They jumped.
One by one, figures slipped over the cliff edge and vanished into the fog like shadows.
Eliza Park's coat flared behind her as gravity embraced her, wind howling past her ears. Her face remained unreadable, eyes narrowed against the white blur, her body cutting through the mist like a spear. Seconds passed like eternities, until the mist broke and the jagged terrain below came into view—an ocean of warped, cracked stone, glittering like scales under scattered sunlight.
She landed in a crouch, boots scraping against the ground, and stood with a breathless calm as the others descended around her.
Harper hit the ground next, knees bending, muttering a winded curse. "Do you always pick cliffs instead of doors, Liz?"
"Cheaper than elevators," Eliza replied, brushing dust off her gloves.
A third figure slammed into the ground with a soldier's precision—Mikhail, the silent Russian man mountain, adjusting his gun strap like it was just another Tuesday. Seth Wu tumbled down, rolling before springing up with a grin. "Ten out of ten landing. I stick it."
Kaede dropped last, the wind fluttering her pale-blue jacket as she scanned the terrain, glyph-laced gloves humming softly at her sides.
Ivana arrived not by fall, but impact.
Her armored boots cratered the earth when she landed, sending a shockwave that made pebbles skip. Her crimson braid whipped behind her like a war banner.
Harper glanced at the smoking spot beneath her feet. "Nice of you to make an entrance."
Ivana said nothing, her stoic face focused on the terrain below.
They stood on an uneven plateau, framed by jagged stone teeth that jutted from the ground like a fossilized monster's mouth. The mist clung to their ankles, and deeper still, the air smelled… old. Not musty. Ancient.
"So," Seth said, hands on hips, "where's the door? Trapdoor? Elevator button? Glowing rune? I'm open to anything that doesn't involve breaking my legs."
There was nothing obvious—just silent stone, contorted shapes half-swallowed by cracked soil and vine-like roots that moved slightly with the breeze.
Eliza walked forward, hands in pockets, her gaze dragging across the terrain. Deep in thought. Distant. Like someone chasing ghosts.
Harper frowned. She'd known Eliza too long to miss the signs.
"You're not telling us something."
"I told you what you needed," Eliza said, not looking back.
"No, you paid us what you needed," Harper corrected. "There's a difference."
The others stayed quiet, but they were listening.
Eliza didn't respond.
They spent the next few minutes fanning out, searching for anything that might resemble an entrance.
"Feels like this place's just... stone," Seth muttered. "No door. No magic signatures. Just rock."
Harper knelt near a particularly sharp outcropping. She ran a scanner across it—but it flickered, whined, then shut down.
"Something's not right," she murmured, placing her palm directly against the surface. It was warm.
"I thought this was just buried ruins," Kaede said quietly, approaching. "There's no mana field. Not even low-rank ambient pulses."
Harper turned to Eliza. "This terrain...... it's fake."
Eliza tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the rock formation isn't naturally formed. It's like… a shell. Something's under us."
Seth's eyes widened. "You saying we're standing on the roof?"
"Exactly."
Mikhail stepped beside Harper. "Then we need a way in."
Harper nodded. "But this crust is dense. I can't break it with tech alone. It's absorbing frequency."
Mikhail grunted. "We could rig a charge."
"Too loud.the Japanese bereau would pick up the signature in seconds."
That's when Ivana stepped forward.
She just walked past them, stopping at the flattest portion of the terrain. Her eyes studied it like it was a battlefield.
Harper blinked. "Uh, what're you—?"
Ivana inhaled once, cracked her knuckles—and then drove her fist into the earth.
The world answered with a scream.
The punch exploded downward with a thunderous boom, splitting the surface like shattering glass. Tremors ran through the plateau as the impact rippled in all directions. A red energy crackled from her knuckles, surging through the fracture like a pulse of divine wrath.
Chunks of stone blew away. A yawning void opened beneath their feet.
"Shit!" Harper shouted as the ground gave way.
"Ask me again when my spine regains feeling," Harper groaned as the fall ended, almost five hundred meters underground.
No alarms. No shifting gears. Just stone, thick air, and the eerie sound of dust settling.
The light came from faintly glowing lines carved into the walls—runes, symbols, writing. But none of it made sense at first glance.
And in the center, just beyond the statues, was a throne.
A child sat on it.
He looked no older than eight, his body still and pale, dressed in ancient robes. Dust covered his clothes, and his skin had a lifeless gray tone and his eyes were open.
No guards, no traps, not even dust. Just rows of carved stone, some cracked, others half-buried under vines except for the six statues surrounding them, two had no heads and the rest had holes in their chests where their hearts should be.
But what caught their attention wasn't the architecture.
It was the flowers.
Thousands of them.
