Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 89: [Three Faces of the Blade 7] When the Illusion Turns

All ten doppelgangers turned.

Ten identical sets of eyes, glitch-lined and glowing with static blue, locked on the real NekoNekoNyan.

"Look at her..." one murmured.

"So pretty..." said another.

"So cute~" a third chimed, voice airy and high.

"I want to be her."

"No—I am her."

"I’m cuter. I smile better."

"No, me! I’m the best one!"

Their voices overlapped, layered like static-filtered echoes of Neko’s own tone. The words repeated, twisted into mockery. The arena buzzed with their distorted harmony.

Neko tried to keep up her act. "G-girls...? What’s going on? What happened to you guys?"

The chatter stopped.

Every head turned to face her at once.

Silence.

Then one doppelganger tilted its head, slowly.

"Can she bleed too?"

"She’s the only one who hasn’t."

"Let’s fix that."

"Start with the cheeks."

"Cutest part."

NekoNekoNyan paled. She took a shaky step back.

"P-please... stop it... You’re scaring me..."

No one moved.

Then one doppelganger stepped forward. Raised its scythe.

Neko stumbled back a half-step. "Okay! Okay! Very funny! Cut the creepy act, girls!" she said, her voice a brittle caricature of her bubbly stream tone.

The blade came down.

She parried—barely. Sparks flew. The sound rang sharp.

"Wh-what the f—?!"

Another slash from the side—blocked again, but with less control.

"Fuck! STOP!"

They surrounded her now.

"So this is how she bleeds."

"Not so perfect anymore."

"She’s screaming like a real girl now."

Neko’s mask shattered.

"GET OFF ME, YOU GLITCHED-OUT FREAKS!"

She slashed wildly, hit nothing. They were faster. Smarter. Crueler.

A blade tore across her thigh. Another slammed into her side.

She screamed—no act, no filter.

Her scythe dropped. A foot kicked it away.

She reached for her UI—denied.

"FUCKING SYSTEM, RESPOND—"

One grabbed her by the collar and dragged her across the floor.

Another struck from top of her.

Her body crumpled in the center of the arena, armor cracked, breath hitching.

Blood painted the floor.

The doppelgangers stood around her.

"Look," one whispered.

"The real one."

"She’s just like us after all."

Neko lay sprawled, gasping, broken. Her limbs twitched, fingers weakly pawing at the ground. Her eyes darted, glazed with terror.

She opened her mouth—tried to say something. A cry, a command, maybe even an apology. But only a faint rasp came out.

Nothing followed.

Her lips moved without sound as she stared up at the swarm of herself.

Betrayed.

That’s what her mind screamed. Not by a player. Not by a guildmate.

By her own skill.

Her signature. Her pride.

The thing that made her "special."

Now it was killing her.

The final scythe came down—too fast to see.

And she flickered.

[FORCE LOGOUT – NEKONEKONYAN]

A silence fell.

With the original logged out, the doppelgangers began to unravel.

One by one, they fade into glitchy mist.

Until nothing remained but the blood on the floor—and the boss still watching from the center of the pit.

Now it was just Arvax.

The heat still lingered from the last trial—coiling through the metal floor like a pulse. Brass plating glowed faintly at the seams, as though reluctant to cool. A haze shimmered above the arena, not smoke but something heavier. Burnt mana. It smelled like scorched bone and melted wire.

The silence wasn’t silent. Arvax’s chest vents wheezed with slow, regulated steam bursts—like a forge trying to breathe. Somewhere deep inside the brass body, gears ticked softly, out of sync. Like something winding back.

All around the pit, the stone walls were scorched and cracked. Broken scaffolding leaned at dangerous angles above molten vents. The central platform, where Neko had fallen, was still slick with half-evaporated blood, outlined by the glitch residue where her doppelgangers had vanished.

Still idle. Still breathing steam from its chest vents. But watching.

Raven dropped silently from the upper platform, boots barely making a sound as he landed on the scorched stone.

His eyes narrowed. 75% HP left. That meant the real fight hadn’t started yet.

He crouched behind a jut of broken brass plating, thinking fast.

What was the best combination for this?

Ironbark Seneschal. Reliable healing and battlefield control. He’d need sustain.

Lady Ostreva. Poison and rot. Good for long engagements. Especially with this beast.

Phantom Seer? No. As much as he likes Seer, Phantom Seer was not enough for this. He needs something more offensive.

He needed a disruptor.

His mind snapped to a fight weeks ago.

Thornspine Manor. The midboss.

The one who broke formation lines.

Widowvine Arcanist.

It was risky—but chaos would serve him better than brute strength.

And then there was the Titan.

Emberforge Titan.

Too soon for that.

"Not the Titan. Not yet," Raven muttered.

