Carmilla kept the cold tip of her black sword pressed firmly under the boss’s scarred chin.

The tall man stood completely frozen, his eyes wide with fear as droplets of blood trickled down his leather coat. The yellow mana flames on his iron warhammer were completely gone, replaced by the faint, lingering smell of ozone and burning air.

"Woo Jin," Carmilla said, her voice smooth and unbothered. "Secure the spatial anchor."

"I’m on it," I said.

I scrambled up from the cold floor, shaking off the dull pain in my shoulder where the shockwave had slammed me into the wall.

I rushed toward the giant metal ring in the center of the cavern. The dark purple spatial tear above the structure was still swirling like a violent storm, humming with unstable power.

I reached into my duffel bag and pulled out the silver master drive and the secondary explosive charge.

PING!

Suddenly, a bright blue system window flashed right in front of my face.

The screen didn’t display the usual calm updates. Instead, the borders of the blue interface pulsed with a rapid, dark red light.

[WARNING: UNKNOWN ENTITY DETECTED]

[MANA READING: EXTREMELY HIGH]

[HOSTILITY LEVEL: FATAL]

I stopped dead in my tracks. My eyes narrowed as I stared at the blinking red text.

"Carmilla," I called out, keeping my voice low. "Don’t drop your guard."

Carmilla glanced at me, her dark red eyes narrowing. "What is it?"

"I am feeling a massive energy signature," I said, looking around the cavern. "It’s not coming from the guards. It’s coming from somewhere deeper inside."

The scarred boss suddenly let out a low, raspy laugh. Blood stained his teeth as his lips curled into a wild grin.

"You fools..." the boss wheezed, staring at Carmilla with a mixture of terror and madness. "You think... you think this sub-station was built to extract mana stones?"

Carmilla pressed the blade half an inch deeper into his neck. "Explain."

"Project Obsidian isn’t an extraction site," the boss spat, coughing violently. "The spatial anchor wasn’t opened to bring harvesters in. It was opened to keep it fed."

THUMP.

A soft, heavy vibration echoed through the limestone floor.

It wasn’t an explosion. It was like the heartbeat of a giant creature waking up deep beneath the earth.

THUMP.

The floor shook again, harder this time. Dust and small white pebbles rained down from the high cavern ceiling, splashing into the pools of blue mana fluid near the broken glass cylinders.

[SYSTEM ALERT: HOSTILE THREAT APPROACHING]

[DISTANCE: 80 METERS BELOW SURFACE]

[ESTIMATED TIME TO IMPACT: 15 SECONDS]

"Carmilla, back away!" I yelled, stepping back from the control console and drawing my iron dagger with my right hand.

Carmilla didn’t hesitate. She swung her left fist sideways, slamming her knuckles straight into the boss’s temple to knock him completely unconscious. She grabbed his collar, tossed his heavy body behind a row of steel crates out of the way, and leaped back to my side in a single fluid motion.

"Where is it coming from?" Carmilla asked, her black sword sparking with fresh crimson lightning.

"Below us," I said, pointing down at the solid concrete floor right under the spatial anchor.

The giant metallic ring began to shake violently. The dark purple spatial tear above it flickered out of control, turning from deep violet to a sickening shade of black.

CRACK!

A five-foot-wide fissure opened in the middle of the floor!

Thick black mist poured out of the crack in the concrete, smelling heavily of rot, old blood, and metallic iron. The air temperature inside the cavern didn’t just drop—it became freezing cold.

CREEEAK... CRASH!

The center of the cavern floor completely collapsed downward into a dark abyss!

From the black pit below, a giant hand made of dark, hardened stone and purple mana sludge reached out, gripping the edge of the shattered concrete floor. The hand had five long fingers tipped with jagged, iron-like claws.

Slowly, the monster pulled its massive body up into the cavern light.

It stood nearly fifteen feet tall. Its upper torso was covered in jagged black scales that looked like molten obsidian rock.

Instead of a normal head, it had a smooth, faceless skull with four glowing purple eyes arranged in a vertical line down its forehead. Long, razor-sharp tendrils of black slime squirmed around its shoulders like living snakes.

[MONSTER IDENTIFIED: ABYSSAL DEVOURER (MUTATED)]

[THREAT RANK: A]

[NOTE: HIGH PHYSICAL DEFENSE. EXTREME REGENERATION. TARGET HAS NO MANA CORE IN CHEST.]

A-Rank.

My throat went dry. A B-rank hunter like the boss was already a heavy fighter, but an A-grade creature was a walking natural disaster.

"A mutated Abyssal," Carmilla whispered. For the first time, her voice carried a trace of real tension. "It was sleeping under the mana vein."

The Devourer opened its faceless maw, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth.

ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

A deafening acoustic wave exploded from its throat! The raw force of the sound wave shattered every remaining glass cylinder in the chamber. Heavy steel ducts tore away from the ceiling, crashing down onto the floor with loud metal bangs.

The blast wave hit us like a brick wall.

