That must mean this guy is someone’s rightful successor.
‘And what’s this Dimension Slash now?’
That wasn’t the only strange thing.
Dimension Slash, huh.
Does it actually cut dimensions?
But I soon shook my head.
There were plenty of skills with grandiose names.
Still, a name this overblown was rare, Dimension Slash……
“Dimension Slash.”
Seeing is believing, they say.
Kyahaha!
The moment I finished speaking, the little guy swung his scythe.
And then.
Slice!
……The warp that ‘Will’ had created was cut clean in half.
Kyahahaha!
Having gotten a taste for cutting, the excited little thing began to swing his scythe wildly.
Krrung! Krrrrung!
《There is no dungeon master maintaining the connection.》
《All “dimensional connections” supporting the dungeon have been severed.》
《The dungeon has begun to collapse.》
The dungeon itself was being buried.
From the edges inward, as if being compressed, it was being devoured by the black space.
The abyss.
Serengeti spoke with a dumbfounded look.
“……Isn’t the warp cut, so we can’t get out?”
“Hmm, looks like we’ll have to leave with the Teleport Book.”
I never imagined that Dimension Slash would be a power that severs warp connections.
On top of that, it was even completely erasing the dungeon.
It was a skill I was seeing for the first time in my life and it was unsettling, but if I just stood there in a daze, I’d be eaten by the abyss.
With no other choice, I halted the spirit and opened the Teleport Book.
Fwoosh!
When I opened the Teleport Book and created a warp, the black flames flickering over the little guy’s whole body turned blue.
A sudden change.
This guy, does he have some special relation to warps?
“This one mustn’t be cut.”
Kyah.
The little guy nodded.
***
The Shadows were waiting at the entrance to the dungeon.
The Demigod Trait Dungeon.
If he came out of the dungeon, they planned to ambush him at once.
He wouldn’t even be able to get his bearings after such a sudden attack.
That was what they were thinking when it happened.
Krrung!
‘The dungeon is collapsing.’
‘All of a sudden?’
Dungeons didn’t collapse even when they were cleared.
Especially these kinds of trait dungeons, they were meant to keep accepting challengers.
But the dungeon was collapsing.
And it wasn’t simply crumbling to pieces, it was being swallowed from below, slowly, little by little, by the creeping abyss.
‘It’s the abyss!’
‘We have to fall back. The boundary is being eroded.’
The abyss was rushing in.
It was the same phenomenon as a city collapse.
When all the warps connecting a city broke down, the abyss would rush in and erase the city itself.
The Shadows made their decision.
Once the abyss began, the entire area here, including the dungeon, would be swallowed.
But when they reached the warp, they had no choice but to panic.
“The warp isn’t working!”
“What about the other warps?!”
“The same!”
“It was working fine just a moment ago, why all of a sudden……!”
Every warp had broken down.
But why, all of a sudden?
Just a moment ago, when they arrived, the warps had been working perfectly.
“The Teleport Book! Didn’t we bring a Teleport Book too!”
“T–The Teleport Book isn’t working either.”
“What the hell are you talking about!”
The leader of the Shadows bit his lip.
Even the Teleport Book didn’t work, this was a first.
When the warps broke and the area sank into the abyss, there was only one way to survive.
‘Kill the ruler of the abyss.’
You had to kill the abyss that swallowed that region and its ruler to get out.
However, abyss rulers were all absurdly powerful.
‘If it’s a relatively weak abyss ruler, we might live.’
The Shadows weren’t weak either.
If it was a so-so abyss ruler, they could hunt it while accepting some degree of sacrifice.
Soon, words floated up in front of their eyes.
<<After 10 minutes : Abyss strong one “Black-Skinned Hybrid” will appear.>>
<<After 20 minutes : Abyss ultra strong one “Dragon-Skinned Hybrid” will appear.>>
<<After 30 minutes : Abyss ruler “God-Skinned Hybrid” will appear.>>
The Shadows’ eyes began to tremble madly when they saw that.
Of all things, it had to be the God-Skinned Hybrid, one of the most notorious abyss rulers!
‘We’re screwed……!!!’
[Notice]
Tap, tap.
The Master sat in his chair, tapping his fingers on the desk, his expression twisted.
The Shadows still hadn’t contacted him.
He’d stayed up a whole day, and yet there was no news.
He’d ordered daily reports, so this silence could only mean something had happened.
“……Did he wipe out the Shadows?”
Impossible.
Even if Randolph kept achieving bizarrely high feats, there were limits.
By the time you cleared Main Quest 6, no matter how strong you were, you’d only be around level 8 at best.
Even if the reward list had been upgraded by the Constellations, the best treasure you could get at this point in time would be ancient-grade at most.
‘It can’t go beyond that.’
That was him being generous.
That estimate already exceeded common sense.
When the Master cleared Main Quest 6, he was only around level 7.
And even then, that so-called speed run had only been possible by being carried and equipping every kind of treasure he could get his hands on.
If you wanted to grind levels like Gracia had, just to reach a specific quest, that took a lot of time.
Yet Randolph had only become a player three months ago.
Honestly, just reaching level 8 in three months was a miracle.
And if he’d spent that whole time only leveling, his stats should have suffered. There simply wasn’t enough time to raise every stat to its max and level up.
Therefore, it was impossible.
“He has a collaborator. A very powerful one……”
He changed his thinking.
If Phantom had a collaborator.
If someone strong enough to erase the Shadows was helping Phantom, then it was possible.
The Master assumed that someone with at least 2-star transcendence was assisting him.
Players with 2-star transcendence or higher were extremely rare.
But he knew every player who had reached 2-star transcendence or above by heart.
