At first glance, Cyrus could tell that the armored knight standing in the center of the circular plaza was completely different from the fodder they had faced earlier.
It stood nearly two and a half meters tall, and the heavy plate armor on its body was no mere decoration.
Just from the way that suit of armor was held up so steadily, it was obvious the body inside was no ordinary husk. It was nothing like the rotten things from before, which moved on the last scraps of instinct and staggered as if they might collapse at any moment. This one looked more like it possessed a complete frame of bone and muscle beneath the armor. Even from its posture alone, he could tell that body was unnaturally solid.
Merely standing there, it gave off an indescribable pressure.
Behind the slit of its helmet, two points of ghostly blue light burned in silence.
It was staring straight at them.
“High Bronze.”
Cyrus’s grip tightened slightly around his twin daggers, and the easy smile on his face faded by several degrees.
He tilted his head toward Sanna and spoke coldly.
“The intel was wrong. Explain.”
Goosebumps crawled up Sanna’s arms.
The instant those eyes locked onto her, she felt as if a cold venomous snake had slithered up her spine.
But she quickly forced down that chill and waved a hand.
“I did hear people saying the dungeon changes constantly, but the boss information is less than a week old…”
Cyrus slowly withdrew his gaze and narrowed his eyes at Cassandre.
“Hah.”
The corner of his mouth slowly split open.
“This dungeon is getting stronger.”
There was no retreat in that smile. Instead, a deeper greed had surfaced within it.
“Now I’m even more curious what we’ll get after destroying its core.”
Cyrus had no intention of retreating.
Besides, this was Blackstone, the dungeon said to bring the dead back to life.
At least in Cyrus’s eyes, that meant their greatest concern had already been stripped away.
“Darm, you take the front in a moment. Blake and I will support you from the sides.”
Darm tapped his short spear against his greatshield, producing a low, heavy boom.
He nodded without speaking.
“So what if it’s High Bronze? Not like I’ve never cut one down before!”
Blake raised the longsword in his hand high and burst into loud laughter.
Finally, Cyrus glanced at Jessup.
“You judge the timing yourself. Just don’t drop your spells on us.”
Jessup adjusted his spectacles and gave a calm smile.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t slipped up yet.”
“Good.”
Darm did not rush forward immediately.
He raised his greatshield at an angle before him and advanced toward Cassandre step by step.
His pace was not fast, but it was steady as an unmoving mountain.
A few breaths later, he finally stepped into Cassandre’s attack range.
“No token!” Cassandre’s hoarse voice rang out. “No sinner may escape!”
In the next instant, the heavy one-handed sword in Cassandre’s hand came smashing down from the front.
The moment the shield face met the blade, Darm immediately tilted his shield, trying to shed that force to the side.
Clang!
The heavy impact kicked up a blast of air across the plaza, sending a ring of dust rising around them.
Even after shedding most of the force, Darm’s body still shuddered violently. The soles of his boots scraped two short marks across the stone slabs.
“Strong.”
He gritted his teeth, his voice low and hoarse.
“Don’t take it head-on.”
The moment his voice fell, the short spear in Darm’s hand thrust out at an angle.
The spearpoint struck Cassandre’s heavy plate armor, only scattering a spray of glaring sparks and leaving a scratch across the surface.
Blake watched this scene and felt his teeth ache.
He lowered his head to glance at the longsword in his own hand, unable to hold back a sigh.
Then, in the next instant, he grinned again.
“If the front won’t work, I’ll cut somewhere else!”
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, Blake had already charged in from the side.
His longsword skimmed past the edge of Darm’s shield, cutting straight for the gap between Cassandre’s knee guard and leg armor.
Cassandre swung its sword backhanded, ready to force him away.
But before the blade could fall, a purple orb shot in from behind and slammed heavily into the side of the heavy blade.
The heavy blade was knocked off course by brute force and crashed into the stone slab beside Blake with a thunderous boom.
Shards of stone burst outward, but Blake did not retreat. Instead, he pushed forward, grinning as he hacked desperately at Cassandre’s joint.
“Sanna.”
Cyrus called out in a low voice.
The female rogue had already circled around to the other side.
She did not draw a blade. Instead, she flicked out a length of thin chain tipped with an iron claw. The hook traced an arc through the air and caught precisely in the gap between Cassandre’s shoulder guard and arm plate.
In the next instant, Sanna gripped the thin chain and threw herself hard toward the steps at the side.
She hooked the other end of the chain into a crack between the stone steps, producing a shrill scrape of metal.
Cassandre’s arm, which had just begun to rise, was forcibly jerked to a halt.
“Hurry it up. I can’t hold this for long!”
