The battlefield shook with every step the Necromancer Lord took.
Its skeletal army stretched endlessly, a tide of death pressing against Rin like a storm of gnashing teeth and hollow eyes. The air reeked of cold rot and burning soul-flames, as though the dungeon itself rejected life.
Rin stood with his blade in hand, his breath fogging the frozen air. He did not raise it with theatrics; he simply adjusted his stance. The storm answered regardless.
The ??? Blade pulsed in his grip, frost spilling across the broken ground with each step he took forward.
The Necromancer Lord roared, releasing a deluge of soul spears. They screamed through the air like banshees. Rin cut upward once—Frozen Edge—and an entire wall of crystalline ice burst from the earth, catching the barrage like a shield. Each impact scattered shards, glimmering like dying stars.
Rin slid across the ice he had conjured, his movements sharp and fluid.
One moment, he was weaving around clawing zombies.
The next, he spun his blade and crafted spears of frozen aura that skewered the undead in clusters.
When a group tried to flank him, a jagged ice wall erupted at his back, locking them out.
It wasn't just power. It was precision.
Each motion carried intent, the ice obeying not like an element, but a language only Rin could speak.
The skeletal tide faltered, but did not end. They swarmed again, shrieking, endless. Rin's breathing deepened. Cuts laced his body, and his aura frayed at the edges. Even so, his eyes burned with resolve.
He was not done.
The Necromancer seeing this display made him surprised and curious about how long this toy would last in the duel against an s tank being
The dungeon groaned like a cathedral of bones. Towers of black stone loomed crooked, split by rivers of molten green that stank of sulfur and burnt marrow. Thousands of skeletons poured from the cracks, armored in jagged soul-forged steel, their hollow sockets lit with cold fire.
At their head, the Necromancer appeared. Cloaked in rags of shadow, his horns curled backward, eyes burning like coals in a pit. A dozen wraiths clung to him like chains, whispering his name in screams.
He raised his staff. The dungeon trembled.
---
Rin moved first.
The ??? Blade hummed in his hand, its surface glinting with frost. He exhaled, lowered his stance, and pressed a hand against the floor.
A thin crack echoed outward.
The ground whitened. Frost spidered across the black stone, spreading with frightening speed. Skeletons froze mid-charge, their knees snapping as ice locked into their joints. In the space of a breath, the battlefield was his.
Rin rose, blade trailing a ribbon of mist.
A single slash sent a crescent of frozen light tearing through the mob, severing fifty skeletons into brittle shards. He did not pause—already sliding across an ice ramp that he conjured beneath his feet, carving upward into the air like a hawk's glide.
Another slash—this time downward. The force of the swing birthed a tidal wave of ice, cascading across the battlefield like a frozen tsunami, swallowing everything in its path.
---
The Necromancer hissed, stabbing his staff into the ground. Souls erupted, dozens, hundreds—screaming faces twisted into a shield that wove around him like a cocoon. Their wails rattled the dungeon walls.
Rin didn't hesitate. He stabbed his blade into the earth.
"Frost Monarch Form."
The dungeon roared.
A blizzard howled from nothing, swallowing the battlefield in a storm of knives. The ??? Blade flared bright, and from the aura surging out came dragons—massive, crystalline beasts of ice, their roars shaking the dead. They surged forward, tearing into the soul cocoon with jaws that snapped like glaciers breaking apart.
The Necromancer howled as the cocoon shattered, fragments of frozen wraiths scattering like broken glass.
---
The staff rose again. Black fire gathered into a sphere the size of a tower, a compressed sun of souls screaming in agony. The Necromancer hurled it down, aiming to erase everything in one strike.
Rin's eyes sharpened.
He swung his blade once, but this was not Cause Severance. The cut didn't target the source—it commanded the world itself.
Ice surged upward, layering into a dome thicker than fortress walls. Dragon scales of frost interlocked, shimmering with runes. The soul-fire slammed into it, splintering the shield into cracks and shards—only for the ice to reform, again and again, eating the blast until it died.
When the flames cleared, Rin stood untouched, frost crawling off his shoulders like a mantle.
---
The Necromancer snarled, abandoning the staff, drawing a blade forged from screaming souls. His body bulked into a demon's frame—muscle twisting, horns lengthening.
Rin smiled faintly. Finally.
Steel met steel.
