A glowing gate appeared before him—the entrance to the next stage.
He smirked. "Round two then."
The Guardian of Fangs appeared as a notification.
Grey stepped through the gate paying no mind to it. The world changed around him—mountainous terrain covered in ash and mist. On a hill ahead, a creature sat waiting, its presence oppressive.
A massive three-headed wolf rested upon a pile of bones—the one on the left had a crazy smile, the other opposite to him on the right had a scar, while at its central, a serious wolf head a bit larger than the other two. Their fur shimmered—white as morning dew cloaked in a black pelt that absorbed light. Its three sets of eyes burned with electricity.
The system flashed before him.
[BOSS IDENTIFIED:
NAME: GRAVE — THE MOONSHARDCERBERUS
CLASS: MONSTERNOID]
The beast rose, its weight shaking the ground. One of its heads released a low growl, while another let out a thunderous roar that echoed through the labyrinth, his white gray fur struck through the wind.
All its eyes charged blue with intent from within its mane.
"You have the smell of my people's blood on you, human,"
"So did you enjoy killing my brothers, the scent of smoke from your clothes gives you away?" The left one cackled. They were finishing each other's words. Another spoke they must have had a fine death those weakling." "Hey don't call them that." Another churned his chimerical laughter, the third one watched calmly.
"Shut…
…Up! ha you all so noisy."
"Huh? The bilateral heads widened their jaws. Grey
grinned. "Pay attention now, because I'm going to bully you," the
center wolf who seemed to have shown no expression up until, Grey spoke those
words, made a grin with the corner of his maw, showing fangs.
In an instant, Grave lunged forward, slamming the two hidden hands behind his back into the ground and sending debris flying at Grey. His claws crackled with lightning as it raised its arm to strike.
Grey didn't flinch, not even paying attention to the rocks coming from the debris, he had eyes for only one thing. The moment the claws descended to strike. He caught the blow, digging his knee into the wolf's stomach. "You thought blocking my view would do you any good," his body flicked
into the zone in that instance like a switch and send Grave tumbling backward.
"Not bad," he groaned.
Grave's eyes blazed. Lightning coursed across its body. It lunged again, moving like a thunderbolt on its fours trying to circle around and confuse Grey, his control over lightning gave him absurd speed. Grey's eye
pupils danced around his eye balls with aura and lightning keeping track of the monsternoid's movements. 'Try as you may I'm not losing sight of you,' it slammed Grey into a boulder with overwhelming force.
The impact shattered the rock.
Grave leapt forward, claws forming an "X" of lightning aimed at Grey's neck. He ducked underneath the attack, driving a punch into the monster's chest, so hard that air burst violently from its back.
They screamed out in flesh-tearing agony. Blood trailed them backwards.
Grey followed up—jumping, fading, and reappearing midair in front of Grave. His punches became a flurry, a wind-following barrage that blurred in speed, golden lightning and heat punch marks displayed on their body, as he was punching a true terror.
Grave retaliated, meeting him with equal ferocity. Their fists collided with a sound like thunder.
Grey grunted, his sleeves tearing apart under the strain.
He yelled out in pain as he moved upwards a bit.
Grave twisted, spinning, and delivered a crushing kick to his flank that sent Grey crashing into the ground. The beast landed atop him, releasing a flurry of lightning-charged blows.
In a sickening crack Grey roared, the punches were like a battery being overloaded, each punch gaining momentum and becoming stronger than the last. " You like that ha! you arrogant punk!" the left wolf laughed as all four fists smashed Grey. He summoned wind magic to fling himself away in a desperate attempt to escape.
Grave caught him midair with two of his hands, by the leg and his jacket then slammed him into the ground a couple of times before hurling him into a wall.
"Cough! Cough!" Blood spilled from Grey's mouth.
"Darn monsternoid!"
Intent flashed around his golden white eyes; they remained bright, not letting his spirit break. His wounds began to close—a result of his Heightened Vitality Skill working.
Grey lunged towards them, 'what?!' they were caught off guard, his speed had increased. Grey slammed a crushing blow into Grave's ribs.
'Not done!' He followed with a spinning back heel kick to the jaw that launched the wolf backward.
They stood, the center head robbing his jaw. Grey met them in an instant, before they could react they had already left the surface.
'Again!'
