I didn't slow down.

That was the first decision I made once we regrouped—no hesitation, no reassessment paralysis, no poetic pause to appreciate survival. Momentum was a weapon, and I intended to use it until the cave itself ran out of excuses to exist.

We bulldozed forward.

Literally.

I drove my fist into the wall ahead of us, death-wrapped dualflow screaming as it tore through layered stone, crystal veins, and spatial reinforcement like wet paper. The impact didn't just make a hole—it made a statement. The cave shuddered, a deep, petulant groan rippling through the tunnels as if the structure itself was offended by my audacity.

Kent whooped behind me. "Yeah! That's the stuff! Screw hallways!"

Nora sighed. "This place was designed with pathways for a reason."

"And now," I said, stepping through the smoking gap, "it's designed with exits."

That earned me a snort from Page and an eye-roll from Lillith. I took it as approval.

We moved as a unit now. Not perfectly synchronized—too many styles, too many instincts—but close enough that we flowed around each other without colliding. Dualflow resonated between us, faint but present, like instruments tuning to the same pitch. It made the air hum.

I felt it again.

That pull.

Space dualflow.

It wasn't subtle. It pressed against my perception like a bent horizon, a place where distance didn't quite agree with itself. Massive. Concentrated. Not wild like the distortions the cave used for trials, but structured. Intentional.

An exit.

I slowed just long enough to glance over my shoulder. "Kent."

"Yeah?" He was mid-step, spinning one of his weapons lazily, still riding whatever adrenaline cocktail his trial had brewed.

"That energy I'm sensing ahead," I said. "The big one. You feel it too?"

He closed his eyes, expression sharpening as his perception expanded. The humor drained from his face, replaced by focus. A second passed. Then another.

"Yeah," he said finally. "That's space, alright. Pure enough that it's almost clean. Not cave-made."

"Good," I said.

Nora raised an eyebrow. "You asked him just to be sure?"

I shrugged and punched another wall apart. "Trust is great. Verification keeps you alive."

We accelerated.

At full speed, destruction became routine.

The cave threw its first real obstacle at us less than a minute later.

The space warped ahead, folding inward like fabric being pinched between fingers. From the distortion stepped something tall and thin, its body segmented into impossible angles, limbs extending and retracting as if length were a suggestion rather than a rule.

It didn't walk.

It repositioned.

One moment it stood twenty meters away. The next, it was right in front of Page, claws already mid-swing.

She reacted instantly, barrier flaring—but the claws passed through the shield, emerging on the other side as if the space between didn't exist.

I was already moving.

I slammed my palm into the creature's torso and discharged dualflow directly into its spatial core. Death affinity followed, corrosive and absolute.

The creature shrieked—not in sound, but in displacement. Its body fractured into overlapping afterimages, each one trying to exist somewhere else.

"Stay focused!" I barked. "It cheats!"

Kent laughed. "So do we!"

He hurled a weapon that curved midair, vanishing and reappearing inside the creature's chest. The explosion that followed wasn't loud—it was wrong. Space folded inward, crushing the creature into a compact knot before death mana finished the job.

The remains collapsed into nothing.

We didn't stop.

The next wave came faster.

Reality manipulators—amorphous masses that warped gravity, flipped directions, inverted cause and effect. One of them turned Liam's forward step into a backward stumble, then tried to compress him into the floor.

Liam snarled and detonated lightning downward, anchoring himself with raw force. Nora slipped in, her blade cutting along a line that didn't exist a moment before, severing the creature's control.

I followed with a punch that shattered the space it occupied.

Then came time.

That one was almost impressive.

The air thickened, movements dragging as if we were wading through syrup. A figure emerged from the distortion, clockwork symbols rotating around its form, each tick slowing our perception by degrees.

My fist moved an inch.

Then stopped.

Oh, that's rude, I thought.

The creature tilted its head, as if amused.

I let go.

Not of control—of restraint.

Dualflow surged, violent and bright, ripping through the temporal field like a scream through silence. Death affinity didn't care about time. It didn't care about sequence or delay.

It just ended things.

