a human?
Leo: No. From what's been documented, he's closer to a devil, or a demon — wears a mask, always, nobody's confirmed what's underneath it. But dont underestimate his intelligent. His reaction speed and raw strength are both rated well above anything else currently catalogued in that dungeon. He doesn't just fight. He reads his opponents mid-fight and adjusts in real time.
Pandorami: That's a dangerous combination. Intelligence and reflexes both at that level.
Leo: Which is exactly why I'm not sending everyone.
[He looked around the group.]
Leo: Laxcarseel, Jairulioyo, Lilura, Pandorami, Infinite. You five are going in.
[The five nodded, already shifting into the focused readiness of people who'd expected exactly this.]
Leo: Jeannette, Martha, Antoinette — you're staying here. With me and Luna.
[Jeannette inclined her head.]
Jeannette: Understood, my Lord.
Martha: We'll hold the capital.
Antoinette: And keep our new guest company.
[She glanced at Luna with a warm, welcoming smile, the earlier teasing fully softened into genuine friendliness.]
[Suddenly leo drew Shatter Nebula and, without any particular ceremony, swung it once through the empty air]
[The blade caught nothing — no target, no resistance — and yet the air itself tore where the edge passed, a clean line splitting open into a shimmering gateway that widened steadily until it stood as tall as the hall itself, a dimension visibly waiting on the other side]
[The gathered Guardians went quiet]
Laxcarseel: You just tore open a dimension with the tip of your blade.
Leo: Half my strength on that swing, honestly.
[Laxcarseel let out a low, appreciative laugh, arms crossing, the specific smirk of someone who never got tired of being reminded exactly what his lord was capable of.]
Laxcarseel: Half.
Leo: I didn't want to overdo it and take out the hall.
Laxcarseel: Considerate of you.
[The five chosen for the dungeon stepped through one by one — Jairulioyo first, lightning already crackling faint at his fingertips in anticipation; Lilura close behind, still chattering something about floor plans that nobody was quite listening to anymore; Pandorami and Infinite following with quiet, professional calm; Laxcarseel last, pausing at the threshold just long enough to glance back.]
Laxcarseel: We'll bring back WraithLord's mask as a souvenir.
Leo: I'd rather you bring back all five of you in one piece.
Laxcarseel: That too.
[He stepped through, and the gateway sealed shut behind him with a soft, final shimmer.]
[Jeannette, Martha, and Antoinette remained, along with Luna, and the hall settled into a quieter, more comfortable rhythm]
Leo: I have somewhere I need to be. Important matters — I won't be long.
[He looked at Luna, half-expecting the same protest as before.]
[Instead, she just smiled.]
Luna: Go. I'll get to know the Eastern World a little. I think I've got good company for it.
[She glanced toward Antoinette, who was already looking pleased at the prospect, and Jeannette and Martha, both nodding easily.]
Antoinette: We'll take good care of her, my Lord.
Jeannette: And show her around properly. Not just the plaza.
Leo: Thank you. All of you.
[He looked at Luna one more time, something warm settling into his expression.]
Leo: I'll be back before you know it.
Luna: You'd better be.
[He smiled, turned, and stepped through a smaller opening he tore beside the sealed dimensional gate — gone in an instant, the hall settling into the easy, curious quiet of new company getting acquainted.]
[Antoinette, immediately turning to Luna with bright interest]
Antoinette: So Tell me everything. How long have you actually liked him?
[Luna, going red all over again]
Luna: Antoinette—
[Martha, smiling]
Martha: This is going to be a long afternoon.
[Jeannette, already pulling up a chair]
Jeannette: Good. I want details too.
『The Guardians reached at the Rain of Dungeon — The Descent』
]The gateway spat the five of them out onto a wide stone landing, torches lining a downward staircase that seemed to swallow itself into darkness]
Laxcarseel: Floor one.
Jairulioyo: Let's not waste time on the small stuff.
[He was right to say it. The first thirty floors barely qualified as a fight — beasts and constructs that folded the instant any of the five so much as looked at them seriously. Lilura cleared an entire floor of crystal golems with a single sweep of her blade, absorbing the ambient moonlight of the dungeon's enchanted torches into the strike before anyone else had finished descending the stairs.]
Lilura: That's floor nineteen. Should we name the floors? I feel like they deserve names.
Pandorami: They're numbers for a reason, Lilura.
Lilura: Numbers are boring.
[Infinite, dry as ever:]
Infinte: Everything's boring to you until it tries to kill you.
Lilura: That's fair, actually.
[By floor thirty, Laxcarseel called a halt at the base of another staircase, looking down the endless descent with the specific patience of someone doing math in his head]
Laxcarseel: We're wasting time floor by floor. Nothing down here past this point is going to meaningfully test us until we're much deeper. Let's move.
Jairulioyo: so instead we blitz it.