That left the NPCs of Pangaenia.
‘They’re rumored to exist in the Empire and the Kingdom of Yan. I’ve never seen them myself, though.’
Both were places that were extremely difficult for players to approach.
Just rumors, with no one having seen their true forms.
They were helping Phantom?
Hard to imagine.
Maybe the Shadows were just struggling, but still alive.
“Ma, Master! All the Shadows have been found as corpses……!”
“……”
At the news shouted through the door, the Master clamped his mouth shut.
Confirmation. Even the slightest possibility had vanished.
He had sent people to the branch where the Shadows were gathered to confirm it. If they’d died while attacking Randolph, their real bodies would have died as well.
And they were dead.
All of them.
The annihilation of the Shadows. Years of nurturing them had gone up in smoke.
In an instant, twenty percent of his real-world combat strength had evaporated.
If this got out, other factions would wedge themselves into the gap.
“Damn it!”
Bang!
The Master slammed the desk, splitting it in two.
“This freaking bullshit!!!”
Even that wasn’t enough to vent his rage.
Of course it wasn’t.
Cracks had begun to form in the empire he’d built.
***
Garden of Knights.
After returning to the city ruled by Marquis Weiser, I was “resting.”
‘My mind is completely at ease.’
Even if I’d held an overwhelming upper hand in the fight with Will, facing that thing was still a hell of a headache.
Hence the rest.
Emotional stability was very important.
There were a lot of things I had to do too.
Kyah kyah!
I looked at the little guy wandering around all over the place like a curious animal.
A Heavenly Spirit in the form of a tiny reaper.
After cutting every warp in the Demigod Trait Dungeon, the little guy had changed as well.
【Lv.2】
【Heavenly Spirit】
【Rightful Successor】
【Dimension Slash (Lv.2)】
Its level had gone up.
It wasn’t like it had gone hunting or anything.
It looked like the way it gained experience was very different from a normal spirit.
‘A being that cuts warps and sends cities sinking into the abyss, huh.’
It could freely slice through warps, and send cities down into the abyss?
Just hearing the description, anyone would be flailing and shouting about what a broken, abnormal existence this was.
I quietly stroked my chin.
What was a warp?
It was the only path connecting the continents.
All the continents floating in the sky had been the work of Pina, goddess of the sky.
Rhea, goddess of the earth who had created the continents, had been killed by Ruin and split into thirty-two stars.
When all the continents were on the verge of total annihilation, Pina had raised the remaining land up into the sky.
But the sky continents were not connected.
What was needed to link them was the warp.
‘If they aren’t connected by warps, space itself is devoured by the abyss.’
Simply floating the continents wasn’t enough.
Without warps, the continents themselves could not exist.
‘Then is this little guy a species born from the abyss?’
I had the faint thought that it was a species born to oppose warps.
From the perspective of the abyss, warps were annoying barriers that blocked their encroachment.
A species born to erase those barriers, that was possible.
The abyss was full of all sorts of things, so much that no one could possibly know everything inside it.
Kyah kyah?
After wandering around like a cat for a while, the little guy rubbed its belly.
“Hungry?”
Kyah kyah!
It seemed he was very hungry.
But how could a skeleton eat anything?
Spirits ate the contractor’s mana.
My mana had long since turned into star power.
But the little guy didn’t seem to want star power.
《“???” wants honor.》
Ah. So it ate honor.
Come to think of it, when it was born, it had devoured all the tainted honor.
What if that had been evil karma instead?
‘If I’d had to feed it evil karma, that would’ve been horrible.’
I’d have to regularly stack up evil karma and feed it.
Before long, I’d be a wanted man across the entire continent, the number one public enemy.
It was a relief it was honor.
“Help yourself.”
Kyahaha!
The little guy laughed like he was overjoyed, then swung his scythe over my head.
I felt something above my head being sliced off, and the shimmering haze that had been cut was gulped down by the little guy.
《“???” devours 30 honor.》
《Remaining honor 746》
……It eats 30 at once?
Thirty was enough to do a decent honor quest at least twice.
Surely it wasn’t going to eat this much every day?
Kyahahahahaha!
He rubbed his face against my cheek, then started darting around again, having the time of his life.
He was a fun little guy.
‘I should give him a name.’
I couldn’t keep calling him “the little guy.”
For the sake of my bond with the spirit, giving it a name was essential.
After thinking a moment, I nodded and spoke.
“Hel.”
Kya?
“Your name is Hel.”
Rather than meaning “hell,” it came from the “hel” in Wilhelm, so I named him Hel.
Kyahahaha!
……Guess he likes it.
Thank goodness he was such a positive little guy.
《“???”’s name has been set to “Hel.”》
《Your bond with “Hel” increases.》
《Tip : When your bond with a spirit is high, the spirit will sense the summoner’s intentions and act without needing to be told.》
Now that I’d named him, there was one thing left.
‘Unboxing.’
It was time to receive my rewards.
The eleven rewards that had appeared when I cleared Main Quest 6.
《Extreme-True Saber》, 《Robe of Radiant Honor》, 《Absolute Emptiness》, 《Armor of the Corrupted King》, 《Crown of the Corrupted King》, 《Round Table of the Corrupted Knights》, 《Starwalker》, 《Staff of Original Sin》, 《Terror of Shatiros》, 《Spear of Impurity》, 《Edge of the Labyrinth》
I inspected each one, opening them one by one.
Not a single one had an ordinary name.
Starting with Extreme-True Saber, a weapon that had reached two final stages, every one of the rest had an item level at the very top tier.
‘I needed a bow, this is perfect.’
To clear the next Main Quest, I would need a ranged weapon.