The creature froze—ironically—then cracked down the middle as its timeline collapsed into a single, final moment.

Time snapped back into place.

Kent stumbled. "Okay, that one sucked."

"Agreed," I said. "Let's not do that again."

The cave escalated.

Monsters layered their abilities now—space-warping predators that folded corridors into loops, reality-eaters that erased attacks mid-swing, time-split entities that attacked from futures that hadn't happened yet.

We adapted.

We fought dirty.

Page learned to aim for anchors instead of bodies. Lillith began cursing things into stability. Xavier's explosions grew sharper, more precise, ripping apart distortions instead of just blasting through them.

I led.

Every time the cave tried to slow us, I tore a new path. Every time it tried to confuse us, I followed the pull of space dualflow like a compass needle buried in my chest.

Eventually, the terrain changed.

The walls smoothed, stone giving way to something closer to obsidian glass, etched with faint, glowing runes that twisted when you looked at them too long. The air felt thinner, stretched.

Ahead, the pull became undeniable.

Then we saw it.

The gate.

It was fused into the cavern wall like a wound in the world—colossal, ageless, and unmistakably unnatural.

Violet light bled from its surface in slow, breathing pulses, bathing the stone around it in amethyst shadows that crawled and shifted as if alive.

The air nearby shimmered, warped by unseen forces, carrying the faint scent of ozone and something older, dustier—like forgotten centuries being stirred awake.

Its surface was not a surface at all, but a layered depth of interlocking spatial arrays, sigils folding into one another in impossible geometries.

Lines of arcane script rotated, inverted, and realigned themselves endlessly, never repeating, never settling.

Trying to follow them made the eyes ache, the mind slip, as though the gate resisted being fully perceived.

Distance meant nothing to it.

From one step away, it loomed like a towering monolith, large enough to swallow armies. From another angle, it felt impossibly distant, receding into a horizon that shouldn't exist underground.

Its edges wavered and blurred, fraying into strands of light, as if reality itself was hesitating—unable to agree on where the gate ended and the world began.

Space bent inward toward it.

Sound dulled near its threshold, echoes dying too quickly, while the violet glow deepened into something darker at its core, a slow, swirling void threaded with luminous veins.

The gate did not hum or roar; it listened, patient and aware, waiting for something, someone, to dare cross the line between here and elsewhere.

It was layered with interlocking spatial arrays that made its true size impossible to gauge. It looked close and far at the same time, edges blurring as if reality hadn't decided where to put it.

Beyond it, I felt outside.

Freedom.

And while the description may have felt a little excessive, it was absolutely necessary; anything less would have been an insult to the majestic thing that stood in front of me.

Kent let out a low whistle. "Well. That's dramatic."

Nora nodded slowly. "That's not just an exit. That's a controlled transition."

"Which means," I said, already feeling the warning prickle crawl up my spine, "it won't be unguarded."

The cave went silent.

Not the hollow quiet of an empty space, but a deliberate one—as if every sound had been stripped away and held somewhere else.

No distant groaning of stone under pressure.

No subtle shifts of earth. No skittering limbs or predatory breaths lurking just beyond the light.

Even the ever-present drip of water vanished, cut off mid-existence.

Just stillness.

The kind that pressed against the ears until they rang.

The violet glow of the gate continued its slow pulse, but it made no sound now—no hum, no whisper of power.

The air felt heavier, thick with a tension that had nothing to do with weight.

Magic itself seemed to hesitate, drawn tight like a held breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

Time stretched.

Heartbeats grew loud, intrusive, each one an unwanted reminder that we were still here, still vulnerable, while something unseen decided our worth. Instinct screamed that this silence wasn't safety.

It was restraint.

Then the shadows moved.

A figure.

Humanoid.

Standing perfectly still, backlit by the warped glow of the exit, waiting.

I stopped.

So did everyone else.

The pull of space dualflow flared—then stalled, as if caught on something sharp.

I narrowed my eyes.

"Well," I muttered, fists tightening as death-wrapped dualflow coiled eagerly around my arms.

"Looks like the cave saved its last word."

And then the figure turned toward us.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.