Chapter 196: The Burning Sky

The first Warlord moved before Holden finished his first step.

His 10,000x processor registered the movement instantly. The phantom’s right foot shifted, its knee bent, and its greatsword arm pulled back. The trajectory was clear. The response was already calculated.

But the speed was wrong.

Not wrong as in incorrect. Wrong as in faster than it should have been.

The 300% stat boost hadn’t just made the Warlords stronger. It had made them faster.

The first Warlord crossed fifteen feet of burning stone in the time it took Holden to blink.

His processor screamed the adjustment.

Dodge left. Now.

Holden threw himself sideways.

The greatsword passed through the space where his head had been a moment earlier. The displaced air slapped against his face. The phantom blade came so close that he could feel the heat coming off its edge.

Hiss.

He barely had time to recover before the second Warlord was already on him.

It came from his right, swinging a war hammer in a wide horizontal arc that would have taken his head clean off. His processor mapped the strike, calculated the angle, and found the only gap in its trajectory.

He dropped flat. The hammer passed over him, close enough to ruffle his hair.

BOOM!

It smashed into the ground behind him. The stone exploded. Chunks of burning rock shot upward in a shower of orange sparks.

Holden rolled and came up on one knee.

Two more Warlords were already closing in. The first had recovered and was circling from the left. The second was coming straight at him, while the war hammer wielder was already raising its weapon for another swing.

His 10,000x processor did what it always did. It found the gaps. The spaces between the blades where his body could fit. The timing windows measured in fractions of fractions of a second.

But those windows were smaller than before.

In standard combat, his processor gave him comfortable margins. He had time to think, plan, and choose the best response.

Nightmare Mode had taken that luxury away.

He wasn’t choosing the best option anymore.

He was choosing the only option.

And sometimes, the only option was barely enough.

The greatsword came down. Holden dodged left. The blade missed his shoulder by an inch.

The war hammer came around. He lowered himself just in time, the hammer sweeping past his head by barely two inches.

The third Warlord’s axe swept low, aimed at his legs.

He jumped.

The axe passed beneath his boots.

The fourth Warlord thrust its spear toward his chest. Holden twisted. The spear tip grazed his ribs.

The blade caught the surface of his Phantom-Weave Armor and skidded across it. The armor held, preventing the spear from penetrating.

But the force behind the attack was huge.

The 300% boost had turned the spear thrust into a brutal shove. Holden was knocked sideways, his foot sliding across the floor. His balance broke for a second.

That was enough.

The first Warlord’s greatsword came back around.

His processor screamed.

Too fast.

The blade was already inside his space. The dodge window was gone. He couldn’t move his torso in time.

Holden raised his sword arm.

CLANG!

The Solar-Forged Sword caught the greatsword.

The impact traveled through his arm, into his shoulder, and down his spine. His teeth slammed together, and his wrist screamed beneath the force.

But he held.

Holden shoved the greatsword aside and swung.

The Hellfire struck the Warlord’s chest plate.

FWOOM!

The fire burned straight through.

The Warlord split at the torso. Its upper half dissolved into dark energy while its lower half collapsed into ash.

[Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 4-Star, Nightmare) Defeated! x1!]

[+3,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

[+18,000 KP!]

Eight left.

Then something cut through the air.

It was a shard of phantom energy that had broken away from the destroyed Warlord’s weapon. It spun through the air like a piece of shrapnel.

Holden noticed it a fraction too late.

The shard struck his left shoulder.

That section of his Phantom-Weave Armor had already been damaged during the dimensional collapse and hadn’t completely repaired.

The shard was thin. Razor thin.

It slipped through the gap and cut his skin.

The wound was shallow, barely two inches long. In a normal fight, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Here, every wound mattered.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed.

Warmth spread from his right hand through his body before focusing around the wound. The cut sealed almost instantly. The bleeding stopped, and the skin closed.

[Minor Wound Detected. Blood-Amber Ring Activated.]

[Wound Sealed. Bleeding Stopped.]

Holden looked at his shoulder.

The cut was gone.

