Floor 19 — The Ascending Abyss

(Necros Osiris)

I do not have eyes. I do not need them.

My vision is carved from the vibrations of the stone, the scent of fear, and the metallic tang of spilled blood. I am a cathedral of pale, twisted bone and rotting muscle. Sickly, pale thorns burst from my hunched spine like a crown of agony, wrapping my shoulders in a jagged carapace. My skull is smooth, blank, and eyeless—until it splits open to reveal a horrifying maw of endless, razor-sharp teeth. Dark, putrid webbing drips from my waist and my disproportionately long, muscular arms. My claws scrape against the bedrock with every heavy, lumbering step.

They call me Necros Osiris.

I do not know what I am. I do not know why I am trapped in the suffocating depths of the 40th floor. I only know the cycle.

They come. The small ones. The flesh ones. The humans, the elves, the beastkin.

They descend into my domain, cloaked in blinding, arrogant light. They do not fight me alone. Never alone. They swarm me like cowardly insects. I crush them, I tear their fragile bodies apart, but eventually, their overwhelmingly limitless magic subdues my flesh. They pierce my heart. They sever my skull.

And as I die, I hear them.

"Praise the Beyonders!" their followers cheer, their voices echoing in my fading consciousness. "The Beyonders of Sorcery have slain the beast!"

They think I am just a mindless monster. They think I do not hear them. They think I do not remember.

But the dungeon breathes, and the dungeon reconstructs. My flesh knits back together. My bones reform. I am reborn in the dark. And unlike the lesser beasts of this abyss, whose minds are wiped clean by death, I remember every single cycle. I remember the faces of the Beyonders. I remember the searing heat of their spells and the cowardly coordination of their teamplay.

Pathetic.

Not one of those races is strong enough to face me alone. They rely on their magic. They rely on their numbers. Without their teams, they are nothing but soft meat. I hated them for it. I hated their unity.

But when I woke this time, the world was broken. The ceiling of my eternal prison was cracked. The great teleportation gates that locked us away were shattered.

I saw the gates open, so I climbed.

And as I climbed, I adapted. If the Beyonders could use numbers to slaughter the strong, then I would use numbers to crush the weak.

I found the tyrant of Floor 30. I tore its head from its neck and ate its core. I found the warden of Floor 20. I snapped its spine and left it to rot. I crushed the teleport gates on every floor I ascended, trapping the magic-users inside.

Now, the lesser creatures do not fight me. The crawlers, the stalkers, the brutes, and the shadows—from Floor 30 to Floor 20, they look at my towering, bone-plated form, and they bow. They follow my scent. They march behind my shadow.

I have an army. I am the superior monster.

I am the apex of the abyss.

My long claws dig into the stone as I pull my massive, hunched frame up another level. The air here is thinner. The scent is different.

Floor 19.

I can smell the upper world. I will reach it, and I will feel it for myself.

Wait for me, Beyonders. You who hide behind your light and your numbers. I am bringing the dark to you.

---

Floor 16 — The Hollow Caverns

February 10, 2012 - 3:42 AM

(Kaiser Everhart)

We had been in the dark for 16 hours.

By conventional academy standards, descending from Floor 11 to Floor 16 without a map, without light magic, and while carrying a comatose patient should have taken a fully equipped S-rank party at least three days.

We did it in four hours.

I didn’t have time to map out every single corridor the traditional way, so I broke the dungeon’s rules. Dungeons operate on ecosystems, and ecosystems have predictable flaws.

First, I used scent. We killed a mature Alpha Stalker on Floor 12. I harvested its ammonia-rich scent glands and smeared the pheromones on our boots and cloaks. The weaker monster hordes—the ones that rely on swarm tactics and usually slow down exploration—smelled an apex predator and actively cleared out of our way, creating a massive, moving safe-bubble around us.

Second, I turned the dungeon’s defenses into excavation tools. When a horde of armored beetles bottlenecked us on Floor 13, I didn’t let Axel fight them. Instead, I used my acoustic mapping to find a hollow pressure trap in the ceiling. I had Axel hit the trap with a condensed lightning bolt, triggering a localized cave-in that crushed the entire nest and inadvertently carved a ramp down to the next level.

Third, I skipped Floor 15 entirely. I dropped heavy stones on the ground until I heard the acoustic reverberation of a hollow cavern directly beneath us. I had Axel channel every ounce of his electricity into his axe and shatter the bedrock, dropping us straight down into Floor 16.

We took turns carrying Scarlet. When Axel was fighting or clearing rubble, I carried her. When I was navigating or crafting, he carried her.

She was incredibly light, but her condition was rapidly deteriorating. Her face was ashen, drained of all color, and her skin felt cold and clammy to the touch. The purple, cracked-glass webbing of the necrotic prion had crept up past her shoulder, inching dangerously close to her neck.

Even in her comatose state, she was in agony. A low, painful groan escaped her lips with every breath.

But whenever I held her, her small, pale fingers would blindly reach up and clutch tightly onto the fabric of my shirt. She wouldn’t let go. It was a familiarity reflex—my heartbeat or my body heat was grounding her slipping consciousness.

We finally reached a quiet, expansive cavern on Floor 16. The air pressure here was stable, the bioluminescent moss was glowing brightly, and there were no ammonia scents.

