Chapter 213: ancient deep king

The drop through the blood-red portal didn’t end in open sea water. The sudden shift in the gate’s logic slammed them straight down onto a wide, dry floor made of thick, grey salt blocks. The air inside the massive circular roundhouse was heavy, freezing cold, and tasted intensely of dry brine and old copper. Every five seconds, the high basalt ceiling would let out a slow, wet drip, the black moisture hitting the stone tracks below with a flat, echoing thud.

Jun-ho landed heavily, his large rubber boots making a solid, unyielding sound against the grey salt crust. The stone-gray slabs of the Ashen Monarch Core Plate sat rigid over his chest, perfectly dry despite the water they had just cut through. His left hand kept a hard, steady grip on the new black hemp wrap of The Ash Remnant, the blunt matte-black edge resting near his ankle.

Right beside his elbow, Eun-bi hit the gravel heap with a soft grunt, her canvas bag slung tight across her waist. She had Gyeong-su’s old gray flannel shirt wrapped twice around her ribs, the top three buttons left loose because of the sudden, suffocating heat coming out of the floor cracks.

Her dark hair was wet and messy, strands sticking to her chin as she adjusted her electric headlamp. Her bare thigh pressed hard against his denim trousers for balance, her skin shivering slightly from the salt chill.

"The air is too thick down here, Jun-ho," she whispered, her voice dropping into a quiet, raspy register that didn’t travel past the nearest support pillar. She tapped her silver trauma scissors against her wrist ring with a sharp, impatient click. "My display isn’t registering a single civil network log. The Ministry tracking filters are completely dark."

Rea slid onto a low wooden storage crate right next to his shoulder, her movements carrying a slow, fluid grace that made the high-slashed black silk of her tunic rustle softly against her skin. She had thrown her yellow rain jacket over the side rail of the mining tracks to dry, leaving her long, smooth legs exposed all the way to her upper thigh under the dim oil lamps. The deep V-neck line of her tunic pulled wide as she leaned forward, showing the full, rounded curves of her chest and the narrow, perfect line of her waist. Her full crimson lips parted into a lazy, teasing smile, and her golden-blue eyes spun slowly, tracking the crimson mana threads inside the floor blocks.

"The old man was right about the coordinate files, big guy," Rea murmured, her voice a deep, sultry purr that carried the heavy scent of wild orchids through the sour grease smell of the cave. She leaned her torso down until her shoulder was wedged tightly under his armpit, her warm breath hitting his bare neck in soft, rhythmic puffs. "The traps inside this mezzanine are manual. Look at the two iron trip-wires running down the center of the drainage track. If a normal hunter tries to force the latch, the loop collapses the entire stone block onto his head."

"The wires are brittle," Jun-ho said, his voice flat like stone.

He reached into his pocket with his right hand, his fingers uncurling from the cold brass lock of The Monarch’s Ledger to check his numbers.

[ Level: 25 ]

[ Mana: 2200/5000]

[ Active Trait: Ashen Domain (Phase 3) ]

"Jun-ho, look at the text," Eun-bi said, her fingers tightening around her clipboard as she crouched near the base of the pillar. Her flannel shirt pulled tight across her back, her breath coming in quick gasps. "The ledger is drawing three hundred points from the core line. The resource multiplier is ready, but the path ahead has an active block."

Before he could touch the ten unassigned points floating in his vision, a sudden, deafening CRACK exploded from the blood-red portal right behind their shoulders.

The heavy stone entrance didn’t just rattle; it fractured down the middle as three large Ministry naval cutters dropped their heavy steel extraction lines straight down the vertical shaft. Twenty men in thick, polished white alloy plate armor burst through the dust, their automated crossbows primed with blue tracking arrows, their silver staves pulsing with a thick, active purple lightning current.

Leading the center line was a Tier 5 Maritime Knight, his white helmet covered in a thick layer of grey sea muck, his long silver sword vibrating with a heavy lightning attribute that lit up the entire granite roundhouse in long, liquid lanes of purple glare.

"Target identified!" the Maritime Knight shouted through his visor, his voice booming across the empty floor. "Rogue Vanguard, Kang Jun-ho! The Ministry has issued an open extraction order for the ledger! Drop the black bar and get on your knees!"

From the dark concrete pit in the center of the room, an even larger sound answered his shout.

The three-meter black crystal sphere anchored to the floor didn’t just glow; it split open with a screech of ungreased iron, revealing the area boss—the Ancient Deep King. The creature looked like a massive, hairless torso made of melted train wheels and black iron tracks, its skull shaped like the flat front of an old coal locomotive, its red central eye flaring with a brilliant, blinding white fire that radiated a suffocating weight through the air.

