"That's it, Dan! That's exactly it! Destroy those that sought to harm you!" the demon's voice echoed through the void, howling in pure, unadulterated bliss. "You never did a single thing wrong! You didn't ask to be born into this curse! It's so deeply unfair, isn't it?!"
It's a dream... Dan's conscious mind fractured, the dark rings in his eyes spinning violently like gears in a clock doomed to strike midnight. You know it's a dream... an illusion...
But the raw, visceral sight of the blood-soaked words on the slab broke something foundational inside his soul.
His crimson hair flared outward like a solar flare, igniting with dark, chaotic energy. He stopped fighting the tide. He stopped holding back. He finally let go.
The moment Dan surrendered to the rage, the ripple effect was cataclysmic. The infinite darkness around him didn't just recede—it shattered like cheap glass under a hammer. Massive, jagged fissures tore through the empty space, bleeding a blinding, violent red light.
Outside his subconscious, in the physical realm of the Tower of Devbatuhç, the sheer magnitude of his power caused a localized earthquake. The ancient, indestructible stone walls of the tower cracked from the base to the peak, groaning under a weight they were never designed to hold. The entire pocket dimension buckled. Gravity inverted for a split second, lifting dust, pebbles, and heavy debris into the air before slamming them down with concussive force. The atmospheric pressure skyrocketed so fast that the air itself began to hum and spark with wild, uncontrolled ozone.
This is far, far greater than I ever expected... the creature thought from high above, its dark, nebulous form trembling as the shockwaves of Dan's mana threatened to dissolve its very consciousness. If I'm not careful, this monster might actually kill me before I even get the girl!
"Yes... I know exactly what I'll do," Dan said slowly. He rose from his crouched position, his posture shifting from a broken boy to an absolute god of calamity. The black rings in his eyes consumed his irises entirely. "I'll burn the entire world down to ash... and rebuild everything anew. Yes. Yes, that's gotta be it. I'll tear hell and heaven alike to pieces just to drag back every single soul that died because of me."
He took a single step forward. The fabric of the realm buckled beneath his foot as if he were stepping on wet canvas. A shockwave of pure, compressed kinetic energy exploded outward from his heel, blasting a massive crater into the invisible floor and sending violent ripples tearing through the remaining shadows.
"First... I should kill—"
"Master!!!"
A sharp, incredibly desperate voice pierced straight through the chaotic roaring of his mana.
"Master, where are you?!"
The world froze. The crimson aura rippling off Dan's body wavered for a fraction of a second.
She's here... the demon thought, its cloud-like form shifting and churning with absolute euphoria as it detected the sudden influx of pure, familiar magic entering the broken dimension. My perfect host... and my ultimate ticket out of this godforsaken place!
*What the absolute hell is going on with this place?!* Areia thought frantically as she sprinted up the shifting stone steps at a blinding velocity.
The inner architecture of the Tower was no longer just stone and mortar—it was a living, breathing nightmare. The walls were continually twisting, warping, and rearranging themselves in real-time, expanding into an extraordinarily large, chaotic labyrinth. Massive fragments of ancient rock, grotesque chunks of pulsing flesh, and jagged, calcified bones were floating and moving around the void like debris in a vortex. Even the stone stairs beneath her feet, which seemed to stretch upward into eternity, pulled out of proportion, stretching and rearranging themselves constantly and violently fast.
She dipped into a flawless barrel roll beneath a massive, swinging section of the moving tower, immediately transitioning into a slick cartwheel to dodge an unusually sharp shard of bone that streaked close enough to cut a few strands of her white hair.
Areia landed heavily on her feet and instantly executed a crisp backflip, followed by lightning-fast, zigzagging movements across the crumbling steps. She was dodging falling debris left, right, and center, but even with the geometry of the room constantly shifting around her, she never once broke her stride or lost her explosive upward momentum.
Spotting a massive piece of rock drifting through the air above her, she leaped. Her fingers locked onto the rough stone edge, and using her incredible upper body strength, she pulled herself up and violently flung her entire body upward. She launched herself with so much raw, kinetic force that she became nothing more than a blurred white streak cutting through the darkness.
**[ ALERT: SYNERGY ACTIVATED ]**
*I don't know why, or how... but I know exactly where I am going,* Areia thought, her teeth grit as the glowing text flashed before her eyes. *I can feel him. His soul... he's in so much pain.* She had no idea she even possessed a unique skill like that, let alone when it had officially activated, but its invisible pull guided her forward through the chaos like a compass. Suddenly, her upward momentum broke as the tower's erratic gravity forcefully set back in, dragging her down toward the bottomless abyss below.
Spinning gracefully mid-air to orient herself, Areia reached into her scabbard, pulled out her gleaming vanguard sword, and rammed the blade full-force into the shifting stone wall beside her.
*CHRRRRRK!*
Sparks exploded into the dark as the steel bit deep into the masonry. She caught herself, dangling precariously from a terrifying, dizzying height while massive continents of rock and bone continued to churn and grind heavily all around her.
Areia expertly balanced herself on the hilt of her blade, which remained buried deep within the stone wall. She knew with absolute certainty that she needed to keep moving, but for some reason, every viable foothold within her sight seemed to be shifting farther and farther away from her. The tower was actively fighting her progress. She didn't know how many seconds she had left before this specific section of the wall decided to violently rearrange itself, plunging her into the void.
She lightly bounced on the hilt of her sword. The high-grade metal bent dangerously and creaked under her weight, but it didn't break.
*My instincts are telling me I'm purposely being isolated here,* Areia thought, her purple eyes narrowing.