I dug my boots into the stone floor, using my footwork stance to lower my center of gravity, but the sheer air pressure dragged me ten feet backward until my back hit a steel pillar.

Carmilla stood her ground, her red lightning shield flaring brightly to deflect the sonic pressure.

"Woo Jin!" Carmilla called back, her long dark hair whipping wildly in the wind. "Can your dagger pierce its skin?"

"No," I replied instantly, checking the monster’s thick obsidian plates. "My iron blade will snap on contact. Its outer scales are too dense. I can’t hit it directly!"

"Then you handle the distraction and support," Carmilla said, her red eyes burning with intense energy. "I will break its armor!"

The Abyssal Devourer moved faster than anything its size had any right to move.

It swung its massive left arm sideways, sweeping a sixty-foot arc through the air. The heavy stone arm smashed through three thick iron pillars as if they were made of dry twigs.

CRASH-BOOM!

"Jump!" I shouted.

Carmilla and I leaped in opposite directions.

The giant arm cleared the space where we had been standing a second before, crushing the main control console into flat scrap metal. Spikes of yellow electrical sparks burst from the crushed wires.

I landed smoothly on top of a row of heavy supply crates on the right side of the cavern.

[SYSTEM NOTICE: WEAK POINT SCANNING...]

[ANALYSIS: BLIND SPOTS LOCATED BEHIND UPPER NECK JOINTS]

[WARNING: DO NOT ENGAGE IN CLOSE-RANGE MELEE WITHOUT COVER]

"Carmilla! The joints behind its upper neck!" I yelled across the room. "The scales don’t overlap there!"

"Understood!" Carmilla replied.

She kicked off a falling steel beam, launching herself high into the air.

CRACKLE-BOOM!

Thick strands of crimson lightning wrapped around her black blade until the steel looked like a red beam of raw plasma. She descended from the ceiling like a falling meteor, aiming her sword straight down at the Devourer’s head.

CLANG-THUD!

The black sword struck the top of the monster’s obsidian skull.

A massive wave of red lightning discharged across the creature’s back, burning away several black tendrils and leaving a deep, smoking crack across its armored head.

ROAR!

The Devourer shrieked in anger. It whipped its heavy tail around, slamming it straight into Carmilla’s midsection before she could land.

Carmilla raised her left arm to block, but the raw physical weight of the blow launched her across the room.

She slammed hard into the far rock wall, crumbling through the limestone surface before dropping to her knees.

"Carmilla!" I shouted.

The monster turned its four glowing purple eyes directly toward her. It raised its giant right claw, gathering a ball of unstable black mana in its palm, preparing to crush her while she was down.

I didn’t have mana. I couldn’t shoot fireballs or cast protective barriers.

But I had speed, timing, and footwork.

I sprinted along the top of the supply crates, accelerating to my maximum physical limit. I didn’t head toward the monster’s front. I ran straight toward the unstable spatial anchor ring on the platform.

I grabbed a loose, heavy steel power cable off the floor that was still connected to the auxiliary generator bank.

"Hey! Over here, you ugly trash!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I plunged the bare, sparking end of the high-voltage cable directly into the pool of water and mana fluid pooling around the monster’s massive legs.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Thousands of volts of electrical current surged through the conductive liquid.

Blue electrical arcs raced up the Devourer’s lower legs, freezing its massive body in place for three critical seconds. The black mana ball forming in its palm flickered and dissolved into thick smoke.

The monster’s four purple eyes snapped down, locking onto me with pure hatred.

It abandoned Carmilla and lunged straight toward me.

Its giant shadow covered me completely as its long iron claws swung down to crush me flat against the concrete platform.

I didn’t panic. I watched its shoulder muscles contract. I glided across the wet concrete floor like an ice skater, passing right under the sweep of its razor-sharp claws by less than two inches.

BOOM!

The monster’s hand smashed into the platform, throwing up a cloud of shattered stone and dust.

Before it could pull its arm back out of the crater, I sprang onto its forearm.

My iron dagger wasn’t strong enough to cut its scales, but it was perfect as a climbing spike. I drove the tip of my iron dagger directly into the soft flesh between the monster’s wrist joints.

STAB!

The Devourer roared, shaking its arm violently to throw me off.

I held onto the dagger handle with both hands, swinging my body upward and landing squarely on the monster’s broad shoulder.

"Carmilla! Now!" I roared, holding onto the back of its neck with my left hand while driving my dagger into the gap behind its neck scale with my right.

STAB!

The monster thrashed madly, but my dagger was jammed deep into the neck joint, locking its head from turning to the left.

From the other side of the smoke, a blinding crimson light erupted.

Carmilla was back on her feet. Her black trench coat was torn, and blood dripped down the side of her lip, but her dark red eyes were burning with lethal fury.

She didn’t run. She glided across the floor in a red streak, leaving deep scorched trails in her wake.

SWOOSH!

She leaped twenty feet straight up, soaring right over the Devourer’s head.

"Royal Blood Art," Carmilla’s voice echoed with cold, absolute authority. "Red Judgement!"

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