Chapter 248: Hunter

The subterranean world groaned beneath a weight it was never meant to hold.

Deep within the shifting tectonic layers, the ambient mana vibrated, carrying a sharp, chaotic frequency. For the first time since his existence has come to be in this world, the B-Rank Calamity Lord felt something foreign and paralyzing take root in its consciousness: Primal dread.

Both of its vanguard generals—the Bicrusted Aran and the Drilhead Blub—had been obliterated within mere seconds of each other. He had been ordered to kill the boy because he was a problem, he knew that someone mentioned like that would not be easy to kill. But this, this was beyond dangerous. The human boy was proving deadly now.

Hide was in the ruined tunnel, his breath venting in thin plumes of violet mist. The jagged, black draconic scales covering his arms, neck, and temples pulsed with a deep, rhythmic hum. His ocean-blue eyes that had completely vanished beneath violet, were now back as he calmed down to a degree.

Yet, he did not waste a single heartbeat.

'Overseer's Vision — Stroke 1.'

Hide would not give the calamity lord a chance to recover from the shock it must have felt after its generals died just like that. As he activated the talent, all the oppressive rock and claustrophobic tunnels faded into transparent, glowing wireframes. His perception swept through the rock hive, bypassing miles of solid rock to lock onto the architectural nexus of the entire mountain—a colossal, vaulted cavern where dozens of underground shafts intersected like the roots of an ancient, rotten tree.

Floating in the exact epicenter of that underground hollow, suspended above the ground, was a small obsidian sphere. It was tethered to the ceiling, walls, and floor by hundreds of thick, pulsating conduits of calcified dark mana—the true, biological core anchoring this whole dungeon.

Hide's gaze narrowed down.

He activated the Sovereign's Void-Walk.

ZAP!

Hide dissolved into a storm of black particles, slipping through the dimensional folds.

When reality solidified around him, he was standing atop a narrow stone outcropping high above the central hollow. The chamber was immense, spanning several hundred yards in every direction, illuminated only by the sickly crimson luminescence radiating from the suspended core.

The moment Hide materialized, the massive core violently throbbed.

"DIE, HUMAN! BE BURIED IN DUST!"

The Calamity Lord's voice boomed from the walls, grinding like massive millstones.

The entire cavern erupted into catastrophic motion. The floor, walls, and vaulted ceiling liquified into thousands of tons of volcanic sand and jagged stone. From the churning earth, hundreds of monstrous constructs took shape simultaneously—colossal, multi-limbed horrors forged from dense obsidian rock, razor-sharp shale, and compressed earth, their hollow sockets glowing with malevolent crimson fire.

Simultaneously, the bedrock convulsed as thousands of fifteen-foot stone lances and crushing earthen pillars converged upon Hide's high outcropping in a suffocating, panoramic crossfire designed to pulverize him into sand mist.

Hide didn't reach for the twin blades, blades would be useless. So was any shield in this situation.

He simply stood at the edge of the precipice, looking down at the charging horde with eyes as calm and lifeless as an frozen ocean. In the quiet corners of his mind, the images of Vanessa and Harry's crushed bodies flashed in vivid color. The memory of Fuu standing lifeless with a three-foot spire through his heart burned against his ribs.

These monsters had slaughtered his comrades. They had turned the earth into a slaughterhouse for the amusement of higher gods.

Hide took a slow, deep breath, and let the dormant power in his chest roar, using his newly acquired talent. He did not have much time to look for how it actually worked, but the description of the talent was pretty much better than others and quite self explanatory.

Moreover, he could say that it was much like one of his already existing skill, Mana Press, just more advanced and more lethal.

HUMMM—!

As he activated the talent, a pitch-black shockwave of unquestionable dominance expanded outward from Hide's body, instantly engulfing the massive cavern in a hundred-meter dome of abyssal territory.

The moment the domain snapped into place, the fundamental rules of the environment rebuild themselves to his will.

The dark mana that had fueled it, the very energy the Calamity Lord relied upon to command the stone—froze in its path. It rejected the monster's commands. The atmospheric power recognized a higher authority, bending completely to the singular will of the Dark Liege.

The mana no longer moved.

Hide slowly lifted his right arm, extending an open palm toward the surging army of stone behemoths.

"Kneel," Hide commanded, his voice dropping into a flat, icy rasp.

WHOOSH!

