Sebastian stood across from him, mask on, black auditor robes.
"You summoned me, Headmaster?" Sebastian asked.
"Raven." Eldric sighed. "Whatever your real name is. I saw yesterday's duel. Impressive. Terrifying, yes, but impressive. You manipulate mana like an Archmage. Your file says you appeared from nowhere two days ago."
"I am a scholar," Sebastian said smoothly. "I study."
"We don't have time for games." Eldric snapped, slamming his hand on the desk. "Three students went missing last night. Good students. Elite track. They vanished from their dorms. No trace. No magical residue. No struggle. Just... gone."
Sebastian didn't flinch. "And you want me to find them."
"The guards are useless. They look for physical clues. You... you see things differently. I saw how you dismantled that fire spell. You understand magic's structure. Find them, Raven. Before the Tournament begins. If word gets out students are vanishing, the Empire shuts us down."
[Quest Accepted: The Missing Elite.]
[Objective: Locate the missing students.]
[Reward: Access to the Royal Vault.]
"Consider it done," Sebastian said.
He didn't go to the dorms. He knew where to look already. Straight to the Academy Dungeon.
The dungeon entrance sat in the lower courtyards, a massive stone archway leading underground. It was meant as a training ground, stocked with low-level golems and mana wisps. But descending the spiral stairs, the air grew heavy.
The smell hit him first. Not the dusty smell of a crypt. Copper tang of blood mixed with the ozone stench of Void energy.
"Valerie," Sebastian messaged via guild chat. "Stay in your room. Lock the door. Don't open it for anyone. Not even staff."
"Zero? What's happening?"
"The school has a parasite," Sebastian replied, cutting the link.
He reached the dungeon's third level. Torches on the walls flickered, turning sickly purple. The stone floor was slick with black, viscous slime.
He found them in a large chamber meant for boss encounters.
The three missing students were there. They weren't students anymore.
Suspended in the air, held up by tendrils of black flesh erupting from the floor. The tendrils burrowed into their spines, pulsing rhythmically, pumping dark fluid into their bodies. Eyes rolled back, white and blind. Mouths hung open in silent screams.
In the center of the room, growing out of a crack in the floor, was the source.
[Monster: Void Parasite (Larval Stage)]
[Level: 35 (Elite)]
[HP: 150,000 / 150,000]
[Status: Feeding]
It looked like a heart made of tumors. A throbbing mass of purple flesh and teeth, rooted into the leyline node beneath the dungeon. Drinking the mana of the earth and using the students as biological filters to process it.
"Disgusting," Sebastian spat.
The Parasite sensed him. Tendrils twitched. The three students jerked like puppets on strings. Their heads snapped toward Sebastian.
"Help... us..." one gurgled, but the voice wasn't human. Layered, distorted. "Feed... us..."
The students dropped to the floor. Bodies contorted, bones snapping and reshaping. Claws burst from fingertips. Skin turned grey and hard. They were being mutated into Void Thralls instantly.
"I can't save you," Sebastian said, voice devoid of pity. "But I can free you."
He drew the [Shadowfang] from his inventory. The blade drank the dim light of the dungeon.
The three Thralls charged. Fast, boosted by Void energy. Sebastian was faster. He activated [Heavenly Steps].
ZOOM.
He vanished. A spatial afterimage left behind. The Thralls attacked the image, claws passing through empty air.
Sebastian reappeared behind them. He didn't use flashy spells. Surgical precision.
[Skill: Dimensional Sever.]
A horizontal line of distortion bisected the room. Cut through the three students at the waist. Cut through the tendrils holding them. Cut through stone pillars behind them.
Top halves of the students slid off their bottom halves. No blood, only black sludge. They dissolved into data before hitting the ground.
[Mercy Kill Confirmed.]
Only the Parasite remained. It shrieked, a sound drilling into Sebastian's brain. Lashed out with a dozen tentacles, each tipped with a bone spike.
