CHAPTER 88 Breakthrough in the Torrent

The freezing, foamy torrent of the mountain stream roared furiously, crashing with monstrous force against the sharp edges of the basalt boulders and carrying a thick, icy mist along with it. A cold, late-autumn wind blew from the north, carrying the scent of approaching frost and the damp earth. Dave stood on one leg on the very top of a slippery, black basalt pillar that protruded directly from the rushing, dangerous river. His dark blond hair was completely wet from the water breeze, clumped together and dripping with freezing droplets directly onto his forehead and shoulders. The boy wore only tattered leather trousers—his bare chest, densely covered in dark bruises, deep welts, and fresh scratches from grueling sparring matches, tensed under the freezing gusts of wind. However, a stable, hot flame of energy smoldered deep within his soul, preventing his body from freezing and maintaining the proper temperature of his muscles.

The day's katorga, however, was double. To his ankles and around his waist, Sensei had attached crude, extremely heavy blocks of basalt with thick, rough hemp ropes. Every single movement, even the smallest, cost Dave a triple dose of effort. The rough ropes dug deep into his wounded skin, and the heavy weights dragged his body down mercilessly, trying at all costs to hurl him into the foaming, roaring depths of the torrent, where razor-sharp rocks waited to shatter his bones at the slightest mistake.

The energy conduits in the boy's chest were completely blocked and cold. The master would not allow him to use a single drop of mana or magic to stabilize his position on the slippery stone, nor to artificially strengthen his arm muscles. Dave had to rely solely on the raw, physical discipline of his physical body and his heightened sense of observation.

"Focus, boy! Water does not forgive a lack of concentration, and gravity does not care about your fatigue!" a rough, resonant voice barked from the rocky riverbank.

Sensei stood on a sandy spit, holding a heavy river boulder the size of a human head in his wrinkled, steel-hard hands. Without any warning, the old man arched his hunched body back and with monstrous force hurled the stone directly at Dave. The boulder hurtled across the steaming surface of the water with inhuman speed, tearing through the river mist and whistling ominously like a launched ballistic missile.

Dave did not flinch. His sapphire eye, the only visible point on his concentrated, almost motionless face, narrowed a fraction. The heightened Yomi I, the primal observation rooted deep within his soul, worked at its highest gears. The boy did not look at the physical trajectory of the incoming stone—he sensed the old man's intent to throw a split second before the movement of the arm itself, reading the slightest tension of his opponent's will and the minimal vibrations of the air.

He applied the rapid, broken steps of the Lynx.

It was pure physical katorga. His left leg, weighted down by heavy basalt, bent at the knee, creaking under the monstrous pressure, and Dave executed a minimalist, lateral dodge on the very slippery edge of the stone pillar. The boulder passed literally centimeters from his right shoulder, pulling a sudden rush of air that nearly pushed him into the river. Dave managed to maintain his vertical position, however, firmly planting his bare toes on the rough stone, and for a split second, a predatory, mocking smile bloomed on his chapped, bleeding lips.

But the old man had no intention of giving him even a second to catch his breath or stabilize his position. A fraction of a second later, another, even larger and heavier boulder launched from his hands, aiming straight for the center of the boy's chest.

Dave tried to correct his position and lean his torso, but the slippery, wet moss-covered surface of the basalt pillar was merciless. The weight of the blocks tied to his waist dragged his entire body to the left, drastically limiting his mobility and slowing the reaction time of his joints by that one, crucial millisecond.

CRASH!

The heavy stone struck him with a dull thud directly in the left shoulder. The force of the impact was monstrous. His bones and joints popped ominously under the hard collision, and Dave completely lost his balance, falling straight into the freezing, foaming current of the river. The water immediately closed over his head, paralyzing his entire body with an icy shock. The heavy basalt weights at his ankles began to rapidly and mercilessly drag him to the stony bottom of the torrent. The freezing current threw his limp body against underwater rocks, tearing the remaining breath from his lungs and wounding his skin to blood.

