The wind on the sixth mountain was no longer just cold. It was heavy. As if the very air was tired of existing.
I stood at the highest peak, the black shroud of the dungeon wavering in the sky like liquid smoke. Down below, where the fourth mountain once stood, now there was only emptiness.
Literally.
The entire mountain was disintegrating, fragment by fragment, as if a black hole were devouring it. Colossal rocks, entire trees, chunks of earth—all slowly spiraled around the dark vortex before vanishing. No sound. No explosion. No dust. Just the silence of things ceasing to be.
As if the world was unraveling from within.
"Four days..." I murmured to myself. "Four more days and this mountain will be gone too."
I sighed.
"Enough time... or none at all."
I had been unconscious for nearly twenty hours. When I woke up, I was lying next to the chalice, now glowing with an unstable crimson light, like a candle about to go out. Blood still trickled into it slowly.
But not mine.
Seraphine had awakened before me. And she was the one who took on the burden of sustaining the barrier.
I gazed into the distance, at the clearing where the others had gathered. All together. All collapsed.
The battlefield had become an infirmary. Or maybe a premature mausoleum.
Dórian was closest to death. His body was completely wrapped, bound in cloth and makeshift splints, looking more like a mummy than a warrior. He convulsed from time to time, his face twisted by pain he could no longer consciously feel. Black veins still crawled across parts of his skin like dead roots. Muscles swollen and purple. Part of his side gave off a putrid stench. Necrosis. If we took him out of here, maybe he'd survive. But there was no way out.
Dália...
She saved everyone.
And now she was in a coma.
Her body lay still beside Dórian, wrapped in blankets and torn cloth, her breathing shallow as if every breath was a superhuman effort. When we found her collapsed, her face was covered in dried blood, and her hands were still outstretched, as if she had been casting healing spells. I imagine she blacked out while trying to stabilize Dórian.
Aeloria...
His body was unnaturally cold. His legs were no longer there. Dália had managed to stop the bleeding before he bled out, but the trauma had been brutal. Limbless, his soul shattered by loss and pain, he only breathed. Weak pulse. Skin pale as snow. And a constant silence. Not even dreams seemed to find him in that abyss between life and death.
Seraphine was the most conscious. The most resilient. But now, she too rested beside the others.
She had many fractures. Her artifact had saved her life, but with lingering damage. By using her own blood to keep the chalice active, she had worsened her recovery even further.
I felt guilt when I saw it was her blood sustaining the barrier.
She had surrendered to sleep only a few hours ago, after losing the strength to remain standing. Her internal wounds, invisible, throbbed in silence.
And the chalice showed no mercy.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
'This has turned into a graveyard... and I'm still standing.'
Maybe that was the cruelest part of all. Why me? Why now?
'If this was truly a test from Selene and Lesley, I will never forgive them.'
"I can't allow myself to think like this," I muttered, slapping my own face to shake off the melancholy. "It's not over yet."
I turned my gaze back to the vortex where the fourth mountain once stood. Next was the fifth. Then the sixth—ours.
Four days.
Or it swallows us too.
'I need to find this dungeon's core. The boss. The cause.'
The only way out was to go deeper.
My body still hurt. The wounds were still there, raw—but less intense.
**
But first... two things need to be said.
The first, and perhaps most important, is that from the peak of the sixth mountain, I can see the peak of the seventh.
And there it is... what's left of a castle.
Or something very much like one.
The ruins rise in silence, shrouded in a dark mist that refuses to dissipate, even under the dungeon's artificial light. An ancient, timeless structure, with black pillars cracked like giant bones exposed to the ages. The walls—or what's left of them—are covered in runes I don't recognize. Not even the symbols. It's as if they belonged to a language forgotten before history itself began.
But it's not just ruins. There's something solemn about that architecture. A broken dome, supported by arches of black stone. Wide, worn steps form a ceremonial staircase that winds upward like a sacred trail. No doors. No gates.
