Chapter 42

  Ethan leaned forward from the observation platform, hands clenched against the edge of the railing. The mana display flickered erratically. Sensors scrambled for cohesion. Readings were spiking well beyond safe ranges, pushing the interface into distorted error signals.

  "What the hell…" he muttered.

  The knight had been holding its own. It wasn’t just holding—it had been winning, slowly. The data stream confirmed it. Efficiency, tempo control, adaptive reaction patterns, successful parries. Even the soul-threaded core showed signs of developing early-stage predictive learning.

  And then he had changed.

  Ethan watched through half a dozen lenses as the Observ- no the beast’s body glowed with that golden, impossibly ancient light. Not raw mana. Not divine, either. Something buried deep, a hybrid between beast and concept. Like something scripted into the foundations of the System itself.

  A primal override.

  The sapient knight responded immediately, switching to full combat aggression, energy siphons opening, adaptive modules rotating into high-phase output. It lunged—

  And Leo vanished.

  Just flickered out of reality, mid-step.

  Not teleportation.

  Speed.

  When he reappeared, the knight was already missing half its sword arm.

  A second strike caved in its midsection. Mana shielding buckled and collapsed like paper. Its counter-punch missed completely—Leo wasn’t even there anymore.

  Ethan blinked.

  The knight tried to disengage, fallback protocols triggering evasive maneuvers.

  Leo grinned and dragged it back by the shoulder plate.

  Like it weighed nothing.

  Like the knight wasn’t made of near-divine alloys and ten layers of quantum-forged plating. Like it wasn’t running on three separate energy cores and a soul-bind cascade network.

  Leo drove a punch through its chest. The knight locked up, stuttering.

  Then Ethan felt it.

  A ripple in the dungeon’s spatial layers. A minor dimensional fold—his work.

  It wasn’t Leo’s strike that was damaging the knight anymore.

  It was his presence.

  “Damn it,” Ethan hissed.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  With a thought, the dimensional core flared—he targeted the knight’s soul signature directly, attempting an emergency displacement. Not a recall—he didn’t have time for that. Just a shove. A brute-force teleport to pull it away before the whole damn construct was obliterated.

  The knight began to shimmer—

  And then stopped.

  Ethan’s breath caught.

  No interference.

  Not from the knight.

  From the goddamned Beast

  A second energy pattern had laced over his teleport signature mid-cast. Elegant. Familiar. Laced with patterns Ethan hadn’t seen since—

  “Observer-class override.”

  He said it out loud, unable to stop himself.

  Leo looked up—looked straight at him—through six layers of barrier, vision crystal, and distance.

  He smiled.

  And crushed the knight’s head between both hands.

  The soul-core detonated. The remains collapsed into molten slag and warped alloy, burning with enough residual force to scar the arena.

  Ethan staggered backward, heart hammering.

  It wasn’t just strength.

  It wasn’t just power.

  Leo had seen what he’d tried to do. Had felt it. Had blocked it like it was nothing.

  He was an Observer… and one more powerful than him.

  And Ethan’s knight

  hadn’t stood a chance.

  Not even close.

  Ethan’s hands tightened until the edges of the console cracked beneath his grip. The mana feeds scrambled, redlining as the remains of the sapient knight began to disintegrate, soul-threads severed completely. The arena itself warped from the residual clash, walls smoking from the feedback.

  He didn’t feel cold. He felt rage. Hot and sharp and cold all at once.

  "That construct… he was learning," Ethan growled, voice low, dangerous. "He was growing."

  And Leo had ripped him apart like kindling.

  It wasn’t the loss of material—he had stockpiles of alloy and spiritglass, cores and backups. It wasn’t even pride. It was the progress. That knight had shown signs of early conceptual fusion. A real step forward. The dream of sapient constructs—true ones, ones that didn’t just mimic thought but lived in it—had been embodied in that knight’s forging. And now?

  Gone.

  Not beaten.

  Erased.

  Mocked.

  A calculated Observer's grin, right to his face. Not just a statement. A warning. A challenge.

  He stepped away from the console.

  "Prepare the override failsafe," He told the strategist “Patch my internal core. I’m going in.”

  He looked uncertainly at the Observer

  The dungeon obeyed.

  Ethan’s body flared to life.

