Adam's Deep Camouflage unfurled from him like a living shadow, a skill honed from his earliest days as a viper and now empowered by his legendary essence. It didn't just hide him; it woven a shroud of visual static and scent-muffling silence over his entire party. To any outside observer, they were nothing more than a slight warping of the pale light, a vague shadow that slid silently across the bone-white floor.

They moved like ghosts through the graveyard of the canyon, the only sound the soft, almost imperceptible scrape of Adam's scales on stone. The oppressive silence was a weight in itself.

Then, they saw it.

In the deepest recess of the canyon, coiled around the base of a massive, glowing crystal monolith, was the serpent.

It was immense, easily rivaling Adam in length but built for pure, constricting power rather than flight. Its scales were a blinding, alabaster white, each one a perfect, polished hexagon that reflected the crystal's light with a cold gleam. Its head was broad and wedge-shaped, with a crest of backward-sweeping horns similar to Adam's but sharper, more cruel. Its eyes were closed, but the lids themselves seemed etched with fine, silvery lines. Above its resting form, shimmering in the air like a phantom, was its status panel.

[ The Pale Revenant Lv 62]

«We are… fortunate,» Lilith's psychic whisper was tinged with awe and cold calculation. «It is dormant.»

Adam didn't share her optimism. His galactic eyes scanned the surroundings, his Hunter's Tri-Sense working overtime. He doesn't want to be careless.

"No," Adam's mental voice was flat, certain. "Our luck isn't this good. Nothing that's survived this long leaves itself this open. This is a trap. We do not get careless for a second." His experience with the Arachnowyrm and the clever humans had burned away any naivete about easy victories.

He looked at his team, then back at the slumbering leviathan. A single target. A perfect, if suspicious, opportunity for a coordinated alpha strike.

"Here's the plan. We hit it once, with everything we have, at the same moment. We don't give it a chance to wake up, to think, to trigger whatever safeguard it has."

"Lilith, You are the initiator. Use Sovereign Silk not to bind, but to lash its jaws shut the moment we strike. Then, immediate Crimson Gaze into its eyes the second they open. Blind and disorient."

"Alice, The moment Lilith's silk lands, you use Void Bind on its coils. Try to pin its muscular power, even for a second. Then, target the base of its skull with Void Bolts."

"Ignis, You are the opener and the finisher. On my mark, you hit the same spot on its neck with your most concentrated, armor-piercing Sun Lance. Not a wide blast. A spear of fire. Then, be ready to pour continuous fire into the wound we create."

"And I will use Tempest Fangs—all of them—aimed at the exact spot Ignis weakens. Followed immediately by Monarch's Pierce straight down through the same point. We crack its armor and spear its brain in one sequence."

He looked at each of them, his will iron. "We strike as one. Understood?"

Nods, both physical and psychic, answered him. The camouflage held, wrapping their lethal intent in silence. They spread out, taking positions around the slumbering Pale Revenant. Ignis's internal fire banked to a faint, controlled ember. Alice became one with the long shadows of the crystals. Lilith perched high above, silk at the ready.

Adam coiled his power, the mana for Tempest Fangs and Monarch's Pierce circulating like twin storms within him. The Crown on his brow felt cold, anticipatory.

The bone-white canyon held its breath. The ghost was asleep. And the reapers had arrived.

The silence shattered.

"NOW!" Adam's command was a psychic detonation.

The plan unfolded with brutal, clockwork precision. From above, Lilith's Sovereign Silk shot down, not as strands, but as a solidified net of shadow that wrapped around the Pale Revenant's jaws, cinching them shut before a hiss could escape. Her Crimson Gaze lanced out, striking the serpent's eyes the moment they snapped open—two beams of searing psychic agony.

Alice's Void Bind erupted from the ground, chains of darkness attempting to pin the powerful coils. Ignis, with a focused snarl, unleashed a single, brilliant Sun Lance that struck the side of the Revenant's neck with a sound like a hammer on anvil. White scales glowed red-hot at the point of impact.

