Sorry for the lateness, was still writing the chapter.
//
Luki reached his destination and stopped.
Ahead of him, the passage opened into a wide section of the Dungeon, drowned in darkness and thick mist. The place was crowded with monster just like the way he left, killing each other without reason.
No one seemed to notice Luki's presence, because he wasn't attacked yet.
He remained still observing the carnage from up close. Now, from a different perspective, he could notice different things, like how the monsters seemed to be being extra violent in their killing.
For a moment he couldn't help but feel pity, not for them specifically but for the whole situation, that feeling that arises when you see on the news that two nations are at war and it shows the destruction caused in cities and among civilians.
The bitterness came almost immediately.
Luki took a slow breath and tried to push the thought away.
He shook his head, his blond hair swaying from side to side, as if trying to shake that line of thinking out of his mind before it could take root.
Luki didn't pause to steel his resolve or close his eyes to focus. He simply stepped forward, as if continuing a normal walk.
He approached the battlefield until reaching its edge, where fewer monsters were fighting.
One of them finally noticed him. It roared and charged.
Luki moved first.
He burst forward and met it head-on, his fist smashing into the monster's skull and blowing its head apart before the attack could even land.
The burst of violence didn't go unnoticed.
The nearby monsters stopped what they were doing. One by one, their attention shifted toward him, until the chaos turned into something else entirely. They abandoned their previous targets and began closing in.
As it turned out, this wasn't just a disorganized fight. It was everyone against everyone, and now, everyone against Luki.
He clenched his fists and faced them head-on, relying on the martial skills he had refined through months of training on the surface and countless battles in the depths of the Dungeon.
He stepped into the closest one, driving a punch into its throat and dropping it while twisting away from a claw that passed where his head had been a moment before.
Another rushed in. Luki shifted his footing, kicked once, then again, crushing bone and sending the creature collapsing to the floor.
More followed.
He didn't stop moving. Every step carried him forward through the battlefield, weaving between bodies and attacks. When claws came, he slipped past them. When a monster exposed itself, he answered with a short, decisive strike.
Luki moved like an experienced adventurer in an early zone. His strength and technique made killing monsters look as easy as slaughtering chickens.
One minute and thirty-six seconds.
But that wasn't enough. He had promised he wouldn't take even five minutes, and that promise wouldn't be broken.
Like a barbarian, he grabbed a monster by the tail without even bothering to identify what it was and swung it violently like a nunchaku. The number of dead monsters rose with every second.
When his improvised weapon finally broke apart, he simply threw the remains away and grabbed the next closest creature, becoming just as, if not more, cruel and terrifying than the monsters had been moments before.
One minute and forty-five seconds.
But why was he even doing this? These monsters were nothing more than obstacles in his path. There was no need to waste time killing weaklings.
Luki stopped and jumped, the force of it cracking the stone floor beneath his feet. He rose several meters into the air and looked ahead.
Then something tugged at his mind, as if calling his attention. His gaze pierced through the chaos and stopped on a single point—a longsword lying untouched on the ground.
A quick estimate told him everything he needed to know. Roughly six hundred meters separated him from the blade. If the fastest man in the world could run one hundred meters in ten seconds, what was stopping him from doing better?
One minute and fifty-one seconds.
Luki began to fall.
Halfway down, something leapt up to meet him, its jaws wide open in an attempt to devour him.
He barely paid attention to what it was. Midair, he twisted his body using nothing but his own muscles, forcing a shift in position without any support.
Just before they collided, Luki kicked downward with both legs at once.
The impact was so strong that the rebound alone sent him several meters away. As for the monster, who cared.
He landed among the monsters for the briefest instant. Then he moved again, before could even turn their heads.
Luki pushed off the ground and stepped onto the head of the nearest monster. The creature barely had time to react before his weight crushed it and he was already gone, launching himself toward the next.
One head became another step, then another and another.
He started crossing the battlefield like something out of a kung-fu film, running over skulls and shoulders, an incredible demonstration of the supernatural capabilities that a body that has surpassed natural limits could achieve.
The monsters obviously tried to stop him, but Luki seemed untouchable, as if he knew exactly where he could or not step. It's almost comical.
Two minute and twelve seconds.
Things were going well for Luki. As they should, considering the difference between the two sides. But it was obvious that wouldn't last.
Midair, his unique sixth sense flared to life. It wasn't quite like a spider sense, but close enough. Something was rushing through the air toward him at high speed.
