The man's face was concealed behind a strange, matte-black mask that emitted a faint, dark-red glow from its seams. His exposed eyes featured pitch-black sclera and dilated, blood-red irises, giving him a deeply insidious look. The sheer atmospheric pressure radiating off him was terrifying, perfectly matching his malevolent appearance.
For the first time since setting foot into this fallen world, a bead of cold sweat trickled down Amon's forehead. Even with [Abnormality Resistance] shielding his mind and body from external madness or magical corruption, a primal sense of growing unease tightened in his chest.
"A human..." the man spoke, his voice layered with an ominous, mechanical distortion. "What is... a weak creature... such as yourself... doing here...?"
Though the words were dripping with arrogance, they weren't delivered as a boast. There was a hollow, matter-of-fact ring to them—as if he were stating an objective physical law derived from vast experience.
"That's certainly one way to greet an opponent," Amon chuckled smoothly.
With a calculated, theatrical flourish, he reached up and tore off his crimson blindfold, letting it drop to the floor. His glinting red eyes flashed in the chamber's dim light as he tightened his grip on his wand, forcing his internal rhythm back into a state of absolute, unshakable composure.
"I... do not see why... I should consider you... as an opponent..." the man replied, his stance remaining entirely relaxed, projecting a terrifyingly calm confidence.
Suddenly, the cold, urgent voice of Amon's [No Longer Human] broke into his consciousness.
<< "Notice. It is highly advised that the user abandon this coordinate immediately. The individual before you possesses an SS-Rank Special Skill designated as [Heaven's Throne]. This skill absolutely deflects any attack directed toward its user, regardless of whether it is physical, mental, magical, or conceptual. Furthermore, in the mathematical event that an attack bypasses the deflection field and reaches his person, the skill instantly analyses the structural data, adapts to the energy signature, and permanently immunises the user against it." >>
"...That is a literal cheat skill," Amon remarked internally, his analytical brain momentarily buffering at the absurdity. "A perfect defence followed by a reactive immunity? Every Special Skill has a baseline limit. What is it?"
<< "The structural limitation of the skill originally dictated that adapting to a successful attack would place an immense, potentially lethal physical and mental strain upon the host's body. However, because the current host has undergone a complete Revenant transformation, that limitation has been functionally neutralised." >>
The mechanical voice of [No Longer Human] continued its grim assessment.
<< "Due to the infinite energy pool of the Chasm Core, the individual now possesses biological and spiritual regeneration mimicking an Aimus Harbinger. He recovers from systemic fatigue and physical trauma instantaneously. His stamina capacity is infinite." >>
"So, I am in a losing situation, is what you're saying," Amon remarked internally.
<< "Correct." >>
"Alright." He let out a silent internal sigh. Even if the math pointed to absolute failure, he couldn't just abandon Jacqueline. Not after tearing through a small army of Revenants, and certainly not after coming this far.
"Since... you're not making the first... move... I'll take it..."
The man blitzed.
The concept of acceleration didn't even apply; he simply ceased to exist at his original position and instantly materialised directly at Amon's flank.
Even with [Space-Time Acceleration] compressing his perception, Amon's eyes couldn't track the physical trajectory. Before his synapses could even register the threat, a devastating kick slammed into his ribs.
The sheer kinetic impact launched Amon across the cavernous testing ground like a broken doll, smashing him deep into the reinforced concrete wall in a violent eruption of debris.
"What the hell is that strength..." Amon coughed up a thick spray of crimson blood, dragging himself out of the smoking crater. The stone under his boots cracked from the residual shock. "Good thing I reinforced my structure with [Absolute Physicality]. If I hadn't done that, that single strike would have liquidated my internal organs."
"You... shouldn't be spaced out... in the middle of a fight..."
The distorted voice echoed right in front of his face. The masked man had already closed the gap, a fist packed with the weight of a meteor tracing a direct path toward Amon's skull.
This time, muscle memory and instinct took over. Thanks to his passive skill, [Mark of the Sword]—which dynamically allowed him to parry any incoming physical vector or magic that didn't mathematically exceed his current level of Magium refinement—Amon threw up his wand. The thin, unbreakable catalyst intercepted the knuckles with a deafening, metallic screech, absorbing the lethal momentum.
