The darkness here didn't just occupy the space; it felt like wet wool pressed against the eyes. Kenjiro's boots clicked against the stone, a rhythmic, solitary sound that seemed to be swallowed the moment it left the heel.
"Very interesting."
His voice was a dry rasp. He didn't like the silence. It allowed the ghosts of the Null to crawl back into his ears. He planted his lead foot, the stone beneath it groaning under a sudden surge of pressure.
"Void Pulse: Solar Flare."
His skin didn't just glow; it detonated.
Blue flames erupted from his pores, jagged and hungry. They didn't flicker like a candle. They roared outward in a hemispheric shockwave of cerulean heat, charring the very air. The absolute black of the path retreated, peeling away from the light like burnt skin. Each step Kenjiro took sent a fresh ripple of fire across the floor, the red mythic blade in his hand screeching as it dragged against the obsidian tile.
"Twelve years," he whispered.
The heat in the back of his neck was a dull, constant throb.
"Twelve years in this hole. Five hundred out there. The Abyss Lord's math is a sick joke."
He stopped. The blue flames cast long, distorted shadows of the fluted pillars against the cavern walls. He looked at his hands—the hands of a twelve-year-old boy, calloused and scarred, yet holding a density of mana that could level a city.
"They'll be gone. Shinjo. Hikari."
The names tasted like ash. He tried to picture Hikari's face, but the image was a blurred watercolor, fading at the edges. Time in the Sepulcher didn't flow; it eroded. He had spent a decade fighting things that didn't have names, extracting souls until his own felt like a crowded room.
"If I return, I return to a graveyard. If I stay, I rot in a crown I never asked for."
He gritted his teeth, the friction of his jaw audible in the dead air. He gripped the hilt until the leather wrap bit into his palms.
"I serve the punishment," he growled, the emerald fire in his eyes flaring. "But I'm taking the interest back with me."
[ System Alert: Entrance to the Third Vein ]
[ Biome: The Scorched Marrow ]
[ Threat Level: Calamity ]
The third path didn't lead to more ice. It led to a vertical drop into a pit of molten slag. The walls were made of calcified bone, enormous ribs the size of ship hulls arching over a lake of bubbling, white-hot lead. The air was a sulfurous soup that made Kenjiro's throat burn with every inhalation.
He stood on the ledge, looking down.
In the center of the lake was a platform of basalt. Standing there were two figures. They weren't beasts. They were humanoid, encased in armor that looked like it had been grown from obsidian and cooled in blood. They held twin polearms that dripped liquid fire.
[ Sentinels of the Third Vein: The Twin Cinders ]
[ Rank: Monarch-Elite ]
"Two of them," Kenjiro muttered. He felt the weight of the souls in his shadow—the Serpent and the Tiger—restless, scratching at the underside of his consciousness. "Fine. Let's see if the 'Voidmancer' title is worth the ink."
He didn't climb down. He stepped off the ledge.
Gravity claimed him for a second before he snapped his fingers.
"Aether Suspension."
The air beneath his boots became solid. He walked down the invisible incline as if descending a staircase, his red cloak snapping in the rising heat. The Twin Cinders looked up, their visors glowing with a dull, furnace-orange light. They didn't speak. They didn't challenge him. They simply crossed their polearms, and the lake of lead began to rise, forming into a swirling cyclone of molten metal.
Kenjiro landed on the basalt platform. The heat was enough to melt the silver band in his hair, but the mana shielding his body held.
"I'm in a hurry," Kenjiro said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, dual-toned resonance. "Move, or become fuel."
The Twins moved. They were faster than the Tiger. They moved with a synchronized, mechanical lethality, their polearms weaving a web of fire that cut through the basalt like a hot wire through wax.
Kenjiro parried the first strike, the vibration of the impact travelling up his arm and rattling his collarbone. He spun, the red blade catching the second polearm in a shower of sparks.
Clang. Hiss. Crack.
