Chapter 81: The Perfect Material for Revenge

Chapter 81. The Perfect Material for Revenge

I panted and pressed my back against the dungeon wall.

Then I slid down slowly.

Mostly because every muscle in my body had apparently reached the collective decision that I was an asshole.

My ass hit the cold stone floor, and I let my head fall back against the wall while dragging air into my lungs. The adrenaline was wearing off, which meant all the damage I’d been politely ignoring during the fight had finally arrived to submit its complaints.

My shoulder burned.

My ribs throbbed.

My legs felt heavy.

Even with Abyssal Reinforcement protecting my body during the fight, an S-rank corrupted monster was still an S-rank corrupted monster. Reinforcement reduced damage. It didn’t magically transform getting smacked into stone pillars into a pleasant massage.

This had been a bad idea.

A profitable bad idea, admittedly.

Possibly a scientifically magnificent bad idea.

Still a bad idea.

I summoned another Health Potion.

The bottle appeared in my hand, and I immediately pulled the stopper free and drank. Warm restorative mana spread through my body, crawling toward the deeper injuries first. The cut across my shoulder closed gradually. Bruising beneath my ribs faded, torn muscle knitting itself together while the ache in my back weakened.

But healing wounds wasn’t enough.

My stamina was another problem.

I summoned a second bottle.

[Crimson Vitality Elixir]

A high-grade recovery potion designed for prolonged expeditions. It stimulated physical recovery, restored stamina, reduced muscular fatigue, and temporarily dulled pain without completely numbing the body.

That last part was important.

Completely removing pain during combat was stupid.

Pain was information.

It told me when something was damaged, when a joint shouldn’t bend farther, and when continuing to use an injured limb would transform a manageable wound into something requiring considerably more expensive treatment.

I drank half.

Paused.

Then looked at the darkness ahead and finished the entire thing.

The effect came quickly.

Heat spread outward from my stomach until my exhausted muscles tingled. The heaviness in my limbs gradually retreated, my breathing stabilized, and the sharp pain around my ribs dulled into something considerably more tolerable.

The empty bottles dissolved into glittering mana particles above my fingers.

I remained seated for several seconds.

Rest sounded wonderful.

Unfortunately, resting for too long in the middle of an S-rank monster’s territory sounded considerably less wonderful.

Blood was everywhere.

Mine.

The Dreadhorn’s.

The scent would travel.

I’d already demonstrated near the entrance exactly what happened when Hollowgrave smelled free food, except the creatures this deep weren’t B-rank scavengers anymore.

I had two sensible options.

Retreat.

Or continue.

Considering Rey’s hidden treasure should be close now, retreating after coming this far would irritate me for the entire flight home.

So naturally, I chose the option most likely to make my wives furious if they ever learned the full details.

After I stored the corpse inside my Dimensional Ring, I planted one hand against the wall and pushed myself upright.

My legs protested.

I ignored them.

Then I kept walking.

The next stretch of Hollowgrave became increasingly unnatural.

The stone changed first. Ordinary black rock gradually gave way to something darker and smoother, threaded with faint violet veins that pulsed whenever my Eclipse wisps passed over them. The mana flowing through the walls became stronger as well, all of it moving toward the same point deeper underground.

I encountered two more S-rank monsters along the way.

Fortunately, neither possessed the Dreadhorn’s terrifying intelligence.

The first was a massive Graveshell Tyrant, an armored reptilian beast whose shell could launch jagged stone fragments and reinforce itself with Earth Mana. Powerful, certainly, but predictable. It relied too heavily on its armor and repeated the same attack pattern whenever I approached its left flank.

That made killing it almost disappointingly straightforward.

I kept Abyssal Reinforcement active, used the stone pillars to block its projectiles, and forced it to rotate repeatedly until I reached the softer joint beneath its rear leg. Eclipse Light became needles again. I drove them through every exposed seam I could reach while constantly changing angles, then transformed the embedded constructs into rotating blades.

Its armor protected it beautifully from the outside.

Unfortunately for it, I had already become rather fond of killing things from the inside.

The second S-rank monster, a Voidmaw Cave Drake, was faster and considerably uglier. It possessed a short-range Darkness Breath and enough physical strength to crack the floor with its tail, but it fought almost entirely through instinct.

That made it easier to manipulate.

I baited its breath attack twice, learned the timing, then intentionally left an opening.

It took it.

The drake lunged.

I Void Shifted past its jaws, slid beneath one wing, and sent a storm of Eclipse needles into the softer membrane connecting its shoulder to its torso.

It spun.

I moved with it.

Short steps.

Controlled breathing.

Never directly opposing its strength.

