"High risk... High reward"

Saying this, he examined what exactly what was in front of him.

The massive blast door loomed over them, a relic of a forgotten era.

The red warning runes pulsed weakly, warning of a danger that had been locked away for centuries.

[SECTOR ZERO: WASTE DISPOSAL - DO NOT ENTER]

"Master," Isabelle whispered, eyeing the thick chains. "isn't this supposed to be a regular extermination quest?"

"Why do I feel like everything we do these days just seems to lad to something crazier"

Recalling the weeping angels they had just faced, Isabelle couldn't help but have a bad feeling

However Damien on the other hand, hearing her say this just chuckled.

"Indeed, I also feel the same way, however isnt it the unexpected things that make life interesting?"

With a smile on his face, he placed his hand on the cold iron.

Through it, he could feel the mana leaking from the other side.

It was extremely dense and suffocating in nature. Whatever was in there had been gestating in the dark for a very long time.

"High risk," Damien muttered, his cross-shaped pupils dilating. "High reward."

He stepped back and drew the Pantheon Sword.

"Golden Dragon Aura: Partial Manifestation."

VWMMM.

A spectral golden claw superimposed over the blade. The white hungry light of the sword merged with the Dragon's sharpness.

SLASH.

He swung the blade in a horizontal arc.

There was a screech of tortured metal.

The Abyss Iron chains metal that could withstand a most attacks were sliced through like warm butter. The links fell to the wet ground with a heavy CLANG.

Damien kicked the center of the blast door.

GROAAAN.

The ancient hinges protested, stripping decades of rust as the massive doors slowly swung inward.

However, under his strenth, there was no use

*BOOM!*

A blast of stale, rotting air hit them instantly. It smelled of old fur, ammonia, and ancient death.

They stepped through the breach onto a rusted metal catwalk.

The room beyond was colossal. It was a hollowed-out cistern the size of a football stadium, stretching down into an infinite darkness.

The only light came from the bioluminescent moss clinging to the high domed ceiling, casting a sickly green pallor over the abyss below.

It was silent.

Not the silence of an empty room. But the silence of a held breath.

"It's... empty?" Isabelle peered over the railing, looking down into the pit.

"I don't see anything. Just the floor."

Damien leaned over the rail. He activated his [Sensory Intent].

Instantly his vision shifted. The darkness peeled away.

He looked at the "floor" of the cistern, fifty feet below.

It was undulating.

"That's not the floor, Isabelle!," Damien whispered, a cold sweat breaking on his neck.

He summoned a spat of hellfire and threw it down.

And sure enough his guess was correct

In both their gaze, the flame tumbled down, spinning in the dark.

WHOOSH.

As the flames light illuminated the bottom of the pit, Isabelle gasped and covered her mouth.

Bellow themwasn't dirt. It wasn't stone.

It was a sea of fur.

Tens of thousands of Abyss Rats were piled on top of each other, sleeping in a writhing, living ocean.

They covered every inch of the cistern floor, a carpet of matted grey and black bodies.

And in the center of the ocean... lay the King.

It was a monstrosity the size of a small house. A Mutated Rat King (Tier 6).

It wasn't a single giant rat. It was a grotesque knot formed from hundreds of rats whose tails had fused together into a singular, pulsating core of flesh and mana.

At the center of the knot, embedded in the fused flesh, was a massive Corrupted Mana Crystal, pulsing with a toxic green light like a beating heart.

The Rat King was asleep. Its massive, collective chest rose and fell, the sound of its snoring causing ripples across the sea of smaller rats.

"By the Gods..." Isabelle whispered, her voice trembling.

"If they wake up... that's not a fight we can handle, it's practically a tsunami."

"Tier 6," Damien analyzed, staring at the central crystal.

"But that Core...That single crystal is worth more than the entire Bone Hall."

He gripped the railing.

"We can do it, we just need to kill the King without waking the thousands of rats around it." he said sarcastically

Isabelle nodded, stepping back carefully. "Okay. Stealth. We can—"

CRUNCH.

Her boot heel, usually so graceful, scuffed a loose piece of rusted metal on the catwalk grating.

A single, small pebble, no larger than a coin dislodged from the rust.

Damien watched it fall. Time seemed to slow down.

It tumbled through the air, past the railing, down toward the sleeping abyss.

PING.

The pebble hit the shell of the Rat King's central mass.

The sound was tiny. Insignificant.

But in the dead silence of the cistern, it sounded like a gunshot.

The snoring stopped. The rippling of the fur ocean stopped.

For one second, there was absolute stillness.

Then.

SNAP.

Hundreds of eyes located all over the Rat King's bloated body opened simultaneously. They glowed with a toxic, neon green light.

Following the King's awakening, the sea of smaller rats woke up. Ten thousand pairs of red eyes snapped open in the dark, illuminating the pit like a field of cursed stars.

They all looked up.

At the catwalk.

SKREEEEEEEEE!

A screech that shattered eardrums erupted from the pit. The ocean of rats began to climb the walls, a tidal wave of teeth and fur rushing toward them.

Isabelle paled, her hands shaking. "Master..."

Damien looked down at the swarm. He looked at the massive Rat King rising in the center, its crystal heart glowing with rage.

He slowly drew the Pantheon Sword. The white light of the blade flared, casting long shadows against his mask.

A feral grin spread across his face, hidden beneath the gloom.

"Well," Damien said, his voice steady amidst the chaos.

"I did say I wanted to test my new body."

Yes despite the odds, Damien didn't feel even a tinge of fear, rather the emotion was something he always felt when he fought

Against bandits in the past, in the dwarf kingdom, against Charron, even against the void prince

With every fight, he felt something that he couldn't get on a regular day

And that was excitement!

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