Dave did not panic, however. He cut off the emotional layer of suffering, treating the sharp pain in his shoulder and the sudden lack of oxygen solely as a dry diagnostic readout of a positioning error. Clenching his teeth, he found the complex rope knot at his waist with his hand and yanked it with all his might, loosening one of the heaviest blocks of basalt. Using the dynamic force of the current, he pushed off the bottom with one leg and, with great effort, hauled himself back onto the wet arena plate, spitting out river water and dark blood.

Dave stood barefoot back on the wet stone and, for a split second, automatically fell into his habitual gesture of deep calculation, narrowing his sapphire eye.

The torrent takes away my stability, and these cursed stones on my legs completely destroy my mobility, he analyzed in his thoughts, wringing his dark blond hair with a bloody hand. Under these conditions, traditional Napierdalanka is useless. That style required momentum, a run-up, a wide swing, and full hip rotation to generate a destructive kinetic wave. If I try to take a wide swing here, the momentum of my own arm will immediately throw me off the pillar into the river. I must completely change the mechanics of force transfer. I cannot rely on distance. I must learn to generate a destructive wave from absolute zero distance, directly from the tension of my core muscles and a sudden, fractional release of KAI energy from deep within my soul exactly at the point of physical contact.

The idea was simple, but its execution required inhuman coordination and a complete redefinition of the biomechanics of movement. It was to be a phase strike—a zero-distance blow, devoid of any visible arm swing.

Dave straightened up, firmly planting his bare feet on the wet stone. The sapphire flow of his soul began to slowly, methodically course through his arms. The boy extended his right fist forward, stopping it just a centimeter from the surface of another, smaller boulder that the old man had placed on a neighboring pillar as a training target.

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"You want to strike without a swing, boy?" Sensei mocked, observing his new stance from the bank. "The steel plate taught you something, but stone will not bend under a mere touch. You must put mass into it, not just wishes."

Dave ignored his words. He focused all his attention on a tiny, dense point on the cold surface of the boulder.

He activated the Gōtai armament.

A black, metal-like coating enveloped his hand, gleaming predatorily in the cold mist. Dave made sure his wrist and elbow remained completely relaxed and springy. Gōtai could not turn his joints into stiff, metal rods—they had to retain the one hundred percent flexibility of a spring, ready for immediate energy release.

The boy closed his sapphire eye, listening to the roar of the river. He tensed his core muscles, twisted his hip a fraction of a millimeter, and at that exact moment, violently compressed the KAI energy deep within his soul, releasing it with ruthless force of will.

Tap.

The strike was almost invisible to the human eye. Dave's fist moved less than a centimeter, lightly contacting the basalt surface. From the side, it looked like a simple, gentle tap of a finger, devoid of any force.

But the physics of this collision were devastating.

BOOM!

The deafening roar of shattering rock echoed through the entire valley, completely drowning out the roar of the torrent. The heavy basalt boulder exploded from within in a split second, disintegrating into thousands of small shards that fell into the river with loud splashes. The kinetic force was so perfectly directed and condensed that the recoil wave struck back down his own body, tearing the thick rope at his waist and shattering the heavy basalt blocks tied to his ankles.

Dave wavered slightly but maintained his perfect position on one leg. From his black-armored hand, a delicate, blue vapor of sapphire soul energy rose. The boy took a deep breath, feeling the wounds on his chest slowly begin to close, and that familiar, brazen chill slowly returned to his bleeding lips.

The Napierdalanka style had been brought to an optimal level. He could generate destructive force from zero distance, without wasting energy on unnecessary movements and without the need for a wide swing.

"Not bad, boy," Sensei said from the bank, a feral, craftsman's satisfaction gleaming in his old eyes. "You've mastered the strike from within. But that is only half the way. The real test will begin when you have to apply it to a living, moving target. But we will think about that tomorrow. That is enough katorga for today. Go dry your feathers."

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers to the south, in the dark, gothic dungeons of Crossgard, a completely different, tense atmosphere prevailed.

The dark, damp Breath Room on the deep 79th floor of the Second Zone was provisionally barricaded with heavy stone slabs and the remains of shattered dungeon mechanisms. The air carried the scent of burnt oil, blood, dust, and heavy, suffocating dark mana that hung like a black shroud over the entire floor, making it hard to breathe and draining life energy. This place was a true, ruthless hell that successfully bled anyone who dared to cross its threshold without proper preparation and firepower.

