More spells.
More speed.
They came faster than before.
But it didn't matter.
Elius raised two fingers.
Four swords were not enough now.
His sword emerged, abandoning the defense.
It blinked into reality behind his back like it had always belonged there, responding to his will without resistance.
Then came the slaughter.
The fifth sword danced ahead of the others. It moved faster, more erratically, slicing through ankles and knees, grounding the goblins.
Then the others followed—one sword sliced the skull of the staff wielder, splitting it in half from top to jaw, while another spun mid-air and slashed two charging goblins across their bellies, disemboweling them in one smooth arc.
Blood poured like rivers.
The air grew thick with the metallic scent of death.
Ron saw a goblin on the ground—its arms missing, screaming in agony, still trying to crawl toward a dropped weapon.
A sword hovered over it for a brief moment.
Then it dropped—shunk—through the back of its neck.
The scream ended.
That was Elius.
He never hesitated.
Never looked away.
Every action he took was a decision made instantly, like it had been calculated thousands of times in a mind far colder than theirs.
They walked through corridor after corridor, chamber after chamber. And no matter where they went, goblins tried to fight.
It didn't matter.
Elius left nothing behind.
Every direction, every angle, every tunnel they explored became a battlefield… and a graveyard.
When goblins came with crude traps, falling rocks and swinging blades, he dismantled them before they could activate.
His swords slashed through stone and rusted chains like butter.
When goblins tried to hide, he found them.
One sword slid into a crevice in the wall. Squelch. A goblin was impaled, hidden behind the stone.
When they fled?
His swords chased them.
They never got far.
Once, a goblin screamed and ran, sprinting across the ground on all fours like a spider.
The others assumed Elius would let it go. But a sword curved around the ceiling and dropped, stabbing it clean through the spine and pinning it to the floor like a bug under glass.
Every time they thought it was over—another tunnel revealed more.
And every time, Elius silenced them.
Ron didn't know how long they had been walking anymore. His muscles had begun to ache. His feet were tired. He wanted to rest, to sit down, to breathe.
But Elius didn't stop.
Shiro leaned close to Lina. "Is… is this what real superheroes are like?"
Lina said nothing.
She was watching Elius too carefully.
"I don't know," Klee said quietly. "This… I'm not sure but it's scaring me."
Eventually, they reached another darkened chamber.
The bodies of goblins already lay scattered across the stone floor.
Some had been cut cleanly.
Others, brutally mangled.
A few were pinned to the walls by swords that still pulsed with faint spiritual light.
Elius stood in the center of the carnage, staring down at one of the fallen.
He crouched.
Turned it over.
Checked its hand, its neck, its chest, its—
Suddenly, he paused.
One of the goblins—no, it wasn't dead yet. It was breathing, but barely. Its one remaining eye was wide with terror. Its face was covered in blood, and its jaw trembled as it tried to crawl away.
A soft glow emitted from its chest.
Faint.
Barely visible.
But Elius saw it.
He stepped forward.
The goblin raised a weak hand, gasping out something in its broken tongue.
Elius didn't respond.
He didn't blink.
He raised his sword—
SHLUNK!
—And drove it straight through the goblin's face.
The body twitched once.
Then went still.
The light faded from its eye.
Elius slowly pulled the sword free.
He stood there, silent for a moment, staring at the corpse.
Then he turned back toward the others, his voice calm. "Let's move."
He didn't explain.
He didn't say what he saw.
He just walked away. And the others followed, deeper into the dungeon… wondering just how far his power—and ruthlessness—truly reached.
The green had overtaken the gray.
That was the only way to describe it now.
The once damp, obsidian-black walls of the dungeon had become completely smeared, splattered, and saturated in varying shades of green.
Some of it was bright and acidic, burning holes into the stone.
Some of it was dark and congealed, bubbling from piles of hacked corpses.
The thick stench of goblin blood clung to their noses like tar—sickening, metallic, but no longer unfamiliar.
This wasn't just a dungeon anymore.
It was Elius' canvas.
And his brush?
Murder.
The group moved through another wide chamber—this one with towering stalagmites and flickering crystals jutting from the ground in sporadic clusters.
Shadows danced and shifted around the jagged terrain, but they dared not linger long.
Because Elius was here.
And Elius was hunting.
SHHHK!
A sword zipped through the air, slicing the ankle of a fleeing goblin.
It tripped and screamed, rolling in agony.
SLASH!
A second sword followed, cleaving its body in two from chest to pelvis, like a butcher splitting meat on a table.
The goblin didn't even have time to die in shock. It was already dead mid-scream.
"Stop running," Elius muttered under his breath, voice almost inaudible.
He wasn't speaking to the goblins.
He was speaking to the game.
The system.
The mechanic he knew so intimately.
The next group fell into his trap before they even knew they were seen.
From above.
From behind.
From within the crystal shadows.
Goblins exploded into chunks—some beheaded before they could raise their weapons, others skewered through their mouths, eyes, or guts by swords that moved without logic, without predictability, only pure, refined instinct.
