The moment Drax crossed the threshold, the world folded into a jagged expanse of ashen stone and choking silence.
No monsters.
No footsteps.
No echoes.
Just a cavern so vast it felt like it swallowed sound.
He kept walking, blades of abyssal essence shimmering faintly around his wrist, ready to form the sword the Black Tree forged for him.
But something was wrong.
Even A-rank dungeons had swarms of creatures.
This place was dead.
It took him another five minutes to find the first clue—
a cracked, half-consumed orc skull melted into the ground as if something had… eaten it alive.
Drax's eyes narrowed.
"…So that's why the gate was empty."
He crouched, dragging two fingers across the stone. Essence residue floated like dust—
hundreds of signatures. Different. Violent. All tangled.
All devoured.
He straightened.
"So the Dungeon Lord didn't lose his army…"
He stepped forward.
"…he ate them."
A low rumble trembled the cavern.
Then the darkness moved.
A giant shape peeled from the far wall like a nightmare slipping off old stone.
It crawled, twisted, dragging a swollen body along shattered bones.
And then it roared.
The Dungeon Lord—an ogre-like titan fused with the bodies it had consumed—lunged. Its face was split into three unnatural jaws, each dripping black ichor.
The cavern shook beneath its steps.
Drax grinned.
"Found you."
The titan swung a limb the size of a bus.
Drax dodged—barely—feeling the wind peel past his cheek.
BOOOOM.
Stone exploded behind him.
He used the recoil to leap forward, abyssal sword forming in his hand—a sleek black blade with a faint, pulsing red vein.
He slashed.
The titan didn't even flinch.
The wound sealed instantly.
Drax clicked his tongue.
"So you regenerate too fast…"
The monster slammed both fists down.
Drax braced—
CRASH.
A shockwave ripped across the cavern, throwing him across the air.
He crashed into a pillar, ribs cracking.
He coughed blood.
"—Tch."
The titan didn't stop.
Its body swelled and twisted, the essence of hundreds of eaten monsters pouring into its veins.
It charged.
And for the first time in a long while—
Drax felt death brush the back of his neck.
The titan's fist came down—
too fast, too heavy, too much essence behind it.
A direct hit would pulverize him.
Drax's pupils thinned.
His inner world stirred.
Something primal whispered:
Call me.
Drax exhaled.
"…Fine."
He opened his hand.
And the world trembled.
A black ripple spread from under his feet—
thin at first, like spilled ink.
Then it deepened.
Thickened.
The Abyss answered.
A chunk of his inner world manifested into reality.
A dark ocean surface expanded beneath him—silent and infinite.
The cavern tilted.
Reality bent.
The titan's blow sank into the black sea—
and its arm immediately sizzled, essence dissolving like flesh dipped in acid.
The beast screamed.
Drax stepped onto the water as if it were solid ground, the sea swirling gently under his feet.
"So this is… my Domain?" he whispered softly.
The Endless Sea felt alive.
Obedient.
Hungry.
Where it spread, the cavern floor corroded.
The Dungeon Lord staggered back, half its chest dissolving, essence being pulled from it like steam.
Drax raised his blade.
"This sea…"
He looked down at the swirling void.
"…it corrodes, it absorbs—"
A whirlpool spun open in the black water.
"…and it traps anything that falls below it."
The titan charged again, desperate, maddened.
Drax stepped forward, calm, expression sharp.
"Devour it."
The sea obeyed.
A massive tide surged upward—black liquid forming a wall that crashed over the monster, dragging it downward. The titan screamed, clawing at the water—
But the Abyssal Sea was a prison.
A grave.
A hunger deeper than anything mortal.
Drax watched its essence rip apart piece by piece.
"Let this be a mercy."
Then—
Silence.
The titan's symbolic essence flickered in the waves, then vanished into the void where Drax's world consumed it.
The Domain slowly receded, shrinking until the cavern returned to normal.
Drax inhaled, wiping blood from his lip.
"…Yeah. That's more like it."
He walked deeper, wiping dust from his coat.
Eventually he found the throne room.
And there—
The true Dungeon Lord.
A tall, pale being slumped across a cracked throne, sword buried in its own stomach.
Its eyes were wild—madness eating away what little sanity remained.
Surrounded by the corpses of its own army.
It had slaughtered its entire legion before finally stabbing itself, unable to bear the hunger twisting its mind.
Drax stood at the edge of the chamber.
"…So you weren't killed by me."
The Dungeon Lord twitched, one eye turning toward him.
A broken smile crawled up its face.
A last fragment of consciousness.
Drax stepped forward, blade dragging lightly across the stone.
"Let's end this properly."
The being reached up with a trembling hand—its last act.
He raised his sword.