Chương 425: Chapter 413 - The Mountain That Remains

The guards at the entrance to the Monastery of Silent Bells stood at ease beneath the late afternoon sun, spears resting against their shoulders as a soft wind carried the scent of pine and old stone across the small fort that guarded the Dungeon. The outpost itself was modest—low stone walls reinforced with timber, a watchtower overlooking the winding road, banners hanging loose in the warm afternoon air.

A kettle simmered over a small brazier near the gate, an EM-based heater humming softly beneath it, while one of the younger guards laughed at something the other had just said. Then the air cracked. A distortion shimmered above the packed dirt courtyard as a figure materialised and slammed into the ground with a wet, heavy impact. The laughter died instantly. Adventurers stumbling out half-dead after triggering an Escape Crystal was nothing new to them.

They had dragged plenty of broken bodies away from this gate before. But this… The man on the ground looked less like someone who had escaped and more like an actual corpse. Half his limbs were gone. Flesh hung open. Cloth had been reduced to ribbons. His vest was crushed inward in several places, as though it had endured repeated blows from a siege hammer. Blood soaked him from collar to boot, pooling rapidly beneath him. One of the guards swore under his breath.

Another rushed forward, already reaching out to help.

"For the Saints above…" The figure coughed, a thick spray of red splattering across the dirt as clear signs of life flickered through the broken body. Then something shifted. Muscle knit. Bone lengthened. Limbs reformed within a single breath, sinew weaving itself back together with unnatural speed. The dented vest pushed outward as ribs realigned beneath it, metal creaking faintly as the structure corrected itself.

Alonso exhaled slowly as he rose to his feet. He paid little attention to the stunned silence and uneasy gazes around him, or to the crimson stain spreading at his boots. He gave the guards a polite nod, then made his way toward the Guild's small office in the corner of the fort. The Adventurer's Guild liaison froze the moment he saw him. He had been the one who warned Alonso against entering a mid-tier Dungeon alone.

The words clearly lingered in his throat now, yet the state Alonso stood in convinced him to swallow them. Alonso met his gaze briefly. Then, from his Storage Bag, dozens of pieces of gear and tempering materials spilled onto the wooden floor with heavy clanks and dull thuds. The liaison stepped back in shock. Among the pile lay two pieces of Grade 4 gear he recognised well. Which meant the man before him had not only passed the first boss. He had actually defeated the second—alone!

For a Silver-rank Adventurer to accomplish such a feat… was unheard of. Alonso stood calm, though exhaustion lined both his expression and his voice as he spoke.

"Please send a courier with these items," he said. Then he paused, as if remembering something. He reached into the physical pouch at his waist and placed twelve red orbs on top of the pile.

"And these. Deliver everything to the Guild Master at Riviera's branch, Gregor McCarther. Tell him it's from Alonso, and that I will make it available to all six of my registered team members for extraction." The liaison stood silent for a moment, still processing what he had just witnessed. Then, unable to stop himself, he asked—"Sir… by any chance, did you ascend States during this Dungeon? Have you reached Gold-rank standards?" Alonso shook his head.

"No." The man opened his mouth again, clearly struggling to reconcile the answer with the Grade 4 gear on his floor. After a moment, he closed it and gave a stiff nod, forcing himself back into professionalism.

"Of course." He retrieved the necessary forms, had Alonso sign the documents using his EM signature, and promptly arranged for a Guild courier to handle the delivery.

"Thank you," Alonso said, placing a Silvermark on the counter and magnetising the phone he had left under the liaison's care back into his hand.

"And… sorry about the blood." The liaison stared at the coin for a moment. When he lifted his gaze to say it was unnecessary… Alonso had already left.

Alonso blurred across the vast fields, his microcapacitors and Path of Shards propelling his body to speeds approaching Mach 3. He moved in a straight line toward the next mid-tier Dungeon, yet even at that speed, he knew the journey would take more than 30 hours. This world was simply that vast, stretching beyond reason and the limits of traditional physics. His mind, however, was elsewhere—still on the last fight. He had taken a heavy beating.

