Chapter 264 263. Rank-SSS Gate.

(AN: Isha illustration in ch 262: Promise.)

***

I felt weak, like a bottom feeder, the longer I stood in this dungeon the weaker I felt, that was a feeling I hadn't felt in a long time, and there was something eerie, a bit too eerie, about this dungeon, and it was making me tremble, not in excitement but in fear.

"Hahaha...f**k."

"!!" I snapped my head back to where I felt a presence walking towards me,

"Hey, who is..." A strange man's low mumbled sounded behind me, and I recognised that voice; it was the same voice that "ordered" me to move before entering the gate, into this dungeon. And,

BAM

I punched at his head as soon as he entered the 10-foot distance and heard the sound of his head splattering. A total of 19 people entered the gate except me, so I walked straight back to the direction where the gate was previously, since I had yet to take out eighteen more.

*

After a while.

"10 more to go..." I mumbled under my breath while moving alerted. 'Wait! Should I use wind magic? Is there any wind elemental property mana in the surroundings? There should be, right? Since it is a smoke cloud...' I thought inwardly and manipulated the aether to collect the wind elemental property mana from the surroundings after putting an aether barrier on myself.

'If only my authority of "The Order" didn't disappear...' I grumbled in my mind, because only recently, when I tried to use that authority, I realise that I couldn't use it anymore and it had disappeared. How? What? And why? Even I didn't know, but I wasn't able to use it anymore. I was slightly disappointed because I was able to use mana without using aether or anything, but now I have to go through the slightly troublesome process of manipulating the aether to get the same result.

"Haaaa..." I sighed.

FTHUUOOOO

"!!!" I jerked to the side in surprise when I felt something fast coming at me, and

TING

With a ting, the poison needle or something similar crashed against the aether barrier and fell on the ground before disappearing without a trace. 'Damn, what the f**k?' I cursed inwardly and lowered the sound of my breathing and heartbeat.

WHOOOSH

Without thinking of anything else, I zoomed towards the direction that something came from, and after half an hour of dashing straight, I found myself in front of a pile of bodies that I recognised as those who came with me, and surrounding those bodies were ten horrifying things that seemed like clowns, no, they were clowns.

I felt horrified when all of them abruptly snapped their heads to face me with a smiling masks on their faces.

'Damn, clowns are terrifying as always....' I muttered in my mind and took a step forward, disappeared, and reappeared behind a clown that held a hatchet and punched down at it, and,

BOOM!

The smoke cloud flickered and stabilised itself when my fist landed on the ground, and all the clowns that surrounded the dead bodies disappeared as if they didn't exist as soon as I punched at it. Baffled by the predicament, I jumped to the side and gazed at the spot where I stood, hoping that something from the smoke would attack and I could grab hold of it.

"...."

But even after a few minutes, absolutely nothing happened, baffling me even more.

'What was that?' I squinted my eyes as I gazed around, finding absolutely nothing, and it has been around five minutes since I began to gather wind elemental property mana from the surroundings, and only now has it reached the acceptable amount.

'Too long....' I mumbled in my mind and gathered everything beneath my right foot, which I raised in the air.

'Tempest stomp!'

BAM

WHOOOOMMM

A massive ripple, a ring of wind pressure, shot out from my feet, pushing and carrying the thick black smoke, clearing the area of 100-meter distance. And then I saw 45 disgusting-looking creatures, flying around mid-air with greyish translucent bat wings, spreading black coloured smoke out of nowhere.

They were a metre-large blobs, a circular mass of something disgusting; it had some gooey substance coming down from the side that faced the ground; they had many mouths covering their entire bodies; and they had two branch-like horns protruding out on their heads or bottoms. I didn't understand properly since it was simply a blob with a sh*t load of mouths.

Since they had a tonne of mouths, they could scream and alert the other monsters, which would be bad for me, so 'Ring of Extinction.' I mumbled in my mind, and the ring, that appeared on my left ring finger that day when I cut through a black hole, widened and floated mid-air above my head; it was about 2-metres wide circle, and by the next instance the ring simply shot out without making any sound as it cut through matter and shrunk back into a small ring and fixed itself back on my left ring finger, turning invisible again.

SPLURT

SPLATTER

Everything happened before even a second had passed, and the disgusting flying creatures were dead on the ground with their bodies cut in half, leaking yellowish liquid that seemed to be their blood.

'Ummm...on second thought, should I empty my stomach before going in? Because I think I'm going to hurl.' I thought inwardly.

