Chapter 312 (Patreon)

Kana gulped, though she wasn’t sure her body still remembered how because she wasn’t able to. The sword hovered a breath away from her forehead, close enough that she could almost feel its promise, yet no force came. No pain. No end. The world had simply… stopped. Not slowed, not dulled, but halted as if something unseen had clenched its fist around reality and refused to let it move another inch. Dust hung in the air like forgotten stars, each grain frozen in place. The pressure in the room remained, heavy and suffocating, yet even that felt suspended, like a storm that had been paused mid-roar.

Her eyes could still see things around, just barely. It took effort—more than it should have—like moving through invisible resistance. Boris stood beside her, caught mid-stride, his spear raised, his face twisted in a shout that would never come. Even the sweat along his temple had stopped, clinging stubbornly to his skin. Suri was no different. Her staff was lifted, mana gathered at its tip, a faint glow frozen in place as if lightning itself had been captured and held still. Her eyes were wide, sharp, filled with urgency—and something else. Fear. Real fear. But she couldn’t move. Neither of them could. They were there, yet not part of the moment anymore, like figures painted into the world.

Kana wasn’t sure if they were seeing what she was seeing at the moment. Her chest tightened, not from injury, but from the silence pressing in around her. It was wrong. Everything about this was wrong.

Then something moved.

Not the world—just a single point in front of her, where the air seemed to loosen, unraveling at the edges. A smear of black appeared, small at first, like ink dropped into water that refused to spread. It thickened, gathered, and began to move in a way that made no sense. It didn’t fall. It didn’t drift. It's simply… formed. Slowly, as if time still obeyed it alone.

The shape curled into itself, becoming a small sphere, no larger than her hand. It hovered there, silent, almost fragile—until it wasn’t.

A mouth tore across its surface.

Not grown. Not shaped. Torn, as though reality itself resisted giving it form. Jagged teeth forced their way into existence, uneven and sharp, too many to count at a glance. The thing stretched into a grin that didn’t belong to anything living, something raw and unfinished. Then the mouth opened.

“I am… almost complete…”

The voice did not echo. It layered, overlapping itself in uneven waves, like many voices trying to speak as one and failing to agree. It was distant and close at the same time, brushing against her mind more than her ears. However.. It didn’t sound like a human at all..

Kana didn’t flinch.

She should have. Well, she couldn’t.

Instead, she focused all her attention on the newly emerged creature.

“I… cannot… believe… I am going… to use this… in my incomplete form…” it continued, each word steadier than the last, as though it were learning how to speak even as it did so. “Now… I will go back… to nothing… again…”

Something in her chest stirred at that. Not fear. Not quite understanding either. Just… recognition. Faint, impossible, but there.

Behind her, Boris and Suri remained frozen, yet she thought—just for a moment—that something flickered in their eyes. Not movement, not awareness, but a ripple, like their instincts were trying to react to something their bodies couldn’t follow or was it simply her imagination? Maybe everything was simply her imagination. It’s unthinkable to think the world had paused after all.

“It is going… to take a while… before I will show myself….. to you.. again…..” the thing murmured, its voice stretching thin at the edges, fraying like thread pulled too tight.

Kana found herself confused. The words of the creature were not in English or their local language, it was something else. Something old. Something ancient. She was amazed that she was able to understand the creature’s language. The creature was wrong in every way she could name, unsettling in ways she didn’t have words for. And yet—

Her heartbeat slowed down. No. Her heartbeat wasn’t beating in the first place.

She did not feel any malice from the creature. 

It was something else.

Something quieter. She searched herself for fear and found none. That alone should have terrified her. But it didn’t.

Because beneath the strangeness, beneath the unnatural status of the world and the jagged grin floating before her, there was a certainty she couldn’t shake. It settled into her bones.

This thing wasn’t here to harm her.

It hadn’t appeared to end her life.

If anything she felt…

It had come back for her. As if she already knew what it was.. As if she was expecting it to come out soon… And somehow, without knowing why, Kana understood that it had shown itself for her. To protect her.. Just like before.. Before.. I can’t remember.

Her thoughts were suddenly disrupted. The answer did not come gently. It arrived like a crack in the world itself.

