While the city of blue crystal pushed Hayjin and Zhilian's nerves to the limit, the Red Obsidian Palace was proving to be a nightmare of a different nature for Doeken's team. Evelyn and Atlas were not sprinting through open-air rubble; they were navigating the bowels of an architectural complex that seemed designed to crush the spirit.
The infinite corridor they had entered was not just long, it was claustrophobic. The walls, composed of a dark material that absorbed the light of Atlas's magical torches, were studded with veins of red crystal that pulsed at regular intervals. It felt like walking inside the throat of a titanic monster.
"How long can this place be?" Atlas huffed, his voice echoing against the low ceiling. "We've been walking for what feels like hours. By now, that kid will have already gotten lost in some dead end or become some predator's lunch."
Evelyn did not slow down. The rustle of her tunic was the only constant sound besides the metallic clang of Atlas's armor. "I've already told you not to underestimate them, Atlas. Fatigue is making you talkative, and silence is a virtue you should learn to cultivate, especially in hostile territory."
Atlas chuckled, shaking his head covered by his white helm. "Come on, Evelyn! A little optimism. Zhilian is strong, I won't deny that, but that Hayjin... he's a dead weight. She's probably wasting half her time just keeping him alive. We, on the other hand, are a perfect machine. I am your shield, you are the magical blade. We are an invincible pair. There's no competition."
"The competition is not against them, but against time," she retorted, her light purple eyes scanning the shadows stretching out ahead of them. "Every second we spend discussing others' weaknesses is a second we are losing time toward our victory. Focus on the path rather than making fun of the others. I feel the air is changing."
Evelyn was right. The corridor suddenly opened up into a circular hall decorated with bas-reliefs depicting forgotten battles. At the center of the room, the air began to distort.
From the walls themselves, as if oozing from the rock, figures emerged. They were not beasts, but humanoid monsters. They were tall, slender, faceless, with skin that looked like matte obsidian. In place of hands, they had curved blades made of the same red crystal that adorned the palace.
"Finally," Atlas said, unsheathing his greatsword with a fluid motion that unleashed a pure white light. "I was starting to fear we'd die of boredom."
The corridor of the Obsidian Palace seemed to shudder. The red veins in the walls began to glow with a violent, almost feverish light, and the floor beneath Atlas's boots vibrated as if the dungeon were chuckling.
Evelyn didn't answer right away. Her purple eyes narrowed as she stared at shadows dripping from the ceiling. "Don't lower your guard, Atlas. These are no simple monsters. Do you feel their mana? It's... slightly distorted."
From the darkness emerged the Shaded. They were humanoids made of a dense smoke that looked like molten glass, with eyes that were slits of burning ruby. As soon as they touched the ground, their arms elongated, mutating into long, curved blades that screeched on the marble.
"Finally some movement," Atlas exclaimed, cracking his neck with a loud snap. "I was starting to think the trial consisted of dying of boredom while walking."
The creatures moved with an eerie coordination. They emitted no sounds, only the sharp whizzing of their blades cutting through the air. Three of them dashed toward Atlas, while two others tried to bypass him to get to Evelyn.
"Stay behind me!" Atlas shouted, but Evelyn was already in action.
The princess of Doeken raised a hand, and the air around her turned freezing. "I don't need a babysitter, Atlas. Mind your own."
Atlas retorted with a grin, unsheathing his sacred greatsword. The blade emitted a harmonic hum, illuminating the room in a blinding white. "I just feel like they have really hideous faces. If they had faces, that is."
The first three monsters lunged with superhuman speed. Atlas didn't retreat; he took a side step, letting the first crystal blade graze his shoulder, and used the momentum to strike the creature's chest with the pommel of his sword. A sound of shattering glass filled the air. Without stopping, he spun into a circular slash that severed the legs of the other two pursuers.
"See? Nothing to it!" he yelled, but immediately had to raise his shield to parry a vertical slash that would have split a normal man in two. The impact forced his boots a few centimeters into the floor. "Alright... maybe they are a bit heavier than they look!"
