The SSS+ Dungeon: "Target Zero"Depth: Layer 5 - The Ruined SanctumTime: The Moment of Manifestation
The air in the Fifth Layer ceased to exist.
It was not a gradual thinning of oxygen, nor was it the suffocating heat of a fire. It was an absolute, conceptual void. The very fabric of reality—the physical laws that governed gravity, mass, and time—was forcibly suspended, bowing in absolute submission to the entity that had just clawed its way out of Erebin's ruptured flesh.
Damien could not move. He could not breathe. He could not even blink.
He lay on the fractured obsidian floor, a double-amputee soaked in the still-warm blood of an Emperor, staring up at the being that had been born from the carnage.
She was levitating mere inches above the gore, her bare feet untouched by the filth. Her deep, royal purple hair floated around her as if suspended in water, framing a face of such impossible, breathtaking beauty that to look upon her felt like a sin. Her heterochromatic eyes—one a burning, abyssal crimson, the other a familiar, luminescent purple—swept across the ruined throne room.
The sheer presence radiating from Nesmeranda, the Demon God, was not just terrifying; it was fundamentally incompatible with human existence. The pressure was so immense that the loose rubble around Damien began to disintegrate into fine dust, unable to hold its molecular bonds together in her proximity.
Inside Damien's mind, the System—the omnipotent, omnipresent architecture that governed all Awakened beings and Hunters—went utterly, violently insane.
[WARNING: YOU ARE IN THE PRESENCE OF A HIGH-END CONSTELLATION]
The blue holographic window that usually hovered politely in his peripheral vision suddenly flared a blinding, toxic red. It expanded, covering his entire field of view, flashing with desperate urgency.
[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED. REALITY ANCHORS FAILING.]
[WARNING: YOU ARE—]
[ERROR]
The text began to jumble. The pristine, digital interface of the System cracked like shattered glass.
[ERROR: ENTITY CANNOT BE CLASSIFIED.]
ERR—FATAL EXCEPTION—]
[ERR—RUN! R-R-R-RUN—]
The system notifications began to overlap, multiplying into hundreds of broken windows, screeching a high-pitched digital wail directly into Damien's brain. It was the sound of an artificial god panicking in the face of a true one.
Nesmeranda slowly turned her gaze toward the empty air in front of Damien. She could see the System interfaces. She could see the digital strings trying to quantify her existence.
Her perfectly sculpted lips parted, her voice echoing not in the air, but directly within the soul.
"How annoying."
She spoke in a calm, luminescent tone. It was a voice that commanded the tides and ordered the stars to die. And yet, beneath the cosmic resonance, the cadence was horrifyingly familiar to Damien. It carried the exact same arrogant, teasing lilt that Melissa used to have.
Nesmeranda slowly raised her delicate, pale hand. She didn't cast a spell. She didn't chant. She simply clenched her fist.
-CRACK.
Inside Damien's head, the noise ceased instantly. Every single red System window shattered into a million digital fragments and dissolved into nothingness. The connection to the Star Stream, the interface that had defined human strength for a decade, was casually crushed like a brittle insect.
Damien was alone. Truly, horribly alone.
"Hmm."
Nesmeranda floated closer, tilting her head as she examined the broken, armless man bleeding out on her floor. A soft, bemused smirk touched her lips.
"It's like looking in a mirror," Nesmeranda said, her voice drifting down like falling snow. She kept her distance, hovering a few feet away, seemingly savoring the taste of the atmosphere in this world after millennia of imprisonment.
'What the actual fuck does she mean by that?!' Damien questioned inwardly, his mind racing, trying to process the impossible situation through the haze of agony and blood loss.
Nesmeranda giggled. It was a sweet, chiming sound that chilled Damien to the marrow.
"'What the fuck does she mean by that?!'" Nesmeranda repeated, quoting his exact internal thought verbatim.
Damien's eyes widened in horror. She wasn't reading his facial expressions; she was reading his soul.
"Hihihihi... oh, poor mortal," Nesmeranda cooed, her crimson eye flashing with amusement. "I am sorry. It seems your fragile, limited mind cannot comprehend what I said. Let me clarify it for you."
She drifted an inch closer, pointing a slender finger at him.
"It's like I am seeing myself mapped onto you. Your face, battered and bloodied. And your hair... it is the exact same shade of red as my right eye. And his."
"Who's his?!" Damien choked out, his voice a raspy, blood-filled croak. He was inexplicably annoyed by her riddles, his anger momentarily overriding his paralyzing fear.
