Dimension Slash

Which meant this creature was someone’s rightful successor.

And what the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hell is Dimension Slash supposed to be?

That wasn’t ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the only thing that struck me as odd. Dimension Slash. Was it seriously going to cut through dimensions?

I shook my head a moment later. Plenty of skills had grandiose names. Still, something this over-the-top was rare. Dimension Slash…

“Dimension Slash.”

Seeing was believing.

Kyah!

The instant the words left my mouth, the little thing swung its scythe.

Snick!

…The warp the Will had created was severed clean through.

Kyah kyah kyah kyah!

Having tasted the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pleasure of a single cut, the creature went wild, thrashing its scythe in every direction.

Rumble! Rrrumble!

The dungeon itself was being buried. From the edges inward, as if being compressed, it was being swallowed by black space.

The Abyss.

Serengeti stared, mouth hanging open.

“……Doesn’t that mean we can’t leave either, now that the warp’s been cut?”

“Hmm. We’ll have to use a Teleport Book, then.”

I never imagined Dimension Slash would be a skill that severed warp connections. And it had outright annihilated the dungeon on top of that.

A skill I’d never seen before was unsettling, but standing around gawking would only get us eaten by the Abyss. I had no choice but to halt the spirit and open a Teleport Book.

Whoosh!

The moment I spread the Teleport Book and opened a warp, the black flames flickering across the creature’s entire body turned blue.

A sudden change. Did this thing have some kind of connection to warps?

“Don’t cut this one.”

Kyah.

It nodded.

The Shadows were waiting at the dungeon’s entrance.

A Demigod Trait Dungeon. The plan was simple: the instant the target emerged, they would strike. Catch him off-guard before he could even think.

That was the idea, at least.

Rumble!

The dungeon is collapsing.

Suddenly?

Dungeons didn’t collapse even after being cleared. Trait dungeons in particular were designed to keep accepting challengers indefinitely.

And yet this one was crumbling — not in a simple, explosive ruin, but being slowly, steadily consumed from below by the rising Abyss.

It’s the Abyss!

We have to fall back. The boundary is being eroded.

The Abyss was flooding in. It was the same phenomenon as a city collapse. When every warp connecting a city failed, the Abyss surged in and erased the city itself.

The Shadows made their decision. Once the Abyss had begun, the entire region — dungeon included — would be swallowed whole.

But when they reached the warps, panic set in.

“The warps aren’t working!”

“What about the others?!”

“Same!”

“They were fine just a moment ago — why all of a sudden……!”

Every single warp had failed. But why? They’d been working perfectly when the Shadows arrived.

“The Teleport Books! Didn’t anyone bring Teleport Books?!”

“Th-the Teleport Books aren’t working either.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

The Shadow leader bit down on his lip. Even the Teleport Books were dead. He’d never seen anything like it.

When warps failed and the Abyss began to sink a region, there was only one way out.

Kill the Dominator of the Abyss.

You had to kill the Abyss that had swallowed the area — and its Dominator — to escape. But Abyss Dominators were, without exception, monstrously powerful.

If it’s one of the weaker Dominators, we might still make it.

The Shadows weren’t weak. Against a mid-tier Abyss Dominator, they could hunt it down at the cost of some casualties.

Then the text floated up before their eyes.

The Shadows’ eyes began to tremble wildly.

Of all the Abyss Dominators — the infamous Skin Hybrid of God!

We’re fucked……!!!

Tap. Tap.

Master sat in his chair, drumming his fingers on the desk, his face twisted in a scowl.

The Shadows still hadn’t reported in. A full day had passed with no word. He’d ordered daily reports — silence meant something had gone wrong.

“……Did he take out the Shadows?”

Impossible. No matter how absurdly high Randolph’s achievements kept climbing, there were limits. At the point of clearing Main Quest 6, the strongest he could possibly be was around Level 8.

Even if the Constellations upgraded the reward list, the best treasures available at this stage would be Ancient-grade at most.

Could it be higher than that?

That was already the absolute ceiling — a calculation that already strained common sense. When Master himself cleared Main Quest 6, he’d only been around Level 7. And even that pace had required so-called “carries” and every treasure he could strap on.

If someone like Gracia wanted to grind levels specifically to hit a certain quest threshold, it still took a massive amount of time.

But Randolph had only been a Player for three months. Honestly, reaching Level 8 in three months was already a miracle. And if he’d spent all that time pure leveling, his actual combat stats should have lagged. Filling every stat to the max while climbing levels simply didn’t leave enough time.

Therefore: impossible.

“He has allies. Extremely powerful ones……”

He revised his thinking. If Phantom had collaborators — if a powerhouse strong enough to erase the Shadows was backing him — then it became possible.

