Chapter 163: Total party wipe out!
Gulp.
Leo swallowed hard, but his throat had gone completely dry.
His eyes were shaking with genuine, unadulterated terror and they stayed fixed on the glowing blood-red letters floating in the pitch darkness above the creature’s head.
[ Celibate Monk ]
[ Rank: A+ ]
"T-This..."
Leo’s mouth twitched, his confidence crumbling faster than cheap wet cardboard.
Sure, he had wanted this!
He had desperately wanted a real A-Rank monster!
A glorious, shonen-style opportunity to prove to everyone, especially to his beloved Sera-chan, that he had finally transcended his limits!
After breaking through to Rank C, a small, arrogant part of his soul had genuinely felt invincible.
Like he was the chosen protagonist of this entire universe!
Now? That feeling had vanished so completely it felt like a hallucination.
Leo might be dramatic, but he wasn’t completely brain-dead.
He knew the difference between heroics and suicidal stupidity... and right now, standing ten inches away from an A-Plus monstrosity, he was crossing that line at lightspeed!
Back at the Hunter Academy’s top-tier training facilities, Leo had sparred against Rank-A instructors before.
He had even exchanged a few flashy moves with visiting Rank-S heroes!
...But those were official training exercises!
The instructors held back ninety-nine percent of their power!
They stopped their blades a millimeter from his throat!
If he made a mistake, an high-level S-rank healer was standing by on standby with mid-grade potion flasks!
There were magic barriers!
Teachers watching!
Safety protocols!
Nobody in those clean, polished arenas was actually trying to turn him into a bloody paste!
This place was totally different.
There were no instructors here. No safety barriers. No emergency medical teams.
And definitely no kindly teacher waiting to yell at the boss for hitting a student too hard!
The thing sitting on the altar before him was a true, bloodthirsty, dungeon-born predator.
Something that had never heard the phrase "play fair" in its entire multi-hundred-year existence!
Leo slowly tightened his trembling grip on his sword.
’This guy is the real fucking deal!’
His heart hammered inside his ribs like a panicked drum.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The Celibate Monk remained completely still.
Its old, gaunt body looked deceptively frail. Grey, papery skin. Long, unnaturally lanky arms.
A smooth, hairless bald head, and a tattered, blood-stained orange robe.
...Leo didn’t buy that peaceful bullshit for even a single microsecond!
’That thing can kill me with its pinky finger!’
Cold sweat poured down his neck, soaking his collar.
’I need to back up—I need to retreat right now—!’
He took one tiny, microscopic half-step backward.
The monk’s eyes snapped at him.
Leo froze dead in his tracks.
Red eyes. Cold. Empty. Void of all human emotion.
The monk slowly raised its grey, skeletal hand. Leo’s pupils shrank to the size of needle tips.
’HERE IT COMES—!’
Zzzzt!
The monk simply... vanished!
Leo didn’t even see it move!
The creature literally bypassed the laws of physics, instantly materializing right in front of Leo’s chest!
Its heavy, grey fist was already planted squarely against his sternum!
"...Huh?"
BOOOOOOM—!
The punch detonated like a high-explosive artillery shell!
"UGHHH—?!"
Leo transformed into a literal human cannonball!
The air in the chamber ruptured with a sonic shockwave as he was blasted backward!
He flew straight past Kaito! Past Hina!
His hair blew violently backward from the absurd wind pressure generated by his own body being launched through the air!
Neither Kaito nor Hina had even perceived the monk’s physical motion!
They only saw Leo, who was standing in front of them a microsecond ago, suddenly vanish into thin air!
Then—
CRAAAAAACK!
Leo’s back smashed straight into the far cathedral wall over fifty meters away!
The ancient, reinforced stone wall violently shook, massive spiderweb-like cracks expanding across the entire surface!
Dust and shattered stone fragments rained down in a heavy cloud.
Slowly... pathetic, like a wet piece of garbage sliding down a window... Leo’s limp body slid down the cracked stone.
Thud.
He hit the cold dirt floor, unmoving.
"..."
Total silence. No movement. No groaning.
The entire chamber went dead quiet, save for the settling dust.
Kaito’s eyes widened into absolute, horror-filled circles. Hina stood frozen, her mouth slightly agape, her Ghost Eyes flickering wildly.
Neither of them could process the sheer, absurd reality of what had just occurred.
Leo... the academy’s golden boy... the prodigy who had just broken his mana limit... the man who had literally spent the last ten minutes loudly bragging about protecting everyone...
Had been punched once.
And was now lying in the corner looking like a discarded sack of flour!
Kaito’s lips twitched violently, his voice barely a breath.
"...L-Leo...?"
No response.
Hina’s face drained of every drop of color, turning as white as a ghost.
"LEO-KUN!"
Still nothing!
