Chapter 35 -— 35 The Thirty-seconds Wall.
Chapter— 35 The Thirty-seconds Wall.
GLING!
[ SYSTEM COUNTDOWN: 00:29.82]
[ MID-STAGE ASCENSION IN PROGRESS—VOID MANA RESTRUCTURE ACTIVE]
[WARNING: PHYSICAL MOVEMENT SEVERELY RESTRICTED]
Kaelen stood paralyzed at the eye of a waking nightmare.
Around him, a dense, swirling pillar of pitch-black and violet energy roared upward like a localized hurricane, chewing through the ancient stone vaulted ceiling and showering the marble floor in glowing white ash. Inside his chest, his meridians felt as if they were being forcibly expanded by a white-hot liquid steel.
The old, fragile pathways built during his days as a broken E-RANK were being shattered atom by atom, replaced by thick, resilient conduits forged to channel high-density Void energy.
Every millisecond was pure agony. His muscles locked. His teeth ground together so hard his gums bled. He was a stationary target in a room filled with lethal predators. Outside that violet column, time shattered into a whirlwind of visceral violence.
"Kaelen!" Lyra screamed over the howling, deafening wind of the cosmic vortex.
"HOLD THE LINE!" Tsubaki’s voice barked back—not a suggestion, but an absolute, unyielding command forged in blood and iron.
"KILL THEM ALL! LEAVE NO ASHES!"
Malakor roared.
The disgraced Blood Magie didn’t bother taking a single step. His face twisted into a demonic mask of fury as he smashed his bare, rune-scarred palms directly into the stone floor.
THOOM!
The entire subterranean vault violently shuddered. A wave of boiling, crimson blood spikes erupted from the marble tiles, bursting upward like a row of giant, jagged jaws.
The sheer, suffocating pressure of Malakor’s A-Rank aura blew back the heavy dust and shattered every remaining enchanted glass display case lining the archive walls, showering the room in a deadly hail of razor-sharp shards.
Lyra sprinted directly into the path of the oncoming death wave. She didn’t retreat, nor did she hesitate for a fraction of a second. She dropped low, her leather combat boots digging two deep, smoking grooves into the ancient stone floor.
He left hand snapped back to stabilize her stance before she drove her rapier forward in a blinding, desperate triple-thrust combination.
[ SKILL: DIVINE SANCTUARY—TRIPLE RAY OF REDEMPTION ]
FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
Three blinding beams of holy silver light shot from the tip of her rapier, tearing through the gloom and colliding head-on with the front line of roaring blood spikes.
BOOM!
The impact detonated with the terrifying force of a siege cannon inside a closed room. Bloodfire, shattered stone, and holy steam blasted outward in a scalding, blinding fog.
The raw kinetic weight of Malakor’s magic threw Lyra backward three full feet.
Her boots skidded wildly against the slick marble, her breath hitching as her ribs creaked under the shockwave.
The sleeves of her leather armor scorched and blackened instantly, yet her golden eyes burned with absolute, unyielding ferocity.
She rebalanced her weight instantly, lunging forward again to block a second stray spike that threatened to pierce Kaelen’s stationary knee.
"He needs twenty-five seconds!" Lyra choked out, hot blood trickling down the corner of her lip as she deflected the jagged crimson point.
The violent vibration in her sword arm nearly shook her blade free from her numb fingers.
"Tsubaki... we can’t let them breach!"
CLING!
[ SYSTEM COUNTDOWN:- 00:22.15]
Meanwhile, the pitch-black shadows behind the steam split wide open.
The Blood Shadow Assassin didn’t bother with chants or posturing. Moving with terrifying stealth, he blurred into four distinct crimson-and-black illusions. His twin curved daggers hummed a sickening, high-pitched death whistle as he circled around the left flank—aiming directly for Kaelen’s exposed, glowing throat.
"Shadow-Stepping rat," Tsubaki growled, his voice dropping into an icy register.
Tsubaki’s dark eyes turned entirely black. He didn’t waste time trying to discern which copy was real with his eyes.
He planted his back foot firmly into the cracked floor, inverted his grip on his dark katana, and slammed the steel blade back into its wooden scabbard with a crisp, echoing
CLICK.
[SECRET ART: -DEVOURING MOON—BLIND DRAW]
SWISH!
A horizontal crescent of pure pitch-black sword intent expanded outward in a three-hundred-sixty-degree arc.
The blade moved faster than the human eye could process—a razor-thin line of localized vacuum that sheared three of the incoming illusions clean in half like cut parchment.
The real assassin gasped in shock as he was violently ripped out of stealth ten feet away, his chest armor split open in a long, shallow red line.
Before the killer could reset his balance, Tsubaki closed the distance in a single, terrifying burst of speed. His boot kicked the assassin’s left knee inward with a sickening CRACK, followed immediately by a brutal elbow strike delivered straight to the killer’s throat.
The assassin stumbled backward, coughing a mouthful of dark blood, but his curved daggers spun in his palms like deadly propellers. He wove a lethal mesh of poison and blood magic that forced Tsubaki back onto the defensive. Blades clashed six times in less than two seconds...
