Chương 32: Chapter 17 Part 2

High above the subterranean horrors of the Grand Abyss, the Royal Palace of Elyndria sat bathed in the serene, golden light of the afternoon sun. Deep within the heavily fortified central spire of the palace lay the Astral Chamber. It was a room entirely shielded by overlapping layers of dwarven lead and high-density mana-dampening runes. This was the intelligence hub of the Zareth Kingdom, a place where the Royal Family monitored the political and magical heartbeat of the capital.

In the center of the circular room sat the Zenith Array, a massive, intricate topographical map of the Grand Abyss Dungeon, carved from a single, flawless block of scrying crystal. The crystal map descended downward into a pedestal of polished obsidian, representing the floors. Within the crystal, tiny, glowing motes of colored light drifted sluggishly. These lights represented the ambient mana signatures of the dungeon's apex predators and floor guardians.

For centuries, the Zenith Array had been a slow, predictable instrument. A boss monster's light would wink out, and three weeks later, a battered but triumphant raid party would emerge on the surface to claim the glory. Today, the Zenith Array was not predictable. It was bleeding. Elias Veyne, the Kingdom's Chief Spymaster and a grand-mage of the royal court, stood at the edge of the crystal table. He was a man who had built his career on cold logic and emotional detachment.

He wore the pristine, silver-threaded robes of the inner council, his sharp, aristocratic features usually locked in a mask of mild boredom. Currently, that mask was entirely shattered. Elias was sweating profusely, his hands gripping the edge of the stone table so hard his knuckles were bone-white. He stared down into the depths of the scrying crystal as if he were watching a slow-motion execution.

The heavy mahogany doors of the Astral Chamber swung open, admitting a young man dressed in a tailored military uniform bearing the golden crest of the royal house. Crown Prince Theron was a man groomed for authority. He possessed a sharp, calculating intellect, calculating eyes, and a commanding presence that usually silenced rooms instantly.

"You requested an emergency audience, Elias," Crown Prince Theron said, his boots clicking sharply against the marble floor.

"I left a tactical meeting with the northern generals for this. It had better be worth my time." Elias didn't bow. He didn't even look up from the crystal.

"Your Highness," Elias breathed, his voice unusually tight.

"The Grand Abyss is breaking." Theron frowned, coming to stand beside the Spymaster.

"Breaking? Has there been a seismic shift? Did a lower-tier guardian migrate to the upper floors?"

"No," Elias said, shaking his head slowly. He pointed a trembling finger at the upper quadrant of the scrying crystal.

"Look at the array." Theron looked down. The lights for Floor 5 were gone. The lights for Floor 6, 7, and 8 were completely extinguished. The massive, pulsing red core that represented the molten Golem on Floor 10 was absent. The shadowy, flickering signatures of the Stalkers on Floor 14 were completely dark. For a long moment, the Crown Prince simply stared at the empty, dark crystal. His tactical mind, usually so swift, struggled to process the visual data.

"Where are the floor guardians?" Theron asked, confusion lacing his royal tone.

"Did the Mage Tower recalibrate the array? Are the sensors malfunctioning?"

"That is what we thought twelve hours ago," Elias replied grimly, pulling a stack of hastily scribbled intelligence reports from his robes.

"We sent a squad of Royal Diviners to check the array's attunement. The array is functioning perfectly, Your Highness. The guardians aren't missing. They have been eradicated." Theron's eyes snapped to Elias.

"Eradicated? All of them? By whom? Is there a joint-guild expedition we weren't informed of? Did the Warrior and Adventurer Guilds combine their elites?"

"No, my Prince," Elias said, swallowing hard.

"The Warrior Guild's primary elites are currently locked down on a private contract. The Adventurer Guild hasn't sanctioned a raid party larger than fifteen men in three months. Furthermore, the timeline makes a raid party impossible." Elias slapped the first parchment onto the table.

"The signature for the Floor 10 Golem disappeared yesterday evening," Elias explained, his voice taking on a frantic, clinical edge.

"Our scrying residues suggest it wasn't chipped away or worn down by a vanguard. The ambient heat signature left behind suggests it was vaporized. Instantly. By a focused burst of Yin energy so dense it rivals a tier-nine hyper-incantation." This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Elias slapped a second parchment down.

"The signatures on Floor 14 vanished three hours ago. The Stalkers were physically detonated." Elias looked at the Crown Prince, his eyes wide with a terror he could no longer hide.

"Your Highness, a forty-man elite raid party requires a minimum of a month of meticulous logistical crawling to breach Floor 14. They have to establish camps, manage mana fatigue, and rotate their shields." Elias pointed down into the dark expanse of the crystal.

"Whoever, or whatever, is down there right now, is not crawling. They are falling through the dungeon like a stone. They cleared fourteen floors of the Grand Abyss in exactly seventy-two hours." The silence in the Astral Chamber was heavy with the terrifying implications of the Spymaster's words. Crown Prince Theron leaned over the table, staring into the dark crystal. The political and military ramifications slammed into him like a physical blow. The Grand Abyss was the Kingdom's ultimate proving ground.

