As Jack turned casually to leave—
—the ground shuddered.
Not from a strike.
From presence.
BOOM.
A silent pulse of power rippled through the chamber.
The blue flames flattened, whipped sideways as if bowing to something ancient.
Crimson cracks lit up beneath the ice, webbing outward like veins from hell itself.
Then—silence.
Colder than before.
Deeper.
Hungrier.
From the far shadows behind the throne, a figure emerged.
No fanfare. No roar.
Just... arrival.
Not large.
Not monstrous.
But infinitely more terrifying.
Its body gleamed with white skeletal armor, unnaturally sleek, inhumanly smooth.
Black veins of power coursed across it like rot etched into bone.
A mask hid its face—featureless.
No eyes.
No mouth.
No humanity.
Yet its Aura...
Suffocating.
Not like pressure.
Like drowning in silence.
Jack froze mid-step.
His eyes glowed faintly red as he glanced over his shoulder—
then fully turned.
The shadows slipped off his face, revealing the faintest spark of genuine interest.
"...Hm."
A low sound, halfway between amusement and recognition.
He lifted his chin.
A grin broke across his face—slow, cold, intrigued.
"Looks like..."
A pause.
"...a worthy opponent."
---
Under the weight of an ancient ceiling, the battle unfolded like a forgotten myth reborn.
Jack exhaled with a breath that dripped mockery.
His crimson gaze narrowed as a smirk curled his lips, effortless, cruel.
"You look weak... Come... prove me wrong."
His voice was sharp—razor-thin and cold enough to freeze blood.
WHOOM!
The beast lunged, a living missile of muscle and rage. The air exploded as it closed the distance in less than a heartbeat.
CLASH!
Its massive fist struck—not flesh, but stone. The wall behind Jack cracked into a spiderweb of ruin. Jack wasn't there.
He floated in midair behind the creature, hands still in his coat pockets, body calm like a drifting ghost.
"You're fast" Jack noted, his voice rippling through the air like divine pressure, calm but heavier than gravity.
The beast turned, claws flashing, unleashing a storm of blows.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each strike thundered through the chamber, but Jack weaved through them like wind—barely shifting, coat fluttering like smoke in reverse.
Then, a sound: CRRK.
Jack rolled his shoulders and gently twisted his neck until it cracked, his first show of effort.
"I'll give you more than the others" he murmured. "Just enough... to keep this fun."
The beast, enraged, fired a massive energy beam from its core.
Jack raised his foot. One tap against the air—a god's whisper—and the wave split cleanly, sliding past him like a parted ocean.
Then—WHAM!
Jack reappeared behind the beast in a flicker, knee colliding with its spine.
A shockwave rippled outward like thunder beneath still water.
The beast staggered. Not down. Not done. This one was different.
They clashed again.
A blur. Light bent. Sound cracked. Every strike was divine art, a war dance of teleportation and impact.
Jack was a phantom, untouchable, but every hit he returned was a message—precise, elegant, inevitable.
"You hold power..." he muttered mid-fight, ducking a strike, countering with a backhand that shattered stone.
"...but no conviction."
Jack whispered mid-punch—so soft, yet the sound rang like a divine bell, coated in an aura so heavy it made the very walls groan beneath its pressure.
The beast responded, roaring, slicing through Jack's coat with a claw charged in forbidden energy. A clean tear. Jack didn't even flinch.
"Good..." he muttered, eyes igniting—one like sapphire flame, the other a devouring void. "Let me show you... what fear tastes like."
Then he moved. No more teasing. No more evasion. Jack charged, full steps now, his arms loose but no longer hidden.
Each strike he threw echoed like earthquakes—walls cracked, air distorted.
The beast met him blow for blow, roaring, its energy flaring violently. But Jack's aura... his existence... was rising like a god unbound. Terrifying. Divine. Inevitable.
Then—one perfect step.
Jack appeared in the air above the beast, as if time had blinked.
His hand rose—red and black, like a dying star trembling with apocalyptic force.
"Disappear" he said, calm... final.
BOOOOOOM.
The entire chamber imploded. Light swallowed everything. Pillars disintegrated. The world held its breath—then fell silent.
