The stone bridge was a death trap designed by a sadist. Even in the original Dungeon Heroes game, players crossing the Chasm of the Flayed moved at a agonizing crawl, carefully navigating missing cobblestones and crumbling edges while dodging the relentless aerial sweeps of Harpies.
Lenus was sprinting across it in total, suffocating darkness.
"Three steps! Missing stone! Jump!" Lenus roared over his shoulder, his voice competing with the howling draft of the abyss.
He heard the frantic scuff-scuff of Elara's leather boots, followed by the heavy, rhythmic clatter of her breastplate as she leaped over the black gap he had just cleared. She landed hard, a grunt of effort escaping her, but she didn't slow down. Her golden aura blazed like a desperate beacon trailing just behind his left shoulder.
Beneath them, the deep thrum... thrum... of the violet anomaly escalated into a deafening, tectonic roar that vibrated through the very stones of the bridge.
The vibration traveling up through Lenus's straw sandals told him everything he needed to know: the massive creature was spiraling up the central support pillar. The air pressure in the cavern shifted violently, a gale of foul, sulfurous wind blasting upward. It carried the distinct, wet sound of scales the size of riot shields grinding against ancient, salt-crusted masonry.
What the hell is it? Lenus's mind raced, his [Aura Perception] straining to process the sheer volume of the violet energy blooming beneath them. There are no serpents in the Abyss until Floor 70! The spawn tables are completely shot!
CRACK.
Ten yards ahead, a massive chunk of the bridge's right edge simply sheared off, plummeting into the void without a sound. Lenus felt the loss of the stone through the sudden absence of echoing wind.
"Veer left!" Lenus shouted, leaning his body into the turn without breaking stride. "The right side is gone! Hug the edge!"
"I can't see anything!" Elara screamed back, her voice thin with panic. "Inias, it's a void! It's completely black!"
"Then close your eyes and listen to my voice! Don't trust your sight!"
Suddenly, the acoustic map in Lenus's mind exploded into chaotic, blinding white.
A colossal head crested the edge of the bridge directly to their right. The displacement of air was so massive it physically shoved Lenus sideways. He dug his heels in, his sandals smoking against the grit as he slid dangerously close to the left edge of the narrow span.
The creature didn't roar. It hissed—a wet, rattling exhalation that sounded like a waterfall of gravel hitting a metal sheet.
Through his [Aura Perception], Lenus finally "saw" the nightmare. A serpentine head the size of a battering ram, crowned with a jagged frill of bone. And at the center of its skull, two massive, pulsating cores of concentrated, toxic violet Miasma.
Its eyes.
A chill colder than the dungeon air spiked down Lenus's spine. The lore entries flooded his mind in a dizzying rush. A serpent of that size... a violet aura... Miasma concentrated in the pupils...
The Gorgonic Dread-Serpent. Floor 90 Superboss.
"Don't look at it!" Lenus bellowed, his voice ripping from his throat in raw, unadulterated panic. "Elara, close your eyes! DO NOT look at its face!"
In the game, the Dread-Serpent possessed a passive skill called [Abyssal Petrification]. If your character model faced the boss's eyes without a mirror-shield equipped, it was an instant-death status effect. No saving throw. No HP bar. Just an immediate "Game Over" screen.
"What?!" Elara yelled, disoriented by the wind.
Hummmmm.
A resonant, sickening hum vibrated through the air. Lenus felt a wave of heavy, suffocating magic wash over the bridge, like cold lead being poured into his veins.
[Warning: Lethal Visual Hex Detected.]
[Status Effect: Abyssal Petrification initiated.]
Lenus braced himself, muscles tensing as he expected his limbs to turn to stone, expecting the final, agonizing end to his short second life.
Instead, a second notification chimed pleasantly in his mind.
[Target lacks visual receptors.]
[Skill: Absolute Blindness completely negates visual-based hexes.]
[Status Effect: Nullified.]
Lenus let out a manic, breathless laugh. His gimmick build—the handicap that was making his daily life a living hell—had just made him a god in the face of an endgame boss.
But Elara wasn't a "gimmick" build.
He heard her gasp—a sharp, strangled sound that died in her throat. The rhythmic thumping of her footsteps faltered, then stopped.
"My legs..." she choked out, her voice tight with a terror he'd never heard from her. "Inias... I... I can't move them. They're so heavy..."
She looked.
Lenus dug his heel into the stone, arresting his momentum so hard his joints screamed. He spun around. In his mental map, Elara's brilliant golden aura was rapidly being encroached upon by a creeping, sickly gray from the feet up. The petrification was taking hold like a rising tide.
Distance to the far ledge: Thirty yards.
Distance to Elara: Five yards.
The serpent, having unleashed its hex, pulled its massive head back. The screech of its tendons and the rush of air signaled it was coiling to strike. It was going to sweep the bridge, swallowing them both and smashing the ancient stone span into dust.
Lenus didn't think. He burned the last of his mana in a single, desperate burst.
[Skill Activation: Phantom Step]
He vanished from his spot, reappearing directly in front of Elara. He slammed into her heavily armored chest, knocking her backward just as the serpent's massive jaws snapped shut precisely where she had been standing a millisecond before.
The clash of the beast's teeth sounded like two iron vaults slamming together. The sheer shockwave of the impact threw Lenus and Elara to the cobblestone.
"I told you not to look!" Lenus snarled, scrambling to his feet even as his head spun. He grabbed the collar of her gambeson and hauled her up with a strength he didn't know he had.
"I-I didn't!" she stammered, her breathing ragged. "It flashed! The light filled the dark—my eyes were closed, Inias, but the violet... it bled through my eyelids!"
