The silence that followed our victory over the ten bosses was short-lived, a mere heartbeat of stillness before the very foundations of the dungeon began to scream. The obsidian walls, once so solid and oppressive, started to shudder and flake away like burnt parchment in a gale. After that the big room disintegrated and there's only an endless empty space.
The floor beneath our boots vanished, yet we did not fall. We stood suspended in a terrifying, infinite void where the stars were replaced by distant, swirling nebulas of violet mana. The darkness was absolute, yet visible, a thick soup of nothingness that stretched out in every direction for what felt like light-years. In this void, time and distance lost all meaning. We were four souls—one of us merged—lost in the deep throat of the universe-sized floor.
Then, the horizon of the void began to shimmer. Till about 1 trillion bosses appeared.
It was a sight that could shatter a sane man's mind. A trillion entities, identical to the cosmic horrors we had just slain, manifested simultaneously. They didn't just fill the room; they filled the sky, the ground, and the very air we breathed. It was an ocean of black and purple malevolence, a sea of shifting limbs and glowing eyes that reached to the very edges of the universe. The sheer weight of their collective mana was enough to make the vacuum of the space vibrate with a low, agonizing hum.
And we struggled.
Even with our new, god-like powers, the sheer scale of the onslaught was overwhelming. Ten bosses had been a challenge; a trillion was an impossibility. Celdrich wrote in his grimoire that they'll die and they did. In a flash of white light, a billion entities at the front of the wave simply ceased to exist, erased from reality by the stroke of his pen. But for every billion he erased, more surged forward from the infinite darkness. But more bosses kept coming.
Celdrich was a blur of motion, his new black and white spirit with the crown roaring with a sound like grinding galaxies. Celdrich went so fast and killed 1 trillion bosses but they reappeared. He moved at speeds that defied the laws of physics, his black katana and dagger carving paths of destruction through the purple tide, but it was like trying to empty an ocean with a thimble. As soon as a trillion were felled, another trillion took their place in the exact same coordinates. It was a loop of infinite slaughter.
We spent a day killing bosses.
The concept of "day" was subjective in the void, measured only by the growing ache in our muscles and the relentless drain on our mana. I felt Elphyete's heart beating inside my chest, her elf ears twitching at the sound of the entities' shrieks. Her magic was a fountain of life within me, but even a fountain can run dry when faced with a desert. I raised the white gold sword, the blade glowing with a brilliant, holy green light. I swung my sword and 500 billion bosses died but they came back.
The shockwave from my swing tore through the void, a crescent of emerald energy that vaporized half a trillion monsters in a single microsecond. The space was cleared for a brief moment, revealing the empty, dark distance of the floor, only for the purple smoke to reform into the exact same number of monsters a heartbeat later.
The hopelessness of the situation began to set in. We were trapped in a mathematical nightmare. Euphyne, however, remained untouched by despair. His arrogance had reached heights that were almost as frightening as the bosses. He swung his massive one-sided war axe with a casual, bored grace, each strike crushing thousands of entities into dust. "Is this all the universe has to offer?" he shouted into the void, his voice echoing against the infinite wall of monsters. "I am a god! You are insects!"
After a few hours I grabbed the orb of truth.
I pulled the warm, glowing sphere from my pocket while my other hand continued to weave Elphyete's creation magic. The 100 floating swords I had summoned were a whirlwind of steel around us, a frantic, spinning shield that kept the bosses at bay. I looked into the depths of the orb, my mind focused on the one thing that had brought me to this hell. The image of the dark version of myself pulling out my heart flashed in my mind.
And while killing the bosses I asked what's the name of the killer of my mother.
The orb didn't respond with a voice. It glowed with an intensity that rivaled the white spirits of our allies, a pure, blinding light that momentarily blinded the trillion bosses. In the center of that light, floating in the air between me and the encroaching darkness, a text appeared. It was written in a script that seemed to burn into my very soul.
And it said, it's Sagha vain damuire.
The name felt like a curse. It resonated in my head, a sequence of syllables that carried the weight of my mother's death and my own years of suffering. Sagha vain damuire. I repeated it in my mind, carving the letters into my memory with a blade of hatred. And then the orb suddenly vanished. It didn't fall, it didn't break; it simply ceased to be, its purpose fulfilled. I made sure to remember that name.