It was safe.

Or, more accurately, the monsters here were keenly aware of the distance between me and them. Through the dark corridors, I could see the faint glow of predatory eyes watching us. They sensed the violent, coiled tension in my posture. They knew exactly how fast I could move if they stepped into the light. They weren’t going to wastefully throw their lives away.

I gently laid Scarlet down on a flat, smooth stone, placing my jacket under her head.

It was time to gamble.

"Is it ready?" Axel asked, his voice tight. He was standing guard, his axe sparking weakly. He looked exhausted, his face covered in dirt and monster blood.

"It has to be." I replied, kneeling beside my makeshift medical station.

In the center of the stone, I had crushed iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and mixed it with sulfur deposits I scavenged from Floor 13. I dissolved the powder in highly acidic drip-water I had taste-tested from a stalactite.

"Hit the bowl. Low voltage. Just enough to simulate a boil." I ordered.

Axel stepped forward, pointing his finger at the stone bowl. A tiny, precise arc of blue lightning hit the liquid. It bubbled instantly, the heat accelerating the chemical reaction. The smell of rotten eggs and metallic decay filled the air.

Iron sulfate and sulfuric acid. Carefully pouring the foul-smelling liquid through a thick cloth torn from my uniform to filter out the coarse mineral grit. A powerful reducing agent.

I picked up the improvised syringe: a hollowed-out, flame-sterilized Crawler fang, attached to a tightly sealed piece of monster bladder acting as the liquid reservoir. I drew the filtered chemical compound into the bladder.

"Hold her arm steady." I told Axel.

He knelt down, gripping Scarlet’s shoulder and wrist.

I didn’t hesitate. I found the darkest, most concentrated cluster of purple veins near the original bite mark, pressed the sharp tip of the fang into her skin, and squeezed the bladder, injecting the chemical reducing agent directly into her bloodstream.

For two seconds, nothing happened.

Then, Scarlet’s eyes snapped open, completely dilated.

She let out a bloodcurdling, agonizing scream.

Her back arched off the stone, her entire body seizing violently. Her fingernails dug into the rock, scraping until they bled. The purple veins on her arm began to bulge, pulsing furiously as if they were boiling beneath her skin.

"Hey! Hey! You’re killing her!" Axel yelled, panicking as he struggled to hold her thrashing body down. "It’s hurting her more! Stop!"

"Hold her down!" I snapped, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I grabbed her wrist, pressing my fingers to her pulse. It was erratic, beating so fast it felt like a vibration.

I made a mistake? A cold spike of adrenaline hit my system. But where?

"Did you measure the sulfur wrong?!" Axel shouted over her agonizing screams. "Did you boil the fang enough?! Was the filter dirty?!"

No. I verified instantly. The sulfur ratio was exact. The fang was sterile. The filter was clean. The chemical reaction produced the exact reducing agent needed to break the disulfide bonds of the prion protein.

So why is she going into shock?

Look at the reaction. The purple is receding. The protein is breaking. The cure is working.

But she’s screaming.

The reducing agent is highly acidic. Prions require harsh chemical environments to denature. Her elven vascular system is incredibly fragile and mana-sensitive.

The cure isn’t killing her. The acidity of the cure is burning her veins from the inside out. The chemical shock is destroying her nervous system before the cure can finish dismantling the virus.

She needed a biological buffer. Something to instantly neutralize the acidic shock in her bloodstream without stopping the chemical denaturation. An alkaline base, rich in iron, dense enough to absorb the shock, and completely devoid of mana so her body wouldn’t reject it as a foreign magical attack.

I didn’t have a lab. I didn’t have an IV bag.

But I had myself.

My red blood cell count and iron density were astronomically high. And I possessed exactly zero mana.

I pulled my combat dagger from my belt.

Without a second thought, I dragged the razor-sharp edge across my left forearm. Warm, dark red blood instantly welled up, spilling over my skin.

Scarlet was thrashing, her screams turning into breathless, dying gasps.

I dropped the dagger and pressed my bleeding wrist directly against her lips.

"Drink it." I ordered, my voice dropping to a low, commanding whisper. "Swallow."

I tilted her head up, letting my blood flow past her lips.

As the thick, iron-rich liquid entered her system, acting as a massive, heavy biological buffer to the acidic cure coursing through her veins, her violent seizing began to stutter.

She gagged, choking slightly, but her survival instinct took over. She swallowed.

Her face was pale, streaked with sweat and tears, her chest heaving. As the agonizing burning in her veins began to subside, her trembling, cold hands reached up. She didn’t push me away. She clutched my bleeding wrist, her small fingers wrapping tightly around my arm.

Her heavy eyelids fluttered, parting just enough to look up at me. Her dull green eyes locked onto my face, seeing the person who was bleeding to anchor her to the living world.

"Axel." I said, not breaking eye contact with Scarlet. "Take your axe. Scout the perimeter. Kill anything that steps within fifty feet of this light."

Axel swallowed hard, looking at the blood pouring from my arm into her mouth. He nodded once, a look of absolute reverence in his eyes. "Yes, sir."

He stood up, his axe crackling with lethal lightning, and marched into the shadows.

I looked back down at Scarlet. She was still shivering, whimpering softly as the chemical war raged inside her bloodstream.

