The silence at the bottom of this abyss was different. Not quiet-silent, but a silence because it was too deep for any sound from the world above to reach.
Kanos took a slow breath. He was still kneeling on the cold rock. The air here was incredibly thin and smelled like stale blood. His punctured right hand was numb, having lost so much blood that his body ran out of signals to send pain.
'Come on, Kanos. Move. Get up,' he ordered himself.
He was just about to press on his knees to stand, when suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
Clack. The sound of a small rock falling. Not from the abyss wall, but from the dark ceiling above.
Kanos froze reflexively. He narrowed his eyes, trying to pierce the darkness of the dungeon floor. The stench of sulfur and rotting meat suddenly stung his nose. Way worse than the smell of the shell-wolf on his first day here.
Up on the cave ceiling, about ten meters above his head, a shadow shifted.
Something was crawling upside down. Its body was long and scrawny, almost like a starved corpse, but it was the size of a city bus. Its skin was deathly pale like a body soaked in water for days. The creature had no eyes. Its face only had one round mouth filled with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. The ends of its four arms and legs weren't fingers, but curved bone blades that easily dug into the stone wall.
A blue panel suddenly blinked in front of Kanos's face. The color was a fiery red.
[ FATAL THREAT WARNING ]
[ DEATH STALKER (LEVEL 75) ]
Kanos held his breath. 'Level seventy-five. Way higher than that obsidian monster.'
The pale creature stopped crawling. Its eyeless head turned left and right, sniffing the air. Its mouth let out a weird clicking sound. Clack. Clack. Clack.
Then, its head stopped, pointing exactly at Kanos's position. The fresh blood from Kanos's right hand was clearly a red flare inviting this thing for dinner.
The monster let go of its grip on the ceiling and immediately free-fell.
'Dammit!'
Kanos threw his body sideways with whatever energy he had left.
BOOM! The pale creature smashed into the ground exactly where Kanos had been kneeling a second ago. The stone floor shattered. Sharp rock fragments sprayed out, one of them scratching Kanos's cheek until it bled.
Kanos rolled backward, trying to keep his distance. But the monster was absurdly fast. The moment its feet touched the ground, its scrawny body lunged forward. One of its bone blades swung horizontally, aiming straight for Kanos's waist.
Kanos ducked reflexively. Just the wind from the slash felt like a scalpel passing over his back. The tips of Kanos's hair were cleanly trimmed.
But its attack didn't stop there. The creature spun its body like a top. The bone blade from its hind leg swept the stone floor, aiming straight for Kanos's legs.
Kanos didn't have time to think. He jumped back, but the tip of the blade successfully sliced his left calf. Blood instantly spurted. Kanos tumbled, fighting the sting.
The pale monster roared loudly, then suddenly leaped back to the cave ceiling and vanished into the absolute darkness.
Silence again. There was only the soft clicking sound echoing from all directions. Clack. Clack. Clack. Kanos crawled toward a stone pillar, leaning his back against it. He was panting. He couldn't see the creature. This level 75 monster was smart. It knew its prey was crippled and couldn't run anywhere, so it chose to play cat and mouse in the dark.
'It's waiting for me to slip up. If I just sit here, I die,' Kanos thought.
Kanos closed his eyes. He forced his Structural Analysis skill to activate, but not to look for the monster. He directed the skill to the entire cave wall and ceiling around him.
Dim blue lines began to appear, forming structural grids of the rocks. His head immediately throbbed severely from receiving the information of a room this size all at once.
On the top left, the structural blue lines suddenly fractured. A heavy weight had just anchored there.
'Found you.'
Kanos threw his body forward right as the monster plummeted from above like a missile.
CRASH! The stone pillar Kanos had just been leaning on was completely obliterated, slashed by two bone blades at once. Thick dust plumed instantly.
Kanos coughed, trying to crawl away. But before he could get up, the monster's long tail whipped out from behind the dust and slammed hard into his waist.
Kanos's body was thrown like a ragdoll. He crashed into the opposite cave wall, the sound of his bones cracking clear as day. Kanos slumped to the ground. His vision went white from the pain. Thick blood spilled from his mouth.
The pale creature walked closer slowly. It wasn't running anymore. Its bone blades dragged across the stone floor, leaving deep gouges with a sound that set his teeth on edge. Scrape. Scrape. Clack. Clack. This monster was savoring its prey's fear.
'Get up... get up, you bastard,' Kanos thought.
He tried to lift his body, but his left leg was numb. His ribs were shattered. Not to mention his punctured hand.
The creature was standing right in front of him. The stench of thick, corpse-like saliva was obvious. The monster's front leg raised, stepping on the ground right next to Kanos's right hand, pinning his body so he couldn't shift anywhere.
Kanos raised his intact left hand into the air. His eyes were wild, searching for splatters of his own blood on the dirt to use as ink.
Dry. The protective net he made when he fell earlier had sucked up his remaining fluids. The blood from his mouth was too little to make a sword-sized weapon. If he forced himself to draw with his blood right now, his body would bleed out and die before the drawing was finished.