Grey caught up with them still being under the gravitational pressure of the previous attack.
'Keep it going.'
He crashed through rocks breaking lots of arranged hills like tearing through fabrics as they distanced their previous fighting grounds as Grey blitzed them more and more away.
They let out a flesh-tearing agony, the ground cratered. Dust filled the air, with a huge explosion.
Both combatants steadied themselves, energy flaring violently around them—Ekrin raised around the Wolves were using an Elemental ability and Aura for Grey who had been enhancing his body while in the zone
state.
They both charged.
Grey's body glowed with radiance—Light Speed activated. He crashed into Grave who were still trying to charge at their own pace—in a blink,
"What the…?!"
Grey drove barrages of punches at their abdomen- hitting and spacing out their lungs. "Taking this," he trashed them with the last strike before grabbing one head and smashing it into a wall. Lefty groaned annoyingly.
Flames spurned around them and combusted into a tall fire.
"Finally got in a solid attack on it," Grey said through labored breaths.
Lightning exploded from Grave's body, his Ekrin expanding like a storm.
Grey's eyes widened as the wolf summoned illusions—multiple copies of itself. He activated Lightning flash, blinding light flaring across the arena, like mirages.
Grey's aura pulsed—Dazzling Display. Mirage clones of him appeared too, reflecting his every movement. The battlefield became a blur of afterimages. With speed and illusion, they exchanged blows and mirage games deceiving each other, in those flitting moment Grey had an advantage possessing an eye that could read the field of battle, he spotted an opening..
"Let's finish this!"
He vanished dodging an attack, reappearing above Grave, and trashed the beast through across the plain. Following instantly with Luminous Leap, he teleported to its side midair and hurled it upward, condensing Gale Wind, merging it with Magma Burst, and enhancing it through Magma Frenzy. The attacks combined into a swirling inferno of elemental devastation.
'This human child… he's growing stronger as we fight!'
Lefty growled, 'Unbelievable!'
Center snarled, 'We must unleash our legacy now! Or we'll be torn apart! Literally.'
But before they could move, a flash of light blinded them.
"Ha—this light!"
Then came excruciating pain.
Grey's foot smashed down, sending them swaying leaving nothing but ruins in their wake. The world blurred. When they regained focus, they saw him—multiple versions of Grey, each moving at lightning speed.
"Are they clones? Illusions?"
"Which is real?"
"Get out of me you dead weights," the wolf at the middle howled annoyed and tired of having to share his thoughts with them, his voice echoed, the other two froze. 'This bastard,' the scarred one remarked, while
the other laughed.
'Yeah! Who does he think he is, ordering us like tha…'
Before he could finish, his head got struck by a beam of aura bright, condensed and whapped, its entirely head got obliterated. The middle and the scarred right screamed in fury and fear, splitting their bodies from the dead joker. They had now become two separate wolves using their Trait Legacy, not taking account to the very much dead one with blood and zipping off the tender flesh where its head once resided.
Both charged, lightning blazing, as they blitzed in with lightning flash.
Grey's aura ignited again. He became a comet of light, hovering above the ground as energy flared around him. He activated Geometry Stability, Fire Heart, and Blazing Vortex simultaneously. The ground cracked,
unable to withstand the sheer pressure, even as he was in the air.
He vanished—then reappeared, punching through the right wolf's chest, flames spiraling through its body as it fell lifeless.
The second fled, electricity flashing around seriously. 'How did it come to this, shit!!' But its feet froze mid-run—Ice Shards erupted from the ground, impaling it in place.
Grey approached calmly. The beast, in desperation, eyes leaned backwards in terror, swung one last lightning punch.
Grey didn't even flinch.
He drew his arm back, flames building. "Art's Work."
The impact turned the world white. When the light faded, only ashes remained.
Grey exhaled deeply, collapsing to one knee.
"Ha… Using multiple skills always drains me." He chuckled softly. "But thanks to Heightened Vitality, I can keep going. I've gotten so much stronger…"
He shook a bit with a strange face thinking maybe they had pushed him more than he initially thought, but shrugged it off as nothing he continued, his body would heal anyways.
He smiled faintly, with a corner of his blooded lips. "This… this is what it means to grow stronger—to feel your opponent's power, even when they're stronger than you."
He stood, waving his hand nonchalantly, trying to remove the essence.
He walked past the next gate.