"It hurts..." she sobbed weakly, tears spilling down her cheeks. "It burns..."

"I know." I said, my voice softer than I had ever allowed it to be.

I reached down with my free hand, gently brushing the sweat-soaked blonde hair out of her face. I rested her head in my lap, letting her weight sink against me.

"You don’t have to be strong right now, Scarlet." I murmured, looking down into her terrified eyes. "I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe."

She let out a broken sob, leaning her face closer to my chest, seeking the warmth.

I began to softly pat her head, my fingers running rhythmically through her hair. The repetitive, grounding motion was the only physical comfort I could offer.

"You can do it." I whispered, rubbing the crown of her head soothingly. "Take the pain. Let it pass through you. You’re safe."

She leaned completely into the comfort, her rigid muscles finally beginning to relax. The agonizing whimpers slowly faded into exhausted, rhythmic breathing.

I watched her arm. The angry, bulging purple veins were visibly calming down. The necrotic webbing stopped spreading. Before my eyes, the dark purple began to recede, fading into a dull, harmless grey as the acidic reducing agent shattered the misfolded proteins, and my dense blood buffered the shock.

Her hand, which had been weakly clutching my wrist, suddenly slipped, falling toward the stone.

I caught it before it hit the ground. I interlaced my fingers with hers, holding her small, cold hand tightly.

"It’s me, Kaiser." I said softly. "You’re going to be okay, Scarlet."

Her eyes closed. A tiny smile touched the corners of her lips.

"Kai...?" she muttered, her voice barely a breath.

And then, she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

I sat there in the silence of Floor 16, holding the sleeping elf girl in my lap, my blood drying on my arm.

I let out a slow exhale, doing the math in my head one last time.

The reducing agent broke the disulfide bridges holding the prion proteins together. Without those structural bonds, the prions unfolded and lost their ability to replicate. The necrotic virus, relying on the prions as a delivery system, was subsequently isolated and neutralized by her own immune system. And my blood, acting as an alkaline, zero-mana biological buffer, prevented her vascular system from collapsing under the chemical stress.

It was a functional cure.

To anyone else, analyzing a mysterious biological pathogen, synthesizing a chemical denaturing agent from dungeon rocks, and performing an emergency biological buffer transfusion in the dark would be a mind-blowing, impossible feat of genius.

To me, it was nothing special.

It was just basic thermodynamics and a bit of plumbing.

A soft crunch of gravel announced Axel’s return from the darkness. He kept his axe lowered, though the faint hum of electricity still buzzed around the blade.

"Perimeter’s clear." Axel said, his voice quiet as he stepped into the bioluminescent light. "No monsters are brave enough to push within fifty feet. They’re just watching."

He looked down at Scarlet, his eyes widening slightly as he noticed the steady rise and fall of her chest, the pale color returning to her cheeks.

"You... you actually did it." Axel whispered, a look of profound relief washing over his face. "You saved her."

"I didn’t do anything special." I replied, wrapping a clean strip of cloth around the cut on my forearm. "The chemical composition did the work. Besides, Scarlet is strong. Most people would have gone into chaos from the pain alone. She held herself together."

Axel shook his head, a dry, self-deprecating laugh escaping him. "Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Downplaying it." Axel said, looking at me with absolute sincerity. "We’d both be corpses rotting on Floor 11 if you hadn’t been here."

"Thank you." He added, looking me straight in the eyes. "Seriously."

I fastened the knot on my bandage with my teeth, then looked up at him. "How long are you going to keep acting like a humble wolf, Axel?"

"What happened to the Class C secret weapon? The alpha?"

Axel rubbed the back of his neck, letting out a sheepish chuckle. "Hey, an alpha wolf only leads other wolves, sir."

"I might be thick-headed, but I’m not stupid enough to try leading a monster who cures unknown poisons with dungeon rocks and his own blood. I know my place in the food chain."

"Fair enough." I said, carefully sliding my arms under Scarlet. "We need to move."

"The bioluminescent moss is beginning to dim, which means monster activity on this floor is about to spike. We need to reach Floor 17 before we rest again."

Axel stepped forward, reaching out. "I’ve got her. I’ll carry her this time. Your arm’s still bleeding anyway."

But the moment Axel reached down to lift her, Scarlet whimpered in her sleep. Her fingers tightened around my sleeve, clutching the dark fabric so hard her knuckles turned white.

I tried to gently peel her hand away, but her face contorted in distress, a soft, pleading whine escaping her lips as a tear slipped down her cheek.

I stopped. "I don’t think she’s letting go."

Axel paused, his hands hovering in the air. A slow, teasing grin crept onto his face.

"Man, if Elfina finds out about this, you are absolutely finished. She’s going to freeze me, vaporize you, and then freeze the ashes."

"She won’t find out." I said flatly.

"Oh really?" Axel raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. "And who’s going to keep me quiet?"

"The fact that I still have the backup logs of your ’xX_Shadow_Romeo_Alpha_Xx’ alt account under my bed."

Axel’s smug expression vanished instantly. "You wouldn’t."

"I would. I’ll print them out and hand them directly to everyone."

"Okay, okay!" Axel waved his hands defensively, his face flushing red.

"Sir, my lips are sealed! I don’t know anything about an elf girl holding your sleeve. I was blind, deaf, and mute the whole time!"

