Rein flinched back, his brow tightening.

  The corruption rate in this loop was spiking far faster than anything the recorded stats had ever suggested.

  Kellen’s snarl—The Ekhosar gave me power—kept replaying in Rein’s head.

  It didn’t make sense. LIZ was already interfering with the black book’s system… wasn’t she?

  Unless the Ekhosar had started deploying a counter-protocol—using corrupted mana as a defensive mechanism while LIZ tried to break in.

  The air tore—like cloth under a blade.

  A jet-black claw swept past his face by mere centimeters. The wake it left behind was razor-cold, sharp enough to raise his skin in a reflexive prickle.

  If he’d been a fraction late, his face would’ve been unrecognizable.

  Kellen’s missed strike threw him slightly off-balance.

  Rein seized the opening and drove his boot into Kellen’s midsection with everything he had.

  The impact launched Kellen backward into a shelf—wood splintering, glass ringing out as the entire rack collapsed in a messy cascade.

  Rein drew a quick breath, trying to leverage the gap with the reflexes of someone who’d fought too many battles to count.

  But what he saw next sent a chill down his spine.

  A normal human would’ve dropped. Even a high-level combat mage would’ve folded from a kick like that—ribs cracked, breath stolen, the body refusing to rise.

  Kellen… didn’t.

  He pushed himself upright with movements that felt wrong, joints popping like stressed wood. His bones protested with ugly little sounds, yet his face showed no pain at all—no wince, no hesitation. Just that warped composure of something that no longer registered damage the way a person should..

  Rein’s gaze flicked past him.

  To the black book, resting quietly on its stand across the hall.

  Under Mana Vision, he could see it: the mana lines around the Ekhosar trembling like running code—processing, recalculating, adapting.

  If his guess was right, the book had deliberately left an “excess fragment” here—an active residue, a backup process that would claw at anything to keep itself alive.

  Rein’s jaw tightened.

  A colder hypothesis surfaced, sharp enough to sting.

  Maybe its actual goal had never been to prop up Ht’ara’s decaying loop by siphoning mana from Arath. Maybe it was doing something more fundamental than stabilization.

  It was trying to replicate—copy its own code into Arath so it could persist, even if this looped cage collapsed.

  “You’re just a virus,” Rein muttered through his teeth, lifting a finger toward Kellen as he surged back in. “Trying to install yourself into Arath.”

  Pit Viper roared.

  The compressed mana round hit like a sledgehammer, hurling Kellen onto his back.

  In the same motion, Rein flooded his body with Haste—pushing it to the limit.

  He kicked off the floor and shot forward, turning into a blurred shadow aimed straight for the Ekhosar.

  But the faster he ran, the corridor stretched away from him.

  Not gradually—absurdly. Distance elongated like a bad dream, the path turning into a tunnel with no end, mocking the concept of close.

  “What the hell—” Rein spat, never breaking stride.

  He glanced at the watch in his hand and felt his eyes widen.

  The second hand was spinning too fast—like it was trying to outrun him.

  “Damn it…”

  “Yes,” Kellen rasped right by his ear. “You’re damned.”

  Rein’s blood went cold.

  Kellen was beside him—smiling wide in a way that was wrong. His chest was torn open by the earlier shot, his body visibly ruined… and still he ran as if none of it mattered, matching Rein’s Haste with impossible ease.

  “In this territory,” Kellen hissed, voice thick with triumph, “the Ekhosar is God. It controls the dimension and every rule inside it… you idiot.”

  He swung.

  For Rein, the world didn’t speed up.

  It skipped—like frames cut out of a film reel.

  One moment there was distance—then there wasn’t.

  A thunderous crack echoed through the warped space, as if invisible glass had shattered.

  Magic Armor failed in a single heartbeat.

  Rein’s body flew, slammed into a stone wall hard enough to spiderweb cracks across it. Warm blood gathered at the corner of his mouth, pain flashing through his torso like a live wire.

  He slid down the wall into a battered crouch, his breath broken by the impact. For a second, his body refused to cooperate.

  Then he forced it, wiping the blood from his mouth with his left hand—careless, impatient.

