Chapter 207: Break (5)
Lucen tilted his head back, laughter spilling into the smoke. His system window pulsed bright at the edges, EXP bar almost full. ’One more. Just one more and—’
The Tyrant’s head turned. Its gaze locked on him, abyssal fire condensing into a burning sphere in its throat.
Lucen smirked. "Finally. You’re paying attention."
[Cataclysm Vector — Abyssborne Variant.]
Crimson lines erupted across the street, jagging upward into the sky, then folding inward like a collapsing star. The Tyrant’s charge backfired, swallowed in the implosion, its chest torn open in a maelstrom of collapsing light.
The explosion leveled four blocks.
[+50,000 EXP]
[Level Up]
[Current Level: 44]
[EXP Progress: 12%]
Lucen stood in the crater, smoke curling off his coat, grin sharp as a knife. "South blocked."
Varik’s gaze met his for a fraction of a second, unreadable. Selindra stared like she was staring at something she didn’t understand and couldn’t afford to. Hunters whispered, shaken, terrified.
The Tyrant wasn’t dead. But it was bleeding, broken, staggering.
And Lucen’s mana thrummed like wildfire.
’Level forty-four,’ he thought, flexing his fingers as the system hummed. ’Not bad for an afternoon.’
The rift pulsed again.
And more shadows moved within it.
The Tyrant staggered, wings cracked, chest scorched from Lucen’s Vector, but its scream still split the skyline like thunder.
The rift above pulsed harder in response, waves of abyssal light spiraling down into its wounds, knitting and reinforcing instead of healing. Its broken frame grew jagged, sharper, wronger.
Lucen flicked soot off his coat sleeve. His grin crooked sharp.
[System Note: "Adaptive Rift Signature Detected."]
’Ah. Feeding loop 2.0. Lovely.’
The Tyrant reared up, its spines glowing hotter, tether lines to the rift thickening until they looked like veins of black lightning. Each pulse dragged more shadows out of the rupture, lesser forms, skittering and hissing as they rained onto rooftops, hundreds at a time.
Selindra’s voice ripped through the smoke. "All squads, retreat to west sector! Now!"
Her staff slammed against pavement, emerald sigils blooming in a dome across a collapsing block. Hunters scrambled behind her shield, dragging civilians. Some stumbled, bloody, barely alive. Others screamed under claw strikes before the barriers sealed.
Varik stood in the open, his blade loose at his side, aura pressing like a tidal wave. He wasn’t rushing. He wasn’t panicking. He was waiting.
Lucen tilted his head. "So what’s the plan? Let it finish sprouting wings and eat the city, or are we pretending this is a controlled burn?"
Selindra shot him a look sharp enough to cut steel. "Shut up and fall back."
"Tempting. But then who kills it?"
"You can’t kill—"
The Tyrant’s claw slammed into the street, flattening a row of towers in a single strike. Dust plumed upward, blotting half the district in ash.
Lucen smiled wider. "Guess that answers that."
Mana surged through him like wildfire. His system pulsed bright across his vision.
[Mana Pool: 385/385]
[Available Spells: Abyssflare Lance, Nullbind Grasp, Riftstep, Cataclysm Vector (Abyssborne), Frost Spire, Shockweave Bolt, Crater Bloom, Soundlash, Piercing Flare]
His grin thinned. ’Yeah. This’ll be fun.’
He stepped forward. Varik’s voice rumbled like an avalanche behind him. "Lucen. Don’t overreach."
Lucen glanced back, smirking. "I wouldn’t dream of it."
He Riftstepped.
Space fractured, and he was suddenly on the Tyrant’s shoulder, the abyssal glow searing under his boots. He thrust his palm down.
[Nullbind Grasp.]
Tendrils lashed deep into its mana flow, strangling the tether lines feeding into its body. The rift above shuddered as feedback crackled through the cords, collapsing half a dozen minor creatures mid-birth.
[+4,000 EXP]
The Tyrant screamed, twisting, wings snapping upward to shred him from its side.
Lucen smirked. [Riftstep.]
He blurred out an instant before its wing tore its own shoulder apart, abyssal fire spraying into the streets below.
Civilians shrieked. Hunters dove. Buildings burned.
Selindra shouted into her comms, voice cracking. "Perimeter collapse imminent! We can’t hold this district!"
Varik’s voice cut steady, absolute. "We hold here."
And then he moved.
One step, and his aura shook the entire block. Two, and his blade carved a line of silence across the Tyrant’s abdomen. The cut didn’t bleed, it unmade. Flesh dissolved in the wake, abyssal tether spasming wildly.
Lucen whistled low. "Okay, that’s rude."
The Tyrant staggered again, wings spasming, light convulsing across its body. It turned its head toward Varik, abyssal flame coalescing in its throat.
Lucen’s grin widened. "Oh no you don’t."
[Abyssflare Lance.]
The spear ripped through its jaw, detonating upward into its skull. Black ichor and fire burst outward in a spray that lit the smoke red.
[+30,000 EXP]
The Tyrant reeled, stumbling sideways into a half-collapsed skyscraper. Steel twisted and fell around its bulk, crashing in avalanches of sparks.
Selindra’s face was pale, sweat running down her temple. "This isn’t working. It’s too bound to the rift—our damage is just—"
"—worth EXP?" Lucen cut in.
Her jaw snapped tight. "You’re insane."
