Chapter 30: Acid rain

After walking through the desolate plain for over four hours, Dante decided it was finally time to stop and rest. He approached a broken stone pillar that looked like it had been sliced in half by a giant sword, leaning his back against the rough surface.

He let out a tired sigh and looked around. "The environment here is really terrible. It’s completely different from the regular tower sectors."

As far as his eyes could see, there was nothing but a gray wasteland. The ground was covered in a layer of ash and cracked stone. In the far distance, a chain of black mountains pierced the horizon like sharp teeth. Even the sky was strange.

Dante calmed his mind. He wanted to check his current condition, so he silently willed his character status screen to appear.

Buzz.

[System Error: External Network Connection Failed.]

[Status Page: Locked.]

[Warning: You have entered an unregistered server zone.]

[Notice: All active synchronization protocols have been forcefully paused.]

A calm expression remained on his face, but he couldn’t help but shake his head.

"As expected, it really is a complete network lockout," he muttered to himself. "Marcus must have spent a ridiculous amount of fortune to acquire that blacklisted artifact. He really went all out just to get rid of me."

For any ordinary hunter in the tower, losing their system connection was a literal death sentence. The tower’s system handled everything behind the scenes. It automatically adjusted a hunter’s body to withstand the crushing gravity of the upper floors and make a slowly stronger, smoothed out the flow of mana inside their core, and provided constant visual data on health, mana, and skill cooldowns. Without the system interface, a hunter was reduced back to their raw, baseline physical limits. They were essentially forced to fight completely blind, unable to see their own status or gauge their opponent’s strength.

However, Dante didn’t feel even a single spark of panic. Long before he ever became a famous S-rank hunter with the backing of the Radiant Dawn guild, he had been a penniless gutter rat.

He had climbed the first ten floors of the tower using nothing but a dagger, his own two hands, and his raw survival instincts. He knew exactly how to fight, and he knew how to survive without a system, he doesn’t rely on system too much, so it’s doesn’t really matter for him .

The real issue right now wasn’t his body. It was his weapon. Dante looked down at his right hand. Although the Seven-Sins Asura Blade remained completely invisible to the naked eye, he could feel its physical presence perfectly. In fact, the handle was pressing so heavily against his palm that it was actively straining his wrist just to keep his grip tight.

The thirty demon souls he had slaughtered earlier were the direct cause of this weight. Under normal circumstances, the system would immediately absorb the souls of defeated monsters, converting them into clean stat points or experience to level up the weapon. But with the network connection completely offline, the unrefined energy had nowhere to go.

The souls were trapped inside the blade’s core. The invisible hilt was pulsing violently, radiating a blistering heat that felt incredibly unstable. It felt like he was holding a volatile container of liquid explosives that could detonate at any moment.

"If I keep killing monsters without finding a way to vent or sync this energy, the blade will eventually fracture from the internal pressure and blow up in my face," Dante thought, his eyes narrowing. "I need to find a high-density mana stone or a local core to force a manual sync."

Suddenly,–

CRACK

Dante quickly turned his head toward the noise. The spinning violet clouds overhead had suddenly dropped incredibly low, turning a dangerous, bruised shade of black. A large drop of rain fell from the sky, landing squarely on top of the stone pillar right next to his shoulder.

The moment the liquid touched the rock, a loud sizzling noise erupted, and thick green smoke burst into the air. The stone didn’t just get wet—the drop literally melted a deep, bubbling hole straight through the solid rock within two seconds.

"Acid rain?" Dante’s eyes narrowed as he realized the danger.

Looking out across, a big wall of black rain was sweeping toward his position at an incredible speed, destroying the dirt and dissolving the ancient ruins in its path .

Dante didn’t hesitate for a single second. He immediately triggered Void Step to escape.

The roaring sound behind him became absolutely deafening. A few drops of rain clipped the back of his clothes, instantly burning through the thick fabric and searing the skin underneath.

Dante didn’t even flinch. He threw his body forward, sliding under a large, slanted stone slab just as the main downpour slammed into the earth.

BOOM!

The sound of the acid rain pelting the obsidian slab above him sounded like continuous artillery fire. Within moments, hot, suffocating steam rushed into the cramped space, making his eyes water and his throat dry.

Dante sat back against the wall, drawing his knees to his chest to save his stamina. He checked the burn on his shoulder. The acid rain had seared a red patch onto his skin, but thanks to his SSS-rank Vajra Mirror Body, the physical force of the drops hadn’t broken a single bone. The environmental status trap could still cause him pain, but it wasn’t nearly enough to kill him.

While he was waiting for the storm outside to pass, a strange sound suddenly echoed from the pitch-black tunnel at the very back of the ruins.

Click. Click. Click.

It sounded like dozens of hollow needles tapping rhythmically against the floor.

Dante kept his eyes closed and remained completely still, but his right hand slowly slid out of his pocket, his fingers wrapping tightly around the burning hilt of his invisible sword.

A terrible, suffocating odor quickly filled the cramped space, completely overpowering the smell of the acid steam. It smelled like a massive meat market left out to rot in the summer heat.

The sound stopped right behind Dante’s head. A low vibration shook the very stone slab he was leaning against. The creature was massive, its hot, humid breath rolling over the back of Dante’s neck. It had clearly been hibernating in the deep tunnels underneath the ruins until the toxic storm drove Dante right into its nest.

"A human..." a strange, wet voice hissed from the darkness. It wasn’t the mindless, animalistic roar of the feral demons on the plain. This voice was slow, articulate, and filled with a cold intelligence. "A real, living hunter from the upper floors. How incredibly lucky. The Queen will be very pleased to know that a fresh soul signature has dropped straight into our perimeter."