[Three-Way Engagement Active: Ancient Deep King (Tier 5 Primal Variant).]

[Target Identified: Ministry Maritime Knight Detail (Tier 5 Enforcers).]

[System Note: The 100x Multiplier will apply to the collective experience pool upon total clearance.] ℯ

"Tae-woo, lock the boards," Jun-ho called out, his voice quiet.

The five elite vanguards stepped forward in unison, their massive Tier 4 frames making the salt floor creak as they slammed their wide blocks of dark basin rock flat against the granite blocks. The five stone walls formed a solid, unbroken mountain barrier that completely blocked the narrow entrance lane, shielding the rear desk area from the mages’ staves.

TWANG. TWANG. TWANG.

The fifteen blue tracking arrows fired by the corporate knights hit the dark rock barriers with a rapid series of dull, harmless clicks. The bolts didn’t leave a single white mark on the stone, their steel tips shattering into gray sand.

"Rea, clear the back line," Jun-ho ordered flatly.

"Watch the wrist snap, big guy," Rea whispered, her golden-blue eyes glinting with a sudden, intense heat as her full crimson lips parted.

With her multiplied master rogue speed, her black silk tunic cut a clean, fluid line through the low cave mist. Her long bare legs flashed under the yellow lamps as she glided past the pillars, her obsidian dagger slicing through the mages’ silver staves with a sharp clack before they could even release a single spark.

Her full, perfect hourglass shape twisted smoothly through the steam, her hip brushing light against the stone-gray plate of Jun-ho’s armor as the four knights dropped their broken rods into the gray muck.

Jun-ho took two long steps forward, his rubber boots sliding smoothly over the salt crust. He raised The Ash Remnant with his left hand, the new matte-black hemp wrap dry and solid in his grip. He didn’t drop into a defensive block, and he didn’t look back at the old fence desk. He let the lake of cold mana behind his ribs break its banks completely, the Ashen Domain - Phase 3 expanding outward in a flat, thirty-meter ring of thick grey frost.

[Ashen Domain Phase 3 Active.]

[Mana Cost: 500 per minute. Current Mana: 1700/5000.]

The air inside the thirty-meter circle dropped forty degrees in a microsecond, the damp brine on the walls instantly turning into a thick sheet of white ice. The world inside the perimeter slowed down until the white fire inside the Deep King’s chest looked like a lazy, sputtering match flame hanging still in the fog.

The Maritime Knight lunged forward with his silver sword, while the iron beast brought its massive track-arm down in a synchronized strike to crush his shoulders.

Jun-ho didn’t move an inch backward. He snapped his left wrist, driving the sharp matte edge of the thousand-fold blade straight down through the center of the iron monster’s chest.

BOOM.

The thunderclap was massive, a localized earthquake that shattered the locomotive-shaped boss into thousands of tiny gray scraps. The blast didn’t stop there; the shockwave traveled straight through the frozen air, hitting the Maritime Knight flush in the center of his white alloy breastplate. The alloy didn’t bounce the blow off; it buckled and broke instantly, throwing the Tier 5 leader backward through the concrete door frame into the dark tunnel outside, his s

ilver sword flying five meters into the salt mud.

[Target Neutralized: Ancient Deep King (Tier 5 Area Boss).]

[Target Neutralized: Ministry Maritime Knight.]

[Total Experience Gained: 2,500,000 XP.]

[Level Up!]

[You have reached Level 28.]

[You have received 15 Unassigned Attribute Points.]

The gray notification boxes piled up across his vision in clean lines before vanishing, leaving only the ink-black text of his new level waiting on his screen.

Jun-ho lowered his sword, his fingers uncurling from the rough hemp grip as the frost around his boots began to melt back into regular oil brine. He turned his back on the ruined doorway, his dark eyes turning back toward the center desk where Eun-bi was already loading the high-tier primal cores into her canvas pack.

Rea let out a short, soft laugh that sounded like silk sliding over stone, her golden-blue eyes spinning in a lazy, victorious circle as she walked right next to his stride. Her full crimson lips were inches from his jawline, her warm breath hitting his neck in soft puffs as she caught the frayed thread near his elbow, her hip wedged tight against his side. "The channel is clear, big guy. My boat has a full tank of diesel, and the secret transit lines out of the reef are completely open. Let’s go allocate these fifteen points before the legacy families can even print a fresh tracking log."

"The detail is ready," Jun-ho said flatly.

He slung his canvas duffel bag over his right shoulder, his fingers closing around the rough black hemp wrap of his sword as they walked out of the ruined roundhouse together, their large rubber boots making a steady, firm crunch against the wet timber planks of the pier as they headed down toward the open sea, leaving the deep water of the channel behind them in the dark gray mist of the outer bay.