The dust hadn’t settled. And apparently, it never really did in a place like this.

  Alex stood at the edge of the battlefield, sword still in hand, scanning the ruins of the plaza. What remained stretched out before him—fractured stone, collapsed structures, and a lingering hum of mana that had no source but refused to dissipate. Magnus was gone. Not dead. Just… gone.

  Liora rolled her shoulder, wincing slightly. "I swear, every time we take a step forward, something tries to kill us. I’m starting to think the gods just didn’t like visitors."

  “I’ve never met a seer that could fight before…” Osric exhaled through his nose, his face pursed with thoughts probably wouldn’t reveal as he tested his newly freed arm. “And that weapon he was using… I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Liora stretched, shaking out her limbs as she adjusted her grip on her halberd. “Yeah, well, I’ve never met a seer that could blast the flesh off Basilisks either, so we’re all having a day of firsts.” She shot a glance at Alex, expectant. “You’re the one who fought him the most—what was that thing? Some lost god’s relic? Crown tech? Or are we looking at something worse?”

  Alex tilted his head slightly, considering his answer. “Something worse.” He let the weight of that settle before continuing, his tone measured. “The way it works, the speed, the precision—it’s built for killing, not casting. And it works independent of him, even without his mana fuelling it.” He met their gazes evenly. “We’ll need to be ready and you’ll have to stay close.”

  Osric grunted, flexing his fingers. “Let’s get moving then. He’ll die in pieces if he shows up again, my bow will make sure of it.”

  Alex agreed with the sentiment. Next time, he would make sure there’d be no escape.

  Alex, Liora, and Osric moved through the streets, keeping their pace steady and their presence low. The expedition had fractured. Faint tremors rolled through the ground at regular intervals, battles unfolding throughout the city. The strongest had already spread out—summoned heroes, hunters, and retainers moving in small groups, each chasing their own prize. House Dreymoore’s main force advanced, their banners barely visible in the distance as they pressed deeper into the stronghold. Clashes rang out between the structures, steel meeting steel, bursts of magic breaking through stone. The city had become a battlefield, each faction carving its way forward, seeking what lay hidden within.

  A cluster of hunters picked their way through the uneven ground and buildings that stood between them, their voices carrying over the perfectly constructed ceilings. “Three hours in, and my rations turned to stone,” one muttered, shaking a hardened lump in his hand. “Not mold, not rot—stone.” Another grunted, adjusting the straps on his pack. “That’s nothing. I saw a guy drink from a fountain, and his eyes started glowing. Still saw fine. Just… wouldn’t stop glowing.” A third scoffed, kicking at the ground where roots coiled unnaturally. “You’re both lucky. My boots started changing, like a shell. Had to get rid of em.” Silence followed as the voices drifted and the group headed further away.

  Alex, Osric, and Liora moved past a tall structure of glass—impressive, but not as imposing as the structures that touched the clouds in the centre. The glass buildings had stone woven into something almost organic—but they moved past them all the same. Whatever the quest needed of them was likely in the centre. Alex led the way, following a trace of something strange in the air he couldn’t quite place— an energy that drifted through his domain and grew stronger with each step.

  They reached the edge of a courtyard, just in time to see the ogre slam one of the hunters into the ground hard enough to snap bone. It stood taller than anything human, broad as a siege beast, its body a mix of thick plated metal and sinew that rippled beneath. Its horns curled forward, heavy and jagged, its tusks lined with molten streaks where fire coursed through its body like veins. It exhaled smoke, lifting its axe with a hand large enough to break men in half, its voice grinding like stone against iron.

  The ogre was massive, thick with layered plates of scorched iron that moved like muscle, each motion flexing against the furnace glow beneath. Its horns curled forward like a bull’s, jagged and uneven, bone fused with tempered steel. Its tusks curved upward, split down the middle, burning like smoldering coals, and its face was an awful combination of a bull’s skull and a boar’s snarling maw. When it exhaled, fire crawled through the cracks of its jaw, words forming in a language that sounded like grinding stone and collapsing embers.

  "Not natural," Osric muttered, eyes sharp as he watched the hunters. "Ogres aren’t made of fire and steel."

  The stench of burning metal thickened as the fight unfolded.

  And the hunters?

  They were struggling to keep up.

  The first sign of the creatures superiority was the heat—a raw, oppressive force, thick with a weight that pressed against the skin like molten iron shaped into a beast. The next was the roar—a grinding, guttural sound, filled with crackling embers and the scrape of metal against itself, as if a thousand swords were being drawn at once within a beast’s throat. It froze the one of the hunters in place for a split second, long enough for the creature to strike.