Adam didn't wait. He unleashed Tempest Fangs. Four lances of concentrated wind and lightning screamed from his maw, each one spiraling unerringly towards the superheated spot on the Revenant's neck. They struck in rapid succession—THOOM-CRACK! THOOM-CRACK!—the combined force cracking and fusing the legendary scales.

He was already moving, a Mirage Cascade blurring his form as he launched himself, horns and body aligned for the killing Monarch's Pierce.

It should have ended there.

But as Adam descended like a living meteor, the Pale Revenant's slit-pupiled eyes, though streaming with psychic burns, gleamed with something other than pain: cold and amusement.

The canyon woke up.

[ The Pale Revenant activates: Domain of the Bleached Sovereign ]

The very air crystallized. The faint ozone smell spiked into a choking, electrified fog that seared their lungs. The giant, glowing crystals jutting from the floor and ceiling pulsed once, then unleashed a synchronized volley of focused, concussive light beams—not at random, but at them. One shattered the ground where Alice was standing, forcing her to abort a Void Bolt and Void Step away with a yelp. Another slammed into Lilith's perch, sending her scrambling for new cover and breaking her Crimson Gaze.

Worst of all, the bone-white floor beneath Adam liquefied, turning into a clinging, quick-setting cement of calcified dust. His perfect Monarch's Pierce, aimed at the weakened neck, was dragged off-course. He struck the Revenant's shoulder instead, punching through scale and muscle in a spray of icy blood, but missing the spine and brain. The Revenant convulsed, a muffled roar of pain vibrating through its silk-bound jaws, but it was far from dead.

The serpent's coils, which Alice's Void Binds had only partially restrained, now glowed with the same pale light as the canyon. With a sound of grinding stone, they pulled. Not to constrict Adam, but to yank him into the path of another crystal beam. Adam roared, twisting in mid-air, but the beam grazed his wing, shearing off a cluster of feathers and leaving a deep, freezing burn.

"IT'S CONTROLLING THE ENTIRE CAVERN!" Adam bellowed, the realization a cold shock. He had anticipated a trap, but not this—not the environment itself being weaponized. His Celestial Calculus scrambled to adapt, but the variables were changing too fast.

The Pale Revenant, despite its grievous wounds, moved with eerie, fluid grace. It thrashed its head, tearing Lilith's silk. It didn't try to bite; instead, it exhaled a cloud of shimmering, crystalline dust from its nostrils—Fossilizing Mist. The cloud expanded rapidly, and where it touched, the air itself seemed to harden. Ignis, trying to line up another shot, got a faceful. Her scales began to grey and stiffen, her movement slowing to a crawl.

«IGNIS! BACK!» Alice screamed, phasing through a crystal beam to shove the petrifying drake back.

"POTIONS! NOW!" Adam ordered, desperation edging his tone. They were on the defensive, their perfect ambush shattered by the Revenant's absolute dominion over its lair.

Alice, breathing heavily, didn't hesitate. Vials flew from her Void Locker. A Healing Potion for Adam's wing. A Mana Potion for herself. An Antidote Potion sprayed over Ignis, cracking the grey film on her scales. They drank and applied in frantic, seconds-long respites between dodging crystalline artillery and patches of liquefying, grasping floor.

The Pale Revenant watched them scramble, its intelligent eyes calculating. It wasn't pressing a frantic attack. It was herding them, using the environment to drain their resources, to separate them, to punish every move they made. A stalactite would drop to block a charge. A wall of bone would rise to cut off a retreat. It was fighting them with the very dungeon, and it was winning.

Adam gritted his teeth, the Crown of the Hollow Glutton pulsing with his frustration. He had underestimated his progenitor. This wasn't just a stronger monster. It was a tactician who had turned its home into an extension of its body. They needed to break its control, or they'd be picked apart piece by piece, buried in the very bone-yard they stood in.

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