The surroundings were quiet. Except for the momentarily rustle of leaves from the large tree besides Hide.

He had just commanded the system to use the D-Rank core of the Brochio Fiend to create a new phantom. He expected the familiar rush of dark mana pulling from the environment, wrapping around him to forge a new soldier.

Instead, a glowing blue holographic window suddenly flashed in front of his face.

[System Warning]

Dark Abyssal Core (S) is temporarily locked.

Time remaining: 3 Hours, 12 Minutes. / 8 hours

Phantom Court creation unavailable until lockdown is lifted.

Hide stared at the floating blue text, his eyes slightly widened in genuine confusion.

"..."

"What is this?" Hide muttered under his breath, reading the prompt a second time. "There was something like this?"

He didn’t remember seeing any warnings about his core locking down. Well the lockdown was for 8 total hours and out of them, almost five had already passed.

That was about time they entered the gate. He calculated everything and realized that he can only use his talent twice before this lockdown occurs. He had used it earlier to make Zenith and then Hooter.

Hide leaned his head back against the rough bark of the tree, letting out a long, frustrated sigh. His mood instantly plummeted. He had been looking forward to adding a fighting type phantom to his arsenal, but now he was stuck waiting.

Fortunately, he realized a moment later, they weren’t in a Dungeon Gate. This was a Loop Gate. It didn’t have a rigid twenty-four-hour collapse timer. They weren’t in any immediate danger of the dimension breaking, so waiting three hours wasn’t a death sentence.

Deciding it was better to just forget about the core issue for now, Hide refocused his mind. He still hadn’t completed his daily quests for the new day. He needed the 500 Experience points and the free attribute point.

He stood up, stretching his shoulders to begin his push-ups.

Suddenly, a cold shiver ran down his spine.

His Perception was triggered, screaming at his nervous system.

He forcefully kicked off the ground, throwing his body backward in a rapid, two-step jump.

A split second later, a massive, blurred shape completely obliterated the space where he had just been standing. The ancient, thick trunk of the tree he was resting against was cleanly sheared in half.

The massive upper half of the tree groaned and crashed heavily into the dirt, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

Hide landed in a low crouch, his glowing blue eyes piercing through the pitch-black night.

Because of his True Sight passive skill, Hide didn’t need a light source. The darkness around him peeled away, revealing the grotesque monstrosity that had just tried to cut him in half.

It was a terrifying, towering beast that stood entirely on two massive, spring-like legs. Its body was a sickly, pale yellow, covered in coarse, wire-like hair. It had no normal arms; instead, three massive, jagged appendages shaped like bone scythes protruded from its shoulders and chest.

One of them had been cut off!

The beast was a complete mess.

Its upper torso was practically shredded. Thick, dark blood poured freely down its chest, and large portions of its intestines and internal organs were loosely hanging out of a massive, gaping wound in its stomach. It breathed in ragged, wet gasps.

It was already heavily injured. Hide quickly guessed it must have fought with another Calamity Beast on its way up the mountain, likely driven mad by the territorial shifts caused by the gate merging.

The yellow beast snapped its horrific, eyeless head toward Hide, letting out a piercing screech.

But the beast’s screech wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the deafening crash of the ancient tree falling.

Through the thick moss, large grass and rocks, he saw them. The heavy thud of the tree had acted like a dinner bell, echoing across the silent mountain.

Almost a dozen varying bodies rapidly shifted direction in the dark.

A pack of Calamity beasts was rushing straight toward him.

"Damn it," Hide cursed, standing up to his full height.

He didn’t have time to play around.

Hide raised his right hand and Night Singer materialized in his grip.

The injured yellow beast lunged first, its powerful, spring-like legs launching it across the clearing in an instant. It swung its three massive bone scythes in a rapid, deadly arc aimed directly at Hide’s neck.

Hide didn’t dodge.

His physical stats were already vastly superior to a normal, unevolved F-Rank. Combined with almost double boost the Abyssal scale carapace gave him, he was a lethal force in close-quarters combat.

Hide simply ducked under the horizontal slash of the first scythe. He pivoted on his heel, using the beast’s own terrifying momentum against it, and drove Night Singer upward.

The short sword effortlessly cleaved through the beast’s already ruined stomach, slicing straight up through its chest cavity and out through its shoulder.

Dark blood sprayed across the dirt as the beast collapsed in two separate halves.

[Calamity Beast(Bone Hunter) - Eliminated]

Experience points gained: 300

Hide didn’t even pause to read the notification.

Three more beasts burst through the tree line. They looked like massive, mutated hyenas with thick, bony plating covering their skulls. They moved with terrifying speed, spreading out to flank him.

Hide smirked.

He thrust his free hand forward.

"Abyssal Frost."

A wave of pitch-black ice violently erupted from his palm. The black frost hit the two hyenas on the left, instantly freezing their legs to the ground and encasing their torsos in jagged, unbreakable ice.

The third hyena leaped into the air, its massive jaws opening to crush Hide’s skull.

Hide didn’t even look at it. He simply raised his hand, channeling a volatile swirl of dark violet energy directly into his palm.

"Mana Blast."

BOOM!

The compressed energy slammed point-blank into the leaping beast. The explosion shattered the hyena’s bony skull entirely, turning its upper half into a rain of bloody mist and bone fragments.

The kill notification followed.

Hide spun around, raising Night Singer, ready to slaughter the frozen beasts behind him.

But before he could swing, a sudden, piercing shriek tore through the silent night.

Hide froze. And instead of killing the beasts himself, he let them freeze into trophies, followed by a cracking them.

Two more kill notifications followed.

Ignoring them, Hide snapped his head toward the ruined house where he had left the girls.

Through the shattered walls, he could see the warm, orange glow of the campfire violently extinguish, plunging the camp into total darkness. A second later, the fragile wooden frame of the house’s second-story window shattered outward.

A figure was violently thrown out of the window, tumbling through the air.

It was Elara.

She landed harshly on the mossy road and then hit a nearby collapsed van, rolling to her feet with surprising agility. Her elegant, silver-white wand was already fully extended in her hand.

Massive spikes of freezing, pale blue ice rapidly materialized around her, shooting frantically into the dark sky as she tried to defend herself from whatever had just attacked their camp.