Above us, the sounds of battle roared—Bell and the others were holding off a monster horde and a rampaging boss. The clash of steel, magic bursts, and rallying shouts echoed like a war drum across the stone halls.
But I wasn't watching.
My eyes were on the lower entrance—the gaping maw of the Dungeon's true depths.
I turned to the three who stood at my side.
[Grey]: Are you sure about this? All three of you may die. No… You will die if you follow me now.
They didn't flinch.
They laughed.
Tri grinned, his eyes glowing with madness and loyalty.
[Tri]: Boss, since the day we became Hunters, we expected death. The only question was how bloody it'd be.
[Douplo]: We die loud. Not quiet.
[Alpha]: And you're still underestimating us.
I sighed, more out of fondness than concern, then raised my hand.
A wave of shimmering cold surged behind us as I snapped my fingers. Ice wrapped the stairway like a living wall, sealing off the path above. No one would follow.
Then we descended.
The deeper we went, the less it felt like a dungeon and more like a mouth. Wet walls. Breathing darkness. And then—
They came.
We were swallowed by beasts and swarmed by monsters twisted by depth and madness.
And we butchered our way forward.
Douplo crushed and cleaved, a walking executioner drenched in ichor and slime. Tri danced between abominations with laughter on his lips and twin daggers that never missed their mark. Alpha was silent, methodical—each shot a death sentence, each movement calculated carnage.
As for me, I didn't walk, I carved. Space bent, time wept, matter screamed as I turned spells and reality into weapons. Tentacles writhed. Magic exploded. Something howled in fear of me.
Finally… the monsters thinned.
The passage opened into a forgotten chamber of the Dungeon—impossibly vast and glowing with molten veins of unknown ore. And at its center… him.
A man stood in golden armor, his back straight, his presence wrong. He wasn't a monster. He is something worse.
[Golden Armored Man]: Well… seems I won't have to hunt you down after all.
His eyes glinted from beneath the helmet—dark, ancient, hungry.
[Golden Armored Man]: You brought yourself to me… fish.
He raised his arm. A sword of light and blood coalesced in his grip.
[Grey]: You're either brave or stupid to mock me in your own grave.
The Hunters flanked me. They didn't speak this time. They knew.
The chamber shook as he moved. No footsteps—just impact. The ground cracked beneath the weight of his presence.
[Golden Armored Man]: Come then. Show me why even the Dungeon whispers your name in fear.
[Grey]: You're not ready.
Then the world ignited.
Alpha opened the dance, twin pistols roaring as cursed rounds spun toward the golden figure. Bang—Bang—Bang. But the armored man parried the bullets mid-air, his blade leaving afterimages in the shape of runes.
Tri blurred past, slashing low with poisoned daggers. The golden man's knee jutted forward—crack—Tri was airborne, spine nearly shattered from the blow.
Douplo leapt in, axe overhead, a warcry tearing his throat. The axe met the sword. Steel shrieked. Sparks fell like burning snow.
Then it happened.
The golden sword shifted, glowing red, and Douplo's chest burst open in a geyser of blood.
[Grey]: No!
Tri, still gasping on the side, tried to leap back in—but a lance of light impaled him from behind.
His body twitched, then stilled.
The silence after Douplo and Tri fell was more than sorrow—it was the breath of something ancient waking up.
Something inside me snapped.
Not gently.
Like glass under pressure, my restraint cracked—and the Hollowed Abyss answered.
Mana didn't surge.
It collapsed inward.
Time bent.
Space screamed.
I stepped forward as my body twisted into something alien. My silhouette stretched, and Hollow Form bloomed—my mask cracked in asymmetry, void tendrils rising behind me like a crown of decay, my eyes glowing with Time Eye and Death Eye both wide open.
But I wasn't done.
The sea within me boiled, and with it, Abysmal Form unfurled—a second skin of abyssal dread, dragonbone armor, and reality-rending aura. My jellyfish tendrils writhed across multiple planes, dripping venom that sizzled the air.
Alpha backed away—not out of fear, but reverence.
Even the Dungeon itself hesitated.
[Golden Armored Man]: Now that's more like it. I wanted the Queen, not the girl.
[Grey]: You wanted death.
The battle restarted with a roar that shattered stalactites.
I came at him as a beast of the abyss—tentacles crashing through the void, devourer's maw biting the air, and my Abysmal Dragon Shark Teeth slicing with each strike.
He met me with that same blood-light blade.
We tore the chamber apart.
I hit him with such force that he phased through a wall of solid adamantium.
He laughed even then—until I struck with the Sting of Death.
His sword cracked.
His helm was dented.
His body bled.
The Golden Man didn't die with dignity.
He died laughing, screaming, broken in every possible way.
I didn't just kill him.
I devoured him—mind, soul, body—every piece crushed between my abyss and hollowing hunger.
And yet, as he faded, his mad joy echoed louder than any pain.
That laugh still rang in my head.
My Hollow Form flickered, unstable.
My Abysmal Form twitched.
My emotions were a shattered ocean. Rage and guilt and something colder.
I turned.
Alpha stood across the ruined chamber—arm gone, soaked in blood, face unreadable. He didn't look away.
I took one final glance at the battlefield—the bodies of Tri and Douplo strewn like discarded toys, their final expressions frozen between fury and loyalty.
I left my dog tag on the blood-soaked floor.
Opened a rift through space.
And vanished.
[3RD POV]
Silence.
Only the sound of dripping blood, cracking stone, and the distant creaks of a broken dungeon.
Alpha stood in the quiet, his breath shallow.
