"Junior Fang! Don't listen to this brat! My Level 60 C-rank [Rock-Arm Colossus] can tank and spank anything in its path. Without me to open the way, you won't last five minutes in a Two-Star dungeon!"
"Goddess Fang, my B-rank Level 50 [Flame-Lance Knight] is ready for deployment! Forget the utility—I just want to stand within ten feet of a UR and see if the air really tastes different around a legend!"
"Pick me! My Silver-Armor General is ranked in the Top 20 of the Academy's Spirit Power Index. I can carry you through this rift as easily as walking through the school gates!"
At the entrance of the Dungeon Zone, the air was thick with the desperate, competitive energy of recruitment. Dozens of Spirit-Masters touted their companions like wares at a bazaar. Fang Yuqing stood amidst the noise, her face a mask of frost. To the public, she was the "Ice Goddess" of Synergy Kolej—unreachable, dignified, and perfectly composed. Only in the privacy of her villa, usually while being provoked to the point of a meltdown by a certain white-haired Spirit, did she ever show her true, flustered self.
Yuan Wu, however, seemed entirely oblivious to the tension he was causing. He stood with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his black combat suit, his striking white hair swaying slightly in the cool morning breeze. His single, visible eye—a cold, heterochromatic orb—swept across the high-level Spirits surrounding them. He looked at the hulking giants and the armored knights with the same detached curiosity one might show toward a collection of antique dolls.
Then, he let out a short, dry chuckle.
"You're all so... incredibly weak," he said.
The voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a razor-sharp quality that sliced through the cacophony of the plaza.
"Where exactly does your confidence come from? You think you have the right to 'lead' me through a dungeon?"
The atmosphere instantly turned to lead. The smiles vanished, replaced by a collective, burning indignation that warped the spiritual pressure in the air.
"What did you say, you brat? Say that again to my face!" A massive Giant Warrior with skin as rough as weathered granite narrowed his eyes, slamming a thousand-pound cleaver into the cobblestones.
BOOM—!
The impact cratered the ground, sending a cloud of dust and grit swirling into the air.
Nearby, the Silver-Armor General's spear let out a low, draconic hum of irritation. His Master, a senior student, sneered with naked contempt. "Kid, don't think a high rank makes you invincible. A UR is a rare sight, sure, but who knows if it's just a hollow title? After all, everyone knows you were born from a trash-tier R-card mutation!"
Facing the murderous glares of dozens of high-level Spirits, Yuan Wu didn't flinch. Instead, he reached up and cracked his neck with a loud snap, his tone dripping with a mock-innocence that felt more like a physical slap.
"Does the truth always hurt your self-esteem this much? If so, I truly apologize for being so blunt."
Veins throbbed on the foreheads of the surrounding Spirit-Masters. Fang Yuqing saw the spiritual energy in the area beginning to spike dangerously; she knew Yuan Wu's tongue was laced with a venom that could start a riot. If they stayed another minute, they'd be fighting the entire student body before they even saw a monster.
She grabbed Yuan Wu's arm with a grip of iron and began dragging him toward the blue vortex of the Two-Star entrance. "We are leaving! Right now!
Standing before the swirling, iridescent blue gate of the Two-Star Rift, Fang Yuqing finally stopped. She turned to face him, her expression shifting from annoyance to a gravity he hadn't seen before.
"Yuan Wu, look at me. I'm asking you one last time: Are you absolutely sure you want to solo this? The Boss at the end of a Two-Star rift is Level 40! We are Level 10. That isn't just a gap; it's a death sentence for anyone else!"
Yuan Wu stood there, the dark leather mask covering the lower half of his face, leaving only that one haunting eye visible. It held a depth of calm that was almost unnatural—a stillness that suggested he had already seen the end of the world and survived it.
"Master, I told you. Trust me. I will handle it."
Fang Yuqing was a conservative at heart. In her worldview, "over-leveling" and "risky maneuvers" were things for protagonists in stories, while she preferred the safety of meticulous planning. But looking into those eyes, she found her protests dying in her throat.
The truth was, this man didn't just have an ego; he had a presence that demanded obedience. If she said no, he would likely just look at her with that silent, "lazy" disdain and walk in anyway, completely ignoring her commands.
"Fine! But if you fail, and we're about to be eaten by monsters, I'm going to kill you first just to save them the trouble!" She shook her small, clenched fist at him, her face flushed red with a mix of fury and terror.
"Killing me before we die... Master, your logic remains remarkably chaotic," Yuan Wu noted dryly. He didn't wait for her to respond. He reached out, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her into the swirling blue light of the portal.
The moment their silhouettes were swallowed by the rift, the Academy's official forums went into a state of total meltdown.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Goddess Fang and the UR just went into a Two-Star Rift SOLO!" "Level 10 versus Level 40? Is this some kind of elaborate suicide mission?" "What a tragic waste of a UR-rank talent. He hasn't been out of the card for 24 hours and he's already being thrown into a meat grinder. Arrogance is a terminal disease."
In a dark corner of the campus, Lin Yue stared at her screen, her reflection twisted in the glass. "That's my UR... she's taking my Spirit and breaking it!" She let out a jagged, hysterical laugh that made the students nearby move away. "Die... go ahead and die! If I can't have him, I hope those spiders tear him into pieces!"
The world shifted. The warmth of the morning sun was replaced by the damp, oppressive chill of a subterranean nightmare.