One moment, the sword of King Rut’er Lez hovered a breath away from Kana’s forehead, the weight of death pressing so close it felt inevitable… and then reality fractured. Not bent. Not blurred. Fractured. The air itself splintered like glass struck by an unseen hammer, thin lines racing across existence itself. The sound collapsed into silence. Motion unraveled. Even the monstrous king, so overwhelming a heartbeat ago, began to crumple—not as flesh, but as something thinner, weaker, like parchment caught in a storm. And for Kana, it looked like the king had no idea at all that his existence was slowly getting rid off.

Kana didn’t move. She couldn’t in the first place however not from the feeling of fear this time, but from sheer disbelief.

The king’s towering form folded in on itself, layer by layer, as though invisible hands were peeling him away from the world. His edges blurred, his shape—body losing meaning, until—like a thought forgotten mid-sentence—he vanished. No explosion. No resistance. Just… gone as if something had sucked him away.

And in that impossible motionless, something else remained.

That small, black thing.

It lingered where the king had been, its surface moving like liquid caught between forms. Its face twisted unnaturally, mouth stretching wider than it should, teeth uneven and wrong, like broken shards arranged into a smile. Then it moved—not forward, not backward, but around, its form slipping, folding, reappearing behind Kana without ever crossing the space between.

Its voice followed, delayed and distorted, like echoes arguing with each other.

“I can… feel… your emotions… you have… many questions…”

The words staggered, out of rhythm with its movements, as if sound itself struggled to keep up with whatever this thing truly was. Kana felt it—not fear, not quite—but something deeper. Recognition without memory. Like hearing a name she had once known but could no longer place.

“I would… tell you… everything…” it continued, voice thinning, unraveling, “however…”

Its form flickered. Dimmed.

“…someday…”

The edges of it began to dissolve, like smoke pulled into an unseen current.

“I must… rest…”

Its grin faltered, stretching, then breaking apart.

“…it will take… time… before I return… again…”

The last words dragged, longer than they should have been, fading into something almost gentle.

“…be careful… out there—”

And then it was gone.

Not vanished like the king. Not erased by someone or with force.

It's simply… ceased to exist.

The world slammed back into motion as if nothing happened.

The sound returned first. The distant crackle of torches. The ragged pull of breath. The dull ache of wounds screaming to be remembered. Kana staggered slightly, her body catching up to a reality that had moved on without her.

“Where is the dungeon boss?!” Boris’s voice broke the silence, sharp and disbelieving. He almost stumbled from stopping his own strike.

Kana turned. Boris stood there, eyes wide, scanning the hall like a man expecting the nightmare to resume at any second. Suri, a few meters away, dragged one leg as she approached, her face pale, her breathing uneven.

Then the familiar glow flickered into existence before her.

[You have defeated the dungeon Boss!]

[You have leveled up!]

She was supposedly excited and looking forward to it but today the text of god felt distant and not important.

Kana gulped, her throat dry. “You… didn’t see it?” she asked, voice unsteady. “The black… thing?”

Boris frowned, confusion tightening his expression. “No. The boss just… disappeared.”

Kana realized. For them, it had been instantaneous. For her… it had not. How? Why her?

He looked around again, slower this time, wary. “Is he hiding? Playing around with his prey?”

Kana shook her head, though uncertainty still clung to her thoughts. The text of god had spoken. That meant it was real. It had happened. The dungeon boss had lost but not from them.

She turned to Suri, searching for confirmation. “Suri… did you—”

Suri shook her head weakly before Kana could finish. Even that small motion seemed to cost her as she continued walking towards them.

And just like that, the truth settled in like a wave suddenly splashed to her.

They had almost died. Not barely. Not narrowly. She was certain. They were supposed to die a moment ago.

If not for that impossible interruption… if not for that black thing…

Kana’s chest tightened. The guilt hit her all at once, heavy and suffocating. Boris. Suri. Their families. The lives that would have shattered because of one reckless decision.

Her sudden decision to enter recklessly to an unknown dungeon.

Her legs gave out.

She dropped to her knees, the sound echoing faintly across the empty hall. Her hands trembled as they rose to her face, as if she could hold everything together by sheer will alone.

But she couldn’t.

“I’m sorry…” The words slipped out from her mouth.

She tried to steady her breathing and she failed miserably.

“I’m sorry…”

Again. Softer this time. 

Her shoulders shook as the guilt carved through her, deeper than any wound she had taken in that fight. She pressed her palms against her eyes, as if she could hide from it, from them, from herself.

“I’m sorry…”

Post note:

2nd chap of the week.Hope you enjoy the chap! 🙂

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