[WARNING: SYSTEM ANOMALY DETECTED] [OBJECTIVE: DEFEAT THE NETHER CAPTAIN — STATUS: COMPLETE?] [RE-CALIBRATING REALM PARAMETERS...]
Fang Yuqing's interface flickered violently. The translucent screens, once a comforting blue, were now being overwritten by jagged, blood-red lines of code. This was no longer the predictable environment of a Two-Star training rift. This was a digital hemorrhage.
"Check the map," Yuan Wu said.
His voice was terrifyingly calm, but his stance had shifted. He hadn't fully retracted his Kagune; the four crimson appendages were swaying behind him with a predatory rhythm, their tips twitching like the tail of a cat cornering its prey.
Yuqing glanced at her wrist. The map of the "Crystal Caverns" was being dissolved. The Boss room—the supposed endpoint—was being overwritten. A new, jagged path was bleeding into the display, leading vertically downward into a region marked only as [THE SUNKEN REACHES].
"A Hidden Phase?" Yuqing whispered, her voice trembling. "That's impossible... Hidden phases are only documented in S-rank calamities or Five-Star legendary raids. We are in a training facility!"
The world didn't just shake; it groaned as if the tectonic plates were being twisted by a titan. The remains of the Nether Captain didn't dissipate into Spirit Stones. Instead, the green embers began to crawl like insects across the floor, seeking out the cracks in the stone and igniting them with a necrotic purple glow.
"Master, get behind me. Now," Yuan Wu commanded.
He didn't wait for her consent. A Kagune wrapped around her waist and shoved her toward the back of the room as the heavy stone doors slammed shut with a finality that felt like a coffin lid closing.
In the center of the cavern, a pillar of purple light erupted, piercing through the ceiling and shaking the foundations of the mountain. The spiritual pressure became so dense that Yuqing felt as though her lungs were filling with water.
From the light, a hand emerged.
It was semi-transparent, the skin looking like it had been cured in saltwater for centuries. Between the knuckles, one could see the slow, rhythmic pulse of a black-blue tide.
[Level ?? : The Deep-Sea Revenant (Hidden Boss)]
The air in the room didn't just become heavy; it was replaced.
"The oxygen... it's being turned into seawater," Yuan Wu noted, his eye narrowing.
"Water...?" Yuqing gasped, clutching her throat.
"No," Yuan Wu replied. "It's a change in the world's rules. This isn't a monster. It's an environment."
The Revenant raised its head. Beneath the tattered rim of its hat, its eyes held no rage—only the cold, terrifying clarity of a navigator confirming a course.
"Route... incomplete," the Revenant spoke, its voice sounding like the grinding of a shipwreck's hull.
In that instant, the ground beneath them vanished. The floor cracked open, and instead of magma or rock, a boundless dark ocean surged up. The map on Yuqing's screen flickered one last time before displaying the new zone title: [THE SUNKEN CHANNEL].
[WARNING: REALM STRUCTURE ALTERED] [WARNING: ENTERING NON-DESIGNATED ZONE] [WARNING: EXIT PROTOCOLS DISABLED]
The Revenant stepped forward, and a massive shadow loomed from the rift behind him. It wasn't a monster; it was a Galleon of Bone. A ship the size of a city block, constructed from the ribcages of sea leviathans and the spinal columns of titans.
"It's not just a Boss," Yuan Wu murmured. "It's a living army."
"All hands... return to the abyss," the Revenant commanded.
The deck of the skeleton ship swarmed with thousands of undead sailors. They didn't charge; they fell from the ship like a tidal wave of bone and rusted steel.
Yuan Wu stepped forward. His Kagune didn't explode outward this time; they uncoiled slowly, their surface glowing with a dangerous, overheated crimson. He swung a massive tentacle, cutting a perfect arc through the air.
SHHH-T!
The sound was delayed, muffled by the supernatural fog. The undead were torn apart, their bodies shattered into splinters. But they didn't die. The bone fragments hovered in the air for a split second before snapping back together, the skeletons reforming as if time were being reversed.
"A resurrection mechanic..." Yuqing's voice was hollow. "We can't kill them."
The tide of bone pressed in. Yuan Wu retreated step by step, but he never allowed a single skeleton to get within a meter of Yuqing.
"Stay back," he growled.
A bone-blade slipped through a gap in his defense, piercing his shoulder.
PLUCK.
The sound was sickeningly clean. Blood splattered into the fog, only to be instantly absorbed by the sea-mist.
