The pain arrived late, the way pain arrived from wounds that were serious enough that the body needed a moment to process the full report.

Kai looked at the hole in his chest.

The armor had not stopped it.

He looked at the blade through his chest, held in a hand belonging to a figure he had not seen enter the cleared dungeon space. The immediate question was how a weapon had gone through armor that was supposed to be difficult to penetrate.

Sera’s voice said his name.

He did not fall.

Around them, one by one, the former Crimson Eden hunters were going down. Not combat but simply lying down, and the smell in the air had changed in the last thirty seconds in a way he had registered and not identified until now.

Sleeping gas.

This had been planned.

[Condition Met: Near-Death Threshold.]

[Distortion Amplification: Active.]

His perception sharpened, and everything slowed down. Kai’s left hand still had the Fractured Blade in it.

He swung backhand without looking. The blade carved a clean arc behind him at the height the hand on the hilt would have to be. The edge grazed the cloth. The hilt in his chest lurched as the assassin let go and stepped clear.

One second.

Kai used it.

He reached behind himself and closed his hand around the black blade’s hilt, where it had partially withdrawn, and pulled it the rest of the way out. The pain was stinging, but he ignored it. Blood ran down the front of his gear in a quantity that made Sera make a sound.

He looked at the blade.

[Null Fang. Grade: S-Rank.]

[A sword in black that is able to ignore a person’s defense and all armor.]

He ran a hand through his hair with the hand that was not holding someone else’s weapon.

"Which idiot paid you?" He said. "And how much did they pay you to make a mistake this expensive?"

The assassin paused. "You should be dead."

"You should have brought a second assassin."

The assassin came in fast, choosing the angle on his left side. Kai slashed out with the Fractured Blade towards the left. Kai turned before steel shrieked as the Fractured Blade clashed with a black blade, making sparks explode.

But then the assassin figure faded away.

And he appeared on Kai’s right, the black blade thrusting towards Kai’s neck. But then Kai’s figure spun around before the slash came from somewhere the assassin had not expected.

The blade caught the assassin across the ribs!

The assassin rolled with the hit and went back fast rather than trying to hold ground, and reset cleanly.

’He did his homework. So he should know about my weapons and most of the way I fight.’ The thought didn’t matter and he moved anyway.

He rushed forward despite the blood loss and the second exchange went to Kai again. Kai’s blade slashed at the right arm of the assassin before his leg lashed out and struck him in his chest, sending him rolling on the ground.

The assassin darted left, but Kai was already there. The black blade scraped sparks off the Fractured Blade. The assassin’s eyes widened as that move should have worked. But the assassin was fighting someone who no longer existed.

The third exchange started when the assassin shifted his angle and came in low. Kai read the angle and moved to meet it and felt the chest wound make its opinion known about that decision in very specific terms.

He moved anyway.

The Fractured Blade caught the assassin’s right arm, and Kai’s leg came up into the assassin’s chest at the same moment.

The wound made the attack lose a bit of power. But the strike was still optimal, and the sound of bone breaking rang out as the assassin was sent launching into the air. The assassin hit the ground, rolled, and came up correctly before he threw four daggers.

Kai swiftly blocked and deflected them before ducking under a ball that shone. And then it instantly exploded behind him, unleashing tiny fragments. But he summoned a shield from his inventory and blocked the iron shrapnels that twisted in the air and rained down on him.

After that, Kai dismissed the shield as he stared at the assassin who was gripping his weapon while bleeding from his ribs. But Kai was bleeding more as the blood continued flowing down his armor.

The assassin stopped moving for half a second.

His eyes flicked to Kai’s chest.

Then to the blood.

Then back to Kai.

’Good.’

That was all Kai needed, and he rushed towards him.

The Fractured Blade slashed down towards the assassin, forcing them to jump away again. But then, instead of rushing towards Kai, their gaze shifted towards Sera.

He noticed immediately, and he moved toward Sera who was still standing but barely. The assassin appeared behind her at full speed, the black blade ready for a strike that would take her out of the fight permanently.

Kai used the Bloodthorn.

He drove it into his own side, below the existing wound, and the Vital Surge activated, life force stored from the fight compressing and releasing into his system. The pain and healing hit at the same time.

It was awful.

But he quickly felt his flesh mending together and he covered the distance in those two seconds.

His shoulder hit the assassin’s forearm and drove the black blade wide. The assassin came back immediately with another strike, but Kai was already between him and Sera. The Fractured Blade and the Null Fang crossed in front of him.

He blocked the assassin’s strike with the Fractured Blade before the Null Fang slashed down on the assassin and forced him to stumble back. Sera’s hand closed around his shoulder from behind.

