“The location and timing of the dungeons are actually predestined. Then, step by step, preparations take place in that region on the spatial plane. In the final stage, mana instantly permeates the prepared area, causing a rift to open in spacetime. That’s pretty much a summary, of course. Not exactly detailed.”

“…?”

Syla… seemed confused. And it wasn’t just her. Leon and the six Black Blood leaders watching from right behind me were likely just as confused.

I, however, continued nonchalantly.

“Here—well, not exactly here, but in the forest just outside the city… in about fifteen or twenty days, a dungeon portal will open. It’ll be a pretty significant dungeon. An A grade, Salvos-type dungeon. It’ll be quite useful to you—both in terms of the rewards and the resources inside.”

Syla stared blankly at my face.

“What? Are you going to ask me to let you go in exchange for this info…?”

She calmly widened her smile. She looked at me with a mocking expression.

“It’s not going to happen, just so you know.”

But I didn’t care and continued.

“Normally, mana automatically permeates the area where the dungeon is supposed to open when the time comes, completing the final stage on its own. However… what do you think would happen if we artificially concentrated massive amounts of mana near the point where the dungeon is supposed to form?”

Silence fell over the room. Syla was still staring at me blankly. She still hadn’t grasped the situation.

The first person to catch on was, surprisingly, Leon.

His eyes, which had been filled with absolute calm and arrogance up until now, widened. He moved, raising his hand to snap my neck just as he had done before, but before he could do it… something happened.

“Ha- huh?!”

Voices of shock rose from the table behind me, but it was too late.

~rrrrrrrmmmmble!

A deep rumble was heard first.

“W- what? What’s happening?!”

Then, the ground shook as if an earthquake capable of splitting the entire world were occurring.

“An… e- earthquake!”

Since we were several dozen meters underground, the ceiling was also taking its share of the tremor.

However, more importantly… the tremor had thrown Leon, who was attacking me, off balance.

Under normal circumstances, such a tremor wouldn’t have caused someone of S grade to lose their balance to this extent.

But then again, that’s assuming normal circumstances.

Because what was happening wasn’t just a tremor.

While we were preoccupied with ourselves, Thomas and his men had finally activated the rune that had been covering the entire city we’d been struggling with for days.

Yes, the entire city.

And the amount of mana required for a rune of this scale to function—and the sheer force of its movement—was so immense that even someone like Leon couldn’t instantly control the chaos in his senses.

And that was just the beginning. After all, the rune’s purpose was to forcibly draw all the surrounding mana into its center—to concentrate and compress it—so that the dungeon I mentioned could be opened earlier than it normally would have been.

To right where we were.

No one could have responded properly unless they’d been expecting it. Even if they had been expecting it, it would have been difficult to respond.

And I… was on the side that was expecting it. And specifically prepared for it.

The moment Leon’s whole focus was broken, I directed all my concentration to swing my cane at him. At the same time, I used the mana and caora I’d been holding back until that moment.

Again, for someone like Leon, this was an attack he could dodge. After all, what I used was a cane—it wasn’t anything lethal…

But Durandal’s Aura was going to make up for that lack of lethality.

I had transformed it from its sword form right from the start so he could approach me without too much caution, so he wouldn’t be too wary of my cane and underestimate me.

Now, I’ve reaped the rewards of all that effort I’d woven together, bit by bit.

Thanks to Durandal’s Aura, my cane cut through Leon’s body as if it were a sword.

S grade Endurance and Vitality?

It didn’t matter at all.

With his senses muddled and his balance lost, he couldn’t properly direct his mana, nor did he have enough time to support it with caora.

The world was merciless to people like us. No matter how high your level was, a single mistake could spell your end if the conditions were right.

And that’s exactly what happened.

As my cane sliced through Leon’s right shoulder and into his torso like it was butter… his face, which had held nothing but arrogance all this time… showed something else.

Fear.

The fear of death.

Even after his body had been split into two separate pieces at a diagonal angle, his eyes were still trembling.

And when I severed his head from the remaining body with a swift motion, his expression froze as if it would remain that way forever.

‘Watch your back!’

~baam! ~baam! ~baam!

After Sith’s warning, I could barely make out the gunfire.

However, I didn’t turn around. I didn’t even move a muscle. I blocked the bullets from where I stood, without so much as a twitch, using a Mana Barrier, then slowly turned around.

The tremors were still ongoing. The mana filling the area at a rapid pace made it harder to focus on anything with every passing second.

But thanks to caora and all of my training to effectively use the wild mana of the Ambiguous Flow, I could endure it to some extent.

Well, the same couldn’t be said for the leaders of the Black Blood.

“Ugh, urgh!”

Being from a race particularly sensitive to mana, the only hannya among the leaders was the first to start vomiting and collapse to the ground. The other three humans shared the same fate shortly after him. Meanwhile, the two dwarves, who couldn’t sense the mana at all, looked back and forth in fear between their friends vomiting on the ground and me.

One of them was the one who fired the gun. But faced with what he saw, he couldn’t hold onto it for long. He couldn’t stop it from slipping through his fingers and falling to the ground.

Just as I said before.

None of the Black Blood leaders were strong individuals.

They hadn’t risen to their positions because of their strength, but because of their connections and their wits.

“Y- you!”

I paused. I slowly turned toward the source of the voice, toward the screen still showing Syla’s face…

Of course, there was no trace of her earlier excitement this time. On the contrary, she looked like she was… furious. Her eye was twitching.

