Chapter 131: No Witnesses
Chapter 131: No Witnesses
Andras walked until he stood only a few steps from Romeo.
The younger man was barely upright. Blood soaked the side of his uniform and ran down his arms in dark lines. His breathing was shallow and uneven. Even so, the hostility in his eyes had not faded. If anything, the knowledge that he had failed only made it sharper. Hatred still burned there—raw, unbroken, and fully directed at the person in front of him.
Andras’s gaze dropped slightly.
Romeo still held his sword.
The grip was weak. The tip trembled against the stone. But the weapon remained in his hand, as though some last fragment of will refused to release it.
Andras moved.
His blade flashed twice in clean, economical arcs.
Steel severed flesh and bone.
Romeo’s scream tore through the chamber as both arms fell away, the sword clattering uselessly to the floor with them. He staggered, blood pouring freely, and dropped to his knees. The sound that left his throat was raw and broken, echoing off the cracked stone walls.
Andras watched without expression.
Then he raised his free hand.
"Abyssal Shadow Dominion."
Darkness swallowed the world.
It was not the ordinary dark of a sealed room. It was absolute. The blue crystal light of the dungeon vanished. The Stonehorn Ravager’s corpse, the shattered stone, the distant walls—all of it ceased to exist. Only two figures remained inside a sphere of pure black.
Shadow rose from the floor like living ink. It twisted, condensed, and formed a high-backed throne of jagged darkness directly behind Andras. He turned without haste, sat, and rested one elbow on the armrest. His bloodied sword hung loosely in his other hand.
"Welcome," he said, voice calm and almost conversational, "to the domain of a god."
Romeo stared up at him, face pale, eyes wide with shock that cut through even the pain. Blood continued to run from the ruin of his shoulders, but for a moment the agony seemed secondary to disbelief.
"Your ability..." Romeo’s voice was hoarse, broken. "It’s related to Echo... Why do you have something like this?"
Andras leaned back against the throne of shadow, expression almost idle.
"I have many talents," he said casually.
Romeo’s breathing hitched.
Andras continued, voice calm and even. "We both wanted to kill each other the moment we entered this place. You waited for your chance. I waited for mine." His violet eyes lowered slightly. "But you are the one who is going to die."
He stood.
The throne of shadow dissolved behind him as he stepped forward. Romeo tried to move, to fall backward, to do anything at all. His body no longer obeyed him properly. Blood loss had stolen most of his strength. He could only watch as Andras raised the sword.
The blade fell in a single clean motion.
---
Romeo’s POV
The world narrowed to the edge of steel and the cold certainty of death.
There was pain. There was the wet heat of blood. There was the knowledge that his arms were gone and that the man standing over him had never once looked at him as a true threat after the final exchange began.
But there was no regret.
If he were given the choice again—knowing this ending, knowing the dungeon, knowing Andras Darkmoor’s eyes—he would still have taken the same path.
Because of her.
Seraphina.
The name alone was enough to pull the darkness back for a moment, replacing it with older light.
He had been seven the first time he truly saw her.
It was during a joint gathering between their families, one of those stiff formal affairs where children were expected to remain quiet and presentable. Most of the other boys had been loud, competing for attention. Romeo had stood near the edge of the hall, already aware that he disliked unnecessary noise.
Then Seraphina had entered with her parents.
She had not been smiling for the crowd. She had walked with that same composed posture she still carried years later, silver-blonde hair neat, expression calm, as though the room’s expectations had nothing to do with her. When a servant nearly dropped a tray near the stairs, she was the one who quietly steadied the edge with one hand before continuing, so smoothly that almost no one noticed.
Romeo had noticed.
Later that afternoon, the children were sent into the gardens. The others played. Seraphina sat alone on a stone bench with a book she had brought herself. Romeo, who had never found it easy to approach people without purpose, still found himself walking over.
"What are you reading?"
She had looked up, not startled, only assessing. Then she tilted the cover slightly so he could see—a treatise on basic mana theory—far too advanced for most children their age.
"You understand that?" he asked.
"Some of it," she answered. "The rest I will learn."
There was no arrogance in the words—only certainty.
From that day, something in him had turned toward her and never fully turned away.
It was only later—still a child, but old enough to understand the weight of noble arrangements—that he overheard the adults speaking in a quieter room adjacent to the main hall. His father’s voice. Another man’s. The conversation had not been meant for him, but the words reached him clearly enough.