Sanna gritted her teeth and shouted under her breath.
“This damn thing weighs as much as a city gate!”
Cyrus did not delay.
He slid his twin daggers back into their sheaths.
Replacing them was a short-handled spiked mace.
It did not look like a weapon an assassin would use. It had no elegant curve, no clean flash of cold light. The heavy head was covered in sharp iron spikes, designed specifically for punching into armor, even cracking open the seams between plates. It was so brutal it almost seemed unlike Cyrus’s style.
Yet when he gripped it, his movements were terrifyingly practiced.
“An assassin has to know how to adapt.”
Cyrus swept out from the shadow at Darm’s left side, not forgetting to let out a cold laugh as he moved.
“If you can’t cut through something, just smash through it.”
The spiked mace slammed heavily into the knee guard on Cassandre’s side.
Clang!
The sharp iron spikes bit hard into the edge of the plate, and a piercing shriek of twisting metal exploded out.
The thick knee guard was not fully pierced, but it was smashed inward by the spikes. Several rivets around it could not withstand the impact and burst free one after another, striking the stone slabs with crisp, ringing sounds.
Worse still, that force traveled through the deformed plate and poured directly into the bone beneath.
For the first time, Cassandre’s steady movements hit a pause.
It was subtle.
It could barely even be called an opening.
But for Cyrus, it was already enough.
“It’s working.”
He laughed softly.
“Keep it pinned down.”
Darm did not answer. He only let out a low roar, planted both feet hard against the ground, and slammed his entire greatshield forward again.
Bang!
The shield face crashed into the front of the armor, producing a deep, muffled boom. Cassandre’s massive body was driven into a slight backward lean, but its armored boots remained nailed firmly to the ground.
Blake laughed even more wildly. His footwork slipped him around to the side, nearly clinging to Cassandre’s leg as he chased after the same target. Every stroke bit down at the same seam behind the knee. This chapter is updated first at novelping(.)com.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Strings of sparks splashed across his bracer. Flecks of broken metal scraped past the side of his face, forcing him to narrow his eyes.
Sanna clenched her teeth, both hands wrapped tightly around the thin chain. Her entire body was almost leaning backward like a bow drawn to its limit.
The other end of the chain was wedged into the crack between the stone steps, pulled taut in a straight line, and several chain links kept giving off tiny trembling notes.
“Hurry!”
Cold sweat seeped from her temples, and her face had flushed red.
“This damn thing is going to tear the chain apart!”
Cassandre slowly turned its head.
Behind the slit of the helmet, those two points of ghostly blue light seemed to brighten.
In the next instant, the arm bound by the iron chain suddenly sank.
Creak!
The thin chain snapped taut.
The stone step holding the chain finally failed to withstand the strain. The crack burst outward, shards of stone flying in all directions, while several chain links were tugged slightly out of shape.
Sanna’s expression changed.
“Careful! It’s breaking free!”
Cyrus stepped forward, his boot grinding over broken stone.
The short-handled spiked mace was raised again, its head carving a heavy arc through the air as it fell straight toward the already-deformed knee guard.
“Keep it pinned until I cripple this leg!”
Several purple orbs shot out from Jessup’s palm, trailing long, thin lines of magical light as they slammed one after another into Cassandre’s helmet.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Arcane missiles exploded across the metal surface, and the glaring light instantly swallowed that cold faceplate. Sparks and black smoke burst apart together. Several twisted fragments of iron flew from the edge of the helmet and bounced across the stone slabs with crisp rings.
When the smoke was scattered by the impact, a savage crack had already split open the left side of the helmet.
Behind the broken plate, a small patch of pale, withered cheek was revealed.
Behind the slit of the helmet, those two points of ghostly blue light paused faintly.
In the next instant, it was as if a spark had been lit deep within the blue glow.
A thread of scarlet seeped out from the edges of the ghostly blue and slowly spread, finally staining those once cold and silent lights blood-red.
Seeing this, Jessup gathered purple magical light in his palm once more.
But just as he was about to hurl the formed arcane missile toward Cassandre’s arm, his movement suddenly stopped.
Wrong.
There was a sound.
It was not coming from the front.
It was coming from behind.
Jessup whipped around and looked toward the fog gate at the end of the path they had come from.
Beyond the fog gate, nothing could be seen for the moment.
But in the next instant, that sound appeared again.
At first, it was only a low dragging noise.
Then, the ground began to tremble faintly.
Dust jumped from the cracks between the stone slabs.
A few bits of broken stone rolled across the ground toward Jessup’s feet.
The vibration was approaching.
And fast.
For the first time, the calm on Jessup’s face disappeared.
“Cyrus!”
