I Was Summoned to Die, so I’m Climbing the Pantheon for Revenge!

Location: Frontierra Nation - Cyanis Hollows Dungeon, Floor 50

Loop 3: The Gathering Dread

The colossal bronze doors slammed shut. The artificial morning sun bathed the emerald canopy in a mocking, idyllic glow.

Saintess Evelyn immediately dropped to her knees, her holy staff clattering against the stone threshold. Her hands flew to her own throat, her beautiful face contorted in an expression of absolute, visceral horror. She opened her mouth, her vocal cords straining to scream the terrifying truth—I died! My head was torn from my shoulders!—but the dungeon’s absolute laws clamped down on her like an iron vise. Not a single sound emerged. She gagged on empty air, her eyes wide with panic.

Before she could spiral into complete hysteria, two figures dropped into the dirt beside her. Shiori gripped Evelyn’s left shoulder, while Gareth ‘Ironhide’ gripped her right.

Shiori’s eyes, burning with a hollow, exhausted intensity, locked onto the Saintess. Shiori slowly pointed to her own throat, then to Gareth's, and shook her head. We know. We remember. You cannot speak of it.

Evelyn looked at the scarred veteran vanguard and the otherworldly Summoned Hero. In their eyes, she saw the undeniable, crushing despair of multiple deaths. The Saintess’s breath hitched, but she slowly nodded, tears of sheer terror spilling over her cheeks as she believed them.

"Lady Shiori? Lord Gareth? Is everything alright?" Elara asked, her elven ears twitching as she stepped forward. Shota, gripping his daggers tightly, also looked at them with deep concern. "What’s wrong? Why is the Saintess crying?"

Shiori stood up, forcing her trembling legs to lock into place. She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead. "We are... formulating a plan," Shiori lied smoothly, though her voice was noticeably strained. "The ambient mana here is highly irregular. When we have our formation set, I will explain. Give us a moment."

Shiori pulled Gareth and Evelyn into a tight, quiet huddle.

"Listen to me carefully," Shiori whispered, keeping her voice incredibly low so the others wouldn't hear. "The trauma of the deaths is degrading the dungeon's memory filter. Soon, the others will remember too. But we have a much larger problem. Every time we die, I feel my mana circuits—my very soul—fraying at the edges. This time loop is not infinite."

Gareth swallowed hard. "How many?"

"Based on the degradation rate... ten," Shiori theorized, her eyes darkening. "If we exceed ten loops, our astral bodies will shatter. We won't reset. We will experience true, permanent death. We have to figure this out now."

Loop 4: Desperation and Division

"New plan!" Shiori shouted to the bewildered party, drawing her broadsword. "This room is a massive spatial anomaly, but every room has an edge! A boundary wall! We cannot fight the boss head-on. We scatter. Run in different directions! Find the perimeter, find a weakness in the illusion, find an exit! Move!"

It was an act of pure desperation.

The party splintered, diving into the dense, sunlit woods like frightened prey. Shiori sprinted dead north, her boots tearing through the undergrowth, her breath burning in her lungs. She ran for what felt like miles, leaping over streams and tearing through thickets of pine. But the forest seemed infinitely expansive, generating new terrain the further she went.

Then, the sky bruised into a dark, twilit charcoal.

Plink.

No matter how far she had run, the crystalline note of the piano sounded as if it were right next to her ear. The Witch of Loneliness did not chase them. She didn't need to. She simply sat at the center of the world and played.

Plunk.

Somewhere in the east, Gareth’s massive life signature instantly vanished. A sickening thud echoed through the woods. Plink. In the west, Elara and Boran’s presences were snuffed out simultaneously.

One by one, the distant notes echoed, followed by the gruesome, unseen sounds of bodies crumpling into the grass, their heads neatly severed by the acoustic pressure. Shiori burst into a small, isolated clearing, completely alone, her chest heaving.

From the dark canopy above, the black obsidian piano slowly floated down.

The little girl in the tattered Victorian mourning dress sat perfectly still upon the velvet bench. Her dead, silver eyes locked onto Shiori.

"Why do you run, big sister?" the Witch whispered, her multi-layered voice devoid of malice, carrying only a profound, ancient sadness. "I only want you to listen."

"We don't belong here!" Shiori cried out, lowering her sword, trying to reason with the anomaly. "We don't want to hurt you! Just let us pass!"

The Witch tilted her pale head. Her delicate fingers brushed the keys. She didn't play a heavy chord. She simply pressed a single, impossibly soft, high-pitched note.

The sound bypassed Shiori's ears and vibrated directly inside the water of her brain. Shiori dropped her sword, clapping her hands over her head as an agonizing, impossible pressure built behind her eyes. She felt her brain literally expanding against her skull, her vision blurring into a sea of red. She let out a bloodcurdling scream—

Loop 5: The Unstable Resolution

The bronze doors slammed shut.

Shiori woke up screaming, her hands tearing at her own hair, her lungs burning as she collapsed into the grass.

"No! NO! Get it out of my head!" she shrieked, the phantom pain of her expanding brain driving her to the brink of madness.

Beside her, the sound of scraping metal drew her attention. Gareth had not dropped his shield. He had drawn his battleaxe. The veteran A-Rank adventurer’s eyes were completely dead. Without a word, he raised the heavy blade and pressed the razor-sharp edge directly against his own throat, fully intent on severing his own jugular before the music could start.

