Chapter Twelve – The Ruler of the Volcanic Dolls
The sounds of burning, of the nearby volcano, reached the ears of the Dungeon Ruler (Darius) with ease.
He stood before a screen made of magical runes and curses,watching how his soldiers were being shattered by the hunters.
His words were inaudible but saturated with a volcanic rage.
The ground beneath him trembled as his aura,thick and oppressive, began to blanket the volcano itself.
His power was so immense that even from a distance,deep fissures cracked the earth. The heat of the lava visibly surged.
(Darius), the Demon of Volcanic Puppets and sovereign of this world, watched his enemies advancing with cold deliberation.
His anger was an eruption held in check,but only just.
"The Monarchs have sensed it.They feel a threat from this being. He is tainted. His power might be the cause of a delay in the Monarchs' plans."
(Darius)spoke with a chilling wisdom, even in his wrath.
Simultaneously,he unleashed his power.
In the same instant,twenty puppets were summoned.
They were larger than the previous ones,their destructive power reaching high S-Rank levels.
Perhaps each puppet's strength approached that of the Ant King himself.
These were Volcanic Puppets,enhanced with cores made from the raw, magical energy of the volcano.
"Destroy that insolent creature, whatever he is. I want to see a corpse," (Darius) commanded, his voice a rumble deeper than the mountain's heart.
The puppets awoke in the moment they heard their master's voice, emitting horrifying, grating shrieks of grinding stone and igniting magma—SKREEE-KRACKLE-BOOM!
In the very next second,an explosion of energy erupted from the volcano's heart.
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Outside the volcanic fortress where (Darius) resided, (Uchiha Sasuke) and the Korean S-Rank hunters felt the terrifying, oncoming tidal wave of power.
The S-Rank hunters shuddered.
Not from fear,but from the sheer, crushing pressure.
It was enough pressure to pulverize everything around them.
They gripped their weapons tighter,their reactions a chain of practiced, desperate movements.
(Baek Yoon-ho) bared his mana-reinforced claw gauntlets with a sharp shink-shink, his own predatory aura rising to its absolute limit just to allow him to stand against the dreadful pressure.
(Choi Jong-in)instantly muttered incantations, his fingers weaving through the air with practiced speed—fwoosh-fwoom—constructing a barrier spell that canceled out a fraction of the pressure around himself and the others.
He was the quickest to sense the monstrous pressure heading their way.
(Chae Ha-in)drew her sword in one fluid motion—shing—and pointed it toward the oncoming wave, simultaneously reshaping her own power in preparation for battle.
In the same moment, they heard (Go Gun-hee) speak, his voice a bedrock of calm amidst the psychic storm.
"This danger may be on the same level as the Ant King.Remain cautious. Be fully alert. Our role is to gauge the target, not engage the danger directly. We will provide support only if the young man encounters a problem."
He didn't need to point at (Uchiha Sasuke), for whom the current development was more interesting than dangerous.
The pressure had reached a high S-Rank level,but for (Uchiha Sasuke), whose power had transcended that of the Six Paths Sage, such pressure was pathetically normal.
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Twenty massive explosions cratered the ashen earth around them.
Twenty giant stone soldiers,each standing five meters tall, wielding an array of weapons—swords, spears, axes—all armored in black and red volcanic rock with pulsing, fiery lines radiating from the right side of their chests, indicating their energy core.
The terrifying energy emanating from each was dangerously close to S-Rank,and it was steadily, unnervingly rising.
The Korean hunters' jaws went slightly slack in shock.
Seeing so many creatures of this caliber at once was unprecedented in their entire history of exploring A-Rank and S-Rank gates.
Without preamble, the central volcanic giant lunged toward (Uchiha Sasuke).
Its movement wasn't a run;it was a teleportation-like blur, impossibly fast for its massive size.
Its colossal sword came down where(Sasuke) had been standing with a deafening CRASH-BOOM!, shattering the ground into a molten crater.
(Sasuke) had simply vanished, reappearing directly above the giant's head with a soft pop of displaced air.
"What… what kind of insane speed is that?!" The Korean hunters reacted simultaneously, leaping backward in multiple, frantic jumps—thud-thud-thud-thud—creating distance between themselves and the squad of volcanic behemoths.
(Baek Yoon-ho)couldn't help but utter the words as he retreated. To him, it looked like the youth had simply ceased to exist in one point and appeared in another, without any sound or observable process.
(Uchiha Sasuke), hovering above the statue's head, activated his Mangekyo Sharingan.
He looked down at the puppets and spoke in a sharp,disdainful tone.
"You send a pack of dolls after me?I think you're truly a mad creature. Since you won't show yourself, I'll shatter these dolls, then kill you. And I will consider this insult something I will repay in kind."
The arrogantly delivered Japanese words were perfectly suited to the personality of the Last Uchiha, who looked upon the giant volcanic puppets as if they were nothing.
At that same moment, a voice emanated from one of the puppets, the one (Sasuke) stood upon.
"Stranger.The Monarchs demand your life. I will make your death a lesson for all who oppose the Monarchs' will."
The voice that came from the giant was a guttural, roaring howl, a mix of grating stone and roaring flame.
