Clearing the Normal difficulty instance was as easy as taking candy from a toddler for me.

Since I was playing solo, my strategy was quite simple.

I just kited everything along the way, then killed them all using a special technique once my stamina hit its bottom line.

Though it sounds simple, the said special technique was a double-edged sword—it dealt damage to even myself, the kind that couldn’t be healed mid-activation and had to just be endured.

Still, its effects were like an atom bomb, clearing the entire surrounding space of monsters in one go.

With one use, thousands of monsters would fall, dying without even knowing why. The passage behind me would go from a roaring, churning mass of teeth and claws to complete, almost peaceful silence in the span of a breath.

After that, my HP, MP, and SP would all crash to the bottom, forcing me to walk and recover. HP and MP could be patched up with potions, so as soon as my SP fully recovered, I’d do the same thing again—running straight toward the boss room, nuking every monster that dared follow.

Just like that, 30 minutes in, I was already at the boss room door.

"But I don’t have time to chip you down slowly like before!"

This was a speedrun, a time attack. Going slow would only push my chances of reclaiming all the first-clear rewards further down. I needed to end this in a single move.

The "nuke" might work on regular monsters, but it wasn’t powerful enough to drain all of the boss’s HP. It could bring it down by half at most—nowhere near enough. Thus, it was time for a different, more underhanded method entirely.

I glanced at the chat that had been quiet since I’d separated from the girls, and was genuinely surprised to find a few dozen camera drones still floating around me.

To think there’d be some eccentric souls who’d rather watch a boring solo run than the action happening on the other side with the girls...

"Well, I can’t disappoint them!"

They had actively chosen to watch this side. Showing them something pitiful wasn’t an option.

I reached into my inventory and drew a new weapon, setting aside the double Dao Sabers. What I needed was burst damage—enough to kill the enemy in a single hit. Concentrated, overwhelming, final.

To do that, the weapon I needed was...

"This one." I whispered, holding it up.

A weapon with a curved blade roughly 1.2 meters long. Its edge featured a unique wave pattern that was genuinely artistic to look at, the kind of craftsmanship that made you briefly forget it was designed to cut things apart.

A fairly standard weapon in terms of classification, but the stats told a different story entirely.

[Bell: This... A katana? It looks more powerful than what your Shogun lady had...]

[DukeFishPaste: So WhiteGod is stealing lady FleetingCloud’s unique charm point now?! 🤯]

[ButaYarou: Wait, Mi-chan’s not just her katana, is she? 😡 You’re so rude!]

[DukeFishPaste: What Mi-chan? You’re more shameless, making up a nickname for her!]

[ButaYarou: WhiteGod slipped before, giving the first syllable of Mi-chan’s irl name!]

[ButaYarou: Ah, you’re not from the original viewers but the second generation, so you didn’t know huh? Hue hue hue~!]

[Bell: ...The two of you, shut up. Go simp on the other side if you want to chat.]

A few chat bubbles appeared, making me smile. At least I could generate some intrigue while I waited.

"Ah, right. I’m planning to use my katana—a drop from the Basilisk after clearing it earlier—to finish this." I said, explaining for the audience.

"And although it looks cool and has better raw stats than FleetingCloud’s, it doesn’t have a combined set effect, so all in all, her katana is still better overall."

I grinned, raising a single finger, and boasted.

"But I plan to kill it in one hit with a move I have yet to teach FleetingCloud."

The chat spiked immediately, the hype visible even from a glance. I didn’t rush, though.

My MP still needed a bit more time before hitting maximum—and I needed as much MP as I could gather to maximize this skill’s damage output. Every point counted. As such, I had to wait, even if it felt like standing still while a clock ticked somewhere in the back of my skull.

After hanging the katana at my waist and watching my MP bar creep toward full, I walked forward. Each step deliberate and slow—the walk of someone who wasn’t worried, which was either confidence or arrogance depending on whether it worked out.

Just a short distance inside, a large shadow stirred in the dark ahead.

The giant snake, Basilisk.

Same as before.

Same red tongue tasting the air.

Same slow, measuring quality to its movement, like it was deciding whether I was worth the effort. It hadn’t learned from last time—but then again, it was a respawn.

It didn’t get to carry memories.

"Now, watch closely!"

With perfect timing, my MP bar completed. I dropped into stance, lowering my center of gravity, then wrapped my hand around the katana’s hilt. The posture was unmistakably Iai—the body coiled like a spring, weight forward, everything pointing at the moment of draw.