  “Look at you,” Kellen said, dripping with pity. His face tried to form a grin, but the corruption kept tugging it into something ugly. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you this… pathetic, Rein.”

  Rein’s eyes lifted, flat and cold.

  “Same,” Rein replied. “Didn’t think I’d have to watch your face collapse into something that can’t be saved.”

  He raised his right hand, finger shaped into a gun.

  But Kellen vanished—not a dodge, but gone, like a line of data erased from the screen.

  “You think I’m stupid enough to let you hit me with the same trick twice?” Kellen’s hoarse voice boomed from Rein’s left.

  What Kellen didn’t realize was this: Rein hadn’t been wasting time.

  While he’d looked broken against the wall, pain wasn’t the only thing running through his mind.

  He’d been writing a command—silently—threading a mana network across the warped stone floor with movements so small they looked like nothing.

  And now, under Kellen’s foot, the hidden array activated.

  A ring of magic—sealed, disguised, waiting—released everything it had been holding back in a single triggered instant.

  A delayed-cast Shotgun trap. Belle’s technique.

  The blast detonated point-blank.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  It tore away Kellen’s attacking arm and threw him off-angle—ragged, unstable, forced into defense a heartbeat too late.

  The shockwave clipped Rein too—he was too close to avoid it completely—but he’d prepared for that.

  His left hand had already formed a Magic Shield with Quiet Casting, slipping it into place ahead of time. It was crude and standard—rushed. But it caught the worst of the blast.

  The idea—dual-hand independent casting—had come from the Ranking Matches: Timothy, the guy who could wield twin core-scepters. Rein had taken that concept into the Mana Realm, dissected it with LIZ, and rebuilt it into his own system until the formula finally worked without a staff at all.

  This was the first field test—and it worked.

  Still, a point-blank Shotgun-level burst was too much for a normal shield. The Magic Shield shattered on contact.

  Rein’s left arm lit up with pain as the backlash tore through him, blood soaking his sleeve—but the bone held.

  He exhaled hard, eyes fixed on Kellen’s crippled form.

  The trade had been brutal, but it opened a gap—big enough.

  Time—his only real advantage.

  The damn book had noticed, and it was devouring the seconds he’d stolen with such effort.

  Rein felt the dimension’s stability begin to fail. The air wavered, shadows doubling as the world stuttered like a corrupted video feed.

  He forced mana into Cure Wound, sealing the worst of the damage in his left arm. A faint green glow sank into torn flesh, coercing the tissue to knit just enough to stop the bleeding.

  Deep down, he hated what he was about to do next.

  He knew the backlash. The neurological strain. The price his body would pay afterward.

  But in a collapsing dimension, there was no “after” worth worrying about. If he didn’t do it now, there wouldn’t be one.

  Rein swallowed the pain and threw his last card onto the table—the one he’d been saving because it was insane.

  Chain Casting. Master Kael’s method: linking energies into one continuous, escalating command.

  “Might Enhanced—Prototype Haste.”

  Mana surged. Veins rose under his skin. His nervous system screamed as it was forced beyond normal limits, and for an instant the world seemed to slow—like reality itself couldn’t keep up.

  Then everything detonated into motion.

  Rein’s body became a blurred afterimage—an arrow of black launched straight for the Ekhosar at a speed no living thing was meant to reach.

  By his calculations, the book shouldn’t have enough reserve left to keep stretching space against an acceleration spike like this.

  The corridor should break first.

  He was meters away. One more second and his hand would close around the black cover—

  —and that was when he realized what he’d misjudged.

  The Ekhosar didn’t expand the space.

  It did something worse—it restored it. Instantly.

  The stretched distance snapped back to its original coordinates in a blink.

  And Kellen—who should’ve been far behind—appeared right in front of him, within two meters, as if he’d been waiting there all along.

  With only one arm left, Kellen lunged and caught Rein’s leg like a hook at the exact moment he was about to reach the book.

  “Damn it—!”

  Kellen’s face, mangled beyond dignity, split into a thrilled grin. The monocle—his signature—was cracked from earlier damage, but his eyes were a deep, feverish red.

