Chương 62: When an Obsessed Reader Gets Himself Killed

Floor 15 of the Jungle Dungeon lay smothered under a suffocating sea of dark purple toxic mist. Magical mud boiled and churned, reeking of acid corrosive enough to eat through metal. At the center of the bog, thirty elite students of the vanguard squad were sunk waist-deep in the muck. Their gleaming alloy plate armor sizzled and dissolved under the purple mud's corrosion, sending up curls of acrid white smoke.

Surrounding them were hundreds of four-meter-tall Titan Mud Elementals — grotesque, shapeless masses of sludge continuously spraying jets of highly corrosive magical liquid. Ting! A Unified System v2. 0 notification appeared in front of Lucian. [EMERGENCY DETECTED: 30 STUDENTS BEING SWALLOWED BY THE MARSH!] [OVER-LEVEL RESCUE CHALLENGE ACTIVATED] Objective: Rescue every target with zero casualties. Countdown until the mud floods the targets' lungs: 45 seconds!

At the center of the swamp, Roger — the leader of the vanguard squad and a second-year noble from an Earl's family — knelt in the poisonous mud. His armor was already damaged beyond repair. His sword was corroded, the blade covered in cracks from the acid. Yet he still raised it toward the sky with both hands.

"Everyone! Don't give up!"

"Everyone! Don't lose heart!" Roger raised his damaged sword.

"In Chapter 28, the Nameless Knight said..." His voice became stronger."' Despair is only the beginning of dawn!'"" If we must become the bait so that our comrades can escape—" Whoosh. SLAP! The sound echoed across the entire swamp. Roger froze. Something had just appeared behind him. Lucian appeared behind Roger and slapped him across the face. The force was strong enough to send Roger's helmet flying several meters away. Roger grabbed his cheek. Five clear fingerprints were left on his face.

For several seconds, the young noble could only stare blankly.

"Huh?"

"Huh???" This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Dawn my ass." Lucian pointed directly at him.

"Stand up. Grab your teammates and pull them toward the edge. Now." Roger stared at him. Lucian's expression twitched.

"I wrote that scene when I had a fever and couldn't think straight." He pointed at the poisonous swamp around them.

"You actually copied it into real life?" A vein appeared on Lucian's forehead.

"Are you trying to bury thirty people alive?!" SLASH! Before Roger could respond, a massive blade of platinum light descended from above. The attack stretched over a hundred meters, cutting through the poisonous swamp in a single strike. Astra leapt down from a cliff edge, the Sun-Slaying Dragon Sword splitting the entire mudflat in two, the heat of her holy light instantly vaporizing the corrosive acid, carving a clean, dry channel straight to the base of the safe ledge.

At the same moment, Eleanor landed at the edge of the channel and drove her sword into the ground. BOOM! A dome-shaped barrier of golden holy light erupted outward, blocking every jet of acid mud fired from the hundreds of surrounding Mud Elementals.

"Retreat down the channel!" Eleanor bellowed. Lucian didn't waste a tenth of a second. Layered Focus: Activate. Silent Blink: chain-activated. Whoosh. Thud. Whoosh. Thud. Lucian's silhouette turned into a blur of ash-grey, streaking across the swamp at the speed of a machine on autopilot. He appeared beside the two most deeply sunk students, grabbed them by the collar, and hauled them up → blinked, throwing them onto the ledge. Streaked right, grabbed three more → threw them onto the ledge.

Streaked left, kicked two Mud Elementals aside → dragged out the remaining four and threw them onto the ledge. All thirty students landed on the dry stone like sacks of sand, sprawled out, gasping for breath. The entire rescue took exactly forty seconds. Ting! [OVER-LEVEL RESCUE CHALLENGE COMPLETE (40 SECONDS)!] Survival rate: 30/30 (100%). Casualties: 0.

Roger sat on the ledge, clutching his swollen cheek, staring down at his thirty comrades — all still alive — then up at the ten-year-old boy in the ash-grey cloak standing on the ledge, catching his breath. Roger's eyes suddenly went red, tears mixing with the mud on his face. He dropped to his knees, pressing his forehead to the ground, his voice choked with overwhelming reverence.

"The ash-grey cloak... appearing at the exact moment darkness closed in around us... A single slap to awaken a lost soul's will to survive! You struck me... so I would never forget this costly lesson in complacency! Everything the book taught us was true!" The remaining twenty-nine students all dropped to their knees at once, sobbing, hands pressed together in worship.

"Thank you, our Savior!"

"A slap filled with boundless compassion!" Lucian stood on the ledge, rubbing his stinging palm, his temples twitching over and over.

"I just slapped his face swollen and he still thinks I'm some kind of savior?!" Evelyn walked down from the ledge, glanced at Roger, then patted Lucian's shoulder with a sigh.

"Give it up, man. You can't cure terminal fanboy syndrome with logic." Before the students could even get to their feet, the entire Floor 15 began shaking violently. BOOM! CRACK! CRACK! The entire mudflat drained away in an instant, collapsing into a massive spinning funnel. The fifty-meter cliff face behind the swamp split open into a pitch-black chasm.

From deep within the rift, a colossal Titan-alloy arm, jet-black and more than thirty meters long, shattered through the granite floor and rose straight up toward the dungeon's ceiling. Glowing red mana conduits along the metal arm began to pulse, radiating a suffocating heat that made the surrounding air boil. A thousand-year-old mechanical roar thundered through all twenty floors of the dungeon. [SYSTEM WARNING: CORRUPTED TITAN GUARDIAN — AWAKENED.]