Sebastian walked forward. Parried a tentacle with his dagger, severing it. Side-stepped another.
"You're feeding on the leylines," Sebastian said, walking closer. "Preparing the ground for the invasion. The Tournament isn't a celebration. It's a ritual. You want all those strong souls in one place so you can harvest them."
The Parasite roared, its main body opening to reveal rows of spinning teeth.
"Chrono-Stasis."
The world turned grey. Tentacles froze mid-strike. Dust motes in the air stopped moving.
One second.
Sebastian stepped onto the air, running up the frozen tentacle like a ramp. Reached the main body. He placed his hand directly onto the wet, pulsing flesh.
[Skill: Solar Flare.]
[Modifier: Internal Combustion.]
Time resumed.
BOOM.
The explosion didn't happen outside. Inside the Parasite. The creature swelled, expanding like a balloon filled with too much air. Light beamed out of its cracks, blindingly bright.
SPLAT.
The Parasite detonated. Chunks of void flesh rained down, burning with holy fire. Black sludge on the floor evaporated.
[Ding! You have killed Void Parasite (Level 35).]
[You have cleansed the Leyline Node.]
[Hidden Quest Complete: The Monster in the Basement.]
Sebastian landed in the mess of gore, wiping a chunk of purple flesh from his shoulder. Looked at the smoking crater where the creature had been.
"Scout neutralized," he noted. "But where there's a scout, the army follows."
He looked up at the ceiling, toward the surface where thousands of students were sleeping, unaware they were cattle waiting for the slaughter.
"The Tournament begins tomorrow," Sebastian whispered. "And I'm going to ruin it."
----
The disconnect from the Ethereal Plane wasn't gentle. A violent severance. Being ripped from a warm womb and thrown naked into a snowstorm.
Sebastian gasped. His body arched off the cold concrete floor of Warehouse 4. His real-world lungs seized, struggling to process the humid, stale air of the industrial district after hours of breathing mana-rich atmosphere at the Academy. He rolled onto his side, dry heaving. Muscles twitching with phantom impulses of a body that possessed god-like strength in another dimension.
"Zero?" Valerie's voice tight with panic. She sat against a pallet of MREs, clutching a real-world pistol with shaking hands. "You were under for twelve hours. The generator... it's sputtering."
Sebastian forced himself to sit up. The headache was blinding. A spike of hot iron driven through his frontal lobe. He checked his internal clock. Midnight.
"Status," he rasped.
A ghostly blue window flickered in his retinal vision. Struggling to manifest against the crushing reality of the physical world.
[Real World Synchronization: 5.2%]
[Mana Sensitivity: Moderate]
[Warning: Local Mana Density increasing rapidly.]
"5 percent," Sebastian whispered. Wiping a line of blood from his nose. "The cleansing of the Leyline Node in the game... it accelerated the merge."
Boom.
A transformer on the street pole outside exploded. The hum of electric lights in the warehouse died instantly. Plunging them into absolute darkness. The backup generator coughed once, twice. Then died.
Silence. Heavy. Suffocating silence.
"They cut the grid," Sebastian said. His voice cutting through the dark. "Or something ate it."
"Something?" Valerie clicked the safety off her pistol. The sound deafeningly loud.
"Don't shoot unless I tell you," Sebastian ordered. His eyes adjusting. His [Eye of the Void God] passive bleeding through, overlaying his vision with a faint, static-filled wireframe of the warehouse. He could see the heat signature of Valerie. The cooling engine of the SUV. The thick, reinforced walls he had created with his Engineering skill.
But he also saw something else.
Outside the walls, in the rain-slicked darkness of the industrial lot, there were disturbances. Not heat signatures. Holes in the fabric of reality. Distortions. Shimmers that moved with a skittering, jerky rhythm.
"Get to the center of the room," Sebastian commanded. Standing up. His legs felt heavy. Gravity pulling at him with jealous force. He grabbed the heavy iron crowbar he had kept by his side. It felt pathetically light compared to the [Earth Sword]. But it was real.
