The walls of the dungeon were pulsing with a blue light. It was like the walls were alive. The sound of metal hitting exoskeletons echoed off the walls. This was Sub-Floor 4. It was not a pce you wanted to be.

  Jaxon was at the front, his huge tower shield pnted firmly in the ground. A bunch of Razor-Beetles, each big as a wolf,f were smming into his shield.

  "Hold the line ", Valeria shouted. She was moving fast; it was like a blur of red. Her twin daggers were cutting through the air, leaving trails of glowing red behind them. She was a Ruby-rank. She was fast. Every strike she made left a mark that exploded on impact.

  Jaxon was trying his best. "Leon, go to the left, " he grunted. "They are trying to get behind my shield." Leon did not waste any time. He jumped over Jaxon’s shoulder, his cymore humming with energy.He cut a beetle in half. The green glow from his sword lit up the cavern for a moment.

  "Clear," Leon said. "Sis hit the cluster of beetles at ten o'clock."Sis was at the back. He raised his hand.

  He did not look as strong as the others. He was not weak either.

  He took a breath and let his magic flow.

  “ I have to keep this under control. If I let my magic get too strong, it will be bad.”

  I need to keep it blue, he thought.

  I need to stay a Sapphire.

  “Inferno: Fire Bullet," Sis said quietly.

  * He snapped his fingers, and six balls of fire shot out.

  They were not as fshy as Valeria’s magic. They got the job done.

  They pierced through the beetle's armour. Burned them from the inside out.

  The fight was intense. The four of them worked together.

  They were a team. They were good at it.

  When the st beetle fell, ll they all let out a sigh of relief.

  They walked over to an alcove near the Boss Room.

  Jaxon colpsed against a rock, dropping his shield to the ground.

  "Man, those beetles were tough," he said.

  Valeria wiped some monster blood from her cheek.

  Her magic was fading. She looked tired.

  Good Job, Sis," she said softly. "Your magic saved Leon’s life."

  Sis smiled a little.

  He was tired. He was happy they had made it through.

  "Just doing my job, " he said.

  They had twenty minutes before the Boss Room doors opened.

  Leon checked his watch. Looked at the group.

  "This is not a Guild raid," he said.

  "We are on our own. We need to be ready."

  The doors to the Boss Room. They walked in.

  The room was big with pilrs of gss around.

  In the centre of the room was the Blue Sentinel, a construct of gss with a swirling vortex of magic at its core.

  The fight was intense, with all four of them working

  Sis used his magic to keep the drones off their backs.

  Valeria and Leon worked together to take down the Blue Sentinel.

  Jaxon used his shield to protect them from the Sentinel's attacks.

  At one point, the Sentinel's core started to glow brightly.

  Sis knew he had to act

  He closed his fist. Let his magic flow.

  "Bck Lightning: Thunder Strike," he said.

  A huge bolt of electricity shot out and hit the Sentinel’s core.

  It was so powerful that it made the air shake.

  The Sentinel’s attack was not unched. The group finished it off.

  When the fight was over, er the group stood there panting.

  They had done it. They were all alive.

  Jaxon stood up, dusting himself off.

  "Whoa, Si, that st bolt of magic was crazy ", he said.

  Leon walked over to Sis, looking at him with an expression.

  "That was not a Stun Bolt, Sis, " he said. "It looked darker."

  Valeria walked over to Sis, looking at his arm.

  The skin around his Sapphire gem was a little red.

  "You pushed yourself hard, " she said quietly.

  Sis pulled his hand back, looking a little tired.

  "I just reacted, " he said. "I thought Jaxon was going to get hurt. I did what I had to do."

  The group walked out of the dungeon back into the lights of the city.

  The Sector 24 Headquarters was buzzing with the usual post-raid energy. Instead of cold steel, the lobby was filled with the sound of ringing phones, hunters compining about paperwork, and the smell of coffee.

  "Next please!" a voice called out over the chatter.

