Chapter 198: unranked trial

The wooden stairs leading down from the upper room didn’t just creak; they gave a short snap as Jun-ho’s rubber boots hit the middle landing.

It was three in the morning. The heat from Master Kwang’s hearth was still rising through the cracks in the floorboards, but the air inside the main cavern had turned completely sour. The smell of burning coal had been swallowed by a cold, greasy stench of high-density maritime mana that could only come from a military-grade guild cutter.

Master Kwang was standing near his anvil, his heavy tongs clamped tight around the unpolished hilt of The Ash Remnant.

The sword was finished, but it didn’t look like a standard legacy weapon. The old railroad iron was gone, replaced by a solid, four-foot wedge of ink-black metal that didn’t reflect a single ray of light from the oil lamps. The crossguard was a thick, square bar of raw black basin slag, and the grip was wrapped in heavy, unrefined hemp cord that was still wet with the thick oil of the Tier 5 crawler. It looked rough, crude, and heavy—less like a sword and more like a tool meant for breaking concrete foundations.

"Take it," the old blacksmith grunted, his scarred arm trembling slightly from the sheer physical mass of the weapon. "The alignment is locked to your ribs, kid. But you’d better move fast. The harbor lines just went dark."

Jun-ho reached out his left hand, his fingers closing around the rough hemp wrap. The moment his skin made contact, a sharp gray notification box opened across his vision, perfectly silent.

[Asset Integration Complete: The Ash Remnant (Phase 2 Form).]

[Item Utility: Physical strikes carry a 500x weight calculation upon impact. Your mana conductivity is increased by 40%.]

[System Note: The Unranked Breakthrough Trial is now accessible through the lower cliffs.]

"Jun-ho!"

Eun-bi burst through the back door of the forge, her canvas bag slung tight across her waist, her yellow rain jacket covered in a fresh layer of grey sea muck. Her face was completely pale, her dark hair messy and wet from the spray outside. She had her green field radio clutched tight in her hand, the small speaker letting out a high, frantic whine of static.

"They’re inside the bay," she said, her voice dropping into a quick, sharp whisper as she stepped next to his shoulder, her bare fingers catching the frayed thread of his gray shirt. "Not the second line recruits. The Sun God Guild main detail just brought their flagship—the Sun King—right past the boundary markers. They have three Tier 5 Commanders leading the line and forty heavy enforcers already dropping onto the floating docks."

A loud, arrogant voice boomed through the tiny radio speaker, sounding thin but heavy with a cold authority.

"—All unranked runners are to remain inside their shanties. The Ministry has granted an open extraction logs order for the recovery of the stolen ledger. Any asset that interferes with the guild perimeter will be cleared under Section 4. Target Kang Jun-ho, drop the black bar and step onto the open slipway."

Jun-ho didn’t look at the radio. He slung his duffel bag over his right shoulder, his left hand keeping a firm grip on the new hemp wrap of The Ash Remnant.

"Where is the trial entrance?" Jun-ho asked, his voice flat.

"It’s directly beneath the blacksmith’s slipway," Eun-bi said, her sharp face turning hard as she looked down at the floorboards. "Gyeong-su’s old logbook said the First Sealed Unranked Trial was built right under the natural rock foundations of this bay. But the entrance is locked by a three-layer Ministry barrier. If we try to clear it while the forty enforcers are blocking the harbor, we’ll be caught in the open mud."

"They won’t block the harbor for long," Jun-ho said.

He pushed open the heavy iron door of the forge, stepping out onto the wet timber planks of the pier. The morning fog was thick, rolling over the black basalt cliffs, but through the yellow mist, the massive, silver hull of the Sun King was visible, its high-power halogen searchlights pinning the floating village in two long, bright lanes of blinding white light.

Forty heavy enforcers in polished steel plate armor were already walking down the main siding, their heavy boots making a deafening clatter against the wood, their short crossbows primed with glowing blue mana arrows.

Leading the center line were the three Tier 5 Commanders, their white alloy breastplates gleaming under the glare, their hands holding long silver staves that hummed with a heavy, active lightning attribute.

"Target identified!" the lead Commander called out, his voice booming across the dark water. "Novice Vanguard, Kang Jun-ho! Put your hands behind your head! The Sun God main detail is taking over this sector!"

Jun-ho didn’t answer them. He took three long steps forward, his large rubber boots making a steady, firm crunch against the wet wood of the slipway. He let the vast, frozen pool of the Ash Monarch mana behind his ribs break its banks completely, the Ashen Domain - Phase 2 expanding outward in a flat, twenty-meter ring of thick grey frost.

[Ashen Domain Phase 2 Active.]

[Mana Cost: 400 per minute. Current Mana: 2500/2500.]

The air inside the twenty-meter circle dropped thirty degrees in a microsecond, the wet salt spray on the planks instantly turning into a thick sheet of white ice. The world inside the perimeter slowed down until the heavy blue lightning vibrating around the Commanders’ staves looked like lazy, sputtering threads of purple thread hanging still in the fog.

The forty enforcers lunged forward together, their iron maces raised in a synchronized strike to crush his ribs.

But the moment their grey steel shields crossed the boundary of his domain, their kinetic velocity was stripped by half. Jun-ho didn’t drop into a defensive stance. He raised The Ash Remnant with his left hand and brought the flat side of the heavy weapon straight down onto the wooden floorboards beneath his feet.

The sound wasn’t a standard dungeon explosion; it was a localized earthquake that blew the entire black timber pier completely to pieces. The shockwave, multiplied five hundred times by the weapon’s bound trait, traveled through the floating village, fracturing the iron chains and splitting the wooden hulls of the nearby barges wide open. The force of the blast tore the forty enforcers off their feet, throwing their grey steel bodies backward into the ink-black water in a single, massive wave of white foam.

The three Tier 5 Commanders staggered back against their flagship’s rail, their visors covered in a thick layer of grey frost, their active skill lines frozen into solid gray boxes by the sudden, massive output of his mana.

[Forty targets neutralized.]

[Experience gains locked until Breakthrough Trial is complete.]

Right through the shattered gap in the wooden floorboards, a dark, round opening in the volcanic rock was visible—the entrance to the First Sealed Unranked Trial. It was blocked by three heavy sheets of grey crystal that filled the archway, pulsing with a thick, crimson mana logic.

"Jun-ho! Now!" Eun-bi shouted, jumping down into the gap right behind his shoulder, her yellow rain jacket rustling as she clutched her canvas bag tight against her ribs. Her face was very close to his in the dark, her bare thigh pressing hard against his side for stability on the broken rock.

Jun-ho reached into his pocket, his fingers closing around the cold brass watch of the Paradox Dial.

"Clear the line," Jun-ho whispered into the dark hole.

[Paradox Dial Utility Active.]

[Target: First Sealed Unranked Trial (Three-Layer Crystal Barrier).]

[Mana Cost: 200. Current Mana: 1900/2500.]

He pressed the small brass button down.

A heavy, metallic click echoed through the volcanic shaft, and instantly, the crimson mana pulsing inside the grey crystal sheets died out completely, turning into a dull, frozen white mineral that cracked into thousands of tiny pebbles, raining down onto the stone tracks below. The path to the breakthrough zone was completely open, leading straight down into the deep, dark silence of the outer island foundations.

Jun-ho grabbed Eun-bi by the thick strap of her bag, his left hand holding the black sword tight against his knee, and dove straight forward into the dark opening of the shaft, leaving the shattered pier and the ruined flagship behind them in the dark gray mist of the open sea.