He was a blur of red and blue against the white-hot background. He wasn't winning. The Twins were a single mind, parrying every one of Kenjiro's counters before they could land. One polearm opened a shallow cut on his thigh; another scorched the hem of his hood.
Kenjiro skidded back to the edge of the platform. The molten lead lapped at his heels.
"Too slow," one of the Twins rasped. The voice sounded like grinding stones. "The King is a child. The child is a corpse."
Kenjiro wiped a bead of sweat from his chin. He let out a short, sharp laugh. It wasn't a sound of joy. It was the sound of a man who had finally found the limit and decided to break it.
"I'm not the one fighting you," Kenjiro said.
He slammed his left palm onto the basalt. The soul-mark on his wrist erupted in a blinding green light.
"Shadow Extraction: Dual Manifestation!"
The basalt platform didn't just crack; it shattered. Two pillars of black, oily smoke shot upward. From the left emerged the Fulgur-Serpent, its obsidian scales crackling with blue lightning that turned the white-hot air into a chaotic storm of ions. From the right, the Fubuki-Ryū Tiger materialized, its ice-skin steaming as it met the heat, its violet eyes fixed on the Twin on the right.
[ Warning: Mana Consumption - 85% per second ]
[ Warning: Soul Strain at Maximum ]
"Kill them," Kenjiro commanded.
The Serpent didn't wait. It coiled around the first Twin, its lightning-charged scales grinding against the obsidian armor with the sound of a million screaming saws. The Tiger lunged at the second, its frost-claws clashing with the fire-polearm in a violent explosion of steam and pressure.
Kenjiro stood in the center, his face pale, blood leaking from his nose as he maintained the link. He reached into his weaponry store and pulled out the Heaven-Piercer Spirit Arrow. He didn't have a bow. He didn't need one.
He held the arrow like a javelin. The gold light of the artifact pulsed in sync with his failing heartbeat.
"General Hidetada," Kenjiro whispered, his eyes locking on the core of the first Twin. "Lend me the shot that kills kings."
The arrow began to vibrate so violently it hummed a high, crystalline note that cracked the nearby obsidian spires.
The Twins realized too late. They tried to disengage from the shadows, but the Serpent's coils were a vice of electricity and spite.
Kenjiro drew his arm back.
"Point-Blank: Execution."
He threw.
The arrow didn't fly; it erased the space between Kenjiro and the Sentinels. There was no sound of impact. There was only a sudden, absolute silence as the gold light consumed the platform.
When the light faded, the basalt platform was gone.
Kenjiro was floating a few inches above the molten lead, his boots steaming. The Twin Cinders had vanished. No armor remained. No ash. Just two soul-orbs, glowing a dark, angry orange, hovering in the air.
The Serpent and the Tiger dissipated back into Kenjiro's shadow, their work done.
Kenjiro grabbed the two orbs. He felt the heat of them in his palms, the raw power of the Monarch-Elite souls.
[ Extractions Successful ]
[ Level Up! ]
[ Level Up! ]
[ Current Level: 19 ]
He stumbled, his knees hitting the rocky shore on the far side of the lake. He was gasping, his lungs feeling like they were filled with hot sand. He looked at the Fourth and Fifth paths. They were dark. Quiet.
But the air coming from the end of the hall—the Glacial Sepulcher's heart—had changed.
The smell of his mother's cooking. The scent of the pine needles in Itosai. It was a lure.
"Illusion," Kenjiro coughed, pushing himself up. He spat a mouthful of blood into the dust. "The Boss is getting desperate."
He looked at the Heaven-Piercer arrow, which had returned to his hand. The gold light was dim now, exhausted.
"One year left," Kenjiro said, staring into the dark. "If the world is a graveyard when I get back, I'll just have to raise everyone from the dead."
He stepped toward the Fourth Vein.
[ Warning: Final Sentinels have merged. ]
[ Entity Identified: The Bone-Eater Chimaera ]
[ Rank: Near-God ]
Kenjiro didn't stop. He didn't check his mana. He just kept walking.