"This isn’t a siege—it’s control. I need poison. I need DoT for now."

He exhaled.

"Seer and Duskrunner are done in here." He tapped the dismissal prompt. Their forms flickered and vanished into vapor. It’s a pity Phantom Seer was summoned for the illusion, he was thinking the fight with Neko will last longer, but it finished not long. Then Seer’s task is finished here.

[Unsummoned Phantom Seer – Cannot be summoned again until the stage clear]

[Unsummoned Duskrunner Alpha – Cannot be summoned again until the stage clear]

The dungeon’s PvE limit reasserted itself—only four slots.

He stood. Glanced once more at Arvax. The glyphs along its arms pulsed with a slow rhythm.

We need to break it before it gets to red.

He raised one hand.

"Seneschal. Ostreva. Arcanist. Come."

Roots burst from the floor beneath Raven’s feet.

The ground cracked.

First came the Ironbark Seneschal.

Bark ground against bark, then bone. A massive armored figure coiled upward from the earth—its body shaped like a tree carved into the silhouette of a knight. Moss clung to its joints. Its mask was blank and hollow-eyed, a crown of twigs braided into the helm.

Its voice ground out low and unhurried, ancient as buried stone.

"Sovereign," the Seneschal said, bowing its helm low. "Your call is heard. Judgment shall be rendered in your name."

The second figure unfolded like a flower rotting in reverse.

Lady Ostreva emerged from a bloom of red-tinged spores. Her robes were living—petals and poison, grown around her body. A small smile curled the red lips of her pale face, her eyes aglow with cold botanical intelligence.

She tilted her head at Arvax.

"Fascinating. Metal Construct. I’m intrigued now if my poison could harm its metal body. What a wonderful day for for a slow kill."

And then came a whirlwind—dry and sharp—carrying with it a spiral of brittle, withered leaves.

The vortex spun tighter and tighter, like a dying breath coiling into form. From within its core, a shape began to manifest—veiled in shadow, threaded in decay.

Widowvine Arcanist emerged from the whirlwind, her robes composed of unraveling silk and scorched petals. Blackened vines coiled at her feet and writhed briefly before falling still.

Her arrival left the air cold, hollow, as if something once-living had just died.

Widowvine Arcanist floated down in silence, suspended by blackened vines and threadlike petals. Her robes shimmered like silk woven with rot. A ring of cursed blossoms bloomed under her as she landed, then withered instantly to ash.

Her voice arrived in three echoes, spoken all at once.

"Ah, changes of weather. Another arena. Another decay. Shall we unweave its function, petal by petal?"

Raven stood among them, the brass colossus watching from across the pit.

Raven kept his voice low, but clear enough for all three to hear.

"The construct before us is called Ashlord Arvax—Trial Engine of Velkarin. It was built for heavy duty trial of Velkarin high level soldier, not war, but don’t let that fool you. It fights like both."

He glanced at the brass titan across the pit, its steam still venting rhythmically.

"Every thirty seconds, it will cast a mechanic called Trial Initiation Code Crimson. It picks one of us at random—drops them to a single hit point. Seneschal, that is when your Rite of the Root comes in handy."

Seneschal’s gaze didn’t shift, but the moss along its pauldrons stirred slightly.

"It will also summon Ashforged Legions—flaming constructs, five at a time. They’re relentless. Break formation. Keep them isolated. Widowvine, that is your cue for Vine Puppet. Disrupt the Legions formation."

Widowvine Arcanist tilted her head with eerie elegance. "Interesting. Let’s see if its machine can draw blood, with caution."

"Lady Ostreva—keep dodging and stack DoT. No heroics. Just pressure. "

Ostreva smiled faintly. "Sounds lovely already."

"If we push it too far, it enters Red Protocol. That’s Core Overburn. Everything turns to fire. It burns off its armor. Every strike explodes. Every trail is a death zone."

If it reaches for a hammer—move. That’s Oathbreaker. One swing to drop you, one to finish you. Execution move. It doesn’t kill outright—but it drops the target to 1 HP and follows up immediately."

The three nodded. Or bent slightly. Or pulsed in quiet readiness.

Raven glanced at each of them—one wreathed in bark, one in rot, one in silk and venom. They weren’t allies. Not friends. But they obeyed. And right now, that was enough.

Raven’s eyes never left the center of the arena.

"We move on my mark. Until then—prepare."

The fight hadn’t begun. But the pit was already awake.

Metal creaked from above. Chains swayed somewhere unseen. The last remnants of Neko’s fight flickered from the floor, fading like ghosts too ashamed to stay behind.

Somewhere deep in the walls, a rumble echoed—not mechanical, but hollow, like a breath taken before a scream. The braziers dimmed slightly, as if the room itself held its breath for what was coming.

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