Location: Floor 100 - The Absolute Abyss
"Absolutely not."
Sofia Vileblood stared at Kyouya as if he had just suggested they dance in a field of daisies. The Blood-Drenched Demon Lord crossed her arms, her crimson cape pooling around her on the obsidian floor.
"I am an Immortal sovereign, not a snack for a Gluttony skill. Do you have any idea how undignified it is to be swallowed?"
Kyouya leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His golden-ringed violet eyes gleamed with an unsettling, ravenous intensity. It wasn’t just about smuggling her out; his [Absolute Gluttony of Everything] was actively salivating at the prospect of tasting an Immortal's status. The sheer greed radiating from him was palpable.
"I won't hurt you," Kyouya promised, his voice dropping to a smooth, dark whisper. "It’s just a temporary spatial pocket. Think of it as a very exclusive, very dark VIP lounge inside my soul."
Sofia shuddered visibly. "You are trying to sound reassuring, Kyouya, but you just sound incredibly creepy."
Kyouya didn't drop the predatory smile. They both knew it was the only logical way to bypass the dungeon's restrictions without alerting the entire demon hierarchy.
Sofia let out a long, aristocratic sigh, massaging her temples. "Fine. But at least be gentle with the absorption. If I find my dress wrinkled in this 'pocket dimension,' I will sever your spine."
"Nova," Kyouya commanded internally. "Initiate the sequence."
Kyouya’s physical form began to destabilize. His dark suit and flesh melted into a shifting, amorphous mass of dark violet slime. The viscous substance expanded, slithering across the stone floor toward Sofia, attempting to gently envelop her boots and encapsulate her form.
But the moment the violet slime touched her skin, the cavern was bathed in flashing red warning lights.
[SYSTEM ERROR: Target Entity possesses conflicting [Immortal] Status.]
[SYSTEM ERROR: Subject’s Divine Bloodline rejects spatial compression.]
[WARNING: Catastrophic MP Drain detected.]
<Host, the paradoxical nature of your End of Absolute Level Error is clashing with her Immortality loop,> Nova calculated rapidly. <Attempting force-bypass. Re-calibrating spatial parameters.>
The violet slime surged, trying again. And again. And again. Sparks of dark magic and crimson aura violently clashed. Sofia stood perfectly still, watching with mild amusement as the slime desperately tried to eat her, only to be violently repelled by the System's foundational laws.
Within seconds, Kyouya’s MP hit absolute zero in system error.
With a pathetic, wet squelch, the massive dark violet slime completely deflated. It collapsed into a wide, sticky, pathetic smear across the obsidian floor.
"Well," Sofia deadpanned, looking down at the puddle of the supposed System-Breaker. "That was certainly... gentle."
Kyouya couldn't even form a mouth to speak. He was struggling with agonizing difficulty just to keep his consciousness tethered to the puddle. He had the power to erase existence, but apparently, the System absolutely refused to let him eat the Demon Lord.
Location: The Fortress Courtyard - The Church Vanguard
Above ground, the concept of a gentle fight did not exist.
A Church Hero named Caleb—a seasoned warrior with dirt-smudged brown eyes and heavy silver plate armor—roared as he swung his blessed broadsword in a desperate arc. Against all odds, the blade bypassed the Abyssal Reaper's guard.
The edge of Caleb's holy sword grazed Crimson Scarlet’s face. It was a shallow cut, barely a millimeter deep, tracing a thin red line across her porcelain-pale cheek.
The entire battlefield seemed to freeze. The Church Heroes held their breath, expecting an explosion of apocalyptic rage.
Instead, Scarlet stopped moving. She slowly reached up, pressing two slender, black-armored fingers against the cut. She brought the fingers to her lips and licked the fresh blood. Her crimson eyes widened to terrifying proportions, her pupils dilating as her body began to shake with an uncontrollable, euphoric excitement.
"Oh..." Scarlet breathed, her voice trembling with twisted pleasure. "You bit me. You actually bit me."
The agony of the wound didn't anger her; it fueled her madness. Every drop of spilled blood was a symphony.
"My turn!" she shrieked joyously.
She swung The Soul Reaper. The massive bone scythe didn't just cut the air; it tore the fabric of space. Caleb didn't even register the movement. One second his right arm was raised defensively; the next, a geyser of arterial blood erupted from his shoulder. His severed arm, still clutching his broadsword, spun through the air and embedded itself in the snowy mud.
A heartbeat later, the pain registered. Caleb collapsed to his knees, clutching his ruined shoulder, a blood-curdling scream tearing from his throat.
Scarlet laughed—a high, melodic, utterly insane sound that echoed off the fortress walls.