  Another moved to save his teammates life.

  Four of them worked in formation, but it was clear they were evenly matched. Perhaps they were simply outclassed, or perhaps the fatigue from endless high level battles had taken its toll. With each clash they fought harder, regardless.

  The first had range—a spear with a hooked, chain-linked shaft, wielded with control that suggested a class built around snaring, disarming, controlling space. He threw it, the weapon shifting mid-air, wrapping around the ogre’s arm—but the thing flexed, and the chain melted before it could pull tight. He summoned another, stronger chained spear.

  Another was a curse-dealer, her sword glowing with sickly energy as she swung—only for the ogre’s metal hide to turn the blow aside. The last was more dangerous.

  Liora made a low sound. “Oh, shit.”

  Osric exhaled slow. “Its them.”

  Alex glanced between them. “Who.”

  Liora grinned like she’d been handed a personal gift. “The Ashen Maw.”

  Alex looked back quizzically beneath his helmet. “And?”

  Liora picked up on it immediately. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them.”

  Alex said nothing. Liora glanced at him, her expression shifting just enough to show she’d seen through his stoic non-response. Osric stepped in, his voice even, like he was explaining something everyone should already know. The Titan-Wolf of Rothgard had been a problem for years—a massive predator that disrupted trade routes and forced villages to fortify their borders. Hunters had tried to take it down, but none succeeded until this team came through. The Man-Eater’s Mire was a stretch of swamp where the water seemed to move on its own, swallowing anyone who ventured too far. The Crucible of Thorns was a jagged maze of stone and poison, and the Black Forest had been a death sentence for anyone who entered. These were real, tangible problems that had shaped the region. The team that dealt with them was efficient, methodical, and relentless. Liora’s grin was faint, almost private, like she had seen something the others didn’t.

  The last hunter came into view.

  "That’s—" Osric exhaled through his nose. "That’s Ravik Gant."

  Liora raised a brow. "You mean Gant the immortal?”

  Osric nodded.

  Ravik Gant. Ravik the Hollow. Osric pointed as Liora excitedly recounted his achievements—one of the strongest among the new hunters who rose meteorically in only a few months, outside noble service— not a legend, yet, but at the start of his journey to possibly becoming one. A man built from sinew and scars, his hands wrapped in ritual cloth that never unraveled, his body layered in bindings woven with sigils that kept something worse inside. A fighter with a class few had seen—Blood Revenant, a hunter whose class would turn him undead, and if he didn’t win after he died, keep him that way, forever barred from humanity. And yet he still fought beyond it.

  Ravik struck, his fist slamming into the ogre’s plated side, the impact rippling through the metal. He moved like a man who didn’t care if he survived the fight—because the moment he went down, whatever he had sealed inside him would fight for him instead. That was the problem. If he died here, the thing inside him would keep going, and no one wanted to be in the blast radius of a revenant breaking loose.

  “Shit,” Liora muttered. “They’re not winning.”

  “No,” Osric corrected, watching the fight. “They’re not winning fast enough.”

  Alex kept his gaze on the ogre. It wasn’t mindless. It spoke. Not in full, coherent sentences, but in intention. It had tactics, knew how to counter strikes.

  “No, they’re losing,” Liora’s gaze flicked toward Osric. “Remnant hunters… losing to a remnant?”

  Osric exhaled. “At this point, everything we’re dealing with is a remnant.” His mouth pressed into a line. “That thing’s past most remnants.”

  The Ashen Maw didn’t operate like standard hunters. They hunted remnants—beasts defined by the chaos of the Frontier, creatures that lived beyond the system’s rules. Different from frontier beasts in that they didn’t play be the rules. Each member carried scars from things no one had written records of.

  Liora tilted her head. “So, are we helping, or are we letting them work for it?”

  Osric leaned against a broken archway, watching the team maneuver. “Ashen Maw built their name on finishing things like this.”

  Alex followed the way the creature absorbed each attack, molten veins glowed brighter, shifting between gold and white-hot intensity. The way the metal thickened along the beast’s arms with each absorption. It had started lighter, molten shifts lining its limbs, but each blow it took settled the plating deeper into its form. “They’re chipping at it. That thing’s adapting.”

  Liora’s eyes flicked back to the fight. “That’s a reason to step in.”

  Osric’s gaze didn’t shift. “That’s a reason to watch and see if they figure it out first.”

  A war hammer slammed into the beast’s ribs, sending molten shards scattering before the metal sealed again and the creature swung harder.

