The second Nex entered the boss zone, he instinctively realised something had went wrong,
____________________________________
All went dark.
The entire Control Room flickered once—
Then lost all contact.
"All feeds lost."
"We've got nothing—no vitals, no visuals—"
"Did we get everyone out?"
No one answered.
The extraction protocol malfunctioned. The rift's interior sealed, and an emergency lockdown began.
Some participants had returned. But many were still inside.
Unknown. Undetectable.
Unreachable.
Orien issued forced teleportation to get everyone out of the rift but still "five minutes were remaining for the teleportation to work", and time was ticking faster than ever before,
And in that unknown, deep in the frost-bitten heart of the rift—
Nex opened his eyes. And saw all the four bosses from the areas, sizing him up.
____________________________________
❖ VOID TRANCE: BLOOD & MOMENTUM ❖
"Ten meters. That's all I get. That's all I need."
---
The air split open.
Frost cracked the ground. Flames licked the ceiling.
Mana trembled.
Four bosses stood before him—C-rank monsters. No weaknesses. No mercy.
No one watching. No one coming.
Just Nex.
Alone. Drenched in blood. Legs half-numb. Breathing ragged.
And ten meters of control.
---
❖ [4:59] – Evade or Die
The Cryo Tyrant lunged, frost breath whistling from its jaws.
Nex didn't dodge.
He launched himself upward using the breath's own pressure as a push—
Reversed his descent mid-air, bounced off a jagged outcrop within his range,
and twisted into a freefall roll behind a rune pillar.
The ice beam sliced through the pillar instead, collapsing it on the Tyrant's own foot.
"One. Off balance."
The Blaze Ravager came next, claws flaming.
Nex let it come.
At 8 meters—he ripped a corpse's weapon from the ground mid-swing
and hurled it into its own knee joint—
Not to injure, but to force a limb pause—a momentum stutter.
That was enough.
Nex vectored off a falling debris chunk, letting it carry him like a cannonball
into a glacier wall, where he reversed grip and slingshotted back at terminal speed
through the narrow gap between two bosses.
---
❖ [4:11] – Close. Too Close.
He hit the ground, rolling—just in time for a flaming rune to explode behind him.
The heat melted the ice under him.
He sank—
But he vectored a broken fang from the corpse near him to stab into the wall,
anchoring himself as molten rock burned below.
His palms blistered. Skin peeled.
But he climbed up—
And vectored a loose boss fragment straight into the eye of the Rune Elemental.
It shrieked—
The Tyrant, enraged, turned and fired at the wrong target.
---
❖ [3:29] – Blood Trickles. Vision Blurs.
One second too slow.
A shard pierced Nex's left thigh—bone-deep.
He screamed, vectored backward to a ledge above—but slipped.
Caught himself with his only uninjured hand.
Hanging.
The Blaze Ravager's molten breath shot toward him.
"Use it."
He timed the moment—
At 2.8 meters, just inside his radius—
He vectored one loose ice chunk in front of him, then another behind—
The flame rebounded between the mirrors—
And hit the Rune Elemental square in the chest.
---
❖ [2:52] – The Arena Collapses
A quake tore through the field.
Platforms shattered. Walls fell.
The battlefield became a shifting graveyard of broken ground and blood.
Nex sprinted—but his leg gave way.
The Cryo Tyrant slammed down—cracking the earth.
Nex leapt—used the shockwave as a trampoline—vectored mid-flight into the air.
There, he caught an icicle shard, vectored around it, and spun—
Right behind a falling piece of boss armor.
He kicked it down with enhanced force—
Crushing the Blaze Ravager's arm beneath it.
> "Three tangled. One blind. Still alive."
---
❖ [1:59] – Everything Hurts
Nex's shoulder was dislocated.
His lip was split.
His ribs screamed with every breath.
He grabbed a broken staff, not to fight—
But to use it as a timed wedge.
He wedged it between two burning runes on the ground, waited for the countdown—
And when it erupted, he used the resulting mana surge to launch a loose glacier spike
into the Rune Elemental's back.
It staggered into the Cryo Tyrant.
---
❖ [1:01] – Steam & Light
Then the idea hit him.
The ice.
The flames.
The steam.
He focused. There were floating frozen shards all around him, still in range.
There were also rune traces in the air from prior flame attacks.
He vectored the ice into clusters, holding them with precision—
Then vectored the residual flame energy into contact—
They exploded into scalding white vapor.
A massive, choking steam cloud blanketed the arena.
Blinded bosses. Confused sensors.
And at the center, a silent ghost moved.
---
❖ [0:44] – Collapse
He couldn't feel his legs.
Couldn't hear over the sound of cracking.
He vectored himself from wall to wall, faster than human muscles could endure,
leaving blood on every surface.
The bosses swung wildly—
Their own chaos breaking each other's forms.
He used the Rune Elemental's own collapse as a step
to vault over the Tyrant's back, using momentum to roll down and away.
---
❖ [0:15] – No Sound. No Signal.
Control room—silent.
Nex—broken.
But the glyph activated. A faint golden light beneath his foot.
"Extraction—triggered."
But the Blaze Ravager saw it too.
Its final scream shook the walls.
It charged.
---
❖ [0:07] – Last Play
No strength left.
Only one vector impulse possible.
He vectored the last ice spike mid-air—
Into the burning glyph under him.
The shock threw steam upward, blinding the Ravager.
The other bosses turned.
They collided.
And Nex—
Vanished in the light, while muttering
Ten..... Fucking ten metres,
And disappeared the next instant.
____________________________________
( 5 minutes before)
❖ [Scene: The Cryo Spire – Final Rush]
Aria's boots skidded against frosted stone.
The air had turned unnaturally cold.
Her sacred flame dimmed in response — a warning.
"That wasn't a boss death tremor," she muttered.
"That was... something else."
She rounded the edge of a broken pillar — and Ruby was already there.
Covered in ash, knuckles bleeding, breathing hard — her twin blades still humming.
"You felt it too?" Ruby asked.
"Something's wrong."
They exchanged a nod — then turned to the sound of shifting stone.
Lucas vaulted over a ledge, landing near them, face pale, his usual grin gone.
"This place is unstable," he said, wiping blood from his forehead.
"All the bosses vanished. Like... not defeated — just gone."
Kaelith arrived next, sword sheathed, gaze sharp.
He wasn't panting. He never panted. But even he looked... uneasy.
"There's something alive here," he said.
"Something bigger than the protocol expected."
Marcus came in behind, dark affinity flaring, eyes focused.
"Four bosses' signals vanished at once," he said.
"No death markers. Just— silence."
A few other students were already there — bruised, alert, weapons drawn.
The Cryo Spire pulsed ominously ahead, like a heartbeat made of frost and mana.
It should've been the final boss room.
And it was empty.
Dead silent.
Then—
THU-DUM
A single pulse of crimson light surged from the spire floor.
Their bodies stiffened.
A voice echoed in their comms— garbled, distorted, Orien's voice maybe?
"—Protocol malfunction. Emergency evacuation engaged. All participants—"
A flash. A rune. A countdown.
"No—!" Aria snapped.
"We just got here!"
Too late.
Golden glyphs ignited under their feet—
Lucas grabbed Ruby's hand instinctively.
Kaelith turned to Marcus, brows furrowed.
Aria's eyes widened.
"Wait... Where's—"
They vanished.
---