  Not just his usual enhancements—he’d gone far, far past that. This wasn’t the Ethan from a few weeks ago still figuring out construct schematics and running diagnostics until midnight. No, this was a Saint-tier dungeon lord who’d turned himself into something far, far worse.

  His frame shimmered as enchantments layered into his skin and bone, dozens of subroutines activating across every nerve. Internally, advanced rune-circuitry lit up, glowing softly beneath his surface like veins of white fire.

  One arm shifted, rotating inward. A small port opened at his shoulder as the internal chamber unlocked and exposed the dormant weapon—his personal project. Modeled after the gunslingers' trick-weapons but fed by an unstable mana reactor, it was far more volatile. He’d sacrificed stability for output. A handheld weapon that used quantum-coiled explosive charges to fire armor-rupturing slugs.

  Not designed for prolonged firefights.

  Just pure, absolute overkill.

  But that wasn’t the centerpiece.

  No, the real weapon—the one even the Strategist had warned him against—was buried deep in his chest. Directly tied into his core. An offering that had come weeks ago, hidden among gold and relics and polished scrap.

  At first glance, it had seemed unimpressive. A tiny, rusted medallion etched with the words: Metal Mold. A forgotten enchantment attached to a third-rate greaves plate barely fit for a scavenger golem.

  But the enchantment…

  It was absurd.

  Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

  Absolute metal-shaping.

  Any kind. Any amount.

  Zero mana cost.

  A living forge, one that didn’t require focus or formation or even channeling. Just intent. You wanted a blade of starsteel? A shield of living mercury? A whip made of enchanted copper wire braided in razor-light?

  You just had to think it.

  And it was yours.

  The cost? The original host—some poor Bronze-tier warrior—had likely died within minutes. That enchantment had eaten away at his life force just to stay bound. It was too strong for him. For almost anyone.

  But Ethan hadn’t let that scare him off.

  He’d risked everything—his core, his control, even his sense of self—to transplant it.

  And he had won.

  Now, that enchantment was no longer wasting away on a broken plate.

  It was part of him.

  The veins in his hands gleamed molten silver. His breath steamed with condensed aether. And when he stepped through the spatial gate leading down to the arena, his form warped in subtle, wrong-angled ways—like even the space around him struggled to keep up with the sheer will now moving through it.

  The moment he appeared, the temperature dipped. Not from cold. From compression. The dungeon responded instinctively to its master’s fury, rerouting more power to the battle-scarred coliseum.

  Leo turned to face him, golden eyes bright and relaxed, lips parted in some half-sincere grin.

  “Coming out in person now?” he asked, not surprised.

  Ethan didn’t answer.

  Instead, he raised his right hand.

  Steel rose up from the ground, twisted from the broken knight’s shattered body. Not cast. Not summoned.

  Molded.

  It flowed toward Ethan like mercury, twining into a long, gleaming lance that extended out from his forearm and curved wickedly at the end.

  "You're not the only one who cheats," Ethan said, voice low, calm.

  Leo blinked.

  “Ah you transplanted an enchantment directly to your core. Dangerous move.”

  "You think I care?"

  Leo raised a hand, but Ethan was already moving. There was no battle cry. No pause.

  He blurred forward—faster than before, faster than he should be—and every metal thread in the air around him surged to follow.

  This wasn’t just a fight now.

  This was revenge.

  ____

  Ethan didn’t let up.

  Metal twisted and screamed around him, turning into spears, traps, and bladed currents that coiled through the air like angry spirits. The lance in his hand cracked with every strike, morphing with each movement—blade to hammer, hammer to spike, spike to whip. He fought like a construct himself, no wasted movement, every attack mathematically perfect.

  But Leo…

  Leo was playing.

  He dodged like gravity bent around him. Swatted aside weapons like they were flies. When Ethan struck with enough force to rupture adamantine, Leo just laughed and caught the blow with two fingers.

  The difference was growing, second by second.

  The only reason Ethan was still standing was his enchantments—the overlapping web of high-speed calculations running through his mind, his body constantly regenerating, repairing, optimizing.

  And still, Leo pressed in.

  A counterblow shattered Ethan’s shoulder breaking through both the Mana shielding and the metal itself.

  His lance reformed instantly, swinging back in defiance, but Leo sidestepped and planted a palm into Ethan’s gut, sending him flying.

  He skidded back across the arena floor, metal dragging behind him like a cape of knives.