The clash thundered like mountains colliding. Every strike of the Necromancer's blade birthed shockwaves, each echo filled with ghostly shrieks. Rin answered with precision—his cuts were not wild swings, but inevitabilities. Each thrust pierced gaps in the Necromancer's armor, each parry redirected his weight into imbalance.
At one point, the demon stabbed Rin clean through the side. Blood spurted—only for Rin to seize the blade inside his own flesh, freezing it solid. He twisted, shattering it with a pull of his sword.
The Necromancer staggered, stunned. Rin's expression never changed.
---
The duel escalated. The demon raised soul-titans from the ground—giant skeletal warriors wielding weapons forged from curses. Rin answered with avalanches, carving through their legs, then leaping skyward on frozen pillars, cleaving down with ice-drills spiraling from his blade.
The dungeon was chaos incarnate. Fire, ice, steel, screams. Yet Rin never lost rhythm. His movements flowed with an artistry that made slaughter look like choreography.
The Necromancer Lord raised his skeletal hand, and the battlefield answered.
The sea of corpses that Rin had already cut down shuddered as if mocking death itself. Cracks raced across their brittle bones before they swelled grotesquely, bellies distending with unstable mana.
"Die with your creations!" the Necromancer hissed, his voice like a chorus of wailing souls.
The corpses detonated one after another—chain reactions of fire, blood, and bone that turned the cavern into a storm of shrapnel. For an instant, it looked as if even space itself would collapse beneath the shockwaves.
But Rin's blade sang. With a single sweeping arc, walls of jagged frost rose like mountains, swallowing the blasts, freezing fire into pale sculptures, and shattering bone fragments mid-air before they touched him.
The Necromancer only laughed. He pressed his staff into the ground, the black crystal tip pulsing like a heart, and the corpses he had not sacrificed convulsed together, merging.
From the amalgamation, a towering knight of bone and shadow emerged—armor fused from skulls, eyes burning blue, and in its hand, a colossal greatsword carved from ribcages and bound with soulfire.
"My masterpiece," the Necromancer declared, his rotting lips stretching into something between a grin and a curse. "A blade to test a blade."
The skeletal knight stepped forward, each movement shaking the dungeon floor. The air grew heavy with death, as if the weight of every grave pressed upon Rin's shoulders.
Rin's eyes narrowed. He lowered his stance, the ??? Blade in his grip whispering with cold fury. For the first time in the duel, his lips curved into the ghost of a smile.
"Perfect," he murmured, frost misting his breath. "Let's see if your masterpiece can withstand mine."
And the clash began—soulfire greatsword colliding with frozen edge, the shockwave tearing through the dungeon like a storm, each strike carrying the weight of armies.
Its soulfire greatsword came down in an overhead cleave that split the caven beneath them like parchment. Frost hissed where Rin blocked, the force rattling his bones.
Before the echoes faded, the knight twisted unnaturally, its body bending like a puppet strung by a thousand souls, and swung from the side.
Rin ducked under the arc, his blade dragging across the floor—frost bloomed in his wake, birthing jagged ice spires that shot upward and pinned the knight's leg.
The Necromancer sneered. The knight's limb dissolved into ash and reformed instantly, the soulfire reanimating its frame. With one effortless stomp, the ice shattered.
Then it lunged.
Each strike of its blade left a wake of spectral flame, wide arcs that seared through both stone and air. Rin danced between them, footwork light and precise, blade parrying just enough to redirect instead of clash. He raised his hand—an ice shield curved up around him as a soul spear shot from the knight's chest like a cannon. The spear cracked the shield, but Rin's blade finished the job, severing it mid-flight.
"Not bad!" the Necromancer cackled. "But you can't cut what is already dead!"
The knight swung again, but Rin didn't retreat this time. He surged forward, aura flaring. His blade carved a crescent, ice mist trailing.
> Against the Grain.
The strike cleaved through the knight's chest, the soulfire dimming for an instant—before erupting twice as bright. The knight's body stitched itself back together, absorbing fragments of other corpses scattered across the floor.
"Then I'll carve until nothing's left," Rin muttered.
He stabbed his blade into the ground. Frost roared outward in all directions, coating the dungeon in a frozen field. The knight's feet locked in place, frost biting into its form.
It responded with fury, raising its soulfire greatsword overhead. The Necromancer whispered, and dozens of bound souls streamed from the walls, fusing into the blade until it burned like a sun of black fire. The weapon descended, a killing arc aimed to split Rin in two.