With no way to dodge in the air, he improvised.
Twisting his body in that tiny window of time, Luki kicked the monster beneath him upward, sending it straight into the incoming attack.
Boom!
A burst of heat swallowed the space around it, instantly killing the small monster he had thrown into the path.
With his momentum briefly stalled, Luki landed and looked toward the source.
Floating in the distance was the culprit. A Will-o'-Wisp. Maybe even the same one from before.
Either way, there was no time for interruptions.
Luki dashed forward and grabbed the nearest monster he could find, throwing it straight at the floating fireball. The creature's massive body arced through the air. It was so large that even moving fast, it seemed slow.
That was when Luki realized he had just thrown a Silverback with one hand. And... that thing had to weigh hundreds of kilos.
Its size only made it a better target. A lightning strike sliced through the air a moment later, striking the monster directly and killing it instantly.
The half-charred body crashed to the ground in front of the Wisp, which floated lazily in the air as if none of it mattered.
But that wasn't the end.
The Wisp gathered its flames again and released a torrent of fire into the battlefield, intercepting not one but dozens of monsters. They could do nothing except be pushed back and burned by the raging flames.
On the other side, Luki was already running.
Low posture, arms trailing behind him like a ninja, he tore across the battlefield. Wherever he passed, monsters were sent flying, thrown out of his path and straight into the path of the enemy behind.
In a few dozen seconds, Luki had already covered half the distance to his sword, reaching the middle of the battlefield.
He knew it not by counting the meters, but by the wreckage around hi, shattered bodies against the ground and walls, and the constant currents of violent wind sweeping through the corridor.
Whoosh!
Luki jumped while running. A low gust of wind sliced through the space where his legs had been, trying to sweep him off his feet.
The Wind Sprite.
The same small, beautiful maiden who had hurled him hundreds of meters away earlier with a miniature tornado now hovered there, unmoving, her tiny figure framed by the faint currents of wind swirling around her. The devilish smile on her face widened as if she were enjoying the situation.
Two minutes and twenty-six seconds.
Luki was forced to stop, standing still with his legs slightly apart, his arms outstretched at his sides, as if he were prepared to do anything.
Then he felt it.
At first it was subtle, just a thin wave of warmth brushing against his back. But within seconds the air grew hotter, and the dim corridor behind him started to glow with flickering orange light.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw the damned Wisp was approaching.
The living fireball drifted through the battlefield, its flames pulsing softly as it closed the distance. Burnt monster corpses and scattered debris lit up under its glow as it floated closer and closer.
Then it stopped, hovering a short distance away, flames swaying lazily in the air, but it didn't attack. It simply remained there, as if it understood the situation perfectly.
Luki moved slowly, turning sideways as he walked backward to the wall, his eyes moved from the floating fireball to his right and the tiny maiden blocking the path on the left.
The battlefield around them had grown strangely quiet, the monsters either too far away or too wary to approach. For a brief moment, it felt as if the entire Dungeon had paused to observe the stalemate.
Their attention shifted from one to the other, as if each one was waiting to see who would act first.
Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.
They moved at the same time.
The Wisp exploded into motion, unleashing a massive stream of fire that roared down the corridor, and at the same instant, the Wind Sprite raised her hand and released a violent blast of wind.
Luki reacted immediately, he jumped backward, his feet striking the wall behind him before his body twisted. His legs lifted off the ground and his hands caught the stone above.
Then he started climbing, hauling himself upward with raw speed, his arms pulling his body higher along the wall as the attacks collided beneath him.
Fire met wind in the center of the corridor.
The moment they touched, the air exploded outward. The stream of fire roared forward like a dragon's breath, while the torrent of wind kept crashing into it head-on, the impact expanding outward and filling the corridor with burning turbulence.
But the clash of fire and wind didn't last forever. Little by little the power feeding both attacks began to falter. The roaring column of flames weakened, the raging currents of air lost their violence, and the massive collision between the two forces slowly shrank until the pressure finally collapsed.
The corridor fell silent.
What remained was devastation. The stone floor had been scorched black on one side and carved apart by slicing winds on the other, reduced to a strip of ruined ground between the two elementals.
But there was nothing in the middle.
Thud.
The Wind Sprite tilted her head slightly when she heard the sound. Curious, she glanced behind her.
Far down the corridor, her target was already running.
Luki had dropped behind her and crossed over the clash while the two attacks had locked each other in place. Now he was sprinting through the battlefield at full speed, weaving between monsters and debris as he pushed toward the distant sword.