The smirk vanished from Nesmeranda's face, replaced by a look of profound, glacial indifference.
"None of your damn business."
Nesmeranda tilted her head.
-WHOOSH!
She didn't teleport. She simply moved faster than the concept of speed allowed. She appeared instantly in front of Damien, crouching down so her flawless face was mere inches from his soot-stained nose. The smell of ozone, lilacs, and deep-space void filled his nostrils.
She leaned in, her lips brushing against his ear.
"It is good to finally meet you," she whispered, her voice laced with a terrifying, intimate reverence. "'The One Who Was Despised By The Heavens.'"
Before Damien could even process the title, she pulled back. She smoothly raised her knee, driving it directly upward into Damien's stomach.
-BWHACK!
The impact was beyond physical pain. It felt as if a cannonball had been fired through his intestines.
Damien's body was launched off the ground. He shattered the sound barrier instantly, rocketing upward. He blasted through the massive hole in the ceiling of the Fifth Layer, tearing through the dimensional barrier, and was violently violently thrown all the way back up into the Fourth Layer—the Corpse Valley.
He crashed into the ash-covered earth, skidding for a hundred yards, digging a trench with his own broken body before finally tumbling to a halt among the rotting carcasses of the monster army.
'Motherfucker... AHHHHH! That hurts!' Damien screamed inwardly, his body convulsing as he coughed up a geyser of blood. He instinctively tried to touch his stomach, but he had no arms. He could only writhe in the dirt, feeling the exact imprint of her knee burned into his internal organs.
Before the dust from his crash could even settle, the air distorted.
Nesmeranda materialized above him, floating casually in the purple, bruised sky of the Fourth Layer. She looked down at him with an expression of mild disappointment. She held out her hand, and from the void, she casually tossed his chipped, bloodied Poignant Dagger down into the dirt beside his face.
-CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The metal bounced against the rocks, mocking his helplessness.
"Did that hurt?" Nesmeranda asked, her tone dripping with sadistic mockery.
"I honestly thought you would barely feel a tickle in your stomach from that. It seems I've gone too far, huh?" Nesmeranda sighed in mock sympathy, delicately scratching the side of her head.
"Whatever."
Nesmeranda closed the distance between her and Damien in a heartbeat, dropping from the sky like a falling star.
-BAM!
Another sickening "BWHACK!" echoed through the valley as Nesmeranda swung her bare foot, kicking him brutally in the gut again. Damien was sent rolling across the jagged rocks like a discarded ragdoll.
"Let's play," Nesmeranda smiled, her eyes glowing with dark euphoria as Damien lay in the dirt, helplessly clutching his stomach with his mind, unable to even brace himself for the end of the world.
***
6 Hours Later.The Surface - Nevada Exclusion Zone (Layer 1).Gayeol's POV
The desert sun was blinding, harsh, and utterly unforgiving.
Gyeum Gayeol burst from the shimmering boundary of the First Layer gate, collapsing onto the hot, cracked asphalt of the staging grounds.
"Haah... haah... haah!"
She was gasping desperately, her chest heaving as she tried to pull the arid Nevada air into her burning lungs. She had been running non-stop for six agonizing hours.
When Damien had screamed at her to run, she had obeyed. She had fled the Fifth Layer, utilizing a hidden, unstable spatial shortcut—an emergency exit path mapped out by the WHA intelligence division before their communications were wiped out. The shortcut had forced her to navigate a labyrinth of dimensional tears and residual monster ambushes, fighting on absolute empty, driven solely by the primal, terrifying instinct to survive.
Her pristine uniform was in tatters, soaked in sweat and monster blood. Her katana, the legendary blade of the Sword Empress, was chipped and dull.
She finally looked up, blinking against the glare of the sun. The surface staging area was in a state of absolute pandemonium. The sky was no longer a natural blue; it was tainted with swirling streaks of violent purple and black mana leaking from the gate.
Tents were overturned. Sirens were blaring. Medics were rushing back and forth.
Standing near the main command cluster, surrounded by frantic UWAAM officials and heavily armed Secret Service agents, was Prime Minister Michael Thompson. He looked like he had aged twenty years in the last six hours. His tie was undone, his hair disheveled, his eyes bloodshot.
Michael's eyes widened as he saw the lone figure collapse near the gate. He pushed past his security detail, sprinting across the tarmac.
"Call the Medics!" Michael screamed, his voice hoarse.
