"So this is your champion? This… knight who cannot even bleed with pride?"
He hurled Seraphveil like broken metal. The knight crashed hard, tumbling across the stone, dragging a long trail of dark ichor.
A deep silence fell.
Lutharax straightened, with arms folded. "He was strong," the beast said, mockingly. "But in the end, just another puppet."
I stayed quiet, my hands clenched.
Seraphveil didn't move at first. His wings trembled, folded in. His blades lay far from his hands.
Then… slowly, one foot pushed against the ground, and he stood.
Blood poured from his stomach, but his head lifted. His cracked helm stared directly at Lutharax.
Lutharax tilted his head. "Still standing?" he asked with a dry chuckle. "Foolish. You serve a weak monarch."
That… was when the change began.
Seraphveil didn't charge. He didn't swing.
He just… looked at me.
"My Sovereign…" his voice was low, controlled, but laced with something else.
"...May I kill him?"
His tone wasn't desperate. It wasn't even angry. It was reverent—sharp and cold like a knight kneeling before his king, asking not for permission… but for justice.
Lutharax blinked, then laughed.
"Kill me? You can barely—"
"Do it," I said.
And everything broke.
Seraphveil's shadow exploded beneath him, blacklight spiraling into the air. His eyes ignited, not with rage, but with judgment. His wings stretched wide, the wounds on his body vanishing in an instant as if erased by command.
Then he whispered,
"Ultimate Skill—Abyss Crown: End of False Gods."
The entire floor dropped into silence. Chains froze, and even Lutharax stepped back.
A symbol formed behind Seraphveil—an enormous crest glowing with abyssal glyphs. His blades reappeared in his hands, but they were different now—twice as long, etched with glowing black runes.
And then, in a blink, Seraphveil vanished.
The next moment—
BOOOOOOM!
A clean, straight cut, so fast and so heavy it split the dungeon in two lines of still air. Lutharax stood, frozen in place. His chains are unraveled. His armor are cracked. His eyes, those eight glowing orbs—dimmed at once.
"Wh…"
That was all he said before his body split.
Straight down the middle.
A silent, perfect death.
Lutharax collapsed with no roar, no rage—just silence. The mighty Twelve-Chained Terror, Calamity-class, fell into two lifeless halves that dissolved into void ash.
In the echoing stillness, Seraphveil dropped to one knee, both blades stabbed into the stone.
"Your will is done, My Sovereign."
I exhaled, softly. "Good job, Seraphveil."
From the stillness, the silence was broken by a slow ripple through the shadows at my feet.
Then, two figures rose from the dark.
Vorathos and Umbraezer emerged without being summoned, stepping onto the ruined floor of the 7th layer. Their faces, if they could be called such, held clear traces of disbelief.
They lowered themselves to one knee, heads bowed.
"Forgive us, my Liege," Vorathos said first, voice low but shaken. "We… appeared without your order. But…"
Umbraezer continued, his molten eyes wide.
"We had to see him. Closer. With our own eyes."
Both looked toward Seraphveil, who still knelt calmly beside the remains of Lutharax.
"Was that your full strength…?" Vorathos asked cautiously. "Or were you simply—testing him?"
Seraphveil slowly stood again, blades dissolving into shadowlight as he faced them.
"I could have destroyed him from the start."
His voice held no pride. Only truth.
"But I chose not to."
Umbraezer's head lifted slightly.
"Why?"
The Abyss-Winged Knight turned toward me. His four wings folded neatly behind him, blacklight trailing from his form like a cloak of living dusk.
"Because I needed to know."
"To know what?" Vorathos pressed.
Seraphveil's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Whether this floor—this entire dungeon layer—held enough power to threaten our master."
A pause followed, and he stepped forward once, boots echoing against broken stone.
"Now I understand it doesn't. There's no problem at all."
Umbraezer leaned back slightly. Vorathos stood in silence.
The tension in the air cracked like distant thunder.
"So you measured it…" Umbraezer murmured. "Not for yourself, but for our liege."
"Always," Seraphveil said with a short bow. "Every blade I draw is in His name."
Then, without another word, they returned to my side, vanishing back into the swirling shadows like a ghost of judgment.
The shadows receded, and silence returned to the battered remains of the 7th floor.
I stepped forward, the ground cracking faintly beneath my boots. Behind me, is Seraphveil, and his four wings gently folding as he stood beside me.
Before us, the portal to Floor 8 is open.
I turned slightly. "Let's move."
Seraphveil nodded once. "Yes, My Honored Sovereign."
We stepped through the portal together.
After that, we stepped out into the new domain of Floor 8.
The space around us was vast—wider than the 7th, and colder. The ground beneath our feet was slate black, lined with glowing veins of pale blue that pulsed like frozen lightning. Crystalline spires rose in jagged clusters, and a permanent twilight loomed overhead, filled with drifting motes of silver mist.
It was silent. Unnaturally so.
I narrowed my eyes and took a step forward.
"Let it watch," I said.
The silence didn't last.
Just as Seraphveil and I stepped further into the twilight-lit expanse of the 8th floor, something shifted.
WHOOSH—
Seraphveil's blade flashed, cutting horizontally through the space where the strike had come from, but it hit nothing.
No sound. No impact. Just air.
Something had tried to strike me… and then vanished like smoke.
From the darkness around us, a voice rasped like dry leaves:
"Ahhh… Monarch… and his First Wing. Delightful…"
BOOM—!
A spire behind us exploded as a shadow burst upward from the ground—from Seraphveil's own shadow. A long, ink-like limb slashed toward his back, but he turned instantly, parrying with a flare of blacklight.
The moment his blade connected, the shadow scattered into smoke—no blood, no body. Just gone.
Seraphveil floated down beside me, sharp-eyed and calm.
"It merges with the darkness itself. I cannot pinpoint it."
"You can't sense it at all?"
He shook his head.
"I can, but not in this state. It isn't hiding. It is the shadow."
Another whisper, this time behind us… then above.
"This floor is mine... You are the prey..."
Suddenly, a new notification appeared before my eyes:
-
[New Mechanic: Sentient Shadow Domain]
Mini-Boss-Class Entity: "The One Who Lurks" has activated its Floor Authority.
Enemy can fuse with any shadow within the 8th floor.
Detection abilities are hindered by active domain interference.
Attacks may bypass reaction time if cast from within merged concealment.
Countermeasure Suggested: Purge area with overlapping light or compress all shadows.