190. Core (II)

CRACK!

A single white seam raced down the obsidian peak. Blinding white light spilled out, highlighting every crag of it—and it kept striking lower, lower. Burrowing into the earth, splitting down the sides of the mountain. Thickening. Widening.

There came a violent rumbling, a rumbling so loud it swallowed all sound. And it seemed like whole mountain was coming apart at that seam.

It looked bad just from the picture—boulders falling, glaciers cracking, bending over themselves, throwing down vast showers of snow—Zane imagine what it felt like to be on the ground.

The camera was still honed in on Irina's face, though. Cool and calm, despite it all. The expression of a leader. Like she was still in control.

She watched that stone with narrowed eyes. Clenched her hands to white-knuckled fists. And her chains began to glow even as they jumped and bobbed on the ice.

The mountain kept splitting. She had to stamp a foot several feet into the ground, wrap a chain through a crag to keep stable. The rest of the World Rankers scrambled in a blind panic just trying to stay upright.

Even as the ground underneath them opened up, yawning wide, shucking off avalanches of sleet, throwing ice-sheets in all directions, throwing tons upon tons of snow down the range—until a V-shaped chasm slashed down the middle of Heaven's Peak.

The picture panned over. The splitting had stopped. The mountain showed its guts.

There—leading all the way down to murky, dusky depths, was a massive stone staircase.

Scribed over and glowing runes, runes like hieroglyphs from some lost civilization. The thing spanned half the width of the mountain, it felt like. A fiery light washed out from deep within...

Notifications popped up.

Not on the projection.

In Reina's face. In Zane's face. In the faces of everyone on Earth. A single message—

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝔾𝕒𝕥𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕦𝕡𝕖𝕣𝕕𝕦𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕠𝕟 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕓𝕖𝕖𝕟 𝕦𝕟𝕝𝕠𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕕!

"What?!" gasped Reina.

Zane was still staring at the screen. Frowning.

The rest of the mountain had stopped shaking. But the peak hadn't. The stairwell hadn't.

A shadow stretched out from within. Blotting out the red. Swallowing the length of the staircase.

Something was coming from the depths.

A monster. A minotaur the size of a small mountain. Its body was rippling with beastly muscle. Its eyes were cruel red slits. It wielded an axe. Pitch-black, mottled with the purple of obsidian, smoking slightly. A murky gray pearl capped its spine. It dragged the thing behind it, as though it were too heavy to lift normally...

The instant it appeared the World Rankers all tensed. Zane heard why a moment later. A voice—one of the reporters, hoarse, shaky—cut in the feed.

"It—it says, Asterion the Minotaur—classification—Monster Knight! And the Level—255!"

Reina stared. "Did he just say—"

Then the minotaur opened its mouth.

𝕊𝕆 𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊 𝕀𝕊 𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕋ℍ.

The voice that emerged was mangled, so deep you could barely make out what it was saying. Like it spoke through badly burnt vocal cords.

It laughed. A gurgling booming sound.

𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊 𝕀𝕊 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕊𝕆-ℂ𝔸𝕃𝕃𝔼𝔻 𝔾ℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋 𝕋ℍℝ𝔼𝔸𝕋 𝕋𝕆 𝕄𝕆ℕ𝕊𝕋𝔼ℝ𝕂𝕀ℕ𝔻!

Most of the A-Team just gaped. Like they couldn't quite believe the thing was speaking.

Not Irina. Her eyes were narrowed. Focused solely on the target.

She began to smoke a dark aura—her Bloodline beginning to burn...

𝕐𝕆𝕌.

The minotaur had turned its heavy gaze on her. It had glanced briefly at the rest of the Top World Rankers, lost interest almost immediately. But Irina caught its gaze somehow.

𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝔼 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕄𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋𝕀𝔼𝕊𝕋 𝕆𝔽 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝔼𝔸ℝ𝕋ℍ𝕃𝕀ℕ𝔾𝕊, 𝕎ℍ𝕆𝕄 𝕀 ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 ℍ𝔼𝔸ℝ𝔻 𝕊𝕆 𝕄𝕌ℂℍ 𝔸𝔹𝕆𝕌𝕋? 𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝔸ℝ𝔼 𝕎ℍ𝕆 𝕋ℍ𝔼𝕐 ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 ℂℍ𝕆𝕊𝔼ℕ 𝔸𝕊 𝕋ℍ𝔼𝕀ℝ ℂℍ𝔸𝕄ℙ𝕀𝕆ℕ?