He slid to his knees, catching Gayeol's battered body just before her face hit the blistering ground. He propped her up, his hands shaking as he supported the World's Rank 3 Hunter.
"Gayeol! Gayeol, look at me!" Michael demanded, his eyes searching her face, looking past her for anyone else. "Where's Damien?! Where is he?!"
Gayeol coughed, a dry, racking sound. She clutched Michael's sleeve, her knuckles white.
"He... he stayed," Gayeol choked out, struggling to force the words past her ruined throat. "He stayed in the Fifth Layer... fighting Erebin. He... he told me to run."
Michael's face drained of all color. He looked up at the towering, pulsing red vortex of the gate.
"Prime Minister! Look!"
A surviving communications soldier from the vanguard surface team shouted, pointing frantically at a massive holographic monitor set up near the command tent.
Against all odds, the Old Era broadcasting drone that Erebin had deployed had survived the destruction of the castle. It had somehow managed to re-establish a stable quantum link, punching a signal through the dimensional layers directly to the surface servers.
The screen flickered, cutting through the static, and stabilized on a live feed from the depths of the dungeon.
The entire camp fell dead silent. Thousands of soldiers, medics, and politicians turned their eyes to the screen.
They didn't see the glorious victory they had been praying for. They saw hell.
The camera was zoomed in on a desolate, ash-covered landscape. In the center of the frame stood a woman of impossible beauty, her purple hair blowing in an unseen wind.
And at her feet, lying in the dirt, was Damien.
He was unrecognizable. He was missing both arms. His tactical gear was shredded to ribbons, his body covered in horrific bruises and deep, bleeding lacerations. His left eye socket was a hollow, bloody crater.
But he wasn't dead.
The camera angle shifted slightly, showing the Prime Minister and the world exactly what Damien was doing.
He was dragging his broken, limbless torso across the dirt, using the last agonizing spasms of his neck and jaw. He had reached the Demon God. And with the very last ounce of his strength, Damien Vincenzo Leone had clamped his teeth down, violently and desperately biting into Nesmeranda's bare foot.
It was a pathetic, futile, incredibly human act of defiance.
Michael's eyes widened to the absolute limit. He stared at the screen, watching his son-in-law, the man he loved like his own flesh and blood, reduced to a maimed, crawling animal, fighting a god with his teeth.
The dam broke.
"LET ME GO!" Michael roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated heartbreak and madness.
He dropped Gayeol and lunged toward the pulsing red gate.
"LET ME GOOO!!!"
Two massive UWAAM guards intercepted him, tackling the Prime Minister around the waist.
"DAMIEN! LET ME—" Michael thrashed wildly, fighting with the frantic strength of a desperate father. He clawed at the guards, kicking and screaming, trying to throw himself into the portal.
"DAMIEN, JUST STAY THERE! PAPA WILL BE THERE! I'M COMING, SON! HOLD ON!"
"ARRRGGGHHH!!"
The guards wrestled him to the asphalt, pinning his arms behind his back. Michael sobbed hysterically into the concrete, his screams echoing across the silent, horrified staging grounds. The leader of the free world was broken, watching his family be systematically eradicated by the universe.
Lying on the ground a few feet away, Gayeol watched the screen.
She was terrified. A deep, cold dread settled in her bones as she stared at the purple-haired woman on the monitor.
'THAT! That must be the Demon God!' Gayeol's mind raced, her breath hitching in her chest. 'Nesmeranda!'
She saw Damien in that state. Missing his arms. Missing his left eye. Covered in his own blood and the ash of the dungeon, biting the foot of an invincible deity just to prove he was still alive.
Gayeol gritted her teeth. A fierce, desperate denial swelled in her heart.
She placed her palms flat against the burning asphalt. She tried to push herself up.
'STAND UP!' she commanded her muscles.
Her arms shook violently, refusing to lift her weight.
'STAND UP! GODDAMNIT!'
She pushed harder, her fingernails scraping against the stone.
'STAND UP, GAYEOL! I... I NEED TO SAVE HIM! I LEFT HIM BEHIND! I HAVE TO GO BACK!'
She managed to raise herself onto her hands and knees. But her mana core was completely empty. Her tendons were torn. Her body had nothing left to give.
She collapsed back onto the ground, hitting her chin against the asphalt.
'PLEASE STAND UP! Hic... hic... hic...' Gayeol began to sob, her tears leaving clean tracks through the dust on her face. 'Please, I'm begging you, body... stand up.'