As if it had never existed.

"Good ring," he muttered.

Then the next attack came. Holden stopped playing safe.

The calculation was simple. Defensive fighting was a losing strategy in Nightmare Mode. The enemies were too fast, too strong, and too numerous. If he waited for them to come to him, they would eventually overwhelm him through sheer numbers.

Eight Warlords attacking at the same time, each moving at 300% speed, would eventually create a web of blades that even his processor couldn’t navigate forever.

He had to go through them.

Not around.

Holden activated Ultimate Gale-Step. The world stopped.

Not slowed.

The eight remaining Warlords froze in place. The nearest one’s greatsword hung in the air at the peak of its swing. Another’s war hammer remained suspended a second before impact. Ash from the burning ground floated around him like black snow.

In the frozen world, Holden moved.

His Rank 3, 2-Star body, reinforced by Aether-Steel density and pushed to maximum output, moved through the battlefield with perfect control. Every step covered ten yards.

He reached the first Warlord.

The frozen greatsword hung in front of him. Holden stepped inside its arc, placed the Solar-Forged Sword against the phantom’s neck joint, and pushed.

Shhhk.

The head separated from the body.

In the frozen world, it didn’t fall. It simply hung in the air, detached from the body and frozen in place.

Holden moved to the next.

The war hammer wielder.

He stepped behind it, placed his blade against its spine, and cut.

Shhhk.

Next.

The axe wielder.

He stepped beneath its frozen arm and cut through the hip.

Shhhk.

The spear wielder.

Holden stepped behind it and cut through the neck.

Shhhk.

Four kills in just four seconds.

The Warlords didn’t even know they were dead.

Then Gale-Step ended.

The world resumed.

The four Warlords Holden had cut fell apart at the same time. Their bodies split along the lines of his attacks and dissolved into dark energy.

[Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 4-Star, Nightmare) Defeated! x4!]

[+12,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

[+72,000 KP!]

Four left.

They recovered quickly. Their red eye slits locked onto Holden. Their weapons came up.

Holden didn’t wait.

He charged.

He went straight for the nearest Warlord, sword blazing as fire roared along the blade.

The Warlord swung its greatsword.

Holden stepped inside the arc, moving closer than the blade could reach, and drove the Solar-Forged Sword through its chest.

FWOOM!

Hellfire erupted inside the Warlord’s body, consuming it from within. The phantom energy holding its form together destabilized and collapsed.

The Warlord dissolved around Holden’s blade like smoke.

The second Warlord was already attacking.

An axe came down from above. Holden pulled his sword free and raised it.

CLANG!

The axe crashed into the Solar-Forged Sword.

The impact drove Holden to one knee. The floor cracked beneath him, and his arm shook from the force.

Three hundred percent of a Rank 3, 4-Star’s strength had been focused into that single strike.

But his Aether-Steel body held.

Holden pushed the axe aside and swung.

A tight Hellfire Cleave tore through the Warlord’s chest.

FWOOM!

The Warlord split in two.

Its upper half dissolved into dark energy while its lower half crumbled into ash.

The final two came together.

Side by side.

One carried a greatsword. The other carried a war hammer. They attacked from opposite angles, their weapons closing in on Holden like a pincer.

His processor mapped both trajectories.

The gap was between them.

A space barely wide enough for his body had opened where the two attack paths overlapped.

Holden stepped forward into the gap.

Both weapons passed on either side of him. They came so close that he could feel the energy rolling off them against his armor.

He raised his sword and pointed it left.

Fire condensed at the tip.

He fired.

A needle of compressed Hellfire punched through the third Warlord’s eye slit.

It dropped.

Holden spun.

He pointed the sword to the right.

He fired again.

The fourth Warlord took the Hellfire needle through the throat. It grabbed at the wound as dark energy leaked between its fingers.

Then it collapsed.

[Wave 1 Cleared! x10 Phantom Warlords Defeated!]

[+30,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

[+180,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 776,290]

The notification glowed in front of him.

One hundred and eighty thousand KP in less than five minutes.

