Suffice it to say, the Revenants were no match for the golems, especially considering the sheer number of them.
FWIP!
BOOM!
A frost golem bashed two Revenants to the ground in one swing, their black bodies splattering like liquid. But rather than dying or completely vanishing, a few meters away, the holographic light began to recoil and re-form. Bodies reconstructed. Those vanguards stood up again, silent and unbothered.
Well, the vanguards were dead. But thanks to the Core of Shadows, the core didn't die.
"Useful..."
Jaemin muttered, arms crossed, silently spectating from atop a broken column of frost.
SWISH!
FWIP!
KABOOM!
A crackling green ball of arcane energy came crashing down from the cavern ceiling, slamming into the cluster of frost and crystal golems. The explosion shattered some completely, and left others weak—weak enough for the vanguard to finish off in coordinated silence.
Jaemin looked to the side.
"So that's what those arcanists were doing..."
He mumbled, almost scoffing.
"Pft. Pain in the ass."
He still remembered the pain those twelve arcanists gave him back in the Lapis Chamber. Sneaky bastards. He almost felt sorry for the golems—almost.
TING-TING!
[Your Valour Surge is almost depleted.]
"Wait, what??"
KABOOM!
Even before he could register the notification, something enormous landed across from him. A tremor shattered a line of ice pillars nearby.
Jaemin stepped back once.
A large, dominating beast emerged from the shadows. Coated in iron armour, with obsidian-plated legs, snow-covered hands, and crystal eyes, glowing from the hollows of its face. Towering above the rest of the golems. No doubt. This was something else.
FWIUP-PING!
His Focus lit up in violet.
[Abyssal: Behemoth]
[Class: Boss]
So he was the boss of all these golems. That explained it. That being said—
TING!
Valour Surge: 0 / 2000
Jaemin's jaw clenched.
"Of course... of course it would eat my Valour Surge right when the boss shows up."
Jaemin sighed, palm on his face, clearly annoyed.
"I'm not in the mood to fight."
He raised his hand slightly.
"Finish him. Warden."
A ripple of light burst out beside him—then coalesced. Sparks cracked as a Resonant took form, taller and broader than the others, clad in hard light like armour, lightning running like veins beneath his plates. In his hand, a long obsidian spear crackling with static.
He stepped forward slowly, spear dragging across the ice with a sharp hiss. The Behemoth roared and charged, each footstep splitting the cavern floor like thin glass.
BOOM!
ROARRRRR!!!
Without warning, the Warden reeled his arm back and hurled the thunder spear at inhuman speed.
CRACK!
The weapon pierced clean through the Behemoth's left shoulder—paralysing it instantly. Static wrapped its limbs, locking it mid-charge.
The Warden raised his hand.
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FWIP!
The spear snapped back into his grip, and he moved.
Fast.
SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!
Each cut was brutal but surgical. He cleaved through the Behemoth's legs, its torso, and its shoulder. A circular dash put him behind the beast—he slashed across its back, dropped low, and with one final arc of his spear—SHUNK!—he lopped the head clean off.
The giant collapsed.
The Warden walked back through the rising frost and steam.
Jaemin blinked once. Then smiled, eyes lit up faintly.
"Proud of ya."
He turned his attention to the steaming, twitching remains of the battlefield. Golems—crystal, frost, and iron—lay scattered. Behemoth included.
Golems were among the few Abyssals that sometimes carried core fragments.
Jaemin raised his hand.
"Override."
Shadows erupted from beneath the corpses.
Whoosh.
From their corpses, light ripped free—like souls torn from stone—each one manifested again.
One by one, they took shape behind Jaemin.
The golems...Iron, Frost, and Crystal.
And the Behemoth as well.
Jaemin's army stood still behind him—silent shadows echoing his footsteps. With each new kill, each boss defeated, the number of Resonants climbed. And as he levelled, so did his storage capacity. That meant one thing: expansion.
"Still room for more..."
He muttered.
He glanced upward. The frozen sky above the cavern flickered faintly with aurora static—time was moving weird again.
"It's getting late though…
He kept walking.
****
Hwang Seungho's squad no longer existed.
They were doing well at first. Their tactics were clean—hunt the local rift wildlife, rest in carved-out caves, collect rift crystal fragments. Classic survival loop. But something had shifted the moment they stepped deeper north.
There it was.
A frozen cathedral, standing in eerie stillness—far off in the white haze, just past the tree line. Icy spires, collapsed windows, black snow falling around it.
They should've turned back.
What happened inside that cathedral wasn't a battle. It was a slaughter. A kind of ritualised cruelty no Abyssal ever showed before.
Only Hwang Seungho survived.
