The frozen ruins stretched ahead in every direction, ancient towers leaning against a sky the color of dead ash, ice-locked rooftops catching what little light reached this deep into the Lower Mantle. Shattered windows gaped like empty eyes along crumbling façades, and somewhere beneath the frost-choked streets, the groan of ancient mechanisms still echoed faintly, as though the city itself had only just remembered how to breathe. Broken statues stood sentinel along ruined avenues, their features worn smooth by centuries of frost, watching over streets no living thing had walked in longer than any record of Valvyx could measure.
Then it woke fully.
Wendigos poured from shattered buildings and broken palace halls alike, some leaping between rooftops with silent, predatory grace, others emerging from snow-choked courtyards to stalk toward him with unhurried patience. The city had become a hunting ground built entirely around him.
DING!
⟢ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
[Enemy Detected: Wendigo ×275]
[Level: 575]
[Class: Aberration]
[Reward: +10,000,000 Exp ×275]
The first came from above, diving from a shattered rooftop with claws extended.
Indigo Colored Fire — Fire Protection
The shield caught the strike, and Azraeth answered by driving it straight down through a frozen window into the ruin below, the impact shattering glass and ice alike. Two more sprinted along a rooftop's edge, angling to flank from above; Teleport carried him instantly onto the same rooftop between them, and he ended both before they'd finished registering he was no longer on the street at all.
Indigo Colored Fire — Fire Booster
Flame roared around his feet, and he tore across the rooftop's broken tiles toward a cluster gathering in a ruined courtyard below, kicking one clean through a frozen archway hard enough to collapse the stonework around it. A pack ambushed from a collapsed balcony, timing their drop to catch him mid-leap; Foresight flagged the pattern early, and he twisted through the fall, using a shattered statue as a springboard to land already mid-strike against the formation below. A third group tried to bottleneck him in a narrow alley between two leaning towers; he teleported clear over the entire formation instead, reappearing behind their line and ending three before they'd finished turning.
A dozen more converged from a narrow side street, using the tight architecture to funnel him toward a dead end.
Indigo Colored Fire — Mud Lava
He spread unstable ground across the street's entire width, and half the pack lost footing on churned, frozen slush. Azraeth used the opening to smash two more through a crumbling pillar, the ancient stone giving way entirely and burying a third beneath rubble. A Wendigo dropped from a tower directly overhead, and he caught it mid-fall with a burning uppercut that sent it crashing back into the tower's own base, cracking the structure's foundation.
The tower groaned and began to lean.
Azraeth didn't wait for it to fall — he used the collapse itself, teleporting through the falling debris to strike from an angle three Wendigos hadn't accounted for, ending all three before the tower's wreckage finished settling across the street behind him. A grappling pair seized both his arms from the settling dust, straining to hold him for a third to finish; he drove his weight low and rotated hard, throwing both into the fresh rubble before the third could arrive.
Heat Sense flared wide as the pack shifted tactics again, splitting into smaller groups that vanished behind ruined structures only to reappear from entirely different directions, testing whether he could track scattered threats as easily as a single mass. He met the shift by refusing to chase any single group, letting the pattern of their reappearances guide him instead, ending each emergence a half-second before it could commit.
Indigo Colored Fire — Stellar Pull
He expanded the ultimate into its large form as the survivors regrouped for one coordinated push, a colossal star blooming above the frozen palace's broken courtyard, gravity dragging ice, rubble, and Wendigos alike toward its burning center. Dozens vanished into the vortex, and Azraeth pressed the opening while the rest fought their own stolen balance, ending clusters faster than the shrinking pack could reform. A handful clung to shattered statues to resist the pull entirely; he abandoned the vortex for direct strikes against them, burning fists finding purchase where gravity alone couldn't finish the job.
A stray claw finally opened a gash along his side; he pressed a burning palm to it mid-motion.
Indigo Colored Fire — Lava Heal
The wound sealed shut, and as the last remnants of the pack gathered for one final, coordinated charge across the palace's broken entrance hall, Azraeth fell back three strides to meet it properly.
Indigo Colored Fire — Supernova
Violet-blue light gathered between his palms as the charging remnant surged toward him through the ruined hall. He held the compression steady, refusing to let their numbers rush the charge before it finished, and the detonation completed a heartbeat before their line could close, reducing the coordinated assault to ash and drifting frost in a single silent flash. He pushed forward through the last scattered survivors, ending them with a wide sweep of thermal light that melted frost from ancient marble for a dozen meters in every direction.
DING!
⟢ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
[Enemy Defeated: Wendigo ×275]
[Level: 575]
[Class: Aberration]
[Exp Gained: +2,750,000,000]
DING!
[Level Up! Lv. 734 → Lv. 738]
---
Azraeth rested briefly amid the ruined entrance hall before continuing deeper into the frozen city.
