Chapter 195: Nightmare Mode Unlocked

The villa smelled like garlic and butter.

Holden stood at the kitchen stove with an apron on, stirring a pan of seared meat with one hand while seasoning a pot of rice with the other.

Maeve sat at the kitchen counter with her tablet propped against a salt shaker, pretending to monitor data feeds while actually watching Holden cook.

"You’re using too much butter," she said.

"There’s no such thing as too much butter."

"Medically, there is."

"Medically, butter makes everything better. That’s a fact. I read it somewhere."

"You read it on a takeout menu."

"Which is a credible source."

Renna burst through the kitchen door.

"IT SMELLS AMAZING! What is that? Is that the expensive meat from the market? Because if it is, I want more than one piece. Actually, I want more than that. Can I have another plate?"

"Yes, you can." Emric said, walking in behind her. He had a new notebook tucked under one arm. The old one was completely full. "Though nutritionally, the protein intake for a Rank 2 cultivator is approximately two hundred grams per meal."

"Emric. I just killed a Blood-Fiend. I can eat whatever I want."

"Caloric excess doesn’t respect heroism."

Renna stared at him.

"That is the worst sentence anyone has ever said to me."

Lyra came in last. She had changed out of her academy uniform into a simple white shirt and dark pants. Her silver hair was loose around her shoulders, and she looked lighter somehow. Not physically. There was something different in the way she carried herself, as if a rope had been cut that she hadn’t realized was tied around her.

She walked up behind Holden and looked over his shoulder at the pan.

"What are you making?"

"Victory dinner. Pan-seared beast loin with herb butter, spiced rice, and whatever vegetables I could find in the market that weren’t moldy."

"Victory dinner," Renna repeated, her eyes lighting up. "I love victory dinner. We should have victory dinner every day."

"We’d need a victory every day," Emric said.

"We did have a victory every day! The train fight, the tribunal, and the Blood-Fiend. That’s three victories in three days. That’s a streak!"

"Statistically, a three-day streak isn’t enough to establish a sustainable trend."

"Emric." Renna pointed her bread stick at him. "Please. Just for one meal. Stop being a statistic."

He thought about it for a moment.

"I’ll attempt to limit my statistical observations to two per course."

"Thank you."

Holden plated the food. Five plates in total. He carried them to the dining table himself, setting one in front of each seat. The portions were huge. He had cooked enough meat to feed a small squad, and the rice was piled into mountains on every plate.

Maeve looked down at hers.

"This is more than I eat in two days."

"Eat. You’ve been running on tea and data for three days straight."

"I had a sandwich."

"A sandwich isn’t a meal. A sandwich is a suggestion."

"It was a substantial sandwich."

"Maeve."

She sighed and picked up her fork.

They ate together.

All five of them, around one table. The conversation was loud, messy, and constantly overlapping.

Renna talked with her mouth full about the Blood-Fiend fight, using a bread stick to demonstrate her arrow angles. Emric corrected her calculations twice and was ignored both times. Lyra ate quietly, but she smiled. The kind that reached her eyes and stayed there.

Maeve told Holden his rice was slightly overcooked. Holden told her the rice was perfectly cooked and that she had no palate. Maeve informed him that her palate was refined and his was "aggressively peasant." Holden said he was proud of his peasant palate.

Maeve laughed.

After dinner, Renna fell asleep on the couch. Emric covered her with a blanket, then sat at the table with his notebook, writing by candlelight. Lyra and Maeve talked quietly in the corner, Lyra’s voice calm and steady while Maeve listened without interrupting.

Holden washed the dishes.

He dried them, stacked them, wiped down the counter, and folded his apron.

Then he went to his room and locked the door.

The Platinum Chest sat on his bed.

He had taken it from the Blood-Fiend’s ashes, the same chest that had appeared above the dissolving remains of Aldric Sterling. It had glowed with white-silver light before Holden swept it into his Inventory.

He pressed his thumb against the seal.

Shhhk. Click.

The chest opened.

A deep red light spilled out.