Locked in a desperate struggle, Amon unleashed a terrifying spell.
"Halted Suspense."
Instantly, the violent, dark-red hue of the Black Chasm drained away, leaving the entire chamber locked in a stark, monochromatic vacuum.
Everything stopped dead in its tracks. Time ceased to flow, the rigid laws of physics crumbled into nothingness, and Magium itself lost its cosmic purpose. By freezing Magium, the spell nullified all external magic and active skill matrices within its radius.
"It's a neat little trick I engineered after analysing Costoria's Time Stop and mimicking my Mother's Glacial Realm," Amon thought, a flicker of pride warming his cold chest. But the pride was short-lived. To his absolute horror, the masked man's fingers twitched against the wand. The absolute freeze was already cracking under the sheer weight of the Revenant's existence.
He had seconds. Amon channelled his Magium into a single, localised coordinate point.
"Gravity Death."
The space directly occupied by the masked man violently imploded. A localised singularity manifested, generating a volume of gravitational mass so unfathomably dense that it warped the immediate temporal field. The absolute pressure crushed the fabric of space itself, seeking to completely erase the entity's very existence from the timeline without leaving a single atom behind.
As the catastrophic distortion tore through the epicentre of the time stop, Amon stared through the dust, waiting to see if a conceptual erasure was enough to rewrite a cheat code.
But ironically, the man manifested directly before him, entirely unscathed, as if Gravity Death hadn't even touched him.
"Was... that your... best shot...?" the man asked. For a fraction of a second, he looked genuinely puzzled by the effort, but his expression warped back into pure, unadulterated menace. He drove his fist straight into Amon's gut, his knuckles crackling with a malevolent, high-density black-red energy.
The air was violently knocked out of Amon's lungs. A thick splatter of blood tore from his mouth as his vision blurred. He nearly blacked out right then and there, the sheer agony threatening to put his consciousness to sleep.
Forcing himself to stay awake through sheer, unyielding willpower, Amon swung a desperate counter-kick—only for the man to intercept his leg effortlessly with a single hand, throwing him back like trash.
For the next hour and a half, the chamber became a one-sided slaughterhouse.
The masked man completely overwhelmed Amon, systematically beating him into a half-dead, bloody mess. Multiple ribs were shattered, his collarbone was snapped, and every ragged breath Amon drew felt like inhaling broken glass.
The most terrifying part? The man hadn't cast a single spell to do this. It was just his raw, monstrous physical strength and flawless martial skill, paired with the absolute cheat skill, [Heaven's Throne], that outclassed Amon so horrendously it wasn't even a fight. It was an execution.
"Like I had expected... You are... disappointingly weak..." The man let out a heavy sigh, his distorted voice dripping with genuine disappointment as he lifted Amon off the floor, holding him up by the tattered, blood-soaked collar of his jacket.
Amon hung limply in his grip, his face bruised and leaking crimson. Yet, as he looked up at the insidious dark-red eyes of his executioner, a small, fractured smile began to tinge his lips.
"Yeah... I am weak..." Amon wheezed, his voice weak but entirely devoid of fear. "I knew from the very start... that I couldn't beat you..."
His smile widened, turning into a manic, sharp-toothed grin. His blood-red eyes glinted through the swelling with a sudden, intoxicating surge of pure pleasure.
The masked man froze, slightly taken aback by the expression. He had dragged countless geniuses into this room, and he had watched every single one of them cower, weep, and beg in utter despair. Yet the boy in his grip was looking at him like he had just won the lottery.
"You must have gone insane... after all the beating..." the man murmured under his breath, his grip tightening. He pulled his right fist back, the black-red Dark Magium energy condensing into a point of absolute lethality to deliver the finishing blow. "Let me... free you... from your suffering..."
The man drove his fist forward with terminal velocity, aiming to cave in Amon's face once and for all.
But it never made contact.
A flash of sharp, crimson light sliced through the atmosphere. In a fraction of a millisecond, the masked man's incoming fist was cleanly severed in half, the amputated flesh violently deflected away from Amon's face.