The devilish smile on the fairy's face widened, though now there was a faint trace of irritation mixed in.
Her wings began beating rapidly.
The next instant she vanished into the air.
The chase began immediately. Luki tore across the battlefield, crashing through scattered monsters and leaping over fallen bodies while the Wind Sprite shot forward above him like a streak of wind. She caught up within seconds, gliding alongside him for a brief moment before turning her head and giving him a playful wink.
Then she attacked.
A blade of compressed wind slashed toward him. Luki twisted aside without slowing down, the invisible strike carving a deep line into the stone where he had been a heartbeat earlier. Another gust followed, then another, each one forcing him to shift direction as he ran.
He kicked off a monster's shoulder, vaulted over another, then abruptly changed direction when the fairy dove past him. The moment she overshot, he pivoted and sprinted after her, forcing the tiny elemental to spin in the air and accelerate again.
It quickly turned into something resembling a dogfight.
One moment the fairy was behind him, launching cutting gusts while he zigzagged through the battlefield. The next moment he used a wall, a corpse, or even a monster's back to change direction and close the distance, forcing her to turn abruptly.
They were fast, absurdly fast.
Luki moved with the raw speed comparable to that of a Level Three adventurer, his body further amplified by the strange boosts of his unique skills. The Wind Sprite answered with pure aerial agility, darting through the air while bending the currents of wind around her.
They crossed the battlefield so quickly that it was almost impossible to follow them. From a distance it looked less like a chase and more like a violent storm tearing through the monsters. Bodies were thrown aside, stone cracked under sudden impacts, and bursts of wind ripped through the corridor wherever the fairy passed.
Within seconds the entire battlefield had become nothing more than collateral damage to their game of pursuit.
Two minutes and fifty seconds.
But someone wasn't satisfied with that result.
With every passing second the sadistic smile on the Wind Sprite's face twisted further. The playful curve of her lips warped into something uglier, veins bulging faintly across her forehead as her teeth ground together.
She was irritated, no, she was furious!
This annoying fly simply refused to die!
Her movements lost the grace she had shown before. The delicate swings of her arms turned rough and violent, as if she were hurling the wind itself with brute force. Invisible blades and bursts of pressure kept flying toward Luki again and again.
But none of them landed, he was simply too fast.
Every gust cut through empty space. Every attack struck the ground, the walls, or unlucky monsters instead. Luki kept running, jumping, twisting through the battlefield with relentless momentum, slipping past every strike by the smallest margins.
The fairy's eye twitched. Perhaps because her twisted sadistic desires were not fulfilled, the fairy seemed to have decided that she had had enough.
The Wind Sprite suddenly stopped midair.
Her tiny body trembled, and then she screamed in pure rage, a furious cry that echoed through the corridor. The air around her exploded into motion as the winds answered her anger.
A tornado formed instantly, white currents spiraled around the fairy, spinning faster and faster before expanding outward in a violent surge. The twisting column of wind grew in seconds, swallowing everything around.
Luki's eyes widened, hwas mid-jump, his body suspended in the air after pushing off the last monster beneath him. There was no wall nearby, no corpse, no surface he could use for another step.
The storm reached him, the white winds roared as the tornado expanded, and in the next instant Luki was completely swallowed by it.
Two minutes and fifth-three seconds.
The tornado vanished just as suddenly as it had appeared.
One moment the corridor was filled with roaring white winds. The next, the storm collapsed inward and disappeared as if someone had simply blown out a candle.
A rain of blood and shredded remains poured down from above, splattering across the shattered battlefield and painting the stone floor red. Bodies that had been caught in the storm came down in pieces, crashing into the ground with wet thuds.
The corridor looked like a slaughterhouse.
Deep gray rings had been carved into the floor where the tornado had spun, long circular scars etched into the stone by winds sharp enough to slice through monsters like paper. Dust and smoke drifted slowly through the air as the last drops of blood fell.
The Wind Sprite hovered in the middle of it all.
Her chest rose and fell with each breath, wings beating slowly as if she were catching her breath… or perhaps savoring the aftermath. A satisfied smile rested on her face, her eyes half-lidded with something close to bliss.
But the longer she looked around, the more that smile began to fade, her gaze moving across the destruction.
Her head turned once. Then again. She began scanning the battlefield, her expression tightening as the irritated smile slowly returned to her face.
Where. Has. He?!!
Three minutes and five seconds.
Tap.
