Tony's speed was simply inhuman. The instant he activated Phantom Step, his body blurred into a dozen afterimages, too fast for the stunned samurai to even comprehend. One breath, one heartbeat—and the middle-aged man's body slumped to the floor, his ornate robes soaking crimson as a fountain of blood painted the walls.
Only then did the armored guards react, faces twisted in panic as they scrambled to draw their blades. One reached for his weapon only to grasp empty air. His eyes flickered to Tony's hand, where a familiar sword gleamed under the dim lantern light.
"Tch…" Tony's lips curled into a cold smirk as his body vanished again.
From the balcony, it looked as though a dozen Tonys materialized at once, weaving between the panicked guards.
"Slick… slick… slick…" Steel flashed, a dance of death too swift for mortal eyes to follow. One by one, the guards collapsed, their lives spilling onto the tatami mats until silence reclaimed the room.
HighQiang let out a long whistle, half awed, half horrified. "First thing Big Bro does after entering the dungeon? Wipes out our side. Man's got ice in his veins. Still… can't blame him. These idiots were just dead weight anyway."
Yuqing's lips twitched. The Sakura Nation strategy guides had recommended the same tactic, which told her everything she needed to know about how useless these NPC allies truly were.
"You guys stay put," Tony said, voice calm as ever. "I'll clear the path."
Without another word, he stepped to the balcony edge and dropped into the chaos below.
The battlefield was a churning sea of bodies—rebels and shogunate soldiers hacking, stabbing, and screaming. The moment Tony landed, his blade flashed, and men on both sides toppled like wheat before a scythe.
There was no hesitation, no mercy. He wasn't here to play politics. His four stats were already hovering around 120, and with Sword Mastery and Phantom Step, these enemies—barely scratching at 10 to 20 attributes—might as well have been children swinging sticks.
Did slaughtering this many men weigh on him? Not anymore. Tony had died a dozen times himself in the bloodbath that was Lin Fortress. He'd learned the rules of this world the hard way: kill or be killed.
From the balcony, his teammates stood frozen, jaws slack.
"Holy hell…" HighQiang breathed. "He's mowing them down like it's nothing."
"It's not even a fight," Yu Bowen muttered. "It's like watching a god smash bugs."
"I swear, I joined this party just hoping to clear a dungeon and brag about it later," HighQiang said, voice tinged with disbelief. "Hell, I even planned a cool pose for when I got my carried-to-victory screenshot. But this… this is on another level. We're strapped to a nuclear bomb."
"Yeah," Yan Wu added, shaking his head. "We don't even need to move. Just sit back and watch."
Yuqing ignored their chatter, eyes fixed on Tony carving a bloody path through the battlefield. Her breath caught when two hulking elite soldiers—towering men clad in heavy armor, attributes easily triple that of common grunts—charged from the rebel ranks, twin blades arcing toward Tony's head.
"Watch out! Elite incoming!" she shouted on instinct.
But she quickly realized her warning was pointless. Tony was already moving, faster than her eyes could track. Two blinding arcs of steel later, the elites' heads spun into the air, their bodies stumbling several feet before collapsing like broken dolls.
Tony swapped blades without missing a beat, spinning into another whirlwind of death. The dungeon AI kept funneling reinforcements, but they arrived too slowly. Every enemy within reach died before raising a weapon. In less than a minute, the ground was slick with blood, and Tony stood alone, surrounded by corpses.
As he closed in on the exit route, a strange figure stepped forward—a man in ceremonial armor, his robes marked with intricate sigils. At his feet, a white, spectral hound bared its fangs, growling low.
"Boss fight," Yuqing breathed. "That's the Shikigami user…"
The boss barked out foreign commands, words Tony didn't bother deciphering. In his mind, there was only one solution for obstacles: remove them.
He charged straight ahead, speed unwavering. The spectral hound lunged first, but the moment its ethereal form touched Tony's blazing aura, it howled in agony and dissipated like mist in fire.
Then Tony hit the boss.
BANG!
It was like watching a truck plow through a pedestrian. The armored man flew backward, ribs crunching audibly, blood spraying from his mouth in a scarlet arc. By the time he hit the ground, it was obvious he wouldn't be getting back up.
Tony didn't even slow his pace. A shadow streak, and he was gone, melting into the darkness beyond the encampment. Moments later, the system's chime echoed in everyone's ears.
[Congratulations. You have cleared Trial Dungeon: Shogunate Rebellion. Rating: F.]
[First Clear Bonus Achieved. Due to your minimal contribution, you receive: Strength Crystal x1, Agility Crystal x1, Constitution Crystal x1, Spirit Crystal x1.]
"WOOHOO!" HighQiang whooped, fist pumping the air as the others laughed in sheer disbelief.
Meanwhile, in the Transcendents' Forum, the Shogunate Rebellion section was in chaos.
Just three minutes earlier, a Sakura Nation player had posted a thread announcing that their elite exploration team, the famed Amaterasu Squad, was about to secure the first clear. They'd scouted every mechanic, swapped in their strongest members—including their nation's only SSS-ranked talent, Nobuo Miyamoto—and expected to dominate.
The comments flooded in, full of arrogant boasts.
"Haha, Amaterasu Squad's clear will put all the previous ones to shame. Great Xian's clears were just luck and trash-tier cheese."
Fourth, first-clear overall, but the most legit. Watch and learn, foreign scrubs."
"True power belongs to Sakura Nation. Everyone else is just filling the leaderboard for us."
But mid-celebration, a World Announcement thundered across the interface:
[World Announcement: Congratulations to Tony, Yuqing, HighQiang, Yu Bowen, and Yan Wu for completing Trial Dungeon: Shogunate Rebellion.]
The forum froze.
"…Wait… what? Why are there five Great Xian players on that announcement?"
"Must be a bug. It's supposed to say Amaterasu Squad."
"There's no way anyone beats Nobuo Miyamoto to the clear. No way."
Players frantically checked the records. What they saw left them speechless:
3 minutes, 20 seconds.
Amaterasu Squad's own best attempt? 15 minutes, 37 seconds.
The mockery started instantly.
"Three minutes. LMAO. Sakura clowns got their faces slapped."
"Should've spent less time bragging and more time clearing."
"Don't cry about kill-steals when you couldn't even find the boss before Tony nuked the whole map."
Back in the Lin Fortress forums, players gaped as new posts surfaced.
"That Tony… is that the same guy who cheesed Lin Fortress?"
"I just checked the dungeon log. Same dude."
"WHAT THE HELL?! He cleared the Shogunate Rebellion faster than it takes me to tie my shoes!"
One stunned player summed up what everyone was thinking:
"I think this guy AFK'd in his first dungeon for six hours, took a nap, then woke up and decided to break the game."
And just like that, Tony's legend grew.