The man recoiled, his insidious eyes widening in sudden confusion beneath his mask as his hand rapidly knitted itself back together through his harbinger regeneration.
"Took you long enough... Miss Jacqueline..." Amon's voice was barely a raspy whisper, but it was absolutely saturated with dark excitement and manic triumph.
The masked man spun around. To his absolute shock, the Dark Magium chains that had been binding the centre of the room lay shattered on the floor. Standing there, entirely unbound, was the Succubus Queen.
In her grip, she wielded a magnificent, long, slender sword that hummed with immense power. The blade glowed with a deep red hue, its golden edges adorned with highly intricate, pulsing runic inscriptions. The ornate hilt featured a brilliant, light-blue gemstone embedded at its core, framed by a unique, outward-curving guard that perfectly complemented her regal aesthetic.
She didn't give the entity a moment to breathe.
Jacqueline blitzed forward, transforming into a blur of light-blue and crimson. She unleashed a relentless flurry of lethal slashes, forcing the masked man to abandon all offence, desperately dodging and jumping backwards as the runic blade sheared through the air.
Realising he was being completely outpaced by the Succubus Queen, the man suddenly gripped Amon's half-dead body. He violently threw him directly at Jacqueline, using him as a meat shield to obscure her vision and force an opening.
It was a fatal miscalculation.
With breathtaking, fluid grace, Jacqueline caught Amon's broken body with one arm, cradling him securely against her nun-like dress.
In the same motion, her free hand swung the runic sword in a devastating, blind arc. The glowing blade tore cleanly through the masked man's chest, ripping open a deep, lethal laceration that sprayed dark-red corruption across the laboratory floor.
"I don't understand!" The man roared, his distorted voice cracking under the weight of utter confusion and escalating rage. "How?!"
"A trickster..." Amon wheezed, his voice barely rising above a broken whisper. He stared at the panicked entity, his bruised, blood-slicked face twisting into a final, triumphant grin. "Never... reveals his secrets..."
"I'll kill you both!" the man screamed.
His entire silhouette began to throb and swell with a catastrophic wave of malevolent black-red energy as his body forcibly mutated to adapt to the lethal wound. But Jacqueline didn't give him the luxury of a second phase.
Before the transformation could even materialise, Jacqueline closed the distance in a flash of light-blue mana. Her runic blade became an absolute blur of light, carving through the air and slicing the man endlessly, shredding his physical and conceptual form until there was not even a single speck of his corrupted existence remaining to regenerate.
"Secret Sword Art, Eclipse."
Jacqueline finally spoke, her voice remarkably mature, soothing, and entirely steady despite the carnage around them.
Amon looked up at her face, momentarily captivated by her sheer, otherworldly beauty. Up close, her striking red-pink eyes held a profoundly graceful yet mature charm that seemed to command the very atmosphere of the room.
But the absolute strain of the ninety-minute beating and the total drain on his Magium reserve finally caught up to him. Before he could gaze at his saviour any further, the edges of Amon's vision rapidly blurred into pitch black, and his head rolled back as he fell completely unconscious in the arms of the Succubus Queen.
. . .
Amon's eyes fluttered open. The immediate sensory shock of the Black Chasm was entirely gone, replaced by the suffocatingly familiar scent of expensive aged wood and premium velvet.
He was lying on a plush chaise lounge in an ornate, sprawling living room. The ceiling loomed so exceptionally high overhead that it would make even a towering warrior feel minuscule. Across from him, lounging with effortless, feline grace on one of the imported leather sofas, sat Masha.
"Your stream has hit a brand new ceiling, my precious streamer~" Masha spoke, her voice practically dripping with liquid amusement and playfulness. She tapped a glowing holographic terminal hovering between them. "Your little impromptu expedition into the Black Chasm has garnered an astronomical amount of attention on the Streaming Platform. You're currently trending in 7th place in the global stream rankings~"
Amon didn't say a word. He remained unusually, heavily silent, staring blankly up at the crystal chandelier above.