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
—sparks flying in every direction, blindingly illuminating their cold, sweat-slicked faces in the dark vault.
[SYSTEM COUNTDOWN: 00:14.05]
"Amateurs," the red-eyed player spoke from the back of the chamber.
He hadn’t moved an inch from his position near the rear archway.
His hands remained casually tucked inside his long, dark grey coat. Yet, beneath his smooth, blank white mask, his glowing crimson eyes shifted coolly toward Lyra.
With a light, almost dismissive flick of his right index finger, a microscopic red thread of compressed spatial energy shot across the room.
It was silent. It carried no grand aura, no loud boom.
Lyra’s battle instincts screamed in pure terror. She spun her rapier around to block, channeling every single drop of her remaining holy mana into a concentrated shield on her blade’s guard.
PING!
The crimson thread struck the exact center of her rapier.
The high-grade enchanted steel didn’t just bend—it shattered into five jagged shards. The kinetic force picked Lyra up off her feet and slammed her hard against the stone wall of the vault.
She hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud, her rapier reduced to a broken hilt, her lungs gasping for air as her holy aura flickered out like a dying candle in a storm.
"Lyra!" Tsubaki yelled, turning his head for a fraction of a millisecond.
That microscopic distraction was all the assassin needed. The assassin’s curved dagger swept upward, slicing deep through Tsubaki’s left forearm. Blood sprayed across the marble tiles, but Tsubaki didn’t scream; he gritted his teeth, pivoted on his heel, and drove the heavy butt of his katana’s pommel violently into the assassin’s jaw, knocking the killer back five paces with a broken jawline.
Malakor stepped forward, his laughter echoing maniacally through the sealed vault as he raised both hands overhead.
A massive, basketball-sized orb of roaring, compressed blood-fire coalesced above his palms, radiating enough heat to melt stone.
"It’s over!" Malakor roared, his eyes wild with unholy glee as he aimed the roaring orb directly at Kaelen’s rigid, glowing figure. "Die along with your useless Void!"
[SYSTEM COUNTDOWN: -00:03.00]
[-00:02.00]
[-00:01.00]
[-ASCENSION COMPLETE—VOID ARCHITECT (MID-STAGE)]
[-ALL MERIDIANS FULLY RESTORED & EXPANDED]
[NEW PASSIVE UNLOCKED: SPATIAL DOMAIN (10M)]
The roaring pillar of violet energy surrounding Kaelen didn’t fade away.
It imploded.
Every speck of violet light, every strand of cosmic mana, was instantly sucked back into Kaelen’s body in a single, silent millisecond.
Malakor hurled the giant blood-fire orb downward with all his strength. "DIE!"
Kaelen’s eyes snapped open.
They were no longer just dark violet—deep, cosmic starlight spun like tiny, living galaxies inside his pupils.
He didn’t draw a blade. He didn’t raise a shield.
Kaelen simply took a single, calm step forward and thrust his bare right hand directly toward the incoming sphere of roaring death.
[SKILL: VOID ANNIHILATION—ABSOLUTE COLLAPSE]
SHOOOOOOMA!
Ten-meter ring of pitch-black spatial distortion expanded outward from Kaelen’s feet, blanketing the surrounding stone floor.
The exact millisecond Malakor’s massive blood-fire orb entered the ten-meter domain, the roaring magic didn’t explode—it completely lost its underlying structural stability.
The compressed blood-mana was unraveled atom by atom, shredded into raw ambient particles, and sucked directly into a vacuum tear mid-air, disappearing into nothingness like water down a drain.
The residual shockwave blew the surrounding dust and thick blood mist clean out of the vault.
Malakor’s wild laughter froze in his throat. His arms remained outstretched mid-air, his jaw hanging open as he stared at his empty, trembling hands in absolute, horrified disbelief.
"My... my Blood Core spell... vanished?"
Kaelen didn’t give him a single second to comprehend.
In a fraction of a millisecond, Kaelen vanished from his spot. He didn’t run; he literally folded the physical space between himself and Malakor, appearing directly in front of the giant Blood Mage like a phantom.
"Your magic is crude," Kaelen whispered, his voice carrying a double-layered, cosmic echo that vibrated deep within the stone walls.
Kaelen’s hand snapped out like a striking viper, his fingers locking like a steel vice around Malakor’s thick throat.
The newly upgraded Void mana flooded out of Kaelen’s palm, instantly invading Malakor’s body and completely paralyzing his internal blood pathways.
The terrifying A-Rank boss was lifted clean off the ground by one arm, his legs kicking uselessly in the air, his eyes bulging in pure, primal terror as he felt his entire life force being systematically unraveled.
Kaelen shifted his cosmic gaze away from the gasping Malakor and turned his head slowly toward the back of the vault.
Ten paces away, the Red-Eyed Player stood perfectly still behind his white mask. For the very first time since the heist began, the mysterious player took a slow, cautious step backward, his glowing crimson eyes narrowing in calculation.
Kaelen’s grip tightened around Malakor’s neck, his dark eyes locking onto the masked intruder with absolute coldness.
"Now," Kaelen said softly, his voice ringing through the quiet vault like a death sentence. "Let’s talk about who really owns this vault."