The S-rankers were still panting from their battle with Kharzith. Their wounds ached, their mana ran thin, but relief began to creep in. The Candle of Endings had fallen. For the first time in hours, silence ruled the dungeon.
Then the silence broke.
He was there.
The masked man stood on Kharzith's still-burning corpse, not with triumph, but as though he had been waiting all along. Crimson eyes gleamed from behind the mask, bright as wounds in the dark. His frame was tall, draped in black-and-crimson robes stitched with spatial runes that shimmered faintly, alive as starlight. His blade—long, thin, and pitch-dark with streaks of fractured light—seemed less like forged steel and more like a wound carved out of reality itself.
He looked like the Codex made flesh, but colder. A warlord dressed in inevitability.
The air around them crackled with palpable tension, a storm on the verge of breaking. Seo Joon, once a mere S-rank under the oppressive rule of the law, now stood at the precipice of his true power—his crimson eyes gleaming with the weight of the countless battles he'd fought and the blood he'd shed. His form was unnaturally still, as though the very air held its breath in fear of his next move.
In front of him, the S-rankers—human warriors of unmatched strength—stood resolute. Their eyes gleamed with determination, each one of them a paragon of power in their own right. The heavy silence stretched between them, a momentary lull before the fury that was about to erupt.
The leader of the S-rankers, a tall man with a scar running across his face, raised a hand to signal his comrades.
"Stay sharp. This creature... it's no ordinary monster."
Seo Joon tilted his head, the faint curl of his lips hidden under the mask. His crimson eyes narrowed with amusement. Ordinary? You think I am ordinary? He scoffed internally. They will regret that thought.
Seo Joon, seeing how pathetic they were, decided internally to make them try their best. And with a flick of his blade, the very space split apart. A throne of obsidian rose from the rift, dripping starlight. He sat upon it casually, one arm draped over the side.
"Launch a full-scale attack while he underestimates us!" the captain barked.
They unleashed everything at once.
Chains of shadow erupted from the ground, snaring his limbs. A gravity mage forced the battlefield downward, crushing the earth until it cratered under its own weight. Spells filled the air—storms of fire, waves of lightning, spears of ice.
Hyun-woo summoned Ifrit in desperation. The Infernal King materialized in a burst of flame and molten stone, his form towering, his horns glowing white-hot. His molten eyes widened the instant they locked onto Seo Joon.
"Master," Ifrit growled, his voice low, almost… reverent. "Run. That one is calamity itself. I cannot fight and shield you both."
Still, the spells flew, detonating around Seo Joon in a storm that tore the dungeon walls apart. When the smoke cleared, he remained seated. Unscathed.
"You have one chance left," Seo Joon said, his voice flat, carrying like a tolling bell.
Ifrit's jaw tightened. "Then listen. Give me your mana—all of it."
The S-rankers hesitated only a moment. Then, one by one, they funneled their power into him.
Ifrit swelled. Flames towered high enough to blacken the ceiling, heat blistering the stone itself. With masterful control, he drew in the torrent of power, condensing it tighter, tighter still, until a star began to form.
A sphere of pure flame hovered above his palm—its temperature the same as the core of the sun: fifteen million degrees Celsius. It should have vaporized the entire dungeon, yet Ifrit held it together, compressing it further. The fireball shrank, denser and denser, until something forty-three times larger than the moon had been compressed to the size of a moon itself. A feat of mana control so absurd it could only belong to a being called a King.
To amplify it further, Ifrit spread his arms wide. A Heavenly Flame Domain enveloped the battlefield. The very air turned molten, every particle feeding the sphere. The star flared so bright it hurt to look at.
"This," Ifrit roared, his voice thunder shaking the ground, "is flame at its truest. The core of creation itself! Let us see you erase this!"
And he hurled it forward.
The S-rankers gasped as the sphere tore across the battlefield, warping space itself with its density. It was an extinction-level attack—enough to end nations.
For the first time, Seo Joon smiled.
He rose from the throne, blade in hand. In a single motion, he slashed.
The sphere split in two.