The monster's round mouth opened wide right in front of Kanos's face. Hundreds of needle teeth ready to chew his head whole.
'I don't have charcoal. I don't have ink. I'm out of blood.' Kanos stared straight into that horrifying mouth. His panic was gone. His fear was dead. His cornered brain was now running at an insane speed.
'The system said ink is just a medium. Just a tether to pull energy dust from the air. As long as I understand the shape, the air will form the object.'
Kanos remembered his status panel. There was one line that had always been covered by question marks from the start.
[ MANA: ??? ]
'If my very existence is considered an error by this world... why should I play by their rules?' The monster shot downward to snap Kanos's neck.
At the exact same second, Kanos raised his left index finger. He didn't dip his finger in blood. He held nothing. The finger was purely empty.
Kanos stared at the empty air between himself and the monster. He channeled all his focus, vengeance, and remaining consciousness into the tip of his index finger. He pictured the most lethal shape. A giant anti-cavalry steel pike. Carbon steel. A thick base, a tip as sharp as a needle, standing at an angle to perfectly welcome the monster's chest.
'I don't need ink. Draw straight in the air!' Kanos pulled one thick line upward with his left finger.
SHING!
The air in front of Kanos suddenly tore open. Instead of a black or red line, the stroke Kanos's finger left behind glowed bright white. So bright it lit up the entire bottom of the abyss like broad daylight.
Time around Kanos felt like it slowed down. The humming in his head exploded, replaced by a loud shattering sound exactly like glass breaking into pieces.
The blue screen in front of him instantly cracked, changing into a blinding white with golden text blinking wildly.
[ CRITICAL ANOMALY: USER FORCING EMPTY MEDIUM ]
[ ACCESSING INTERNAL MANA PATHWAYS... SUCCESS ]
[ ERROR CLASS SYNCHRONIZATION REACHED 100% ]
[ TIER 1 LIMIT BREACHED ]
[ SKILL EVOLVED: ART TO REALITY (TIER 2 - BLANK CANVAS) ]
The white line in the air brutally pulled energy. No more blue dust. The air around them instantly solidified in a fraction of a second.
A giant steel pike, with white light still radiating from its edges, formed solidly from the stone floor right above Kanos's chest. Its steel base dug as deep as an adult's thigh into the ground, while its sharp tip pointed straight up at an angle.
The pale monster was already free-falling toward Kanos with its mouth agape and full force. It couldn't brake. The creature slammed its own body onto the tip of the giant steel pike Kanos had just created out of thin air.
SHCKK!
The sound of thick flesh and bone being pierced by pillar-sized steel echoed incredibly loud.
The steel pierced right under the monster's mouth, tore through its neck, and burst out of its back. The level 75 creature shrieked with a sound that nearly deafened Kanos. Its giant body thrashed in the air, trying to claw at the pike. Its pale blood spurted heavily, bathing Kanos's entire body.
But Kanos's handmade pike didn't budge at all.
The white steel held the monster's weight perfectly. After a few seconds of violent thrashing, the creature finally went still. Its long legs hung limply. Its head drooped down, just a hand's span away from Kanos's face. Dead in an impaled position.
Silence descended back onto the bottom of the abyss.
The white light from the steel pike slowly dimmed, turning into the color of normal, cold steel covered in blood splatters.
Kanos was still sprawled on the ground. His breathing was heavy and ragged. His nose bled fresh blood from forcing his brain to bend the rules of reality just now.
But he didn't care about the pain.
Kanos raised his left index finger. No charcoal. No blood residue. Just an empty, trembling finger. He moved his finger slightly in the air, and a thin white line followed its motion, leaving a trail of light that slowly faded in the dark air.
Kanos laughed softly. His laugh was hoarse, dry, and felt incredibly cold in the middle of that dark space.
The golden notification panel popped up again in front of him.
[ ENEMY DEFEATED: DEATH STALKER (LEVEL 75) ]
[ EXTREME LEVEL DIFFERENCE. EXP MULTIPLIER ACTIVATED ]
[ LEVEL: 3 -> 12 ]
[ C-C-CLASS OVERRIDDEN: E R R O R -> I-L-L-U-S-T-R-A-M-A-N-C-Y ]
[ M-M-MANA UNLOCKED: ??? -> 500/500 ]
[ ALL PHYSICAL STATUSES RESTORED ]
A warm sensation poured heavily back into Kanos's entire body. His shattered ribs felt like they were quickly knitting back together. His calf closed up. The pain in his head vanished. Although the hole in his right hand still left a scar, the bleeding completely stopped, and the muscle didn't feel numb anymore.
Kanos pushed himself to stand up straight. He wiped the monster blood from his face, stared at the giant impaled corpse right in front of his nose, then looked up toward the darkness of the abyss above.
'You thought I'd die without my drawing tools, Garrick?' Kanos touched the empty air with his finger, pulling a small, brilliantly bright white line.
'In this world, as long as I can still think... this air is my canvas.'