Gabriel's golden aura flared to shield him and the nearby hunters, but even that divine light flickered under the weight. "This… This is beyond any guardian we've ever faced. This is death itself."
Raiden's lightning sparked defensively across his form, flickering erratically. For the first time, he wasn't moving—he was watching, calculating, eyes locked on the flame-clad behemoth.
Even Ezekiel, whose drones had faced countless catastrophes, found his systems warping. "Mana output spiked again… No—tripled. I'm barely keeping the scans stable!"
And Ji Seong-Ho, ever stoic, now gritted his teeth, his blade trembling slightly in his grip. "This one… is thinking. It's not mindless."
The towering entity took another step. Its molten chest swelled with power, and every hunter present instinctively shifted into a defensive stance.
"Your presence here… is a trespass. Your survival… a test. Your will… an offering."
It lifted one colossal arm, obsidian skin splitting as arcs of abyssal fire surged through it. The other two figures—the knight and the chained phantom—remained motionless behind it, but their auras now stirred, as if waking from slumber.
The throne behind them loomed in the darkness… still empty.
I watched everything unfold from the outside through the shadows I had planted.
Even from a dimensional tether, the phantom weight of the guardian's presence gnawed at my senses. It wasn't just a beast. It had awareness.
Christa glanced at me again, sensing the change in my expression. "Shit! What's happening now?!"
I answered, my voice barely above a whisper. "They haven't even started fighting yet. But it's already begun."
Inside the dungeon, the giant took one more step forward.
"Prove yourselves… or be erased."
The moment the abyssal titan spoke, its voice lingered like thunder in the air, shaking the very mana threads binding the space around it.
And then—it moved.
One arm. One strike.
The air itself split with a soundless shockwave. It wasn't a grand gesture or a flourish. Just a simple, devastating backhand swipe with its colossal, molten-forged arm.
The result was instant.
Alexander Graves, the Titan of Calamity, was the first to intercept it. His body was like an immovable wall of steel, fists glowing with runes carved from ancient titan scripts. But the moment impact hit—his reinforced stance shattered. He was flung backwards like a cannonball, crashing through three blackened stone pillars before embedding into the far wall with a deafening crack.
"Alexander!" Gabriel shouted, forming a divine sigil midair, but he too was caught in the tail of the wave. His golden wings of light snapped as he was launched like a comet into the sky of the endless void above the dungeon's abyssal core, crashing into an unseen barrier that rippled with celestial energy.
Raiden Arakawa had summoned a full storm around him—lightning cascading across his body like armor—but even the Storm Emperor faltered. The strike passed near him, and the pressure alone launched him across the jagged field, carving a trench of scorched stone with his tumbling body before he vanished into the distance with a crash.
Ji Seong-Ho brought his blade up in time, his Celestial Blade glowing in defiance—but even his perfect guard cracked. His knees buckled, blood spraying from his lips as the impact knocked him back, his figure disappearing in a blur, embedding deep into the dungeon's distant cliffside like a broken doll.
Ezekiel's drones shattered midair in a cascade of explosions, and his energy shield collapsed like glass. "—S-SYSTEM RESET—" he choked, his mechanical arms shielding his core module just in time before he was blasted away in a hail of molten debris.
And yet, the guardian hadn't even taken a second step.
From outside, Christa clutched her comm crystal as static flooded in. "What the hell was that?!" she snapped, turning to me, panic rising in her voice. "Are they still alive?!"
I didn't answer right away.
My vision through the shadows trembled. Not from fear—at least not entirely. From awe. From understanding.
That wasn't just power. That was authority. Abyssal authority.
And not from the boss.
The throne was still empty.
That titan… that guardian… was just one of the keepers.
"They're alive," I finally muttered, eyes narrowing. "Barely. But they've just realized what they're up against."
A wave of static buzzed through every communication crystal. The air around the field command outside the dungeon pulsed with tension, the ominous silence from inside weighing heavier by the second.
The monitoring drones Ezekiel deployed had already gone dark.
All feeds were frozen—no visual, no mana readout, no life signals.
Christa gritted her teeth, pacing with increasing agitation as she held her comm-crystal to her ear. "Come on, Leon. Say something. Anything!"
President Darius Vaughn stepped forward from the elevated platform that had been set up as the strategic command center. His expression, normally composed and authoritative, was tight with concern.
He turned toward the vice director, Alastair Crowe, who stood equally still, eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he tapped rapidly on a portable mana-pad, trying to reconnect the lost links.
"Status update," Darius demanded, his voice echoing across the outpost.
A nearby Hunter-tech officer swallowed hard before replying, "All communications to the interior squad have gone completely dark. No mana resonance. No signal echoes. It's as if… it's as if they were severed from this dimension."
Gasps and murmurs spread through the A-rank hunters gathered in the surrounding containment perimeter.
"What do you mean severed?!" one A-rank blurted. "You're saying we lost contact with the strongest hunters in the world?!"
Darius remained silent for a moment before speaking into his crystal with calm, deliberate precision."This is Darius Vaughn. Alexander Graves, Raiden Arakawa, Gabriel Dela Cruz, Ji Seong-Ho, Leon Vael—any of you, respond."
A pause. Then again, louder. "Confirm status immediately."
Still no answer.
Alastair's jaw clenched. "This isn't a signal issue," he murmured. "Something's suppressing all forms of long-range mana transmission. Not even relic-encrypted channels are getting through."
Christa's voice shook. "We… we have to go in after them, right?"
"No," Darius said firmly. "We can't do anything helpful."
I stood at the edge of the encampment, still staring into the open maw of the dimensional gate. My shadows fed back only flickers now—distant fragments, as if the dungeon itself was resisting even my tethered reach.
But what I saw… what I felt…
The guardian's presence was still there, unmoving after its single attack. Waiting. Watching.