Floor fifty-seven's two hundred and eighty Wendigos ambushed from rooftops and courtyards exactly as the last had, but Azraeth met them with far cleaner economy, using collapsing architecture as a weapon rather than merely surviving its chaos, herding entire packs into weakened structures before they finished forming ranks. A pack attempted to use a frozen bridge as a chokepoint, forcing him into single-file combat; he simply collapsed the bridge itself beneath their formation before they could commit to the trap.
Floor fifty-eight's two hundred and eighty-five coordinated their scattering tactics more aggressively, splitting and reforming across the ruined skyline in patterns meant to exhaust his attention; Azraeth answered by controlling the terrain itself, collapsing key structures preemptively to deny them the routes they depended on. A cluster tried ambushing from behind a row of frozen statues; he answered with a wide burning sweep that shattered the statues and the ambushers hiding behind them in the same motion, ending the fight faster than any before it despite the greater numbers.
---
Floor fifty-nine's silence broke as violently as the first had.
DING!
⟢ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
[Enemy Detected: Wendigo ×290]
[Level: 575]
[Class: Aberration]
[Reward: +10,000,000 Exp ×290]
This pack fought with an intelligence sharper than anything before it, using the city's remaining towers as staging grounds for coordinated dives while ground packs drove him toward the impact zones.
Indigo Colored Fire — Fire Booster
Flame roared around his feet and carried him clear of the first coordinated drop, and he answered by teleporting directly onto the tower the divers had launched from, ending the remaining spotters before they could redirect the next wave.
Indigo Colored Fire — Fire Protection
The shield absorbed a crushing double strike from a pair that ambushed through a collapsing archway, buying the half-second he needed to answer with a burning counter that brought the archway down on three more behind them. Heat Thickness dulled a claw strike aimed at his spine into a shallow scratch, and he answered with a burning elbow that ended the attacker outright. A trio attempted a coordinated grapple from three directions at once; he dropped his weight and spun through the center of it, breaking all three holds simultaneously before any could tighten.
A stray claw finally caught his forearm, tearing deep; he pressed a burning palm to the wound mid-strike.
Indigo Colored Fire — Lava Heal
The gash sealed shut, and he pushed forward without losing a fraction of momentum, driving the thinning ranks toward the palace's central courtyard.
A massed formation gathered in the palace's central courtyard, refusing to break even as their numbers thinned.
Indigo Colored Fire — Mud Lava
He trapped the entire formation in churning, unstable ground, and fell back three strides to gather his remaining strength.
Indigo Colored Fire — Supernova
Violet-blue light compressed between his palms as the trapped formation tore free and surged toward him regardless. A single Wendigo broke ahead of the rest, hurling itself at the gathering light with claws extended toward the core itself; Azraeth stepped into its path without releasing the charge, ending it with a single burning strike before it could disturb the compression. He held the rest of the charge through Fire Protection absorbing what he couldn't avoid, refusing to let their numbers rush it, and the detonation completed a heartbeat before they could close the final distance, reducing the charging mass to ash and drifting frost in a single silent flash.
Indigo Colored Fire — Stellar Pull
A compressed sphere tore through what remained of the densest concentration, and he followed with the star's large form, gravity dragging the last survivors into a burning vortex that finally silenced the ruined city entirely. He ended the last stragglers with controlled, exhausted strikes, the frozen streets settling into true stillness once the final Wendigo fell.
DING!
⟢ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
[Enemy Defeated: Wendigo ×290]
[Level: 575]
[Class: Aberration]
[Exp Gained: +2,900,000,000]
DING!
[Level Up! Lv. 746 → Lv. 750]
---
Azraeth rested amid the ruined courtyard before descending to Floor 60.
This time, nothing moved at all.
No Wendigos emerged from the shattered buildings. No footsteps echoed anywhere in the vast, frozen palace stretching before him. Broken banners hung frozen mid-collapse along cracked marble walls, and enormous chandeliers of solid ice dangled overhead, catching what dim light existed and scattering it across silent corridors. Ancient staircases spiraled upward into darkness, their frost-covered steps untouched by anything living in longer than any record could measure. The air itself felt older here than anywhere else in the Lower Mantle, heavy with a silence that pressed against him more insistently with every step deeper into the palace.
Azraeth walked carefully through the silence, Heat Sense finding nothing anywhere in the ancient halls, until the corridor finally opened into a vast throne room.
The throne itself rose at the chamber's far end, ancient and magnificent even buried beneath centuries of frost — dark stone carved with symbols older than the ruins surrounding it, ice sheeting its surface in slow, frozen waves that seemed almost deliberate, as though something had chosen to be encased rather than simply succumbed to the cold. Cracked marble steps led up to it in a wide, ceremonial approach, flanked by frozen statues whose features had long since been worn featureless by time and frost alike.
He approached slowly, each step echoing far louder than it should have in a silence so absolute.
Only when he reached the throne itself did the surrounding ice begin to crack, thin fissures spreading outward from the frost-sheeted stone in slow, deliberate lines, as though something long dormant had finally noticed he was there.