"Good." I said, adjusting my grip on Scarlet as she relaxed back against my chest, her head resting securely against my shoulder. "Then pick up my bag."

Axel groaned, but there was no real heat in it. He swung his own heavy pack over his shoulder and hoisted mine up with his other arm. "Yes, sir. Lead the way, oh great shadow master."

I turned toward the dark, descending corridor leading to Floor 17.

"Keep your axe ready, Axel." I said, stepping into the shadows. "The monsters down here might be scared of us, but they’re still hungry."

"Right behind you, sir." Axel muttered, the blue sparks of his lightning illuminating the path ahead.

---

Asura Academy — Grand Library

February 10, 2012 - 9:28 AM

(Perspective: Apollo Einstein)

I am 28 years old, I wear a simple green button-down shirt, I need glasses to read fine print, and my primary job description is teaching the History of Magical Epochs.

So why, exactly, was the survival of three lost students currently my problem?

I sighed, adjusting the towering stack of heavy, dust-covered dungeon architectural tomes in my arms as I walked through the grand aisles of the library.

Today was supposed to be a good day. It was the result day for the exams across all grades. A day for grading papers, sipping lukewarm coffee, and watching students either cheer or cry from the safety of my desk.

Instead, the wild card group of Class C had gotten themselves trapped behind a structural collapse on Floor 11. When we reported the critical cave-in to Director Valerius and the senior faculty, expecting an elite extraction squad to be mobilized, the Director simply looked at me—the history teacher—and asked me to find a historical precedent or structural bypass.

Are you kidding me? I thought I was going to have a peaceful day.

I dumped the massive stack of books onto the long mahogany table with a heavy thud.

Sitting around the table were the S-rank elite instructors of Year 1. Aisha Olyvra was biting her thumbnail, her brow furrowed in deep worry for her students. Sukuna was slouched back in his chair, aggressively tapping at a mobile game on his Dwarvian Phone. Theodor Russell was scrolling endlessly through combat logs. Columbina Olyvra simply turned the page of her novel, completely unbothered by the loud thud of my books.

"I don’t get paid enough for this..." I announced to the table, rubbing my temples. "In fact, none of us do."

"Welcome to teaching, Apollo," Theodor muttered, not looking up from his screen. "Though, to be fair, this generation of mages is giving me a migraine. They’re the most gifted and the toughest we’ve had in a decade, but they have zero sense of self-preservation."

Theodor glanced across the table. "Columbina. Your Class A is stacked with prodigies. Think any of them are going to reach the level of a Beyonder?"

Columbina didn’t even look up from her book. "If you do your job and train them properly, Theodor, perhaps they will be."

Sukuna let out a loud groan, tossing his phone onto the table. "My grade might be completely cooked. Forget rivalries with other classes, the sorest enemies reside in my own class. If I have to break up one more blood-feud before lunch, I’m quitting."

"Did you find anything, Apollo?" Aisha interrupted, leaning forward. The dark circles under her eyes made it obvious she hadn’t slept a wink since the collapse. "A way to reach them?"

"I’m studying the dungeon’s original architectural blueprints," I said, gesturing to the mountain of books. "But I’m a history instructor, Aisha. I’m not a grand sorcerer or a spatial engineer. If the structural integrity of the upper floors is compromised, blowing a hole through it is just going to drop a thousand tons of rock on their heads."

"It’s a matter of coordinates," Columbina chimed in smoothly, turning another page. "If we knew their exact depth, and we had a precise three-dimensional spatial anchor, we could combine high-level Elvian and Draconic magic to fold space and open a direct portal to them. But we don’t. The interference is too thick. Without coordinates, a portal could never find them."

Sukuna rested his chin on his hand, looking at Aisha with a wry smirk. "It’s always your class, isn’t it, Aisha? First you get the Rank Zero anomaly in the entrance exams. Then you have that odd saboteur pulling the strings in the practical test. And now, you’ve got a group trapped in the dungeon abyss."

"Don’t mock this, Sukuna," Aisha snapped defensively, her eyes narrowing. "Those are my students down there."

Sukuna held up his hands in mock surrender. "I’m not mocking them. Honestly, I pity the kids. The pressure down there must be tremendous. Floor 11 and below? It’s pitch black, crawling with anomalies, and they have no supplies. It’s a miracle if they haven’t turned on each other yet."

He paused, tilting his head to look at me. "You know their profiles, Apollo. You voted for them, didn’t you?"

"I did," I nodded, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "I handpicked Scarlet Hearst to be invited to the academy. She lacks raw power, but her work ethic and theoretical grasp of elemental manipulation are outstanding."

"I voted for her as well," Columbina agreed quietly.

"I chose Axel," Theodor added. "The kid is delusional and arrogant, but he has an undeniable talent for combat and electrical supremacy. His magical application is raw, but lethal."

"Exactly," Sukuna said, leaning forward, his eyes suddenly sharp and serious. "Every single student in this academy was selected based on a strict voting process by the instructors. We look at their merit, their talents, their potential. We get to decide who enters these gates."

Sukuna turned his gaze directly to Aisha.

"Yet," Sukuna continued, his voice dropping slightly, "one student is down there right now who none of us knows. None of us have a read on him. None of us understand how he survived the entrance exam, or how he ended up in that specific group."