Irina stayed silent.

ℍ𝕄ℙℍ. It snorted.

And Laws exploded down the tip of that axe. Black, rippling lightning. Crackling an ugly sound like television static turned up far too loud...

An overwhelming aura exploded from the Minotaur. Shadows blasted out from it in every direction—the skies above darkened near black. The grounds lost their colors. The essence it gave off was so stifling Zane could nearly feel it across the screen.

Just standing in the presence of that aura nearly made the A-Team, all World elites, lose their nerve—as one, they staggered back a step.

But Irina stayed where she was.

She refused to give an inch—but the muscles did stand out hard on her neck, veins popping out deep purple. But she held.

Zane was sure that Core was not an Inferior Core. And that Law was not some basic Fusion either.

"Romano!" growled Irina. Her face was all scrunched up in concentration. Somehow she managed to keep her voice even, though quite tight. "Gun for its eyes. O'Connor! I'll need you to trip it up. On three—"

The monster laughed. It set off a little earthquake.

𝕐𝕆𝕌 𝕊𝕋𝕀𝕃𝕃 𝕄𝔼𝔸ℕ 𝕋𝕆 ℙ𝕃𝔸𝕐 𝕐𝕆𝕌ℝ 𝔾𝔸𝕄𝔼𝕊 𝕎𝕀𝕋ℍ 𝕄𝔼?

It smiled hideously. 𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 𝕀𝕊 𝔸 ℙℝ𝕆𝕍𝔼ℝ𝔹 𝕎ℍ𝔼ℝ𝔼 𝕀 ℍ𝔸𝕀𝕃 𝔽ℝ𝕆𝕄. 𝕐𝕆𝕌 ℍ𝔸𝕍𝔼 𝔼𝕐𝔼𝕊. 𝔹𝕌𝕋 𝕐𝕆𝕌 ℂ𝔸ℕℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕊𝔼𝔼.

It took a step. And the step beneath it shattered down its length—it was already gone. A blur of shadow, moving as fast as all darkness moved when the lights went out. It seemed impossible something so large could move so fast—there was scarcely time to react. It was already upon them. Already upon Irina.

To her credit, she managed to put up her chains just in time. It must've been some danger sense, some gut reflex—she burned her Bloodline too, called her strength. Just in time.

Considering the circumstances, it was an extraordinary reaction time. The rest of the team was still frozen under the weight of the aura.

One chain rose to block. The other lashed for the beast's throat. Her face was screwed up with determination.

But she had made one miscalculation.

The Minotaur brought down its axe. A dark blur so big it must've wiped out a quarter of her view—it crashed down on her Spirit Weapon in a magnificent arc. And it brought a weight Zane had never seen. The sheer density of it—the essence concentrated on that line of an edge—it all bore down in an instant.

The chain shattered.

Irina gasped.

The axe passed through. And lopped her arm clean off. One smooth crackling stroke. Black lightning cauterized the wound as it passed, leaving a smoking stump behind.

For the first time, Irina's eyes widened. She stared at the stump, stunned.

Her other Chain was still looping overhead, bearing the full brunt of her Strength bloodline—

The Minotaur batted it out of the sky. Carelessly. As though it did not respect her power at all. It had hardly used any Law at all, Zane noticed. These were not even Skills. Just raw power, raw essence.

Then it raised a hand over her body. An open palm blotting out the light of the sun. And pressed down.

Irina blocked it, roaring—caught it with her free arm, her broken stump. Somehow she still had it in her to keep fighting. They heard the shattering peel out through the screen—CRACK-CRACK!

Irina trembled. Sank deeper and deeper—she let out a strangled cry.

She was giving everything she had left.

Finally her teammates seemed to wake. They let out desperate wails. Shadow knives flickered through the air, pinged off the beast's skin. A forest of spiked vines rucked up through the ground—they couldn't even score a scratch. A Skeleton King shambled up, tried pounding a fist—The Minotaur just ignored it.

It sank that open palm deeper and deeper. Leaning its weight.