"You move too much, Atlas. You're wasting energy," Evelyn commented with an irritating calmness.
With a snap of her fingers, Evelyn evoked a series of lances made of green energy that erupted from the ground. Two of the humanoids were impaled instantly, their obsidian bodies shattering like glass under the pressure of the magical strike. They spilled no blood, but a dense red dust that stained the floor.
She remained motionless as four Shaded surrounded her. She elegantly raised both hands and, with a fluid gesture of her fingers, evoked six spheres of emerald green energy. They were no ordinary projectiles; they rotated around her like planets around a sun, emitting a hiss like that of a serpent.
"Veritas," she whispered.
The spheres shot forward. They didn't just strike the monsters; they pierced right through them, leaving perfectly circular holes that began to corrode instantly. One of the creatures tried to regenerate, but the green energy lingered in the cavity, consuming the Shaded's mana until it collapsed into a pile of inert dust.
"Evelyn, on the left! More are coming from the ceiling!" Atlas shouted, as he repeatedly struck a monster's head with his sword, then impaled it with a precise thrust to its crystal heart.
"I see them, Atlas. Mind you don't scratch your tunic, I know how much you care about looking polished," she retorted. With a swift movement of her arms, she made three green spheres converge above her head, fusing them into a single beam of emerald light that swept away the entire wave crawling down the walls. The magical explosion was so strong it made Atlas stagger.
"Hey! Watch where you fire that stuff!" the knight exclaimed, parrying a slash at the last second. "You almost singed my hair!"
Meanwhile, Atlas was demonstrating his mastery with the Sacred Sword. Despite his arrogance, he moved with devastating precision. He parried the blow of one of the crystal blades, feeling the vibration of the impact travel up his arms, and countered with a horizontal slash. His blade, infused with Earth and Light mana, severed the chests of two creatures simultaneously, pulverizing them.
"Too slow!" the knight exclaimed, charging the last one remaining. With a sword strike, he threw it off balance, then skewered it through the center of its chest, where a small pulsing core of red crystal resided. The creature dissolved into acrid smoke.
The clash grew tighter. The remaining Shaded realized that individual attacks were useless and fused together, creating two obsidian colossi three meters tall, armed with axes made of blood-red crystal.
"Now we're talking!" Atlas leapt forward, charging his strike. His sword lit up with a golden light, the mastery of the Altavilla family flowing through every muscle. He evaded an axe blow that shattered the floor and struck the colossus's calf, forcing it to its knees. "Evelyn, now! I won't hold it down for long!"
"There is no need to shout, I am right here." Evelyn extended her open hand toward the second colossus. A green sphere, much larger than the others, appeared in her palm, vibrating with an unstable power. "Dissolve."
The sphere exploded into a cobweb of green energy filaments that enveloped both colossi. The creatures emitted a sharp hiss, almost a scream of agony, as their solid bodies were reduced to atoms of pure mana. Within seconds, nothing remained of the threat but a faint smell of ozone.
"Skillful, but not enough for me," Atlas commented, sheathing his weapon with a theatrical gesture. "That was almost... easy. I expected more from an Association dungeon."
Atlas panted slightly, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his gauntlet. "You certainly haven't changed at all. Always finishing things dramatically."
Evelyn wasn't smiling. She approached the remains of one of the creatures, observing the red dust. "It was bait, Atlas. These creatures only served to test our reaction times. Don't you see? The palace is consuming their mana to power something else."
The corridor of the Obsidian Palace seemed to contract. For an instant, the hum of the red crystals changed frequency, turning into a sharp hiss that pierced Atlas's eardrums. The knight froze mid motion, his hand locked on the hilt of his greatsword. The air grew thick, saturated with a sudden, suffocating smell of iron and slaughter.
Evelyn, walking a few steps ahead, vanished into a scarlet fog that seemed to ooze directly from the walls.