“Just because we didn’t leave anyone there to avoid unnecessary casualties doesn’t mean there’s no one nearby! We control the whole city, Aiden! YOU WON’T MAKE IT OUT OF THERE ALIVE!”

She curled the corners of her lips upward, even if clumsily.

“It’ll actually work in my favor! We were planning to get rid of Black Blood soon anyway—you’ll just be handing the city over to us! NOTHING HAS CHANGED—YOU’VE LOST AGAIN!”

The growing intensity of the mana was seriously starting to make it hard for me to focus. I felt like I was about to faint, but… I held myself together.

I narrowed my eyes. I tilted my head slightly to the side, just as she had done a moment ago, and looked at her as if I were pitying her.

“Don’t you still understand what I just said…? Bring as many men as you want here. I’ll go into the dungeon that’s opening up and hide in there. By the time I clear it and return, the city will already have been seized with the help of the Morten Family and Piarlin.”

The awkward smile she had put on disappeared again. She couldn’t even close her mouth properly. Her lips seemed to refuse to shut.

But then she paused, as if processing my words in her mind. Her eyes widened gradually. Then, she couldn’t help but swallow, even if only with difficulty.

“You’re forcefully opening an A grade dungeon, gathering that much mana…”

Just then, the screen began to glitch. The mana in the area had reached such high concentrations that it was starting to disrupt any technology nearby.

“T- the city… you’ll be killing innocent people too! That much mana will cause anomalies for weeks on end, animals will turn into monsters… The survivors will suffer from mana poisoning! You’ll cause tens of thousands of deaths…!”

She spoke as if she weren’t a member of an organization that had caused—and would continue to cause—the deaths of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of innocent people. It was almost comical.

I tilted my head to the side once more. Without taking my eyes off her, and without changing my expression in the slightest, I looked at her coldly.

“So?”

Syla, however… froze as if she had nothing left to say.

“A small price to pay for dealing a major blow to Saligia. Just a tiny sacrifice for a better future.”

The screen got even worse. Syla’s image was starting to distort; I could no longer make out her expression clearly.

And, along with that, the tremors that hadn’t stopped yet intensified.

“I told you, Syla.”

I sighed softly. I clasped my cane between my hands.

“I won’t stop until Saligia’s end comes. No matter what you do, you’ll never, ever be able to stop me. The only thing you can do is watch helplessly as I slowly bring your end.”

The room, which should have been dark, was strangely illuminated. I felt as if I were on the verge of fainting.

‘Aiden, the portal is about to open. Just a few seconds.’

It didn’t take long for me to receive the warning I’d been expecting. But I didn’t care much.

“You created the monster that will cause your downfall with your own hands.”

After those words, I closed my eyes once more.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d pass along this statement when you report to your superiors.”

And then… everything suddenly lit up. A blinding white light filled the entire space.

…

After the light came darkness and silence.

…

Almost… peaceful.

As if all the chaos that had just unfolded were nothing but a dream…

But that feeling passed quickly. Another one took its place.

An unsettling sensation—as if I were moving, as if I were falling somewhere… yet at the same time, an even more uncomfortable feeling as if I were standing still.

A faint warmth followed this strange contradiction. Then… it vanished just as suddenly as it had come.

The darkness began to slowly give way to light.

But this time, there was nothing dazzling. More like… a dim light source behind my eyelids.

When I opened my eyes… I was on the ground.

I was looking up at an unfamiliar sky—an orange sky.

‘You’re in the dungeon. You made it, Aiden.’

‘Of course I made it… you think all that preparation was for nothing?’

Sith said nothing else, only laughing a little.

I, however, looked at the only object in the sky—this world’s sun. It appeared much larger than the one on Lunerra, almost… twice as big or something like that. Yet despite that, its light was far weaker. I could look directly at it without any strain on my eyes.

I tried to stand up, but the moment I attempted it, a pain that made me feel as if I were in hell spread throughout my entire body. If I hadn’t stopped myself instantly, I wouldn’t have been able to stop a growl of pain from escaping my mouth.

I clicked my tongue and activated the Phoenix’s Regeneration, which I’d been forcing to stay deactivated until now.

I’d been trying to keep my wounds as they were so my acting would look better and they’d lower their guard against me as much as possible, but I didn’t need that anymore.

So, with that done, I looked around.

I was in a mountainous area. Everywhere I looked, except for the sky, there were rocks. From a mountain far enough away that I could see its peak, black smoke was rising toward the sky. It looked like an active volcano.

Setting that aside, I was on a slightly sloped surface under what could be described as quite hot air.

The only thing I saw besides the dungeon itself was the unconscious figures not too far from me.

The leaders of Black Blood had been dragged into the dungeon along with me. None of them seemed to be conscious.

“…”

At first, I looked at them silently. Then I rolled my eyes, let out a deep sigh, and spoke to myself.

‘Let me know if any of them seem to be waking up…’

‘Sure, leave it to me.’

That’s how I shifted my focus away from them.

For now, there didn’t seem to be any threat. If I’m not mistaken, there wouldn’t be one for a while anyway.

So, in short…

I suppose there’s no harm in resting until the Phoenix’s Regeneration heals my body at least a little…

I turned my gaze back to the sky.

As tiny blue flames appeared over all my wounds, slowly healing my body, I simply watched the orange sky.

For minutes on end, without caring about anything else.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep