Chapter 213: Nightmare Rage

"Nobody comes in."

Holden stood in front of his bedroom door, blocking the entrance. The corridor behind him was crowded with Team Soup, the Twins, and Balthazar’s aide. All of them watched him with the same expression people wore when facing something they did not understand but knew was dangerous.

Lyra stepped forward and reached for his arm. Holden saw the movement and stepped back.

"I need one hour," he said. "Don’t open this door. Don’t knock, and don’t try talking to me through it. Just give me one hour."

"Holden, you don’t have to..."

"One hour, Lyra."

She stopped. Her blue eyes searched his face, but his black eyes stared back without warmth. There was no joke, no gentle redirect, and no sign that he wanted to be talked out of his decision. Only the cold certainty of a man who had already made up his mind.

Lyra slowly stepped back.

Holden closed the door, locked it, and pressed his palm against the frame. Aether-Steel spread into the bolt, fusing it to the wall. Nobody was opening that door without a Rank 4 standing outside it.

He sat on the bed and brought up his System interface.

[Current KP: 1,330,290]

[Multiplier: 10,000x]

[KP Booster: 2x Active]

[Fighter Rank: Rank 3 (6-Star)]

Holden opened the Instanced Dungeon menu. The familiar options appeared before him: Phantom Beast Pit, Elemental Trial Grounds, Abyssal Simulation, and several other standard and safe modes. They were designed for training, testing, and controlled growth. Most of them would not kill him if he made a mistake.

He scrolled past them.

At the bottom of the menu, the red text appeared. The same warning that had been waiting for him every time he opened this section. It pulsed against the dark interface.

[NIGHTMARE DIFFICULTY]

[Enemy Stats: Increased by 300%]

[KP Multiplier: 3x]

[WARNING: Lethal Risk Detected.]

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The warnings flashed across the screen. The System was practically screaming at him not to choose this mode, just as it had the last time he entered it at 2-Star and fought for two hours while operating at ninety-nine percent processor capacity.

He was 6-Star now. Stronger, faster, and tougher. The recommendation was a minimum of 5-Star, and he was above that threshold.

But that was not why he had chosen Nightmare Difficulty.

He chose it because it was the hardest thing available. Because nothing else came close to what he was feeling.

"Confirm."

BEEP. LETHAL RISK ACKNOWLEDGED.

The portal appeared in the middle of the room. Red light poured through the opening, painting the walls in the color of fresh blood. Heat rolled into the bedroom in waves, making the lamp flicker and the bedsheets curl.

Holden stepped through.

The red sky was the same. So was the burning ground, with rivers of lava glowing inside deep cracks. The heat pressed against his skin like an enormous weight.

His Phantom-Weave Armor tightened into combat configuration. The Ember-Silk Cloak settled around his shoulders and began regulating the furnace-like temperature. The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed once, acknowledging the environment.

Holden summoned his sword.

The Solar-Forged sword appeared in his hand. He did not ignite it yet. Instead, he stood still and looked across the burning landscape.

The first wave spawned.

Ten Phantom Warlords rose from the ground. Each one stood eight feet tall, covered in black armor, with condensed dark energy swirling beneath the plates. Their red eyes glowed through narrow slits as they raised their weapons.

They were the same monsters he had fought the last time, back when he had been 2-Star and barely survived their attacks.

Now, they were nothing.

The first Warlord reached him with its greatsword raised overhead. The swing was fast, boosted by 300 percent, and powerful enough to split a building in two.

Holden did not dodge.

He stepped into the attack, moving inside the greatsword’s arc. His own blade rose and met the weapon halfway through its swing.

CLANG!

The impact felt nothing like it had before. At 2-Star, that same collision had driven him to one knee, made his arms shake, and forced him backward through sheer strength.

At 6-Star, the Warlord’s greatsword stopped dead against his blade. The force spread through Holden’s Aether-Steel body and vanished. His boots stayed planted, and his arm did not tremble.

With a short push, he knocked the greatsword aside and drove the Solar-Forged blade through the Warlord’s chest.

Shhhk.

The Phantom Warlord dissolved.

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

[+3,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier! 2x Booster!]

[+18,000 KP!]

Holden ignored the notification. He was already moving toward the next target.

The second Warlord came from the front. The third charged from his right, and the fourth swung at his back. Holden cut through the first, blocked the second, and drove his shoulder into the third before finishing it with a clean slash.

Then he raised his sword.

"Hellfire Cleave."

FWOOM!

A wide arc of crimson fire erupted from the blade, spreading thirty feet across the field. Four Warlords were caught in the blast. Their armor did not melt. It vanished, along with the condensed phantom energy holding their bodies together. They dissolved into dark mist before the flames finished crossing the arc.

Holden swung again.

FWOOM!

Another wave of fire swept across the burning ground and caught five more Warlords. The heat was so intense that the stone beneath them turned to glass, while the lava inside the nearby fissures boiled and splashed against the edges.

Tsssss. Crackle.

[Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 4-Star, Nightmare) Defeated! x9!]

[+54,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier! 2x Booster!]

[+108,000 KP!]

The next wave spawned twenty Warlords.

The System was escalating. It had noticed how quickly Holden was clearing each wave and responded by increasing the number of enemies. More monsters rose from the ground, more weapons were raised, and more targets rushed toward him.

Holden did not change his approach.

He kept swinging.

FWOOM! FWOOM! FWOOM!

Every strike released a wall of fire that consumed everything within a thirty-foot arc. The Warlords charged into the flames and disappeared one after another.

He was 6-Star now. The gap between him and the monsters had changed. Their 300 percent boost had made them equivalent to 8-Star fighters when he was only 2-Star, but his own base had climbed four stars since then. The difference was no longer enough to make him the weaker fighter.

Even so, Holden fought like an underdog.

He fought like a man who wanted to hurt something. Every swing carried the full force of his Rank 3, 6-Star body, channeled through the Solar-Forged blade and amplified by his Perfect-tier Hellfire.

One Warlord slipped through his guard. Its greatsword came from the left in a horizontal sweep.

Holden could have avoided it.

He did not care enough to move.

CLANG!

The Sovereign’s Pendant activated. A silver shield flashed into existence and absorbed the strike. The Warlord’s blade bounced off the barrier, leaving its chest open.

Holden drove his sword through the creature’s eye slit without even turning his head.

Shhhk.

Another Warlord attacked from behind. Holden did not look back. He simply swung his sword in a blind arc, releasing another Hellfire Cleave that caught the charging monster and erased it.

FWOOM!

[Phantom Warlord (Rank 3, 4-Star, Nightmare) Defeated! x12!]

[+72,000 KP!]

[Nightmare 3x Multiplier! 2x Booster!]

[+144,000 KP!]

His KP total continued to rise. The Nightmare multiplier stacked with his passive booster, turning every kill into a six-fold reward. The numbers climbed with each wave and every burst of fire that swallowed another group of phantom warriors.

The waves kept coming.

Twenty. Thirty. Fifty.

The System spawned them as quickly as Holden could destroy them. Ash covered the burning ground, lava boiled inside the fissures, and the red sky pulsed whenever another Hellfire Cleave exploded across the field.

An hour passed.

Holden’s body was screaming. It was not a lack of energy. The Star Core Elixir kept his reserves full, and its doubled recovery rate returned power to his channels almost as quickly as he spent it.

The pain was physical.

His muscles had been pushed to their limits for sixty minutes without rest. His tendons were stretched tight, and his bones vibrated from the force of countless Hellfire Cleaves. Every movement demanded more from his body, but he continued without slowing down.

The Blood-Amber Ring pulsed steadily as it sealed one cut after another. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

The Warlords only managed to hit him when he was between swings, during the brief gap before he could release another Hellfire Cleave. Each wound was shallow, and each one closed within seconds.

But he was still getting hit.

Not because the enemies were too fast. Because he was not dodging.

Holden did not want to dodge. Dodging was what someone did when they wanted to survive.

He wanted to kill.

The two things were not the same.

The final wave appeared.

Ten Warlords rose from the burning stone and charged toward him. Holden met them in the center of the field, raising his sword as crimson fire gathered around the blade.

This time, the Hellfire Cleave was different.

FWOOOOOSH!

The attack did not form a crescent. It expanded into a dome, a full eruption of white-hot crimson fire that spread outward from Holden’s body in every direction. The flames consumed everything within thirty feet.

The ground beneath his feet did not merely crack. It melted. A pool of liquid rock formed around his boots, bubbling and hissing as the fire continued to expand.

BOOM!

All ten Warlords dissolved at the same time. The flames erased them as easily as a hand wiping writing from a chalkboard.

Tsssss.

[Wave 10 Cleared! All Standard Waves Complete!]

[Total KP Earned (Nightmare Session): +270,000 KP!]

Holden did not look at the number. He already knew what he was going to do with it.