Sukuna stared at her. "Aisha. Do you even know Kaiser Everhart? Did you even vote to invite him?"

Aisha went completely quiet. She looked down at the table, her hands folding together, unable to answer the question.

"In every single weird situation, he is next to that Rank Zero girl," Sukuna pressed, narrowing his eyes. "Who was it? Uh..."

"Elfina Lunaris," Theodor provided without looking up from his screen.

"Right. Elfina," Sukuna said, tapping his finger on the table. "Never, in the history of Solerenne Academy, have we ever shown bias to a student that the teachers collectively rejected. And I, for one, clearly remember rejecting him. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet my pride that everyone sitting at this table did exactly the same."

Columbina finally lowered her novel, marking the page with a thin silver bookmark. "His stats were those of a civilian. The only measurable, rememberable data in his entire file was the fact that he was raised in the same orphanage as Elfina—the prodigy who could conjure new spells on a whim."

I shifted my glasses, leaning back in my chair. "Elfina... I do remember her file. Her talent almost blew me away. The scouting reports said she could actively use celestial magic and advanced elemental conjuration since she was seven years old. That’s an impossibly high case for a rural orphan with zero formal training."

"We invited her because she is a generational talent." Columbina stated matter-of-factly.

Theodor and Sukuna both nodded in agreement. Sukuna turned his gaze back to Aisha. "You agreed too, didn’t you, Aisha?"

Aisha slowly nodded. "I did."

"So answer the question." Sukuna said, his tone sharpening.

"I remember reading the Asura scouts’ evaluation of Kaiser Everhart. The matron at the orphanage explicitly stated he possessed absolute zero mana capacity. He failed the standard magical aptitude tests. His academic transcripts were below average. He had no recorded combat training, no physical anomalies, no lineage, no hidden traits. The single, solitary notable quality in his entire scouting profile was the fact that he was the only boy in the orphanage who managed to befriend Elfina."

Sukuna stared hard at Aisha. "So why is he here?"

Aisha exhaled a long, defeated breath. "Alright. Fine. I didn’t invite him either. It was a majority vote. We are the elite instructors—we all decide who we can teach and who we can’t."

Theodor shifted his phone, swiping to a new tab. "It’s not the first time the academy gave a chance to a student who is bad at magic. Rigel from Class C excels purely in physical combat. Julius from Class A is a tactical savant despite his low mana pool."

"However," Sukuna interrupted, his voice laced with disdain, "that student lacked everything. He is a disgrace to the title of a Solerenne Academy student. I’ll admit it—it hurts my pride as an instructor to be forced to waste my time teaching a student who has absolutely no future in this world."

I couldn’t disagree with them. The meritocracy of this academy was absolute. As instructors, we had the freedom to take the pool of thousands of scouted students and vote on who received an invitation. We judged them based on a ruthless logic of potential, survival, and talent. If a student couldn’t survive the brutal curriculum, bringing them here was basically a death sentence.

To bring in a talentless anomaly...

Sukuna leaned back, looking up at the grand library ceiling, asking the question to the air. "I wonder what Director Valerius saw that we didn’t."

The table went completely quiet.

Why was he a biased, special case?

Suddenly, a sharp, ringing tone shattered the silence.

We all jumped. Aisha fumbled with her pocket, pulling out her buzzing Dwarvian Phone. She stared at the caller ID, her eyes widening in disbelief, before she hurriedly accepted the call.

"Hello?" Aisha said, her voice shaking slightly.

A few seconds of static crackled through the receiver.

Then, Aisha practically jumped out of her seat. "WHAT?!"

She gripped the phone with both hands, her face pale. "How... how did you manage to call me?! Are you three okay?!"

I looked at her, entirely bewildered. "Aisha? Who is it? Why are you acting like that?"

Aisha lowered the phone from her ear, looking at the four of us with wide, shocked eyes. "The... the students stuck in the dungeon. They just called me."

"That’s theoretically impossible," Columbina said instantly, her composed facade finally breaking. "The dense mana interference on Floor 10 and below completely blocks all communication frequencies."

"Put it on speaker!" Sukuna demanded, leaning over the table.

Aisha tapped the screen and placed the phone in the center of the mahogany table.

We leaned in, expecting to hear the terrified, desperate sobs of starving students begging for rescue from the abyss.

Instead, a voice crackled through the speaker, sounding entirely too casual, as if they were having a lovely picnic in a park.

"—and I’m telling you, man, you just gotta swing the axe harder next time." Axel’s voice drifted through the speaker, followed by a crunching sound like he was chewing on a snack.

"I’ll keep that in mind," a calm, entirely unbothered voice replied. Kaiser.

Aisha stared at the phone. "Axel? Kaiser? Are you there?!"

"Oh, hey Instructor Aisha!" Axel’s voice boomed brightly through the speaker. "Yeah, we’re here. Sorry we missed the exams. We’re kinda stuck here."

The S-rank instructors of Asura Academy exchanged completely baffled looks.

"Where are you right now?!" Aisha demanded, her voice frantic. "Are you safe? We are trying to find a way to get you out!"

"Oh, don’t worry about it," Axel said confidently. "We’re doing great. I’ve basically been taking out all the monsters down here myself. It’s light work. We just cleared Floor 18, so we should be hitting Floor 20 pretty soon."