They covered the entire courtyard, growing between slabs, sprouting from walls, even dangling from the ceiling above like ivy. Red, violet, pale blue—soft colors that shimmered faintly under the light.
Seth took a step back. "What the hell kind of art gallery is this?
"Don't get stupid," Ivana snapped.
Harper crouched beside a cluster, squinting at them. "They're not rooted. No stems. It's like they're just... sitting on the stone."
"That's not possible," Eliza said. She stepped ahead of the group, her long coat trailing behind her. Her face was unreadable as she looked around. "Spread out. Slowly.
Don't touch anything.
Harper shook her head and turned toward the walls. "I'll check the runes. Maybe they'll explain what this place is."
Kaede joined her, while the others began inspecting the statues.
Harper knelt by the wall and ran her scanner across the symbols.
The characters weren't just random—they were words. Foreign ones.
Japanese?
She tried to make sense of the first she saw.
"知識," she whispered. "Chishiki... I think that's knowledge. But..."
She frowned. The letters were backwards. Like a mirror reflection.
"Wait... this is reversed," she muttered. "Written from bottom to top and backwards. Like someone wanted to confuse us."
Kaede looked over her shoulder. "You read Japanese?"
Harper pointed. "What's this look like to you? Ignore the order. Just focus on the shapes."
"That looks like... '死'? Death?"
Harper nodded slowly. "Yeah. But see how it's placed? It's backwards, maybe even scrambled."
She began dragging her fingers across the stone, tracing more of the symbols.
Harper squinted. "Chishiki wa watashi no ikikata... I think that's something like, 'Knowledge is my way of life.'"
To touch death… to... understand?' Or... maybe 'To touch death with understanding.' I can't tell. The order is reversed and it loops."
Creepy.
Meanwhile, Eliza had taken two slow steps forward.
She wasn't listening to them. Her eyes were fixed on the creepy child seated on the throne like an undead king
There was something in the air around him. A whisper, just beyond hearing. A pull she couldn't explain, she tried to resist the invisible attraction but it felt like it came from a much powerful being above her rank.
"Eliza," Harper called. "Something's weird about these messages. I think this place is—"
"Mom! " Eliza said softly.
Harper didn't turn back, maybe she misheard her because of the echo
Mom!
She took another step toward the throne.
But Ivana moved first.
The mercenary stepped in front of Eliza, blocking her path with a firm hand on her shoulder.
Eliza didn't resist, but her eyes didn't leave the child
Ivana didn't move her hand. "Elizabeth, don't worry, help your friends get out first and leave safely my child."
Her breath caught in her throat as Ivana's voice echoed through the dim chamber, soft and haunting. "Elizabeth."
No one called her that. No one except her mother.
A strange chill ran down Eliza's spine. She turned slowly toward Ivana. The hardened mercenary stood tall and poised, yet something in her gaze had changed. Those sharp eyes—usually cold and calculating—now held a familiar warmth. A warmth Eliza hadn't seen in years.
In that moment, Eliza wasn't staring at her hired gun. She was staring into eyes that mirrored Virele's.
"Why... why did you call me that?
Ivana stepped closer, her hand rising gently to cup Eliza's cheek. "You've done well," she said, her voice impossibly soft, almost reverent.
Eliza's knees buckled. The words struck her like a blade to the chest. "Mom?" she breathed.
Her mind reeled. The one she had tried so desperately to resurrect. The reason she poured billions into these expeditions. Virele—her mother—who vanished without a trace years ago, only for her corpse to be found in a ruined wasteland no one could explain. A powerhouse beyond the SSS rank. A black-ranked existence. The strongest... and yet, even she had fallen.
Tears welled in Eliza's eyes. Her arms moved on their own, wrapping tightly around Ivana. The embrace was warm, grounding, yet laced with a surreal tension.
"Please don't leave again," she whispered, clutching her as though she'd vanish if she let go.
Then, everything shattered.
"What the heck are you doing, Eliza?" Ivana's voice snapped—harsher, grounded, real.
Eliza pulled back instantly.
Ivana was staring at her, bewildered. The warmth was gone. The glint in her eyes had faded. Just like that, the illusion vanished, leaving behind the soldier she knew.
Eliza's heart pounded. Her mind swirled with confusion and dread. Had she imagined it? Hallucinated? But it felt too real—too precise. The name, the words, the voice.
Her breath grew shaky. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
She turned abruptly. "Harper!" she called.
Harper blinked, startled.
"What do the inscriptions say again?" Eliza asked, her voice urgent now.
Harper glanced at his tablet, then recited,
(To touch death with understanding, knowledge is my way of life)
Eliza's blood ran cold. She stood frozen for a heartbeat, then took a step back, her voice rising. "We have to get out. Now."