  “Too late, Rein,” he rasped. “Time is the one thing you don’t have anymore.”

  They crashed down onto the shaking stone floor near the long table.

  Rein clenched his teeth.

  Heat crawled up his spine, a sharp instinctive warning.

  How much time did he have left—minutes, seconds? Or had the stolen time already run out?

  A blast more violent than anything before hammered down from the ceiling.

  Rein’s hearing dropped out for a heartbeat, vision flaring white with sudden light and heat—like a verdict slammed from above.

  The dimension convulsed.

  Cracks raced through the air itself, spiderwebbing across invisible glass—then it shattered.

  Dust and smoke poured in.

  The Ekhosar was thrown from its stand and skidded across the floor, coming to rest right beside Rein—like the universe that was tired of waiting.

  Rein’s hand snapped out and seized it.

  He looked up through a gaping rupture in the ceiling.

  Above the ruined cabin, a silhouette hovered—backlit by lightning that tore the sky in jagged arcs.

  Hah. From this angle, the guy almost looked like some kind of thunder god.

  He didn’t get to breathe.

  Kellen moved again—dragging himself forward with feral desperation, climbing onto Rein as if the only thing left in him was the urge to reclaim the book. His remaining hand clawed for it, mouth gaped wide.

  “Don’t… touch it.”

  His lips never moved, but the words tore out from deep inside his chest.

  Rein’s finger flared.

  Pit Viper fired point-blank.

  Kellen’s head snapped back, the monocle exploding into fragments as his body went slack, collapsing away from Rein.

  Rein didn’t even watch him fall for long.

  He just tightened his grip on the black book and muttered, voice flat with irritation—

  “So annoying,” Rein muttered.

  “If you want it that badly, go find another one in hell.”

  …

  …

  After a few ragged breaths, Rein snatched up the pocket watch.

  The earlier distortion had chewed his remaining time down to less than ten minutes.

  Then the black book in his right hand flared.

  A dark-green veil swallowed him, and Rein sank straight through the basement stone—as if solid rock had turned to liquid under his boots.

  It felt like plunging into thick mineral slurry: dense, suffocating, dragging at his limbs until his chest seized and his lungs begged for air.

  Deep in that pitch-black depth, a faint glow waited below—as if he were about to fall through into a world on the other side.

  He clawed his way back up through the cold stone.

  Rein rolled onto his back, sprawled out, sucking air like a man drowning on dry land. His coughing echoed through the space, raw and violent.

  When he forced his eyes open and looked around, he realized he was back inside the massive circular chamber of the Dungeon Core—Ht’ara’s heart.

  Only now… it looked like hell had taken a bite out of it. Dust hung in the air, and more than half the walls and ceiling had collapsed.

  [LIZ: You’re back. In one piece. Let me guess—the dinner party was a disaster?]

  A bright-blue chat window popped into his vision.

  Sometimes her habit of running her mouth made him want to strangle a hologram. But right now, it was the only thing that made him smile.

  “It was basically hell,” Rein said, then snapped straight to business. “LIZ—use the cache. The reset key is the five nodes of the spatial-expansion array.”

  [LIZ: Got it. Pulling it from your front-lobe cache—hold still.]

  A thin progress line flickered into view and sprinted forward.

  A spike of pain stabbed through Rein’s temples—like needles drilling straight into his brain.

  His gaze flicked to the timer.

  Ten seconds.

  Will it make it…? Will it actually make it in time?

  [LIZ: Converting… mapping the five key nodes into the Core. Stay with me.]

  “Hurry, LIZ!” Rein snapped. “Move!”

  Five… four… three…

  [LIZ: Done. Resetting… and—yes. It took.]

  The red number blinked at 2—then vanished.

  The violent shaking stopped dead.

  Rein let out a breath so deep it felt like his lungs finally remembered how to exist. He stared around the circular chamber as it began to dissolve, slowly, like a dying program losing cohesion frame by frame.

  [LIZ: Normally it would try to reopen the route on its own. Don’t worry—I killed that behavior.]