  "Oh, hey, Leon. Back in one piece?" Mira called, already reaching for the Essence Stone scanner on her desk.

  The guild hall buzzed around them—clinking armour, low chatter, and the faint smell of metal polish and burnt mana. Mira, however, looked as rexed as ever, leaning back in her chair like she owned the pce.

  "Heard the dungeon was being a bit of a pain today," she added. "Any of you get eaten?"

  "Not today, Mira," Leon ughed, sliding the Blue Sentinel’s Essence Stone across the desk with a little flourish. "Just some singed armour and a few dents in Jaxon’s pride."

  "Tell me about it," Jaxon grumbled, poking at a charred hole in his sleeve. "Stupid fire traps."

  Mira snorted and pulled open a drawer, fishing out a slender silver vial filled with swirling metallic liquid.

  "All right, heroes, you know the drill," she said, setting it down with a soft clink. "Quick tap on the Aether-Mercury so I can make sure none of you is bringing back ‘Dungeon Blight’ or surprise curses. Leon, you’re up first. Try not to explode it this time."

  "That was one time," Leon protested, but he tapped the vial anyway.

  The liquid shimmered, then glowed a bright, healthy emerald green. The scanner on Mira’s desk chimed and fshed the same colour.

  "There we go," Mira said. "Still emerald rank, still annoyingly stable. Next."

  Jaxon went next, grumbling under his breath. The vial fred green again.

  "See?" Mira said. "Not cursed. Just cranky."

  She barely gnced at the readout, her fingers flying over the screen as she ticked boxes and confirmed their run. She’d clearly done this a thousand times.

  When Sis stepped up, his expression didn’t change, but Mira could feel the mana around him tighten. His "Prism Veil" settled over his aura like tinted gss.

  He touched the vial. The Aether-Mercury shifted, then settled into a familiar, calm sapphire blue.

  "Sis, still a very reliable Rank 3," Mira announced with a satisfied nod and a wink. "Consistency is a gift. Unlike some people who like to jump ranks overnight and give me panic attacks."

  She flicked her eyes pointedly toward Valeria.

  Valeria stepped forward, expression cool as always, but there was a tiny tilt to her mouth that counted as a smile. She pressed her fingertip to the vial.

  The liquid fred crimson, bright enough to cast red highlights over everyone’s faces for a moment before it faded.

  "See?" Mira said. "Ruby rank. Double the power, triple my paperwork. Thanks, Val. Really appreciate it."

  "Always happy to contribute," Valeria replied dryly.

  Mira rolled her eyes and stamped their digital chips one by one, the device letting out a cheerful beep with each confirmed payment.

  "All right, credits are in," she said. "You’re officially richer, and I’m officially done with you. Now get out of here before the night shift comes in—they're way grumpier than I am, and they actually read the safety reports."

  "Terrifying," Leon said.

  "Exactly," Mira replied. "Shoo. Go spend your money on repairs and bad food like normal adventurers."

  They ughed, gathered their gear, and filed out—already arguing about who’d almost died the most that day as the guild doors swung shut behind them.

  The party at the local tavern was loud and bright. warm wooden beams, a roaring firepce, and the smell of grilled meat drifting through the air. Lanterns hummed softly with stored mana, painting the room in gold and amber.

  A bard stood on a low ptform, strumming an upbeat tune on a mana?amplified lute. Every few beats, the sound fred a little too loud, making cutlery rattle and a few drunk adventurers cheer like it was on purpose.

  "To the Blue Sentinel!" Jaxon yelled, nearly sloshing foam over the edge of his massive wooden mug as he held it high. "And to having enough credits for the premium steak tonight! No more mystery meat for us!"

  A few nearby tables ughed and joined the toast, because free celebration noise was still celebration.

  Leon clinked his mug against Jaxon’s with a grin. The tension from the dungeon run had finally started to melt off his shoulders. He leaned back in his chair, boots stretched out under the table, and started arguing with Jaxon over which armour enchantments they should blow their hard?earned credits on.