When the smoke cleared, Jack stood alone. His coat fluttered gently. Not a scratch marked his body.
He exhaled, quiet.
"...Fun while it lasted."
As he turned to leave, the air warped. A portal opened—mysterious, ancient, glowing with unstable energy.
Jack stopped. Glanced at it.
As Jack stood before the portal, time itself seemed to hesitate. The air grew dense—each breath a weight, each heartbeat a drum of impending confrontation. The portal didn't shimmer like magic.
It throbbed, ancient and aware, like a living sentinel forged to guard secrets not meant for mortals.
It refused him.
His crimson eyes narrowed—not in confusion, but in recollection. That familiar resistance. The 68th floor. The same defiance. No explanation. No mercy. Just rejection. The same suffocating pressure. The same invisible law of reality saying, "Not yet."
A low, guttural hum rolled through the cave like thunder underwater. Jack moved forward—half a step, no more—but it was enough. The portal answered, lashing out with a blinding surge of force.
He stood firm, unmoving, but the backlash sent fractures crawling beneath his boots like lightning trapped in stone.
He didn't flinch. He just stood there, still, like a mountain daring the storm.
"...Tch."
His voice was low, the calm before annihilation—thick with weight, void of panic. As he exhaled, the flames wreathing him snuffed out, silenced for just a moment by the density of his intent.
Then he spoke—no, declared—and the very air twisted under the gravity of his words.
"Still not strong enough."
The sentence wasn't regret. It was a revelation.
Each syllable rippled outward, bending the cave's geometry, distorting the atmosphere. His aura surged—black edged in crimson, like a dying star screaming to be reborn.
Cracks webbed the floor beneath him, not from force, but from pressure—like the world around him could no longer contain the being it housed.
"This portal..." His gaze rose, scanning the gate not with fear, but comprehension. "It's not just a passage. It's a verdict. A threshold between now... and what comes next."
And then—a smirk. Barely there. Dangerous.
"Good."
That single word cut deeper than any blade. It wasn't optimism. It was promise.
His voice dropped, laced with menace and clarity, colder than the void, heavier than fate itself. The chamber trembled. The cave wept dust. "If this world believes this is my limits..."
His eyes flared—two suns in collapse.
"...it's dead wrong."
The portal flared back, reacting to the spike in power—but it didn't open. It resisted. It feared.
Jack turned, slow and precise, his coat brushing cinders aside. One hand slid into his pocket.
The fire made way for him. Even his shadow no longer obeyed natural laws—long, broken, jagged at the edges, trailing behind him like the ghost of an apocalypse yet to come.
"Soon" he said, voice low, almost like a vow. "You won't be able to stop me."
And with that, he walked away. Flames parted. Darkness followed. And the portal pulsed—no longer in defiance...
...but in warning.
Jack's steps echoed in eerie calm as he walked away from the inert portal. His back turned. No stance. No fear. Just defiance. Then—a sound.
A low hum, deep and resonant. Not mechanical. Not magical. Existential.
Reality itself convulsed.
Behind him, the portal didn't open—it shattered. But not like glass. It tore like the fabric of existence being clawed apart by something older than time.
Space twisted inward, then exploded outward in a burst of warped light and impossible geometry. A new rift had formed—a gateway to the 70th floor—a place spoken of not with awe, but with silence.
From the breach came cold wind. Not natural cold. Grave-cold. Wind that smelled like rot and regret. Then, the things began to crawl through.
Not beasts.
Abominations.
They emerged in jerking, unnatural movements, limbs bending in wrong angles, bodies stitched from the anatomy of nightmares. Some dragged too many arms.
Others floated with heads split into mouths. Eyes—glowing, shrieking things—burned with a hatred so deep it felt ancient.
They circled him.
Growling. Screeching. Clicking with insectoid hunger.
But Jack didn't turn. His posture didn't shift.
One hand remained in his pocket. The other at ease by his side. He tilted his head—slowly—like hearing an old, boring tune.
"...Huhhh" he exhaled, long and unimpressed. "Really?"
He turned his head just enough for his glowing crimson eyes to be seen—pupils narrow, radiating raw rejection of the scene before him.
"Beasts..." he said with quiet mockery, "...that act exactly like humans."