Then, slowly, he walked—his steps uneven, dragging—toward the remains of his brothers-in-arms.
He knelt beside them.
Their faces were barely intact. Their armor was ruined. But their dog tags were there.
He took them.
Gently.
Then… he found hers. The cold metal still carried heat. Still echoed her.
He stared at it for a long while.
Then, silently, he pulled out a smiling moon mask—one Tri had crafted long ago as a joke—and slipped it over his face.
It hid nothing.
The tears still fell.
He stood, back straight, but broken inside.
And walked.
Out of the battlefield.
Out of the shadows.
Through the cracked and bleeding Dungeon.
A one-armed ghost wearing a smile he didn't feel, carrying the names of the fallen.
[Back to Grey – Grey POV]
I didn't scream.
Didn't cry.
I simply… walked.
Through void—pure and consuming, the kind of darkness even nightmares fear. My hollowed soul no longer trembled. It was numb. I let my body drift, steps silent, mind cold. The rage had ebbed. Now, there was only the ache.
And then I heard it.
A voice—cracking and vast, old beyond time. A breath that shook nothing, yet made my bones shiver.
A massive, rotting skull loomed from the dark. Bigger than kingdoms. Its surface was a decayed continent, rivers of molten shadow running like blood. Within its jaw, an eternal abyss churned and devoured all light, and its hollow eye sockets blazed with soulfire.
Davane.
The Undead Planet God.
The Hollowed Devourer.
A forgotten evil star once worshipped as Death Incarnate.
He stared at me.
[Davane]: What brings you here, little child of the Hollow? Did you miss home?
His voice echoed across existence. Cold. Curious. Playful.
He didn't remember me.
Good. That made things simpler.
I drifted downward, landing softly upon his surface, now a bustling world of death. Billions of undead, shades, reapers, and bone-beasts walked, bartered, trained, and preached. Some cast spells of ancient undeath, others reforged weapons that screamed in silence.
This… was no graveyard.
This was a kingdom. No—a civilization of the dead.
And they had grown.
A looming figure approached. Towering and plated in cursed armor, its glowing runes scarred from countless wars. On his massive shoulder sat a small girl, blindfolded, her skin pale as snow, clutching a bone staff carved with the names of a thousand dead.
She tilted her head.
Even without eyes, she saw me.
[Yanira]: Welcome, sister of Death and Hollow, to our home.
Her voice was calm, but heavy with power.
[Yanira]: I am Yanira, Dreambinder of the Pale Choir… and this is my father, the Death Prince Warrior.
The towering knight bowed his head slowly, showing a respect few beings in the cosmos ever would.
The girl extended her hand, small and soft, yet pulsing with ancient energy.
[Yanira]: You have lost… much. But not all. Come—we were waiting for you.
I followed Yanira, her blindfolded gaze guiding me like a compass in a realm that forgot what compasses were. Beneath Davane's vast, crumbling skull, the city of the dead stretched across caverns and spires of fossilized bone and dark crystal. It had no name. It did not need one.
Here, everything was death.
And yet, it lived.
Undead sparred with lichfire blades. Ghosts whispered spells into the hands of wraith-students. Sentient skeletons debated with shadow scholars over soul equations. The air was cold, but not cruel. Here, the dead were free.
Yanira turned her head toward me as we walked.
[Yanira]: There are many kinds of strength, Grey of the Hollow. Yours was born from rage… but that fire burns out. Let us teach you how to shape it.
I didn't respond. Just nodded.
The days—if you could call them that—blurred into a haze of steel, screams, and silence.
For two weeks, I bled beside berserkers in the Circle of Mourning Steel, a bloodstained dojo forged from the ribcage of a long-dead titan. They didn't speak much. They didn't need to. Every swing of their rusted, jagged axes was a lesson. Every shattered bone is a correction. I adapted. I evolved. My hands blistered, split, and healed again until the axe felt like an extension of my rage.
At the Ash-Spires, obsidian towers clawing into the void above, I knelt among the liches, necromancers, and spectral sages. They taught me restraint. How to breathe magic between heartbeats. When to cast and when to kill. I learned Death and Life magic not as opposites, but as the same blade turned at a different angle. It welcomed me, like it knew I belonged there.
And in the Chalice of Ending Songs, beneath a sky of weeping moons and bone flutes that played themselves, I found the fragments of my Dragon Song. The ancient death dragons sang not with their voices, but with their souls. I listened. I sang. And the void sang back.
Now… I stand at the edge of this hollowed world once more.
I looked behind me—billions of undead in a land forgotten by life, still moving, training, dreaming in their own deathless way. Yanira waved softly with her bone staff. Her father, the Death Prince Warrior, gave a nod of silent respect.
The skull of Davane, the ancient god, loomed in the far distance, still watching… but not interfering.
I opened a rift.
Mana rippled like broken glass, my blood-ink signature etched into the fold of space as the void screamed open.
One last breath.
One last memory of Tri and Douplo. Alpha, with his mask of a smiling moon.
Then I stepped through.
A new world awaited.
[Chapter &%^&&^]
(File Corrupted. Dimensional Transition Detected.)
[Dimensional Broadcast Detected]
NOTICE: You are now classified as a Level S Threat.
You are not wanted by the Justice Seekers for killing a member for no reason.
Judgment Rendered: Death by Justice.
Subject: Grey Walpurgis
Alias: #%%$#$###
Status: Exile. Enemy of Order.
[End.]
[Name]: [Grey Walpurgis]
[Species: Hollow Dreaded Jellyfish Demi-Human]
[Experience: 870,000,000 / 900,000,000]
[Level: 89]