  Rein’s stomach dropped.

  “So… there’s no way back to Arath?” he murmured—then the thought caught up and turned to ice.

  Then his eyes widened.

  “Wait—LIZ! If you sealed every entrance and exit… I’m trapped here too!”

  The black book—once floating—dropped onto the stone with a dull thud, deactivated. The platform beneath it cracked. At accelerating speed, the surrounding walls began collapsing.

  Rein spun left and right, panic tightening his throat.

  [LIZ: Relax, partner. With the access you authorized earlier, I’ve already learned the Ekhosar’s structure.]

  Her tone stayed casual, almost bored.

  [LIZ: Honestly? This code reads like a sloppy prototype. But after I corrected the broken algorithms… I can run a clean route and send you back. No problem.]

  Rein’s face went slick with sweat as the floor beneath his boots kept erasing itself.

  “What—are you telling me you hacked the book and built a dimension-travel program out of it? That’s insane!”

  [LIZ: Alright. I’m opening a route by squeezing out every last drop of mana left in this dungeon and that book.]

  “W-wait, LIZ! How can you be sure you’ll send me to the right place—”

  His voice caught.

  “—or send me back with all my pieces still attached?”

  [LIZ: I know. You’re thrilled to be my first live test.]

  Thrilled my ass.

  A strange shimmer formed around the black book on the floor.

  Then it began to crumble—breaking down into fine particles of energy. The stone beneath it fractured and spiraled inward, like water being sucked into a drain.

  [LIZ: And no—you don’t get a DeLorean.]

  The ground at Rein’s feet broke into chunks and started getting pulled toward the whirlpool fast.

  Who the hell cares about a DeLorean right now?

  Rein backed up, making himself as small as possible—like that would help against physics tearing the world open.

  Fine. Better to jump with an untested life vest than go down with the ship.

  “Do it, LIZ!” Rein barked—his last order.

  And then his entire world collapsed into a blinding light that burned his vision white.

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  An advanced spellcasting technique that links multiple spells or enhancements into a seamless sequence without pausing between individual incantations. Originally used by Master Kael, this method enables continuous, high-speed execution of magic by threading mana into a pre-written command network. In this chapter, Rein combines “Might Enhanced” and a prototype version of “Haste” into a single Chain Cast, pushing his body beyond safe limits. The technique causes extreme neurological and physical strain, suitable only for highly trained mages.

  A powerful trap spell inspired by Belle’s techniques. Rein uses a secretly constructed mana array on the battlefield that unleashes a Shotgun-level blast when triggered. This delayed-cast trap activates under Kellen’s foot mid-battle, successfully crippling him and opening a counterattack window.

  A new technique Rein developed after observing twin-wielding mage Timothy. He adapts the concept into casting two separate spells simultaneously without using a staff. In this chapter, Rein shields himself using Quiet Casting to activate a Magic Shield on one hand while triggering a delayed attack with the other. This test confirms the method’s real-time viability.

  Rein deploys a modified version of “Haste” within a Chain Casting structure. This variant increases acceleration beyond the natural speed barrier. It causes temporary slowing of perceived time from Rein’s POV but results in extreme physiological strain. Rein uses this technique as a final gambit to reach the Ekhosar before the space collapses.

  The Ekhosar appears to have embedded a hidden subroutine in Arath—a backup fragment intended to survive even if its main system collapses. Rein hypothesizes that the Ekhosar was never just stabilizing a failing loop but attempting to replicate itself entirely by “installing” its corrupted mana into Arath’s system. This would enable it to persist even after dimensional failure, much like a self-replicating virus.

  The Ekhosar manipulates spatial and temporal parameters within its territory. As Rein charges forward using Haste, the hallway stretches impossibly—then snaps back to original coordinates. This reveals the book’s mastery over reality in its dimension, effectively “restoring” space rather than simply expanding it.

  QUOTE

  A pop culture joke referring to the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future. As Rein attempts a desperate escape through a collapsing dimension, LIZ humorously notes that his method of time and dimension travel lacks the iconic style or reliability of the famous sci-fi car.