I stood before the Great Gate, that stony isthmus separating the Labyrinth of Harmony from the beating heart of the ruins. The pressure emanating from behind the obsidian stone was not merely physical; it was a spiritual burden that settled deep within my very marrow. In the impenetrable darkness that had become my home, and I don't know how long I had inhabited it, I was no longer the child who had fallen with a trembling body and a fearful soul. I felt my body change; my limbs had lengthened, my muscles had grown denser, and the clothes I had fallen in were now nothing more than tattered rags covering a part of my body, forged in the crucible of battle.
How much time had passed? I don't know. In this abyss, time is not measured in hours or days, but in the number of monsters I had slain, the mysteries I had unraveled, and the times I had escaped certain death.
I placed my hand on the cold stone and felt the pulse of the Double Core in my chest. Within me, mana and aura swirled in an eternal, violent dance, a delicate balance between life force and destructive power.
"I've lost count," I whispered, my voice dry, like an echo from the depths of a bottomless well. "But I know I'm no longer the weak Kaian. In my previous life, when I commanded legions as a mighty mercenary, my aura glowed a medium red. I was only two steps away from reaching the peak of purple and then the legendary black realm. Back then, I believed power was simply a matter of size and energy density. But these ruins... have taught me that true power lies in purity and harmony."
I looked down at my hands, scarred by battle and marked by magical burns. The aura emanating from them now was a radiant, deep yellow, teetering on the edge of green. My mana had settled at the peak of the Mist Rank. By ordinary standards, a Yellow Rank Mist-level warrior is just a simple foot soldier, but I was anything but ordinary. My wind mana, which I had drawn from the cold air currents within these catacombs, was so compressed that it no longer resembled mist; it was more like invisible, microscopic razor blades.
Trrrrrrrrrr!
The ground shook violently, and the gateway began to slide upwards with a deafening metallic screech, as if the ruins themselves were screaming in agony. From behind the rising dust, the Supreme Guardian emerged.
It wasn't a living being, but a silent, four-meter-tall giant, carved from raw purple crystal that seemed to devour the light around it. At the center of its chest lay a core charged with immense energy, emitting a piercing, terrifying, dark green light. The pressure it emitted told me unequivocally: this being was a whole order above me in color.
"So, the difference between you and me is a whole order of green versus dark yellow," I remarked coldly, as my mercenary mind immediately began analyzing the energy flow pattern in the beast's joints. "You have density, I have precision. You have crystalline stability, I have a windstorm."
The Guardian suddenly surged forward with a speed beyond my expectations. He slammed his crystalline fist down, shattering the obsidian floor tiles into flying shards like projectiles. I leaped into the air, using wind mana beneath my feet to create temporary air platforms—a "walking on air" technique I'd honed during my battles with the narrow passage monsters.
"[Path Interference: First Gear—Storm Speed!]" I fused my mania and aura into a single flow. Wind surged through my leg muscles, thinning me until I felt lighter than a feather. I shot like an arrow toward his crystalline head, but the Guardian raised his shield with a terrifying instinctive reaction. My shattered blade slammed against the hard surface, leaving a trail of yellow and green sparks that danced through the air like dying souls.
The fight was a funeral dance. Each time the guardian tried to crush me, I slipped through his fingers like air. I used handcrafted stone vials filled with paralyzing nerve gases I'd extracted from the cracks in the ruins; I hurled them at his joints and used wind mana to force the gas into the fine fissures of his crystalline body.
The guardian began to stagger; his green energy started to oscillate and squirm as the gas interfered with his internal energy pathways. This was the moment I'd been waiting for.
"Now!"
I concentrated every atom of my yellow aura into the tip of my broken blade and enveloped it in a mana cyclone compressed to the point of explosion. This was the strike I'd honed during my long nights (or days) of solitude: "Aura-Cutting Wind Stab."
I pierced his defenses, spiraling past his green energy shields. My blade lodged itself in the core of his chest.
The Great Shattering
The guardian exploded into thousands of crystalline shards that glittered in the darkness like diamonds. At that moment, a surge of raw, pure energy from the shattered core flowed directly into my chest. My twin nuclei spun wildly, greedily absorbing that immense power. I felt a solid barrier in my soul crack and burst; the yellow aura began to fade and disappear, replaced by a vibrant, pure, emerald-cool, bright green glow.
I had done it. I had ascended to the next rank while still in this grave.