Without Hide touching a single ounce of matter, the dense dark mana filling the grand chamber began to violently condense. In less than a fraction of a second, thousands of spectral weapons forged from vitrified, razor-sharp dark mana manifested in the empty air. Longswords, jagged broadswords, barbed lances, and heavy spears hovered in neat, disciplined ranks above the cavern floor, humming with an aura of pure annihilation.

Hide flicked his fingers downward.

SWOOSH! SWOOSH! SWOOSH!

The infinite armory rained downward in a relentless, sonic-speed barrage.

It was now less a battle and more an execution. The dark blades tore through the charging multi-limbed constructs like hot needles through silk. Stone limbs were severed cleanly, obsidian chests were shattered into gravel, and hundreds of beasts were pinned directly to the bedrock before the embedded dark mana detonated in concussive bursts of dark ice.

The incoming earthen pillars and falling stalactites were shredded into harmless dust clouds dozens of paces before they could ever reach Hide's outcropping.

"What... what is this?!" the Calamity Lord's voice cried out, the booming arrogance entirely replaced by frantic, screeching agony. "What are you doing to the mana?!"

Hide shifted his gaze directly toward the core suspended in the center of the hall.

Through Abyssal Will, he seized the flow of energy running through the stone. With a sharp, mental clench, he severed every single mana conduit feeding into the obsidian heart. He actively siphoned the ambient dark mana away, drawing the dungeon's lifeblood directly into his own bottomless core.

Deprived of its energy supply, the massive core flickered and died.

Across the cavern, the towering sand avatars, the stone barriers, and the lingering earthen constructs collapsed into heaps of dry, lifeless dust. The Calamity Lord had run out of mana. It could no longer construct an avatar. It could no longer hide behind an entire mountain of stone.

CRACK!

The suspended core fractured down its center, violently splitting open to expel the creature's true physical body onto the hard stone floor below.

THUD.

The monster hit the dirt, rolling across the loose gravel like a discarded doll.

Hide stepped off the stone outcropping, using a gentle burst of dark mana to slow his descent, landing silently three paces away from the fallen beast.

The true form of the B-Rank Calamity Lord was pathetic.

It was a tiny, grotesque creature standing barely three feet tall. Its bloated, hunched body was covered in a patchwork of mismatched, discolored skin's roughly stitched together with black sinew. Its head was a bulbous, hairless mass completely devoid of eyes, ears, or a nose. The only feature on its twisted face was a massive, gaping slit of a mouth lined with rows of jagged, needle-like teeth stained pitch-black with the dried blood of things it had consumed.

The creature frantically scrambled backward on all fours, its blunt claws scraping against the stone as it looked up at Hide's towering, scaled figure.

"P-Please... have mercy... mercy..." the creature squeaked, its voice a wet, trembling rasp that begged for life. "I only followed orders... the sovereign... yes, the sovereign of space ordered it all. If you wish, now that I am on earth, I can bid yourcommand."

Hide looked down at the shivering abomination, his expression carved from emotionless granite.

"You showed no mercy to my people," Hide whispered and summoned his blade. A singular, fluid crescent motion of vitrified steel severed the air. The grotesque head of the Calamity Lord flew spinning into the dark, its desperate squeal cut short as a fountain of black blood painted the cavern floor.

THUD.

The tiny torso slumped limply against the rubble, entirely lifeless.

[Calamity Beast (Demon Faced Hunter) — Eliminated]

[Experience points gained: 74,800]

The staggering volume of experience points made a new progress. Inside his vision, the system interface lit up with a rapid cascade of level-up notifications:

[Level Up]

[Level: 90 → 91]

[Exp: 57,480 / 18,800]

[Level Up reward has been added to inventory.]

[Level Up]

[Level: 91 → 92]

[Exp: 38,680 / 19,000]

[Level Up reward has been added to inventory.]

[Level Up]

[Level: 92 → 93]

[Exp: 19,680 / 19,200]

[Level Up reward has been added to inventory.]

[Level Up]

[Level: 93 → 94]

[Exp: 480 / 19,400]

[Level Up reward has been added to inventory.]

RUMBLE!

With the death of the Demon Faced Hunter, the unnatural shape of of this cavern bound by the Calamity lord broke apart. The massive cavern groaned in agony as hairline fractures rapidly raced across the ceiling and walls. Tons of ancient rock and structural stalactites began plummeting to the floor as the entire subterranean hive initiated a catastrophic cave-in.

Hide pulled out the small, brown Core of the calamity lord before leaving. He dissolved into dark particles and appeared into the Dark Realm.