  "You don’t need fire resistance on everything," Leon said. "You just need to stop walking into fire."

  "And you don’t need to be sarcastic all the time," Jaxon shot back, "but here we are."

  Valeria, half-listening, sipped her drink and pretended not to smile.

  Sis sat near the end of the table, a little out of the spotlight but close enough to feel the heat from the firepce. He wrapped his hands around his mug, letting the warmth soak into his fingers as the tavern chatter washed over him—ughter, clinking gsses, the bard’s uneven rhythm, someone in the back loudly insisting they totally could have soloed that boss.

  He liked this version of the world. The one where he was just "Sis the Dependable," not a walking anomaly or a problem to solve. Just a steady presence at the edge of a crowded table, sharing a good meal with friends, listening to their dumb arguments about gear and steaks and who technically "almost died" more times in the dungeon.

  For tonight, that was enough.The tavern’s warmth was long gone, repced by the cool bite of Sector 24’s midnight air. Sis stood alone on his apartment balcony, leaning on the rusted railing as the city lights flickered below like distant stars.

  For the first time in five years, the "Prism Veil" inside his soul wasn’t calm. It rattled—like something huge was pacing behind a thin wall.

  "Boss, seriously," a crackling, impatient voice echoed in his head. Inferno. His fire core. He sounded like a furnace about to explode. "Holding us back in that Sapphire-tier toy box was an insult. I wanted to turn that gss sentinel into a puddle, not just warm it up."

  "He’s right," another voice added, this one sharp and buzzing—Bck Lightning. His words came in fast, jagged whispers, like static chewing through a cable. "We’ve pyed your little ‘weak Sapphire’ role for years. We stayed quiet. We pretended. But we’re starving, Sis. If you keep us locked up, something is going to snap. Give us air. Give us a hunt."

  Sis pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly. "Fine," he muttered. "You win. But not here. Not in Sector 24. Too many eyes, too many scanners. If we’re going all out, we do it where no one can see."

  He flicked his wrist and summoned a holographic screen. The Order’s public dungeon registry floated in the air—a long list of sectors, ranks, and urgent alerts. He ignored the nearby low-tier listings and scrolled straight to the dangerous end.

  [SECTOR 478: THE FROST-VALLEY CATACOMBS]

  Rank: DiamondStatus: Active StagnationAssigned: White Rabbit’s Guild (Deployment: 0800 hours tomorrow)

  Sis’s lips curled into a small, sharp smile. "Sector 478," he whispered. "Across the continent. No civilians. No patrols yet. That’ll do."

  He stepped up onto the rail.

  Then he stepped off.

  He didn’t fall.

  For a heartbeat, he hung in the air, as if the world itself had forgotten what gravity was supposed to do. Inside his chest, the shutter he’d forced closed for years didn’t just open a crack—it shattered.

  The calm blue glow in his veins vanished. In its pce, a blinding white light roared to life, racing through his body until his skin hummed like it couldn’t contain what was inside.

  "Raijin’s Boots," Sis commanded.

  Obsidian lightning snapped into existence around his ankles, swirling up his calves like living chains of bck gss. They solidified into jagged, translucent greaves made of crackling storm-light.

  He didn’t run.

  He ignited.

  The balcony disappeared beneath him as he shot forward. One instant,t he was above Sector 24’s apartment blocks; the next, he was a bck-and-white streak carving through the night sky. The shockwave that should have shattered windows and set off arms never came—the air folded around him in a silent tunnel, a vacuum field he cast on pure instinct.

  Below him, the world blurred. Forests became smears of dark green. City lights melted into long rivers of gold. Oceans fshed by like strips of torn silver foil. In minutes, he had crossed a distance that took pnes hours.