He had managed to push the final boss into its second phase, but that was as far as he had gone. The gap remained large. His estimated Power Index had yet to reach 18, 000, far from the 21, 000 needed to overcome such a foe alone. Even so, the fight had been valuable. There, he had felt how difficult it was to reach the realm he had touched against the Choir when facing a truly powerful opponent with only one real attempt. The battlefield shifted too quickly.

Its Will reshaped the stage at a scale that resisted being anchored, bending space and pressure faster than he could establish himself within it. All in all, it showed him that the road ahead… was long. As he flew over the fields, the landscape blurring at the edges of his vision, he sent a wave toward his phone and checked his messages. There wasn't much.

Aside from a report that Wang and a couple of others had reached Silver-rank thanks to the gear and orbs, and a few minor updates he skimmed past, nothing demanded attention. It seemed all six of them were focused on advancing toward the Fourth State. And here he was, having barely reviewed the schematic for the next advancement. A faint breath of amusement escaped him. He crafted a short message, informing them about the package containing the Dungeon loot.

Since he was far from Riviera, the courier would likely need about a week to make the return trip. There was time. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! After that, he let his thoughts loosen. Even with the Set enhancing his recovery—stamina and mental fatigue included—something deeper lingered. He had driven himself past his limits in that Dungeon over and over. The cost remained, woven beneath the blood drying across his armour and clothes.

Such was his path. Midway through the journey, he descended beside a river, rinsed the blood from his skin and armour, and sat for a few minutes in quiet meditation upon the grass before taking flight again. He let his body maintain its course near the peak speed of modern Earth fighter jets while his mind settled into stillness. Minutes stretched into hours. The sun arced downward, daylight thinning into night. By the time darkness claimed the sky, the outline of the next Dungeon stood ahead.

The tide crashed down in a wall of black water and screaming faces. Alonso stood at its heart. Blades split in opposing arcs as torsos lunged from the mass, ribs exposed, arms fused at the shoulder and swinging rusted weapons in perfect swarm rhythm. Chains of bone-linked limbs snapped toward his throat while another cluster drove low for his knees. His Will rose behind him. The void silhouette unfolded, stars grinding slowly within its chest, vast and silent.

It pressed outward, seeking shape, seeking order, seeking control. The Host answered. Its Will surged like a drowned ocean given hunger. Dark water coiled above the fused bodies, forming a towering crest filled with half-formed faces and open mouths. The chamber flooded with pressure. Stone cracked as the tide rolled forward. Alonso stepped in. A pivot through narrowing space. A shoulder turn that sent three blades glancing past his ribs.

He cut through two wrists at the instant their intent peaked, steel sliding through sinew before force fully gathered. He drove forward, placing his heel into a fracture line he had marked earlier, using the uneven floor to tilt the swarm's footing by a fraction. For a breath, the field leaned toward him. The void expanded. Distance folded inward around his stance. The pressure of the tide thinned along one flank as he anchored himself at the convergence of intent, bodies, and broken stone.

Every torso that lunged found its angle collapsing by a hair's breadth. Every surge of dark water split around his outline. He felt it. The domain forming. A sphere of shifting tension where every motion began to reorganise around his presence. He moved inside it like an axis. Cross-cut. Turn. Upward thrust through two chests fused at the spine. A backstep that drew a cluster too far forward, their own mass tangling their lower limbs.

His Will pressed down through the void, thickening the air beneath them, forcing their balance to betray them. The tide recoiled. Then it swelled. The Host pressed forward as one mind. Torsos tore free from the main body and hurled themselves outward, detonating into sprays of dark water that reformed midair. Arms elongated, fingers splitting into hooked spines. The chamber dimmed as the tide-manifestation rose higher, swallowing the faint light in its depths. Pressure mounted. His domain shuddered.

The dark water began to seep into its edges, eroding the space he had claimed. The Host's Will carried voices of shared death, layered resolve, the weight of a warband that had drowned together and refused to disperse. Several torsos locked arms and drove straight through his centerline. Alonso met them head-on. The void crashed forward. Galaxy-light flared within its core as he poured intent into the space itself, forcing the tide to fracture around him. Steel and Will flashed in a storm of intersecting arcs.