And yet, her legs remained dead weight. Her body did not hear her plea. She was trapped on the surface, a helpless spectator to an execution.
'Please... hic... hic... please, I need to save him. I can't lose someone else again.'
She lay there, weeping into the dirt, while the world watched the end of their final hero.
***
5 Hours Earlier.The SSS+ Dungeon: Layer 4.The Long Agony.
Damien was gasping for air, his chest heaving violently as he tried to survive the relentless, systematic torture.
The blows were completely out of this world. Every time Nesmeranda kicked him, it felt like being hit by a freight train traveling at mach speed. Her strikes didn't just break bones; they ruptured organs, tore muscle fibers, and sent shockwaves through his nervous system that made him wish for the sweet release of unconsciousness.
And yet... he was still alive.
He didn't know if it was his high endurance stats, his sheer willpower, or if the Demon God was deliberately keeping him on the absolute razor's edge of death just to prolong her entertainment.
He lay on his back, staring up at the bruised sky. His face was a mess of swelling and lacerations.
Nesmeranda floated down, landing gracefully beside his head. She crouched, her pristine gown gathering softly around her. She reached out with a delicate, pale finger and gently traced the line of his jaw.
"Your eyes," Nesmeranda mused, leaning in close. "They were kind of beautiful, you know. Even though the color of them is that disgustingly dark, pitch black."
She smiled, a cold, clinical expression.
"But..."
Her finger moved upward, resting gently on his left eyelid.
"I could say your stubbornness is commendable, mortal."
Nesmeranda smirked.
Without a flicker of hesitation or effort, she plunged her thumb and forefinger into his left eye socket.
"AGGGGHHHHHHH!!!" Damien shrieked, his back arching off the ground in a rictus of unimaginable agony.
She didn't just pluck it out; she crushed it inside his skull. The sickening sound of popping fluid and tearing nerves echoed in the quiet valley.
She pulled her bloodied fingers back, wiping them casually on a nearby monster corpse.
Damien couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. The pain was a blinding white light that consumed his entire existence. He had no energy left. He lay there, trembling, blood pouring down the side of his face, soaking into the ash.
Nesmeranda stood up. She looked down at him, her crimson eye glowing.
"Let us see if you can fly."
She appeared directly in front of his feet.
-BAM!
Nesmeranda kicked Damien's broken body squarely in the chest. He was launched hundreds of feet straight up into the dark sky, spinning uncontrollably, blood trailing behind him like a morbid ribbon.
Damien's single remaining right eye frantically darted around as the wind roared in his ears, searching for where she would appear next.
The air displaced above him. She reappeared on his left side, high in the atmosphere.
And—
-BAM!
Another devastating impact. But this time, it was an axe kick from Nesmeranda's left foot, driving her heel directly into the center of his spine.
'AAGGGGHHH!' Damien screamed inwardly, the air driven completely from his crushed lungs.
His single eye widened in terror as he plummeted toward the earth at terminal velocity. The ground rushed up to meet him.
'DAMNIT!!!!' Damien screamed in his mind.
He tried to brace himself. He tried to call upon the void. He tried to summon his [Black Death] trait to cushion the impact, to form a spectral shield, to do anything.
Nothing happened.
His trait, the legendary power that had allowed him to kill SSS-Rank Apostles and defy an Emperor, could not be activated anymore. Nesmeranda hadn't just beaten him physically; her mere divine manifestation had fundamentally corrupted his System interface.
His trait, which was supposed to be the key to his survival and his ultimate vengeance, was gone. All of his skills, his passive abilities, his masteries which he had honed in blood and tears for five agonizing years... crumbled into digital dust in his mind.
He was no longer a transcendent warrior. He was just a human. Flesh, bone, and pain.
-BOOM!
Damien's body slammed into the ground with the force of a meteor. A massive crater formed around him, cracking the obsidian bedrock.
He bounced twice, his body flopping limply, before coming to a stop face-down in the dirt.
He spat up a massive pool of thick, dark blood. He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his arms. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass.
He couldn't walk anymore.
But he could see it.
Lying ten feet away in the ash was his Poignant Dagger. The cheap, A-Rank weapon he had used to defy gods.
Damien began to crawl.
It was a pathetic, agonizing sight. Without arms, he had to dig his chin into the dirt, using the weak, spasming muscles of his neck and torso to drag his heavy, broken body forward an inch at a time.
