"Quick! Windcarver, come out and seal the cage!" Runefather shouted, and thankfully, no one objected.
The opposite side had already given up. Everyone simply stared at the metal cage while Windcarver continued powering it up, about to activate the spell. Just as the swirling blue portal began forming, Damian's joy at not seeing that strange purple swirling liquid was crushed as he suddenly heard a loud voice in his head. From the looks of everyone present, it seemed it wasn't just for him but for all dungeon participants.
[Use of unauthorized method detected, contrasting with the natural dungeon proceedings. All challengers are banned. No shortcuts are allowed.]
What the hell? However, before Damian could make sense of what he had just heard, everything suddenly blacked out.. But no, he wasn't unconscious. He was in a pitch-dark place. Everything around him was darker than the blackest of nights. Then, without warning, a blinding light shattered the darkness and forced Damian to shut his eyes. A booming voice echoed from the light.
"What have you done? You unnatural abomination!"
Finally, Damian managed to open his eyes just slightly, and through the narrow slits, he saw the being before him. A shock ran down his spine.
A massive, towering giant loomed over him, its skin red like molten rock, massive curling horns as black as abyss jutting from its skull. Blood-red eyes dripped with lava, glowing like burning embers. Damian felt as if he were staring up at a mountain. The shape, the horns, the massive belly.. It looked familiar.
The figure from all the murals.
The one they called the Sun God.
Yet, despite its overwhelming presence, Damian could sense nothing from the being. No mana. No aura. He couldn't even feel the heat from the bright golden liquid pouring from its wounds. It was as if the god did not exist at all.
The creature—no, the god—was bound. Its entire body was chained in abyssal black shackles, the dark links biting so deeply into its flesh that molten gold bled from the wounds, sizzling as they ran down his massive frame. The god was kneeling, his body covered in injuries, his flesh torn and burned, yet his presence was no less terrifying.
"What did I do?" Damian asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"You released him! You ignorant child! Your arrogance has invited ruin! That thing is not a mere spirit, not a simple beast to be caged again. It is hunger, it is corruption, and now—it is free."
The voice thundered through Damian's mind, shaking the very fabric of his thoughts.
And then, in an instant—
The desert had not changed. Time had not moved. The world was still frozen in the very second he had left. The waygate still swirled with its blue shimmering energy, only just stabilizing now. The warning from the dungeon was still echoing faintly.
And then, everything changed.
A shift in mana, sharp and violent, sent a tremor through the air.
A deep, resonant boom shook the ground, followed by a wave of brilliant red energy that surged toward them from where the keypoint had been located. It wasn't just spreading across the ground—the sky was burning too, a massive wall of crimson energy rushing toward them at incredible speed.
Damian moved without hesitation. He reached for the waygate, trying to activate it, trying to reach Sam and the others, but just as the swirling blue energy of his waygate flared—it stopped.
The waygate had failed.
Without wasting another second, he turned to his wormhole spell, but before he could escape into the sky, a piercing screech rang out, shattering the air around them.
Every Third Ranker present took an instinctive step back.
Inside the cage stood a shadow—a pitch-black figure clad in jagged, overlapping armor, its body shifting like a living void. It held a massive two-handed sword, the blade exuding an overwhelming aura of pure destruction. The mana inside that thing was beyond reason, beyond logic. It was astronomical.
And the first thing it did after coming out of the waygate—
Was burying its sword straight through Windcarver's chest.
Windcarver's scream tore through the battlefield, his body convulsing as the blade pierced him clean through. The black figure wrenched its sword free without hesitation, allowing Windcarver's lifeless body to slump to the ground. The sheer pressure radiating from the armored entity was horrifying—it was as if space itself was bending under its presence.
Damian forced himself to ignore it.
He activated his wormhole spell to go above and jumped—
But at that exact moment—
The red energy wave had reached them and he was struck by it in midair.
It swallowed everything.
It ignored matter, ignored mana, ignored barriers and shields. It simply was, passing through all like a formless tide, an omnipresent force that defied all logic.
It felt like he was falling endlessly, his mind, body, and soul breaking and reforming over and over again. A faint electric buzz numbed his senses, dragging him into unconsciousness.
The first thing Damian felt when he awoke was an unbearable heat—scorching, suffocating, pressing from both above and below. His hands dug into the sand beneath him, the grains far too warm to be natural. His body ached, he realized his potion's effect was gone.
Without hesitation, he reached for his potion container in his spatial storage and took several sips, feeling the cooling effect spread through his body, stabilizing his temperature.
Then, he extended his mana sense to its limit—
No one was within thirty kilometers. No allies, no pathfinders. Just scattered monsters roaming aimlessly in the distance.
Where were the others?
So much had happened in mere minutes. His mind was still struggling to grasp it all. But now wasn't the time to think. He checked his mana reserves and found that only one of his mana liquid containers held anything at all—one-fourth full.
Not enough. Not even close. He needed at least 230,000 to open a waygate.
Damian discarded the idea immediately. Instead, he turned his focus to his surroundings. The best way to get a grasp on the situation was height. He propelled himself straight up, flying as high as possible to get a clear view.
The dungeon's usual flight restriction never came.
The invisible ceiling that prevented anyone from flying higher than 1,000 meters was simply gone.