Chapter 247: Counter

The silence inside the cavern did not last for long as the dark mana in the surroundings gathered within Hide's chest and violently detonated.

The air turned pitch-black and the draconic scales covering his arms, neck, and face bristled like sharpened iron spikes. His ocean-blue eyes had vanished completely, drowned beneath twin vortexes of unbridled hatred.

"DIE!"

Reality tore apart across where Hide stood.

BOOM!

The cavern floor disintegrated beneath his boots as he crossed thirty yards in a zero-second blur. He bypassed the distance entirely, slamming both scaled fists straight into the center of the four-armed sand avatar's chest.

Abyssal HellFlame!

A cataclysmic torrent of dark, mana-devouring fire exploded outward from his knuckles. The heat was so incomprehensibly intense that it vaporized the sand avatar, turning hundreds of tons of loose earth into glowing, shattered glass before blowing a fifty-foot crater straight through the subterranean foundation.

The avatar shrieked as its construct was erased from existence.

Yet, from the ceiling and the shifting walls deep within the labyrinth, that mocking, grinding laughter echoed once more. The B-Rank sovereign was already pooling its consciousness elsewhere, drawing upon the endless bedrock to weave another vessel.

Hide did not chase the fading laughter.

He turned back toward the puddle of red-stained mud where his friends lay broken.

"Zenith. Aegis," Hide commanded, his voice shaking slightly.

The two colossal phantoms bowed their heads in immediate unison.

"Take Kai," Hide ordered, his scaled finger pointing toward the bleeding, unconscious boy pinned to the floor. "Stop his bleeding with the high-grade potions I will give you. And take..."

Hide's breath hitched in his throat as his gaze fell upon Fuu's impaled, lifeless body. He swallowed the bitter iron rising in his mouth.

"...take Fuu's body. Carry them both out through the breach."

"As you command, my Liege," Zenith resonated, stepping forward with eerie grace.

With delicate precision that defied its massive, seven-meter executioner frame, Zenith carefully lifted Kai into its dark-plated arms, while Aegis hoisted Fuu's corpse over its colossal iron shoulder, shielding the boy's remains beneath its impenetrable body.

Hide raised his hand and commanded the two other phantoms to come forth.

Two geysers of dark mana erupted from his hand.

From the first cloud emerged the sleek, black reptilian beast—the agile, blade-tailed lizard phantom with glowing blue eyes. From the second stepped a vicious, hunched goblin-like phantom, its obsidian claws dripping with venom. While neither phantom possessed the overwhelming destructive power of Zenith or Aegis, both were formidable D-Rank predators capable of butchering anything below a Lesser Calamity Lord.

"Scour the upper cavern tunnels," Hide commanded the two beasts. "Find the remaining recruits of the Black Shield Agency. Escort them toward the exit."

The lizard phantom hissed, its tail whipping through the air, while the goblin phantom let out a low, guttural snarl. Both creatures melted into the darkness, racing up the subterranean shafts like twin streaks of black lightning.

Hide stood alone in the center of the shattered hall, his chest heaving as the cold draft of the cavern washed over his blood-caked skin.

Deep within the subterranean foundation, the ambient mana spiked as the B-Rank Calamity Lord began assembling another massive body.

'This dungeon break... it's structured like a military vanguard,' Hide analyzed coldly, his predatory instincts overriding the blinding grief in his chest.

He knew the ironclad hierarchy of multi-star gates. A B-Rank Higher Calamity Lord never ruled alone; in an invasion territory of this scale, there were always at least two C-Rank Lesser Calamity Lords acting as its generals, commanding the lower swarms and hunting down scattered intruders.

Hide closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.

He wished the Doom Overseer was perched upon his shoulder right now. But he had sent both the Overseer and Drogon back to the skies of Rilth on a priority reconnaissance mission to track the spatial coordinates of Hubin and locate the Boundary Pusher.

He had to rely entirely on his own arsenal.

'Overseer's Vision — Stroke 1.'

HUMMM.

The world around him dissolved.

The dense, suffocating darkness of the cavern vanished, and the solid stone walls of the entire mountain turned completely translucent in his mind's eye. A flawless, three-dimensional blueprint of the subterranean labyrinth unfolded directly inside his brain, displaying every twisting tunnel, every deep fissure, and every pulsing mana signature across the six-mile radius.

Instantly, his vision locked onto a chaotic cluster of energy three levels above him.

In a wide, sloping cavern, three figures were retreating desperately toward a narrow surface fracture.

It was Elara. Her face was smeared with soot, her mana visibly depleted as she continuously cast ice lances to hold back a relentless tide of hundred-legged centipede beasts. Behind her were the remaining two rookies of his agency, their blades chipped, barely able to keep their footing and fight other beasts.