When Atlas reopened his eyes, the architecture of the palace had mutated: the crystals no longer glowed with magical light, but dripped a dense, dark, and slimy liquid that smelled of clotted blood. Before him, at the center of a circular room engulfed by foul fumes, Evelyn was on her knees. Her ash-blonde tunic was already soaked in purple stains.
Behind her, emerging from the dark like a parasite, was Hayjin. But he wasn't the emaciated, ironic boy he had seen in Opes's garden. This version of Hayjin had skin of a deathly pallor, almost grayish, and wide-open sockets where his pupils were reduced to black pins surrounded by a bloodshot, crimson red. Planted on his face was an unnatural smile, a grimace that tore the corners of his mouth up to his ears, revealing sharp, black teeth.
Before Atlas could even emit a cry or move a muscle, locked by an invisible paralysis, Hayjin dashed forward with inhuman speed.
With a sharp movement of his arm, he clawed Evelyn's throat. His fingers, ending in nails thick as blades, dug into the tender flesh of her neck. There was a dull sound, like torn leather. The skin stretched and broke, releasing a violent jet of arterial blood that splashed onto Hayjin's face, who widened his aberrant smile even further. Evelyn emitted only a muffled gurgle, while her hands uselessly tried to hold the edges of her severed trachea.
Without a shred of hesitation, Hayjin brought his other open hand down onto the girl's belly. His fingers penetrated the tissue and the tunic with the ease of a knife through butter. With brutal force, he yanked downward, ripping her abdomen from side to side. The muscular wall tore open into a flaccid flap, and the internal pressure immediately caused the first loops of the intestines to spill out, sliding onto the stone floor with a wet, squelching sound.
Atlas witnessed the scene in the grip of pure, visceral terror. He felt his heartbeat thudding in his head as Hayjin, sinking both hands into Evelyn's open abdominal cavity, began to rip out her internal organs with violent yanks. Pieces of liver, spleen, and stomach came away, torn and thrown to the ground amidst the torrents of gastric fluid and dark blood flooding the room. The ligaments of the flesh gave way with sharp, gruesome snaps.
Then, Hayjin leaned over Evelyn's face, her eyes still moving weakly in the final spasms of agony. The boy opened his jaws wide and buried his mouth into her face, tearing away a large chunk of flesh with a savage bite. The sound of chewing filled the room: a wet, heavy noise of cartilage and facial muscles being ground between teeth, mixed with the sucking of blood. Hayjin continued to devour the tissues of her face, exposing her white jaw and the underlying teeth, until he reached the cranium.
With fingers soiled in brain matter and fat, he grabbed the edges of the wound on her forehead and cracked the frontal bone. A vitreous sound, like a shattered coconut, and Evelyn's gray brain mass, veined with purple capillaries, slid out of the eye socket and split skull, pooling on the floor in a shapeless mush.
Atlas opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out of his throat.
"Atlas! Atlas, wake up!"
A firm, cold hand grabbed his shoulder, shaking him vigorously.
The knight tensed his muscles all at once, letting out a deep, gasping breath, as if he had just resurfaced from a long drowning. His sacred greatsword slipped from his fingers, producing a loud metallic clang on the floor of the obsidian corridor. The ceiling was intact. The red crystals pulsed with their usual magical light.
Before him stood Evelyn. Her ash-blonde tunic was perfectly clean, her throat was intact, and her face showed only an expression of cold, composed perplexity.
Atlas was completely drenched in sweat. His hands shook inside his gauntlets and his heart was beating so hard it made his chest ache. He brought a hand to his head, trying to banish the echo of that chewing sound that still rang in his eardrums.
"What... what happened?" he hissed, his voice reduced to a trembling whisper.
Evelyn studied him closely, crossing her arms. "You froze in the middle of the corridor for nearly two minutes. Your pupils were dilated and you started breathing as if you were suffocating. Your mana had a chaotic spike. What happened to you?"