He stared hard at the fog gate, his voice sinking.
“Something’s happening behind us.”
Before they could react, a harsh metallic scrape rang out from deep within the white mist.
It sounded as though something heavy and sharp was being dragged across the stone slabs, approaching inch by inch.
A gaunt hand slowly reached out from the fog gate, gripping the rusted sword steadily.
Immediately after, another violet sword-light drooped down from within the mist.
As the white fog churned, the Whisperer’s gloomy, twisted face slowly emerged.
It tilted its head. Its hollow eye sockets swept across the five people in the plaza, then slowly settled on Cassandre.
“Valrak… answers your command…”
Jessup’s pupils contracted faintly.
But before he could speak, the white mist deeper inside the fog gate was suddenly forced apart by an even larger shadow.
A heavy footstep fell with a thunderous crash.
Bonecrusher dragged that giant club, nearly as thick as a tree trunk, and shattered through the fog as it charged into the plaza.
The end of the club scraped across the stone slabs, dragging out a rough white mark.
It did not speak.
It only breathed low and heavily, cloudy white vapor spilling from between its teeth.
In the next instant, it laid the giant wooden club across its side, its massive body standing directly in front of the fog gate.
That was not an attacking stance.
It was more like a door.
A door that no one could pass unless they knocked it down first.
Blake looked back and saw Bonecrusher blocking the fog gate, and the smile on his face stiffened.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
His eyes went wide, and he cursed aloud.
“What kind of bastard dungeon calls in reinforcements?!”
Cyrus did not curse.
He only stared fixedly at Bonecrusher in front of the fog gate, the smile on his face vanishing completely.
“…We’re being watched.”
His voice was very low, as if confirming the worst possible guess.
The instant Cassandre was suppressed, the bosses behind them had immediately moved in to seal off their retreat.
Cyrus lifted his head and looked at that tall, gaunt twin-sword figure, his brows drawing tighter and tighter.
“This kind of response…”
He gritted his teeth.
“Shouldn’t appear in a low-level dungeon like this.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Ahaha! You noticed.”
Inside the Core Chamber, Owen’s entire core was flashing with anger.
“That’s right. I’m watching!”
“And I’m watching very closely!”
He glared hard at the five people in the plaza.
“You were wrong from the moment you walked through the entrance. You didn’t even glance at the treasure chests I worked so hard to place. You steamrolled right over the little monsters I carefully arranged, and on top of that, you kept running your mouths about tearing down my home.”
“Charging straight for the core.”
Owen’s voice instantly turned cold.
“Good.”
“Then I’ll remember every last one of you very clearly too.”
“Not one of you is getting away.”
In the image before him, the party had already been split apart by the bosses.
Their originally tight coordination was shattered the moment the three bosses pressed in at once.
Darm was still holding the very front, but he no longer had the spare strength to pay attention to anyone else.
Every swing of Cassandre’s sword forced him to grit his teeth and raise his shield to take it head-on. Heavy impacts echoed across the plaza again and again, and obvious dents had already begun to appear along the edge of the shield.
Bonecrusher raised its tree-trunk-thick club and swept it across, forcing Blake to retreat again and again. The swordsman who had been laughing so wildly moments ago could only roll away in a sorry state to avoid the falling club, letting shards of stone scrape past the side of his face.
Sanna tried to circle around to the side again.
But the Whisperer was faster than her.
That gaunt figure slid out as if from the shadows themselves, the rusted sword and the violet-glowing ruined blade sealing off her path one after another.
Sanna had only just drawn her dagger when the violet sword-light skimmed past her shoulder, forcing her to grit her teeth and retreat back where she had started.
The magical light in Jessup’s palm flared, then went out.
He wanted to support Blake, but Bonecrusher’s massive body happened to block the space between them.
He wanted to shift fire and blast open The Whisperer, but Sanna was still trapped inside its attack range.
He wanted to create an opening for Darm, but Cassandre’s heavy sword was pressing down strike after strike, and the front line could not spare even the slightest gap.
For a moment, he could not find a single safe angle to cast from.
As for Cyrus, he had already put away the short-handled spiked mace and drawn his familiar pair of daggers instead.
His gaze swept between the three bosses.
That face, always calm and unruffled, finally turned ugly.
It was not that they could not fight.
It was that they had no room to respond.
Everyone had been forced into their own fight. Their rhythm had been completely disrupted, and they could no longer coordinate with one another.
How were they supposed to fight like this?
Cyrus’s gaze finally landed on The Whisperer.
Not Cassandre.
Not Bonecrusher, who had sealed off their retreat.
But that tall, gaunt figure now cutting apart their rear line and flank.