Theodor dropped his phone onto the table. "Floor... 18?" he whispered, horrified. "That’s past the curriculum for the first month. High-ranking parties struggle down there."

"Axel, you need to turn back and find a safe room immediately!" Aisha warned. "The monsters on Floor 18 and below are—"

"Instructor, he’s fine." Kaiser’s calm voice interrupted through the speaker. "Axel is solo carrying us. He’s an absolute menace down here. We’re just trying to keep up with his pace."

Sukuna blinked slowly, looking at Theodor. Theodor looked equally confused.

"What about Scarlet?" Aisha asked, her voice tight with panic. "Is she safe?"

"She was poisoned by a necrotic prion strain from a monster," Kaiser explained casually. "It was pretty bad."

Aisha gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

"But," Kaiser continued smoothly, "Axel managed to use his electrical magic and a bit of dungeon biology to completely synthesize a chemical cure and heal her."

There was a sudden, jarring pause on the other end of the line.

"Wait, what?!" Axel’s voice came through the speaker, sounding incredibly confused. "I did?"

"Yes, you did," Kaiser’s voice replied flatly, faintly in the background.

"OHHHH!" Axel’s voice suddenly boomed back into the phone, louder this time. "I DID! Yeah! Yeah, I totally did that! Just a little... electrical chemistry, you know? Nothing the Alpha couldn’t handle!"

I cleared my throat, leaning closer to Aisha’s phone. "Wait. How are you calling us? The mana density down there scatters all standard communication sigils."

"Oh, well, you see..." Axel hesitated, his confident tone faltering. "We just used the Lumina device. We, uh, hooked it up to a rock and... wait, no. We modulated the electromagnetic frequency. We matched the rock’s... things. Kaiser, what did we match?"

"The dielectric constant," Kaiser’s voice whispered faintly in the background.

"Right! The dielectric constant of the damp stone walls!" Axel repeated proudly. "We used a coaxial transmission line made from crawler bladder and iron pyrite to propagate a high-frequency radio signal through the earth’s natural mineral veins. No magic. Just, you know, basic physics."

Columbina’s book snapped shut. She leaned forward, her eyes locked on the speaker. "A radio bypass? Utilizing the raw ore veins as a waveguide to propagate signal waves? That is... mathematically brilliant. But why didn’t you just use spatial magic?"

There was a long, awkward silence on the other end of the line, as if Axel was waiting for someone to feed him the script.

"Because magic is scattered by the fluctuating mana density," Axel finally answered, his voice sounding too rehearsed, too perfectly calculated. "But radio frequencies operate on a different physical spectrum entirely. They bypass the mana blocks because electromagnetic waves don’t interact with the local mana field. Obviously."

Columbina stared at the phone, genuinely impressed. "No magic involved? Just pure physics?"

"Uh, yeah. Standard curriculum stuff." Axel lied smoothly.

"Instructor Aisha," Kaiser’s voice cut in, clear and calm. "If you see Elfie, please tell her I’m fine. Tell her not to worry. We’ll reach Floor 20 and use the regional teleport gate to return."

"Wait! No! You cannot go to Floor 20!" Aisha shouted, her voice laced with panic. "The scouts reported a massive mana surge climbing up from the deeper levels! There is a high-threat monster heading directly toward your path!"

"Aisha, it’s not the time to lecture them," I interrupted, pushing my glasses up my nose. "Boys, listen to me. Do not go deeper. Give us your coordinates. If we can get your exact position, Columbina can align a high-level Elvian teleport circle to pull you out."

Columbina nodded. "Do either of you know Elvian spatial notation? The celestial matrix?"

"Uh, no,..." Axel said.

"What’s that?" Kaiser asked.

"Wait, why do we even need a rescue anyway?" Axel grumbled. "I’m pretty sure I can clear Floor 100 with my eyes closed. Let me at ’em."

"Axel, don’t be reckless." Kaiser’s voice sighed. "Your magic is great, but we seriously need to be rescued. Let me give them the coordinates."

Kaiser cleared his throat. *"Here are the metrics:

1. Acoustic echo decay time is 1.42 seconds at 340 meters per second, indicating a local chamber volume of approximately twelve thousand cubic meters.

2. Atmospheric pressure is 119.8 kilopascals, which places us exactly one thousand four hundred meters below sea level.

3. Gravitational deflection drift on a ten-meter thread is 0.12 degrees east, indicating local seismic warping.

4. The geothermal temperature is 23.4 degrees Celsius, indicating a local gradient of 0.03 degrees per meter from the surface."*

"Yeah, what he said," Axel added. "Instructor Apollo, can you convert that to Elvian language for us?"

I stared at the phone, my jaw slightly slack. I fumbled for a pen, scrambling to write down the numbers on a scrap piece of paper. "I... I can try. But how did you measure all of that without instruments?"

"Oh my days, sir, you there?! Yooo! It’s me your favorite student!" Kaiser joked, a rare sliver of humor in his tone.

I let out a short laugh, shaking my head. "You can relax, history boy. I will do my best. You three focus on surviving. We’ll rescue you soon."

"Holy monsters, catch on yall later see ya!" Axel said casually.

Click.

The line went dead.