Ron had given up counting how many Elius had killed. Was it sixty? Eighty? More?
All he knew was that they hadn't fought a single one since the first.
Elius didn't allow it.
He moved like death incarnate, calm and methodical.
Not a drop of green blood stained his clothes, despite the carnage surrounding him.
The flying swords rotated in a precise formation behind him, whirling with deadly anticipation—always ready, always thirsting.
Klee had stopped talking entirely.
Her knees shook as she walked, eyes darting to the shadows, afraid of seeing more goblins—and maybe more afraid of what Elius would do to them.
Lina's expression was unreadable now, but Ron saw the occasional twitch in her fingers. She wasn't afraid.
She was learning.
Shiro… simply stared. Half in awe. Half in disbelief.
Then, suddenly, another goblin died.
It hadn't even done anything.
It had merely poked its head from behind a column of rock. SHNK.
A sword launched like a missile and pinned it to the wall with a sickening squelch, its head split open like a melon.
Elius walked toward the body, expression unchanged, but in his eyes, there was something—calculation.
He knelt.
He turned the goblin's body, checked its chest… then its hand…
DING!
The system screen appeared only in his vision.
Fragment of Martial Skill Found. Current Progress: 2/5.
His eyes lit up.
"Yes…" he mumbled.
Ron heard it. So did the others.
"Did you say something?" Shiro asked.
Elius didn't look at him.
"I just had to make sure," he said flatly. "We'll need it to beat the boss. That's why I'm doing this."
They exchanged glances.
Boss?
Was there a boss monster ahead?
No one had mentioned it.
"Wait… there's a boss in this dungeon?" Ron asked, blinking.
"Of course," Elius said simply, rising to his feet. "It's the same as any dimensional zone. There's always a core. Always something that sustains the zone. That's our real target. If we beat it, we clear it. If not…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
But inside his mind, another sentence unfolded.
Just like before… Just like in the game.
Just like in my past life.
Back when cultivation parties entered pocket dimensions in search of fortune, power, and escape.
Fragments of martial skills were often scattered across those mini-worlds, and only when enough were gathered could they face the hidden boss monster.
Once completed, the martial skill could even give one person the edge to overcome the boss monster.
One completed fragment alone could tip the scale.
But Elius wasn't here for one.
He was here for all of them.
He wasn't going to explain that to Ron, or Lina, or Shiro, or Klee.
He didn't need them to understand.
He needed them to follow.
The next hour was a blur of devastation.
Elius' massacre continued. Goblins appeared and disappeared—almost instantly—like they never existed.
Some died before they even saw him.
Others tried to run and were hunted down with almost surgical cruelty.
In one chamber, he killed a goblin simply for twitching the wrong way.
The sword sank into its chest, and Elius calmly pulled the corpse over, eyes scanning—
DING!
Fragment of Martial Skill Found. Current Progress: 3/5.
He exhaled slowly.
Just two more.
Another stretch of tunnel. Another ambush.
But they weren't prepared.
A dozen goblins jumped from high ledges, shrieking with bloodlust.
Elius never moved.
His swords did.
They flew into the air—swoosh, crack, THUD, SPLAT—each one ripping through skulls and torsos.
One goblin was split vertically from head to crotch.
Another had its spine ripped from its body as the sword spun wildly after impact.
A third was pinned against a wall, its body twitching and convulsing around the steel.
Elius checked their bodies, one by one.
He sliced open their chests, split their skulls, examined their hands.
One by one.
Until—
DING! Fragment of Martial Skill Found. Current Progress: 4/5.
"Almost," he muttered.
"Almost what?" Klee asked weakly.
Elius didn't respond.
He walked again.
They followed.
This time, they reached a chamber that resembled a broken throne room.
It was massive.
Pillars carved with primitive goblin symbols surrounded a jagged stone chair stained green and brown.
Dozens of goblins stood in silence, as if they were guarding something.
It didn't matter.
Elius didn't stop.
He raised his hand—Swoosh!
The swords darted.
Faster.
Sharper.
Deadlier.
The goblins screamed. Fought. Cast spells. Launched arrows.
None of it worked.
They were butchered.
Slashed in two. Heads flying. Limbs torn from sockets. Some were impaled together, skewered like meat on a kebab. Elius cut through them like an artist with an invisible blade.
And then…
One goblin was still breathing. It tried to crawl away. A trail of blood oozed behind it.
Elius stepped forward.
He didn't hesitate.
He stabbed his sword directly into the goblin's face.
SHNK!
DING!
Fragment of Martial Skill Found.
Current Progress: 5/5.
Martial Skill Created: Shadow Clone (Common Tier) (Time limit: 4 minutes).
Elius' eyes widened slightly.
"…Again?" he whispered, blinking.
He already had a similar—no, more powerful ability through his formed cultivation party connected to Shiro.
After all, Shiro's clones have no time limit.
In fact, he is using the clone right now and was raiding the dungeon on the other side.
So why was the dungeon giving him this?
Was it a coincidence?
Or was something deeper at play?
Elius narrowed his eyes.
What is going on?