Tap.
Luki stood still, a thoughtful and slightly confused expression on his face as he looked into the distance. Nearly two hundred meters away, the Wind Sprite floated over the devastated battlefield. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand while watching her.
What had just happened?
One moment he had been swallowed by visible, razor-sharp winds, the next moment he was here. No pain. No wounds. No force throwing him away. It had been like blinking and suddenly standing somewhere else.
Before he could dig deeper into the thought, a strange warmth spread across his arm.
Luki glanced down and noticed that the Falna tattoo on the back of his hand was glowing faintly.
That alone was strange enough, but something else caught his attention. Following the faint light, his eyes moved across the ground until they landed on it.
His sword. It lay only a few steps away.
The blade glowed with the same faint light, its runes shining softly. Around it, the Dungeon itself seemed to behave strangely.
The stone bricks around the weapon shifted and twitched as if alive, the ground subtly rising and collapsing as though trying to swallow the blade, but it couldn't. Each time the stone crept closer, it hesitated and pulled back, stuck in a strange stalemate with the weapon.
Apparently the Dungeon couldn't absorb something so... auspicious.
Luki smiled faintly.
Ignoring the mystery for now, he simply walked toward it. He bent down and reached for the hilt. The moment his fingers wrapped around it, he began to pull.
The stone floor shifted and clung to the blade as if trying to hold it back, the earth dragging along with the weapon as it slowly slid free. But the resistance was weak, futile.
Within seconds the sword came loose.
After three long minutes, Luki had recovered his blade.
— Good to see you again, brother~. — He said it lightly, almost joking to himself.
But something strange happened next.
Luki paused, he watched as the glow between the runes along the blade flickered… then the light along his Falna responded. The two glows moved back and forth, shifting between sword and skin several times in quick pulses before suddenly fading away completely.
— Uhm? — He turned the weapon in his hand, inspecting it from different angles while trying to figure out what had just happened.
Nothing seemed different.
After a moment Luki simply shrugged.
With a resigned sigh, he turned back toward the battlefield. His expression hardened as he adjusted his grip on the hilt.
— It was obvious, right…?
In the distance the two elementals had begun moving together.
The Wind Sprite approached with a serious expression on her face while the Wisp floated beside her, its flames burning a little lower than before. They stopped a short distance away, side by side, silently watching him.
Luki looked at the two monsters in front of him, his natural enemies, then down at his sword. After a moment he looked back at them and let out a tired sigh.
— Come on... I've got two minutes to finish you two and run out of here. I have somewhere to be, you know? So if the two of you, who I'm almost sure can understand me, could just open the way… I'd be immensely grateful.
After saying that, he simply stood there, waiting for a reaction.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then, strangely enough, the two monsters looked at each other. The Wind Sprite tilted her head while the Wisp floated in place, the two seeming to exchange some silent understanding through nothing but their gaze.
A second later they turned back to him.
FWOOOOSH!!!
FWHUM!!!
Like a battle aura, wind and fire swelled around them.
The maniac sadistic grin on the Wind Sprite's face returned in full force, stretching across her small face with obvious excitement. At the same time the flames of the Will-o'-Wisp compressed inward before surging outward again with greater intensity.
Apparently that was a no.
— Yeah… figures. I guess we don't have another option.
A confident smile spread across Luki's face as he raised his sword in front of him, gripping the hilt with both hands.
— Come!
They attacked at the same instant.
A massive straight-foward tornado of slicing wind tore across the battlefield while, from the other side, an enormous torrent of fire burst forward like a blazing cannon.
Halfway through the corridor the two attacks collided and merged.
The twisting winds captured the flames, turning them into a roaring spiral. A colossal tornado of fire erupted between them, spinning violently as the inferno climbed higher and higher.
Luki looked at it... then he smiled.
A wild grin spread across his face as the rush of adrenaline drowned out fear, doubt, and reason.
And he ran straight toward it.
...
Three minutes and seventeen seconds.
Three minutes and forty-two seconds.
Four minutes and three seconds.
Four minutes and nineteen seconds.
Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
Four minutes and forty-nine seconds.
Four minutes and fifty-five seconds.
...
Lili sat on the ground, her small body resting over the cloths that covered the cold stone floor.Her hands were still joined in front of her, fingers tightly intertwined in the same posture of prayer she had not broken since he left.
— One hundred and eighty-seven… one hundred and eighty-eight… one hundred and eighty-nine… — Her voice was soft and muffled beneath the helmet, the numbers leaving her lips in quiet whispers.