  Liora’s gaze flicked toward Osric. “That look like a team without problems?”

  Osric exhaled. “They know what they’re doing.”

  “He’s right, we should move,” Alex said.

  The hunters battling the ogre weren’t allies, and not only would they likely resent them from ‘stealing’ guaranteed levels, they would likely be enemies too, if the threats of Magnus was to be trusted. The decision to move on hadn’t been easy, but it hadn’t been wrong either.

  The deeper they moved, the more the city shed any resemblance to something made for mortals, or somewhere anyone was even meant to walk.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Bridges arched into impossible spans, stone carved with language that predated the system. Figures etched into temple facades stood taller than giants, their faces worn smooth, their eyes gouged out. In some places, architecture twisted in ways that ignored gravity, as if designed for beings that navigated space differently. Murals stretched across entire walls, depicting beings locked in battle against figures none recognised—prayers frozen in stone, left unanswered for millennia.

  The creatures that still lived here had outlasted everything else.

  The evolved that roamed the streets had long abandoned their origins. Serpentine beasts wove through the ruins like water, their plated hides shifting before any strike could land. Predators that had learned to never be hit.

  Further in, they stepped through the remnants of an ancient arena, where the sand had long since turned to glass from the heat of endless battles. The walls bore scratches that were too calculated to be the result of instinct, etched into patterns that suggested study, refinement—an opponent recording victories, analyzing its own success.

  Something shaped like a man, but built like an answer to every martial flaw. Joints within joints. Motion within motion—its limbs too elongated, too dense, and too taut. A form that had learned human combat and perfected it. It moved like a grandmaster of every discipline—no wasted movement, no exploitable stance, every attack an optimized equation, incorporating disciplines it had likely killed to master.

  “This one understands how to fight," Liora exhaled.

  “Kill it before it figures out how to fight better than us,” Osric yelled over the sound of his bow firing.

  They fought it like they fought something trained, predicting, countering, using techniques. Alex still refused to use his aces—no stat boosts, no quick kills, and instead focused on increasing his mastery. But it had been learning, even in the middle of the fight, adjusting faster with each exchange. The longer it survived, the harder it would be to kill.

  Until Liora clipped a tendon, Osric severed the spine, and Alex crushed the head.

  The battles that came next were quick, brutal, and varied.

  A quadrupedal beast, covered in layered chitin that fit together like moving shields, waited where the road had collapsed into an old amphitheater. Every movement tested range, pushing forward just enough to read their reactions, retreating before a real strike could land. The jaws were oversized, lined with spines instead of teeth, the pressure alone capable of crushing armor. When it attacked, the force behind it could have shattered stone, but Liora struck first, the halberd carving into the gaps between the plates—only for the wound to seal shut, the creature’s body rejecting damage as though injury was merely a suggestion. Osric’s arrows severed the spine in three places. Even then, the body twitched forward, unfinished business in its dying nerves.

  "Would’ve been nice if it died like a normal thing," Liora muttered, yanking her weapon free.

  Osric glanced at the corpse. "That one had been killing people for a while."

  Liora nudged its massive skull with her boot. "Yeah? Didn’t help."

  Further on, something with too many arms, each one shaped for a different form of killing, met them in an ancient plaza, attacking with the precision of a creature that had spent generations learning how to win—until Alex gave it a cut it had never seen.

  Their levels rose with each victory.

  [You have defeated level 786 Eidolic Apex - Evolved Variant (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]

  [You have defeated level 793 Kinetic Morphid (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]

  [You have defeated level 755 Neurothel Harbinger (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]

  [You have defeated level 822 Phase-Variant Devourer (D). Bonus experience due to level difference.]

  [You have defeated…]

  [You have defeated…]

  [You have defeated…]

  [Bonus experience due to level difference.]

  [Bonus experience due to ‘Hero’ feat.]

  [Level 229 > 246]

  [Strength +68, Dexterity +68, Intelligence +102, Unassigned stats +68]

  They moved on, passing doorways too vast, corridors built for something that had no reason to walk. Pillars stretched higher than any building in the old world, their surfaces carved in languages that had not been spoken in an age. Some walls bore scorch marks of divine mana that hadn’t faded with time.

  The city had been shaping its inhabitants for centuries, forging them through death and iteration. Whatever waited at its center had survived all of it.

  The temple sat at the center of the city, impossible to miss. Spires cut through the sky, their upper sections vanishing into dense clouds. The architecture was impossibly pristine, untouched by time or entropy. That was their destination. Whatever held the quests secrets would be there, Alex was sure of it.

