Not from her battlefield, but somewhere beyond it. A neighboring passage. A distant clash.
Even the ancient stone trembled faintly.
Haruna paused for only a few seconds, listening.
That was enough.
A dagger shot toward her face from the darkness.
"Watch out!" Haruki warned.
Haruna stepped aside just in time, the blade slicing past where her eye had been moments earlier.
In one fluid motion, she unsheathed her cursed blade and fixed her gaze on the shadows ahead.
From them emerged hobgoblins.
A dozen. All mounted on dire wolves.
Their eyes were pitch black, hollow, as if something else was staring through them.
Controlled?
Maybe.
But it didn't matter.
If they were being controlled, they were enemies.
If they weren't, then they were opportunists who chose the wrong side.
Either way, her sword would judge them.
"Careful, Haruna... There are quite a lot of them," Haruki warned.
Haruna acknowledged her words but remained unmoved.
"Doesn't matter. With Master's guidance, I've grown stronger. Physically. Mentally. I simply cannot lose..." she vowed, lowering her stance as wind began to gather at her feet.
"...If I were to fall to mere opportunistic traitors like these, that would be the lowest I could possibly fall."
The air detonated beneath her.
Wind burst outward, launching her forward in a blur of blue.
The goblins barely had time to react.
Her blade flashed once.
Twice.
Three times.
The vanguard collapsed in seconds, their wolves screeching as they fell.
The rear forces finally caught sight of her movement and erupted into a battle cry, their voices echoing violently through the tunnel. Strength surged through their bodies. Morale spiked.
But it was nothing more than theatrics.
Haruna raised her sword high.
Astrons surged through her veins, pouring into the blade in a brilliant torrent. Wind spiraled violently around her arm. Lightning crackled between the currents and her glowing blue eyes.
The slime-patterned lines across her body pulsed with mystic radiance.
Her sword vanished within a roaring vortex.
Then she swung.
A miniature thunderstorm tore forward.
The tunnel exploded with light and sound as lightning descended in violent arcs, the tornado shredding flesh, stone, and steel alike. Hobgoblin riders screamed as the storm swallowed them whole, their bodies charred into blackened silhouettes before scattering into ash.
The gust did not stop there.
It carried the ashes deeper into the tunnel at blinding speed, a violent herald announcing her arrival to whatever waited ahead.
Silence followed.
Haruna flicked her blade once, shaking the filthy blood from its edge.
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Then they moved.
Haruki sounded almost smug, an odd glimmer of excitement in her voice.
"You're amazing! Do you have anything else? Like proper casting-type spells?"
"I... do," Haruna replied calmly. "But this is the most efficient approach if we want to reunite with Master and Miss Hana."
"I know... Sorry. I got a little carried away," Haruki admitted, letting out a small, awkward laugh.
"I... see."
Haruna fell quiet as they continued forward.
Every step felt heavier than the last.
Since their teleportation, something had shifted.
Haruki had changed the moment Haruto disappeared from sight.
Her entire demeanor was different.
Was she blaming herself?
Or was the silence simply the weight of being separated from her brother?
Haruna found it unsettling.
Haruki, usually so vibrant and outspoken, now felt restrained. Masked. Too quiet.
Even the apology felt wrong.
Apologizing isn't something Haruki would do. At least that's what Haruna could understand from the limited time they'd been together.
But... Haruna did not press her.
Instead, she turned that unease into resolve.
Another reason to move faster.
Another reason to reach the end.
She bent her knees and lowered her center of gravity.
Wind gathered once more.
In the next instant, it detonated beneath her feet, launching her forward at terrifying speed. She balanced mid-dash using controlled wind manipulation, adjusting subtly to maintain precision.
Torches ignited one by one in her wake, marking the territory she conquered within the pseudo dungeon.
They advanced with a single purpose.
To reunite with those who mattered most.
Hana.
Haruto.
And whatever waited at the end of this distorted trial.
...
As the newly bonded sisterly tale unfolded within the tunnels of the dismantled dungeon, another familiar figure moved at an astonishing pace in a completely different vicinity.
Flames swallowed the entirety of the wet tunnels as wind and fire combusted together, forming raging fire tornadoes that evaporated anything standing in their path.
At the center of this chaos stood one small slime.
Hana leaped into the air, cocking her body back before exhaling a powerful vortex of wind engulfed in flames. The fire tornado surged forward at terrifying speed, instantly swallowing everything ahead.
In front of her were frogmen. Or at least, that was what she called them, based on her game knowledge, of course.
Their wet skin evaporated and cracked dry in seconds as the small slime, supposedly their natural prey, unleashed an overwhelming fire wind hybrid technique. They burned into ash before they could even attempt to defend themselves.
As her enemies writhed and dissolved in agony, Hana remained eerily calm.
Without a word, she replicated Haruto’s dash technique, gathering Astrons behind her body. The unstable sphere of energy detonated into an explosive burst of fire, launching her forward like a cannonball.
Midair, she adjusted her trajectory, using controlled bursts of flame to incinerate more enemies along her path.
Beside her, exclusive system windows opened one after another, announcing experience gains as she defeated monster after monster.
With her core affinity revealed to be fire, her ambitions ignited into fierce confidence. Armed with newfound power and inspired by Haruto’s ideas, she manifested her abilities with precision, sweeping through the dungeon at overwhelming speed. Like a level 100 player entering the tutorial area of a game, her gaming experience sharpened her instincts, elevating both her intellect and her grasp of magic.
To her right, a floating map hovered in midair.
She was advancing steadily, a pin marking a larger area ahead that appeared to be the dungeon’s end.
She had one goal.
Find Haruto.
She had requested the system to locate him and the others as quickly as possible. That tracking progress displayed on the opposite side, where a second map had formed, revealing monsters as red dots of varying sizes.
She landed, then propelled herself forward again with another combustion burst.
Her body did not collapse despite being mostly fluid. Some unseen force held her structure together, stabilizing her form even under violent acceleration.
Then a notification chimed beside her.
A new system window appeared.
<
The locator map updated instantly, revealing several tunnels converging toward the large chamber at the end.
Blue pins marked the positions of Haruto, Haruki, and Haruna. Haruto was alone in his own tunnel. Haruna and Haruki were together in another.
Hana slowed, carefully studying the map as more monsters appeared ahead.
Since detection was based on the amount of energy emitted from a body, the larger the dot, the stronger the monster. According to the map, more powerful entities lurked deeper within the dungeon.
“It’s almost as if there are levels to this,” she muttered.
Her gaze shifted toward the largest red dot resting within the final chamber.
“The final chamber might actually have a boss.”
That was concerning.
But not nearly as concerning as what she noticed next.
Hana leaned forward slightly, trying to process what she was seeing.
One of the tunnels was already half cleared.
And… there were no large monster signatures moving through it.
Just one small dot.
Moving at an unnatural speed.
Her entire focus sharpened instantly.
“That’s bad…”
Without hesitation, she dashed forward once more, leaving behind only the echo of her fiery departure as she vanished from where she had stood.
Whatever that presence was, it was effortlessly eliminating every monster in its path and advancing at terrifying speed. That alone demonstrated a level of superiority even Haruto did not possess.
The threat was obvious.
Someone could conceal their presence. Someone capable of suppressing their aura to nothing more than a faint, insignificant dot.
There was something stronger than any of them.
And it was definitely not on their side.
That was dangerous.
More dangerous than the boss itself.
For that reason, she had to reach them first.
She had to warn them before they encountered that thing.
...