We stepped through the gate, and immediately, everything was… wrong.
It wasn't dark or ominous like the stories made it out to be. No oppressive miasma or suffocating Mana pressing down on my chest. Instead, it was eerily bright, almost too bright, with a strange violet light shimmering across the landscape.
The ground beneath our feet wasn't dirt or stone—it was like a living surface, pulsating faintly, as if the world itself was breathing. I expected monsters to leap out at any second, but all I saw were shadows moving in the distance, too quick to make out shapes.
This wasn't a battlefield. It was something else… something alive.
I looked at Theo. He narrowed his eyes, taking in the unnatural glow. "Yeah… this is not what I was expecting either," he muttered.
And that's when I realized: the gate didn't just transport you somewhere dangerous. It transported you somewhere… different. Something beyond normal danger. Something that made every instinct scream that we weren't just stepping into a fight—we were stepping into a living puzzle.
"Shit! Something's wrong! Why did it have to appear here of all places?!" Lucas shouted, his voice cracking as sweat ran down his temples.
"What are you talking about, sir?" a student asked nervously, eyes wide.
"We're all gonna die," Lucas said, his tone deadly serious. "We need to pray we don't encounter the boss of this gate… or it's over for us."
He ran both hands through his gray hair, tugging at it in frustration. "This… this is a crazy gate. Far from any normal one we've seen before."
The air grew heavier as we all realized the weight of his words. Something about this gate wasn't just dangerous—it was unnatural.
A crazy gate.
"It's a gate full of all kinds of crazy things," Lucas continued, voice tense. "You won't find a cave crawling with man-eating monsters here… but it will have landscapes like this—beautiful, serene, almost peaceful. And that's the worst part."
He paused, letting the words sink in. "All the monsters' stats… they're tripled. Tripled from normal. If this was supposed to be a C-grade gate, it's more like an S-grade… maybe even Star-tier."
A shiver ran down everyone's spine. What looked like paradise could very well be a death trap.
"It was Death Island," another student said.
"Huh," Lucas said, looking scared and puzzled. To think that the stern, scarred, and normally intimidating man could be this rattled.
"Death Island is a gate that's filled with S-grade monsters," Oscar Chiron continued, his voice tense, "and the boss… it's said to be Star Tier. My sponsor confirmed it."
The surrounding students went silent. Whispers of disbelief and fear buzzed through the group like a storm. Even the normally unshakable A-grade slayers exchanged uneasy glances. Lucas's hand tightened on his staff, sweat forming at his brow. The name Death Island wasn't just a gate—it was a legend of carnage, a place where even seasoned slayers had been rumored to vanish without a trace.
I felt a thrill run down his spine. 'Perfect' i
thought. If this gate lived up to its name, it might just be the kind of chaos I'd been waiting for.
KREEEEEIIIIK!!!
HAHA!!
The sounds ripped through the air, loud enough to shake the ground beneath our feet. The laughter that followed the KREEEEEIIIIK was bone-chilling, echoing across the landscape like the voice of some merciless predator. Every student around instinctively dropped to their knees, faces pale, hearts hammering. Pure, unfiltered fear.
Then the ground thumped. Heavy, deliberate thumps that made the soil quake. A shadow loomed over us, massive and grotesque. It was a giant. Not just any giant—but one whose presence screamed death. The air itself seemed to vibrate with its steps, and even Lucas, the normally composed A-grade slayer, staggered back a few paces.
It looked like an ogre. No—worse. It was a giant ogre.
Screams erupted from everyone around. Even Theo, my normally grinning, joking friend, was screaming like a child. I, however, was frozen in place. Fear rooted me to the ground, clawing at my chest, making it feel like my heart would burst—or that I might just seize right there.
The giant ogre raised its weapon. A massive metal club, covered in jagged thorns spiraling down its length, glinted ominously in the dim light. Every instinct screamed at me to move—but it swung the club straight toward me, slicing through the air with a force that made the wind itself scream.
Lucas came dashing toward me like a blur, his movements sharp and calculated. Before I could even blink, he grabbed me by the waist and slung me over his shoulder with a grunt.
"If you die here, you might not awaken," he said, his voice low but stern, almost like a command.
Huh? Awaken?
When did he—
Before I could finish the thought, he cut in, his tone flat but knowing.
"I know that's why you came. No normal person would walk into a gate just to support a friend or to see it for themselves."
He didn't even look at me as he spoke, eyes scanning the field like a war veteran who'd seen this scene a thousand times before. The air around us vibrated with mana and terror, and for a moment, I couldn't tell if I was trembling from fear… or anticipation.
And then the ogre came charging, each step pounding the ground with impossible force. Its size and speed defied reason—like the laws of the world bent just for it.
The A-grade slayers that had come with Lucas immediately sprang into action, engaging the monstrosity with precision and deadly intent. There were five of them in total, including Lucas himself. While they fought, Lucas focused on evacuating the students to a safe distance. No one could leave a Crazy Grade gate until it was cleared—a brutal disadvantage of these high-tier gates.
One of the A-grade slayers, a mage, floated effortlessly into the air, her robes fluttering like wind-chased leaves. She raised her hands, her eyes glowing with arcane power, and shouted:
"Ice Flare!"
A blinding torrent of blue-white energy shot toward the ogre, crackling and freezing the very air in its path. The ground around the impact point shattered into jagged shards of ice, sending shards scattering like deadly spears. Freezing the ogre in place.
She then summoned another spell. "Hell Flame!"
A roaring ball of fire erupted in her hands and shot straight toward the ogre's massive head. But the ogre barely flinched—it raised its forearm and blocked the attack with ease. The air shook as the force of the fire slammed against its arm.
With a deafening roar, the ogre swung its thorned metal club. The frozen mage didn't even have time to react—one brutal strike, and she was gone, split clean in half.
The other A-grade slayers continued their attacks, but it was hopeless. One by one, they fell, their skills and strength no match for the sheer raw power of the beast. The battle was descending into carnage, and it seemed as though nothing could stop the ogre.
"Sword… Grace of Disaster!" a slayer with a sword shouted, his voice slicing through the chaos. The A-rank slayer swung his blade with every ounce of precision he had, the tip glowing faintly with his own mana. Time seemed to slow as the sword arced upward, following a perfect trajectory he had calculated from the ogre's movements.
The club-wielding beast had been distracted for just a heartbeat, overcommitting to its previous strike. Using that tiny opening, the slayer leapt with incredible agility, the momentum from his swing amplified by the edge of the mana coursing through the blade. The sword bit into the ogre's midsection with a wet, echoing crunch, cutting through sinew and bone as if it were nothing more than paper.
The giant let out a final, ear-splitting roar before toppling to the ground, split in two. The battlefield fell silent for a brief heartbeat, but the terror wasn't over—the rules of a Crazy-grade gate were cruel: only two monsters existed. The minion was gone, but the boss still lurked, waiting in the shadows.
Only 2 slayers left. And the Star tier boss. how would they handle such a monster if they struggled with a mere minion.
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