You don't need permission to enter the seventh mountain.
You just have to climb the steps.
It's almost like an invitation.
And now the second thing...
The thing that made me stop breathing the moment I first laid eyes on that place.
The final guardian.
He is there.
Lying in the center of the ruins. In the heart of the structure, surrounded by fallen debris and collapsed pillars, as if the castle had been built around him. Or for him.
His body doesn't move. But his eyes... oh, all twenty of his eyes...
Are open.
Fixed on me.
From the moment I set foot on the peak of the sixth mountain.
They don't blink. Don't shift. They just stare with the patience of a predator that knows its prey has nowhere left to run.
Dórian saw him before any of us. In his feverish nightmares, when the pain was so great that his soul almost slipped from his body. Not that I knew that at the time—but now, I see him with my own eyes too.
A centipede-like body covered in black scales that absorb the light. A double jaw that always seems to be smiling. Curved, broken horns. And twenty violet eyes scattered across a face that defies any anatomical logic. Some blink diagonally. Others stay perfectly still. Some vibrate, as if perceiving multiple realities at once.
Six chitinous claws, like those of a locust, sharp as obsidian axes. A tail slithered behind it, ending in a scorpion's stinger.
He's there.
Waiting.
As if he's been waiting for us from the very beginning.
As if he knew that, in the end, there would be no other path but to climb those stairs.
And face him.
And this isn't some dark cave. It isn't just another creature.
It's the end of everything.
"Phew..." I exhaled.
Reality was harsh. Defeating that thing was impossible. Just by looking at the final boss of the dungeon, I knew he was on a completely different level than anything we'd faced so far.
The second thing...
Is this damned ring.
Ever since the death of the serpent guardian, the calling has become unbearable.
It doesn't matter when. Sometimes during the day, as I watch the horizon vanish into the distortion of the mountains.
Sometimes in the middle of the night, when the cold cuts the skin like blades.
The whispers—thin, sharp, starving—pierce my mind like needles. There are times when not even the constant whistling wind up here at the summit can drown them out. They cut through sound. Through bone.
Something changed.
Something awakened within it when the serpent died.
And I know exactly why.
This ring... is not just an artifact. It never was.
I took it from the corpse of a black serpent.
The centipede was a colossal monster, more like a puppet, with a black snake in place of a tongue that controlled it and shot beams like the guardian of the sixth mountain.
That thing was being controlled by something. Or someone. And now, with the serpent's heart destroyed, maybe... the leash of submission has been broken.
Or maybe it's just hungry.
I look at it.
The ring—black as the void—glows faintly, almost imperceptibly. But it's there. Like a buried heart deep in the earth, beating just enough to remind me it's still alive.
I ponder everything I know so far.
The first time I entered that damned pocket world, I nearly died.
My body couldn't withstand the dimensional pressure, the effects on the mind, the trials of space within space.
I was torn apart—even though my physical body remained intact—the pain was real, the exhaustion was real, and the despair was real.
But I also… evolved.
My manipulation of space advanced by weeks, maybe even months beyond what I would have achieved through normal training. I managed to absorb natural spatial energy in a matter of weeks—something I hadn't achieved in months. It forced me to grow. Tore me apart and stitched me back together.
I spent six weeks inside.
And out here… only sixty hours had passed.
The ring's internal time distortion is constant. One week inside equals ten hours out here.
I have only four days left before the sixth mountain vanishes like the others.
That gives me roughly four weeks inside… with a bit of time left to face the guardian once I return.
I could resolve whatever the second trial is.
Maybe even complete the process the ring so desperately demands. But the question is: can I?
The first trial nearly killed me. The second… well, the second is calling my name.
I look around.
Aeloria, legless, corpse-pale.
Dórian, sunken in fever and poison, necrotizing from the inside out.
Dália… in a coma, her thread of life held by a strand as if the chalice had taken the rest.
Seraphine… the only one still standing. But fragile. A spark trying to keep the torch lit.