  They passed the corpse of something that had failed. Once humanoid, now something else—halfway through a forced evolution that had collapsed mid-process, its body rejecting whatever transformation the city had tried to impose.

  Alex stepped over it. Guess this place doesnt just breed killers. It culls the weak, they must’ve been too low levelled to even exist this deep into this place, Alex surmised.

  Liora kicked aside a severed arm. “This place really doesn’t let things leave half-formed, huh?”

  Osric shook his head.

  They kept moving until finally, the drew closer to the structure in the centre of the city.

  The temple.

  The temple was layered history—civilizations built atop one another, their remnants sealed within the stone. Columns thicker than fortresses held up a ceiling so distant it may as well have been sky. A procession of faceless statues lined the path, each clutching a different weapon, each shattered at the same point—across the throat. Mosaics depicted gods that no one worshipped, triumphs that no one remembered, and prayers that had never been answered.

  The deeper they walked, the less the architecture resembled anything meant for mortals. Columns curved at impossible angles, murals shifted under the light, pathways split and rejoined with no clear logic or respect for how dimensions were supposed to behave.

  And a thick gate that defied logic bared all entry to the main structure.

  The place was thick with mana, pressing against Alex’s domain like an unrelenting wind, unable to penetrate but constantly pressing in, reshaping itself, testing the boundaries.

  Liora took a long look at the golden gate blocking their path. “This is a good place to die.”

  Osric gave her a flat look. “Optimistic today.”

  “I meant for other people.”

  Alex ignored them, scanning the structure, searching for a way past the gate. There was a trap embedded in its structure, the formation of mana obvious yet indecipherable, and one that suggested it could easily harm any who tried to force their way through. I can use flux and walk us all through, but I may need every reserve of Dao resilience for whatever’s at the top of those spires, he decided, deep in thought.

  Osric stepped toward the gate, running his fingers over a section of carved text. "Old tongue. Pre-system. Probably First Era." He stepped back, eyes narrowing. "It says ‘Here Lies—’" He hesitated, frowning. "Huh."

  Liora raised an eyebrow. “That’s a weird way to stop talking.”

  Osric tapped the inscription. “It’s… not done.” His frown deepened. “There’s a void in the center. A complete vacuum of mana. I think we need to inject our own to enter.”

  Liora leaned in, inspecting the stonework. “Or it eats us. Both are equally likely.”

  Alex didn’t hesitate. He triggered a skill, pushing mana forward. The moment his energy touched the inscription, the golden gate flared to life—not glowing, not shining, but activating with an immediate shift in structure, as if something fundamental had just realigned.

  Osric followed, directing his mana with practiced precision. Liora sighed, shaking her head. “Alright, let’s see where this bad decision takes us.” She triggered her own skill.

  The change was instant.

  The temple tore them from reality. One moment they stood before the gate—the next, they were inside.

  And the inside?

  The inside of the gate did not match what they had seen from the outside. The moment they stepped through, they saw something else.

  They had walked toward stone, glass, and metal, a structure untouched by time, a monument to something beyond human civilization. Inside, the entrance to the temple was a battlefield layered in blood.

  Or what was left of one.

  Fresh, still pooling, still sinking into cracks that had been forced into the stone by bodies hitting the ground with fatal impact—lingering traces of spells burned into the stone, the residue of high-level combat imprinted into the ruins. The corpses were everywhere, some collapsed in craters where they had been struck down with overwhelming force, others severed cleanly, flesh sheared through as if their defenses hadn’t even mattered.

  Bodies lay dead in mangled heaps.

  The dead were hunters—experienced, powerful, armed with the best weapons money and skill could afford.

  The dead were heroes—summoned warriors, pulled from other worlds, blessed with strength beyond men.

  A man in radiant golden armor, the sigil of a forgotten kingdom emblazoned on his chest, had been torn in half at the waist, his sword embedded in the ribs of a foe long dead beside him. Another, a woman with runed tattoos burned deep into her skin, was still clutching her own severed arm, as if she had tried to reattach it before she finally died.

  Hunters too strong for their own good, summoned heroes in their shattered armor. Still holding their weapons in cold, stiff fingers, as if clinging to the last moment they were alive. Even in death, the corpses were proof of how powerful they had been. But none of them had survived.

  And there was no sign that any of them had gotten close to harming whatever they had been fighting.

  Osric’s boots scraped against stone as he took in the scene. “None of them even made it past the entrance.”

  The Temple itself had changed. What was once pristine, once refined, had become something else entirely. The layers of civilization were visible now—stone upon stone, each era built over the last, a patchwork of architecture that no longer fit together.