And clinging to the jagged shadows of the ceiling directly above the cavern exit was a massive, chitinous monstrosity.

It was an eight-legged, obsidian-shelled arachnid beast pulsing with a dense, corrupted C-Rank mana frequency—a Lesser Calamity Lord. The creature was completely invisible to Elara's depleted senses, its razor-sharp, venom-coated stingers poised to drop directly onto the young mage's head the moment she stepped beneath the archway.

Hide's ocean-blue eyes flared with lethal violet lightning.

He didn't waste a single microsecond on the reforming sand lord behind him and used his third talent, Sovereign's Void-Walk.

Space folded like thin paper.

ZAP!

Hide dissolved into a cluster of pitch-black spatial particles, vanishing from the lower chamber.

Three hundred yards above, the arachnid Lesser Calamity Lord shifted its weight on the stone ceiling, its mandibles dripping corrosive acid as it prepared to launch its fatal strike down at Elara.

SWOOSH.

A razor-thin spatial rift snapped open directly behind the beast's neck and Hide stepped out.

The creature's sensory hairs twitched in sudden alarm, but before its nervous system could even transmit the impulse to turn, a crescent arc of steel cleaved through the gloom.

SHING!

With one effortless, silent flick of his blade, Hide severed the beast's massive, armored skull cleanly from its torso.

THUD.

The colossal arachnid head hit the stone floor, its legs convulsing in death as black ichor erupted from its neck.

Elara and the two rookies froze, their weapons raised in terror, only to see the towering, scale-clad figure of their president standing atop the falling carcass with his blades dripping black blood.

"Keep moving," Hide's voice dropped like cold iron before Elara could even speak. "Do not look back."

A crisp system window chimed in his peripheral vision:

[Calamity Beast (Bicrusted Aran) — Eliminated]

[Experience points gained: 10,000]

Hide didn't even pause to watch them run.

His Overseer's Vision flared again, tracking the second C-Rank general.

Through the subterranean rock layers, a massive, drill-headed worm beast was tunneling at terrifying speed through the lower bedrock, aiming directly for the tunnel where Zenith and Aegis were carefully carrying Kai and Fuu toward the surface.

'You will not touch them.'

Hide vanished into the dark particles once more.

He materialized inside the narrow, shaking tunnel just as the solid rock wall violently caved inward. The colossal drill-headed worm burst through the stone, its gaping circular maw lined with thousands of spinning obsidian fangs.

Hide didn't dodge.

He stepped forward, planting his boots firmly into the earth. Raising his right hand, he summond and thrustedforward a rotating sphere of absolute destruction, at the front of the sphere, a ball of mana condensed.

Mana Blast!

KABOOM!

The mana blast detonated inside the beast's gaping mouth with the concussive force of a tactical missile. The internal shockwave shattered the worm's armored skull from the inside out, sending massive chunks of scorched chitin and boiling black blood raining across the tunnel.

THUD!

The massive carcass collapsed into the dirt, lifeless.

[Calamity Beast (Drilhead Blub) — Eliminated]

[Experience points gained: 10,000]

The numbers inside his interface violently accelerated, cascading through his remaining thresholds until the final barrier shattered with an ear-splitting chime:

[Level Up]

[Level: 89 → 90]

[Exp: 1,280 / 18,600]

[Level Up rewards have been added to inventory.]

[Congratulations, You have reached the threshold for Class Evolution]

[Class Evolution Initiated]

Syncing physical vessel with dark mana core...

Restructuring cellular damage...

Class Rank Evolving.

An intense, burning clarity washed through Hide's entire nervous system.

His mana pathways expanded threefold, transforming from narrow rivers of dark mana into a roaring, bottomless ocean of primordial power. The micro-fractures in his bones instantly sealed, the fatigue in his muscles dissolved, and the dark scales covering his body hardened into an unyielding armor that radiated the chilling aura of a true sovereign predator.

[Evolution Complete]

[Class Rank Increased: (B-Rank → A-Rank)]

[50 Unallocated Stat Points awarded.]

[Evolution Points awarded]

You have Received a new Talent.

Talent 4 - Abyssal Will

[The Sovereign does not bow to the heavens, nor does he yield to the abyss. The world bends because he wills it. Complete immunity to all divine, mental, illusionary, and soul-suppression attacks regardless of rank. When operating under critical damage or fatal pressure, all active and passive skills gain a 100% efficiency boost. Allows the Abyssal Lord to force his will upon the surrounding dark mana, shaping its identity.]

Hide slowly exhaled, a cloud of dark, violet mist escaping his lips as he opened his ocean-blue eyes.

His gaze was cold, empty and terrifying now. The hunt of the Calamity lord was over, now Hide was the hunter and the beast the prey.