Area of Effect, Lenus realized with horror. The Miasma here is so thick, the spell doesn't need direct eye contact anymore. It just needs perception.
The gray creeping up her aura had stalled at her knees, but she was anchored to the spot. And the serpent was already resetting, coiling its neck for a second, final strike.
"Give me the halberd," Lenus ordered.
"What?"
"Give me the damn stick, Elara!"
She blindly shoved the heavy ironwood shaft into his hands. The jagged, sheared-off metal at the top was heavy and unwieldy, completely unlike the balanced, graceful weight of his katana.
Lenus stood between the paralyzed Knight-Captain and the looming violet aura.
I can't cut it, Lenus calculated, the "data" of the world flowing through his mind. My Strength is only 12. My katana would shatter against those scales, and this halberd is as dull as a shovel. I have one play. Just one.
The serpent hissed again. The immense shadow of its head blocked out the ambient draft of the cavern. It was lunging. Straight down the center of the bridge.
"Elara, hold onto my belt," Lenus commanded, his voice eerily calm despite the thunderous approach of death. "When I say jump, you use whatever feeling you have left in your thighs to push backward. Don't think. Just move."
"Inias, we're going to die—"
"I don't plan on it. Hold on!"
The serpent struck.
It didn't come from above; it skimmed the surface of the bridge, its lower jaw scraping the cobblestone like a massive snowplow, intending to scoop them up and carry them into the abyss.
Twenty feet. Ten feet. Five.
Lenus dropped to one knee. He jammed the blunt, wooden base of the halberd into a deep, ancient crack between the cobblestones, angling the jagged, rusted metal spike forward at a perfect forty-five-degree angle. He braced his shoulder against the ironwood shaft, turning himself and the bridge into a living fulcrum.
"JUMP!" Lenus roared.
Elara shoved off him with a desperate cry.
A fraction of a second later, the serpent's lower jaw collided with the jagged spike of the Sunbreaker halberd.
CRUNCH.
The sickening sound of metal punching through soft, fleshy palate echoed over the chasm. The sheer kinetic force of the massive beast hitting the braced ironwood shaft didn't snap the wood—Sunbreaker was indestructible quest-tier loot. It held.
Instead, that impossible kinetic energy transferred directly into the bridge.
The serpent's own momentum impaled its lower jaw on the spike, forcing its head to violently jerk upward and backward. The beast let out a deafening, agonizing shriek, its violet blood spraying like acid rain across the stone.
But the bridge couldn't take the force. The ancient central arch shattered under the pressure.
The ground beneath Lenus gave way.
Gravity seized him. But the violent upward jerk of the serpent's head, caught on the halberd, acted as a momentary catapult. Lenus was thrown backward through the air, completely blind, weightless in the dark.
He reached out instinctively.
His raw, bleeding fingers slammed into the hard, jagged edge of a stone cliff. The far ledge.
He slipped, his arms screaming in protest as his body weight jerked against his sockets. He was going to fall. But a heavy, gauntleted hand suddenly clamped around his wrist like a vice.
"I HAVE YOU!" Elara screamed, lying flat on the cliff edge, her petrified legs dragging uselessly behind her as she hauled him up over the lip of the precipice.
They collapsed onto the solid stone floor of the far side, gasping for air.
Behind them, the Chasm of the Flayed erupted in a cacophony of destruction. The remainder of the stone bridge crumbled into the void, taking the impaled, thrashing Dread-Serpent down with it. The beast's furious, gurgling roars faded into the bottomless depths, followed seconds later by the distant, echoing boom of thousands of tons of masonry hitting the cavern floor.
Silence slowly reclaimed the dark.
Lenus lay on his back, his chest heaving, listening to the golden pulse of Elara's heartbeat beside him. He pulled up his UI, the glowing text shimmering in the void.
[Warning: Extreme sequence survived.]
[EXP Gained: 500]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Inias is now Level 4. All stats increased. 4 Free Attribute Points available.]
Lenus let out a long, exhausted groan, wiping a mixture of cold sweat and violet monster blood from his scarred face.
"Are you insane?" Elara whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of awe and absolute horror. "You... you parried an Abyssal Lord. With a broken stick."
"I used leverage," Lenus corrected, his voice raspy and dry. "Basic physics. Don't give me too much credit."
He sat up, wincing at the deep, throbbing ache in his shoulder. He tapped his scabbard against the solid ground. Tap.
The acoustic wave mapped the area. They were in a wide, refined stone corridor. The architecture had shifted. No more jagged dungeon walls or damp limestone. These were smooth, carved blocks. They had crossed the threshold.
"Your legs," Lenus said, turning toward her.
Elara grunted, shifting her weight. "The gray... it's fading. The curse broke when the beast fell out of range. I have feeling returning to my toes."
She paused, the rustle of her leather armor loud in the quiet hall. "Inias. That serpent... it was radiating an aura of pure Miasma. A lord of the deep. Why was it on the first floor? That shouldn't be possible."
"Because the game is broken," Lenus muttered under his breath in English.
"What?"
"I said... because the Abyss is waking up," Lenus covered seamlessly. He stood up, shaking the tension from his limbs. The "rules" of Dungeon Heroes were no longer a guide; they were a trap.
"Rest for a minute. Let the petrification fade entirely," Lenus said, drawing his katana to check the edge. "We just made a lot of noise. And we're entering the Necropolis."
Elara looked up at the blind swordsman standing in the pitch blackness. He had no eyes, yet he moved with terrifying precision. He possessed a mind that treated leviathans like mere math problems.
"Who are you really, Inias?" she asked softly.
Lenus sheathed his katana with a crisp click that echoed down the dark hallway.
"Just a man trying to beat the game," he replied. "Now get up. The dark is waiting."