’Not wrong,’ he thought, watching the bar climb. ’But at least I’m getting paid.’
The rift pulsed again. Louder. Darker.
And then the voice hit.
Not sound. Not thought. A resonance.
You dare sever my anchor?
Every hunter dropped, screaming, clutching their skulls. Civilians fainted. Even Selindra’s barrier cracked.
Lucen froze mid-step. His system window flickered static.
[Warning.]
[Abyssal Entity Awareness Detected.]
[Containment Threshold: Failing.]
His grin faltered into a sharp, narrow line. ’Ah. The landlord’s home.’
The Tyrant’s broken body convulsed. Its chest split open, a column of light tethering it directly to the rift. The shadow inside shifted, vast, endless, pressing against the tear.
Selindra’s voice broke raw. "That’s... not just a break. That’s... intrusion."
Varik’s blade rose higher. His aura thickened into something crushing, ancient, terrifying. For the first time, Lucen saw him serious. "Prepare yourselves."
Lucen’s grin came back slow. Crooked. Dangerous.
’Yeah. I can work with this.’
—
The sky wasn’t sky anymore.
Above the city, the rift had widened into something that no longer looked like a tear, it was an eye. A vertical wound of abyssal light, lashes of black fire curling at its edges, its pupil a depthless core staring down at the world.
And the Tyrant wasn’t dying. It was opening.
Its chest had split wider, ribs curling outward like the petals of some grotesque flower. Inside, where organs should’ve been, abyssal light churned, a tether straight into that infinite gaze overhead.
Each pulse sent shockwaves through the district, shattering windows, cracking steel, rattling Lucen’s teeth.
Selindra’s face had gone chalk white. Her barrier sigils flickered like dying embers. "This is impossible. Gigantic-class rifts don’t sustain entities."
Lucen tilted his head. "Guess this one didn’t get the memo."
Varik didn’t answer. His blade was raised, aura boiling. His silence pressed heavier than Selindra’s panic.
The entity’s voice rolled again, not in sound but in vibration, every syllable a knife dragged across bone.
Anchor established. Vessel incomplete. But enough.
Hunters across the district collapsed where they stood, some bleeding from their noses, others simply dropping their weapons and curling on the ground. Civilians screamed, shoved through evacuation corridors that were buckling under the sheer wave of force.
Lucen’s system screamed back at him.
[Warning: Abyssal Entity Influence at 47%.]
[Stability Risk: Critical.]
[Passive Resonance Unstable.]
’Unstable, huh?’ His grin flickered. ’That’s new. And bad. And hilarious.’
The Tyrant’s skull snapped toward him, light dripping like molten tar from its jaw.
Lucen cracked his knuckles. [Riftstep.]
The world fractured, and he was gone, reappearing a heartbeat later behind its shoulder. His hand already burned with spellfire.
[Abyssflare Lance.]
The spear roared alive, abyssal flame tearing space apart around its edge. He drove it straight into the joint of the Tyrant’s wing, detonating it in a blast that sprayed shards of crystal and ichor across rooftops.
[+12,000 EXP]
The Tyrant screamed. The rift pulsed. The voice pressed harder.
You wield my fire.
Lucen froze mid-step, the system window stuttering.
[System Override Detected.]
[Entity Recognition Attempting: ...]
His grin went knife-thin. ’Oh no, buddy. You don’t get naming rights.’
Varik’s blade cut across the Tyrant’s ribs before it could finish. The arc of force erased half its chest cavity in a single swing, light unraveling in the wake. For a heartbeat, the tether lines faltered. The rift shuddered.
Selindra’s voice cracked sharp. "Now! Push it back!"
Lucen lifted both hands. Mana roared through him like floodwater, abyssal resonance screaming in tandem. His veins burned, his skin tingled with static.
[Cataclysm Vector — Abyssborne Variant.]
The glyphs burst into being, not red this time but black, streaked with violet edges that bled outward like veins. They twisted in unstable arcs above him, intersecting at impossible angles until the very air warped.
He slammed them down.
The vectors collapsed inward on the Tyrant’s chest, dragging light, matter, and abyssal fire into a singularity. The sound wasn’t an explosion, it was silence, a sudden void that swallowed screams, crashes, everything.
When it released, the Tyrant was gone from the waist up. Half its body simply erased. The tether lines snapped in showers of broken light.
[+35,000 EXP]
[Level: 45]
[Progress: 12%]
The rift screamed.
It didn’t close. It opened wider. The eye dilated, shadow spilling downward like liquid night. Shapes stirred in that darkness, wings, claws, a face too vast to belong to flesh.
Selindra staggered, staring up in horror. "It’s... descending. That’s not a dungeon break anymore, that’s invasion."
Varik’s aura flared higher than Lucen had ever felt, pressure so sharp the pavement cracked around him. "Then we cut it here."
Lucen laughed, low and breathless. The sound didn’t belong in panic, but it was there anyway. "Oh, I like that plan."
His system chimed.
[New Quest: Abyssal Anchor Elimination.]
[Objective: Destroy the conduit before the entity descends.]
[Reward: ???]
His grin stretched sharp as glass. ’Perfect. Finally, a paycheck.’
The rift above convulsed. The Tyrant’s remaining body spasmed, ribs twisting back into place, torso rebuilding as the entity forced its vessel whole again.
The next round hadn’t even started.