Laxcarseel: Absolutely
[They tore through the next sixty-eight floors in a single unbroken push — Jairulioyo's lightning clearing corridors before the others had finished entering them, Pandorami's life-drain and creation abilities handling anything that survived the initial pass]
[Infinite's cold analytical strikes finishing what remained, Lilura's Sword Lunar reaping through entire rooms of enemies in single arcs, Laxcarseel simply erasing whatever crossed his path with the specific, casual efficiency of someone who had already decided none of it mattered]
[Floor forty-two, a legion of shadow-wolves — gone in under four seconds]
[Floor fifty-five, a lake guardian wrapped in storm magic — Jairulioyo caught it mid-summon and ended the fight before it finished forming]
[Floor seventy-one, an entire hall of animated armor wielding elemental blades — Pandorami's Omix Supreme flattened the room without any of the others needing to lift a weapon]
[Floor eighty-six, something that might have been a small god of decay — Laxcarseel looked at it, said nothing, and it simply stopped existing]
[By floor ninety-eight, they hadn't slowed once]
Infinite: That's ninety-eight.
Lilura: Ninety-nine next. The guard floor.
Laxcarseel: Finally. Something worth actually fighting.
『Floor 99 — The Six Guards』
[The staircase opened into a vast circular chamber, six pillars arranged around its perimeter, each one crowned with a distinct elemental sigil — flame, stone, gale, hourglass, wave, frost]
[Six figures stepped down from their respective pillars as the group entered, each cloaked in armor shaped from their own element, faces obscured behind visors carved to match]
[The fire guard spoke first, voice crackling like the element itself]
Fire Guard: Five intruders. You've come further than most.
Laxcarseel: We plan to go further still.
Earth Guard: Then you'll have to go through all of us.
[The fight erupted instantly — no formal declaration, just a sudden, total clash as all six guards moved at once, each one summoning full enchantment circles beneath their feet.]
[Jairulioyo took the Wind Guard directly, lightning meeting gale in a shrieking collision that tore visible gouges into the chamber's stone floor]
Jairulioyo: You're fast.. I must say
Wind Guard: Faster than lightning, some days.
Jairulioyo: Not today.
[He caught the guard's next strike mid-motion, Omni-Directional Blitz answering the wind's evasive pattern from every angle at once, and the guard staggered under the weight of a hundred simultaneous strikes it couldn't fully dodge.]
[Lilura squared off against the Water Guard, her Sword Lunar drinking in the moonlight-charged torches lining the chamber walls, absorbing power with every passing second]
Water Guard: Your blade grows stronger the longer this goes.
Lilura: That's the idea.
[She parried a wave-strike that would have drowned a lesser fighter, redirecting the water's own momentum back into the guard's chest, and the impact sent them skidding hard against their own pillar.]
Water Guard: You're patient. That's rare.
Lilura: I contain multitudes.
[Pandorami and the Time Guard traded blows in a strange, stuttering rhythm — the Time Guard slowing localized pockets of the chamber around itself, trying to buy space to cast, and Pandorami's Xarath Lair steadily draining the guard's life-force with every exchange regardless of the temporal distortion]
Time Guard: You're immune to the slowing.
Pandorami: I don't need to be fast. I just need to not run out before you do.
[The guard's spellwork faltered mid-cast, the drain finally outpacing its regeneration, and it dropped to one knee.]
[Infinte handled the Ice Guard with cold, clinical precision, matching frost with frost until the guard's own element began working against it, ice crystallizing along its joints faster than it could shed the buildup.]
Infinite: Quite Poetic.
Ice Guard: Don't gloat.
Infinite: I don't gloat. I observe.
[Laxcarseel had already finished with the Earth Guard by the time the others were still mid-fight — a single application of Liberal Infinity erasing the guard's stone armor down to the concept of stone itself, leaving nothing behind for the guard to stand on]
[He turned toward the Fire Guard next, and within thirty seconds, that fight was over too]
Laxcarseel: That's five.
[He looked around the chamber — Jairulioyo finishing the Wind Guard, Lilura's blade closing the gap on Water, Pandorami's drain collapsing Time, Infinite's frost sealing Ice entirely in place.]
Laxcarseel: Good work.
[Jairulioyo, breathing a little harder than usual:]
Jairulioyo: That actually took effort.
Pandorami: First real fight in a while.
Lilura: I liked it. We should do this more often.
Infinite: You say that after every fight.
Lilura: Because it's true after every fight.
『Floor 100 — The WraithLord』
[The staircase past the sixth pillar led into total darkness, and the five of them descended together, the air growing colder, heavier, with every step.
The chamber at the bottom was vast — a cathedral of black stone, a single figure seated on a throne of twisted shadow at its center]
[He rose as they entered]
[A mask, featureless and pale, covered the entirety of his face, and beneath it, robes of shifting shadow-fabric that seemed to breathe on their own]
WraithLord: Five of you. Interesting. Most who reach this floor come with far more, or far fewer.
Laxcarseel: We didn't need more.
WraithLord: We'll see.
[He tilted his head slightly, studying them each in turn, and something in his posture radiated the exact calm, calculating patience of someone who had already begun reading every weakness in the room.]
WraithLord: Shall we begin, then?
To be continued...