"There are a lot more than I thought," Jaemin muttered.
His voice was low, drowned by the clang of metal and the chaos up front—but his steps were deliberate, swift, silent.
He ghosted through the field like smoke, weaving around golems mid-swing, slipping into the backline unnoticed.
One step, two—then his daggers spun.
SLASH. SLASH. SLASH. SLASH.
Four golems dropped instantly, their thick stone armour cracking apart in clean, precise arcs.
His daggers cut without resistance—like knives through silk. There was no struggle. No tension. Only motion.
"Just where are they coming from…?" he muttered under his breath, eyes narrowing.
"And why so many of the same type?"
He crouched beside one of the downed golems, dagger still humming with heat. Its body hadn't shattered like the usual Abyssal constructs. The core patterns were... different. Something felt off.
On closer inspection, thin, faintly glowing arcane sigils ran across the joints and chest—etched into the stone itself like carvings older than time. They pulsed a soft violet hue, still warm.
"…No way." Jaemin's brow furrowed.
"This isn't a normal golem."
His fingers traced the rune marks quickly, memorising them as his Focus activated with a faint flicker behind his iris. A soft Fwiup-ping! rang in his head.
[Name: Arcane Runeguard]
[Class: Corrupted]
"Corrupted…?"
Jaemin blinked. That classification wasn't typical—not in any Abyssal archive he'd studied. If it were 'Corrupted', then something else made it. Not Abyssal. Not naturally spawning.
Something forged them.
And worse—something used arcane magic to do it.
"These aren't appearing on their own…"
Jaemin muttered. He stood up slowly, scanning the skies, then the Rift hovering not far from the battlefield.
"They're being sent here."
He turned to the Rift—and his Focus caught the spike before he even processed it.
TING!
[Rift Signature: Unstable]
His heart sank.
TING!
[Rift Status: Malfunctioning]
No. This wasn't a simple breach.
TING!
[New Tier Unlocked: 3.2]
"Shit."
Jaemin's breath caught for a moment as he felt the sudden pulse in the air, as the Rift had just drawn a deep breath of its own. A new tier meant something entirely different—this Rift wasn't just leaking monsters.
It was recalibrating. Adapting. Evolving.
And this battlefield? It had just turned into a live experiment.
***
Back in the front line, the battle was shifting.
The RuneGuards were thinning. Slowly, steadily, but surely. Their bodies crumbled more easily now, less resistance, less cohesion. As if whatever magic gave them form was unravelling at the seams. A failed experiment. That's all they were. They might've once been Golems—once noble constructs—but now, they were barely holding together. Misshapen limbs. Chipped cores. Faint arcane glows sputtering inside them like a dying ember.
But they pressed forward.
"MORE OF THEM!" someone yelled.
"KILL ALL OF THEM!!" roared the front-line leader, sword hoisted above his head like a war banner.
KYUCK!!
KYACK!
RAWRRR!!!
KRIICNK!
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WEE-WAA-WOO!!
Screeches. Screams. Mechanical howls overlapped like discordant notes of war. Each RuneGuard dropped like dead weight, cracking into blackened chunks across the battlefield. Their numbers weren't infinite, but they surged like a tide, pushing the defenders back an inch every time one wasn't slain fast enough.
"The numbers are shifting!" one of the backliners shouted.
"Keep us steady, healers!" Seo Juntae barked, his voice like a whip cracking across the chaos.
The three healers snapped into motion.
"Auxiliary Core: Dynamic Overdrive!"
"Auxiliary Core: Shimmering Light!"
Two pulses of aura exploded into the ranks—white and gold. Boosts. Regeneration. Barriers. Speed. Every cell in their bodies lit up with power.
The third healer didn't chant. She was already kneeling beside a collapsed striker, one hand glowing with focus, sealing torn flesh with surgical precision.
"ARGHH!!"
SLICE!
KYAAKK!
Seo Juntae's figure tore through the enemy ranks like a lion off its leash.
His sword sang with every cleave, every blow carving through corrupted stone and cracked magic.
"Bastion Core: Lion's Mane—Apex Ignition!"
WHOOM!
His entire blade ignited.
Not fire—Rage. The molten edge hissed against the air, glowing like molten metal hammered by fury.
WOOSH!SLISH!Three RuneGuards gone. Then two more.
Each swing left heat trails in the air. Each movement cracked the earth under his boots.
And still, they came.
"Hold still!" Lee Nayun rushed to his side, palm pressed against his shoulder. Her aura pulsed directly into him—refuelling his stamina like gas poured into a nearly empty tank.
A sharp breath left his lips.
