The nine elites moved as one—trained, brutal, a violent wall of foam-green muscle and sharpened spears. They charged with the kind of synchronized fury bred by a ruler who rewards blood with titles. For a second the river's surface darkened with their shadow, and every frog in the settlement held its breath.
Airen met them at the center.
It lasted barely a heartbeat.
The first pair reached him and slammed their spears down in a practiced double strike. Airen twisted his sword in a lazy arc—more a correction than a block—and the first spear sheared off at the haft. The elite who swung it stumbled, and before he could recover Airen's boot hammered into his stomach. The frog flew like a rag, hit a house post, and didn't move again.
Two down.
The next two attacked from flanks. One tried to bind his arm with a whipping tongue; the other aimed a thrust for his chest. Airen's response was a single, fluid motion: he caught the tongue between two fingers, wrenched it, and the pursuer's head snapped back as if on a hinge. The other elite's thrust was met with a brutal cross-step—sword across wrists, blade through shoulder—then a knee to the jaw that folded the creature like paper.
Four down.
They came faster, crazed now, reddened veins shining under the Chief's magic. Spears whistled, a dozen blades sang. Airen moved clean and economical—sliding, spinning, elbows and heel strikes added to steel—each strike precise enough to make carnage look tidy. A spear became a lance he kicked aside; at another point he vaulted, landed on a chest, and severed two necks with one downward thrust.
Six down. Seven. Eight.
The ninth elite tried to be clever—he circled, feinted, and lunged with a rippling, pumped-up shove meant to flatten a lesser foe. Airen didn't dodge. He met the blow, let the momentum carry him, and then he let loose a single terrifying thing: aura.
It poured through his limbs like molten metal made muscle. The air around his fist rippled. He drove his palm into that last elite's skull—full force, infused—and the sound that followed was not human. Bone crunched. The frog crumpled, a broken puppet, eyes vacant.
Nine dead. The horde's synchronized intensity shattered into panting, stumbling chaos.
Airen landed among the dying and the stunned. He didn't gloat. He didn't pause long. He walked.
He killed the Chief before the Chief could even climb from his platform.
The great frog ruler never made it to his feet. He barked orders, tried to summon another spell, but his hands trembled and the magic sputtered. Airen stepped forward, plucked a discarded spear from the muck, infused it with a cold sliver of mana, and threw. The spear punched through the Chief's chest with a terrible, clean finality. The platform rocked; coins scattered. The Chief fell like rotten fruit.
There was no triumphant rally. There were only screams, wet thuds, the slap of bodies on mud and water. Some frogs tried to run—bodies skittering over broken planks, slipping into shallows, hands clawing at reeds. Others fell to their knees and begged, faces flattened, eyes rimmed with white fear, voices bubbling and croaking pleas.
"Please—please don't—"
"Spare me, I will give you everything—"
"We didn't want this! Chief made us—"
Airen listened like a judge listening to excuses. He watched as the first tried to crawl away, as another tried to hide beneath a half-sunken boat. His expression never flickered; the killing decision was quiet and absolute. He moved and finished them—swift, clinical. A blade to the throat; a spear through the heart as someone flung themselves up with futile rage; a kick that sent a fleeing frog's head into the water with a sick, final hollow.
He worked like a machine of purpose: hunt, strike, move. He found archers hidden in rafters, spear-wielders in reed beds, children-sized frog-people huddled inside smoky huts. Once he reached them, they made the same choices—cower, plead, beg. He gave them the same answer.
"I'll have to kill all these shits one by one," he muttered once, more to himself than to the dying. He moved on.
By the time he reached the furthest bank, the river settlement was a ruin—houses smashed, stilts chewed and broken, water slick with dark staining. The air smelled like smoke and fish and iron. Frogs floated listless, others clutched at stumps, those still breathing groaned or whimpered.
Airen finished the last of them with a cool, efficient motion: a punch, aura-infused, straight through a coward who had tried to climb a post and whoaled as his spine gave. It was quick. It was merciless.
Silence answered.
The river village dissolved like a bad dream. The wooden pillars, the huts, the pillars carved with frog runes—all shimmered, fragmented into glittering motes, and winked out. The ground under him shifted, and the world snapped back into hard stone.
He stood alone in the dim chamber of the sixth floor. Torches guttered along the walls; the stale smell of dungeon stone filled his nose.
A soft panel unfurled in front of him:
[Experience Gained: 140,000,000]
[Points Earned: 1,400,000,000]
[Level Up! Current Level: 69]
Airen stared at the glowing panel before him, then let out a sharp exhale.
"Now… time for the rewards."
But just as he stepped toward the chest, a thought gnawed at the edge of his mind. His brows furrowed.
"System," he muttered, his voice low, "I've been inside this cubic world too long. How many hours has it been?"
[It has been more than 15 hours.]
Airen froze. His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed into slits.
"Fifteen…? Why haven't I woken up yet?"
For the first time, a faint shadow of unease flickered across his face. He wasn't afraid of death—never had been—but the possibility crawled in his thoughts. His tone sharpened, cutting through the silence.
"Don't tell me… I died in the real world?"
The words left his mouth like iron. His expression hardened, but his eyes betrayed something deeper: not fear, but cold calculation of the unknown. If he was dead, then what stood here was nothing more than a ghost with a sword.
[No. If you had died there, you would have died here as well.]
Airen's jaw unclenched slightly, his breath steadying. "…So I'm alive." He tilted his head, sharp gaze drilling into the void. "Then why haven't I woken up?"
[Unknown. I cannot determine the cause.]
Airen clicked his tongue, a frustrated "Tsk" slipping out as his smirk returned. "Fine. I'll leave that for later. Whatever it is, I'll crush it like everything else in my way."
He turned to the chest and flipped the lid open.
Inside lay a single item. A crystal orb, faintly glowing, but its core was no light—it was swirling darkness, twisting and devouring the glow around it. Like a fragment of the void itself had been sealed in glass.
Airen picked it up carefully, turning it in his palm. "…And what's this supposed to be?"
[Break it.]
Airen's eyes flicked to the orb, then narrowed. "…You're sure?"
[Yes. If you do, you will gain a companion.]
His lips curved faintly. "A companion, huh? Let's see."
With a cold smile, he clenched the orb in his fist.
CRACK!
The glasslike surface shattered, and immediately darkness exploded outward. A suffocating wave of shadow spilled across the chamber, devouring everything in sight. The torches flickered, sputtered—and died.
The entire floor drowned in black. Not even Airen's sharpened vision pierced it. The air thickened, heavy, oppressive.
"System—what the hell was that?!" Airen's voice cut through the dark. His expression remained composed, but his stance shifted, sword ready, every muscle primed for battle.
And then—he felt it.
The shadows weren't just around him. They were inside him. The darkness slithered into his chest like liquid smoke, seeping into his veins, embedding itself into his very core.
For the first time in a long while, Airen's sharp eyes widened.
"…What the f***… did I just let inside me?"