One eye lost. Blood staining his entire face. His ears are still bleeding. Not from a physical wound, but from the sound. From something that shouldn't have sound.
He wasn't running anymore—just walking, stumbling, almost. His legs worked, but not his brain.
His thoughts were broken.
"They're all dead... the whole strike team... even the coreborns..."
"The recruits? Heh... dead within two days, I bet..."
To Seungho, being superior was always the goal. Outlasting them was his proof.
But something was wrong.
Every time he walked forward, the terrain didn't change. The trees didn't move. The wind stayed the same.
That creeping feeling—that horror everyone knows but can't name—he was looping.
He'd been walking in circles.
And it felt like he'd been doing it for days.
Hwang Seungho kept walking, boots crunching through frost, vision blurry from blood crusting over his remaining eye—
Then he stopped.
Smoke?
...Meat??
He sniffed again, and his good eye widened. That was food. Cooked. Fresh.
He rushed forward, pushing through thick, icy branches, and finally—he saw them.
The recruits.
Alive. Eating, laughing in the warmth of a fire inside a shallow cave.
His pulse erupted.
"These bastards… all of my comrades DIED, and they're still alive???!"
He clenched his fists. His sword was gone—but with a Bastion Core, he didn't need one. He could bend iron bars between two fingers. Crushing skulls was nothing.
"HOW DID ALL OF YOU SURVIVE?!?!"
His voice BOOMED across the canyon, sending snow flying in every direction.
Everyone froze.
His bloodstained figure limped into view—no sword, but eyes full of murder.
He didn't see people. He saw targets. He saw betrayal.
Ever since Coreborns came into being, a quiet cruelty began festering behind the walls of progress. The powerful stepped on the powerless. Laws were written, yes—but rarely enforced. Injustice wasn't rare; it was normalised. Even within their ranks, Coreborns had started killing other Coreborns—sometimes out of fear, for power, and sometimes, just to feel something.
Hwang Seungho was one of those. To him, killing others—Abyssals or humans alike—was never personal. It was instinct. If they got in his way, they died. And right now, every recruit in front of him was in his way.
Hwang Seungho flared what little crimson aura remained—his Bastion Core roaring to life.
Everyone knew. Words wouldn't work.
Kim Rae-ah was the first to move.
She stepped up, jaw clenched, voice shaking but loud:
"Precision Core: Bolstering Snipeshots!!"
Her orange aura flared into needle-sharp bolts, firing streaks of burning glass toward Seungho's chest.
But—
"Bastion Core: Lion's Mane," he muttered.
A fiery dome blasted outward from his chest with the roar of a lion, its heat reducing the snipeshots to cinders mid-air.
He took one more step.
Kim Rae-ah stumbled back.
"Damn... he's strong..."
Everyone was frozen in place.
There was no plan. No way out. Not against a trained Bastion.
Ji-yoo stood, trembling—fists clenched, heart racing.
She didn't know if she could fight. She didn't even know if she'd survive five seconds.
All she could think about was getting to Jaemin.
"Auxiliary Core: Critical Trigger..."
The words barely made it past Ji-yoo's lips, but her trembling hand was already glowing—her faint emerald aura diverging like threads and weaving through the Lion's Mane.
The ability—Critical Trigger—was a rare debuff technique, one that only activated under intense anxiety.
That very condition made it powerful enough to bypass Seungho's dome, even if only for a few seconds.
And those seconds were enough.
His movements faltered. His balance skewed. His remaining eye blurred just enough that he couldn't focus.
"Now! RUN!"
Kim Rae-ah didn't wait. She shouted as she grabbed Ji-yoo, and everyone bolted from the cave, sprinting into the open frost field.
They didn't look back.
They ran with everything they had, praying—begging—that wherever they ended up, Jaemin would find them first.
But as their feet pounded through snow, something changed.
The air grew heavy. Their pace slowed, not from exhaustion, but as if an invisible pressure was dragging their limbs.
And then they saw it. The cathedral. Frozen. Towering. The very same one that tore Seungho's team apart.
That's when it happened—
"There is nowhere to run."
They spun around.
Hwang Seungho was back.
Bloodier. Angrier. Eyes wide with pure rage. His aura flared like a wildfire desperate for air.
Kim Rae-ah moved to the front, heart pounding in her chest. Her stance was shaky, but she stood firm—anything to buy the others time.
Seungho's hand clenched into a massive fist, veins popping with power. He raised it high.
"DIE, YOU UGLY—"
Hwang Seungho stopped, the majestic cathedral in sight, and far off, Jaemin was standing.
He didn't care about Jaemin, no, not at all; it was the large cathedral that stopped him in his tracks, as if all the memories of his squad dying were flooding his brain again.