Seraphina Valebright had already been promised.
Engaged.
To Andras Darkmoor of the Darkmoor family.
Romeo had stood frozen outside the doorway, small hands clenched at his sides, the name burning itself into his memory before he had ever seen the boy it belonged to. From that moment, Andras Darkmoor was not a stranger. He was the obstacle already placed between Romeo and the future he had only just begun to imagine.
As the years passed, that quiet hatred settled deeper. He watched Seraphina’s talent bloom, watched her composure harden into something rarer than beauty, watched other families measure her as a future prize. The more exceptional she became, the more fiercely he wanted to stand at her side—not as a background figure, but as someone who could overturn what had already been decided.
Andras Darkmoor had been the enemy long before they ever met at the academy.
Whether through proximity, through the way Seraphina’s attention eventually lingered, or through the quiet disruption of the path Romeo had imagined for years, the white-haired student had only confirmed what Romeo already believed. In the academy there were limits to what could be done. In the dungeon, there had been none.
So he had taken the chance.
Even now, with death descending, he would not call the choice wrong.
The sword completed its arc.
---
Romeo’s head fell.
It struck the shadowed floor with a dull finality. His body collapsed a moment later. Blood pooled darkly against the black surface of the domain, then lost meaning as Andras dismissed the technique.
Abyssal Shadow Dominion receded like a tide pulling back from shore. The dungeon chamber returned—the blue crystals, the cracked stone, the massive corpse of the Stonehorn Ravager, and the headless body of Romeo Ravenhart.
Silence settled again, heavier than before.
Andras stood over what remained of his classmate for a moment, then activated the system.
"Devour."
[Ding!]
[Target detected.]
[Target: Romeo Ravenhart.]
[Beginning Talent Devouring...]
A short pause.
[Ding!]
[Devouring Complete.]
[Host has acquired Talent — Mana Compression (B+ Rank).]
Andras studied the notification without visible reaction. Mana Compression. A practical talent. The ability to densify mana before release would strengthen both his limited spellwork and the force behind techniques that relied on concentrated energy. Combined with Echo Resonance and his existing close-combat foundation, it was a meaningful gain.
He dismissed the interface.
Two talents taken inside the dungeon. Earthshatter from the boss. Mana Compression from Romeo. The place that should not have existed had already proven more useful than inconvenient.
Andras cleaned his blade with a brief motion and turned his attention to the rest of the chamber.
The blue crystal light along the walls flickered more unsteadily than before, as though the dungeon’s structure had weakened with the death of its guardian. The heavy pressure that had filled the room when they first entered was beginning to thin.
He extended Echo Resonance outward.
Faint vibrations moved through the stone—disordered now, no longer the purposeful flow of a dungeon feeding its protector. Cracks continued to spread slowly along the walls. On the far side of the chamber, the air shimmered faintly.
Andras walked toward it.
As he approached, the shimmer intensified. Space distorted, much as it had in the training hall when the portal first appeared—only this time the pull was outward rather than inward. A rough, unstable opening formed against the far wall, edges wavering with residual mana.
An exit.
Andras stopped in front of it and looked back once at the chamber.
Romeo’s headless body.
The Ravager’s corpse.
Blood and shattered stone.
No witnesses to the killing. No immediate explanation required. When he returned, he could control the narrative as needed. Romeo had been pulled into the dungeon with him. Romeo had not come back. In a place filled with monsters and structural collapse, that required little embellishment.
Andras stepped through the opening.
---
Light and sound returned in a rush.
Andras’s boots struck the solid floor. The air changed—cleaner, cooler, free of the dungeon’s metallic cold. For a moment, his vision swam as the transition completed. Then the training hall of Ambrose Academy resolved around him.
Shouts erupted at once.
"Andras!"
"He’s back!"
"Professor—!"
Students kept at a distance surged with noise and movement. Seraphina was among the first to push forward, silver-blonde hair disordered from tension she had clearly not been able to suppress. Aurelia stood a short distance behind her, composed but visibly attentive. Valeria Draven was already moving toward him, expression sharp, wooden training sword still in hand as though she had never set it down.
Andras remained still and let them come.
Valeria reached him first. Her eyes swept over him in a rapid, professional assessment—blood on his clothes, cuts on his sleeve, the state of his sword, the fact that he was standing.
"Report," she said. "What happened?"