The attack wasn't a warning. It was a goddamn execution.
A streak of emerald light split the air, and before Yuan Wu's brain could even register the sensory input, the thing was already behind him. His pupils shrank into needlepoints. Behind him, the air groaned, collapsing under the sudden displacement of mass.
A crystalline blade, jagged and screaming with high-frequency vibrations, descended with enough force to cleave a tank.
CLANG—!!!
The impact didn't just ring out; it exploded. The air in the dungeon shrieked as Yuan Wu's kagune—a torrent of obsidian-red flesh—spiraled into a dense, pulsating shield a millisecond before contact. The sheer momentum of a Level 70 nightmare wasn't something you just shrugged off.
Yuan Wu's boots dug deep furrows into the loam, the earth beneath him groaning and spiderwebbing outward in a violent, messy fracture. He slid back half a step. Just half.
He didn't move. He didn't turn around. He just stood there, his back to the monster, as the dust from the cracked ground choked the air.
"…Fast," he muttered. No fear, no adrenaline, just a cold, analytical observation. The tone of a man who had seen everything.
Ten meters away, the Mirror Mantis—the Red-Name Boss that owned this section of the rainforest—crouched low, its iridescent exoskeleton shimmering with an oily, predatory sheen. It was twitching. Recalibrating.
Its massive, scythe-like forelimbs were vibrating at a frequency so high it made Yuan Wu's teeth ache. The algorithm in its core was overloading; it had encountered a "prey" that didn't just break and bleed.
Fang Yuqing stood a few paces back, her chest heaving as she fought to keep her vision from blurring. Her eyes were glowing with a frantic, crystalline blue—she was pushing her perception trait to the absolute breaking point.
"Don't let it reset, Yuan Wu!" she yelled, her voice raw. "It's not just speed! It's offsetting its rhythm—desyncing from your natural perception! It's attacking the gaps in your heartbeat!"
Yuan Wu tilted his head, a thin, vicious smile curving his lips. "Offsetting the rhythm, huh? A bug that plays music. Cute."
SHHK—!
The Mantis lunged again. One. Two. Three.
It wasn't a dance; it was a goddamn meat grinder. Metal screamed against bone, a relentless, jagged screeching that felt like it was peeling the skin off his eardrums. Yuan Wu didn't move from his spot, his body shifting mere centimeters. His peak-level combat instincts allowed him to "see" the trajectory before the monster even decided to strike.
His kagune met every strike with perfect, sickening precision.
The Mantis, realizing its direct assault was failing, let out an ultrasonic shriek. Suddenly, it wasn't just one monster; it was dozens. "Solid Afterimages"—a skill that defied the dungeon's basic physics.
The forest was suddenly filled with the scuttle of a swarm. They circled him, a cage of emerald death.
Then, the true execution began.
A strike came from the absolute zero of Yuan Wu's vision. It was faster than the others—a strike backed by the creature's desperation.
Slash.
The kagune moved to block, but the Mantis's blade curved mid-air, a "Mirror Strike" that bypassed the obsidian shield through a spatial fold.
A shallow line of red opened across Yuan Wu's side. Dark, rich blood instantly bloomed through the fabric of his shirt.
"He got hit…?!" Fang Yuqing's heart dropped. But she forced her vision deeper. "Yuan Wu! The leg! The left mid-leg! Every time it folds space, it anchors its weight on that pivot for 0.01 seconds! That's the anchor! That's the only part of it that stays real!"
Yuan Wu didn't look at the wound. He touched the wet stain on his side with a finger, then brought the dark, rich crimson to his face. He stared at it, his expression shifting from cold detachment to a sick, predatory hunger.
"…Good," he whispered. Not as a caress, but as a low, distorted growl that didn't sound human anymore. "Is that all? I was starting to get bored."
The air in the clearing suddenly turned heavy, as if the oxygen had been replaced by lead.
A suffocating pressure erupted from Yuan Wu. His kagune didn't lash out as spears; they unfurled like the wings of a fallen deity, spreading wide and thin, vibrating at a dissonant frequency that countered the Mantis's hum. He was weaving a web, collapsing the geometry of the battlefield.
The Mantis sensed the trap. It moved to flicker away. But as it shifted its weight to its left mid-leg to initiate the jump—
Yuan Wu was already there. He didn't move; he simply existed in front of the creature.
CLANG—!
The Mantis raised its blades in a panicked guard. But Yuan Wu didn't aim for its head. He had the weak point now. His leg swept low—a heavy, crushing blow backed by the peak-level power of a UR spirit.
CRACK.
The sound of shattering chitin exploded like a gunshot. The left pivot leg shattered into emerald dust. The Mantis's rhythm didn't just break; it imploded. It crashed into the dirt, plowing through the earth until it hit the base of an ancient, gnarled tree.
Yuan Wu appeared over the creature. He stepped down, his boot crushing the Mantis's thorax into the ground, pinning the Level 70 terror like a specimen on a board.
The monster struggled—violent, desperate, and still lethal. Its remaining blades lashed out, trying to disembowel the intruder, but Yuan Wu's kagune pinned its limbs with surgical coldness.
The hunt was over. The silence that followed was more terrifying than the combat.
Yuan Wu leaned down, his white hair falling over his face, obscuring his eyes from Yuqing's view. He reached out his hand, his fingers snapping with a sharp, sickening CRACK.
He leaned close to the monster's mandibles, his voice a whisper that felt like a cold blade pressed against the soul.
"（Tell me. Doesn't matter, you're going to die anyway. But, before you die…）"
"（We can play a game. The rules are very simple.）"
He leaned even closer, his crimson eyes trembling with a madness that no AI could simulate.
"（Start from one thousand. Subtract seven each time. From now until you die. Don't stop.）"
The Mantis's mandibles clicked in a final, confused spasm.
FLASH—!!!
A crimson spike erupted downward, clean and absolute. It pierced through the Mantis's head, through its core, and buried itself three feet into the bedrock below.
The monster didn't even shriek. Its body dissolved into a cloud of shattered pixels and fading spirit essence, leaving nothing behind but a scorched crater.
Silence reclaimed the forest. The Red-Name Boss was gone.