The abominations stopped—tense, snarling.
You pretend to be terrifying... all that noise, all those teeth. But on the inside?"
He smiled. Wide. Calm. Too calm.
"You're just as hollow."
That smile—it was perfect. Impossibly clean, like it belonged on a statue, not a man. But it didn't reach his eyes. His gaze stayed dead cold.
Then—a whisper.
"I don't know why you even try."
His aura began to drip out—not blaze, not roar—but leak. Like black fire pouring from the cracks of a vessel too full.
The floor shook beneath him, trembling under the pressure of contained wrath.
"It's not strength that makes monsters scary..."
He closed his eyes.
"...It's silence."
And then—he moved.
Not like a warrior.
Not like a fighter.
Like inevitability.
BOOM.
The air exploded around him. The first beast lunged—only to vanish, torn apart mid-motion, its body reduced to scraps in a blink.
Another shrieked—Jack's finger flicked, and its skull twisted midair like paper caught in a storm.
No screams came from him. No grunts. No wasted motion. Just graceful destruction.
A god in motion.
A man so far beyond fear, the act of battle looked like boredom relief.
He weaved through them—not dodging, but drifting, letting their strikes miss by inches while countering with surgical violence.
Limbs flew. Screams were cut short. Black ichor rained down.
And Jack?
He kept walking forward. Eyes half-lidded. Smile faint. Aura roaring silently behind him like a tidal wave barely held back.
The 70th Floor had revealed itself.
The portal now wide, waiting.
It was inviting him.
Surface—High Chamber of the Ranger Council.
The air was still, heavy like an old wound.
The stone walls—etched with ancient emblems of the old world—did nothing to contain the tension.
Around the obsidian round table sat the Ranger Council, legends, tacticians, survivors of apocalyptic events—yet now, their faces were pale. Eyes downcast. Jaws clenched.
Above them, a glass dome let in the faintest, flickering shafts of light.
It danced like dying flame across the polished floor, casting fractured shadows that twisted with every breath of the wind outside.
At the heart of it all sat Iris.
Composed. Unmoving. But within—her mind churned like a storm beneath still waters. In her hand, she turned a single apple—not as food, but as metaphor.
Its skin gleamed under the light, pristine... delicate. It reflected her thoughts: a fragile world, waiting to fall.
Silence reigned—until it cracked.
"He's returned" said one council member, voice sharp, brittle. "The world is spiraling into chaos... again. But this time, it's not a beast. It's him."
Another ranger—grey-eyed, battle-scarred—gritted his teeth.
"Jack... or should I say—Leo. From 300 years ago." His eyes flicked around the table, his voice laced with disbelief and fear. "We barely survived him once. And now... he's back. Stronger. Darker."
He swallowed hard.
"...Not just human anymore."
The name Leo lingered like a ghost in the chamber.
Iris didn't respond. Not right away. She just kept turning the apple—slowly, thoughtfully—like she was holding the fate of the world in her palm. Her gaze never left it.
Finally, in a whisper not meant for anyone but herself, she spoke.
"He's Leo... but not the same Leo I knew."
Her voice trembled—not from fear, but memory.
"He's something else now. A shadow... with memories."
A long pause followed. No one breathed.
Then—a chair scraped back.
A senior ranger rose, his presence commanding. Every room he entered bowed to his voice. Now, that voice echoed across the stone like judgment.
"Iris," he said, "your team—our strongest. And yet, even you couldn't touch him."
That truth hit like iron.
He paused. Then, heavier: "We're out of options."
A younger ranger leaned forward, eyes haunted, voice low.
"Then we do what we swore never to do."
Iris looked up.
The room waited.
He continued.
"It's time we request multi-dimensional assistance."
The phrase struck like lightning.
Because it meant one thing: This wasn't just about Earth anymore.
"If Jack loses control—if Leo's memories collapse into that thing he's become—this world... every world... could fall."
Silence again. But now it was different. Heavier. Inevitable.
Outside, as if on cue, thunder rolled through the sky. Not a storm—something older. Deeper. A warning from the very fabric of the universe.
And in that silence, the apple in Iris's hand stopped spinning.
It rested in her palm—perfect, whole, and trembling.
Just like the world.