He opened the Direct Breakthrough menu.

[Direct Breakthrough: Rank 3, 6-Star to 7-Star]

[Cost: 500,000 KP]

[Confirm? Y/N]

"Confirm."

The System took the points.

[500,000 KP Deducted.]

[Breakthrough Initiating.]

The energy struck him.

This time, it was not a jolt or a crack. It was a detonation that began in his core and expanded through every meridian, channel, and cell in his body.

His cultivation core did not simply open. It ruptured. The walls reinforced by six previous breakthroughs shattered, and the energy behind them poured through his body in a flood that remade everything it touched.

His Aether-Steel body responded immediately. The molecular structure reinforcing his bones, muscles, and skin compressed again, becoming denser and harder. The metal in his bones changed into something new, something his 10,000x processor could not immediately categorize because it was still forming.

His meridians widened. The channels carrying energy through his body expanded, doubling in capacity and tripling in throughput. The bright golden current of his 6-Star power deepened into something heavier, a dark amber flow that moved through his veins like liquid metal.

His muscles reformed from within. The fibers became denser and more efficient, capable of producing greater force with less effort. From the outside, his body looked almost the same.

Inside, it had become something else entirely.

The Star Core Elixir’s recovery surged. Its doubled stamina rate kicked into overdrive, processing the massive influx of energy and turning it into stable power. The Ember-Silk Cloak hummed against his skin, regulating the temperature spike and drawing away the heat that would have cooked an ordinary cultivator.

Then Holden’s aura exploded upward.

A pillar of golden energy shot from his body, through the red sky and the ash clouds, punching into the void above the Nightmare dimension like a spear thrown at the heavens.

BOOM!

In the real world, the walls of Holden’s bedroom cracked. The floor split beneath the bed and the door groaned against its fused hinges as pressure slammed into it from the other side.

The corridor shook.

"What was that?" Renna shouted.

"Energy surge," Emric answered. "Rank 3 signature. It’s climbing, and it’s coming from Holden’s room."

"Holden!" Lyra called from beside the door. She struck the fused bolt with her palm, but it did not move. "Holden, are you okay?"

Maeve watched the readings on her monitors. Her voice remained quiet, but everyone heard the tension in it.

"His energy signature just doubled. No, it tripled. He’s breaking through."

"Breaking through to what?" Renna asked.

"7-Star."

Silence filled the corridor.

It was the kind of silence that followed a number too large for the mind to process immediately.

Inside the room, the portal closed. The red sky vanished, the burning ground disappeared, and the Nightmare dimension folded away after serving its purpose.

Holden stood in his bedroom.

The walls were cracked, the lamp was broken, and glass covered the floor.

His Aether-Steel fingers appeared unchanged, but he could feel the difference. They were denser, heavier, and more powerful. Even the air seemed to resist their movement, as if his body had become heavier or the world around him had grown thicker.

His 10,000x processor ran a series of diagnostics.

[Aether-Steel Density: Increased 40%]

[Energy Capacity: Increased 60%]

[Physical Force Output: Increased 35%]

[Movement Speed: Increased 20%]

[Recovery Rate: Maintained at 2x (Star Core Elixir)]

The numbers were good.

The numbers were always good. They were the language the System spoke, the currency of his growth, and the measure of how far he still had to go.

Holden walked to the door and pressed his palm against the fused bolt. The Aether-Steel, unable to withstand his new density, cracked and fell away. The bolt slid free.

He opened the door.

The corridor was full. Team Soup, the Twins, and Balthazar’s aide stood pressed against the walls where the shockwave had left them.

They stared at Holden, then at the cracked walls behind him and the broken glass scattered across the floor.

His eyes were still black, but the darkness had changed. It now held depth. Something glowed behind it, a raw and dense power that radiated from his body in waves and made the air shimmer.

Lyra stood closest to him, one hand still raised from where she had been striking the door. Her blue eyes met his. She saw what he was becoming, but she did not look away.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No."

The answer was the same as before. Honest and bare.

Lyra studied him for a moment. "Are you stronger?"

"Not to my taste."

She nodded. She understood him now. For Holden Voss, grief had become power. The way he honored the dead was by becoming strong enough to protect the living.

His gaze moved past her, taking in Emric, Renna, Cora, and Sera. The Twins stood side by side, their swords already at their hips.

"Gear up," Holden said.

Renna straightened. "For what?"

Holden’s black eyes settled on the corridor ahead.

"It’s time to hunt."