  Sector 478: Frost-Valley CatacombsThe Diamond-rank dungeon loomed over a dead, frozen valley—a jagged maw of ice and stone, breathing out a constant fog of white mist. The air here was heavy. Angry. Every breath cwed at the lungs.

  When Sis stepped past the dungeon’s shimmering barrier, the weight of it smmed into him. Mana here wasn’t just thick—it was crushing.

  "Ha!" Inferno ughed, the sound echoing through Sis’s bones. "Now this is mana."

  A normal Sapphire would have dropped to their knees from the pressure alone, ribs cracking under the invisible force. Sis rolled his shoulders once and kept walking.

  The Frost-Valley Catacombs were a nightmare of ice tunnels and frozen caverns. Pilrs of clear crystal rose from the ground like fangs. Frost coated everything in a thin, gssy yer that reflected his white glow at him in a thousand broken shards.

  The first wave hit him in the second chamber.

  Frost Giants—ten, then twenty, then whole packs of them—lurched out of the blizzard that lived permanently in these halls. Each one was three times his height, bodies made of compacted ice and stone, eyes burning with pale blue fme.

  They roared.

  Sis ughed.

  "All right," he said softly. "Have fun."

  He raised his hand. Inferno answered.

  Heat exploded outward.

  He didn’t throw fireballs. There were no neat little spells, no tidy circles. The air around him turned into a star.

  In an instant, the temperature in a wide circle around Sis spiked. The nearest Frost Giant didn’t even have time to swing. Its arm melted, then its chest, then its whole body colpsed inward, steam screaming off it as it fshed from solid to nothing.

  "More," Inferno howled, drunk on release. "More, more, MORE!"

  Sis walked forward.

  Every step was a death sentence. Giants sprinted at him, shaking the cavern, but each one that broke through the haze crumbled the moment his white-hot aura touched them. Ice armour sagged, then ran like water. Weapons fused to hands before both vanished in twin bursts of steam.

  Bck Lightning joined in.

  Thin, jagged bolts of pitch-bck electricity leapt from Sis’s shoulders and spine without any chant or gesture. They didn’t arc zily from target to target—they snapped across the room in blinding, straight lines.

  One brushed a giant’s head.

  The head didn’t explode. It simply wasn’t there anymore.

  "You see that?" Bck Lightning giggled, his tone high and wild. "Gone. No fmes. No ash. Just erased. Next!"

  The deeper Sis went, the less the giants looked like enemies and the more they looked like sparks thrown into a furnace. Groups that could have wiped out whole Emerald squads simply vanished as he passed. Their roars were cut in half, swallowed by the rush of fme and the hiss of melting ice.

  He lost track of how many he fought.

  He only noticed that, for the first time in years, he was smiling in a dungeon.

  The Boss RoomThe final chamber was a cathedral of ice.

  A wide, circur arena spread out beneath a dome of frozen crystal. Spikes of frost hung from the ceiling like white spears. In the centre of the room y the boss—a colossal Ice Drake, its body coiled around a central pilr of solid gcier.

  It lifted its head when Sis entered, frost crackling along its scales. Its eyes were twin nterns of harsh, pale blue. Every exhale turned the air into swirling knives of snow.

  A normal party would have spent an hour dancing around this thing, looking for weak points, burning through potions and backup pns.

  Sis didn’t slow down.

  "You want this one?" he asked quietly.

  Five voices inside him stirred at once.

  He raised his hand.

  All the light in the room bent toward his palm.

  A single, blinding point of True White Mana formed there—a dense, silent star tightening in his grasp. No fmes. No crackling. No dramatic build-up. Just pure power, compressed until the air around it warped.

  The Ice Drake sensed it.

  It reared back, sucking in breath for a freezing bst that could have turned a city block into a sculpture. The temperature dropped so sharply that the ice on the ground screamed as it split.

  Sis simply stepped once.

  He was suddenly in front of the Drake’s open maw.

  He pushed the star into its chest.

  There was no explosion. No shockwave.

  For one still, silent moment, Drake’s eyes widened.