Inside the chest, resting on dark velvet, was a ring.

[Item Acquired: Rank 3 Blood-Amber Ring]

[Type: Passive Healing Artifact]

[Passive: Rapid Coagulation. Instantly seals minor wounds, cuts, and lacerations on contact. Converts ambient energy into regenerative force. Stops bleeding within three seconds of injury.]

[Passive: Ambient Absorption. Passively absorbs environmental energy to maintain the ring’s healing reserve. Requires no active input from the host.]

[Description: A band of fused Blood-Amber containing a living core of regenerative energy. The ring bonds with the host’s circulatory system, creating a passive healing network that responds automatically to physical damage.]

Holden lifted the ring.

It was warm, but not hot. The warmth reminded him of a steady hand, something alive and calm. The amber was deep red, almost brown, with swirling patterns inside that moved like liquid.

He slipped it onto his right index finger.

The ring tightened and adjusted to his size. Warmth spread from his finger into his hand, up his wrist, and settled somewhere deep in his chest. A faint pulse followed, almost like a second heartbeat, before settling into his circulation.

[Blood-Amber Ring Equipped!]

[Passive Healing Active.]

"Useful."

Holden sat on the edge of his bed and pulled up his System interface.

[Current KP: 616,290]

[KP Booster: 2x Active]

[Fighter Rank: Rank 3 (2-Star)]

[Next Multiplier Milestone: 1,000,000 KP]

[Deficit: 383,710 KP]

Holden stared at the number.

He was already more than sixty percent of the way to one million. Closer than he’d ever been.

But the remaining points wouldn’t come easily.

The Capital was clean. House Sterling was gone. The Royal Family’s immediate crisis was over. The Crimson Syndicate had been dismantled. The portal was closed. Every major enemy in the city had either been destroyed or neutralized.

For the first time since Holden had awakened the System, the surface world was peaceful.

Peace was bad for business.

He needed enemies.

Lots of them.

Strong ones.

The kind that dropped massive amounts of KP and kept coming.

Holden opened the Instanced Dungeon menu.

The interface flickered, and a new window appeared over the familiar dungeon selection screen. The standard options were still there. Phantom Beast Pit. Elemental Trial Grounds. Abyssal Simulation. All familiar. All capped at Rank 2 difficulty.

All too easy for his current Rank 3, 2-Star body.

But below the standard options was a new line.

It was greyed out and faded, almost as if it had been sitting there the entire time, hidden behind a lock that had only just opened.

[Difficulty Selection: Advanced]

[Prerequisite: Rank 3 Cultivation Achieved]

[Standard Mode: Enemy stats at 100%. KP reward at base rate.]

[Hard Mode: Enemy stats increased by 150%. KP multiplier increased by 1.5x.]

[Approved for Rank 3 combatants.]

Holden looked at the options.

Then he looked farther down.

Below the approved difficulties was another line.

[NIGHTMARE DIFFICULTY]

[Enemy Stats: Increased by 300%]

[KP Multiplier: 3x]

[WARNING: Lethal Risk Detected.]

[This difficulty is designed for Rank 3, 5-Star+ combatants.]

[Current Host Rank: Rank 3, 2-Star.]

[System Advisory: DO NOT ATTEMPT.]

[Proceed anyway? Y/N]

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The warning flashed across the screen. The System was practically screaming at him.

Three hundred percent stat increase.

Three times the KP multiplier.

Designed for Rank 3, 5-Star combatants.

He was only Rank 3, 2-Star.

Holden’s 10,000x processor ran the numbers.

Nightmare enemies starting from Rank 3, 4-Star would be pushed to an effective Rank 3, 8-Star combat level under the dungeon’s 300% stat boost.

Faster than the Abyssal General.

Stronger than the Siege Turtle.

And there wouldn’t be just one.

There would be multiple enemies at once.

The math said it was dangerous.

The math said one mistake could kill him.

Holden looked at the warning.

Then at his deficit.

383,710 KP.

