Chapter 5: The Weight of Limitless
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"Haaah…"
A long sigh escaped my lips as I finally reached the heart of the dungeon.
The chamber was nothing like what I expected.
A dead dungeon, the forums had called it. Empty, hollow, a grave with no monsters to guard its treasure. That sounded simple enough when I was still just a reader behind a glowing screen. But standing here, surrounded by an oppressive silence so thick I could hear my own pulse echoing in my ears, the word dead didn't feel comforting—it felt suffocating.
And yet…
Before me, embedded in a cracked stone pedestal, lay the thing that made my breath hitch.
A faint glow spilled out of the crystalline object resting on the pedestal's surface. It wasn't blinding, nor dazzling. Instead, it pulsed—steady, slow, alive. Each throb of light seemed to sync with my heartbeat, as though my body recognized it even before my mind fully grasped what I was looking at.
The [Limitless] Artifact.
"…Unbelievable."
The word trembled out of me as I staggered closer.
This was it. This was the artifact that had only been mentioned once in passing. I remembered the day clearly—buried deep inside the SBS section of the webnovel's comments, a reader had asked if there were any unique weapons or hidden artifacts besides swords and spears. The author had shrugged it off in a reply, half-jokingly admitting that there was a single item tied to axemanship, buried in a forgotten dungeon, but since no one in the main cast used an axe, it would never appear in the story.
Just like that. A throwaway piece of trivia.
But here it was, glowing, humming, real.
And mine.
I clenched my fists, suddenly aware of how dry my throat was.
'I actually found it… The one artifact that makes axemanship more than a dead-end skill. The one thing no one else even knows exists.'
I'd expected ruins, collapsed stone, maybe an ominous mist. But not this. A clean, hollow chamber. Roots dangled from the ceiling like veins, light seeped faintly through cracks in the walls, and dust lay untouched across the floor, undisturbed by footsteps or claws. No monsters, no guardians. Just silence.
It was wrong. Too easy. Too convenient.
And yet, wasn't that the point?
In the story, no one had bothered coming here. Because no one cared about axemanship. The protagonist's rival stumbled in here by mistake during an elective expedition, discarded the artifact thinking it was trash, and that was it. Nothing more.
But I wasn't him.
I wasn't bound by ignorance.
I was a reader. I knew the weight of what lay before me.
My hand trembled as I reached out, fingers brushing the crystalline surface of the [Limitless].
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Just cool glass-like texture beneath my fingertips. Then—
Thrum.
Light surged outward, washing over the chamber in a wave. The pedestal cracked further under the pressure, lines spiderwebbing across the stone. My eyes widened as I felt it—like fire and lightning fused together, pouring into me through my palm.
"Aaagh—!"
My knees buckled. My body convulsed as if struck by a thousand invisible hammers. Pain exploded through every nerve, raw and unrelenting. My bones groaned, my muscles tore and stitched, tore and stitched again in an endless cycle. It wasn't just physical
it was inside, deeper, in the veins that carried mana, in the marrow that carried life.
Limitless wasn't some gentle blessing.
It was a shattering.
A rewriting of what it meant to be human.
I couldn't even scream. My jaw locked tight, breath caught in my throat. Only a strangled hiss escaped as I collapsed to the cold stone floor, clutching my chest.
Time lost meaning. Each second stretched into eternity, every heartbeat like a drum pounding against my skull. My vision blurred, black spots dancing at the edge. My body wasn't just being changed
it was being broken to pieces and reforged again, over and over.
Then darkness.
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I woke to silence.
"…Urgh."
My throat burned as if I'd swallowed fire. My limbs felt heavy, alien, stiff. Slowly, I rolled onto my side, wincing at the soreness in every joint.
The dungeon ceiling loomed above me, its cracks glowing faintly with lingering light. For a moment, I lay there, simply breathing, waiting for the pounding in my skull to ease.
When I finally managed to push myself upright, my first instinct was to check the time. My fingers fumbled inside my bag until they closed around the familiar cold surface of my tablet.
Tap.
A faint holographic screen flickered to life above it, displaying the interface.
========================
Time : 07 : 17
Date : 07/02/3957
Mail (15) Calls (0) Messages (0)
"…Only three hours."
Relief loosened the knot in my chest. I'd half-feared I'd been unconscious for days, maybe weeks, like some fairy-tale coma. But three hours was manageable. Academy enrollment wasn't until tomorrow. I still had time.
Closing the device, I pulled in a deep breath and summoned the courage to open the thing I'd been both dreading and anticipating.
Status Window.
A ripple of blue light appeared before me.
===Status===
Name : Kael Arden
Rank : G
Strength : G
Agility : G
Stamina : G-
Intelligence : G
Mana Capacity : G
Luck : E
Charm : G-
Profession : [Axemanship Lv.1]
Traits: [Limitless] – No Rank Cap
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My lips curled into a trembling smile.
"There it is…"
[Limitless]. A single word. A simple line. Yet its meaning was heavier than anything else I'd ever seen.
No more ceilings. No invisible wall waiting at the peak of G-rank, F-rank, or even S-rank. My growth was mine to decide.
It didn't make me talented. It didn't make me powerful. But it gave me something far greater freedom.
And that freedom meant I could walk a path no one else dared tread.
"…The path of the axe."
I let my gaze drift to the profession line. [Axemanship Lv.1].
Back when I was just a reader, everyone ignored it. Who cared about axes when swords were elegant, spears were versatile, and bows could rain death from afar? Axes were clumsy. Brutish. The "barbarian's weapon."
But I remembered that offhand reply from the author. The one artifact. The one art. The one path left unexplored.
A faint chuckle escaped me, though it came out ragged and weak.
"Guess it's my turn to write that path myself."
---
It took longer than I wanted to crawl out of the dungeon. My body resisted every movement, stiff as though I'd been chained. For an hour I did nothing but tense and release each muscle, coaxing them back to life one by one. Fingers, arms, legs. Only then did I manage to haul myself upright and stagger forward.
When the dungeon's mouth finally opened above me and the crisp air of dawn spilled across my face, I nearly wept.
"Haa… finally. Fresh air."
The difference was staggering. Inside had been suffocating, stale, as if the walls themselves clung to the last breath of a thousand years. Out here, the breeze carried lifepine, soil, dew. I gulped it down like water.
Straightening, I turned eastward.
And there it was.
On the horizon, Ashton City.
The megacity glittered beneath the rising sun, skyscrapers gleaming like spears of glass and steel. Sky-trains hummed along their magnetic tracks, darting between towers, never stopping, never sleeping. Humanity's capital. The jewel of survival after the cataclysms.
"Beautiful," I whispered, the word slipping out unbidden.
No matter how broken the world had become, humanity had built this. Defiant, stubborn, alive.
And now, it was my home.
I clenched my fists, staring at the skyline.
[Limitless] had given me freedom, but freedom alone wasn't enough.
I needed a weapon. A path. A technique to carve my name into existence.
And I knew exactly where to start.
The Parshu Axe Art style.
Created by the Indian Ranker who had honored Lord Parshuram, the eternal warrior of the axe. A style rooted not in elegance or grace, but in overwhelming force honed into divine precision. The only true axemanship manual of its kind.
My lips tightened into a determined grin.
"…Limitless only gave me freedom. The axe will give me a path."
With that thought, I adjusted my bag, turned my back on the dead dungeon, and began the long walk toward destiny.