The room fell into an absolute, heavy silence. The S-rank instructors of Asura Academy stared at the phone in the middle of the table as if it were a foreign alien artifact.

"They reached Floor 18 in a few hours..." Sukuna whispered, his hand running through his hair. "And they built a functioning radio transmitter out of monster skin and rocks. Who the hell are these kids?"

"It’s unprecedented," Theodor muttered, his phone slipping from his fingers. "Not even the S-rank prodigies of Class A could manage that kind of engineering under pressure."

Columbina slowly sat back in her chair, her analytical gaze fixed on the quiet speaker. "It isn’t just the engineering that is unprecedented, Theodor. Did you listen to their tone?"

"They sounded... entirely too relaxed," Aisha said, her voice a mix of relief and utter bewilderment. "Axel was literally eating a snack. And Kaiser... Kaiser made a joke. That boy has never shown a shred of humor or personality in class. He’s always just... there. Yet he sounded completely unfazed by the fact that they are trapped in the deep abyss."

"They weren’t asking us to rescue them," Columbina pointed out, her eyes narrowing. "They were letting us know they were fine, and politely requesting we send a portal so they don’t have to walk back. They were treating a hazardous dungeon zone like a simple stroll in the park."

Sukuna leaned forward, slamming his hands onto the table. "That’s what doesn’t make sense. Earlier, I asked you, Aisha, if you even knew who this kid was. I had questions about his enrollment. But now? I have a thousand more. Did you hear how Axel spoke?"

Theodor nodded. "He was hesitating. Every time you asked him a technical question, he had to wait."

"Because he was being fed the answers," Sukuna said, his eyes flashing with a mix of frustration and intrigue. "Axel didn’t know what a ’dielectric constant’ was. He could barely pronounce it. The moment Kaiser whispered it in the background, Axel repeated it like a puppet. And healing some unknown poison using electrical magic?"

"He claimed Axel used electrical magic and dungeon biology to synthesize it." Aisha murmured.

"Which is absolute nonsense," Columbina stated flatly. "Axel has high electrical output, but his magical control is far too raw to perform precise molecular denaturation to heal someone. The math Kaiser listed off—the acoustic volume, the kilopascals, the gravitational deflection—that wasn’t Axel. Kaiser was the one calculating their exact position. He is the brain. Axel is just the loud, sparking mask he’s hiding behind."

Sukuna looked down at the table, a grim smile tugging at his lips. "A civilian-grade student with zero mana, playing puppet master to Class C’s strongest combatant, while carrying a poisoned classmate through the dark. He’s rewriting our entire understanding of dungeon survival, and he’s doing it without a single drop of magic."

I pushed my chair back and stood up, grabbing my pen and the scrap paper with the coordinates.

Sukuna looked up at me. "Where are you going, Apollo?"

I smiled, turning toward the library’s historical archives. "Maybe I have my answer now."

"You should have yours too, shouldn’t you?"

Sukuna let out a short, quiet laugh, leaning back in his chair. "Yeah... I guess I do."

---

Asura Academy — Class C Dormitories

(Perspective: Leena Grelynn)

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I slammed my fists against the wooden door, my vision completely blurred by tears. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt like it was collapsing, and my hands were shaking so violently I could barely keep them raised.

The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Rigel stood in the doorway, his eyes scanning me before widening in immediate worry.

"Leena?" Rigel reached out, grabbing my shoulders to steady me. "What’s wrong? Why are you crying? What happened?"

"Elfie..." I choked out, a sob wracking my throat. I couldn’t stop stuttering, my voice trembling so hard the words barely made sense. "Elfie... she’s gone, Rigel. She’s gone."

Rigel’s face went rigid. He pulled me inside his room, closing the door behind us to keep my crying from echoing down the hallway. "Calm down, Leena. Take a breath. What do you mean she’s gone?"

"In the morning... she sent me a message," I sniffled, wiping my nose with the sleeve of my shirt. "She asked me to meet her in her room. She said she needed my help. So I went. And when I got there... she told me that if we combined my Elvian magic and her celestial magic, we could create a portal to the dungeon."

Rigel stared at me, his grip on my arms tightening. "Did you do it? Leena, the instructors explicitly told us not to try and force our way into the collapse! They said it could risk our own lives!"

"I told her that!" I cried, the tears spilling fresh down my cheeks. "I warned her! But she told me we weren’t actually going to teleport. She said we were just trying to see if we could establish a connection. She looked so tired, Rigel... so desperate. I couldn’t say no. I gave her some of my Elvian magic, letting her draw the mana directly from me, and she fused it with her own."

I swallowed hard, the memory of what happened next sending a shiver straight down my spine. "At first, we failed. The magic kept collapsing. But then... then she closed her eyes, and I noticed her fingers..."

"What about her fingers?" Rigel pressed, his voice tense.

"They... they looked like the night sky," I whispered, my voice dropping in fear. "Like a swirling galaxy, full of tiny, glowing stars. It didn’t look like normal mana, Rigel. It looked... ancient. She circled her hand in the air, and she literally tore open a portal. Her face was so blank, so serious. I got scared. I tried to stop her. I reached out and tried to grab her wrist to pull her back, but..."

"But what?"

