The air in the Demon King's Dungeon's core chamber was thick enough to choke on. It wasn't just dust and ozone, but the cloying scent of spilled magic and rotting ambition. The ground, a slick obsidian carved with pulsating red runes, trembled underfoot.
Kim Joon-Ho, hailed as the world's strongest S-Rank Hunter, stood at the center of the maelstrom. His breath came in ragged, controlled pulls, each one burning in lungs compressed by the chamber's oppressive mana. His custom armor, once gleaming silver and blue, was now a scarred testament to the hour-long slaughter. Cracks webbed across the chestplate, and dark, otherworldly blood steamed where it had splashed against the metal.
Around him, the remains of his elite raid team, Aethelgard, caught their breath. They were the best of the best, handpicked for this final, desperate mission to end the decade-long nightmare of dungeon breaks. Now, only five of them were still standing in the heart of the enemy's domain.
To his left, Min-Soo, the team's stone-skinned Vanguard, leaned heavily on his shattered tower shield, his breathing a wet rasp. To his right, Hye-Jin, their Arcane Archer, had an arrow nocked but her hands were shaking, the fletching stained with her own blood from a gash on her brow.
And beside him, close enough to touch, was Choi Yuna. His lover. His partner. Her pristine white and gold robes, the uniform of a top-tier [Mind Affector], were miraculously untouched by the filth of battle. Her beautiful face, usually a mask of serene support, was set in a grim line of concentration, her eyes fixed on the prize.
The prize.
Hovering in the center of the chamber, suspended over a bottomless black pit, was the Dungeon Core. But it was more than that. It was the World Tree's Heart. A crystalline orb the size of a human head, its interior swirled with the essence of a thousand captured souls and the raw, unshaped power of creation itself. It pulsed with a gentle, emerald light, a stark contrast to the hellscape around it. This was the source of the Demon King's power. The key to ending everything.
"Final push," Joon-Ho commanded, his voice a gravelly echo in the vast chamber. It held no fear, only the bone-deep weariness of a long war and the iron resolve to see it finished. "Min-Soo, hold the left flank. The death-spawns are reforming. Hye-Jin, suppression fire on the right conduit. It's trying to channel more energy."
He didn't look at Yuna to give her orders. Her role was to shield their minds, to keep the core's psychic wails from turning their brains to mush. She had been doing it flawlessly.
"Joon-Ho…" Min-Soo coughed, a speck of blood on his lips. "The guardian's last shriek… my durability stat is in the red."
"Just thirty more seconds," Joon-Ho said, his eyes never leaving the Core. He hefted his sword, Final Dawn. The blade, a masterpiece of lost technology and enchanted adamantine, was dulled and notched, but its edge still held the promise of an ending. "On my mark. We hit it with everything we have left. One coordinated strike. Yuna, you maintain the psychic buffer until the very instant. The backlash will be… catastrophic."
Yuna nodded, a tight, efficient movement. "Understood. My mana is holding."
It was a lie. He would realize that only later. At that moment, he heard only the truth he expected.
"Ready?" he asked, his muscles coiling. The fatigue vanished, burned away by a final surge of adrenaline. This was it. The end of the road. After this, maybe there could be peace. A world without constant fear. He allowed himself a single, fleeting thought of a quiet future. A future with her.
"Ready!" Min-Soo roared, slamming his fractured shield against the ground.
"Ready!" Hye-Jin echoed, her bowstring drawn taut.
Joon-Ho took a deep breath, the acrid air filling his lungs one last time. "Now!"
He moved.
His body became a blur of motion, Final Dawn held high, channeling every last drop of his S-Rank strength, speed, and the unique skill, [Sovereign's Descent]. Light, pure and blinding, erupted from his blade. He was no longer just a man; he was a meteor, a final judgment aimed at the heart of the world's misery.
Min-Soo bellowed a war cry, a sonic wave of pure force erupting from him to shatter the reforming demonic flesh on the left. Hye-Jin's arrow, a miniature sun, streaked towards the right, silencing the thrumming energy conduit in an explosion of light and splintered stone.
Joon-Ho crossed the distance. The World Tree's Heart filled his vision. He could feel its power, a terrifying, beautiful song of life and death intertwined. With a scream that tore from the depths of his soul, he brought Final Dawn down in a perfect, decisive arc.
The blade connected.