"It's futile," Nesmeranda's voice floated down from above, echoing with divine boredom. "All of your struggles... they are all utterly futile, mortal."
She landed lightly on the ground next to him.
As Damien dragged himself forward another inch, she swung her foot.
-BAM!
She kicked him in the ribs, rolling him over.
Damien groaned, spitting blood, and immediately flipped himself back onto his stomach, continuing his excruciating crawl toward the dagger.
-BAM!
She kicked him again, harder this time, aiming for his kidneys.
-BAM!
A kick to the spine.
-BAM!
A casual sweep that cracked his jaw.
Nesmeranda repeatedly, methodically kicked Damien's body as he struggled, ignoring her completely, focused only on the metallic gleam of the dagger in the dust.
Futile, wasn't it? It was all completely futile and useless. All of his desperate struggles were absolutely meaningless in the face of this absolute power.
Like, what was he trying to do exactly? What was the end game here?
He had wanted to die. He had marched into this dungeon seeking the sweet release of death. He had told Michael, Gayeol, and Nicholas that he was here to end his life on his own terms.
And yet... here he was, reduced to a maimed worm, struggling violently, desperately, to survive.
Pathetic. It was truly pathetic.
Was it pride? Was he crawling through the dirt, taking the beatings of a god, simply because of human pride?!
No!
It was because of a promise. A promise forged in the fires of grief. A promise to die, yes... but to struggle to survive until the absolute, bitter end. Damien wanted to die, but he wanted his death to mean something. He wanted to fight until his body completely failed him, as his final, bloody tribute to Melissa, to his parents, to Lucy, to Simon, and to the old monkey Nicholas.
He couldn't just lay down and accept the execution. That wasn't who he was. That wasn't the man Melissa had loved.
That's why—
'AAAHHHHHHH!!!'
He couldn't die yet! He wanted to die a meaningful death! He wanted to leave a scar on this god before he went to hell!
Damien reached the dagger. But he didn't have arms to pick it up.
Nesmeranda stepped forward, placing her bare, pristine left foot directly in front of his face, blocking his path to the weapon.
Damien looked up at her. His single right eye burned with an unquenchable, terrifying human hatred.
He didn't hesitate. He lunged forward with his neck.
He opened his mouth and viciously bit down on Nesmeranda's left foot.
He gathered every single ounce of his remaining strength, every shred of his vanishing life force, and poured it entirely into his jaw muscles. He bit down with the force of a hydraulic press, his teeth sinking into her divine flesh, intending to tear the muscle from the bone.
Nesmeranda looked down at him. She didn't scream. She didn't even flinch in pain.
"Tch!" she clicked her tongue, an expression of profound disgust crossing her flawless features. "Do you have a feet fetish or something, you filthy animal?"
She asked it in a mocking, condescending tone. The exact tone that Damien hated the most in the entire universe.
For the last six hours, she had been mocking his struggles. Mocking his reliance on a cheap dagger. Mocking his inability to protect his friends.
And yet... Damien couldn't blame her.
He realized, in that final, blood-soaked moment, that he was a fool. A massive, colossal fool who had tried to survive while fighting a Multiversal Ender. A Goddess like her—which Damien belatedly realized was a threat capable of destroying realities, not just continents—was just toying with him. It was like a human bullying an ant before stepping on it.
And yet, despite knowing the absolute futility of it all, he still struggled to survive.
A fool.
A FOOL!
A FOOL!
A FOOL!
Damien's vision was completely fading to black. He was already hearing the whispering voices of the dead calling his name as he kept his jaw locked in a death grip around her foot, refusing to let go, his blood pooling around her toes.
Nesmeranda sighed, a sound of utter boredom. She merely tilted her head, looking down at the broken toy that had finally lost its novelty.
"Here," Nesmeranda said softly. "Let me help you end this."
She slowly raised her right foot high into the air. Mana gathered around her heel, condensing into a sharp, lethal point.
And—
-BAM!
She brought her heel down in a devastating axe kick directly onto the back of Damien's skull.
The sound of his skull fracturing echoed with terrible finality.
Damien's jaw went slack. His head hit the dirt, unmoving. The light finally faded from his single, staring eye.
Nesmeranda stepped back, pulling her foot free from his slackened mouth. She looked down at the lifeless, mangled corpse of the man who had defied the heavens.
"Foolish human being," Nesmeranda sneered, her voice laced with absolute contempt.
She leaned forward and casually spat on his broken face.