The temperature plunged drastically the moment their boots crossed the threshold of the yawning cavern.
The crisp, wind-whipped chill of the mountain canyon vanished in an instant, immediately replaced by a heavy, suffocating subterranean pressure.
It was a stale, stagnant atmosphere thick with the acrid stench of sulfur, moisture, and heavily corrupted mana that hung in the air like a physical shroud.
Barn led the advance into the subterranean passage, his elongated, shadow-black coat sweeping silently over the slick, damp stone.
Rosalina and Nyxara followed half a pace behind in tight formation, their senses drawn taut and their weapons resting at the ready, the faint clicking of their enchanted boots against the dark basalt echoing in the enclosed space.
Etched directly into the overhead stone archway of the entrance, an intricate ritual circle burned with an eerie, diseased crimson light.
It was the Holy Church’s forced activation array, vibrating violently like a nest of disturbed hornets as it siphoned the wild ley lines of the outer canyon and funneled that raw energy straight into the subterranean depths below.
Thump.
A heavy, low-frequency pulse resonated through the rock floor, vibrating straight through the soles of their boots like the slow, labored heartbeat of a waking titan.
”The core is already awakening,” Rosalina murmured under her breath, her fingers hovering near the luminous focus gem strapped to her wrist.
Beneath her skin, her Earth and Nature Mana stirred in immediate response to the violent warping of the surrounding stone.
“The basalt here…
it’s losing its natural composition.
It’s being forcibly overwritten by the dungeon’s domain field.”
”It’s a mirror realm solidifying its anchor,” Nyxara whispered, her cold violet eyes narrowing as she tracked the crimson-black veins of tainted mana crawling across the cavern roof.
“The Church calibrated this array to induce an aggressive, chaotic spawning cycle.
Every beast formed within these chambers will be born with maximum bloodlust.”
”Let it spawn,” Barn answered calmly, his hands remaining casually tucked into his coat pockets.
With a deliberate exertion of internal willpower, Barn forcefully compressed his vast mana reserves inward.
A brief, faint luminescence outlined his physical form before plunging deep into his spiritual matrix, sealing his core beneath dense layers of energetic restraint.
The sudden restriction felt like heavy, freezing iron chains wrapping around his internal pathways, leaving him physically feeling far weaker than his baseline state.
Rosalina turned her head sharply, genuine alarm flashing across her sharp features as she sensed the sudden, drastic drop in his presence.
“Barn, what did you do?”
To any external scrying lens or standard mana-detection array, Barn now registered as nothing more than an unthreatening, mid-tier combatant casually walking into a prepared slaughterhouse.
Yet beneath this heavily suppressed shell, his transcendent [All-Know] sensory perception operated at absolute clarity, mapping every stone, fluctuation, and hostile heartbeat in the cavern with effortless precision.
Ten paces ahead, the wide passage pinched into a natural basalt bottleneck.
Wrapped in spell-dampening, light-absorbing cloaks that erased their body heat, respiration, and mana signatures, the Church’s elite executioners waited.
In their hands rested serrated, black-steel curved daggers coated in an oily, purple mana-corroding venom, poised to spring the moment the targets crossed into the narrow kill zone.
Outside the cavern entrance, high on the rocky ledges of the gorge, three hidden Church watchers peered through long-range optical scrying lenses, waiting to record the quick and silent execution of the intruders.
Barn did not break his stride in the slightest.
”Rosalina.
Left wall, three targets,” Barn commanded, his voice level and entirely devoid of urgency.
“Nyxara.
Right wall and center, four targets.
Do not use high-tier spells.
Control your output and crush them with pure efficiency.”
Beneath their dark cowls, the executioners’ eyes flared wide with shock—their specialized concealment had been pierced before they could even trigger the trap!
”Kill them!” the squad leader hissed, his voice warped by an integrated vocal distorter.
In a fraction of a second, seven dark silhouettes erupted from the stone walls like striking vipers, their poisoned daggers trailing streaks of crimson mana as they lunged to close the distance simultaneously.
Rosalina did not flinch.
Trusting Barn’s command without hesitation, she raised her left palm.
Rather than expending her reserves on a massive High Mage bombardment, she channeled a precise, highly concentrated thread of Nature Mana directly into the cavern floor.
[Entangling Spike]
Thwip!
Thwip!
Thwip!
Three jagged pillars of dense basalt erupted from the ground at sharp angles.
The stone spikes impaled two lunging executioners clean through their shoulder plates, pinning them to the rock before their daggers could fall.
Simultaneously, thick, petrified stone vines burst from the fractured floor, coiling tightly around the third assassin, snapping his wrists with a wet crunch and crushing his poisoned blades to iron dust.
Across the corridor, Nyxara moved with terrifying, fluid speed.
She stepped straight inside the guard of the lead executioner, her right palm coated in a shimmering, iridescent veil of her newly integrated Divine Moon energy.
[Moon-Veil Palm]
BANG!
The condensed divine resonance detonated entirely on the inside of his armor.
While the heavy exterior plating remained unmarked, the internal kinetic shockwave pulverized his mana core and shattered his internal organs in an instant, throwing his lifeless body backward against the basalt wall where it slumped motionless.
The strike was an evolved form of her foundational close-quarters technique, [Dark Cover Strike]—a lethal art she routinely employed to either completely drain an opponent’s energy reserves or cripple their nervous system by injecting volatile dark energy directly into their pathways.
Before the three remaining executioners could comprehend the instant destruction of their vanguard, Nyxara pivoted smoothly on her heel.
She swung her arm in a razor-sharp arc, releasing a compressed crescent of dark energy laced with moonlight that sheared cleanly through their weapon arms in a single, silent flash of light.
For both noblewomen, this expedition was a controlled proving ground.
By restricting themselves strictly to low- and mid-tier techniques, they were actively adapting to their refined mana pathways, honing absolute efficiency over wasteful destruction under Barn’s guidance.
The entire ambush was dismantled in less than three seconds.
The three surviving assassins collapsed to the stone floor, groaning in agony as conjured stone vines bound them securely in place.
Out on the cliffs above the gorge, the scrying lenses held by the three Church observers visibly shook with unmasked disbelief.
Rosalina exhaled slowly, looking down at her glowing fingertips in quiet astonishment.
She had expended less than a tenth of her standard output, yet the structural precision Barn had drilled into her matrix had turned elite Church assassins into helpless practice dummies.
Nyxara stepped back into formation, the violet glow in her eyes steadying as she looked at Barn.
“Executioners neutralized, Master Barn.
Should we eliminate the watchers outside?”
”Leave them,” Barn replied smoothly, stepping past the immobilized assassins without sparing them a glance.
“They need someone alive to deliver the failure report to their superiors.
It is far more entertaining when the Church knows their trap collapsed, but has no idea how.”
He turned his gaze toward the descending, pitch-black abyss ahead, where the subterranean air grew thicker and hotter with raw, unrefined dungeon mana.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Ting!
Experience Acquired: +150 EXP (Efficiency Mastery)
Ting!
Experience Acquired: +300 EXP (Command Resonance)
A cold, dangerous smirk touched Barn’s lips as he felt the ambient, chaotic energy of the cavern swirling around his deliberately bound core.
”Now, follow me and support me,” Barn said, stepping forward into the deeper layers of the dungeon.
“Let’s go find the core.”