Not with a clang of metal, but with a sound like the world cracking.
A spiderweb of brilliant green light exploded across the surface of the core. The psychic wail he'd been shielded from hit him then—a wave of pure, undiluted anguish and loss that would have vaporized a lesser mind. He gritted his teeth, riding the wave, pushing the blade deeper.
The core shattered.
A silent, expanding sphere of emerald energy burst outwards. It washed over him, over the chamber. It didn't burn; it unmade. The obsidian floor turned to sand. The reforming monsters dissolved into motes of black dust. The oppressive mana pressure vanished, replaced by a sudden, deafening vacuum of silence.
It was done.
The Demon King's Dungeon was broken.
Joon-Ho landed on one knee, Final Dawn plunging point-first into the now-crumbling ground beside him. He was empty. Drained. Every muscle screamed in protest. But a wild, disbelieving hope surged in his chest. They'd done it. Against all odds, they had—
A searing, impossible pain erupted in his lower back.
It was a cold fire, a violation that lanced through his exhaustion and shock. It wasn't the clean pain of battle. It was intimate. Treacherous.
His body went rigid. The hope in his chest froze, then shattered into icy confusion.
Slowly, mechanically, he looked down.
The tip of a crystalline dagger, glowing with a familiar, soothing light—Yuna's [Psionic Shiv] skill—protruded from the front of his abdomen, just below his ribcage. It was slick with his blood, a vivid red against its pristine surface.
Time slowed to a crawl.
He turned his head, the movement agonizingly slow.
Behind him stood Choi Yuna. Her expression was no longer grim or concentrated. It was calm. Blank. Devoid of the love, the warmth, the shared history of a decade. Her eyes were flat, like chips of polished jade, looking at him as if he were a stranger. Or an obstacle.
Her hand was still on the hilt of the dagger buried in his kidney.
Over her shoulder, he saw Min-Soo and Hye-Jin. They weren't rushing to his aid. They weren't screaming in betrayal. They simply stood there, watching. Their faces were impassive. Cold. Min-Soo averted his gaze slightly. Hye-Jin's bow was lowered.
Understanding, cold and absolute, flooded Joon-Ho's veins, more paralyzing than the poison he now felt seeping from the enchanted blade.
"The World Tree's Heart can only be claimed by one, Joon-Ho."
Yuna's voice. It was the same voice that had whispered promises in the dark, that had laughed with him over simple meals between raids, that had said she loved him. Now, it was devoid of all emotion. A clinical statement of fact.
She twisted the dagger.
White-hot agony blinded him. He gasped, blood bubbling in his throat. His legs gave way, and he collapsed forward, catching himself on his hands. Final Dawn lay useless beside him.
He watched, vision swimming, as Yuna calmly stepped past his fallen form. She approached the crumbling pedestal where the shattered core had been. At its center, now that the outer shell was gone, a smaller, denser orb of light hovered—the purified, concentrated essence of the World Tree's Heart. The true prize.
She plucked it from the air. It bathed her face in a gentle, triumphant glow.
"Why…?" The word was a wet, broken thing, torn from him.
She didn't even look back. "The new world won't have room for shared glory. Only one throne."
Min-Soo and Hye-Jin moved to flank her, their posture protective. Of her. Not of him. Never again of him.
The betrayal was so complete, so utter, it felt surreal. The pain in his body was nothing compared to the tectonic plate shift in his soul, the erasure of every trust, every memory, every shared dream. Ten years. A decade of fighting side-by-side, of building a life in the cracks of an apocalyptic world. All for this.
His life was fading fast, spilling out onto the disintegrating dungeon floor. The darkness at the edges of his vision crept inwards.
As his consciousness began to flicker, his fading senses caught a final, tiny detail. A sound not of the dungeon, but personal. A delicate crack.
The artifact. The simple, unassuming jade pendant he always wore around his neck—a family heirloom from a life before the System, one he'd never understood but kept for sentiment. As his life force ebbed, as the last of his S-Rank mana dissipated, the pendant finally gave way.
It shattered.
A warmth, alien and immense, not from the dungeon but from within the pendant, blossomed against his chest. It was a feeling of unraveling, of threads of fate being severed and re-spun.
The last thing he saw was Yuna's back, walking away with his comrades, holding the light of the world in her hands.
The last thing he heard was the echo of that small, final crack.
Then, nothing.
To be continued...