"Feeling down?" Masha asked, her head tilting to the side as her eyes glinted with curiosity.
"It's honestly so fucking annoying," he finally spat. His voice was hoarse, but completely laced with venomous irritation. "That I have to consistently put myself in actual, mortal danger just to harvest a bunch of cheap views. You monsters all just love to watch me suffer, don't you?"
"Well, raw desperation is what commands high viewer retention, and there's really no need to be so mad, Amon~" Masha chuckled melodiously, spinning a glowing glass of wine between her fingers. "The villains are practically hardcoded to suffer in these narratives, are they not?"
"But I am not some damn villain, Masha!" Amon snapped, snapping his head toward her. His expression was locked in a rigid, forced stillness, but his voice shook violently under the sheer volume of suppressed rage vibrating through his chest. "I am doing every single thing in my power to save my family and fundamentally rewrite the fate of this novel's accursed ending. And to do it, I am forced to dive headfirst into statistically impossible scenarios..."
"You have never once complained about facing high-risk scenarios before," Masha countered softly, her playful tone shifting into something sharper, probing his defences. "So why choose to whine about it now?~"
"BECAUSE I ACTUALLY ALMOST DIED THIS TIME, MASHA!" Amon roared, his polished glass mask completely shattering as his face contorted into pure fury. He slammed his fist into the cushion beneath him. "EVEN IF I WANTED TO AVOID THE DAMN SITUATION, I COULD NOT—BECAUSE I FUCKING KNEW TOO WELL THAT IT WAS A PART OF THE SYSTEM'S HIDDEN QUEST!"
"Oh my," Masha muttered, a faint, sharp smirk blooming across her lips as she openly savoured the rare spectacle of Amon's unbridled fury. "You're speaking as if this were the very first time you've had to dance along the razor's edge of a life-and-death situation, Amon~ Your cataclysmic encounter with the Red King, and that sudden ambush by the Aimus Harbingers were equally, if not more, fatal situations, my precious streamer~ And yet, you cleared them both with such flawless, heartbreaking finesse~"
She fluidly rose from her velvet seat, her footsteps making absolutely no sound as she glided across the ornate rug toward him. Stopping directly before his trembling form, she reached down.
Her fingers clamped roughly around his cheeks, her grip unyielding and harsh as she forced his face upward to look directly into her eyes.
"No matter how much you complain, scream, or throw tantrums, you will never be free from your suffering," she whispered, her gaze locking onto his glinting red eyes with a terrifying intensity. "Whenever I see you pushed into a corner, trapped in a bad, life-threatening situation... a part of me genuinely, deeply wants you to break."
She leaned in closer, brushing past his jawline until her lips were right against his ear, her voice dropping into a raspy, intoxicating purr.
"After all... seeing you completely break would finally allow me to encase you as my most prized possession~"
Amon's fury subsided instantly. In a fraction of a second, the hot rage that had consumed him evaporated, completely replaced by a cold, paralysing emotion.
Fear.
Masha's eyes held a sharp, predatory glint that sent an instinctual shiver down his spine, and witnessing his immediate vulnerability only made her look at him with deeper hunger. Seeing the subtle tremor in his posture, Masha audibly chuckled. But the sound was no longer melodious. It was dark, heavy, and deeply sinister.
"Aw, are you afraid?~" she purred, slowly brushing her thumb against his jawline, savouring the way his skin went cold. "I quite like it~ Seeing you this terrified under my direct touch is quite exhilarating, but..."
Abruptly, the suffocating pressure vanished.
Masha let go of his face, spun on her heel, and smoothly glided back to her sofa. She sat down, crossing her legs elegantly, and faced him with a flawless, perfectly polished professional smile.
"I can't exactly indulge myself right now, since I operate on a very limited schedule."
The whiplash was just as terrifying as the malice. One moment, she spoke as if she were going to do unholy things to his body and soul, and the next, she was conducting business as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. Amon forced himself to compose his breathing, pulling his broken protagonist mask back over his features, but his nerves remained completely on edge.
"I'd like to know about your little plan for saving Jacqueline," she said, her voice instantly returning to its familiar, playful curiosity.