Whenever its tail came around, I moved toward the base where the swing carried less force. Whenever it tried to bite, I attacked the throat. Whenever it raised its wings, I targeted the exposed joints.

By the time it realized something was wrong, nearly twenty Eclipse constructs were already buried beneath its scales.

One thought turned them into blades.

Another made them rotate.

Blood poured from its mouth before it collapsed.

[Evolution Progress: 78%]

Both corpses disappeared into my Dimensional Ring.

I continued deeper.

My breathing had become heavy again by the time the passage finally opened into a chamber I recognized.

I stopped.

For several seconds, I simply stared.

There.

This was it.

Rey’s memory surfaced with startling clarity.

The circular chamber.

The broken column leaning against the eastern wall.

The strange triangular crack running across the ceiling.

Even the enormous dead root protruding from the stone remained almost exactly where it had been in Rey’s memories.

This was where he’d buried the treasure.

My pulse accelerated.

I walked toward the far wall, counting my steps from the broken column.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Then I stopped.

Nothing looked unusual.

That was intentional.

Rey hadn’t merely dug a hole and thrown something valuable inside. He’d used Earth Manipulation to compress several layers of soil and stone together until the hiding place became indistinguishable from the surrounding dungeon.

Which meant opening it properly required the same method.

I looked around first.

[Abyssal Hunter’s Domain]

My awareness spread through the chamber and nearby tunnels.

Nothing large.

No approaching mana signatures.

Still, I kept three Eclipse wisps floating behind my shoulders while the others illuminated the chamber.

Better paranoid than eaten.

I placed my palm against the wall and inhaled slowly.

[Earth Manipulation]

Mana flowed from my core.

Pain immediately answered.

Black veins crawled faintly beneath the skin of my wrist.

My chest tightened as the curse reacted to ordinary mana circulation, that familiar poisonous heat spreading along my pathways.

[Warning: Curse Reaction Detected.]

[Curse Stability: 97%]

Three percent.

Annoying.

Manageable.

I kept going.

The wall trembled.

Stone softened beneath my palm.

Not literally melting, but separating according to my control as compressed layers of earth shifted away from one another. The process was delicate. If I simply blasted the wall apart, I could damage whatever Rey had buried behind it.

So I peeled the stone away gradually.

Layer after layer.

My breathing became heavier as normal mana continued irritating the curse.

Then the final layer separated.

Something glowed inside.

Violet.

My Earth Manipulation stopped.

The curse pain faded slowly as I withdrew my mana.

And there, buried inside a perfectly sealed cavity, was a crystal.

It was approximately the size of my fist.

Black at its center.

Deep violet toward the edges.

It didn’t reflect the Eclipse Light surrounding me.

It seemed to swallow it.

Thin veins moved beneath its surface like something alive, pulsing at irregular intervals while a dark mist leaked through the cavity.

Corruption.

Pure, ancient corruption.

My Abyssal Eye activated almost automatically.

The system reacted immediately afterward.

Hard.

Black-violet notifications flashed across my vision one after another.

[WARNING!]

[Extreme Concentration of Primordial Corruption Detected.]

[Analyzing...]

[Analysis Complete.]

[Item Identified: Maledict Sovereign Crystal]

[Rank: SSS]

[Type: Condensed Corruption Core / Forbidden Material]

[Creator: The Dark Lord]

More information appeared.

[A crystallized mass of concentrated Dark Lord Mana created personally by the Dark Lord during the Great War. Contains an exceptionally dense concentration of stabilized corruption capable of altering mana cores, contaminating surrounding mana veins, and inducing higher intelligence in sufficiently powerful corrupted organisms.]

I stared at the last line. Then slowly looked toward the walls.

Well, that explained a lot.

This thing had been sitting underneath Hollowgrave for years, leaking tiny amounts of corruption into the surrounding mana network.

Rey hadn’t merely hidden treasure here.

He’d accidentally created an evolutionary pressure cooker.

My attention returned to the crystal.

Another notification appeared.

[Warning: Direct contact may result in severe mana-core corruption.]

[Warning: Prolonged exposure may cause irreversible mutation.]

[Warning: Conventional purification is not recommended.]

Any reasonable person would have immediately backed away.

I didn’t.

Instead, I stared at an SSS-rank material personally created by the Dark Lord, capable of altering mana cores, accelerating evolution, and producing intelligent corrupted monsters.

My lips slowly curved upward.

The expression reflected faintly across the crystal’s polished black surface.

Rey had hidden this because it was dangerous.

The Light Temple wanted to use their Holy Relic against me because they believed Dark Lord corruption could be suppressed and controlled.

And now I was standing in front of a concentrated piece of the Dark Lord’s own power.