The hum of the underground arena faded as Tessandra Liones stretched lightly, the residual energy from her circuits still vibrating faintly in the room.
"That's enough for today, Kaelen," she said, her voice calm but commanding. "Rest up. Tomorrow, you meet the rest of your teammates. You'll need more than raw strength to survive what's coming."
Kaelen nodded, exhaustion clear on his face, but the spark in his eyes remained unextinguished. "Understood," he said. "Tomorrow, I'll be ready."
With a graceful bow, Tessandra dismissed him, watching as he left the arena and began his journey home. The streets of Amorak seemed smaller somehow, mundane against the scale of power he had just witnessed.
Back in Kael'Ar, the city of Arkion's reconstruction was almost finished , but in a quiet corner of the world, far from the human eyes, Arata Kurogane sat in the calm of his restaurant, Hoshigawa, sipping tea with a serene smile. The faint hum of the establishment, the aroma of freshly prepared meals, it all created a momentary pocket of peace in a world that was anything but.
But peace, as usual, was fleeting.
The faint tug of cosmic resonance reached him. A pulse unlike anything terrestrial — raw, alien, and hungry. His eyes narrowed, the golden aura around him flickering ever so slightly.
"Interesting," he murmured, setting down the tea cup. "Someone else is stirring… outside this world."
The source was unmistakable. Something massive. Something alive. Something that fed on the very essence of life itself. He could feel it—an intelligent predator moving through the void, attuned to the vital currents of living beings across Kael'Ar.
Arata rose calmly, stepping into the air as the city around him seemed to pause in subtle reverence. His mind accessed calculations and strategies without effort, mentally mapping the trajectory and energy signature. The creature was beyond anything recorded in the mortal realms. It had a name, whispered across the dark corridors of interdimensional space: Dark Night.
The Dark Night:
It was a being that defied conventional form — a sphere-like head with eight glowing, crimson eyes, each independently observing, calculating, and predating. From its body sprouted long, writhing tentacles, flexible yet immensely strong, capable of crushing worlds or siphoning the essence of life from any being unfortunate enough to come close.
Dark Night survived by feeding on the life force of living beings, consuming planetary energy and astral currents alike. Its hunger was insatiable, a force of natural predation that spanned dimensions.
Its home realm, Nophilis, was as dark and cruel as its namesake. A void between worlds, littered with dead stars, blackened planets, and lingering echoes of civilizations it had consumed. Nophilis had no sun, no sky, only a perpetually shifting expanse of void where energy itself seemed to twist in pain. The Dark Night reigned supreme there — the apex predator of a world where survival was extinction.
Nophilis was whispered about in forbidden tomes as a warning to even the most reckless of interdimensional travelers. Few survived to tell the tale, and those who did often returned… hollow.
Arata's eyes glinted.
"I see," he murmured, already extending his senses into space, bridging circuits and life detection with a precision that was uncanny. "So this is the one that's been drifting… feeding across dimensions."
He rose fully, his aura igniting like a second sun around him. The walls of Hoshigawa seemed to shimmer under the invisible force of his presence. Then, without a word, he vanished, stepping through the void itself.
Outside the atmosphere of Kael'Ar, the stars stretched endlessly. A dark silhouette moved against the cosmos — the Dark Night. Its tentacles arched, probing, tasting, as the eight eyes glimmered with predatory awareness.
Arata arrived in orbit around Kael'Ar, his golden aura crackling faintly against the black of space. He floated, calm and measured, observing the creature. The Dark Night sensed him immediately, eyes turning in perfect unison toward his position. But unlike all other life it had hunted, it could not perceive his essence fully.
The void seemed to grow colder around him as the Dark Night hissed, a soundless exhalation that vibrated through dimensions.
Arata tilted his head, a faint smirk forming.
"Well then," he murmured, "let's see what Nophilis has been hiding."
And with that, the stars stretched infinitely before him as he prepared to engage the creature that could devour life itself.
The Era of Dungeons was only the beginning. Out here, in the void, a far greater threat had awakened.