On the cold, stone steps sat the girls of the Crew. All of them were extremely exhausted, their breaths heavy and ragged, and around them lay the smoking, metallic debris of powerful dungeon constructs they had neutralized with great difficulty in a bloody battle just moments ago.

Shnee sat leaning against the cold stone, breathing heavily. Her pride and icy, impeccable composure were being put to the harshest test since entering this dungeon. The dark mana pervasive on the 79th floor had drastically weakened her sapphire energy conduits, causing her usually perfect, flawless defense barrier to fail several times during the clash with the elite dungeon guardians. The consequences were visible at first glance—her usually perfect, porcelain skin on her left shoulder and near her collarbone was covered in several fresh, deep, and painful scars that still seeped lightly with blood, marring her previously flawless appearance.

Beside her, on the blood-stained moss, lay Karys. Her dark macko-tail twitched convulsively on the stone floor, and her whole body trembled with exhaustion. During the last fight, the girl had fallen into the absolute, murderous frenzy of the dark Fenrir, fighting as if high, with no regard for her own safety and ignoring all wounds. Now that the combat trance had faded, she was barely able to maintain a vertical posture. She raised her hand with difficulty, trying to chew on the hard, dry ration she held in her trembling fingers.

"This food tastes like ordinary sand..." Karys wheezed, grimacing with deep disgust. "I want a proper, hot, fat-dripping piece of roasted meat from a campfire. The same one you told me about in detail... Without him, everything in this cursed dungeon is just... too quiet. And too heavy. These rations will finish us faster than those cursed constructs."

Kaede sat on a broken chest nearby, slowly and methodically cleaning the bowstring of her bow of dust and monster blood. Hearing Karys's words and seeing the painful scars on Shnee's shoulders, the girl shook her head in deep resignation. She closed her eyes and muttered quietly under her breath in her native Earth language, smiling sarcastically under her nose:

"– Targety ledwo dyszą, a szefa nie ma. Status: przejebane... –" ("Targets are barely breathing, and the boss is gone. Status: fucked up...")

Shnee and Karys slowly raised their heads, looking at her with complete incomprehension, long accustomed to those strange, incomprehensible tirades and words that Kaede regularly spat under her breath in moments of greatest stress and exhaustion.

"What are you babbling under your breath again, Kaede?" Karys asked quietly, shifting her sore body on the cold step and leaning her head against the wall.

"Nothing, nothing..." Kaede waved her hand slightly, without pausing her methodical cleaning of her weapon. "I'm just saying that without our chief logistician, his calculations, and that annoying, brazen smirk, this dungeon is slowly eating us alive. We lack someone who would put all of this into a logical whole and simply shatter this wall before us."

Shnee remained silent for a long moment. Although she tried at all costs to maintain her proud, icy facial expression, at the mere mention of Dave, a delicate, pink blush crept onto her pale, marble cheeks, which she was unable to control. The girl slowly opened her leather notebook with logistical notes and economic plans, on which the "D" seal drawn by her own hand was visible.

"This floor is bleeding us," Shnee finally said, her voice quiet and tired, yet incredibly firm. "The dark mana paralyzes our splotches, and the constructs are too resilient for us at this moment. As soon as we clear this sector and secure a safe passage to the Breath Room, we are taking an absolute break. We are not going further to the next floors. We stop here and wait for him."

"Do you think he will return stronger?" Karys looked up at her, wiping her dust-stained face with the back of her bloody hand.

Shnee closed the notebook with a loud snap, and her gaze rested on the fresh, painful scars covering her left shoulder.

"I know him," she replied softly, an unyielding, deep certainty gleaming in her eyes. "He does not waste a single second of his life on idleness. When he returns to Crossgard, he will be a completely different man. He will be a monster who will shatter these dungeons with a single blow, paving the way for us. The question is whether we will be strong enough to keep pace with him and not bring him shame when we come to stand by his side."

In the barricaded Breath Room on the 79th floor, amidst the distant, muffled echo of monsters roaring in the darkness, a deep silence fell, full of tension and predatory anticipation. The Crew was waiting for their leader, and their future in Crossgard was at stake.