Chapter 249: Caught

The dimensional fabric of the Dark Realm tore open with a faint, greasy hiss.

A cluster of pitch-black spatial particles bled into the open air above the surface, knitting together to deposit Hide Volter onto earth. The moment his boots touched the gravel, his knees violently gave out.

THUD.

Hide collapsed forward, his palms slamming against the cracked ground.

His chest heaved erratically as a wave of vertigo assaulted his skull. Going in and out of the Dark Realm using Sovereign's Void-Walk four consecutive times in under ten minutes was a reckless gamble he had never attempted before. The Dark Realm was an ancient, non-Euclidean void whose dimensional pressures exerted a punishing, agonizing drag upon the mortal soul. Every nerve ending in his brain felt as though it had been scrubbed with coarse sandpaper.

And then there was his new talent, Abyssal Will.

Ever since he had forcefully imposed his dark mandate over the entire cavern to rewrite the laws of atmospheric mana, a bizarre, hollow sensation had settled into the marrow of his bones. His vision was blurred at the edges, swimmy with dancing grey. His limbs felt completely weightless, almost detached from his physical torso, like a puppet whose strings had been stretched to the verge of snapping.

'Get up,' Hide snarled internally, gritting his teeth until blood coated his molars. 'On your feet, Hide. Move.'

Refusing to let his exhaustion claim him, Hide dragged himself upward. He forced his trembling legs to lock, pushing his posture straight as he rolled his shoulders back. With a sharp, mental command, two flashes of dark mana ignited in his palms, and his dual obsidian blades slid into his grip.

His combat instincts, honed through months of continuous slaughter, screamed that something was wrong.

The surface was supposed to be a hive of organized military infrastructure. There should have been exterminators patroling and armored transports from the International Exterminator Corporation waiting at the primary cordon. Above all, there should have been the hum of the colossal runic pylon projecting the iridescent S-Rank barrier that sealed the Dead Zone from the Central Continent.

The barrier was gone.

The runic pylon had been completely deactivated, its massive power conduits severed and left to smoke in the dry wind. The armored personnel carriers and corporate observation posts had been abandoned.

Before Hide could even process the sabotage, the bedrock beneath his boots began to groan.

BOOM!

A catastrophic, concussive tremor ripped through the continental crust.

Behind Hide, an area of land spanning nearly ninty kilometers, territory equivalent to two massive metropolitan cities—completely gave way. With the Demon Faced Hunter dead, millions of tons of ancient rock, calcified caverns, and underground tunnels collapsed in on themselves in a thunderous, apocalyptic sinkhole.

A gargantuan mushroom cloud of dense black soot, pulverized shale, and sulfurous ash billowed thousands of feet into the sky, blotting out the midday sun and drowning the landscape in a suffocating twilight.

ROAAAR!

SKREEEEEE!

The collapse had crushed countless lower-tier beasts into paste beneath the falling bedrock, but thousands more had survived. From the jagged rims of the colossal sinkhole, hordes of mutated subterranean horrors—chitinous centipedes, iron-scaled burrowers, and feral cave hounds—clawed their way out of the dust, their bloodshot eyes burning with rabid, unhinged fury.

A disaster. An apocalyptic disaster.

Hide's heart constricted in his chest as he thought of his comrades. 'Did Zenith and Aegis make it out with Kai and Fuu's body? Did Elara and the rookies clear the perimeter before the barrier fell?'

He prayed with every fiber of his being that his phantoms had outrun the collapse.

Because right now, Hide could not go looking for them.

Through the drifting curtain of grey ash and sulfuric smoke, ten silhouettes stepped forward, moving with eerie, synchronized grace.

They formed a wide, disciplined perimeter around Hide, cutting off every single line of retreat.

Hide's glowing ocean-blue eyes narrowed into razor-sharp slits as his True Sight cut through the smog.

Their faces were completely hidden behind polished, bone-white porcelain masks, but their attire was unmistakable. They wore sleek, snow-white tactical dusters lined with dark, flexible carbon weave. Embroidered in shimmering silver thread across the right chest of their coats was an insignia Hide recognized with chilling clarity: a circular emblem featuring a snarling, howling wolf.

The ones he had seen with S-Rank Commander Julian.

The elite assassins who had operated as Julian's private hounds during the World Tournament in Ufrifa.

"You here to avenge that bastard Julian?" Hide asked, his voice raspy, and completely devoid of fear. He didn't bother hiding his involvement. "Or does your head want to see me?"

From the skeletal iron framework of an abandoned watchtower, a deep, cultured voice drifted down through the howling wind.

"So, you did kill Julian," the voice said, echoing with cold, bureaucratic satisfaction. "Walter was right about you after all."

Hide didn't flinch. A bitter, venomous sneer curled the corner of his lips.

"Curse that fucked up old bastard," Hide spat, his fingers tightening around the grips of his dual blades.

Walter Bigiva had orchestrated this entire nightmare. He had designated a 4-Star meat-grinder as a harmless 3-Star gate, sent the Black Shield Agency inside to die, deactivated the exterior barrier to let the beasts run wild, and stationed this squad at the threshold to butcher him if he managed to crawl out of the rubble.

That almost made him laugh.

The figure on the watchtower didn't offer another word. He simply raised two fingers and made an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist.

SWOOSH!

The ten white-clad assassins moved simultaneously.

They didn't charge like mindless beasts and rather moved like a single, multi-headed organism. Four assassins closed the distance in a low, skimming sprint, while the remaining six fanned outward to deploy ranged suppression.