But that wasn’t all there was to it. If it were that simple, Miyabi would’ve stumbled onto this technique on her own long before now.

Instead, I pushed my mana through the handle and into the blade itself.

Like pressurized air feeding into a sealed container, the inside of the scabbard began to expand—the blade almost wanting to leap free of its own accord, straining against the housing like it was alive and impatient. But I pushed it back, holding it in, allowing even more pressure to build.

The scabbard creaked faintly under the strain.

Next came the most difficult step.

I moved my elbows and shoulders in the motion of drawing the sword, then cancelled the action a fraction of a second before it registered—before the system could count it as a proper draw.

I did this not just once or twice, but dozens of times in rapid succession, each false-draw feeding more "charge" into the technique, the pressure inside climbing higher and higher with each repetition.

As I continued, red mist began to rise from my body in thin, curling wisps. The visible indicator of the special technique activating. The air around me felt different—denser somehow, like the space itself was being pressed inward.

Five seconds.

Twenty-eight false-draws accumulated.

The Basilisk had already closed the distance, its giant maw hovering directly before my face, wide enough to swallow me whole without any difficulty.

I didn’t panic. I just smiled, whispering just loud enough for the watching audience to hear.

"Secret Technique: Primal Red Lotus Charged Slash!"

My hand moved, riding the releasing force of the compressed mana, tracing a natural arc through the air. It moved so fast that the blade practically vanished for an instant—there one moment, gone the next, the motion too quick for the eye to follow even knowing it was coming.

The next moment, the entire field was washed in a red flash.

Nobody could see what had happened for a good few seconds. Not even I could, properly. But there was no need. After all...

[Congratulations for... For clearing Howling Dungeon (Normal Difficulty)!]

[Total Clear Time: 33 minutes 18 seconds.]

...

[Congratulations for breaking the threshold and reaching first place!]

[First Clear Rewards have been sent through mail. Please confirm.]

Notifications that couldn’t be obscured even by the blinding red flash were already stacking before my eyes.

A literal one-hit-KO.

"Hmm... So it really couldn’t hold up under that kind of abuse..."

Unfortunately, the katana disintegrated into iron sand before I could even attempt to re-sheathe it. The mana compression had been crushing the blade from inside the scabbard the entire time I’d been charging.

The pressure of holding that much force in, and then the speed of the release—everything had added up and broken the weapon completely. It hadn’t even lasted long enough to cool down.

A shame, honestly.

It had been a beautiful blade while it lasted.

"But well, this should be good enough." I smiled, brushing the last of the iron sand from my fingers. "With this, I’ve secured the Normal Difficulty’s first-clear-reward!"

Without waiting, I tapped "Exit Dungeon" from the window, transporting outside immediately. No cutscene—that was only triggered on the quest or on Hell difficulty. Though I wasn’t entirely sure whether it would be a genuine replay when we got there, or the original script.

Anyway, as soon as I stepped out, another group emerged at almost the exact same moment.

I wasn’t surprised—I had seen their clear notification pop up at nearly the same time as mine, the two appearing in such quick succession that it was almost synchronized.

"Oh, you girls are back." I greeted them casually, taking in their figures. "That was fast."

"That’s our line!"

Miyabi immediately grabbed my collar, eyes wide with something caught between shock and indignation.

"How did you clear Normal difficulty alone in the same time it took the six of us to clear Easy?!"

"Hahaha... Blame the gap in knowledge and experience."

"Grr...! I’m not convinced!" Kiki chimed in, grinding her teeth together. "You must’ve cheated! I’m sure of it!"

"There are no cheats in Heaven’s Path, though... Ah, does Moon Waltz and all the techniques in the same vein count as a cheat? In that case, maybe I did."

Although I was teasing them, I was genuinely impressed.

Clearing the dungeon in 33 minutes meant they had been running almost the entire way through.

I didn’t know what they’d done at the boss room specifically, but their efficiency as a team had kept pace with me going practically all out by myself. That wasn’t something I had expected—not at this stage, not this cleanly.

My lips couldn’t help but curl upward.

After all, having reassuring allies at your back was never something bad. It was, in fact, exactly what I needed most.

"Alright, that’s enough." I raised my voice, glancing across the group.

Then I turned back to the dungeon entrance and pressed my finger against the next difficulty option.

"Up next—let’s make the Hard Difficulty look easy!"