*

I felt disgusted by the yellowish liquid that came out of the blobs whenever they were killed, but since I couldn't do anything about it except kill them, I kept moving on. There were quite a few things I found out about the fog, which I named "Curtain of Nightmares," because it's exactly what you would expect when you hear the name: the fog creates illusions of what you fear or hate the most come true, and the bodies I saw earlier were the remaining ten people I was searching for. And NO, I am not scared of clowns..... Ok, just a little bit. They are terrifying, okay! If you like clowns, then stay away from me! Hmph.

Ahem, that got a bit personal.

Anyway, I killed 163 of those blobs. I don't know if they were weak or if the ring I have is too strong, but I killed that many. I didn't test for any other ways of killing them because they were a bit too disgusting for my liking.

"When does it end?" I mumbled under my breath, and

FTHUUOOOO!!

TING

'Ah, I forgot about this....' That thing, whatever that is, would shoot out every time I made any sound from my mouth....mouth? Is there some sort of connection between the mouths? And why a mouth?

"Aaa...."

FTHUUOOOO!!

TING

'Hmmm.....'

BAM!

I raised my right leg and slammed it on the ground, but this time there was no attack, so I understood that it did have something to do with mouths; though slightly creepy, I ignored it and walked in the direction from which these needle-like things were coming.

*

After an hour of walking straight, I arrived in front of a massive door that screamed "boss room." It was at least 50 meters tall and maybe 5 meters thick; there were strange witchcraft-like patterns on it, and in the middle, a small cauldron with a strange smoke coming out of it was imprinted on the massive door.

'Maybe that's the black smoke.' I thought inwardly.

I walked towards the door and placed my hand on it to push it, but I shuddered in fear as soon as I placed my hand on it. My face muscles twitched as my whole body trembled as I felt a chill run down to my very core, and as soon as I realised that I was scared, I subconsciously grinned widely.

"Fuuu...." I took a deep breath and exhaled.

WWWOOOOOIIIIIIINNNNNGGGGGHHH

With an ear-deafening screech, the door dragged on the ground, making me stop pushing the door. I massaged my ears for a few minutes before the "beep" sound in my mind halted, employed aether to cover my ears, and pushed the door again, but this time I heard no noises thanks to the aether, but the vibration cruising through the door into my hands was a bit too much.

And a thick cloud of dust covered my sight as I walked into the boss room, slightly trembling. I waved my hand in front of my face to make room for breathing. A second later, I got irritated by how much smoke there was and flung my left hand diagonally upward to clear out the dust cloud in front of me.

And my entire body stiffened as soon as my gaze landed on the tall, faceless, slim black mannequin figure that sat on a huge throne wearing a black suit, whose luxury seemed out of this world. Though the suit was great, that wasn't what grabbed my attention; no, it did actually, and I mean seriously. Ahem, there was a black cloud of smoke surrounding the huge mannequin figure, more dense than the one I saw outside.

The figure was easily 50 metres tall, even while sitting cross-legged. It had rested its faceless head on its right wrist while resting its right elbow on the armrest, similar to how I sit on my black throne in my domain, but a lot, lot more menacing. It abruptly moved, albeit slowly, but even that moment was enough to make me shudder.

It simply pointed its right index finger at me while I stood completely tensed, on guard. Then slowly, the thick black smoke around it moved towards its right arm, covering its palm completely before growing back towards its shoulder like a tree root, expanding forward and forming long claws that seemed approximately as long as a small aeroplane, or 10 metres long, and then the figure slowly floated up, standing straight.

"Goddamn, it's tall." I mumbled under my breath involuntarily as I gazed up at the 120-meter towering figure, but the figure abruptly froze when I spoke.... Ah! It has no mouth!

'Ah, I f**ked up....' I muttered in my mind at the revelation, and the smoke that was slowly covering the figure's entire body abruptly began to move faster, and though it had no face, I could tell that it was pissed off just from the killing intent that was oozing out of it.

'No!!! Stop! You don't have eyes, nose, and ears too!!! Why are you getting mad? No, maybe it has ears since it is hearing my words!'

Rooty wings, arms, claws, and legs—everything was formed by the black smoke that covered everything since the moment I entered this dungeon. (AN: Image)

FTHUUOOOO!!

TING

"Aw sh*t."

FTHUUOOOO! (5x)

TING (10x)

.....

...

***

(AN: Hello people, this chapter will mark the end of vol.3 Destruction. And the new chapter(s) will come on Sunday.)