She counted calmly and faithfully, giving her full attention to the passing of each second as if it were the most important thing in the world. Never in her life had Lili cared so much about time.
Fortunately… or perhaps the Dungeon had truly listened to Luki's threats.
No monsters appeared.
Not a single wandering creature from the distant battlefield approached the corridor or spawned right before her. The place remained eerily quiet, almost as if the Dungeon itself had decided to leave her alone.
But that fragile illusion of safety did nothing to ease the fear in her chest. Not fear for herself, but for him.
— Two hundred and forty-one… two hundred and forty-two… two hundred and forty-three…
The numbers had reached the four-minute mark.
How many times had Lili told herself that she would never imagine meeting someone like him? Someone so kind, so positive, so stubbornly determined.
And inside the Dungeon of all places.
She still remembered the day they first met. At the time she probably hadn't given it nearly the same importance, but now that memory had become something she held dearly.
The moment he had thrown himself into danger to save a complete stranger like her from the monsters.
And now the two of them were… in a relationship?! The thought still felt surreal.
If things continued like this, Lili was certain that someday in the future she would remember this very moment in a much more romantic light. A silver-armored knight, sword in hand, fighting his way through the Dungeon to save the princess waiting for him.
The princess being her.
— Two hundred and sixty-six… two hundred and sixty-seven… two hundred and sixty-eight…
Somewhere along the way, Lili had begun to value him more than her own life, something she had never truly realized or perhaps she simply refused to admit.
Lili had never understood people who loved something more than their own lives. Money, reputation, pride, the feeling of superiority, what was the point of any of that if you ended up dead? You couldn't take any of it with you to the other side.
Yet ever since she tasted the sweet fruit called love, she couldn't help but bite her tongue at her own hypocrisy. And how happy she was to be a hypocrite in this case.
The problem was that love also brought something else with it.
Fear.
The fear of losing it. The fear of losing the feeling itself… and the person who had brought it into her life.
They said that if you feared for someone, then your love was real. If that was true, then Lili must love Luki with all her heart, because the mere thought of him not returning almost made it stop altogether.
But what did those feelings matter if she could do nothing to protect them?
Luki had given her his armor so she could feel safe while he was gone. But what could she give him so he could be safe?
In the end, everything returned to the same truth.
Power. Or rather, the lack of it.
The strong could do whatever they wanted, they had no reason to fear anything. The weak could only pray to chance and to whatever divine force might be listening, hoping things would somehow turn out alright.
— Two hundred and seventy-nine… two hundred and eighty…
He said he would come back in less than five minutes. He promised. He promised he would return to her safely.
But…
— Two hundred and eighty-one… two hundred and eighty-two… — The anxiety slowly began to creep in.
Each second felt longer than the last. What once seemed like a simple count now felt like a curse ticking away inside her chest, every number tightening the pressure around her heart.
Time was running out, and with it, her sanity.
Lili wanted to stay faithful to their promise. She wanted to wait until the very end patiently, without crying, without worrying about him. She knew he would come back safely.
He would never break a promise like that, and if he wasn't going to break it the promise, then there was no reason to be afraid. Because he would definitely come back.
But… but…
— Two-two-two hundred… ei-eighty... three... Two hu-hundred… eighty… four… — Her voice trembled as the numbers came out uneven and broken beneath the helmet.
Fifteen seconds left.
— Two hundred and eighty-five… two hundred and eighty-six…
Lili's hands began to tremble slightly. She noticed it and tightened her fingers together, forcing them to stay firm.
— Two hundred and eighty-seven… two hundred and eighty-eight…
Her voice came out softer this time, dragging the words as if each number had become heavier than the last.
— Two hundred and eighty-nine… two hundred and ninety…
Behind the helmet she blinked several times, her eyes already shining with tears that refused to fall.
— Two hundred and ninety-one… two hundred and ninety-two…
She hesitated before finishing the number, stretching the last syllable longer than necessary.
— Two hundred and ninety-three…
Her voice trembled again, barely audible now.
— Two hundred and ninety-four…
The tears in her eyes finally gathered at the edge, threatening to spill at any moment.
— Two hundred and ninety-fi-
Tap...
Lili's head snapped upward.
Tap... tap... tap...
The faint sound of footsteps echoed down the corridor.
Lili completely forgot what she had been doing as she turned toward the sound, lifting the visor of the helmet with a quick motion so she could see better. Her eyes searched the darkness of the corridor, wide with hope.