  Then, starting from the point where his hand had pressed into its scales, its entire body lost its shape. The solid dragon form blurred, then sagged, then colpsed into a waterfall of glowing slush that hit the floor with a heavy, dull spsh.

  The central gcier pilr cracked from top to bottom.

  Sis stood alone in the settling mist, his breath the only sound.

  CleanupTwo hours ter, the Frost-Valley Catacombs were quiet.

  Not "dungeon" quiet.

  Grave quiet.

  The tunnels that had once howled with blizzard winds and giant roars were still. The only signs of the monsters that had lived here were melted scars in the ice and the occasional half-fused weapon buried in the floor.

  In the centre of the former boss's room, the Ice Drake’s Essence Stone—a Diamond the size of a human head—y cracked and useless, its core shattered by that point-bnk white strike.

  Sis looked at it, then turned away.

  "Not worth the trouble," he muttered. "If I take it, someone will come looking."

  "Time’s up," he said aloud, stretching his shoulders. The wild joy of the rampage was fading, leaving behind a deep, heavy calm. "You two done?"

  Inferno’s bzing presence had dimmed to a warm, satisfied glow. "For now," he rumbled. "That was a feast."

  Bck Lightning’s ugh had gone soft and zy. "Much better," he whispered. "I could sleep for a week."

  Sis lifted his hand.

  The Prism Veil snapped back into pce.

  The blinding white in his veins drained away, repced by that familiar, safe Sapphire-blue glow. The crushing pressure of his presence vanished. The dungeon, for a second, felt bigger—as if it had been holding its breath and could finally exhale.

  By the time the first pale light of dawn brushed Sector 24’s skyline, Sis was back in his bed, hair still damp from a quick shower, bnket pulled over his shoulder. To anyone who saw him, he looked like what he pretended to be every day:

  A tired, overworked mid-tier hunter who had just slept through the night.

  The Morning AfterFour hours ter, the White Rabbit Guild’s advance team sprinted up to the Frost-Valley entrance, weapons drawn and armour gleaming.

  They expected a wall of killing cold.

  They found open air.

  The dungeon doors were already wide. No monsters poured out. No blizzard howled from within. The air that drifted out was faintly warm.

  "Weapons up! Formation!" the Guild Leader barked.

  They rushed inside.

  Ten minutes ter, the entire front squad stood in the boss’s room, staring at the melted remains of what should have been a nightmare.

  The Ice Drake’s corpse was nothing but a ke of slowly freezing slush. The walls were covered in smooth, gssy streaks where something impossibly hot had scraped along the ice. The Essence Stone was cracked down the middle, leaking faint light like it was bleeding.

  "What... what is this?" the Guild Leader whispered.

  His voice echoed in the empty hall.

  "Scan for mana signatures," one of the support mages said, already activating her tools. A magic lens flickered over her eyes. Runes lit up around her hands.

  Then dimmed.

  She swallowed. "There’s nothing."

  "Nothing?" the Leader snapped. "Something did this. A Diamond team? A cannon? A—"

  "No residual mana," she said quietly. "No spell pattern. No bde marks I recognise. It’s like... It’s like the fight never happened. Like the dungeon woke up one moment and was dead the next."

  The Leader looked around slowly, his face pale.

  "No signature. No trace," he muttered. "Just... nothingness."

  Far away in Sector 24, Sis rolled over in his sleep as his arm began to ring.

  "Ugh," he groaned, cracking one eye open. "Morning already?"

  Inferno chuckled faintly in the back of his mind. Bck Lightning just sighed, content.

  No one in the world—Order, Guild, or monster—had any idea that the "nothingness" in Sector 478 had a name, a cheap apartment, and a little sister to wake up for.

  AnnouncementBTW, please tell how the first chapter goes and if there are any changes you would like to see, and ignore the cover ... IK I messed up quite nicely, so forgive me though it looked more epic before whatever disaster I posted