Rin's eyes sharpened. He lifted his blade, aura flooding out, and whispered—
> Frozen Fang Dragon.
From the ice field, a colossal dragon erupted, scales of crystal and wings of snow. It roared, meeting the soulfire blade head-on. The impact shook the dungeon, a hurricane of fire and frost shredding the battlefield.
When the light cleared, half the knight's body was gone, frozen into brittle shards. But it still stood, dragging itself forward, reforming with every step.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" the Necromancer crooned, raising both arms as if conducting a symphony. "This is art—death remade as eternity!"
Rin tightened his grip. His frost spread again, crawling across the knight's body like veins. The ??? Blade pulsed, ice whispering against his palm.
He exhaled once. Calm. Certain.
And stepped forward to finish the masterpiece with his own.
He pressed the ??? Blade to his chest.
Frost erupted outward.
His aura condensed into a single command—the Frost Monarch's Law. The battlefield froze in absolute silence. Time itself didn't stop, but phenomena did: flames halted mid-flicker, soul-chains slowed, wails died in throats. The Necromancer froze mid-swing, horror in his eyes.
Rin stepped once. His blade whispered across the demon's throat.
A crack. Then silence.
The Necromancer shattered into ice-dust, his scream never leaving his lips and the corpse knight shattered along with him
The Necromancer scythe splintering, its soul-flames snuffed out by an avalanche of frost. Silence fell. The horde was gone. Only Rin stood, blade in hand, the chill of the Monarch's aura still hanging in the air.
The ??? Blade pulsed once—different from before. Not hunger. Not dominance. Something softer.
The Codex whispered, its voice echoing in his mind:
"At long last, the ??? Blade (glitch sound effects) has found a bearer it can protect… until the end of time."
Rin blinked. For a moment, he wasn't standing in the dungeon.
Snow fell.
Not fresh snow, but the cold remains of centuries—each flake carrying fragments of regret.
The vision bled open and Rin found himself standing in an endless tundra of memories.
He saw them—all the wielders who came before him.
The first, a warrior-king, who raised the blade to defend his people. Frost surged, but his body cracked beneath the strain. His kingdom never knew he froze alive on his own throne, the blade still clutched in his hand.
The second, a priestess draped in white, praying that the sword's purity could cleanse the rift. But her prayer was drowned in screams as the frost she summoned spilled beyond her control, swallowing her temple, her disciples, even her own heart.
A third, a nameless youth. He swung the blade in desperation, defying monsters that outnumbered him a thousandfold. For a time, the weapon answered him with brilliance—ice dragons, walls of crystal. But the cold seeped into his marrow. He died still fighting, not slain by monsters, but by the friend he had once begged the blade to save.
And more. Wielder after wielder. Centuries of them. Each face blurred, each death sharper than the last. Some perished from the burden of power. Others lived long enough to despair as the sword failed to shield those they loved.
The chorus of voices was deafening—regret, anguish, rage, pleading. A thousand screams muffled beneath a thousand layers of snow.
Through it all, Rin felt the blade's loneliness.
It hadn't wanted to consume them. It hadn't wanted to watch them shatter.
It had only wanted to protect.
But it had no will strong enough to choose differently. Until now.
The frost around Rin pulsed, not cold but steady—like a hand trembling yet refusing to let go.
For the first time in its existence, the blade wasn't searching for someone to wield it.
It was choosing someone to stand beside.
In the vision, Rin glimpsed a silhouette—vast, skeletal, cloaked in frost. A guardian's form, slumbering still. Not yet… but one day.
Codex Record Update — ??? Blade (Awakened)
Designation: Ego Weapon — Transcendent Tier
Affinity: Ice / Absolute Cold
Loyalty: 100% Bound
> Annotation:
"For centuries, the Frozen Edge searched—not for conquest, but for a soul it could protect. All others cracked, shattered, or were devoured by the very cold they sought to command. Each failure weighed upon the blade like a chain of frozen regrets.
Now, at last, the will of the blade stirs not in hunger, but in devotion. The weapon no longer asks to be wielded—it has chosen.
As its frost entwines with its master's will, fragments of a greater form stir within the abyss of its memory, an echo of armor that once guarded gods. Though dormant, the promise lingers—one day, the frost shall rise not just as a blade, but as a guardian that walks beside its bearer.
'Bearer… until the end of time, my frost shall be your shield.'"