Irina burned brighter and brighter too—every last ounce of her essence, her Bloodline, driving against its force—it was a surreal scene.

Irina Volkova had been the best in the world since the Rankings came into play. She refused to go down like this. This was the heart of a champion.

The Minotaur frowned.

Then those enormous muscles on its arms bunched up. Started to seethe—it burned its own Bloodline too. Just a little. And a glut of essence exploded down its palm. It let out a snarl. Shoved hard.

And drove its hand straight into the ground.

There was a shattering. A splattering. A silence.

Dark blood seeped between the digits. When it removed its hand, you couldn't even tell what lay underneath used to be human—the way when you squashed an ant, you couldn't even tell what bug it had been—it'd been so ruined after the smashing…

The Minotaur let out a snort. It looked with some disgust at its palm. It had torn some skin in that effort. It wiped off the smeared blood, the flesh, against white snow.

It stood. It looked calmly toward the rest of the A-Team.

By then they had already been trembling.

They ran screaming.

They didn't get far.

It wasn't the Minotaur that chased them. It sat down on the steps, at ease. It plunked down its Axe there. As though it didn't plan on moving anytime soon.

But the gateway beneath kept rumbling…

Monsters spewed from the bowels of the mountain.

Monsters loosed from some other world.

Great burly orcs wielding clubs spiked with Tier-Four Laws. Red-eyed, red-skinned Imps cackling with glee, brandishing flaming knives. A demon horde poured into the world, loosing high-pitched screeching, cackling. And not a single one under Level 200.

They stormed down the mountainside. Zane saw that French Necromancer Lagarde vanishing under a horde of imps—

The feed cut there.

Silence.

Back in their bedroom, Reina was very pale. She looked to Zane, trembling. Even Zane didn't know what to make of that.

She scrambled up—"I've got to make some calls," she said frantically. "We have sub-Factions in the area, we have teams raiding dungeons nearby—they've got to evacuate, now!"

It said a lot about Reina that that was what her mind instantly went to.

Zane nodded. She dashed from the room.

For a while after, he just sat there, frowning heavily. Staring at the image of the Minotaur. Holding that battle with Irina in his mind.

Then he stood.

He left her a note saying where he was, what he was doing. And made for the Warrior Dojo.

***

ʜᴏᴜʀꜱ ʟᴀᴛᴇʀ…

"It appears," said Reporter Teofimo Andres—his hair in total disarray, stammering wildly, eyes rimmed with red—he gulped, tried again. "It appears that the Final Floor of the Heaven's Peak dungeon was, in truth, a cruel trick. It was a disguised entrance to the Superdungeon all along. And… though top World Rankers Alessandro Romano, Liam O'Connor, Klaus Muller, Matthew Lagrange, and, of course, the great Irina Volkova fought valiantly… they lost their lives at the scene."

It took him a few seconds to find his next words. His voice was trembling.

"Hordes of Superdungeon Monsters are, as we speak, rampaging across the Himalayas—Blood Imps, Orc War-Chiefs, Dire Trolls… E-Evacuation orders have been issued by all nearby Factions. Emergency teleporters have been made available to all stragglers. As—as best we can tell, the so-called 'Monster Knight' has not moved from guarding the S-Superdungeon's entrance."

He took a breath.

"Even as those Monsters run wild, brave top World Rankers, including Cain Hastings, Yuki Urabe, Cristina Dos Santos, and Emeka Eze, have answered the call—as we speak they are aiding the evacuation efforts. Doing their best to stem the Monster tide. But… more keep coming. Escaping from the Superdungeon. We have lost six more World Rankers already. The rest have been forced to make retreat after retreat. Unless—unless the entrance is somehow closed, it is only a matter of time until—until—" he choked up.

Another long silence.

"As—as we speak the world's governments are scrambling for a response. The world's most powerful stand at a loss… but. I plead with you, do not despair—there is hope yet! I have come to you today, friends, to share a piece of breaking news!"

His breathing grew heavier. "The Minotaur was mistaken… our strongest champion was not at the scene. Humanity has not thrown its strongest punch yet. And that punch is only about to get stronger… not thirty minutes ago I received word that Zane Walker is breaking through to Core! So hold strong, friends—the Savage Sage is coming to fight!"