Before her foot touched the ground again, Ivana stepped into her path. "Why?" she demanded, "We just got here."
"I'll explain later!" Eliza hissed. "But we need to leave. This place… it's connected to her death."
That got their attention.
The mercenaries looked up from their idle positions, confused but alert. Harper stood slowly, his gaze shifting from Eliza to the walls.
"I saw her," Eliza continued, voice shaking. "My mother. I think… I think she warned me."
Ivana narrowed her eyes. "You're saying Virele? That Virele showed up here?"
A heavy silence settled. Everyone in the chamber had heard stories about Virele—one of the strongest beings in history. A black-ranked powerhouse who terrified even the SSS-class elites. Her disappearance had shaken the world, and when her corpse was discovered, surrounded by ruins eerily similar to this, no answers followed—only fear.
If she was afraid of this place
"But we haven't even—" kaede began.
"I don't care," Eliza snapped. "This place killed her. I thought I could find a clue about resurrection… maybe even find a way to bring her back. But this place isn't what I thought it was.
Ivana glanced at the walls, her grip tightening on her weapon. "Alright. Everyone, prep to move out. Now."
And if Virele's warning was real, then whatever had taken her life still lingered... and now it knew Eliza had come.
Heat passed through the ruins like a gust from a furnace. The ground trembled. Somewhere deep below, a muffled whoosh echoed upward.
And then, the flowers lifted.
They simply rose, slowly, like balloons filled with air, drifting upward and spinning in slow circles.
"What the hell...?" whispered Harper.
A second flower brushed against seth's arm.
He jerked back, but it was too late. The petals sank through his skin like water into cloth.
He gasped, then screamed.
Seth dropped to one knee, clutching his arm. A faint bulge pushed against the skin—then another, this time near his shoulder.
And then the same species of flowers started emerging from his skin like it was fertile soil
One pushed through his arm like it was growing through dirt. His skin split open, blood pouring out as the petals opened wide.
Seth screamed again—but it cut short as a stalk tore up his throat and out through his mouth.
Harper rushed to seth
The team scattered. Ivana slashed at the drifting flowers with her blade, sharp and fast. A few she cut clean in half—but most kept floating, unaffected.
Mikhail fired his rifle but a flower landed on his chest.
He panicked, clawing at it, but it sank through his armor, into his skin.
The flowers bloomed from his chest, his ribs, his arms.
The explosion was sudden and wet. Blood sprayed across the stone floor. His limbs fell apart, buried in vines and petals.
The flowers floated around her, circling like moths near a lantern—but never touching her. Not one.
Everyone stood frozen.
"Fall back!"
The youngster on the throne shifted abruptly, his fingers brushing hard against the granite throne and breaking it, and everyone felt compelled to kneel.
Fuck! Can't move.
A+ ranked warriors like Ivana felt it instantly.
If this kid was not a deity, it was undoubtedly a powerhouse that went beyond black ranking since no one could stop the oppressive killing intent that was flowing from it.
The moment the flame fully bloomed, its pressure swept across the battlefield like a tidal wave tearing apart even the flowers
Eliza's heart pounded, her lungs tightening just standing near it.
If this kept up, low-ranking powerhouses like Harper and even Eliza would perish in a matter of minutes; their skins were already clearly burning under the hot red flame and appeared to be melting.
Ivana's aura flared violently instantly
From her back, a searing blue flame erupted—coiling like a dragon, dancing like wind on a blade.
Fuck!
At the height of their affinity level (A-) or (B-), Kaede were all powerful men whose strength outweighed the effect of a ballistic missile, also known as ballistic firepower warlords. They would undoubtedly be able to handle a S rank great warlord when combined with Ivana's greatest power, but their presence seemed much stronger.
The dragon behind her grew larger, spiraling skyward like a heavenly beast breaking free of mortal shackles.
For a moment, it looked like a star had descended to oppose the darkness.
The child on the throne finally shifted, like a demon waking up from slumber, he stared at the figures below him, then snapped his fingers.
The red flame above his palm detonated into a sea of serpents, each one shrieking like tortured souls as they lunged at Ivana —thousands of fire snakes binding together into a colossal spiral spear of destruction
Go back to hell
Hmm! Useless mortals
Ivana instantly fell out of the sky like she had never been there
The red flame pierced through the blue dragon's skull.
The child got up from the throne, he raised his hand and waved it.
For a brief period, not only was there no light or oxygen to breathe, but the sun had also given way to darkness, making it seem as though the entire planet had been annihilated.
The entire ruin was totally demolished.
There are more than eight billion individuals on the planet, yet none of them possess the audacity to come to me. However, it appears that the Virele family is the most intelligent in the world— your mother, and then you
Hehehe