Kitti positioned herself directly behind the Shielder as they stepped into the antechamber.
The room stretched out before them like the inside of a living wound. Red crystals jutted from every indentation in the walls, ceiling, and floor, glowing faintly as if pulsing with blood. Their eerie light washed over the chamber, filling it with an oppressive, unsettling crimson haze.
Kitti swallowed. The atmosphere alone felt hostile.
Surprisingly, Jean stood right beside her, his normally loud footsteps replaced by cautious shuffling. The twins spread themselves out on opposite ends of the formation, acting as massive anchors on both flanks. Alice remained at the rear, bow raised, eyes scanning every crystal for movement.
Shade raised his claymore, its dark metal reflecting the red glow in fractured streaks. "I'm guessing this is the last room," he muttered.
He pointed toward the far end of the antechamber, where a throne room waited, a massive stone seat carved into the wall, empty and foreboding.
"But where's the boss?" the Shielder asked aloud. "It should be some kind of Cyclops king, right?"
Alice stiffened. Her eyes widened suddenly, panic flickering across her normally calm expression.
She gasped sharply.
The sound cut clean through the group's focus.
Everyone turned toward her.
"He's doing something," she whispered, voice trembling. "The dungeon… it's twisting unnaturally."
Before anyone could question her, she rushed forward, pushing past the Shielder. "We must hurry!"
The urgency in her tone sent the entire party into motion.
They sprinted after her, boots pounding across the glowing red stone. The throne room blurred past as Alice veered straight toward a narrow hallway hidden behind the throne, a cramped corridor that winded sharply downward like the throat of some buried beast.
"I thought that was the last room!?" Jean shouted as he followed the others into the tight passage. His voice echoed sharply off the walls. "This damn dungeon!"
The passage continued spiraling, deeper and deeper, the red glow behind them fading into darkness as something ahead pulsed with power.
The deeper they pushed, the thicker the air became.
It was subtle at first, a faint pressure on their lungs, a strange heaviness clinging to the back of their throats, but the further they descended, the more undeniable the sensation grew. The walls themselves seemed to vibrate, humming with a slow, sickly rhythm that matched no heartbeat known to any living creature.
Shade was the first to break the silence, voice low. "This… isn't normal right? Out of everything we've seen today."
"No," Alice agreed without turning around. Her wings were half-flared, quivering with tension. "He's close. Whatever he's doing, it's reaching its peak."
Kitti felt a shiver crawl down her spine. She had been in dangerous situations before, more than she could count, this dungeon was at the very top of course, but never had her instincts screamed so loudly. Something in this hallway felt wrong, wrong in a way that made her bones want to flee before her brain caught up.
The Shielder pushed onward regardless, shield held high. "Stay together. Whatever's ahead, we end it..."
A tremor cut him off.
The entire hallway lurched sideways, nearly knocking the party into the jagged walls. Red dust fell like rain as the ground shuddered beneath their feet.
Alice braced herself, planting her entire fist into the stone. "He's accelerating it...! Whatever ritual he's doing!"
Jean swore viciously. "A ritual!? Why is there a ritual in a dungeon?"
"Move!" Alice ordered, voice sharp enough to cleave stone. "We're out of time!"
And so they ran.
The cramped passageway finally spat them out into a wide chamber, circular, vast, carved of darker stone untouched by the red glow above. This room felt ancient, alive, almost sentient. Veins of bone-pale light pulsed through the floor in slow, irregular beats.
Their feet sank into the thigh high swamp like water that was in the room as they entered.
At the far end of the chamber stood a towering figure.
The Boss.
A Cyclops, but not one like the others. Taller, leaner, draped in layers of darkened bone and ritual markings carved directly into his formerly red flesh. His single eye burned with a hungry white flame.
Alice didn't even stop to gawk at the boss. She pushed forward, boots sinking into the swamp that reeked like rotting blood and iron. Every step sent ripples across the thick, red-black sludge.
"Ah," the boss said, his voice deep enough to vibrate through the chamber walls. "Todesfußler."
He paused, tasting the old name before dismissing it with a faint shake of his head. "No. That name holds no power over you anymore. You have a new name. A pity… but not a deep loss."
Alice growled, her mouth twitching in irritation as she continued to wade through the muck. "You!" she hissed. "I have come to end you, and take back what is mine!"
The boss did not react to her rage. Instead, his heavy gaze slid past her, landing on the shielder positioned directly behind her.
"Chrome. The undead shielder."
The shielder froze mid-stride, armor creaking. "That… name. It's mine, isn't it?"
"You slew my son," the boss said, stepping down from his raised platform. Each footfall sent a dull, wet thud into the swamp. "You took the last vestige connecting me to this world."
He approached with slow, deliberate steps. "When I first arrived in this dungeon, I came with thirteen of my brethren. Each of us a scarred survivor of you barbaric humans. I molded this pitiful dungeon into something worthy of us… and using the genetic code of my brethren, I created more of my kin."
"You're oddly literate for a monster," the shielder said, genuine surprise slipping into his voice.
The boss's expression shifted, solemn, almost mournful. "Yes. Literacy… a sign of intelligence among you humans. Even among your own, you mock and dismiss those without it, condemning them to live lives as objects."
He lifted his head, eyes burning with quiet hatred. "Humans are truly vile."
Bekhan steadied himself, staff raised but shaking slightly. "Is that what this is about?" he asked, voice echoing faintly across the blood-swamp. "Revenge? Against those who wronged you? Against humanity?"