"Yuan Wu!" Yuqing screamed.
On the deck of the galleon, the Revenant paused. "Threat level... rising. Initiate Correction Phase."
The pressure doubled. Yuan Wu was being forced back, his Kagune being torn and forced to regenerate at a rate that was visibly draining his energy. Yet, he stood like an immovable dam against the tide.
"You don't have to keep blocking for me!" Yuqing cried out, tears pricking her eyes.
"Shut up," he snapped, the first time he had ever truly silenced her. "You are the Master. I stand here because that is the only thing that matters."
Yuan Wu looked at the wound in his shoulder. He let out a soft, jagged laugh.
"...It hurts. It really, really hurts."
His body began to twitch. His Kagune started to "react"—not a controlled transformation, but a violent, systemic collapse. Bone spurs began to erupt from his spine. His eye turned into a bleeding sun.
"Yuan Wu...?" Yuqing reached out, but he snarled at her.
"DON'T... touch me!"
He was fighting it. He was manually suppressing the Kakuja transformation, forcing the madness back into his bones because he knew that in a total berserk state, he might kill her too.
"Stay... right... there!" he roared.
The air around him fractured. He lunged. Not at the sailors, but at the ship itself.
He moved so fast the water-heavy air cracked. He appeared atop the skeleton galleon's core. His Kagune fully unfurled, looking like the ribcage of a dragon, and slammed into the ship's central mast.
CRACK—KABOOM!
The core shattered. The "rules" of the dungeon began to unravel. The resurrection mechanic failed; the skeletons turned to dust and stayed that way. The massive bone ship began to sink—not into the water, but out of existence.
As the fog cleared and the system finally announced the victory, Yuan Wu collapsed to his knees. His Kagune vanished, leaving him pale and trembling. He turned his head just enough to see Yuqing. Once he confirmed she was unharmed, the tension left his body.
[HIDDEN BOSS: DEEP-SEA REVENANT — DEFEATED]
They were teleported back to the Academy entrance, exhausted but victorious. Fang Yuqing was ecstatic, her inventory overflowing with rare materials like [Soul-Captain's Amulet] and [Abyssal Curse Core]. She had made a fortune.
But the celebration lasted exactly three seconds.
WHOOSH—!
The sound of air being cleaved apart silenced the cheering crowd. A massive battle-axe, glowing with a dull, murderous light, descended from the sky directly toward Fang Yuqing's head.
"MEOW—!" Little White's fur stood on end, its eyes wide with terror.
CLANG!
Yuan Wu's Kagune reacted with instinctive speed, intercepting the axe inches from Yuqing's skull. His heterochromatic eye flashed with a murderous, blood-red light.
"You dare touch my Master?"
The assassin shimmered into view—a muscular woman in leopard-print battle gear, her face twisted into a sadistic grin.
[Level 70: Leopard-Warrior (B-Rank Spirit)]
"Oh my~ your UR's reflexes are truly cheating!" the woman laughed, her voice coarse. "Let big sister chop this little girl into pieces... it'll be better for everyone!"
The crowd scattered in a panic. This was an assassination in broad daylight within the Academy walls. Yuqing's legs turned to jelly. If Yuan Wu hadn't been there, she would already be a headless corpse.
"Master," Yuan Wu said, his voice dropping to a whisper that promised death. "In this situation... you won't have an objection if I kill her, right?"
Yuqing looked at the assassin, then at Yuan Wu. The fear in her eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp anger. She knew the woman wouldn't talk; she knew someone had sent a B-rank Spirit just to steal her UR.
"Yuan Wu," she said, her voice like ice. "Kill her."
The Leopard-Warrior laughed, hoisting her axe. "A Level 15 UR thinks he can kill a Level 70 B-rank? Little girl, you've been reading too many fairy tales!"
Yuan Wu didn't answer. He didn't need to. His Kagune struck like a bolt of lightning.
The air in the Academy plaza, which should have been filled with the chatter of students and the hum of peaceful spiritual energy, had curdled into a thick, suffocating tension.
"Level 70, B-rank," Yuan Wu whispered, his voice vibrating with a dangerous resonance. "You've spent decades accumulating power, yet you use it for the chores of a coward."
The Leopard-Warrior sneered, her muscles bulging as she pressed down on her weapon. "In this world, kid, 'B-rank' is the ceiling for most . We do what we must to survive. And you? You're a prize. A UR-rank without a Master is just a weapon waiting to be picked up by someone who actually knows how to swing it!"