The sheer, impassable difficulty of the dungeon was a known, absolute law of their reality. If an entity existed that could shatter fourteen floors in three days, that entity possessed enough raw, concentrated military power to single-handedly march on the Royal Palace and slaughter the King's Guard without breaking a sweat.

"Who?" Theron demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy whisper.

"Who is in my dungeon, Elias?"

"We... we don't have visual confirmation, my Prince," Elias admitted, hastily sifting through a third set of reports.

"But we have a highly probable anomaly. A few days ago, an unknown woman arrived in the capital. She took up residence in the Vael estate."

"Marquess Vael?" Theron asked, his brow furrowing.

"A border lord. Why is she relevant?"

"Because a few days ago, this woman walked into the Warrior Guild and completely humiliated Vice Guild Master Durgan on his own balcony," Elias said, reading from the spy report.

"She paralyzed him and the dark elf sword master, Axel, using an aura so terrifying that our informants on the lower floor thought they were suffocating. She threw a king's ransom of A-rank cores on the table to hire them as glorified house guards." Theron's eyes widened.

"Durgan accepted a house-guard contract?"

"He did more than that. He pulled his elite shield-bearers off their dungeon rotations and turned the Vael estate into a military bunker. Then, he dragged High Apothecary Silas Vane out of the alchemy district by his collar to treat a sick girl inside the manor." Elias set the final report on the crystal table.

"Following this, the mysterious woman vanished into the lower wards. Our shadows tracked her to the Obsidian Coin, where she met with the halfling rogue, Lynx. They bypassed the royal toll gates via a smuggler's tunnel precisely seventy-two hours ago." Theron rubbed his temples, feeling a massive headache forming behind his eyes. The pieces were locking into place, and the picture they formed was utterly terrifying.

"A lone woman and a halfling guide," Theron muttered. He looked at the Spymaster.

"You are telling me that a single, unknown individual is currently speeding through the Grand Abyss?"

"I am telling you that a walking calamity has entered our kingdom, Your Highness," Elias corrected gently but firmly.

"And based on the Apothecary's diagnosis of the sick girl in the Vael estate, we know exactly where this calamity is heading." Theron looked up.

"Where?"

"Floor 20," Elias whispered.

"The Twilight Zone. She is hunting the Abyssal Frost Marrow." Theron stared at him. The sheer audacity, the sheer, unimaginable arrogance of the goal was staggering. Floor 20 was a myth. It was a place the royal cartographers had simply labeled 'Death.'

"She won't survive Floor 15," Theron said automatically, relying on his years of military education.

"The upper floors are beasts and traps. Floor 15 is where the true Abyss begins. The Death-Knights coordinate. Their anti-magic fields will strip her of her spells, and their sheer numbers will crush her. Her cruising ends at the Twilight Threshold." Just as the Crown Prince finished his sentence, the Zenith Array in the center of the room emitted a loud, high-pitched whine. Both men snapped their attention to the massive scrying crystal.

Deep within the crystal, directly on the marker for Floor 15, a cluster of thirty dark-purple lights had gathered, the combined, lethal signatures of the Death-Knight battalion. Suddenly, a new light appeared in the center of the cluster. But it wasn't a light. It was a void. It was a point of absolute, crushing darkness that seemed to suck the ambient mana out of the scrying crystal itself. Crack. A hairline fracture suddenly spider-webbed across the surface of the flawless dwarven crystal.

Elias stumbled backward, crying out in shock as the magical feedback physically burned the air in the room. Down in the crystal, the void expanded violently for a fraction of a second. It didn't fight the thirty purple lights. It simply erased them. One by one, the elite, impenetrable signatures of the Abyssal Death-Knights winked out of existence, snuffed out like candles in a hurricane. One minute. That was all it took. Thirty elite dungeon boss-tier entities, deleted from the map.

The void vanished, leaving the Floor 15 quadrant entirely dark, silent, and empty. Crown Prince Theron stood absolutely frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs in a frantic, terrified rhythm. He stared at the cracked surface of the Zenith Array, the reality of the situation crashing down upon him. The rules of their world no longer applied. A demi god was walking through their dungeon.

"Elias," Theron said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual royal arrogance, replaced by the cold, calculating tone of a survivor.

"Yes, Your Highness?" the Spymaster squeaked, his hands shaking.

"Send word to the Vanguard stationed at the dungeon entrance," Theron commanded, his eyes still locked on the dark crystal.

"Tell them to double the perimeter. Triple the heavy-shield formations."

"To... to arrest her when she emerges?" Elias asked hesitantly. Theron slowly turned his head to look at his Spymaster as if the man had just suggested diving into a volcano.

"Arrest her?" Theron echoed, a humorless, terrified laugh escaping his lips.

"Elias, if she actually breaches Floor 20 and returns to the surface, the Zareth Kingdom no longer has the authority to arrest her. We double the guard so that when she emerges, we can properly bow."