He stood on floating rocks not big enough for a party of ten. "Whoa!" He wiggled a bit.
The scenery changed again.
Grey fell upside down through the air before landing hard on a floating rock. Around him stretched a sky with no end—clouds, mist, and countless levitating stones drifting in silence.
"Whoa…" Grey gasped, looking around. "What a terrifying beauty…"
'I couldn't even see the bottom.'
A shadow moved in the distance. The air grew hotter.
From beneath the clouds rose a dragon—its scales black as obsidian, eyes burning crimson. The sheer pressure of its presence cracked the floating rocks.
Grey felt flabbergasted. "A…a drag…dragon? Then finally I knew this day would come this is it! The end of me,"
"Literally, excruciating painfully, end of Greyson Lucas!"
The dragon's wings spread wide, eclipsing the light, as it dove into the foggy clouds, hiding like a shadow
[SYSTEM WARNING: GLIPHERNIR — THE BLACK MOUNTAIN DRAGON]
A blinding flare erupted behind Grey. Instinct screamed—he jumped aside just as molten fire engulfed where he stood.
Landing on another platform that swayed him about as he tried to balance his center of gravity but it was no good he had to abandon the rock and moved to another one.
He tried jumping as multiple fireballs filled the air,
'Ah…what the…?' He clumsily fell, tumbled and dodged the attacks through different platforms, he tumbled onto one after getting hit by a flame breath—he crashed through the stumbling rock platforms, one after the other he broke through them, he drew; he grabbed one and it tilted sideways.
He was hanging vertically, he looked down seeing nothing beneath him at the endless distance of shattered rocks floating around, he finally stood up, aching, my clothes are all scorched, and it wasn't cheap too." He unbuckled the jacket, tossing it aside, exposing his inner black laced shirt, sewn with beautiful black cotton materials, the neck was exposed sewn together in crossed manner downwards, now that he had abandoned his long sleeves.
'I've only heard of dragons from storybooks; think I'd actually get to fight one. What luck,' he frowned showing teeth grinding
together, his hands showed off black band stitched wrapped around his arms, he
drew Ieva, his blade of divine alloy.
"Let's make this one for the storybooks."
He activated everything at once:
Light Speed, Aurora Heart, Blazing Aura, Prismatic Aura, Solar Empowerment, Pyroclastic Flow, Geometrical Stability, Wind Pressure, Blazing Vortex, Pure Lightning, and finally…
He stopped in an excruciating pain.
'What… the…?'
He fell to his knee, sword pinned down, he groaned in surprise as blood gushed out, the pain he was enduring and thought had gone
away, ragged across his entire being with tormenting pain, he yelled out once more letting out an agonizing scream. He was hurt and he didn't know the when, where, why and how. 'When did I first notice this, what sort of damage did I endure, and when!' the pain flashed again, pulsing at both body and mind.
"Was it the wolves!"
'I've never felt this kind of pain before!"
The dragon was flying around the clouds like a shadow ofdeath still searching for Grey, its colossal frame, dashing about in search of
its prey, with speed and power scenery was filled with terror, as flames rained down through the clouds like magma.
Grey opened the interface, what he saw was Eldritch aberration. His mind thought of different scenarios, pain pulsed shooting
through his entire being, 'why now?' He held his chest as he knelt down trying to piece it together and also to hide his frame from the terror swelling around the setting. Warnings of the system continued to ring in his head along with the flashing pain he felt, Authority usage- overexertion, limits- combustion
threshold breached.
'OK? W-what then?, if it's an abnormality, I possess abilities that could counter it.'
The next thing he saw…
His eyes widened; the sight before him transformed his confusion into certainty.
Aurora's heart, Prismatic Aura, and skills with healing abilities are trying to resist overexertion. Warning!!!
Failed!
Failed!
Failed!
Failed!
Failed!
Error! Overexertion could not be resisted.
Due to attempt, combustion recoil will take place.
'…what…?'
The Emperor's chain golden Ekrin flamed around him and Ruler's Touch smashed him, the system drew blood. Grey flew down through multiple platforms as he. Time dragged, slowed to a suffocating crawl. Frozen in what seemed to be a fixed point in midair, he could only watch as a colossal
dragon's maw burst through the smoking debris and lunged toward him. Slow,
helpless, and gravely wounded.