On the altar, the Celibate Monk calmly lowered its grey fist.
Its expression hadn’t changed by a single degree.
It looked over at the unconscious, broken body of the Rank-C hunter as if it had done nothing more than casually swat away a mildly annoying housefly.
Kaito’s hands trembled as he gripped his flaming sword, cold sweat practically pouring down his forehead.
"...That... that was literally a single basic attack..."
Hina’s Ghost Eyes shook in absolute, sheer panic.
She stared at the monk, then at the motionless Leo, then back to the monk.
Her voice shrank into a pathetic, terrified whisper.
"...H-How the hell are we supposed to fight a monster like that...?"
Slowly, the Celibate Monk stood up to its full, towering height. Its ancient, skeletal joints cracked with a terrifying sound.
Crack.
Crack.
It raised its bald head, the fiery crimson glow in its hollow eye sockets flaring with immense, overwhelming spiritual pressure.
And for the very first time... a wide, grotesque, bone-chilling grin stretched across its ancient, withered face, revealing rows of sharp, blackened teeth.
"...The path to true enlightenment..."
The entire A-Rank chamber violently trembled, stone dust falling from the ceiling like snow as its oppressive aura filled every corner of the room.
"...begins with absolute, unyielding suffering!"
...
"Hina-chan, spread out!"
Kaito barked, his voice straining under the immense, suffocating pressure radiating from the boss.
Hina gave a quick, sharp nod and instantly bolted in the opposite direction!
Catching the monster off-guard from two angles was their absolute only remaining strategy.
if Leo’s full-power Rank-C mana punch hadn’t budged the damn thing by a single millimeter, that didn’t mean they were just going to lie down and meekly accept their deaths!
They were hunters, dammit! Protagonists of their own stories!
...And yet, less than ten glorious seconds later, both Kaito and Hina were lying flat on the cold, blood-stained stone floor.
Cough!
A thick spray of crimson blood spat out from Kaito’s mouth as he gasped desperately for air, his enchanted flaming sword shattered into useless, dull metallic fragments beside him.
Opposite him, Hina was crumpled pathetically against the base of a stone pillar, clutching her cracked ribs as her Ghost Eyes flickered out like cheap, broken lightbulbs.
They hadn’t even seen it coming!
The sheer speed and pure, unfiltered physical stats of an A-Plus monstrosity were simply on a completely different dimensional plane!
It wasn’t a tactical engagement at all! It was a total, unmitigated party wipe in under ten seconds flat!
The Celibate Monk stood towering above their battered, broken bodies.
Throwing its bald head back and laughing out loud with a booming, echoing roar that shook the very foundations of the cathedral!
"HA HA HA HA! FOOLISH MORTALS!" T
"Zero spiritual conviction! Zero martial discipline!"
"You are nothing more than a pathetic, worthless bunch of horny teenagers playing dress-up in a dungeon!"
Hina gasped...
"Kaizen kun..."
....
Somewhere else in the dark, secluded corridor of the dungeon.
Kaizen’s entire body trembled violently as he unloaded a heavy, third load of his baby batter deep into Sera’s battered virgin pussy with absolute, chaotic happiness.
Then, slowly, he began to pull out.
Plop!
His heavy, thick length came sliding out with a loud, slick, incredibly wet pop, dripping with her sweet juices and virgin blood.
Sera lay there beneath him, completely melted, her eyes half-lidded, breathing heavily in a state of pure, brain-fried ecstasy.
...But right in that moment, Kaizen suddenly froze.
A sudden, strange chill swept over his chest.
He felt an unmistakable, bad feeling deep in his heart.
A sudden, ominous premonition that something was going horribly wrong nearby.
’Wait a minute! Is this...?’
Feeling genuinely uneasy, Kaizen narrowed his eyes and instantly activated his own Ghost Eyes.
BZZZZT!
His vision pierced through hundreds of meters of solid stone and dark cavernous pathways, soaring directly toward the deep interior of the dungeon.
His spectral sight breached the massive, broken stone doors of the final boss chamber.
The moment his vision crossed into the room, his eyes widened in sheer disbelief!
There, lying motionless on the cold, blood-stained stone floor, were three battered, broken bodies—Leo, Kaito, and Hina!
A complete and total party wipe!
And standing right in the middle of the dark cathedral was the towering, ancient figure of the A-Plus Rank boss, its bald head thrown back as it roared with laughter.
...But then, all of a sudden, the monk stopped laughing mid-roar.
The monster slowly turned its head, its crimson eyes locking directly onto the invisible, floating Ghost Eyes that were spying on it from across the dungeon!
A slow, utterly evil, bone-chilling smile stretched across the Celibate Monk’s withered face.
It slowly raised its skeletal hand, extending a long, grey finger... and pointed directly at Kaizen.