The boss turned toward him.
For a moment, the Cyclops's single eye no longer resembled a monster's at all, it resembled that of an old scholar, weary and ancient, someone who had watched far too much suffering unfold and carried the weight of every memory.
"Oddly enough, no," the boss said. His tone held no hatred, only certainty. "Trying to fight against the titan that is humanity is a futile effort. Your kind is simply too numerous… and among you walk individuals whose strength far eclipses my own."
He gestured faintly, as if pointing to an unseen world above them.
"You are guided by patron gods who bestow blessings and miracles without hesitation. They watch over you. In moments of great need, they descend to lift you upward."
He paused… and the chamber almost seemed to inhale with him.
"Yet there are no such figures for us Cyclops," he continued, voice softening into something mournful. "No patrons to pray to. No deity to welcome us into the afterlife. No higher will that claims us as its children. When I laid broken and useless, when I wondered why there was no one to hear my cries, I realised that there was none that could help us."
His shoulders lowered.
"Not yet, anyway."
Alice stopped moving mid-stride, her eyes going wide with sudden clarity. "You're trying to ascend," she breathed. "You seek to become a god… for monsters."
The boss met her stare without flinching.
"My people come first," he said. "The Cyclops will find salvation. And should any other lost soul seek my protection…"
His eye burned brighter, conviction sharpening his voice. "…then I will grant it. As the god, Ophryon!" when he spoke his name, a sudden weight seemed to descend on the group.
"Then this ritual…" the Shielder murmured.
His gaze dropped to the sludge at his feet just as a distorted face surfaced, one of their fallen comrades, only to melt into a bleached skull and sink back beneath the blackened muck.
Ophryon, no longer merely a boss but a name steeped in ancient weight, turned to him. "The crystal at this dungeon's heart spoke to me," he said calmly. "It whispered of a world beyond this one. A New World. Filled with mythical wonders and beings who exist on a higher plane."
He lifted a hand, letting a faint ripple of divine energy pulse from his palm. "Somehow, that crystal absorbed enough power and divinity to evolve across dimensions. But it lacked one thing—a vessel strong enough to ascend. A worthy host."
Ophryon's single burning eye drifted toward Alice, lingering there with unsettling intent before returning to the Shielder. "I will force myself into the ranks of gods and deities, and bring salvation to my kind. All I require… is the proper number of souls."
He spread his arms as though presenting the swamp around him. "At first, I believed millions would be needed. An impossible endeavour." A thin, almost human smile tugged at his lips. "However, it seems the souls of a mere handful of humans are enough."
Jean snapped.
"That's not going to happen, you bastard!" he roared.
His sword, still bound to his wrist by torn wrappings and dried blood, shook with the force of his rage. "Giving some sloppy speech about how life sucks for you, like that excuses anything! I don't care about any of that crap!"
He pointed his blade at Ophryon, voice cracking with fury. "Because of you, my comrades are gone from this world! Screw your ascension! You messed with the wrong adventurers!"
He charged through the sludge of blood and death, forcing his legs to move despite the thick resistance. Each step sent a spray of dark filth into the air as he raced straight toward Ophryon with everything he had left.
Ophryon did not even brace himself.
He simply watched Jean approach with a cold, detached curiosity, then spoke, as though reciting a fact already carved into stone.
"Your name. I shall take it… Jean Bretite."
Jean's eyes flickered.
A dull red glow swelled in his pupils,then vanished.
All light left him.
The swordsman's body went slack mid-stride, collapsing into the sludge with a sickening splash. There was no final scream, no desperate reach for life. He simply fell, lifeless, and the thick, dark muck swallowed him whole, dragging him slowly beneath the surface.
It had happened so fast that none of them fully processed it.
No one had time to react.
No one had time to save him.
Jean was dead.
Ophryon raised his singular eyebrow. "He was too weak to offer anything of worth for his name. So instead his life was offered, for that is all he has."
The Shielder's brows furrowed in fury. "Girls!" he barked.
"On it!" Mai yelled, vanishing in a blur before reappearing directly beside Ophryon.
"Yaaah!" Yui shouted as she mirrored her twin, materializing on the Cyclops's other side.
"Destroy Mode! Double Strike!" they yelled in perfect unison, their massive hammers growing monstrously in size before smashing down from both sides.
The impact was absolute. Ophryon didn't even have time to flinch, his upper body was obliterated in an instant, pulverized into nothingness. No trace of flesh remained; it disintegrated on contact, leaving only the echo of devastation behind.
Ophryon was dead.
For a brief, fleeting moment, the Shielder allowed himself a glimmer of relief, then his eyes widened as realization struck.
From the remnants of Ophryon's lower body, an ethereal, astral form began to rise. A colossal skeleton, eerily familiar, emerged from the bloodied sludge. Its bone-white frame glimmered with an unnatural aura, and every inch of it screamed recognition to the Shielder.
"No… way," he murmured, dread creeping into his voice.
Before anyone could react, the skeleton reached the peak of its ascent, and vanished. Ophryon stood whole once more, as if the previous obliteration had never occurred.
"That's your skill!" Yui gasped, staring at the Shielder in shock.
"I can see that!" he replied grimly, already sprinting after Ophryon.
The Cyclops's single eye burned with triumph as he grinned widely. "You're too late. I already have the last piece. That should be enough."
As he spoke, a new face bubbled up from the surface of the sludge directly before him. Jean's face, frozen in a silent scream, rose briefly before melting away and sinking back into the black depths.