As long as it remained there, Sanna could not break free, and Jessup could not find an angle to cast.
Cyrus drew in a deep breath and lowered his stance.
In the next instant, he charged straight toward the Whisperer.
“Out of options now, aren’t you?”
Inside the Core Chamber, Owen could not help muttering nonstop.
“That’s what you get for causing trouble. That’s what you get! Damn it, how can there be people this annoying?”
He watched the five-person party in the image, their formation completely carved apart by the three bosses, and the light of his core flashed with anger.
“I knew it. Some humans really are the most troublesome creatures in the world.”
The words had barely left his mouth before Owen paused.
“No, wait. Can’t paint everyone with the same brush.”
“Rayne and the others are still pretty good.”
“But you lot are different!”
His voice rose sharply.
“You’re the bastards trying to tear my home down!”
As his voice fell, the battle in the image completely lost all suspense.
Cyrus did manage to reach The Whisperer.
His twin daggers stabbed out left and right, their angles tricky enough to almost slip past the crossing sword-light that The Whisperer brought down. But The Whisperer had no intention of defending. The rusted sword swept across, and the violet-glowing ruined blade followed, hooking up from below. With an even more vicious chain of slashes, it forcibly cut off his assault.
Sanna tried to take the chance to cut in from the side, but The Whisperer forced her back with a backhanded sword stroke.
The magical light had just lit in Jessup’s palm when Bonecrusher’s giant wooden club came crashing down beside him. The stone slabs shattered, and the impact sent broken stones flying into him, forcing him to stumble back. The spell he had only half-formed collapsed along with it.
Blake roared and charged toward Bonecrusher. His longsword chopped into that thick club, but only cut away a few chips of wood. In the next instant, Bonecrusher swept backhanded and smashed his entire body into the stone wall at the side.
White light rose.
Blake’s figure broke apart into motes of light and vanished.
Darm still gritted his teeth and held the very front.
But his shield had already been severely deformed.
Cassandre’s heavy blade smashed down again and again, until the final blow finally caved the greatshield inward. Darm let out a muffled groan and dropped to one knee. Before he could stand again, the sword had already fallen.
A second white light rose.
Then a third, and a fourth.
Sanna was forced by The Whisperer into Bonecrusher’s attack range.
Jessup tried to use magic to buy himself distance, but the sword wind sent out by Cassandre interrupted his casting.
Their figures were swallowed by white light one after another.
In the end, only Cyrus remained in the plaza.
The Whisperer and Cassandre hemmed him in from front and back, and his face was terrifyingly dark.
He seemed as though he still wanted to say something.
But in the next instant, the violet-glowing ruined blade had already swept across his chest.
White light rose.
Cyrus’s figure also broke apart into motes of light and vanished.
The plaza fell quiet once more.
Owen stared at the image for a long while before finally letting out a long breath of relief.
“Phew…”
“It’s finally over.”
He hurriedly shifted his view toward the starting chamber.
Sure enough, several rays of white light soon gathered again inside the stone chamber.
◆ ◆ ◆
Cyrus, Blake, Sanna, Darm, and Jessup fell to the ground one after another.
Their faces did not look good. The fatal wounds on their bodies had already vanished, and their breathing had returned to a steady rhythm.
But the shock of having just experienced death was not something they could recover from in a mere moment.
Blake was the first to prop himself up. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to curse out loud, but in the end, not a single word came out.
Sanna’s face was pale as she lowered her head and repeatedly checked that her hands and feet were intact, as if she still could not quite believe she had truly survived.
Jessup held a hand to his forehead, his brows locked tight, his gaze so dark it almost seemed to drip water.
Darm remained silent the entire time. He only lowered his head and looked at his own hands, his expression somewhat dazed.
As for Cyrus, he stood almost the instant the white light faded. His face was terrifyingly dark, and his eyes were fixed straight ahead, as if his mind were frantically replaying every detail of the battle just now.
Owen watched them.
The more he watched, the more he felt something was wrong.
“…Wait.”
“That’s not right.”
He suddenly realized something extremely serious.
These people had clearly come straight for his core.
They had not hidden their intent at all.
They wanted to destroy his core.
And the result?
After dying once, they had still been sent back to the starting chamber by Trial Return as usual.
Aside from the Soul Damage and some damaged equipment, their bodies had been restored to their original state.
They could even bring the information they had just obtained with them and sit there, rethinking how to attack next time.
Owen’s entire core almost stopped functioning.
“Did I… completely forget to design a punishment for malicious adventurers like these?”
The Core Chamber fell silent for an instant.
In the next moment, Owen’s entire core trembled violently.
“No.”
“This loophole has to be patched.”
“Now. Immediately. Right this second!”