Shin'ya was sprinting down the crumbling stone staircase at a breakneck pace, his grey hoodie flapping violently behind him. The air was thick, his chest was burning, and yet, his uncontrollable anime-nerd brain was still aggressively turning its gears, over-analyzing the sudden shift in reality. Wait a minute!Shin'ya thought, his inner voice shouting in pure frustration as he jumped over a collapsed pillar. If the Sound-Eater Miasma is supposed to consume all sound energy, how did my boot scraping against a tiny piece of gravel make a sound that traveled all the way down to the Titan?! And more importantly... I can hear my own frantic breathing right now! The fog is clearing up!
He skidded around a corner, his eyes wide with an epiphany.
The bells! The psychic frequency of that rusted bell didn't wake the Titan—it cleared the Miasma! The bell is an anti-fog trigger that restores normal acoustics to the room so the monsters can use sound-based tracking! But why the heck would anyone build a dungeon with such a hyper-specific, multi-layered, contradictory gimmick?! It's completely unnecessary! Don't tell me I'm stuck in some kind of web novel and the author is just making up ridiculous rules to make me suffer?! Ugh, enough! I don't have time for this meta-crisis!
Sensing the thousand-man swarm of Calcified Stalkers closing in from the side corridors, Shin'ya didn't hesitate. He took a massive, burning gulp of air, channeled his shadow unknown shadow energy, and dove headfirst into the dark floorboards.
Shadow Slip
Using his newly unlocked four-second limit, he pushed his shadow-velocity to absolute maximum. He became a streak of liquid midnight, bypassing the entire army of stone skeletons in a flash. He surfaced four seconds later, lunged forward, inhaled, and dove right back in, repeating the brutal cycle until he finally burst into the lowest, cavernous layer of the ruins.
The moment his boots touched the ground, his breath completely caught in his throat.
There, in the center of a subterranean chamber the size of a football stadium, was the Grave-Weaver Titan.
The disaster-class colossus was a horrifying, prehistoric abomination. Its massive, towering body was composed of calcified, skeletal plates fused with raw, pulsing black magma veins. Instead of a normal face, its head was a featureless, armored dome with six hollow, ear-like cavities that vibrated with every microscopic sound waves. Its long, segmented arms ended in massive, obsidian claws, and its legs looked like the trunks of ancient, petrified trees.
The giant was already moving. Its featureless head was tilting downward, its god-tier senses locking onto the tiny human intruder.
Oh no, oh no, oh no! I need to make this quick!
Shin'ya instantly crouched low, reaching into his sub-space shadow storage and pulling out the heavy, glowing silver holy spike. Gripping the divine relic tightly, he unleashed a desperate burst of speed, rushing straight toward the Titan's left foot, which was the size of a carriage.
He lined up the spike with the ancient pedestal beneath the monster's heel and thrust it forward with all his might.
CLANG!
The silver spike violently bounced off the hardened, calcified hide of the Titan's skin. The sheer recoil rattled the bones in Shin'ya's arms.
"Are you kidding me?!" Shin'ya muttered. He adjusted his grip, gritted his teeth, and drove it forward a second time.
CLANG!
Another failure. The skin was completely impenetrable to a normal thrust.
Looking up, Shin'ya saw the Titan's massive obsidian fist raised high in the air, preparing to smash him into a thin paste. The sheer absurdity of the situation finally made his teenage patience completely snap. He went full, unbridled anime-protagonist mad.
"ALRIGHT, THAT IS IT! I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THIS HIGH-STAKES STEALTH NONSENSE!"
In a flash of fluid motion, Shin'ya reached to his waist and drew the Ketsugai. The pitch-black tachi hummed with a terrifying, concentrated aura of abyssal unknown energy of the Ketsugai. He swung the blade upward in a blinding arc.
Shadow Slash
The wave of concentrated darkness sliced cleanly through the air, carving a deep, pulsing fissure right into the center of the Titan's calcified foot. Thick, black magma-like blood oozed from the wound.
Before the monster could even react to the pain, Shin'ya slammed the Ketsugai back into its sheath, grabbed the heavy silver holy spike with both hands, and channeled every single ounce of his remaining physical strength. With a feral scream, he thrust the spike directly into the fresh, bleeding cut.
PZZRRT-SHHIIIIING!
The moment the holy spike pierced the flesh and connected with the ancient stone pedestal below, a blinding, radiant explosion of golden light erupted through the cavern.
The Grave-Weaver Titan froze mid-smash. The black magma veins on its body instantly turned to cold, grey ash. The featureless dome of its head slumped forward, and its massive, mountain-sized body collapsed backward, crashing heavily onto the cavern floor.
BOOOMMMMMM!
A violent, localized earthquake rippled through the catacombs, sending clouds of dust and debris raining down from the ceiling. Then, slowly, the oppressive magic faded, and the thousands of rattling bells in the upper corridors completely fell silent.
Shin'ya fell directly onto his hands and knees, panting violently as sweat poured down his face. His arms were shaking from muscle fatigue, but as he looked at the completely neutralized, slumbering giant, a wide, delirious, triumphant smirk spread across his face.
"V... V-VICTORY!" Shin'ya wheezed, throwing a shaky fist into the air. "Take that, you oversized rock pile! Time to go back home and get my money, baby! Hehehehe!"
Not wanting to spend another second in the dusty, dark tomb, he took one final deep breath, dissolved into the ground with Shadow Slip and effortlessly glided through the shadows all the way back up the long, winding staircase.
A minute later, Shin'ya casually popped out of the darkness right at the entrance of the Northern Ruins, dusting off his gray hoodie.
Guild Master Gideon Vance and his pale, bespectacled assistant were standing by the iron barricades, their faces pale with anxiety. The moment they saw the fourteen-year-old boy emerge completely unscathed, the assistant's clipboard literally slipped from his hands, clattering onto the floorboards.
"You're... you're back?!" the assistant stammered, his jaw hitting the floor. "The tremors stopped... Did you actually—"
"The spike is driven," Shin'ya interrupted, his deadpan mastermind mask perfectly back in place as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. He looked at Gideon Vance with a cool, unbothered stare. "The Titan is sleeping for another century. Now, Guild Master... let's talk about my payout."