Hide reacted purely on instinct.

CLANG!

He pivoted sharply, his right blade flashing upward to intercept a descending strike. The lead assassin wielded a specialized, serrated longsword pulsing with high-voltage electricity. Upon contact, millions of volts of azure lightning detonated across the blade, racing down the steel to engulf Hide's arms and chest.

The assassin's masked head tilted slightly, expecting Hide's nervous system to seize under the lethal current.

Nothing happened.

Hide's body had already completely adapted to high-voltage lightning. The electrical charge crackled harmlessly across his pale skin, grounding out into the dirt through his boots without disrupting a single muscle fiber.

"My turn," Hide hissed.

With a sharp twist of his wrist, Hide deflected the shock blade, driving his left elbow straight into the assassin's porcelain mask. The bone-shattering strike threw the killer backward, but before Hide could follow through with a decapitating slash, a hail of projectile weapons tore through the air.

WHISTLE!

Six black-iron throwing darts, their tips glistening with a viscous, dark-purple paste, struck Hide across his ribs and left shoulder.

A neurotoxin engineered from high-rank Calamity beast's venom. Any normal A-Rank Exterminator struck by that concoction would have suffered complete respiratory failure within three seconds. But the moment the toxin entered Hide's bloodstream, his passive immunities incinerated the foreign compound, rendering it as harmless as spring water.

Yet, the assassins were not fools. They didn't rely solely on their own weapons.

From the perimeter of the collapsing sinkhole, a pack of five colossal, razor-limbed cave stalkers caught the scent of human blood and charged the clearing, their jaws dripping with hunger.

Instead of drawing their weapons to eliminate the monsters, the two assassins flanking the clearing smoothly backed away. Using precise, low-altitude wind bursts, they deliberately cleared a path through the dust, herding the ravenous beasts directly into Hide's exposed blind spot.

"Tch!" Hide clicked his tongue, forced to break his defensive stance.

Abyssal Frost!

Hide slammed his boot into the ground, sending a jagged, freezing wave of corrupted black ice erupting across the dirt. The ice surged outward, catching two of the incoming assassins by their ankles and rapidly encasing their lower bodies in unbreakable, dark-crystal frost.

Simultaneously, Hide spun in a full, lethal circle. His dual blades cleaved through the throats of two lunging cave stalkers, coating his clothes in hot, black ichor as their heavy carcasses tumbled into the dirt.

He was fighting ten elite human killers and a horde of feral beasts simultaneously, his body dragging under the suffocating weight of exhaustion.

WHOOSH!

The air behind him displaced violently.

A massive, hulking assassin—nearly eight feet tall and clad in heavy, reinforced plate armor—burst through the curtain of falling ash. In his massive, gauntleted hands, he swung a colossal, two-handed warhammer forged from high-density black alloy, bringing the weapon down in a catastrophic, overhead crushing blow.

Hide crossed his dual obsidian blades above his head, bracing his footing to parry.

CRACK!

The impact was astronomical.

The shockwave cratered the earth beneath Hide's boots, driving him two inches into the dirt. Hide's physical frame held under the pressure, but his dual blades—weapons that had cut through hundreds of beasts, sliced through B-Rank constructs, and absorbed endless elemental clashes—could not withstand the crushing force.

SHATTER!

With an ear-splitting, metallic snap, both obsidian blades fractured down the middle, exploding into useless, jagged shards of dark steel that scattered across the ash.

Hide's eyes widened in alarm.

In that split-second of unarmed vulnerability, a shadow materialized directly behind his spine.

SHING!

A sharp, agonizing pain erupted between his shoulder blades.

Hide felt cold, mechanical steel violently punching through his flesh, locking directly onto his vertebrae with brutal, mechanical precision.

"GAH—!"

Hide coughed a heavy mouthful of dark blood onto the earth. Driven entirely by survival instinct, he kicked off the dirt with explosive force, leaping fifteen meters forward to tear himself out of the assassin's reach.

He skidded across the gravel on one knee, clutching his chest as he reached a trembling hand behind his neck.

Clamped firmly to the center of his upper spine was a heavy, circular metallic apparatus. Four barbed, needle-like titanium talons had driven deep into his tissue, latching onto his spinal column like the legs of an iron spider. The device ticked rhythmically, pulsing with a pale, sickening grey light.

Slow, measured footsteps crunched over the shattered stone.

The leader of the squad stepped out from the smoke, towering over Hide's kneeling figure, looking down at the young warrior with cold, absolute triumph.

"Do not bother struggling, boy," the leader declared, his cultured voice carrying an arrogant, mocking certainty. "That device is special. There are only two of its kind in the entire civilized world. Once successfully anchored to the spinal column, its micro-disruptors completely sever and suppress the flow of mana to the biological vessel."

The leader took another step forward, drawing a polished silver combat knife from his chest sheath. "Right now, you are nothing more than an ordinary, defenseless human."

Hide remained kneeling on the cold ash. His head hung low, his silver hair casting a dark shadow over his face.

Then, his shoulders began to tremble.

A low sound escaped his throat. At first, it sounded like a dying cough—but as the sound grew louder, the leader's brow furrowed beneath his mask.

It was a laugh. Hide was laughing.

He slowly lifted his head.

His ocean-blue eyes were burning. He raised his thumb, casually wiping the smear of dark blood from his chin, before pushing himself smoothly off the dirt, rising to his full height with effortless grace.

"A device that severs mana...?" Hide murmured, his voice was chilling, that made the hair on the back of the leader's neck stand on end.