Using vitality collapse on them, the reaction was immediate!

There was no outward flash at first, no warning pulse or dramatic buildup. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the SS-Ranked mantises simply froze, their bodies locking as if something inside them had been violently inverted.

Then their vitality collapsed.

It didn't leak out.

It detonated.

Abyssal light erupted from within their bodies as if miniature suns had been ignited inside living shells. Cracks raced across their exoskeletons from the inside out, glowing white-hot before the chitin failed entirely. The mantises burst apart in a catastrophic chain reaction, their cores rupturing simultaneously as compressed vitality converted into raw annihilation.

The dungeon screamed.

A sphere of destruction expanded outward at impossible speed, swallowing everything in its path. Heat surged violently, climbing past forty thousand degrees, then higher, until it peaked at nearly fifty thousand degrees Celsius. The ground didn't crack.

It ceased to exist.

Stone vaporized instantly, turning into incandescent plasma that was swept outward by the expanding shockwave. The dungeon floor was flash-scorched into smooth, glasslike slag as the explosion rolled across it, leaving behind nothing but glowing ruin.

Bruce was hit head-on.

The blast slammed into him like a god's hammer, tearing him from the air and hurling his body backward with overwhelming force. His clothes didn't burn, they were erased, reduced to drifting ash in less than a millisecond. His hair ignited instantly, black strands turning to cinders as the heat devoured everything unprotected.

Even Bruce would have been gone in that instant.

Instant incineration.

No body. No ash. Nothing.

If not for his Heal.

Golden-white restoration surged violently through his body, layers of regenerative energy clashing directly against the inferno engulfing him. Flesh charred and regenerated simultaneously, skin burning away only to reform again in the same breath. Blood boiled, then stabilized. Bones glowed faintly red under the strain before being reinforced again and again by his god-class healer authority.

Pain existed, but only for a fraction of a thought.

The heat wave kept expanding.

Every remaining S-Ranked mantis still alive and corpses was erased instantly. Their thick, reinforced chitin, normally capable of withstanding artillery-level impacts, offered absolutely no resistance. At fifty thousand degrees, their durability was meaningless. Their bodies were flash-incinerated mid-motion, reduced to drifting particles of superheated matter before their instincts could even register death.

Plant life didn't burn.

It vanished.

Roots, spores, fungi, mana-infused growth, everything organic within the dungeon was annihilated in the same instant, the explosion spreading unimpeded to the very edges of the pocket space. The entire dungeon was scoured clean, reduced to a glowing, lifeless wasteland of molten stone and vaporized remains.

Bruce was still airborne.

'I've never used Vitality Collapse on SS-Ranked beasts before…'

The thought surfaced calmly even as the world burned around him.

'But with the vitality of creatures at that level... and with me using it on multiple SS-Ranked targets at once…'

Another shockwave hit him.

It wasn't the initial blast, it was the secondary expansion, the accumulated heat and pressure finally catching up. The explosion swallowed him whole, a roaring wall of incandescent destruction that eclipsed his vision entirely and carried him across the dungeon like a leaf in a hurricane.

'…this level of destruction was inevitable.'

Heal continued to roar within him, his Ex-Class authority forcing his existence to persist despite conditions that should not have allowed life in any form. His body was flayed by heat, rebuilt, torn again, then restored, over and over, each cycle completed in less time than a heartbeat.

For a moment,

Only fire existed.

Only annihilation.

The explosion expanded until it reached the absolute limits of the dungeon, crashing against spatial boundaries with a deafening, reality-warping roar. Mana turbulence surged wildly as the pocket space strained to contain the catastrophe unfolding within it.

And at the center of it all,

Bruce was still alive.

Burned. Bare. Suspended mid-air.

Watching the end of the dungeon rush toward him in a tide of fire and light.

Soon, the firestorm finally passed.

What remained was silence.

Bruce's body hit the ground hard, skidding across scorched stone before rolling to a stop. For a moment, he didn't move. Heat haze still warped the air, and faint embers drifted down like dying stars. The dungeon around him no longer resembled a living space, it was a dead, hollowed shell. Every surface was blackened, cracked, and glassy in places, the stone scarred with deep, ugly fissures that radiated outward from the epicenter of the blast.

Then Bruce stirred.

He pushed himself up slowly, one arm bracing against the ground. His body was completely naked, skin coated in layers of black ash and soot. His hair was gone, burned clean off, and grievous burn injuries covered him from head to toe. Patches of flesh were charred and split, some still faintly glowing red beneath the surface as residual heat bled away.

Heal pulsed.

Golden-white light flowed through him one last time, washing over ruined flesh and knitting it back together seamlessly. Burnt skin peeled away and was replaced by smooth, unblemished flesh. Muscles reformed, nerves stabilized, blood cooled. In seconds, the damage was gone as if it had never existed.

Bruce rose to his feet.

Completely naked. Completely bald. Ash clung to his skin in streaks and smudges, coating his shoulders, arms, and chest like war paint. He looked around slowly, eyes taking in the aftermath.

The dungeon was gone.

Not destroyed, but emptied.

Every trace of life had been erased. No mantis corpses. No plant matter. No spores, roots, or lingering mana signatures of beasts. Just scorched earth stretching as far as he could see, cracked and blackened, steaming faintly under the lingering heat.

Bruce let out a long, tired sigh.

"…That was excessive."

He raised a hand and summoned Ash. Red mana rippled briefly before condensing into simple black shorts, which he pulled on without ceremony, leaving his upper body bare. The ash-streaked skin of his chest rose and fell slowly as he exhaled again, calmer now, more measured.

'Vaelith,' he said internally, gaze still fixed on the ruin around him. 'What do you think of those SS-Ranked mantises' Authority?'

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