"W-Why?" Amon questioned, his voice cracking with a slight, involuntary stammer.
"Because the audience is dying to know," she replied simply.
With a casual flick of her wrist, the luxury of the safehouse living room was instantly invaded. Countless glowing blue holographic chat interfaces materialised in the air, floating around the room like a swarm of digital fireflies, scrolling with millions of rapid-fire messages.
"Don't worry, my precious streamer, they didn't get to witness our little intimate moment~" she purred playfully, giving him a quick wink before chuckling melodiously.
Amon looked away from her, his eyes scanning the cascading walls of live-text. The streaming platform's audience was completely losing their minds over the conclusion of the Chasm raid.
He then started explaining his plan of rescuing the Succubus Queen. The pieces of the grand puzzle finally fell perfectly into place.
Before the masked Revenant had even landed that devastating first kick, Amon's cold, calculating mind had already structured a high-stakes, all-or-nothing gambit.
He knew from the absolute data provided by his system that a confrontation with [Heaven's Throne] was a mathematical impossibility. To win, he had to completely shift the win conditions of the board: he would turn himself into the ultimate, sacrificial decoy to keep both the entity and the colossal Chasm Core entirely hyper-focused on him, while secretly orchestrating the rescue of the Succubus Queen from the shadows.
The true turning point had occurred the exact millisecond Amon activated Halted Suspense. Under the cover of that frozen, monochromatic vacuum, he hadn't just cast a single time-stop anomaly. He had seamlessly layered two god-tier, SSS-Rank spells directly into the fabric of the chamber.
The first was a conceptual Illusion Spell of the highest order: Perfect Dream.
This apex SSS-Rank spell granted Amon absolute dominion over the sensory perception of everything within his immediate perimeter, locking his targets into a flawless, artificial sensory loop from which they were utterly helpless to escape, regardless of their cosmic power.
To ensure victory, Amon had meticulously throttled and modulated the spell's output. He dialled the localised magium frequency to an exact, passive threshold—just enough to completely rewrite the sensory data of the masked man and the Chasm Core, but subtle enough that it didn't trigger the aggressive, defensive vector-deflection of [Heaven's Throne].
The second spell Amon had woven into the frozen timeline was an SSS-Rank Creation Spell: Another Self.
This spell allowed Amon to manifest a perfect, autonomous biological duplicate of himself. He aggressively drained his own deep Magium reserves, pouring the vast majority of his refined energy directly into the clone before setting it loose.
While the masked man was occupied venting his rage on Amon, the invisible Another Self spent the entire ninety minutes methodically unravelling, neutralising, and shattering the complex Dark Magium chains binding Jacqueline.
The moment the chains snapped, the body double executed the second, absolute directive Amon had encoded into its consciousness: it commanded Jacqueline to completely absorb its form.
Though the Succubus Queen was initially startled and confused by the bizarre request, the clone rapidly briefed her on the true state of the battlefield, which left no room for hesitation. Sensing the sheer, pristine quality of the energy standing before her, she wasted no time and completely synthesised the duplicate into her core.
Amon's decision to dump almost his entire remaining magical capacity into the clone wasn't just to buy time—it was a calculated catalyst. His personal Magium was so hyper-refined, so pristine in its composition, that injecting it directly into Jacqueline's near-SSS-Rank core violently forced her over the threshold. It triggered an instant, explosive ascension, evolving her from a peak-tier powerhouse directly into a true, unmitigated SSS-Rank catastrophe.
During his twenty-minute clearing of the outer facility, [No Longer Human] had already decoded the history of the lab. The system had revealed that Jacqueline's initial capture wasn't due to a lack of strength; she had been caught in a coordinated, multi-layered ambush orchestrated by the Chasm Core and the entity. Because the masked man was hovering right on the edge of SSS-Rank himself, the surprise assault made her defeat mathematically inevitable.
However, [No Longer Human] had left Amon with one crucial piece of data: if Jacqueline were to ever cross the threshold into a true SSS-Rank entity, the monumental gulf in power levels would allow her to effortlessly obliterate the entity, bypassing the adaptation entirely through absolute conceptual dominance.