"What is it?" Valerie whispered. Moving back.
"Phase Spiders," Sebastian said. "Tier 2 dimensional beasts. They hunt by detecting electrical impulses. Fear. Heartbeats."
SCREEEE-CH.
The sound came from the roof. Not a physical impact. The sound of metal screaming as it was phased through.
High above them, on the vaulted ceiling Sebastian had reinforced, a section of the steel plating rippled like water. A claw, long and tipped with a scythe-like barb, punched through the metal as if it were wet paper. Then another. Then a head—a cluster of eight milky-white eyes glowing with a hateful, violet luminescence.
The Phase Spider was the size of a minivan. Its body translucent, shifting between the physical and the ethereal planes. Making it look like a glitch in the world's rendering.
It hissed. A sound like tearing silk. And dropped.
It landed silently on a stack of concrete bags twenty meters away.
"It's inside!" Valerie raised her gun.
"No!"
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Valerie fired blindly. The muzzle flashes lit up the warehouse in strobe-light bursts. The bullets struck the spider, but they didn't bleed it. They passed harmlessly through its thorax. Sparking against the concrete wall behind it.
The spider shrieked. Locking onto the source of the loud noise. It lunged.
Sebastian moved. He didn't have his game stats. Not fully. He didn't have [Heavenly Steps]. But he had 5% synchronization. His muscles coiled and snapped with hydraulic force. He intercepted the beast mid-air.
He didn't swing the crowbar. He channeled his meager real-world mana into it.
"Solidify."
Not a spell. A crude application of will. He forced the mana around the crowbar to vibrate at a frequency that disrupted the spider's phasing.
The iron bar slammed into the creature's mandibles.
CRUNCH.
The impact wet and sickening. Chitin shattered. Violet ichor sprayed across Sebastian's face, burning like acid. The spider crashed to the floor, screeching. Its phase-shift disrupted by the mana interference. It was physical now.
"Kill it!" Sebastian roared. Pinning one of its thrashing legs with his boot.
Valerie didn't hesitate this time. She aimed at the creature's head. Which was now fully material.
Bang. Bang.
The bullets tore through the creature's brain-pan. Grey brain matter exploded outward. The spider convulsed. Its legs curling inward as it died.
Sebastian stepped back. Breathing hard. The exertion of channeling mana in the real world made his veins feel like they were filled with broken glass. He looked at the corpse. It wasn't dissolving into data. It was rotting rapidly. Dissolving into a pool of toxic sludge that hissed against the concrete.
"That... that was a monster," Valerie stammered. The gun shaking in her hands. "A real monster."
"A scout," Sebastian corrected. He walked to the wall. Pressing his hand against the cold alloy. He could feel them outside. Dozens of them. Testing the perimeter. Sensing the prey inside. "The walls keep out the zombies. They don't keep out things that can walk through dimensions."
He turned to Valerie. She looked on the verge of breaking. She was a CEO's daughter. A high-level mage in a game. But here? She was just flesh and blood.
"We can't fight them here," Sebastian said. His voice hard. "Not yet. My sync rate is too low. We need the City Core. We need to install it in this warehouse. Once installed, it overwrites the local physics with Game Logic. The walls become impenetrable to phase-shifting. The turrets I built will actually fire."
"But the Core is the prize for the Tournament," Valerie said. "That starts in... in the game."
"Exactly." Sebastian pointed to the VR rigs powered by the emergency batteries. "The second wave is here. The spiders are cautious. They won't swarm until they test our defenses fully. That gives us a few hours. We go back in. We win the Tournament. We get the Core."
"And if we die in the game?"
"Then we respawn," Sebastian said. Walking over to his helmet. "But if we die here, there is no graveyard run. We log in. We win. We survive. That is the only path."
Outside, the scratching on the metal walls grew louder. A chorus of hunger scratching at the door.
Sebastian didn't look back. He sat in the chair. Pulled the visor down. And whispered into the darkness.
"Link Start."