"I’m okay, just focus on him," she said. Her voice was thin, but her grip was not.

The assassin glanced at Sera and then at Kai. He took a step back as he realized Sera was no longer the easy target.

Kai stepped forward.

The assassin lunged, his blade flashing toward Kai’s throat. But Kai caught it on the Fractured Blade, and sparks exploded between them. Then as the assassin twisted his blade, Kai’s leg lashed out, striking the assassin forward.

The assassin was sent flying. Before he could recover, Kai hurled Null Fang and it rushed through the air. The black blade crossed the distance and buried itself in his side. And for the first time in the fight, he released a grunt and vomited some blood.

The assassin tried to grasp the Null Fang, but the Fractured Blade hit his shoulder a moment later. And then Kai appeared with a fist that crashed into the assassin’s face, smashing into the ground. Then he pulled out the Fractured Blade before slashing at the assassin’s thigh and left shoulder to stop any further resistance.

The fight ended.

Kai sighed before glancing to see that Sera was sitting instead of standing. Like getting back up would take more energy than she had left.

"The ring." She sounded exhausted.

"What ring?" he said.

She pointed at the Heartguard Rings on her hand, the S-Rank set from the dungeon drop, and he looked at the description.

[Heartguard Ring — Grade: A Rank]

[Born from the Crimson Heart, it’s able to pierce through a person’s emotions and influence them to speak the truth for one whole minute. It also increases one’s agility by 60 and magic by 70.]

Then she put her hand flat on the ground, closed her eyes, and was asleep before he had finished reading the description.

Not unconscious. Sleeping. He checked, and her vitals were stable, her breathing was regular, and she had simply reached the point that Crimson Eden had been building toward for the entire run, and her body had decided the point had arrived.

He looked at her for a moment. Then, at the assassin.

...

The assassin was looking at the ground when Kai crouched beside him.

"Who hired you?" Kai said.

The assassin said nothing.

Kai broke the index finger of his left hand. The sound was small and clear in the quiet of the collapsed garden.

The assassin said nothing.

The middle finger.

Still nothing.

Kai looked at him for a moment. Then he put his hand on the assassin’s shoulder, the Heartguard Ring making contact, and asked the question again.

"Who hired you?"

The assassin’s jaw moved, and his eyes changed.

"Victor Hale," he said with a look of horror. But at the same time, he looked relieved, like finally saying it had hurt less than hiding it.

Kai said nothing because he wasn’t surprised. That was the part he disliked most. Not the chest wound, not the blade on his back, and not the hunters on the ground around him.

He had seen it coming, and it had still happened anyway. He should have put more focus on Victor instead of the dungeons.

But it was pointless to regret it now.

The assassin looked at him as if he seemed to expect something. A reaction, an escalation, the response that the answer warranted from someone who had just been told the name of the person who had paid for a black blade through their chest.

Kai looked at the Null Fang in his hand, and then the assassin trembled. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but Kai didn’t give him the chance. He drove the Null Fang through the assassin’s heart with both hands.

The assassin’s mouth was wide open as Kai spoke. "I don’t want to hear it. Just hurry up and die."

Kai pulled the blade out and let the body settle against the broken garden stone.

Then he picked up Sera before going over to wake up the sleeping hunters. They needed to hurry up and leave before the Crimson Eden fully collapsed.

Somewhere across the city, Victor was already at the next problem.

...

Lily was standing before the Abyssal Clock gate when Victor arrived. She had arrived first like always and spent the trip updating her routes. But even with all of that, it still wasn’t enough. Victor stopped beside her and then they looked at the gate together.

Abyssal Clock was dark with the surface carrying a texture that seemed to shift between solid and transparent at the edges. The symbols along its frame were different from the other gates, arranged in regular intervals like markings on a measuring instrument.

The rest of the team arrived over the next few minutes. Mira, then Raze, then Elden with two support hunters. Nobody spoke much. The gate had been affecting the district for days.

Everyone could feel it.

She held the tablet steady.

14:32:07.

She counted in her head. One. Two. Three. The display did not change.

Four. Five.

Still 14:32:07.

Six. Seven.

14:32:08.

One second had taken seven seconds to happen.

She looked up at the gate and then, at the team around her. Nobody looked surprised because they had all counted. Still, nobody said anything and waited for Lily. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

The gate had been affecting the surrounding district for days. She had read the distortion reports and had built her branching system around the time anomaly data. She had understood what the Abyssal Clock was supposed to do.

"It has already started," she said.

The gate opened.