Chapter 10: Hunting an Abomination [3]

A heavy, suffocating panic swept through the guards stationed at the prison entrance.

The soldier who had stepped forward to receive the liege froze in his tracks, his hands trembling against his iron spear shaft.

"L-Lord Baron..." the guard captain stammered, swallowing hard as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

"You... you wish to descend alone?"

To a common foot soldier, the young master’s command sounded like madness.

The creature caged beneath their boots was a 1st-Tier Abomination.

Every child across the Western Continent was taught the gruesome history of these monsters.

A century ago, when the first Apocalypse descended and the Abyssal Rifts tore open, dense waves of mana radiation flooded the atmosphere.

The ancient archives recorded that wild beasts, livestock, and even unawakened humans exposed to the raw, unrefined energy lost their sanity, mutating violently into bloodthirsty monstrosities.

Yet, as decades passed, humanity realized the early archives were incomplete.

While many abominations were indeed mutated beasts, the sudden appearance of mythical horrors like Shadow Serpents, Abyssal Griffins, Blood Devil Worms, Thunder Phoenixes, and Dragons proved that the Abyss held creatures far more complex.

Some were not just driven by feral hunger.

Some were intelligent, ancient, and terrifyingly calculated.

To organize the threat, humanity had codified Abominations into nine distinct tiers of destruction:

• 1st-Tier Abominations: Possessed physical capabilities equivalent to Superhumans, carrying brutal innate traits. A single 1st-Tier could breach wooden palisades, slaughter garrisons, and wipe out an entire frontier village in hours.

• 2nd-Tier Abominations: Massively increased density and size, capable of crushing fortified stone buildings and small keeps without resistance.

• 3rd-Tier Abominations: Devastating assault beasts capable of turning entire city streets and trading districts into rubble with relative ease.

• 4th-Tier Abominations: Behemoth-class horrors that could lay siege to fully walled cities, commanding lower-tier abominations like a coordinated army.

• 5th-Tier Abominations: Cataclysmic threats capable of laying waste to entire provinces, requiring multiple high-tier Rankers to subdue.

• 6th-Tier Abominations: Kingdom-level disasters—monsters whose mere presence could erase sovereign nations from the map.

• 7th-Tier to 9th-Tier Abominations: Continental apocalypses. Beings capable of sundering mountain ranges, parting oceans, and shattering landmasses.

Only a handful of 7th-Tier Abominations had ever been recorded since the descent of the first Apocalypse.

Not a single one had ever been slain; their whereabouts remained shrouded in the dark corners of the map, and no sane empire dared hunt them down.

Not to talk of 8th-tier Abominations and 9th-tier Abominations.

It’s rumored that the appearance of a 9th-tier Abominable horror will begin the extinction of the human race.

Even if a 1st-Tier Abomination sat at the very bottom of this terrifying food chain, it was still an absolute nightmare for ordinary men.

A single stray claw swipe could snap a mundane soldier’s spine or tear a Sword Apprentice knight in half.

The guards surrounding the underground prison looked at one another with pale, terrified faces.

They weren’t just afraid for the young master’s life—they were terrified for their own families.

In the Western Continent, the Darkstar Family’s wrath was absolute.

If a direct successor candidate died under their watch while they remained breathing, the elders of the main estate would not simply execute the guards on duty.

Their entire bloodlines, wives, and children would be purged to the ninth generation to answer for the failure.

That was the ruthless, unforgiving law of the Dragon Lords.

"My Lord, please reconsider!" the guard captain pleaded, dropping back onto his knees and pressing his forehead into the gravel.

"The beast is heavily wounded, but its abyssal mana remains volatile! If anything were to happen to your noble personage in the dark—"

"It’s fine," Craig cut him off smoothly.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t issue a grand speech.

Instead, Craig simply drew a deep, measured breath into his expanded lungs and unsealed the valve on his newborn core. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

BOOM!

A violent wave of pure, crimson mana detonated outward from Craig’s chest.

The air pressure inside the canyon plummeted instantly.

A miniature shockwave swept across the gravel, kicking up a ring of dust and forcing the horses to let out panicked whinnies.

The guards groaned in unison as an overwhelming weight slammed onto their shoulders, staggering them backward.

The mundane soldiers fell onto their hands and knees, gasping for air, while even the Superhuman knights felt their heartbeats stutter under the sheer, unrefined density of the mana radiating from the fifteen-year-old youth.

It wasn’t just raw power; it was the unknown, terrifying authority of the Divine Draconic Physique.

A Dragon’s Aura!

Their frightened eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing shock as they stared up at Craig.

A Seventh Young Master of the Darkstar Family had successfully awakened his mana core before setting foot inside the Temple of Dragons.

The first in history of the Darkstar Family.

The guard captain’s breath hitched in his throat.

He looked at Craig’s calm, unblinking face, then at the flowing crimson hair swaying gently in the mana storm.

The fear of the beast vanished, instantly replaced by a deep, instinctual terror of the young lord standing before him.

Without another word, the captain scrambled backward toward the heavy iron winch set into the stone wall.

His hands trembled violently as he grabbed the lever, his knuckles turning white as he unlocked the primary gear.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Heavy iron chains rattled violently against the pulley system.

The massive, rune-carved iron trapdoor set into the stone floor groaned as it was hauled upward, revealing a pitch-black, gaping abyss that led down into the earth.

A foul, icy draft rushed out from the darkness below, thick with the iron stench of dried blood and the rotting odor of abyssal mana.

Craig looked down into the dark gullet of the dungeon, his golden eyes narrowing as a faint, predatory glint ignited in their depths.

Behind him, Ser Hughway silently stepped forward, resting a hand on the pommel of his longsword, ready to follow his liege into the dark.

"Stay above, Hughway," Craig instructed, his tone leaving no room for argument as he stepped toward the open iron hatch.

"This prey is mine alone."

Without waiting for a response, Craig stepped off the edge, plunging down into the shadows of the subterranean vault.