The revelation gave me a new, cold clarity. But the battle was far from over. We spent 2 days killing them.
For forty-eight hours, we didn't stop. We couldn't stop. The moment our guard dropped, the purple beams would converge and erase us. We were a small island of light in a universe of darkness. Celdrich's movements were becoming mechanical, his crowned spirit flickering with exhaustion. Euphyne's arrogance was the only thing keeping him standing, his laughter becoming more strained as the days passed. I could feel Elphyete's spirit beginning to strain against my mana-less frame, the merger starting to take its toll on my physical body.
I knew we couldn't win by attrition. If we stayed here, we would eventually run out of mana, and the trillion bosses would swallow us whole. I needed a way out, something that didn't rely on Celdrich's blocked teleportation magic. I looked at the white gold sword in my hand, feeling the resonance of the Archangel God spirit. I realized that if I couldn't teleport out of reality, I would have to cut through it.
I raised my sword and charged mana and swinged downwards.
I poured everything I had into the strike—Elphyete's remaining creation magic, the holy light of the Archangel, and my own raw, desperate will to live and find Sagha vain damuire. The blade didn't just strike the air; it caught on the fabric of the 10,000th floor itself. And it sliced reality.
A vertical tear appeared in the void, a jagged rift of pure, white light that looked like a scar on the darkness. Through the rift, I could see a familiar landscape—the gray stone walls and damp air of the upper floors. I didn't hesitate. I got an idea.
The trillion bosses lunged toward the rift, sensing our escape. I grabbed Euphyne and Celdrich's hand with a strength I didn't know I possessed. Celdrich looked at me with wide, exhausted eyes, and Euphyne gave a final, arrogant scoff at the monsters behind us.
And I jumped into the hole.
The sensation was like being pulled through a needle's eye. The intense pressure of the 10,000th floor vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, jarring change in gravity and mana density. The transition was so violent that I felt my senses reel, the green glow of the merger flickering as my body struggled to adjust to the sudden drop in power.
And suddenly we went back to the 10th floor.
We hit the cold, hard stone of the tenth floor with a heavy thud. The air here was thin and weak compared to the abyss we had just left, but it felt like the sweetest breath I had ever taken. The silence wasn't the heavy, cosmic silence of the void; it was the normal, quiet hum of a dungeon. I lay on the floor, gasping for air, feeling the green glow slowly begin to recede as the merger reached its limit. We were back. We were alive. And I finally had a name.
The echoes of the 10,000th floor had barely faded from our ears when a sharp, soul-piercing scream tore through the relative quiet of the tenth level. It wasn't the sound of a monster, but the unmistakable cry of a familiar screams. Celdrich's head snapped toward the darkness of the descending staircase, his new crowned spirit flickering with a restless, dark-white energy that signaled his heightened senses were back online. Without a single word of hesitation, we began to run, fueled by an adrenaline that felt far more potent than any mana potion.
The journey from the tenth floor to the fiftieth was a blur of stone, shadow, and absolute speed. We didn't bother with stealth or caution anymore. With our new divine weapons in hand, the mid-tier floors felt like nothing more than a minor inconvenience. I led the charge, the green light of the merger still pulsing through my veins and my elf ears picking up the vibrations of the scream as it grew louder and more desperate with every floor we conquered. Every time a minor dungeon mob tried to block our path, I didn't even slow down; the mere aura of the Archangel spirit seemed to part the darkness like a physical blade.
Behind me, Euphyne was a golden streak of arrogance. His massive one-sided war axe trailed sparks against the dungeon walls as he laughed, clearly enjoying the way the mid-level monsters scurried away in fear of his overwhelming presence. Celdrich followed with his black katana unsheathed, his movements so fast and precise that he seemed to vanish and reappear several feet ahead with every stride. We bypassed the traps, ignored the treasure chests, and sprinted through the winding corridors that usually took adventurers days to navigate. We tore through the 20th, 30th, and 40th floors in mere minutes, the environment shifting from damp caves to ancient marble halls, until finally, the air grew unnaturally cold and heavy as we reached the final staircase leading to the threshold of the 50th floor.