  The murals that lined the temple walls did not show humans, or elves, or anything of this world. They depicted beings vast and incomprehensible, locked in battle against something unseen. Figures warped and shifting when stared at for too long, changing, as if unwilling to be fully understood.

  Divinity had passed through this place. And whatever had been left behind was still here.

  They were being watched.

  Liora stepped over a half-eaten corpse, eyes locked ahead. She wasn’t looking at the dead. She was looking at what had done the killing.

  “…Are those… Goblins?”

  Osric's jaw tightened. “Not like any I’ve ever seen.”

  Alex had noticed them the moment they’d arrived.

  There were thirty of them before the temple doors, some leaning on weapons, others resting on bodies, and a few crouched or squatting, waiting.

  Their bodies had evolved far beyond their origins. They were more than the small child-like creatures Osric and Liora had come to associate with the word ‘Goblin.’

  They were what goblins had become.

  Seven to eight feet tall, their once-wiry frames had adapted past crude survival into something sculpted by war. Their skin was dark green, polished like living metal, reinforced over countless generations to resist both blade and spell.

  Their faces had refined past their bestial origins—angular, sharp, almost elven, if not for the extended fangs and sharp tusks that curved slightly over their lower lips. Their eyes shone with intelligence, not the primal hunger of their lesser peers.

  Each was a product of thousands of years of death and iteration.

  Their limbs were balanced, built for fluid movement, their muscles too perfectly structured to be anything but the end result of unrelenting refinement. Some had adapted external plating, natural exoskeletal armor that layered seamlessly with their flesh. Others had scarred but functional changes—self-grown blades extending from forearms, perfectly jagged protrusions of reinforced keratin wrapped around their knuckles like natural gauntlets.

  Weapons were not held in hands—they were integrated into them.

  One adjusted its seated position to turn and look their way, a smirk tugging at its face, sharp teeth flashing.

  Another nudged it’s mate and pointed as it reached to its side, palm resting on the hilt of a segmented weapon that had fused into the bones of its legs, the slow, movement filled with casual anticipation. Unhurried.

  Each one radiated mana—dense, refined, surging with power. But none of them moved.

  They were waiting.

  Alex took them in, the arrangement of their members among the corpses, the sheer presence they exuded.

  He spoke only once.

  "Stay close."

  Osric straightened, his mana sharpening around him. Liora’s weight shifted forward, already placing herself in the first step of a motion that hadn’t happened yet.

  And at the center of it all, before the massive temple doors, sat a throne.

  The throne stood before the temple doors, monumental in size, seamless in construction, Its surface gilded with ancient engravings. Divine text that moved across it, the words rewriting themselves in with each moment, adjusting to truths only it could understand.

  A figure sat lazily in the throne, resting its weight against one arm, fingers curled loosely over the grip of a severed limb, the armoured arm of a hero, shattered at the joint, blood still fresh where it had been torn free, forearm still locked in a final twitch of resistance. It lifted the limb and took a bite, chewing slowly, golden eyes half-lidded like it was barely paying attention.

  And behind it, large wings rested.

  Its skin glowed like polished brass, shifting with the light, not static but layered, each movement causing faint ripples of deeper bronze and smoldering red beneath the surface. It wasn’t flesh. It refined itself with every breath, adjusting, alive in a way that skin shouldn’t be. More vibrant, brighter, almost glowing.

  Like living mana.

  Its jaw was strong, cut sharp as if sculpted rather than grown. Black ink traced from the corners of its eyes down to its jaw, thin sigils carved into the skin, shifting as it chewed like they were adjusting themselves.

  Its hair spilled past its shoulders, thick, dark, woven with shifting threads of violet and ember-orange, moving like the last embers of a dying fire. Chains of gold threaded through its hair, linked to the heavy ring through its nose and looping back to an earring in its pointed ear, shifting with every tilt of its head.

  Flesh, bone, and armour disappeared between its teeth, yet there was no savagery in the act.

  It swallowed, and its wings grew wider.

  Its silk-like robes hung loose over its body, layered in deep blues and smoldering crimson, each thread laced with gold, shifting text moving through the fabric like something was rewriting it with every moment. A belt of interwoven rings, carved bone, and ancient gold rested against its waist, charms and trinkets hanging from thin chains, each one inscribed with a language too old to name.

  Eyes, slitted and gold with shifting pupils—capable of focusing in ways human eyes never could, turned to look at them, unhurried. Its golden eyes watched them like it was more curious than concerned.

  It’s lips parted into a slow, knowing smile.

  Then it spoke.

  “Begin.”

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