They stood in a massive limestone cavern. Giant, jagged crystals of blue mana-quartz grew from the walls like the teeth of a giant, casting a haunting, ethereal glow over the jagged rocks. The air was thick with the smell of wet stone, ozone, and something metallic—the scent of a predator's den.
"It's a cavern-type dungeon," Fang Yuqing whispered, her voice echoing. She summoned her spiritual staff, the blue light reflecting in her wide, nervous eyes. "Tight spaces, limited visibility, and almost no room for long-range kiting. This is the worst possible terrain for a solo fighter. We have to be—"
"Master, you talk a lot when you're nervous," Yuan Wu said, his voice echoing with a metallic tint through his mask.
"I'm not nervous! I'm being tactical! I've memorized the weakness of every common monster in the Two-Star catalog!"
Just then, a sound began to rise from the darkness ahead. It was a skittering, clicking noise—the sound of hundreds of hard, pointed legs scraping against stone. From the shadows, over a dozen giant spiders emerged. Each was five meters long, their carapaces made of the same hard, prismatic crystal as the cavern walls.
[Level 23: Crystal Ore-Devouring Spider]
"Watch out!" Fang Yuqing shouted, retreating behind Yuan Wu. "Their carapaces are nearly indestructible to physical attacks at our level! Their only weakness is the joint where the leg meets the body! You have to aim for the gaps in the crystal armor with surgical precision!"
Yuan Wu lowered his head, his white hair falling over his brow. He didn't move into a defensive stance. He didn't summon a weapon or chant an incantation. He just stood there, looking like a casual observer at a museum.
"The joints, you say? Precision?"
SHHH-LINK!
With a sound like tearing silk and breaking bone, four massive, blood-red appendages erupted from Yuan Wu's lower back. They weren't just tentacles; they were thick, muscular Rinkaku—liquid muscle given terrifying form, covered in scales that pulsed with an angry, bioluminescent light. The air in the cavern suddenly felt ten times heavier, the gravity of his presence crushing the surrounding pebbles into dust.
In that instant, any trace of "humanity" in Yuan Wu vanished. He was replaced by a being of pure, unadulterated slaughter. He cracked his neck, a twisted, predatory smile forming behind his mask.
"Weaknesses... I don't have the patience for that. Why bother finding a gap when I can just... erase the whole target?"
He moved.
There was no build-up. One moment he was standing still, and the next, the air where he had been was replaced by a vacuum and a sonic boom.
He was a blur of black and red. The first spider didn't even have time to hiss before a Kagune, moving with the velocity of a railgun, punched through its "indestructible" crystal chest.
CRUNCH!
The spider was pinned to the cavern wall like a butterfly in a collection box, its crystal armor shattered into a thousand shards. Yuan Wu didn't stop to admire the kill. He spun in mid-air, his four Kagune fanning out like the blades of a demonic windmill.
WHIP-CRACK!
The red appendages tore through the air, creating shockwaves that shattered the nearby mana-crystals. The spiders tried to lunge, their venomous fangs dripping, but they were fighting a hurricane. The Kagune were sentient spears—they functioned as drills, shields, and hammers simultaneously.
"Too slow," Yuan Wu's voice drifted through the chaos, sounding bored.
He landed in the center of the pack, and his Kagune went into a frenzy. They lashed out in a 360-degree arc, the raw physical force behind them so great that the spiders weren't just being cut—they were being pulverized into a fine blue dust. The carapaces were crushed like eggshells under a hydraulic press.
Fang Yuqing stood frozen, her staff held uselessly in her hands. She had been prepared to cast buffs, to provide cover fire, to point out openings. But there were no openings to point out because there was no "fight." This was a massacre. It was the art of the Rinkaku—violent, efficient, and absolute.
Within sixty seconds, the skittering stopped. The cavern was silent again, save for the sound of falling pebbles and the low, hungry hum of Yuan Wu's receding energy. The dozen Level 23 monsters were gone, replaced by a sea of glittering dust and a heap of Spirit Stones.
Yuan Wu stood in the center of the wreckage. His Kagune were still extended, twitching slightly as they absorbed the lingering spiritual energy of the fallen. He looked down at his hands, then back at Fang Yuqing. He hadn't broken a sweat. Not a single drop of blue spider blood had touched his black suit.
"Is that all?" he asked, his tone genuinely disappointed. "I was expecting the monsters in a Two-Star rift to at least make me move my feet."
Fang Yuqing stepped forward, her boots crunching on the crystal fragments. Her mind was struggling to process the sheer scale of the power gap. "That... that was just your basic Rinkaku strikes? No skills? No Mana-bursts?"
Yuan Wu retracted his Kagune, the red appendages vanishing into his body as if they had never existed. He thrust his hands back into his pockets. "In my world, this is how we eat. It's not a 'skill,' Master. It's a biological function."
He looked at her, and she saw her own reflection in his eye. She looked at her experience bar. It had jumped from Level 10 to Level 15 in a single minute. The efficiency was terrifying. Most students spent weeks grinding to gain five levels in a Two-Star rift.
"You're a monster," she whispered, though there was no fear in her voice—only a dawning, frantic realization of the power she now tethered to her soul.
"I've been called worse," Yuan Wu replied, his eye glinting in the dark. "Now, let's find the Boss. I'm starting to get an appetite."
He began walking deeper into the cave, leaving his Master to scramble after him. Fang Yuqing realized then that she didn't need to plan tactics. She just needed to keep the energy flowing, because as long as Yuan Wu was awake.