The Red Arena.
The crimson one was staring intently at the fracture where the man in black had vanished.
Zero hesitated.
The crimson figure, who until a moment ago had eyes only for the man in black, had just turned his head toward the torn opening into which the man had been sucked.
Sliiit.
One side of his raw, ulcerated mouth peeled upward into a distorted grin.
The entity that had been trampling over the Users like a swarm of ants no longer spared them a single glance. He simply took a step toward the newly formed rift.
One step, and then the next.
And then, he was swallowed into the beyond.
"....."
Left behind in the clearing where the two had been clashing just moments ago were nothing but a warped field and the cooling corpses of the Users.
—
...
The chat window, which had been rising without a single line of pause, fell into a dead silence for that lone, brief instant when they both vanished.
• • •
"This place is..."
In the span of a single breath, the world had completely changed.
The wall behind his back warped inward once, vomiting him—Dong Bong-soo—out into the exterior.
A dark, empty world resembling deep space. There was no distinct place to set one's feet.
There was neither an upside nor a downside. Neither the blood-red energy he had received from the Demon Lord of Destruction nor the twisted energy the Kirin had dragged in could follow him here; their connection had been cleanly severed.
He had thought he might crash into something, but he hit nothing at all.
He was simply floating.
Whether he was drifting like this because he had reached a gravitational equilibrium or because of a completely new set of physical laws unique to this space, he could not tell.
'It is likely the latter.'
Because he had absolutely no trouble breathing. To be precise, it felt closer to the sensation of being completely fine without even needing to breathe.
Dong Bong-soo quietly surveyed his surroundings.
A pitch-black space. It wasn't black because of an absence of light, but because nothing had been designated to be colored into it in the first place.
Though it could not be precisely described through mere senses alone, it felt closest to something left half-built.
Far off in the empty void, a single mountainside floated sideways. It was a mountain with only half its slope drawn.
One side of the ridge was fully rendered with color, while the rest remained as mere wireframe outlines, allowing the void beyond to show clean through. Beside it, a single section of a castle wall drifted past. It was a surface where the stone textures were only about half-applied.
A tree stripped entirely of leaves floated upside down, and a few buildings with only their outer lines sketched and their interiors left completely hollow drifted along without any weight.
None of it was confined to any specific place. They simply drifted.
Tiring—.
A brief notification rang inside his perception. Distorted letters materialized along one side of his vision before scattering away.
It belonged to neither New Murim Online nor What Is Hero.
It was the third channel. The same system that had dragged the Kirin into its domain and swapped out the valley terrain.
The characters were completely crushed and unreadable.
However, that was of little importance. It merely proved that even here, the system was still functioning, albeit in a broken state.
'Interesting.'
Before he was a predator, Dong Bong-soo was fundamentally a human being.
Curiosity is a human instinct that no one can suppress. And he believed he had driven closer to the absolute origin of these worlds.
The origin—something he did not yet fully comprehend.
Yet, he had encountered this type of space once before.
On the day he had absorbed the Fire Spiritual Root into his dantian, the system had ultimately failed to contain it, pushing him across the channel into that infinite space of white intent.
While that place had seen mountain ranges and rivers molded from the flesh of pure intent, this location was distinctly a place of a much higher dimension, despite the similarities.
Perhaps it was a tunnel that connected all existing worlds.
A primal cradle where all sorts of physical laws, the martial arts of the Murim, or perhaps even the laws and definitions of magic that might exist elsewhere naturally generated.
Drift.
Lightly deploying his Super True Energy Field to move, he casually brushed against one of the drifting mountainsides. Where his fingertips made contact, the half-drawn slope rippled like a gentle wave before settling back down.
There was no weight. There was nothing to block him. Atop his Super True Energy Field, which naturally deflected anything it touched, the half-built mountain slid sideways like a sheet of paper.
The physics here differed in many ways from those of the real world. As if a different physics engine was being applied from one moment to the next, the velocity and movement themselves were entirely unpredictable.
This was undeniably a place whose texture was fundamentally distinct from either of the two Murim realities or the game-like space he had just departed.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been worth exploring step by step to gauge what kind of entities inhabited it and what phenomena occurred here.
But right now, he did not have that luxury, and more fundamentally...
There was no prey in this vicinity.
It wasn't that they were hidden; they simply did not exist. No matter how widely he deployed and extended his Super True Energy Field, not a single trace of biological life could be detected.
The buildings left as mere outlines and the leafless trees merely drifted without weight, completely devoid of any sense of true reality.
They were things that would offer absolutely no resistance to his hand even if he were to cut through them.
They were fundamentally no different from the swarm of Users that had clogged the valley of that other world just moments ago.
Since his [Stats] was already completely maxed out, there was nothing left for him to gain to become any stronger here. This was a place where there was nothing left to cut, and nothing left to be cut by.
Therefore, the primary purpose of this place had now become crystal clear.
A graveyard.
The first graveyard.
"..."
Dong Bong-soo came to a halt where he floated. He then simply waited, letting one hand hang loosely at his side.
The rift in space through which he had entered remained unhealed. The fractured line remained split wide open without being mended, and beyond that crack, he could sense the presence of a familiar presence drawing near.
Crack—.
The fracture tore open a span wider.
Through the gap, a single crimson figure forced his way inside. His ulcerated mouth was stretched long and high into a manic grin on one side.
His face looked exactly like someone who had tracked his prey right into the hiding spot it had chosen for itself, finally entering a domain where only the two of them remained.
In a way, it was a face that looked like an externalization of Dong Bong-soo's own inner self.
The crucial difference was that Dong Bong-soo didn't let a single trace of that show on his countenance.