From the shadows, a silhouette was approaching.
It looked humanoid… but strange.
One of its arms was enormous, so large it nearly dragged along the ground as it moved. For a brief moment Lili thought it might be a monster.
But something inside her told her otherwise.
A sweet, joyful smile slowly appeared on her face.
The figure came closer until she could finally recognize who was.
— Yo. Less than five minutes, right? I told you it would be quick.
Luki stood there with a relaxed smile on his face, looking back at her with open affection as if nothing unusual had happened.
His clothes, however, told a very different story.
The cloth garments he had been wearing were almost completely destroyed, torn and burned in several places. What little remained barely held together around one shoulder.
But Lili didn't care about that, not even a little. He came back. He kept his promise.
— LUKI-SAMA! — She shouted his name and immediately ran toward him.
At the same moment, Luki started running toward her as well.
The two of them crossed the corridor with wide smiles, the tension of the past minutes melting away as they rushed toward each other like children who had been separated for far too long.
Lili's feet struck the stone floor lightly as she ran, the oversized chainmail swaying around her small body while the helmet tilted slightly from the sudden movement. Her eyes never left him for even a second.
And then-
A faint circle of light quietly appeared beneath her feet.
Thump!
Her body stopped abruptly against an invisible barrier and she bounced back, landing on the ground with a dull thud, sitting hard on the stone floor.
For a second she just blinked, confused.
Then she looked around... and understood.
The faint circle of light beneath her feet had grown brighter, its lines spreading across the floor in intricate patterns. Symbols she didn't recognize slowly awakened one by one as the magic gathered beneath her.
A teleportation circle.
Time seemed to slow.
Both of them froze in place, their bodies still caught in the motion they had been making only seconds before. Their eyes widened as they looked at each other across the corridor.
Just one glance.
But in that single moment, countless things passed between them. Things they wanted to say. Things they wished they could hear.
And above all else. Fear.
— LILI!!
— LUKI-SAMA!!
Luki ran.
Without hesitation he threw himself forward, sprinting toward her with desperation. The sword he had fought so hard to recover slipped from his hand and clattered against the ground behind him as he rushed ahead.
Lili crawled forward on the other side of the barrier, reaching it and pressing both hands against the invisible wall. She began hitting it weakly, as if hoping the fragile blows might somehow break it.
— LUKI-SAMA! LUKI-SAMA!! LUKI-SAMA!!! — Tears streamed down her face now, her expression twisted with panic and helplessness as she kept calling his name.
The light beneath her feet grew stronger.
The magic circle brightened rapidly, the symbols blazing as the teleportation spell reached its final moment.
— LILI!!
Luki shouted her name, stretching his arm toward her as if sheer will alone might close the distance between them.
But it was already too late.
The magic circle activated.
A burst of blinding light erupted from the ground, swallowing Lili completely as the teleportation spell consumed the space around her.
And then... she was gone.
Luki's hand struck the ground a moment later.
BOOM!
The impact cracked the stone floor, a small crater forming beneath his fist as the force echoed through the empty corridor.
But there was no one there anymore.
Luki slowly lowered himself to his knees in the middle of the broken stone, his head bowed slightly as he remained completely still. He didn't move, didn't speak, simply kneeling there in the quiet aftermath where she had stood moments before.
...
...
...
BOOOOM!!
The ground exploded outward.
The crater beneath Luki suddenly expanded, stone ripping apart in a violent surge as the floor around him collapsed and fractured. Dust and broken rock shot outward while deep cracks spread through the corridor like spiderwebs.
The air changed.
A heavy pressure filled the space, thick and oppressive. The atmosphere vibrated faintly, like metal slowly grinding against metal, a low invisible tension that made the surrounding stone tremble.
More cracks appeared.
The walls groaned.
Pebbles lifted slightly from the ground before dropping again as the pressure pulsed outward.
At the center of it all, Luki slowly raised his head.
His long hair fell over his face, hiding his eyes in shadow, but the glow beneath it could not be concealed.
A deep blue light burned there as his eyes shone intensely through the strands of hair, bright and cold.
Normally when someone burned with rage their face twisted, their voice rose, their body trembled with the urge to scream or destroy something.
But Luki showed none of that.
His expression was calm.
Completely calm.
— Dun… geon…! — His voice came out low and slow, each syllable dragged through clenched teeth, heavy with a quiet fury that made the air itself feel colder.