The silence after the Hollow Resonance's demise was sacred, a quiet earned by shattered godhood. The Core of Self pulsed serenely in the air, its light a promise of power. Jade reached for it.
Reality screamed.
The air tore like parchment. The Core flickered. A System screen materialized, glitching, bleeding corruption.
{ VICTORY...acknowledged. Rewards calcu—[ERROR]—PARAMETERS EXCEEDED}
{ Bond Synergy: [UNRECORDED_VALUE]. Threat Assessment: [ANOMALY]}
{ ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE. Curator Protocol Engaged.}
The Curator's voice stabbed into their minds, sharp and urgent. "You have broken reality's template. The Fourth Floor is no longer a trial, it is a hunting ground. RUN—"
The voice cut off. The portal behind them shattered. The world dissolved into a vortex of screaming pressure, then—
Impact.
Jade's boots sank into warm, pulsing flesh. The ground was alive, pale, veined, and slick with acidic mucus that smoked against their soles. Above, a shattered moon hung in a crimson sky that throbbed like an infected heart. The air reeked of iron, roasted meat, and ozone.
{SYSTEM ALERT: [ERROR]}
{Floor 4: [DATA EXPUNGED]. Designation: The Hunting Grounds.}
{ Objective: [SURVIVE]. }
{ Warning: Sanctuary protocols offline. 24-hour reprieve revoked.}
The First Wave: Flesh-Hounds
Before Zero could speak, the ground convulsed. Fleshy bubbles swelled and burst, birthing nightmares. Flesh-Hounds, emaciated wolf-like shapes with translucent skin revealing squirming parasites within, erupted from the muck. No eyes, only weeping sockets. Vertical mouths lined with rotating needle-teeth ran down their bodies. They skittered forward in a jerky, insectoid rhythm.
The first lunged. Zero's blade whispered from its sheath. Not a swing, but a subtle Severance. The space before the creature unwound. The Hound's front third vanished—head, shoulders, leg—gone. The remains collapsed, twitching, as the hungry ground absorbed them.
Jade moved simultaneously. Two Hounds leaped at him. He dropped into his foundational sweep, scythe humming. The black star-iron blade didn't cut—it pulverized. The lead Hound shattered, exploding in a shower of gore and wriggling parasites that sizzled against the flesh-floor.
The Second Wave: The Wretched
But the ground kept convulsing. Shambling humanoid figures emerged—The Wretched. A Titan with marble skin cracked and weeping black tar, one arm mutated into a crushing stone claw. A Vampire, her beauty ravaged, fangs elongated into tusks, eyes wild with cannibalistic hunger. Behind them stumbled more—a Dragon-kin with broken wings dragging through the flesh, a Human mage with eyes replaced by glowing void-spheres.
The Titan pointed its claw, voice grinding with despair. "ESSENCE...! GIVE US YOUR ESSENCE...! OR BECOME PART OF THE GROUND WITH US!"
The fight turned brutal. The Titan's claw-slam cracked the earth where Jade had stood, the shockwave shuddering through them. The feral Vampire moved like a ghost, talons seeking to graze and drain their life force. The Dragon-kin belched acidic phlegm that ate into the ground, while the Void-eyed Mage began weaving chaotic energy.
Jade unleashed Obliterate—a concentrated blast that vaporized the Vampire mid-lunge. But the cost was immense. He gasped, feeling the crimson air suck the energy from his cells. Zero's movements, though still precise, were slower, his breath sharper. His Chinmoku stance required visible effort.
The Turning Tide
They stood back-to-back, surrounded by twitching Hound remains and the advancing Wretched. The Titan roared, charging again. Zero deflected its claw with a resonating clang, but the force drove him to one knee. Jade's scythe barely parried a second blow, the impact numbing his arms.
The Void-eyed Mage completed its spell. The air thickened into syrup, slowing their movements. The Dragon-kin lunged, broken wings beating erratically.
"Enough," Zero rasped. He abandoned defense, flowing into Tenbatsu Ryūdan. He became a phantom, his sheathed blade striking pressure points—the Mage's throat, the Dragon-kin's knee, the Titan's elbow. Each strike produced a sickening crunch. Not killing blows, but debilitating ones.
Jade capitalized. He moved through the slowed enemies like a reaper, his scythe a blur of efficient death. No flourishes, just precise, fatal arcs. The Mage fell, its void-eyes guttering out. The Dragon-kin collapsed, its acid blood pooling. Only the Titan remained, swinging wildly with its mutated claw.
Together, they finished it. Zero severed the claw at the wrist with a clean draw-cut. Jade's scythe took its head in the same motion.
The True Hunters Awaken
Silence returned, broken only by their ragged breaths and the sizzle of dissolving corpses. They stood victorious, but utterly drained. The crimson air felt heavier, their energy reserves critically low.
Then the ground trembled—not the small convulsions from before, but a deep, seismic shudder. In the distance, the jagged bone-spires piercing the horizon began to move. They weren't spires. They were limbs.
Enormous shapes pulled themselves from the flesh-plains. A Gore Behemoth, a mountain of interwoven bodies and pulsating organs, rose with a roar that shook the very sky. A Soul-Drinker Swarm, a cloud of shimmering, winged shadows that fed on life force, detached from a canyon of teeth in the distance and began moving toward them.
The true native predators of the Hunting Grounds had awakened. And they were hungry.
The hunt was on.