Atlas looked at the floor, almost fearing he would still see the traces of that massacre. He took a long breath, trying to regain the stability befitting a knight of the Altavilla family. "Nothing... just... a bad trick of this place. An illusion of death. I'm fine now."
He picked up his sword, tightening his grip until his knuckles turned white. The memory of that red-eyed Hayjin and the inhuman brutality with which he had torn his companion to pieces was burned into his mind.
"Are you sure you can proceed?" Evelyn asked, turning to resume the march. "We don't have time for mental weaknesses, Atlas."
"I'm sure," he replied, wiping the sweat from his face with the back of his gauntlet. "Let's move forward. As fast as possible."
As they continued, they found a huge silver metal gate blocking the exit.
Evelyn pointed to the large metal gate at the end of the hall. It was covered in runes glowing with an unstable light. "I believe that is the final passage. Beyond that gate, there will be no more room for chatter."
Atlas grew serious, feeling the magical pressure increase drastically. "Then let's go get that license, Evelyn. Let me open this door."
With a titanic effort, Atlas pushed the doors of the gate. The metal screeched, opposing them with an opposing magical force, but the knight's determination prevailed. When the doors flew open, they didn't find themselves in another room, but on a suspended balcony overlooking a chasm.
Before them, a few hundred meters away, towered the Black Spire.
"Look," Evelyn whispered, pointing to the base of the tower on the other side of the terrace. "There's someone there."
When the doors of the heavy metal gate finally flew open under Atlas's vigorous push, the purplish light of the twilight city washed over the two representatives of Doeken, illuminating the large neutral balcony.
Evelyn took a step forward, but Atlas froze on the spot.
His eyes darted immediately to the figure on the other side of the terrace. There, covered in blue dust and leaning against a fragment of rock, was Hayjin. For a terrifying millisecond, Atlas's mind superimposed reality onto the vivid memory of the hallucination: he seemed to see the boy's skin turn grayish, his sockets dilate into two pools of dark blood, and the corners of his mouth stretch into that aberrant smile, ready to maul.
A violent, visceral shiver started at the base of Atlas's neck and shot down his spine, freezing the blood in his veins. His fingers inside the steel gauntlets contracted and his chest tightened in a sudden, suffocating panic attack. He felt his heart rate skyrocket, while a cold sweat beaded his forehead beneath his helm once again.
Instinctively, the knight took half a step back, bringing his hand to the hilt of his greatsword, as if to defend himself against an ancestral demon.
"Atlas? What's wrong with you?" Evelyn called him in a low voice, not turning around but sensing his sudden rigidity.
The sound of the girl's voice acted like a cold shower. The optical illusion vanished. Hayjin was simply there, a bit disheveled, tired, and decidedly human, intent on making one of his usual sarcastic jokes about the "express flight."
Atlas gritted his teeth, forced his heart to slow down, and expelled the air from his lungs in a trembling sigh that he masked behind the grunt of his armor. He forced himself to regain control, straightening his back and planting his boots on the stone floor. He was just an annoying kid. A mana-less analyst.
"Nothing," Atlas replied, his voice returning solid and deep, though a slight edge of nervousness still betrayed the shock he had suffered. "The journey just left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. But I'm here now."
With a heavy step and the pride of the Altavilla once again serving as a shield against fear, he advanced toward the center of the terrace, ready to face reality.
Atlas narrowed his eyes, recognizing Zhilian's blue silhouette and Hayjin's messy one. "I don't believe it... they made it here too. How is it possible that that kid is still in one piece?"
"Luck favors the bold, or the foolish," Evelyn replied, starting to walk along the stone bridge connecting the red labyrinth to the neutral zone of the tower. "Let's go see which of the two categories they represent."
And so, while Hayjin and Zhilian tried to catch their breath, the shadows of Doeken emerged from the red crystal labyrinth, bringing with them the weight of a challenge that was about to turn into an inevitable collision. The race was no longer against the dungeon, but face to face against their own reflection.