Limbs fell. Faces split. A column of fused bodies collapsed. For a heartbeat, the field bent fully to him. He felt the flow turn. Then the ocean descended. The tide-manifestation folded inward from every direction at once. Dark water slammed into his domain with crushing weight. His void silhouette buckled, stars scattering under impact. The floor ruptured beneath his boots as pressure drove him to one knee. A spear of compressed water formed from ten merged arms and drove toward his chest.

He twisted, deflecting it by inches, yet the impact still tore through his vest and shattered the ribs beneath. Another wave crashed from above, slamming him flat. Dark water flooded his mouth and lungs, heavy with the echo of a hundred drowned screams. His domain flickered. He tried to anchor again. He reached for intent, distance, timing, the fractured ground beneath his palm. He pushed his Will outward, seeking the axis, forcing the field to acknowledge his authority. The Host answered with greater weight.

Torsos piled over one another, forming a spiralling pillar of flesh and tide that descended like a collapsing sea. Hooks tore through his thigh. A fused blade drove his shoulder into the stone. Pressure coiled around his skull until his vision washed white. His void silhouette fractured at the edges. Stars dimmed. The axis slipped. The ocean closed over him. In that narrowing instant, with the next surge poised to crush his chest inward, his fingers found the crystal at his belt. A single thought.

Crack The chamber vanished. The roar of the tide cut short. Alonso burst back into the open air just outside the Dungeon's entrance and crashed into the ground, lungs burning, body broken and battered. He used Judgment Surge at once. Bone slid back into place. Flesh sealed. Strength returned in a heated rush, enough for him to rise and keep moving. And just like last time… he arranged a new package with the Guild's courier… then turned and headed toward the next Dungeon.

And just like that… days passed. He fell. He rose. He bled across marble, sand, shattered stone. Again and again the final boss drove him into the ground, ribs splitting, vision flashing white, lungs burning as he forced himself to stand one more time. The taste of iron lingered constantly at the back of his throat. Death's breath became a familiar presence at his shoulder. Each run carved something out of him. Each return demanded more.

He entered every chamber with the same intent: to seize the axis, anchor the field, and impose his authority upon it. He drove his domain outward faster, steadier, sharper each time. He narrowed distance by fractions, sensed the shift of Will sooner, and stepped into convergences as they began to form. Against the second boss, it became almost natural. Two exchanges. The field aligned. The fight revolved around him. Against the final boss… the tide still rose too high.

He would anchor the space for a breath, sometimes two. The field would lean. Then the pressure would grind down through him—layered Will, heavier, denser, crushing his stance, fracturing the domain until it splintered around his silhouette. The gap in power remained. He felt it every time his knees struck stone. Every time his Escape Crystal cracked in his palm. And yet… His domain lasted longer. The field bent a little further before breaking. His Will carried more weight. Still… he had grown. Stage 1 – 41.

990% ➤ 42. 084% No-Strike – 23. 622% ➤ 25. 341% Will Manifest – 14. 733% ➤ 16. 422% Beyond the numbers, his understanding had deepened. Against the second boss, he fought under restraint—blindfolded at times, sealing his hearing, suppressing his EM perception, even easing his reliance on Will. He forced himself to move with less input, fewer crutches, demanding clarity from whatever remained. In that pressure, his senses sharpened. Physical perception refined. Electromagnetic awareness grew more precise.

His connection to Will steadied, cleaner and less wasteful. His footwork tightened. His blade paths shortened. His awareness expanded, holding more shifting elements at once without splintering. He could now push through the second phase of the final boss with consistency and drive the battle toward the third. According to Houston's latest estimate, his effective Power Index, all things considered, now hovered around 19, 500, placing him within early Gold-rank standards even without advancing his States.

Yet that next Combat Realm still stood ahead of him, close enough to see… but still beyond his reach. Just then, amid his drifting thoughts, a message pulsed through his phone. It was from Ayu. It read: " I just advanced… guess I'm the first:)"