She looked down. The tower seemed entirely bottomless now; the ground she had just spent hours climbing from was nowhere to be found, replaced by a yawning pit of absolute darkness. Her eyes rapidly scanned the walls, tracking the rhythm of the shifting blocks. *Too bad I can't fly,* she muttered under her breath.
Pressing her bare hand against the stone, she felt its raw texture—the ancient roughness, the cold humidity, and the jagged bones wedged across the masonry here and there. The immense vibrations of everything churning in the room ran down through the structure, feeding vital positioning data directly into her senses.
High above her, hidden in the swirling fog, the demon floated. *This will be incredibly quick,* it thought maliciously, locking onto her stationary target and lunging straight down at her like a falling meteor.
As the danger loomed, a sudden memory flashed through Areia's mind—a quiet conversation from a lifetime ago. The answer she had given Dan back then wouldn't change even now.
"Say, Areia, which bug or animal would you say is your absolute favorite?" a younger Dan had asked, sitting casually on a rotting log while flipping a copper coin between his fingers.
"I'd say a dragonfly," she had replied slowly, her face deadpan as she effortlessly pulled her blade out of the carcass of a large, centipede-like creature. "If it were a mammal, though, I'd like a bear."
"A dragonfly? Why on earth a dragonfly?" Dan asked, turning his curiosity toward her.
"The way they move," Areia explained, wiping her blade clean. "I was taught traditional martial arts by the masters of Amag, but I derived my own personal style simply by watching dragonflies in the courtyard. They are blindingly fast, perfectly precise, and dangerously good hunters. Most importantly, they have the highest hunting success rate in nature." She turned to face him fully, her long white hair catching the wind. "My ideal insect will always be a dragonfly."
"Yeah, I can definitely see that," Dan had smiled warmly.
Back in the reality of the shaking tower, Areia stared up at the shifting walls. Of course, she couldn't physically see the cloaked demon, so she didn't know its monstrous form was currently hurling toward her at terminal velocity. But she could feel the suffocating wave of killing intent and absolute hostility crushing the air around her.
She bounced hard on the embedded blade one last time. The steel creaked and groaned under the extreme kinetic force as she launched herself violently upward.
She spun sharply to the right mid-air, dodging the demon's descending strike by a mere fraction of an inch. The shockwave of its miss blew past her, and as her upward momentum naturally died down, Areia didn't fall back into the abyss. Instead, she slammed her palms and boots against the vertical wall.
Like a squirrel on absolute steroids, she started sprinting directly up the vertical surface.
She dodged falling debris and shifting bones with impossible grace. The demon streaked past her again, lashing out wildly, but Areia executed annoyingly quick, hyper-precise evasive movements around every single hazard. Her footwork was so fluid and her momentum so violently fast that distinct, ghostly afterimages of her white hair and leather armor were left trailing all around the tower walls.
*She... she can actually see me?!* the Demon's thoughts spiraled in sheer horror as its attacks hit nothing but air.
*Fuck, she is insanely fast!* the demon thought, its shadowy form churning wildly as it found itself completely unable to keep up with her dizzying movements. *No matter. I'll just strip away every single foothold. She can't continue to climb up a vertical tower for long without a surface to pump her legs against!*
*Just as I thought,* Areia's thoughts raced, her breath coming in short, hyper-controlled bursts. *Something is actively controlling the architecture of this tower.* She noted the stone blocks shifting away from her path at incredible, deliberate speeds, threatening to leave her stranded on a smooth, empty precipice. *They're probably watching my every move, too. No matter... I don't plan on stopping now!*
*Wait... she's getting even faster?!* The demon's panic spiked as it watched Areia ascend even higher, defying gravity without a single conventional foothold. *I can't even keep pace with her and I'm literally flying! Stop her!* it roared, commanding the dark intelligence of the structure. *Stop her right now! The boy will kill her if she actually makes it up there!*
Areia's purple eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. In response to the demon's command, the tower went into a frenzy. Jagged stone spikes of all sizes violently erupted from the masonry, massive walls slammed shut to block her path, and grotesque, bloody creatures made from mutilated corpses and jagged shards of bone rose from the shadows out of nowhere, baring their teeth.
"A completely futile effort," Areia whispered, a small, confident smile pulling at the corner of her lips.
**[ UNIQUE SKILL ACTIVATED: VOID STRIDE ]**
A blinding, cataclysmic white light exploded throughout the interior of the tower, completely illuminating the pitch-black void. A fraction of a second later, a massive sonic boom shook the structure to its very foundations, causing the ancient stone walls to vibrate violently.
When the blinding flash cleared almost instantly, the path ahead was unrecognizable. Every single obstacle, trap, and wall that had been placed in front of Areia had been utterly disintegrated into fine ash. Left behind in the wake of her impossible speed was a glowing, crimson trail of human footprints scorched directly into the stone walls, weaving perfectly around the remnants of the debris. The concussive wave of her pure acceleration was so immense that it didn't just tear through the monsters and traps—it severely fractured the physical tower itself.
The demon floated in absolute, jaw-dropped shock at the sheer, terrifying scale of the destruction. The ambient heat radiating from the scorched path she had run up was so immense, so suffocating, that he couldn't even bring his shadowy form to follow her.
Slowly, the demon's shock morphed into twisted ecstasy, and it grinned. *She's even better than I could have ever imagined... She actually managed to crack the reinforced magic of the tower itself.* The entity's eyes gleamed in the dark. *She is definitely the perfect one. I must have her!*