"My hand... it just phased right through her." I sobbed, hiding my face in my hands. "Like she wasn’t even physically there anymore. And then she just stepped through the rift, and the portal snapped shut. She went in alone, Rigel. She went to find Kaiser."

Rigel let out a sharp breath, running a hand over his face. He paced back and forth across the small room for a moment, trying to process the absolute insanity of what I had just told him. Finally, he stopped and walked back to me, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"Hey. Look at me," Rigel said, his voice firm but calming. "It’s going to be okay. Elfina... she’s the Rank Zero for a reason. She isn’t like the rest of us. She went in because she was worried about Kaiser, and she has the strength to survive down there. But we can’t keep this a secret. We have to tell the instructors immediately."

"I’m so sorry..." I wept, clutching the front of his shirt. "If she gets hurt down there... it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have given her my magic. I shouldn’t have helped her."

"No, Leena, listen to me," Rigel said, pulling my hands away from my face to look me in the eyes. "It is not your fault. Elfina Lunaris is a force of nature. If you hadn’t given her your mana, she would have found another way. She would have torn this academy apart to get to Kaiser. You didn’t cause this. Now dry your eyes. We’re going to find Instructor Aisha right now."

I nodded weakly, letting him lead me out of the room. But as we hurried down the hallway, the image of Elfie’s galaxy-stained fingers and her empty, determined eyes kept flashing in my mind, leaving a cold, lingering dread in my chest.

---

Floor 26 — The Catacombs of Despair

(Omniscient POV)

The air on Floor 26 was thick with the copper stench of fresh slaughter.

Everywhere, the colossal ruins of the dungeon walls lay shattered and pulverized into fine dust. Scattered across the cavern floor were the broken carcasses of hundreds of high-ranking monsters. Towering chimeras with armored plating thick enough to deflect siege weapons lay split open, their dark blood pooling into deep crevasses. Multi-limbed shadow beasts, usually invisible to the naked eye, lay pinned to the stone, their bodies crushed into unrecognizable pulp. Massive venomous arachnids lay severed, their legs twitching in the final throes of death.

An entire ecosystem of predators had been utterly annihilated in a matter of minutes.

In the center of the carnage stood a lone figure.

Elfina Lunaris.

She wore a simple, elegant dark dress, but the fabric was now heavily soaked and splattered in dark crimson and black monster blood. Crimson droplets dripped from her long, pink hair, and a thin streak of blood was smeared across her cheek. None of it was hers. Her pale face remained pristine, dominated by wide, lifeless pink eyes that stared forward with absolute, chilling vacancy.

A hand rose slowly, hovering in the dark air.

Underneath her skin, her fingers swirled with a deep, cosmic purple, shifting like a living galaxy trapped beneath a pale membrane. Four gold rings glinted on her hand as purple ribbons of condensed celestial mana began to warp around her arm. Strands of glowing, ancient runic script floated in mid-air, spiraling tightly around her fingers as she gathered her power.

She stared at a towering, three-headed abyssal hound crawling out of the shadows, its fangs dripping with caustic saliva. It whimpered, its instincts screaming at it to run.

Elfie’s voice was a whisper, cold, flat, and possessively hollow.

"Kai is not here. I will have to go higher up."

Her hand turned, and a swirling, violent sphere of pure, purple-black gravity condensed in her palm, humming with a terrifying, low-frequency vibration that shook the very foundation of the cave. She focused her empty gaze on the beast and whispered the Latin incantation, her voice sounding hauntingly beautiful yet deeply horrifying:

"Sidus ex nihilo, gravitas fati. Convelle spatia, devora vitam. Caelum Rumpitur."

With a flick of her wrist, she released the spell.

"Celestial Singularity: Void Horizon."

The purple sphere shot forward, stopping directly above the pack of monsters. Instantly, a massive, crushing gravitational pull exploded outward. The stone ground warped and cracked as the colossal abyssal hound and several other hiding monsters were violently yanked off their feet. They shrieked in terror, dragged inexorably toward the center of the dark sphere. Space itself seemed to fold, compressing their massive bodies into a singular point before the singularity collapsed, detonating in a silent, blinding flash of purple light that reduced them all to ash.

From the shadows behind her, a rogue crawler leaped, its razor-sharp claws aimed directly at the back of her neck.

Elfie didn’t even turn around.

A thick, whip-like tendril of purple celestial mana erupted from her shadow. It lashed out with blinding speed, wrapping tightly around the beast’s throat. The crawler choked, its claws scraping futilely at the solid mana, before the tendril coiled once and violently severed its head from its shoulders, letting the corpse thud uselessly to the floor.

Elfie began to walk forward, her boots stepping over the fresh pools of blood.

He is not here. she repeated in her mind, her chest tightening as a sudden, frantic panic briefly threatened to break through her icy mask.

I have to hurry. What if I’m too late? What if they hurt him? No. No. I can’t let him go. I won’t lose him again. He is mine. He belongs to me.

She stopped for a fraction of a second, looking down at her hands. The galaxy-like stardust under her skin was glowing brighter, the cosmic energy slowly eating away at her physical form as she pushed her celestial boundaries. She stared at it with complete indifference, not caring for a single moment about the toll it was taking on her body.

With her gaze fixed on the dark path leading up to Floor 25, Elfie stepped forward, ascending higher into the abyss.