The carriage ride from the gilded heart of the Capital to the jagged southern fringe of the realm took two days of relentless travel.
As the paved royal roads dissolved into rough dirt tracks, the lush green estates of the interior gave way to the bleak, wind-scoured stone of the Abyssal Mountain foothills.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was quiet and deeply focused.
Rosalina and Nyxara sat across from Barn, meditating in rhythmic synchronization.
Under Barn’s silent direction, the two noblewomen used the travel time to harmonize their vastly different spiritual profiles.
Rosalina’s High Mage core—pulsing with vibrant Earth and Nature Mana—worked in harmony with Nyxara’s volatile Dark Mana, now tempered and elevated by the subtle threads of Divine Moon energy Barn had ignited within her.
Whenever the two contrasting energies clashed, Barn reached out with a single finger, using his [Resonance] talent to smooth the turbulence and guide their mana pathways into deeper efficiency.
Barn was doing this primarily to maintain peace and gather experience; through this delicate channeling, he was receiving a steady stream of pure experience that could easily be transformed into new skills and class advancements.
However, he deliberately held back, pausing his immediate progression to keep his power profile tightly managed for the path ahead.
By late afternoon of the third day, the carriage could go no further.
They abandoned the transport at an abandoned, dilapidated logging outpost, continuing on foot into a narrow, mist-shrouded gorge known as the Grave of Shadows.
The air here was heavy, smelling of ozone, rotting vegetation, and the sharp, metallic tang of unrefined subterranean mana.
”The ambient mana is thick here,” Rosalina noted, pulling her enchanted cloak tighter around her shoulders as her boots crunched against the jagged black gravel.
“It feels…
twisted.
Like it’s being pulled toward a single point deeper in the canyon.”
”That’s the dungeon’s siphon effect,” Nyxara explained softly, her violet eyes glowing faintly in the dim evening light.
“The Church’s seal arrays are forcing the local ley lines to collapse into the dungeon’s core, artificially accelerating its spawning cycle.”
”Dungeons are shards of the world combined with a high density of mana to create a zone that is partially or fully separate from the laws of the world,” Barn explained, laying out the fundamental reality.
Rosalina stopped mid-step, her brown eyes widening in genuine shock.
worlds?
Why don’t I know this?
They taught us in the academies that they are merely natural phenomena created when Dark Energy and Mana combine!”
”Yes, they are worlds.
But they are also living entities that function like a world—and if they grow strong enough, they can devour the world outside,” Barn explained calmly.
”How do you know this?” Nyxara asked, her breathtaking face turning completely serious as her sharp violet eyes locked onto him.
”I am a Master, and a Master knows many things.
However, I am not the only one who knows this truth,” Barn replied smoothly.
Nyxara raised an eyebrow, her gaze darkening.
“So…
the Church?”
”Also the Royal Family,” Barn added, his low voice carrying an unbothered weight.
“Everyone else who ever discovered this reality either disappeared or was forcefully turned into a puppet.”
Rosalina and Nyxara listened, nodding slowly in grim understanding.
In the ruthless political arena of the kingdom, such quiet suppression was exactly what they had come to expect from those holding power.
”And they hid it for years,” Rosalina muttered, a cold anger lacing her tone.
“They kept a ticking time bomb under their own house, knowing full well that it would eventually explode and destroy everything.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
”What did you expect?
They only care about their own immediate interests,” Nyxara said bitterly, her fingers flexing against her side.
“I once met the King.
He acted kind on the surface, but the sheer cruelty I felt behind his mask was the real danger.”
Barn walked at the head of the group, his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his shadow-black coat, which now shifted and stretched downward like a flowing cloak, nearly reaching his feet.
His active power profile remained heavily suppressed—outwardly, his aura registered as nothing more than a composed, mid-tier combatant.
Yet, through his [All-Know] perception, his mind seamlessly mapped every pebble, hidden trap, and living entity for miles around.
”Stop,” Barn commanded softly, halting at the threshold of a massive, jagged fissure in the cliffside that breathed out a wave of cold, damp air.
”Is the dungeon core inside?” Rosalina asked, her hand instinctively resting near the focus gem strapped to her wrist.
”Yes.
This is the entrance, but we aren’t the only ones here,” Barn replied, a faint, dry smirk touching his lips.
He didn’t turn his head, but his dark eyes shifted subtly toward the shadows lining the upper ridges of the gorge.
“Three Church watchers concealed behind optical concealment wards, and a squad of seven elite executioners waiting just inside the cavern entrance.
They’ve already laid the activation array directly over the threshold.”
Nyxara’s eyes narrowed into icy slits, her right hand instinctively humming with a veil of divine moon light.
“Shall I erase them, Master Barn?”
”No,” Barn answered smoothly, stepping forward into the mouth of the dark cavern without a hint of hesitation.
“Let them watch.
They worked hard to set up this playground for their ‘Hero.’ It’s only polite that we show them how easily it breaks.”
With a silent, deliberate step, the trio crossed the threshold into the dark, subterranean depths of the first border dungeon, ready to shatter the Church’s grand design from the inside out.