He hadn’t known, not since the day his F-rank status was officially stamped onto his record.

  The skill had been a blank space in his profile, something half the healers and hunters he’d met assumed was a bug. He’d never been able to trigger it.

  Until now.

  And now he knew. His skill drank from the dungeon core, absorbed it, pulled its energy into him until his own pulse and the core’s were the same beat.

  The effect was immediate. Torn muscles knit together.

  Cracked ribs pressed back into place. Blood loss slowed, then stopped. His body stopped screaming in agony and started buzzing, thrumming with more mana than it had ever known.

  For a heartbeat, he almost believed.

  Then reality slammed back.

  The mana wasn’t stopping. It kept pouring in, far past what a human body should hold.

  His skin felt too tight. His vision sharpened in one moment and blurred in the next. Every breath burned.

  It was too much, too fast. Like trying to swallow the ocean in one gulp.

  He knew his limits. This was beyond them.

  But… he laughed quietly under his breath.

  Who cares?

  If this place was going to kill him, at least it would do so with style.

  Asmon’s feet touched the cracked stone before him.

  The boss’s golden eyes swept over Aseok’s changed state, reading the ripples in his aura with ease. When he spoke, it wasn’t with anger or alarm, just a quiet, thoughtful interest.

  “…You are very interesting.”

  Lee Aseok was still standing only because his body hadn’t yet decided which way to explode, outward in a mess of blood and mana, or inward into a neat little implosion. His head felt light, but his smirk was steady.

  “I can’t disagree,” he said. “My life’s been nothing but drama.”

  The words hung in the air, suspended in the tension between them.

  Then, nothing.

  No movement. No shift. Just a long, unbroken silence, thick enough to feel like another wall in the ruined world.

  Until it shattered.

  They moved at the same time.

  The first impact came too fast for the human eye.

  Lee Aseok’s iron rod, now sheathed in crackling streams of energy, slammed against Asmon’s sword-like wing.

  The collision rang like struck steel, the shockwave rippling through the fractured ground.

  Aseok stepped in hard, pivoted, and swung low. Asmon caught the rod with a clawed hand, twisted, and countered with a strike that sliced the air where Aseok’s head had been a fraction of a second earlier.

  They blurred across the battlefield, through collapsed towers, over shattered bridges, weaving in and out of the crumbling bones of this dead world.

  Stone cracked under their feet, entire chunks of the ruined land breaking away into the abyss below.

  Aseok’s body moved faster than thought.

  The mana flooding him was a torrent, wild and unstable, but it sharpened his reflexes until every twitch of Asmon’s wings, every angle of his strikes, was laid bare to him.

  He wasn’t just keeping up.

  He was matching the final boss blow for blow.

  Sometimes, in those first brutal exchanges, he even pushed Asmon back.

  The iron rod whistled through the air, wrapped in a white-blue glow that sizzled on contact.

  It struck Asmon’s shoulder with enough force to blast feathers into the wind. The boss didn’t flinch, he just moved with it, spinning into a kick that caught Aseok in the ribs and sent him skipping backward over cracked stone.

  Aseok landed, skidding, knees bending deep to absorb the force. He pushed off the ground without pause, returning to close range.

  To anyone else, the fight would have been invisible, a flicker of light, a rain of dust, the crash of impact without clear cause.

  “You’re unusual,” Asmon said suddenly in the middle of their exchange, his voice steady even as he deflected a flurry of strikes.

  Their weapons clashed again. Sparks burst into the dry air.

  “I’ve faced many ‘heroes,’” Asmon continued, parrying, dodging, striking back. “Some burned with fury. Others clung to their lives like drowning men to a rope. But you…”

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  Aseok stepped into the next swing, forcing Asmon to block high. Their eyes locked again over the point of contact.

  “…You have neither.”

  The push broke, and they separated only to crash together again in a blur of motion.

  “No will to survive. No hunger to win,” Asmon said, tilting his head slightly as he avoided a downward smash that cratered the ground. “So why do you fight?”

  The question landed deeper than any strike had.

  For a split second, just a split second—the world around him blurred, not from speed, but from memory.

  He saw a door closing in the dark, the sound of footsteps fading away.

  Parents who had looked past him, through him, toward something more important, the Gates. Always the Gates.

  His aunt’s calculating eyes focused not on him, but on the wealth his dead parents had left behind.

  The sneers of strangers, the muttered comments, the faces that twisted in contempt at the F-rank’s presence.

  The way an entire world could decide, in perfect unison, that you were worthless.

  Faces blurred in the haze of adrenaline.

  They came one after another, faces he’d memorized without wanting to, faces that had carved themselves into him over the years.

  The sneers.

  The eyes that lingered on him not with pity, but with contempt.

  The whole world had hated him in one way or another, and the best part was, they’d never bothered to hide it.

  And then, at the end of it all, the most recent, the clearest—Mu Yichen’s eyes.

  Cold. Unmoved. The holy sword in his grip, gleaming in the light, where Aseok’s empty hand had been.

  That image burned brighter than the core’s glow.

  The corner of Aseok’s mouth lifted.

  “Why do I fight?” he repeated, breathless but steady, the iron rod hanging loose in his grip for a moment.

  His smirk widened just enough to cut.

  “So I can die faster.”

  For the first time since the fight began, Asmon’s expression shifted.

  His eyes widened slightly, the faintest trace of surprise breaking his calm. Then, just as quickly, his mouth curled into something between a grin and a snarl.

  A laugh rolled out of him, deep and resonant, shaking the air.