His eyes lit back up.
"KEEP ATTACKING!" he roared again.
No questions. No replies. The team moved like a machine built for war. Blades. Auras. Footwork. Chants.
SLASH. BLOCK. PIERCE. HEAL. STRIKE. REPEAT.
And one by one, the RuneGuards began to fall.
But somewhere in the back of everyone's minds…They could feel it.
The rhythm of the battle was off.
Something was wrong.
***
Jaemin's daggers dripped with blackened rune-blood, flickering in and out of his grip like living things. Step by step, deeper into the underground nest, he carved his own path. Not loudly. Not grandly.
Silently.
The deeper he went, the fewer RuneGuards the strike team encountered. Not a coincidence.
It was him.
Now, he stood in the middle of the aftermath. Dozens of corpses sprawled across the metallic ruins. The air stank of scorched sigils and dissipated core energy.
"Looks like this is where it stops…" he muttered, his invisibility flaring off in a soft pulse. His hood dropped as he surveyed the pile, breath calm… until—
?!!
Every hair on Jaemin's body stood on end.
His gut twisted.
The strike team.
Something was wrong.
No—something had happened.
He spun on his heel and ran.
His feet blurred. His body flickered between shadows, moving faster than his thoughts.
"Come on, come on, don't let it be what I think—"
He slid to a halt.
Dead quiet.
Gone.
Every single one of them.
The entire strike team.
Not a corpse. Not a sign of a struggle. Just... gone.
"Shit."
His voice cracked as he exhaled.
He clenched his teeth. "Where the hell did they go... and are they even alive...?"
FWIUP—PING!
His Focus snapped online. They hadn't been gone long. He sprinted again, now following their path, weaving between shattered rune-armour and ruined debris.
Bodies lined the corridor. Dozens. All RuneGuards. Cut down by the strike team.
Good. That meant they were still fighting. Still moving.
But the deeper he went, the narrower the path became. The walls closed in. The metallic framework began warping, unnatural and twitching like veins under the skin.
Something was off.
Too clean. Too deliberate.
His boots skidded to a halt.
And there it was.
His eyes widened, but not with shock.
Recognition.
"...You again."
Mist.
Something that should never exist inside a Rift.
Jaemin's mind raced. He was right—the Rift was supposed to be a single-tier breach. But this one had failed. It had become partially multi-tiered. Unstable.
He took a deep breath and stepped through the mist.
Ahead lay a labyrinth of twisted corridors and endless walls.
"Where did they go now..."
Jaemin muttered, eyes locked on the flickering core signatures ahead.
The ground was littered with dead Abyssals, their bodies marked with glowing arcane sigils—scrawled like cursed graffiti.
Cold sweat dripped down Jaemin's back.
He didn't like the direction this was going.
"Just what happened..." he asked himself.
"How did such an elite team still make the mistake of walking through that mist..."
His voice was tight, questioning, frustrated.
"Luck knows where they ended up... I have to bail them out."
Despite the worsening situation, despite the risk, Jaemin wouldn't let this opportunity slip away.
His Focus flared to life.
FWIUP-PING!
Status:Name: Han Jaemin
Level: 80
He clenched his fists.
Already level 80 after wiping out heaps of RuneGuards, Jaemin pushed forward.
The labyrinth twisted and turned, but now, something stronger pulsed ahead. Heavy arcane energy leaked through a door.
Jaemin's steps slowed as he approached. His hand grasped the handle, muscles tense.
He opened it.
Inside was a sanctum.
And in the centre, a massive dome of shimmering energy.
Arcane power radiated from it like a living thing, thick and suffocating.
"That's where they went."
Without hesitation, Jaemin charged forward.
He slammed into the dome—
BOOM!
The impact threw him back, breath knocked from his lungs.
"What the—"
He tried again, bracing himself—
BOOM!
Again, the force slammed him away.
Jaemin's Focus flared sharply.
FWIUP-PING
[Scanning…]
[Abyssal Skill Detected: Nullvault Prison]
[Status: Active]
An unnatural dome of shimmering voidstone matter erupted into existence, swallowing the battlefield in silence.
? Arcane Signature: WARP-LACED, DIMENSIONALLY FUSED
?Permeability: 0%
? Core Interference: Absolute
? Breach Potential: NONE
[Warning: This biome cannot be shattered, pierced, or phased through—internally or externally. Nullvault Prison is a perfect lock. All communication, teleportation, or aura projection inside is denied. Time warps within. Terrain shifts. This is an execution zone.]
Jaemin cracked a dry smile.
"Hmp... Tough luck."