The dungeon screamed.
The compressed sun detonated, unraveling into a sea of erasing flame. Space-time itself buckled; cracks spiderwebbed through the air, the dimension groaned like it would collapse. The ground melted. The sky boiled, and after a few seconds the very fabric of space and time began to crack, distort, and disintegrate.
Yet through it all, Seo Joon stood. Unburned. Untouched. His mask gleamed red in the firelight, his crimson eyes alight with cruel mirth. It only took an instant for Seo Joon to completely repair and modify the dimension into something brand new.
Hyun-woo shielded his face, his voice trembling. "I thought you said this would work—"
Ifrit's molten jaw clenched. "Why would it? Don't you understand? That man… he is the master of space itself. Every dimension bends to him. This gate—you think it was natural? No. He built it. The stars, the sun, the moon that anchor it—all forged by his will."
Hyun-woo's heart stopped.
Ifrit's voice deepened, trembling with something that sounded like fear. "His mana rivals Rin's… no, surpasses it. Only a god of time—or another wielder of space—could hope to rival him."
Seo Joon stepped out of the sea of flames, each stride splitting the air. His blade hummed, reality bending around it.
And then he moved.
The first S-ranker—a woman wielding twin swords—reacted with lightning speed, her blades flashing as she met Joon mid-flight. Steel clashed against steel, a high-pitched screech filling the air as sparks flew. Her eyes widened in shock as she realized the force behind his strike. The weight of his attack was like that of an avalanche, and the force sent her spiraling back to the ground.
Joon landed with the grace of a predator, his feet barely touching the ground before he launched himself forward again, faster than the eye could track.
He blurred again. A mage raised her staff, weaving a storm of ice and fire—but he was already there, his blade slicing her spell in half like paper. "Is that all?" His voice was calm, cruel.
A lightning S-ranker struck from below, arcs splitting the stone. Seo Joon vanished in a flicker of crimson light, reappearing at her side. One hand closed around her throat, and without hesitation, he hurled her into a lava dimension. The water within her body began to boil into steam, while her skin began to blister and burn before even making contact with the lava. Her clothing and hair burst into flames upon approach due to the intense radiant heat, which caused a rapid and horrific death.
The armored knight planted his shield with desperate resolve. Seo Joon's blade came down once. The man's expression twisted in disbelief as his shield and half of his body shattered under Joon's power, and he was flung backward, his body crashing into the ground with a sickening thud.
The captain roared for regroup, but his words drowned in chaos. Seo Joon dragged his blade across the ground. The earth split, shockwaves flinging them all like ragdolls.
"Retreat?" Seo Joon mused, his voice mocking. He rose higher, wings of spatial rift-light unfurling from his back, vast and terrible. "I've played enough."
With a sudden, vicious swipe, Seo Joon struck the ground, sending a shockwave of energy that sent the remaining fighters tumbling. His hands beat once more, the wind cutting through the space like a blade, leaving only destruction in his wake.
The battlefield froze beneath his aura. The mightiest warriors humanity had left—crushed under the weight of inevitability.
The S-rankers, the mightiest warriors in the world, had underestimated him. They had thought themselves the apex of strength, but now they saw, too late, the truth: in the face of Seo Joon's might, they were nothing more than insects before a storm.
And then he laughed, low and resonant, as if the fight had been nothing more than sport, watching as the once-proud warriors struggled to rise to their feet. His crimson eyes gleamed with contempt as he spread his blade wide, the final act of this one-sided massacre ready to unfold.
"Rise, if you can," he murmured, crimson eyes glowing with judgment. "I'll cut you down again."
Then someone in the shadows said, "No you won't."
And lo and behold—the man hidden in the shadow was Rin.
Codex Record — The Masked Calamity
> "He sat upon a throne he pulled from nothing, as if space itself bent in service. His blade was not forged, but carved from the fracture between worlds. Those who faced him swore the air itself refused to carry their breath, for calamity does not merely fight — it rewrites. Some say he was a man. Others, a monster. All agree on one truth: when he arrives, even legends tremble."