Chapter 52: The Master of Dungeon
"Lovely thing, isn’t it?"
The voice came from behind the throne of skin and bone, smooth and dripping with aristocratic arrogance.
Both boys looked up sharply.
A figure stepped out from the heavy shadows behind the dais. It was a skeleton, but not like the mindless thralls wandering the courtyard outside.
It was tall—impossibly tall, its limbs elongated and its spine perfectly straight. The bones were immaculate, a dark, polished ivory devoid of any rot or flesh. It wore the tattered remnants of a dark, high-collared coat, its fabric reduced to shreds by time.
Deep, violet light burned steadily within its eye sockets.
It walked around to the front of the throne, ran one long, bony finger over the armrest made of fused skulls, and then gracefully lowered itself into the seat. It crossed one long leg over the other, resting its chin on its knuckles, looking down at them like a king observing his court jesters.
Fuu grabbed Hide’s arm, his entire body trembling violently. "Hide... what the fuck is that?"
"A leech," Hide replied, his voice completely flat.
Hide’s mind worked quickly. Beasts didn’t speak. Undead too and neither did mutants. They were mindless things driven by the instinct to kill. Only one classification of monster possessed the intelligence and the anatomy to hold a conversation.
"Are you a Calamity Lord?" Hide asked, his voice echoing loudly in the quiet hall.
The skeleton tilted its skull slightly, the violet lights in its sockets narrowing with amusement.
"Of course, boy," it said, its smooth voice carrying a hint of condescension. "I am a Calamity Lord. A lesser Calamity Lord, perhaps, given the constraints of this miserable spot dungeon, but yes. I am the master of this domain."
Hide stared at it for a long, silent moment.
Then, a low chuckle escaped his throat.
Fuu looked at Hide as if he had lost his mind. "Hide... what are you laughing at?"
Hide’s chuckle grew louder, turning into a dark, genuine laugh. A wide, terrifying grin spread across his face, not wide with joy, but with something harsher.
Something that had wanted this answer for a very long time.
The Abyssal Flame roared into life in his right hand.
Orange fire twisted upward from his palm, lighting his face from below. At the same instant, the Abyssal Scale Carapace surged over his body. The black scales locked over his skin, forming the heavy, metallic armor.
The helm slid over his face, leaving only the glowing blue slits of his eyes, and the jagged, eight-pointed crown violently pushed out from his forehead.
The Calamity Lord on the throne leaned forward slightly, resting its hands on its knees. "Oh? You wish to play?"
Hide took a slow, heavy step toward the stairs, the flagstones beneath his boots cracking under the pressure.
"I have always wanted to ask you beasts a question," Hide said, his voice vibrating through the metal helm, sounding demonic and heavy. "Do you feel? Do you bastards feel pain?"
The skeleton let out a dry, echoing laugh. "Pain? You speak to me of pain, little human? You, whose kind bleeds and breaks so easily? You are nothing but meat and water. You are born to be consumed."
"All the ones I killed outside couldn’t speak," Hide snarled, his blue eyes glowing with madness. "They just died like the pathetic, mindless garbage they were. But you... you can speak. Which means you have a mind. Which means maybe you know what it feels like to be ripped apart."
"Such vulgarity from a child," the Calamity Lord sneered, the violet light in its eyes flaring. "I will teach you your place."
Hide didn’t wait for another word.
He thrust his right hand forward, launching a massive, concentrated fireball of Abyssal Flame straight at the throne. The orange sphere tore across the hall, leaving a trail of intense heat in its wake, aimed directly at the skeleton’s skull.
The Calamity Lord didn’t move to dodge. It didn’t even raise a hand.
Instead, the thick, black mist that had filled the corridors suddenly poured out from beneath the skeleton’s ribcage. The dark mana surged forward, wrapping around Hide’s fireball like a massive, unnatural mouth.
The mist didn’t just extinguish the flame. It consumed it.
Hide watched as the black mist swallowed his Abyssal Flame entirely, rotating rapidly in the air before violently spitting it back out. But it wasn’t orange anymore. The fireball that shot back toward Hide was pitch-black, crackling with heavy, corrupted mana.
It moved twice as fast as the original attack.
Hide crossed his arms over his chest, bracing himself. The black fireball slammed into his Carapace.
The explosion was deafening. The impact threw Hide backward, his boots skidding across the stone floor for several meters. He dropped to one knee, groaning as a sharp, intense burning sensation spread across his forearms. The black flames clung to his scales, eating away at the mana of his armor.
[Adaptive Override — Analysis Active]
Damage Type: Dark Mana Replication
Source: C-Rank Calamity Beast - The master of dead
Severity: High — Replicates and corrupts incoming magical attacks
System query: Initiate adaptation sequence for this damage type?
[Awaiting command.]
Hide gritted his teeth, his eyes fixed on the system window.
"Evolve," he commanded.
[Adapting — 15%]
[Adapting — 50%]
He didn’t wait for the adaptation to finish. Shaking the black flames off his arms, he exploded forward, crossing the distance to the throne with the enhanced speed of his Level 8 body.
"Magic didn’t work, so you try your fists?" the Calamity Lord mocked, standing up from its throne. "How primitive."
Hide leaped up the steps, pulling his right arm back. He drove a devastating punch straight toward the Calamity Lord’s chest, aiming to shatter its pristine ribs.
The skeleton moved with blinding speed. It raised one bony arm, the dark mist swirling around its wrist, and casually parried the strike. Hide’s fist collided with the skeleton’s forearm, the impact ringing out like a hammer hitting a church bell, but the bone didn’t even crack.
Hide instantly pivoted, throwing a heavy left hook toward the creature’s skull.
The Calamity Lord ducked under the swing with fluid grace, stepping inside Hide’s guard. Before Hide could pull back, the skeleton drove its knee directly into his stomach.
The force of the blow was staggering.
Hide felt the air violently leave his lungs as the impact transferred straight through the Carapace. He was launched backward, flying through the air and crashing heavily onto the stone floor near the entrance of the hall. He rolled twice before coming to a halt, gasping for breath.
[Abyssal Scale Carapace — Active]
Damage absorbed: 27%
Pain suppression: 50%
"Hide!" Fuu screamed, pressing himself against the wall.
Hide pushed himself up, coughing, his stomach burning from the strike. The physical strength of the Calamity Lord was completely on a different level than the Rulers outside.
"Is that all the rage you possess, boy?" the Calamity Lord asked, standing at the top of the dais. It looked down at Hide with absolute disdain. "You spoke so boldly of pain, yet you are the one bleeding."
"I’m just getting started," Hide growled.
"No," the Calamity Lord said softly, its violet eyes glowing brighter. "You are finished. I find this physical exertion entirely beneath me. Allow my court to entertain you."
The skeleton raised both of its arms into the air.
The dark mist poured out from its body, cascading down the steps of the dais and pooling around the rusted lances driven into the floor.
The human heads impaled on the spikes began to twitch.
Hide watched in horror as the dark mana sank into the stone floor. The flagstones around the base of the lances began to crack and splinter. Pale, rotting hands burst from the ground, clawing at the stone.
The Calamity Lord had not just decorated its room with heads. It had buried the bodies beneath them.
Six figures dragged themselves out of the shattered floor. They were human, but their bodies were bloated and twisted by the dark mana. They wore the torn, rusted armor of official Exterminators. They pulled themselves up, their severed heads somehow reattaching to their rotted necks as they stood.
They turned their dead, milky eyes toward Hide, drawing rusted swords and broken weapons from their sides.
The Calamity Lord sat back down on its throne of bones.
"Kill him," it commanded.
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