A few yards away, Elias, a young Church Hero with pale cyan eyes, stood paralyzed. His legs refused to move. He had read the Church’s forbidden archives. He knew the lore of the Year 104. In that year, an entire generation of Summoned Heroes, accompanied by a reigning Saintess and a legion of Holy Knights, had marched on the Abyss.
Crimson Scarlet had met them alone. She hadn't just defeated them; she had dismantled them over the course of three days, reveling in their screams, turning the heroes of legend into a macabre theater of gore. Elias looked at the giggling Reaper, realizing with horrifying clarity that they were nothing more than fresh toys to her.
Location: The Fortress Courtyard - The Center Line
Not far from the slaughter, Lady Sylas was losing her grip on her physical vessel.
Saintess Evelyn’s continued bombardment of holy light, combined with Shiori’s relentless void magic, had melted away the Lich’s necrotic barriers. Sylas screamed as her right cheek practically dissolved, revealing a grotesque visage: half rotting, taut skin, and half bleached, cursed bone. Her glowing emerald eye flickered erratically in its socket.
"I will rot your flesh from your bones!" Sylas shrieked, preparing another barrage of hellfire.
"You're not getting the chance," Shiori muttered.
She abandoned her mid-range casting and dashed forward, her boots kicking up the frozen mud. She closed the distance with terrifying speed, dropping her center of gravity. She gripped the hilt of her katana, feeding her dark magic directly into the steel.
"Awaken, cold steel," Shiori whispered, the incantation flowing effortlessly from her lips. "Breathe with the wind, strike like the storm. One draw, one breath, absolute sever!"
Dark, volatile magic shrouded the blade in a swirling vortex.
"First Form: Phantom Slash!"
Shiori drew the blade in a blinding, horizontal arc aimed directly at the Lich’s exposed neck.
But Sylas was an ancient monster. In the microsecond before the blade connected, she forcefully condensed the remainder of her mana into a localized, hexagonal barrier directly in the path of the sword.
The dark katana slammed into the barrier. The impact sent a shockwave that cracked the stone beneath Shiori’s feet. The blocking magic was incredibly dense. Sylas smirked with her half-skeletal face, believing the momentum was killed.
Shiori gritted her teeth, the muscles in her arms screaming as she dumped more raw MP into the strike.
"Break!"
With the sound of shattering glass, the katana tore through the barrier. But the resistance had cost Shiori crucial momentum. Sylas forcefully jumped backward, letting the weakened blade slice cleanly through the empty air where her neck had been a fraction of a second before. The attack dealt zero damage. Shiori cursed under her breath, realizing the gap in combat experience between them.
While Shiori and Evelyn fought the Lich, the rest of her classmates executed a flawless, synchronized assault against General Vane.
"Mei! Now!" Yua yelled.
The two girls slammed their hands onto the earth. The solid ground beneath Vane’s heavy iron boots instantly liquified into a deep, sucking mire of magical mud. Vane sank to his knees, his immense physical strength momentarily neutralized by the lack of leverage.
"Freeze it!" Shota commanded, thrusting his hands forward. A blast of sub-zero ice magic shot into the mud, instantly flash-freezing the mire into solid permafrost, locking the General firmly in place.
"Burn it down!" Yoshi roared from the flank, unleashing a torrent of condensed, roaring fire magic directly at the trapped General. The rapid shift from freezing cold to blistering heat was designed to shatter his heavy armor through thermal shock.
Through the roaring flames, Kazura stepped forward. He pulled his fist back, channeling his energy into his primary martial skill. "[Vacuum Shredder]!"
He threw a punch that didn't just hit the fire; it weaponized the air pressure, sending a spiraling cyclone of kinetic force directly into Vane’s chest. The explosion kicked up a massive, blinding cloud of smoke, ash, and steam that blanketed the area.
The students stood panting, their chests heaving. It was a perfect elemental combination.
"Did we get him?" Yoshi breathed, lowering his hands.
The heavy silence was broken by a low, rumbling chuckle echoing from within the ash cloud.
The Vanguard froze. Through the dense grey smoke, a single, piercing light cut through the gloom. It was Vane’s right eye, glowing with an intense, abyssal purple radiance. The heavy permafrost shattered outward as Vane casually stood up, stepping out of the crater. His armor was scorched and dented, but he looked completely unbothered.
"Thermal shock, crowd control, and a localized kinetic strike," Vane said, his voice devoid of anger. In fact, he sounded almost impressed. "You coordinate well without your Ultimate Skills. I admit... you are worthy."
He raised his right hand. The air beside him warped and tore open. Slowly, V
ane reached into the dimensional tear and pulled out a massive, jagged greatsword that seemed to absorb the very light around it.
"But playtime," Vane said, leveling the colossal blade at the terrified students, "is officially over."
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