"You hid yourself in a fine place."
The voice struck the pitch-black void, diffusing in all directions without a fixed source.
This alone was evidence that the physical laws of this space were completely different from outer space.
It was proof that despite appearing to lack a medium, a medium of some sort did exist.
Energies that required a medium to travel, such as the Super True Energy Field or acoustic waves, propagated completely at will along an invisible substrate.
It was simply that the speed and the nature of those interactions were entirely abnormal.
Dong Bong-soo quietly calculated and etched the forms of these atypical physical laws and engines into his mind.
"....."
Only the two of them floated within the empty void.
"Heheh. Well, fine. Somehow, thanks to you, I'm getting to see a whole lot of different worlds."
The Demon Lord of Destruction intently scrutinized the unresponsive Dong Bong-soo. When no answer came, he lightly swept his gaze over their surroundings.
"I can't tell if this is the interior of an unfinished formation, or a collateral branch of the Heavenly Realm, but....."
Crack, snap.
The Demon Lord of Destruction twisted his neck and wrists side to side, flickering his snake-like tongue.
"Well, it doesn't matter. After all, as long as I have you, that's all that matters to me."
The Demon Lord straightened his tilted head. His twisting wrists fell still.
"If you keep your mouth shut and don't even strike back, it really spoils the fun, doesn't it? Huh?"
His torn mouth pulled back even further on one side. Then, the trace of amusement vanished completely from his face.
"So from this point on, I'll start taking this a bit more seriously too."
The man dropped his arms loosely to his sides and let his head fall forward.
At first, nothing happened. There was only a single crimson figure floating in the void with his head bowed.
Thump.
Then, the man's body buckled outward once.
Beneath the skin, something bloated thickly, forcing the human silhouette outward from within.
A dark, murky substance began to seep through the split flesh. Instead of dripping down, it billowed upward.
This was a place where weight did not function, after all.
Creeeeak.
The sound of bones shifting and resetting echoed from deep within the man. His shoulders broadened by another inch, and his back hunched forward.
Crack, crackle.
Step by step, he was deviating from the human form.
And from that body, an immense energy began to surge forth.
No, to say it surged was entirely inadequate. It driven outward in all directions.
With the man at the absolute center, a dark-red energy formed a circular band and expanded outward, causing the pitch-black void to violently shudder wherever it touched.
Gwoooooong—.
Far in the distance, the half-drawn mountainside that was floating sideways was caught in the tremor and violently driven to one side.
The tree that had been floating upside down without any leaves was flipped entirely by its roots.
A few buildings that were only wireframe outlines collided with one another as they were pushed weightlessly away, blurring their contours.
The fragments of a half-built world were swept away, completely incomplete.
The energy did not halt there.
Tjiiik—
The fractured line through which Dong Bong-soo had broken in tore even longer in the distance.
Even the very line that this space maintained as its boundary could not withstand the energy radiating from the man's body and screamed under the tension.
A crimson light overlaid him entirely from his feet to the crown of his head.
Patterns resembling veins tracing up his skin bulged outward, engorged with the inner light.
Beneath that radiance, his ulcerated flesh conversely appeared incredibly dense and solid.
The man lifted his bowed head.
His upturned eyes burned a brilliant, molten red, gleaming intensely. It was a light that had grown a layer deeper.
"Now this is a bit better."
The low, sunken voice struck the pitch-black void, diffusing in all directions without a fixed source.
The loose, mocking cadence from before was gone, replaced by a voice of an entirely different weight.
"I rarely ever have a reason to bring this out. It's thanks to you."
Dong Bong-soo silently observed the transformation.
Tiring—.
A warning flashed again across his vision.
[ A-A-A... An enemy with a level difference of 10 or more than yours has approached within 20 meters... K-k-k-k... ]
[ S-s-zzzz... Target's threat level... c-crack... is being r-reassessed... s-ZZZ... ]
The system repeatedly cut off and reconnected as it belatedly tried to keep track.
Pressed hard under the densified demonic qi, the messages crackled wildly, unable to fully maintain their form.
More importantly, a completely new pattern of mechanical static had been added to the audio loop.
Simultaneously, the Super True Energy Field read the man's body once more.
The rate at which the demonic energy was swelling beneath his skin had completely changed.
Through the [Eye of Faith], the layers wrapped over his flesh materialized again. A blood-red shroud that didn't let a single strand of demonic energy leak out. And its contents could be read quite clearly now.
Except...
He could not see the bottom.
The bottom of this bastard, which had been difficult to measure properly even a moment ago, had now receded even further.
It wasn't a matter of the amount he had filled; it was the type where the vessel itself expanded without any visible end.
A vessel without a bottom, filling back up no matter how much was drawn from it.
That was precisely the nature of the Demon Lord of Destruction's dantian.
"It's that thing again. You were clearly right here, but then you weren't. Are those your eyes and hands?"
The Demon Lord of Destruction held out his hand, opening his fingers as if he had grasped at an illusion and let it slip away.
The bastard snickered directly at it.
"Have you scanned it all? If you're done looking, we should start again, shouldn't we? Huh?"
The tail end of his laughter snapped shut instantly.
"This time, it's definitely going to be much more entertaining. Because this particular thing is something I've been saving like hell."
Behind the man's back, something dark-red soared upward.
Swelling into a dome at his rear, it began to boil with a substance that was neither light nor darkness.
The patterns etched into his skin flashed simultaneously as they drank in the demonic qi.
"Khehehe."
The bastard's pupils dilated to their absolute limit, and within them, the stark black pupils—devoid of any whites—began to divide into minute fractures like cells multiplying.