Aria Sterling stood frozen at the entrance of the shattered blast doors. The darkness ahead seemed to swallow the light from the hallway, and the suffocating pressure rolling out of the cavern was enough to make an ordinary A-Rank Hunter suffocate.
She watched Elias walk casually into the abyss, flanked by his terrifying, crimson-eyed Death Knight.
'He's insane,' Aria thought, her heart pounding against her ribs. 'Or he's something far worse than a monster.'
Her assassin instincts screamed at her to turn back, to report to her family that the Academy was compromised by a rogue variable. But curiosity—and the allure of the Irregular Gate's secrets—pushed her forward. She drew her silver daggers and stepped into the dark.
[You have entered the 'Catacombs of the Forgotten' (Irregular Gate).] [Warning: System rules are distorted in this zone. Death is permanent.]
The air was bitterly cold. The tunnel opened into a sprawling, subterranean necropolis. Massive stone pillars held up a cavernous ceiling, and the ground was littered with millions of shattered bones.
"Don't step out of my shadow," Elias's voice echoed softly.
Aria caught up to him, keeping her distance from the looming Death Knight. "You broke a military seal. The Academy's alarms should be blaring by now."
"They aren't," Elias replied, not looking back. "The dark mana in here is so dense it creates a localized EMP effect. The military sensors above us have been reading a false negative for months. They think the seal is holding, but the gate has already breached its internal barrier."
Aria frowned. "How do you know all this?"
"I know a lot of things," Elias said cryptically.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them began to vibrate. The sea of shattered bones on the floor started to twitch and rattle.
Aria instantly dropped into a low combat stance, her daggers glowing with violet mana. "We're surrounded."
From the piles of bones, thousands of figures began to rise. They weren't just standard skeletons; they were Grave Walkers—undead horrors fused together from multiple corpses, wielding rusted weapons and glowing with sickly yellow eyes. There were easily over five hundred of them blocking the path forward.
[Grave Walker (Lv. 15)] [Grave Walker (Lv. 16)] [Grave Walker Elite (Lv. 18)]
Aria swallowed hard. "An A-Rank Guild would need a full day and a team of forty mages to clear a mob this size. We need to retreat and—"
"Retreat?" Elias chuckled, a sound devoid of warmth. He stepped forward, raising his right hand.
"Let me show you why they call me a Summoner," Elias said.
"Arise, my legion."
The cavern floor behind Elias erupted into an ocean of black smoke.
Aria watched in sheer disbelief as the darkness took physical form. Thirty massive Shadow Trolls roared, their voices shaking the dust from the ceiling. Five heavily armored Shadow Knights drew their longswords. Eight Shadow Mages floated into the air, their hands crackling with dark fire.
And standing at the front, leading the charge alongside the Death Knight, was the massive, axe-wielding Hobgoblin Elite, Iron.
The temperature plummeted. The sheer, overwhelming aura of Elias's shadow army completely eclipsed the Grave Walkers.
"Eradicate them," Elias commanded calmly.
The clash was deafening. The shadow legion crashed into the undead horde like a tidal wave of pure darkness.
Aria had never seen anything like it. Iron swung his massive axe, completely shattering five Grave Walkers into dust with a single blow. The Shadow Mages unleashed a barrage of dark fireballs, incinerating entire rows of the undead. Blood, the Death Knight, moved like a blur of crimson lightning, cleaving through the strongest Elite monsters as if they were made of wet paper.
Whenever a Shadow Troll was injured, it simply regenerated instantly, fueled by Elias's massive, Epic-tier mana pool.
Elias didn't even draw a weapon. He stood still, his hands in his pockets, watching the slaughter with the bored expression of a king watching an execution.
"Are you going to fight, Assassin?" Elias asked, glancing at Aria. "Or are you just here to watch my shadows work?"
Aria snapped out of her shock. She gritted her teeth, her pride flaring. She vanished into the shadows, reappearing behind a Level 18 Grave Walker Elite. With a flash of violet mana, she severed its head perfectly. She moved with lethal grace, a silver blur amidst the chaotic sea of black and white bones.
Within ten minutes, the battle was over. Five hundred Grave Walkers had been reduced to dust.
Elias walked through the remains, his eyes glowing.
[You have leveled up!] [You have leveled up!] [You have leveled up!] [You have reached Level 20.]
He had hit the first major threshold for his class.
[Class Milestone Reached!] [Shadow Legion Capacity increased: 50 -> 100] [New Active Skill Unlocked: Domain of the Monarch (Lv. 1)]
Elias smiled. A capacity of one hundred shadows, and a Domain skill. He was becoming exponentially stronger.
He looked at the shattered remains of the Grave Walkers. The dark, blue-black smoke of their souls was rising into the air, waiting for his command.
"Extract," Elias whispered.
Fifty new shadows violently pulled themselves from the dust. They took the form of heavily armored, shadowy skeletal warriors. His army had just doubled in size.
Aria walked over, sheathing her daggers. She was panting slightly, while Elias hadn't even broken a sweat. She looked at his massive, terrifying army, then looked at him.
"You aren't a B-Rank," Aria said, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts to sound calm. "You aren't even an A-Rank. You're an anomaly."
"I am whatever I need to be to survive," Elias replied, recalling his shadows. They instantly melted back into the ground, returning the cavern to silence.
He pointed down the dark tunnel ahead. At the very end of the necropolis, massive, imposing doors made of solid black obsidian stood closed. A terrible, oppressive aura leaked from beneath them.
"The warm-up is over," Elias said, his eyes narrowing. "The Dungeon Master is behind those doors. And it's not undead."