Master assumed at least a 2-Star Transcendent or higher was assisting the man. 2-Star Transcendents and above were vanishingly rare even among Players. But Master knew every single one of them.

That left Pangenia’s NPCs.

They’re said to exist in the Empire and the Yan Kingdom. Never seen ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them myself, though.

Both were places Players found nearly impossible to approach. Rumors only — no one had ever made real contact. Those NPCs helping Phantom? Hard to imagine.

Maybe the Shadows were simply struggling and still alive.

“M-Master! All of the Shadows have been found dead……!”

“……”

The report came through the open door, and Master’s mouth clamped shut.

Confirmation kill. Even the one-in-a-million possibility was gone. He’d sent people to the Shadows’ branch base to check. If they’d died mid-ambush on Randolph, their real bodies would have died as well.

And they had. Every last one of them.

Total annihilation of the Shadows. Years of cultivation, wiped out overnight. In an instant, twenty percent of his real-world combat power had evaporated. Once word got out, rival factions would start prying into the gaps.

“Goddamn it!”

CRASH!

Master slammed the desk and split it clean in two.

“This fucking shit!!!”

Even that didn’t cool his rage. How could it? The empire he’d built was starting to crack.

Knight’s Garden.

After returning to the city ruled by Marquis Weiser, I had been “resting.”

My mind feels remarkably at ease.

I’d held an overwhelming advantage in the fight against the Will, but sparring with that thing had been a headache and a half. So: rest. Emotional stability mattered. I had plenty of other things to handle, after all.

Kyah!

I watched the little creature scamper around like a curious animal, poking into every corner.

A Heavenly Spirit in the form of a tiny Death God. After it had severed every warp in the Demigod Trait Dungeon, it had changed as well.

Its level had gone up. It hadn’t hunted anything, as far as I knew. The experience mechanism seemed very different from ordinary spirits.

A being that severs warps and sinks cities into the Abyss, huh.

Freely cutting warps and dropping cities into the Abyss? Just hearing the description would make most people start flailing about how absurd such a creature was.

I stroked my chin thoughtfully.

What was a warp, really? The sole passage linking the continents. The continents floating in the sky were all the work of Fina, Goddess of the Sky. Rhea, Goddess of Earth who had created the continents, had been killed by Ruin and shattered into thirty-two stars. Then, in the instant the remaining continents were about to fall to Ruin, Fina had lifted them into the heavens.

But the sky continents were not connected. What they needed to link them was precisely the “warp.”

Without a warp connection, space itself is swallowed by the Abyss.

Simply floating the continents wasn’t enough. Without warps, the continents couldn’t exist at all.

So was this thing born from the Abyss?

The thought crossed my mind that it might be a species born specifically to oppose warps. From the Abyss’s perspective, warps were an irritating shield blocking their erosion. A species that dismantled that shield was entirely plausible. The Abyss held so many things that no one could say what might exist down there.

Kyah?

After roaming around like a cat for a while, the creature rubbed its own belly.

“Hungry?”

Kyah!

Apparently very hungry. But what could a skeleton even eat? Spirits fed on their contractor’s mana. Mine had long since converted into holy power — but this one didn’t seem to want holy power.

Ah. So it ate Honor.

That tracked — when it was born, it had consumed every last scrap of the “Corrupted Honor.” What if that had been Karma instead?

If I had to feed it Karma, that would have been a nightmare.

Regularly racking up evil deeds just to feed a pet? I’d have become a public enemy of the entire continent and ended up on every wanted poster before long. Thank god it was Honor.

“Help yourself.”

Kyah!

Beaming with delight, it swung its scythe over my head. I felt something shear away above me — a shimmering haze — and the creature gulped it down.

……Thirty at once?

Thirty was the kind of number you’d get from completing a decent Honor quest twice over. Please tell me it wasn’t going to eat this every single day.

Kyah kyah kyah kyah kyah!

It nuzzled its face against my cheek, then went scampering off again to explore. An entertaining little thing.

I should give it a name.

I couldn’t keep calling it “this thing” forever. Naming a spirit was essential for building a bond, too. After a moment’s thought, I nodded and spoke.

“Hell.”

Kyah?

“Your name is Hell.”

Not for the underworld — I took the “Hel” from Wilhelm and made it Hell.

Kyah kyah kyah kyah!

……It seemed to like it. A refreshingly positive creature. Good.

Name given. One thing left.

Unboxing.

Time to collect the rewards. Clearing Main Quest 6 had produced a list of eleven rewards.

I went through them one by one. Not a single ordinary name among them. Starting with the Extreme True Saber — a weapon that had reached the end of two stages of refinement — every item was top-tier in level.

I needed a bow. Perfect timing.

Clearing the next Main Quest would require a ranged weapon.