"Gareth, stop!" Evelyn shrieked, throwing her body weight against the massive man's arm, desperately pulling the axe away from his flesh. "The Goddess forbids it! Do not give in!"

A few feet away, Shota was completely catatonic. He had dropped his daggers and was hugging his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth, staring blankly into the forest. The barrier in his mind had broken. He remembered the deaths. The team was actively fracturing into pieces.

"Did you find an edge?" Shiori gasped, forcing herself up, gripping Gareth by the collar to snap him out of his suicidal trance. "Evelyn? Gareth? Did you find anything?!"

"Nothing!" Gareth choked out, dropping the axe. "It's endless! There is no wall! There is no exit! We're rats in a cage!"

Shiori looked at the broken party. Combat was a death sentence. Running was a death sentence. They needed a miracle. They needed empathy.

"Listen to me," Shiori commanded, her voice vibrating with a dangerous, unstable resolve. "We combine everything. We negotiate."

When the piano finally descended in the center of the forest thirty minutes later, the party did not attack. They stood in a tight formation, their weapons sheathed, their bodies trembling.

As the Witch of Loneliness raised her hands to play, Shiori stepped forward. Her eyes flared with intense magical energy. Using the absolute limits of her MP, Shiori cast a high-level [Phantom Mirage] spell.

Directly opposite the Witch, a shimmering, translucent illusion materialized. It was another piano, and sitting at the bench was the illusion of a young boy, dressed in a pristine white suit, smiling warmly.

The Witch froze. Her delicate fingers hovered millimeters above the ivory keys. For the first time, a spark of genuine curiosity broke through the dead, silver emptiness of her eyes. She stared at the phantom boy, entranced by the illusion of another soul.

"Will you..." the Witch whispered, her voice incredibly small, "will you play with me?"

Shiori took another step forward, her heart hammering against her ribs. "I will," she said softly, maintaining the illusion. "But not here. Not in this cage. Let us out of this forest. Let us pass this floor, and I swear to you, I will play with you anywhere you want. You won't be lonely anymore."

The Witch looked from the phantom boy to Shiori. The silence stretched for an agonizing eternity.

Then, the curiosity in the little girl's eyes died, replaced by a dark, abyssal storm of betrayal.

"You lie," the Witch said, her voice dropping an octave, shaking the very earth. "Everyone lies. They always leave."

The Witch slammed both hands down onto the keys. It wasn't the decapitating chord. It was a dense, suffocating, atonal cluster of notes.

Instantly, the entire party froze. Shiori’s lungs locked mid-breath. Gareth was paralyzed mid-step. The illusion shattered into useless motes of light. They weren't paused in time—they were fully conscious, their nervous systems completely hijacked and paralyzed.

The little girl slowly stood up from her bench. She floated down to the grass and began to walk among the frozen statues of the adventurers. She reached up, her freezing, porcelain fingers gently touching Shota’s cheek, then brushing Evelyn’s hair.

"I will keep you all," the Witch whispered, her voice echoing in their trapped minds. "Forever. You will never leave me. You will listen to my music for eternity."

The little girl returned to her bench. She began to play a slow, agonizingly beautiful lullaby.

The time loop did not reset.

Time continued to march forward. Hours bled into days. The party stood perfectly still in the forest. Their eyes dried out, burning with agony because they could not blink. Their stomachs cramped with extreme starvation, yet their HP refused to drop to zero. The magic sustained their suffering. They could not sleep. They could not speak. They could only stand there, trapped inside their own skulls, forced to listen to the endless, looping melody of the Witch’s sorrow.

It was a psychological torture far worse than death. It was the absolute cruelty of eternity.

Deep within the prison of her own body, Shiori’s mind was shattering. The darkness threatened to consume her entirely. But she gathered every single ounce of her Level 201 willpower. She focused all of her mana, all of her intent, into her paralyzed vocal cords. Blood began to leak from her tear ducts from the sheer physical strain.

Slowly, agonizingly, her lips parted a millimeter.

"Please," Shiori whispered.

The single, raspy word cut through the music like a thunderclap.

The Witch stopped playing. She slowly turned her head, looking at the paralyzed, bleeding, broken girl who had managed to defy her absolute control just to beg for mercy.

The little girl stared at Shiori for a long time. And then, a single, crystal-clear tear rolled down the Witch's pale porcelain cheek.

She turned back to the piano. She struck the D-sharp.

Loop 6: The Shattered Minds

The bronze doors slammed shut.

Shiori did not just scream this time. She convulsed. She thrashed in the grass, tearing at her own throat, her mind fractured by the subjective days of endless paralysis and starvation. It took her several minutes to realize she could blink, that she could breathe.

But as she slowly sat up, gasping for air, the ambient sounds of the party reached her ears.

She wasn't the only one screaming.

Gareth was weeping uncontrollably, burying his face in the dirt. Elara was hyperventilating, clawing at her elven ears. Boran was throwing up violently. Yua, Mei, Kazura, and Yoshi were clutching each other, sobbing in sheer, unadulterated terror.

The trauma of the 'Eternity Trap' had been too massive. It had completely shattered the dungeon's memory filter. Every single person in the room now remembered the time loops. They remembered their decapitations. They remembered the endless days of paralysis.

They had five loops left. Their minds were entirely broken. But amidst the horror, Shiori’s shaking hands clenched into fists.

She had seen the Witch cry.

There was a crack in the anomaly's armor. And Shiori was going to shatter it, or die trying.

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