Chapter 63: First Phantom
The ambient mana inside the gate was entirely different from the real world. The real world mostly had pure mana, spread over the area of the whole world.
While inside the gate, the mana was a mixture of pure and Dark Mana.
Dark mana was heavy, corrupted, and stained with the malice of the Calamity Beasts. To a normal human, or even a standard Exterminator, absorbing this mana directly was a death sentence. It was poison, guaranteed to cause severe mana toxicity, internal ruptures, and eventually death.
But Hide possessed a completely different foundation.
He possessed the S-Rank passive skill: Dark Abyssal Core. This allowed him to absorb and use Dark mana without harming his body.
Focusing inward, Hide located the dense, cold center of his being, just besides his heart and opened the floodgates.
Instantly, the corrupted mana in the surrounding swamp reacted. It didn’t just drift toward him; it rushed him. Swirls of dark, violet energy seeped out of the damp earth, the dead trees, and the corpses of the vipers, spiraling rapidly into Hide’s chest.
His body absorbed it like a starving man drinking water.
There was no pain. Instead, a wave of profound, chilling clarity washed over him. The Dark Abyssal Core spun furiously, refining the chaotic dungeon mana into pure, condensed dark mana, storing it deep within his system.
He stood there for a full minute, draining the immediate area dry, until a familiar warmth settled in his chest, signaling that his core had reached its absolute limit.
Hide opened his eyes. They glowed with a faint, dangerous dark violet light.
He activated the talent mentally.
The dark mana he had just absorbed violently surged outward. It didn’t form a neat circle or an elegant spell-matrix. It bled from his pores and rushed from his shadow, pouring out in the air as a thick, inky flood. It spread across, hissing and bubbling, forming a formless, swirling puddle of pure darkness roughly three meters wide.
The puddle churned randomly, thick tendrils of mist grasping at the air as if hungry for a shape.
Hide reached into his inventory. He didn’t even look at the F-Rank and E-Rank cores he had just purchased at the Trade Center. If he was going to build his foundation, he wasn’t going to start small.
And he possessed a perfect core to start.
The core of the Lesser Calamity Lord, the master of the Dark castle.
It was heavy, radiating a freezing pressure that made the air around it shimmer. Hide held it over the churning puddle of dark mana.
"Take it," he whispered, and threw the core.
The moment the C-Rank core touched the darkness, the puddle erupted.
The dark mana consumed it and the puddle expanded rapidly into a chaotic, formless pillar of pitch-black energy that reached the canopy of the trees. The wind whipped violently around it, bending the surrounding vegetation.
Hide watched the chaotic energy pull itself upward, waiting for it to stabilize.
But it didn’t. The dark mana lashed out randomly, chaotic and untethered.
’It needs a shape,’ Hide realized instantly.’ The core provides the power and the anchor, but the talent is generative. It builds what I tell it to build.’
He didn’t want a standard knight in armor. He didn’t want a generic humanoid foot soldier. He wanted something that matched the raw, overbearing violence of the Calamity Lord the core had come from, refined into a perfect killing instrument.
Hide closed his eyes, focusing his mind entirely on the swirling pillar. He grabbed hold of the connection through the Dark Liege talent, forcing his will into the chaotic mass.
’Tall,’ he commanded internally. ’Built for speed, but heavy enough to crush bone.’
The pillar of darkness shrieked, the mist compressing inward.
’Claws that can tear through steel.’
The dark mana folded over itself. The chaotic tendrils snapped into place, solidifying into hard, jagged edges.
Hide opened his eyes.
The violent wind died down as the swirling puddle vanished.
Standing before him was a towering figure, easily four feet tall. It was clad in seamless, pitch-black plating that absorbed the dim light of the swamp. Its limbs were long and powerfully corded with dark muscle. Its hands ended in wicked, jagged talons.
Instead of a face, it possessed a smooth, featureless visor that glowed with a faint, bruised-purple luminescence.
It looked less like soldier and more like an executioner.
The entity slowly lowered itself to one knee, bowing its featureless head toward Hide. The cold, absolute loyalty radiating from it through their mental link was staggering.
A holographic window flickered to life in front of Hide’s face.
--
[Phantom Soldier Formation Successful]
Please assign a name to the newly formed Phantom Soldier.
--
Hide looked down at the towering, kneeling beast.
He didn’t have to think about it for long. He wanted a name that represented the absolute ceiling of what he intended to reach.
"Zenith," Hide said aloud.
The entity’s blank visor flared with a bright violet pulse, accepting the designation.
The system window updated immediately, displaying the full stats of his creation.
--
Name: Zenith
Designation: First Phantom
Anchor Rank: C
Current Level: 1
Rank Evolution : 1/25
Skills:
[Dark Slash] (Active): Allows the user to release a strike of compressed Dark mana from a weapon.
[Phantom Step] (Active): Allows the user to briefly merge with the surrounding Mana, drastically increasing movement speed and evading physical attacks for 1.5 seconds.
--
Hide read through the stats twice, a fierce, genuine grin breaking across his face.
An entity anchored at C-Rank, possessing an armor-piercing attack and an evasion skill, fully obedient, and capable of leveling up independently. And this was only at Level 1.
"Zenith," Hide commanded.
The massive beast stood up instantly, its towering frame casting a long silhouette over the damp earth. It looked down at Hide, waiting.
Hide opened his inventory and pulled out the heavy, pristine Beginner’s Sword he had received from the system. He tossed it.
Zenith caught the heavy blade out of the air effortlessly. The dark mana from its gauntlet immediately bled into the steel, turning the polished silver blade pitch-black.
"Go into the swamp," Hide ordered, his voice cold and steady. "Kill everything you find. And bring me the Gatekeeper’s head."
Zenith didn’t speak, the towering beast simply blurred, merging with the dim light of the trees, and vanished into the underbrush without making a single sound.
P/S - If you like the Story so far, please help it by giving power stones and Golden tickets. There would be mass releases after milestones as said in Auxiliary Chapter. Thanks.