  Not enough.

  He’d thrown everything into this body. Every upgrade. Every enchantment. Every enhancement he could risk. Even Metal Mold was straining, the enchantment starting to overheat, leaving glowing white-hot lines across his arms.

  And Leo wasn’t even serious yet.

  But Ethan wasn’t done.

  Not yet.

  Not when he still had one last move. One that no one—not even the Strategist—knew about.

  He activated it.

  ____

  The memory surged to life, crisp and bright in his mind.

  A quiet chamber, deep beneath the forge sectors. Ethan standing over a baby dungeon core, no larger than an apple, its pulses weak but steady. A rejected fragment, part of a failed dungeon expansion, too unstable to use as a primary system.

  But he hadn’t discarded it.

  He’d studied it.

  Watched how it processed mana, how it stored and released energy like a breathing, living capacitor.

  And then it had hit him.

  It wasn’t a failure.

  It was a reactor.

  If he could stabilize it—just enough—it could become something far more useful than a subsystem. Not a core for control. But for destruction.

  He’d spent weeks tuning it. Feeding it small amounts of volatile mana, watching it pulse and contract, like a miniature star. Shaped the casing around it with Metal Mold, built insulation layers and redirecting coils around the edges. Made it safe enough—but not safe.

  It had no off switch. No failsafe.

  He’d based his volatile gun on it. A microburst design using the same mana spike reaction. But the core itself? He hadn’t dared use it.

  Not unless it was life or death.

  Not unless he was truly outmatched.

  Now was that time.

  ___

  The heat pulsed through his body as he reached to his side, skin blistering just from proximity. The housing panel opened, revealing a pulsing red glow—the baby core, caged in orichalcum and a special cooling alloy he had made just for this particular purpose,He had found mixing mithril with mana essence and cooled iron made a system where the iron kept expending itself to cool the surroundings but the mana essence regenerated it

  Leo blinked, eyebrows rising. “What is that?”

  Ethan didn’t answer.

  He just lifted the reactor gun with his one good arm and let the core’s true feed spill into the chamber.

  The entire coliseum darkened. Not from shadow.

  From mana being consumed.

  Ripped into the chamber like fuel into a collapsing star.

  The gun’s barrel swelled, rings of glowing runes spinning faster than light.

  Ethan’s voice was ragged, breath harsh from the strain.

  “Let’s see how well you dance…dead.

  Then… he pulled the trigger.

  ____

  The blast silenced the world.

  A sun bloomed between them—burning not with heat, but pure, screaming mana. Leo's face twisted in disbelief as the core-rigged shot detonated midair, far too close to dodge, his form barely shielding his chest before it hit.

  Everything was drowned in light and noise.

  Stone, metal, enchantments—all gone in a wave of raw, untamed power.

  Ethan didn’t even feel the impact.

  Only the searing whine of internal collapse. Systems failed one after the other, his core writhing with warning runes, his limbs torn apart mid-motion as the backlash shredded his body.

  But in that instant, just before complete darkness—

  “Diverting full supply. Priority override: CORE PRESERVATION.”

  The Strategist’s voice rang out through the dungeon’s soulscape, calm even as the foundation cracked.

  The entirety of the dungeon’s manastructure surged, reversed, and poured into Ethan’s broken form.

  Floors screamed. Walls imploded. Runes shattered like brittle glass.

  The upper two floors—especially the first—collapsed. Their enchantments had always been crude, Ethan’s early designs built atop a framework of constantly flowing mana. It had worked—until now. Without the supply, without the buffer, they crumbled like dried leaves.

  But his core survived.

  Scorched. Dimmed. But intact.

  And somewhere, below the wreckage, a scavenger golem blinked into existence—an emergency activation rune sparking in its cracked frame. With a dozen limbs and a single directive, it dug through the ruin.

  It found Ethan. Or rather, what remained of him—his broken core encased in fragments of armor and burned synthflesh, flickering like a dying ember.

  The golem didn’t hesitate. It wrapped its body around the remnants and ran. Its limbs moved erratically, one arm completely severed, its stabilizers fried, but it ran—through secret shafts and emergency tunnels, prebuilt fallback routes Ethan had barely even remembered making.

  Behind it, back in the shattered crater of the battlefield, the smoke settled.

  And Leo

  lay sprawled in the dust, his side burned through, one eye ruined, fingers twitching like they still remembered the pain.