  “You’re the first hero I’ve met who’s… interesting.”

  The word hung in the dust between them.

  Asmon straightened, wings flexing wide, feathers ruffling with the movement.

  “What’s your name, hero?”

  Lee Aseok didn’t blink. “Lee Aseok.”

  Asmon nodded once, like he’d just engraved it into some eternal memory, then lunged forward with no more restraint.

  The world split in half.

  Stone erupted beneath their feet as they met.

  Aseok’s iron rod crashed against Asmon’s blade-like limbs, the impact shaking the fractured landscape.

  The boss’s strikes came faster now, each one meant to tear through him completely.

  Aseok didn’t hold back either.

  Every swing was everything he had—each strike layered with the unstable power burning in his body. He aimed for the joints in Asmon’s wings, for the narrow gaps between armor and muscle.

  One strike landed true.

  The iron rod, wrapped in searing mana, slammed into the base of Asmon’s left wing. There was a sharp crack and an explosion of black feathers.

  The wing tore free, spinning into the void below.

  Asmon hissed, but the sound was less painful and more exhilarating.

  They clashed again.

  Aseok’s body screamed with every movement. His muscles felt like they were tearing themselves apart under the force of the mana running through him.

  His vision blurred, then sharpened in bursts, like a camera lens fighting to stay in focus.

  Another opening, he drove the iron rod forward, carving deep into Asmon’s side. The boss twisted away, but a second wing was sheared nearly in half, hanging uselessly at his back.

  The price for those hits came immediately.

  Asmon’s counterattack was brutal, an upward slash that tore through Aseok’s arm, blood spraying across the broken ground. Then a kick that sent him skidding, bones in his side cracking.

  His breaths came ragged. The energy inside him was still boiling, but his body was starting to slow. Every step felt heavier. Every swing took more out of him.

  He knew he didn’t have long.

  So he decided to make it count.

  Aseok adjusted his grip on the iron rod, mana flaring so bright along its length that it split the shadows around them. His knees bent low, the ground beneath him fracturing under the pressure.

  Then he moved, faster than he had since the fight began.

  Asmon’s eyes narrowed. He raised his arms to block, but Aseok was already on him, striking in a blur.

  One, two, three hits landed in rapid succession, each one echoing like thunder.

  And then, with everything he had left, Aseok pulled all the energy from his core, his limbs, every last drop of strength, and swung.

  The iron rod came down like a falling star. The impact roared through the battlefield, the ground cracking outward in a spiderweb of destruction.

  For a heartbeat, it felt like victory.

  Then the pain came.

  It wasn’t sudden, it was absolute. A white-hot lance of agony shot through his chest, freezing him mid-breath.

  His eyes dropped.

  Across his chest, a gash had been carved open so deep he could see the edges of shattered bone. But worse, dead center, there was a hole. A hollow absence where his organs should have been.

  Only then did he realize he hadn’t been the only one delivering a final blow.

  Asmon’s clawed arm was still outstretched from the counter, the black edge of his blade-like talons dripping red.

  The world tilted, then stilled.

  Lee Aseok’s gaze dropped. Across his chest, a wound gaped open, the jagged edges revealing a void where his internal organs should have been.

  The copper scent of blood clung to him, sharp and metallic, burning in the back of his throat.

  He tried to breathe, tried to force movement, but the body beneath him no longer obeyed.

  Pain screamed through him, yet it was distant, like watching someone else be torn apart.

  The truth settled in with brutal clarity: he hadn’t been the only one to strike a final blow.

  Asmon, the monstrous final boss towering above the shattered terrain, had been cut in half in the same moment, crashing to the ground behind him.

  Lee Aseok stood. Not because he could, but because there was nothing left to pull him down.

  The battlefield was silent, save for the whispering wind that carried the last echoes of destruction.

  He let out a low chuckle, hollow and empty. His eyes, staring into the distance, reflected nothing, no triumph, no fear, only emptiness.

  He moved forward, each step an echo of inevitability. He didn’t need to, his body had no strength, but he walked anyway, driven by a pull that was neither thought nor desire.

  Dust swirled around Lee Aseok. He raised a hand, intending to wipe the blood from his face, but found… nothing.

  The arm he lifted had vanished, leaving only an empty sleeve of air. His heartbeat faltered as comprehension struck: not just his arm, but pieces of his body were disappearing.

  The process accelerated. Skin turned to glimmering silver - gold dust, the edges of his form fraying like a broken tapestry.

  His legs, torso, even the remnants of his iron rod dissolved into motes that floated on the wind. He felt it in a way beyond pain, a dissolution of presence, a silent exodus of self.

  The wind tugged at the fragments, scattering them over the ruined world.

  He could feel the battlefield fading, the weight of his life lifting like smoke.

  Shapes of the destroyed towers, the fractured stone, even Asmon’s shattered half-figure blurred at the edges of perception.

  Somewhere in the distance, a voice called his name. Faint. Almost unreal. Far away, echoing as if through layers of mist and time.

  It pulled at him, but there was no panic, no desire to respond. He recognized it, but the recognition was muted, like a memory seen through water.

  Lee Aseok’s lips curved slightly in a near-smile. He didn’t resist. He didn’t fight.

  He simply closed his eyes.

  Author Note:

  Every “OH MY GOD ASEOK STOP” gives me the strength to write the next disaster.

  Mon ? Wed ? Fri

  (Yes, I too question my life choices.)

  https://www.patreon.com/c/LithutheBloom

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