It was not comprehensible speech to(Uchiha Sasuke), nor even to the three Korean hunters.
But Chairman(Go Gun-hee), who was also the vessel of a Monarch, understood the message perfectly.
His eyes narrowed at the statues,but he said nothing.
(Uchiha Sasuke), who heard the bestial howl, felt the intense hostility radiating from the volcanic giant.
He understood that the being speaking didn't intend mere animal noise;there was a message it wanted to send.
But once again,the language barrier frustrated him, a recurring nuisance since arriving in this world.
"Every creature here is an idiot, incapable of speaking my language. Further proof that this dimension is far from my world, or perhaps in a completely different spatial stratum. But it doesn't matter. I just need to capture that creature. I'll get everything I need the hard way."
His decision was clear and resolute in his mind.
He confirmed at that moment that he must capture the ruler of this dungeon at any cost,to verify his theories about this place and confirm a way back to his previous world.
"Then die!" the puppet shrieked in a demonic tone, its roar like a volcanic eruption.
One of the giants launched a sphere of burning fire,its heat reaching thousands of degrees.
The sphere shot forth like a missile.
(Uchiha Sasuke) watched the fireball hurtle toward him with utter boredom.
Then,he activated his Rinnegan.
Space-time ninjutsu: Amenotejikara.
The Korean hunters, and the dungeon ruler (Darius) watching from his screen, saw with their own eyes as (Sasuke) vanished.
In his place,the volcanic giant that had fired the shot suddenly appeared.
The explosive fireball struck it point-blank.
KOOOOM-FWOOOOOSH!
The explosion sent a shockwave rippling out over a hundred meters before the giant puppet was blasted into shattered, molten fragments.
(Uchiha Sasuke), who had watched this display from a new vantage point, spoke.
"These are good fireworks for you.But if this is all you have, it will be merely a brief amusement before I kill you."
He spoke without even gesturing to the exploding fireball behind him,which had torn open the earth, causing streams of lava to begin spurting forth.
The power of the explosion was immense,but to (Sasuke), who could rip apart hundreds of mountains with a mere gesture, the level of this attack was inconsequential.
His Rinnegan was almost unnecessary for dealing with them,but he wanted to test his ability to teleport within the strange space of this dungeon, to confirm if his powers still functioned with precision here.
These thoughts, this cold strategy in (Sasuke)'s mind, gave birth to a bizarre battle from the perspective of the S-Rank hunters.
Explosions were everywhere.
The movements of the giant swords resembled world-ending strikes;every blow from the twenty volcanic giants sent shockwaves for hundreds of meters.
At certain moments,a single slash could cleave through several kilometers of terrain.
Yet,every single attack was avoided through speeds they couldn't comprehend.
The Strange-Eyed Hunter would disappear,and a volcanic giant would appear in his place, as if he could swap locations with the puppets at will.
"What kind of spell is this? I don't sense him using any magic! How in hell does he possess this power? I've never heard of anything like it before!" (Choi Jong-in)'s voice was frustrated as he spoke.
Even his extremely fine-tuned magical sense,which was almost never wrong, couldn't detect when the Strange-Eyed Hunter was casting a spell.
Of course, he didn't know the nature of (Sasuke)'s power.
(Sasuke)was using the Rinnegan's ability to teleport through space and swap places with the stone giants.
The use of chakra,a principle entirely different from mana, was something even an S-Rank hunter like (Jong-in) couldn't comprehend at this moment.
Even (Chae Ha-in), who possessed exceptional sensory abilities and could detect most types of magical power used by S-Rank hunters, couldn't sense any flow of a spell during the teleportation and spatial manipulation.
This made her beautiful eyes narrow sharply,forcing her to reconsider the person in her imagination.
Someone with a similar ability to teleport,but in a vastly different style, yet with an equally devastating effect.
As for (Baek Yoon-ho), unlike the others, he wasn't thinking about the logic.
His beast-like mind,honed by his transformation ability, was trying to absorb the spectacle.
He was the only one physically capable of catching glimpses of the movements with greater clarity,thanks to his animalistic senses.
His sharp eyes,currently in a semi-transformed state, saw fleeting moments—the brief, purple glow of the hunter's eyes before each teleportation.
"Are his strange eyes the source of his abilities? Is it possible that's why he doesn't need the kinds of incantations (Jong-in) uses?" This question was clear in his mind, but he didn't voice it aloud.
Meanwhile, Chairman (Go Gun-hee), watching this spectacle, began to feel a deep unease.
The appearance of this hunter wasn't just an unusual event.It was the beginning of something, a harbinger of an unbelievable chaos that could make Korea the center of a large-scale war with terrifying beings.
He had tried,once, to prevent such beings from appearing in this world.
But it seemed that effort would not be viable for much longer.
A war was coming,and he, too, might be forced to participate in it directly.
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End of Chapter.
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The puppet show begins, with Sasuke as the unimpressed critic and the hunters as the bewildered audience. The plot thickens like volcanic slag! Thank you for reading as the dungeon's secrets and Sasuke's frustrations erupt simultaneously. Your theories are the lava flow that shapes this story's landscape.
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