I can't count on them.
I shouldn't.
If I want even the slightest chance against that monster on the seventh mountain, then any boost in power is welcome.
I run the numbers. The effects.
'If I can saturate my prana core…'
A quick calculation flashes through my mind.
'…a 30% increase in overall energy manipulation and storage capacity. That includes offensive power, magical reaction speed, and dimensional stability. Thirty percent.'
It's not a gamble.
It's a necessity.
"It's better than sitting around waiting to die."
**
I approached Seraphine slowly.
She was sleeping against a stone, arms wrapped around herself. Dried blood clung to her skin, and the chalice rested beside her, shielded by a thin layer of mana that flickered like a weary breath. Her face, though exhausted, still bore a serene expression. But I knew that serenity was forcibly constructed.
I gently touched her shoulder.
"Seraphine…"
She opened her eyes slowly, blinking against the pale light. It took her a moment to recognize me.
"Sorry to wake you. I need you."
She tried to get up on her own, but winced and clenched her teeth in pain. I helped her up, placing her arm over my shoulder.
"You'll understand," I murmured, guiding her across the rocks to the summit.
When we finally reached the top of the sixth mountain, the wind cut like blades. There, ahead, on the peak of the seventh mountain—it awaited us.
The guardian.
Lying like a divine corpse in the center of the ruin. A colossal monster with a twisted body, like a profane altar that breathed. Twenty eyes. All open. All fixed on me since the moment I climbed up here.
Seraphine gasped softly.
"That… that's the guardian of the seventh mountain?"
"Yes." I crossed my arms, eyes locked on the creature. "And I'm starting to wonder… if fighting it is really the only way out of this dungeon."
She stayed silent. Only the wind answered us for a while.
"You think it's possible to close this rift without killing the guardian?" I asked, turning to her. "I mean… is it always like this? The only way to seal a dungeon… is to kill the monster?"
Seraphine lowered her gaze for a few seconds, thoughtful. Then, she took a deep breath.
"That's what everyone believes. But… that's not exactly true."
"What do you mean?"
"The premise is flawed," she replied, with a voice firmer than I expected. "What happens, Glenn, is that most of the time the guardian is responsible for the dimensional anomaly. It's the epicenter of the collapse. That's why killing it solves the problem."
"So… it's not that killing is the only solution."
"It just usually appears to be."
She looked at me, then pointed down to the chalice, now visible among the rocks and the bodies of our fallen companions.
"Maybe that is the key. Maybe the true chalice lies on the seventh mountain. Maybe destroying it—or feeding it, like we're doing—is what prevents the rift from consuming everything."
"But that's just a hypothesis," I added.
She nodded, serious.
"The most likely scenario is still that killing the guardian is the only way."
I stayed quiet for a few moments. Only the sound of our breathing and the dull roar of the wind filled the mountaintop.
I nodded in acknowledgment.
"Understood."
I turned to her, and this time my gaze was direct, resolute.
"I'm going into meditation. I don't know how long I'll be out. But you're forbidden to wake me."
"Even if—"
"Even if the sky is falling." I interrupted. "Even if you think you're going to die. You won't be able to wake me anyway."
She didn't reply. She just looked at me—serious—but there was something more in her eyes. Something beyond faith.
It was trust.
"And you?" I asked. "Can you keep feeding the chalice?"
"Yes. As long as I breathe."
"Good. Then that's all you need to do. Stay alive. Keep bleeding into it. And believe in me."
Seraphine let out a brief, tired laugh.
"I've been trusting you since the moment we stepped into this cursed dungeon, Glenn. I don't plan to stop now."
I nodded, then stepped away, finding a flat spot among the rocks. I knelt.
Took a deep breath.
I looked one last time at the creature waiting for me on the seventh mountain's peak.
"See you soon."
I closed my eyes.
The ring pulsed.
Whispered its invitation.
And I accepted the call.
And the world vanished.