The Nightmare multiplier was insane.

Three times the normal reward, doubled again by his passive booster.

Six times the base reward.

But the System wasn’t finished.

[Wave 2 Spawning...]

[10x Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 5-Star, Nightmare) Spawning...]

[Effective Combat Level: Rank 3, 9-Star Equivalent]

Rank 3, 5-Star.

And with the Nightmare boost, they were now operating at a Rank 3, 9-Star equivalent.

Holden exhaled.

The air was hot and thick. His lungs burned with every breath. Sweat ran down his face and evaporated against his armor.

Above him, the red sky pulsed relentlessly. It felt oppressive, almost alive, pressing down on his shoulders.

The second wave rose from the burning stone.

Ten more Warlords emerged.

They were bigger than the first wave. Their armor was thicker, their weapons larger, and their red eyes burned brighter.

Holden raised his sword. The fire was still blazing.

He charged.

The second wave was worse. The first wave had been fast. The second wave was faster.

The 300% boost on their 5-Star base stats pushed their reaction times to a point where Holden’s processor was running at ninety-seven percent capacity just to keep track of them.

Ninety-seven percent.

He had never operated above eighty before.

The margins were gone. He wasn’t dodging by inches anymore. He was dodging by millimeters.

A single miscalculation or one millisecond of delay could mean a blade through his body.

A greatsword grazed his thigh.

Sting.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed.

Warmth spread through his body. The wound sealed.

An axe clipped his forearm.

Sting.

The ring pulsed again. The cut closed.

A spear tip scratched his cheek.

Sting.

Again, the ring activated. Three cuts in thirty seconds.

Three wounds that could have become serious injuries without the ring.

Three reminders that Holden was operating at the absolute edge of his ability, and the dungeon was pushing him there on purpose.

He killed them anyway.

One by one.

Hellfire Cleave after Hellfire Cleave.

Each attack burned through his energy reserves, but the Star Core Elixir’s doubled recovery rate kicked in almost immediately, restoring what he spent.

The second wave fell.

[Wave 2 Cleared! x10 Phantom Warlords Defeated!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier Active!]

[2x KP Booster Active!]

Then came the third wave. Then the fourth.

Then the fifth.

Each wave was harder than the last.

Each pushed his processor closer to its limit. Each left more cuts across his body for the Blood-Amber Ring to seal.

The battle continued.

An hour passed.

Then two.

By the time the final wave ended, Holden stood in the middle of a battlefield that was more lava than stone.

His armor was scorched.

His sword was still blazing, but the fire had dimmed slightly. Not because his energy was running low. The Star Core Elixir had kept his reserves full.

The problem was his mind.

Two hours of sustained combat at nearly ninety-seven percent processing capacity was taking its toll. Even with the System enhancing his brain, his body was still human.

His muscles screamed.

Two hours of maximum-output combat had pushed his Rank 3, 2-Star body to its physical limits. The Aether-Steel reinforcement continued to hold, but the tissue underneath was burning.

Holden was kneeling.

He didn’t remember dropping to one knee.

[Wave 10 Cleared! All Standard Waves Complete!]

[Total KP Earned: +180,000]

[Current KP: 956,290]

Holden exhaled slowly.

His breath came out as steam. Then the ground shook.

Boom!

The stone beneath his knees cracked. Lava surged through the fissures, rising three feet in a single second.

Above him, the red sky pulsed faster.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The center of the battlefield began to collapse.

A circle of stone fifty feet wide sank into the earth, revealing a pit of molten rock that glowed white-hot at the bottom.

Something was rising from it.

[FINAL BOSS SPAWNING...]

[Phantom Colossus (Rank 3, 6-Star, Nightmare)]

[WARNING: Maximum Lethal Risk.]

Holden forced himself to his feet.

For the first time since entering the dungeon, the Solar-Forged Sword felt heavy in his hand.

He stared into the pit. At the thing rising from the molten rock.

Then he looked up at the red sky, pulsing above him like a dying heart.

Holden tightened his grip on the sword.

He raised it.