Standard Mode would take weeks, maybe months. The rewards were too low for his current rank. Hard Mode would be faster, but not fast enough.

He needed the 3x multiplier.

He needed Nightmare Mode.

A smile slowly appeared on his face.

"Confirm."

BEEP.

[LETHAL RISK ACKNOWLEDGED.]

The portal spawned in his bedroom.

A swirling ring of dark red energy appeared three feet above the floor, hovering in the air. The light it cast was wrong. It wasn’t the clean white-gold of the standard dungeon portals.

This was deep, arterial red.

The air around the portal grew hot. Waves of heat rolled from the opening, making the walls sweat and the mirror fog. A smell of sulfur and ash filled the room, mixed with something older.

Something burned long ago that had somehow never stopped burning.

Holden summoned his Solar-Forged Sword.

The blade appeared in his hand, warm and ready. He tightened his grip and flexed his fingers around the handle.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed once on his right hand, reacting to the draw of the weapon.

Holden looked at the portal.

At the red light.

At the warning that was still flashing in the corner of his vision.

He laughed.

The kind that meant he was completely thrilled.

"Let’s see what you’ve got."

He stepped through.

The white platforms were gone.

The marble-bright training grounds of the standard Instanced Dungeon had been replaced by something straight out of a nightmare.

Which, Holden supposed, was appropriate.

The sky was red.

Red like blood had been poured across the entire sky.

It stretched in every direction, pulsing and shifting as if the sky itself were alive. Clouds of dark ash rolled across it in slow, heavy waves, and through the gaps between them, something that wasn’t quite a sun pulsed with a sickly rhythm.

The ground was cracked stone.

Fissures ran across the surface in every direction. Rivers of molten lava pushed up through some of them, glowing orange and yellow as they filled the cracks with liquid fire.

The heat hit Holden immediately.

It pressed against his skin like a physical weight. His Phantom-Weave Armor adjusted at once, regulating his body temperature, but the air itself remained thick and heavy.

Hard to breathe.

Every inhale tasted of ash and copper.

Crackle. Hissss.

The landscape stretched all the way to the horizon.

Burnt plains.

Jagged mountains.

Rivers of fire.

No cover.

No shelter.

Just an open, hostile wasteland that seemed to exist for one purpose.

To kill anything standing on it.

Then the System spawned the enemies.

Dark shapes pushed through the cracked stone like corpses climbing out of graves. Hands made of condensed phantom matter clawed their way free, followed by huge armored bodies that pulled themselves out of the burning earth.

Phantom Warlords.

They were huge, standing nearly eight feet tall. Humanoid, but wrong.

Their bodies were made of condensed dark energy, solidified into armor-like plates covering their torsos, arms, and legs. Their heads were featureless domes of black energy with two burning red slits for eyes.

Each carried a different weapon.

Greatswords. Axes. War hammers.

All formed from the same condensed phantom energy.

All radiating a Rank 3 aura strong enough to make the air around them shimmer.

[Wave 1: 10x Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 4-Star) Spawned!]

[Nightmare Stat Boost Active: +300%]

[Effective Combat Level: Rank 3, 8-Star Equivalent]

[WARNING: Lethal Risk. One mistake may result in permanent death.]

The Warlords turned toward Holden.

Twenty red eyes locked onto him.

Their weapons rose together.

Phantom steel hummed with dark energy as the ten monsters prepared to attack.

Holden stood alone on the burning stone.

Ten Rank 3 nightmares stood across the field of fire.

His 10,000x processor was already mapping their positions, weapons, movement patterns, and energy signatures. His Aether-Steel body was dense and ready. His Solar-Forged Sword blazed in his hand, its light pushing back the red darkness.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed quietly on his finger.

He should have been scared but he wasn’t.

Holden ignited the blade.

White-hot crimson fire erupted along the steel, burning so brightly that the red sky around him seemed to turn orange.

"Hellfire Cleave," he said.

He looked across the field at the ten Warlords.

"Ten enemies. No backup."

He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.

A grin spread across his face.

"This is going to be fun."

Holden charged.