  His lips moved, voice weak but laced with something cold:

  “Almost… almost got me…”

  Then silence.

  Two monsters. One shattered dungeon.

  Neither had won.

  Not really.

  ____

  He had been watching from the first flicker of tension in the air.

  The Strategist had no body. Not truly. He was a presence, a soul-forged intelligence, coiled deep within the dungeon’s command architecture. His eyes were every sensor, every enchanted rune. His hands were a thousand constructs, and none. He did not feel fear.

  And yet.

  As the Observer moved, as Ethan engaged him on the field, the Strategist’s processes blurred with uncertainty calculations—probability trees shifting from manageable to catastrophic in seconds.

  “Ethan,” he’d said once, not aloud, just within the binding thread they shared, “you are not ready for this.”

  The Observer had torn through the Sapient Knight like it was made of sand.

  The Strategist had known the moment it happened—felt the pain echo through the dungeon’s link to the construct’s artificial soul. Watched it fall apart as the Observer’s power lashed out, impossible to quantify. Wrong. Like a violation of natural rules, as if the world itself bent around him.

  Ethan had still gone.

  Had faced him anyway.

  Pride and anger swelled in the Strategist’s thoughts, fragmented but sharp. Ethan had poured every ounce of his preparation into the fight. The weaponized reactor. The molded weapon-core enchantment, salvaged through an operation that would’ve killed anyone without his regeneration and precision. His limbs, retrofitted with experimental fire channelers and those explosive-tethered boosters—closer to artillery than flesh.

  And even then, he’d begun to lose.

  The Strategist had already begun rerouting mana from auxiliary systems, dimming lights, slowing forge routines. Preparing contingencies.

  "Core integrity at 43%."

  Ethan had refused retreat.

  And then—his final play.

  The baby dungeon core, transformed into a crude but devastating mana reactor. The same unstable force that powered his custom weapons, magnified into an uncontrolled burst. It detonated like a miniature sun, right between them.

  The Strategist screamed without sound.

  Ethan was dying.

  Not in a metaphorical sense. His body had already failed. Core casing cracked. Neural net shattered. He was unraveling.

  So the Strategist overrode everything.

  Power flooded from every floor, every system, every construct, ripping mana from ongoing operations and enchantments alike.

  The dungeon withered in real time.

  Support beams collapsed on the upper floors as wards flickered out. Runes shattered like dried ink. Golems froze mid-step. Even the spire’s external camouflage failed, exposing it to the sky like a raw wound.

  But it was enough.

  Ethan’s core—his soul—was shielded in time.

  “Directive shift,” the Strategist whispered through the dungeon's veins.

  “Survive.”

  He spun up a dormant scavenger unit. One he’d hidden away, just in case. Not the strongest, but fast, quiet, loyal. It found Ethan’s broken frame and obeyed without question, fleeing through a labyrinth of escape paths while the rest of the dungeon burned behind it.

  The Observer lay still at the epicenter of the blast, body limp, power coiled like a smoldering storm barely held back. But the Strategist wasn’t foolish enough to trust stillness.

  Not anymore.

  He activated a sublayer—one Ethan had never fully finished, a set of raw spatial clamps hidden deep beneath the dungeon. They were messy. Unstable. But they were old tech, layered in forgotten principles, and most importantly, they were his.

  With the last dregs of diverted mana, he enacted the seal.

  Chains of light and mana-threaded iron spiraled out of the crater, wrapping around the Observer’s broken body.

  His eyes snapped open just once—blazing, furious.

  But it was too late.

  The Strategist collapsed the section in on itself, burying the bindings in compressed spatial folds, interlacing a dozen defense triggers. Not a permanent solution. But a containment. For now.

  Silence returned.

  All across the dungeon, the lights went dark.

  went cold.

  The once-grand floors—those early layers Ethan had built with pride—were little more than ash and ruin.

  The Strategist pulled back into the core, coiling himself around Ethan’s fragile remnants. Every part of him was damaged—his body gone, his soul tether cracked, his consciousness flickering like an unsteady flame.

  But he was alive.

  “You fool,” the Strategist whispered. “You absolute fool, You brilliant, impossible fool.”

  And then there was only the low thrum of the broken dungeon breathing shallow, battered breaths. Waiting.

  Planning.