Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 165: Ch163. [World Quest] (23) - The real story (4)

Chapter 165: Ch163. [World Quest] (23) - The real story (4)

Floor 99

The world exploded with motion, like movement given sound, raw kinetic force made real.

Miles launched forward, his scythe screaming a crescent arc of black and gold as it tore through the air. Shinji met him halfway, his blade gleaming with the false light of his pact. A single clash sent shockwaves rippling through the stone, cracking the earth beneath their feet.

Shinji’s mask shifted slightly, a fracture splitting across the left cheek.

"Your pace is breaking." Shinji muttered, his voice hoarse.

Miles didn’t say anything in return, but the [Harbinger’s Scythe] carved through space again. Shinji vanished.

Miles didn’t follow with his eyes, listening again, as reality around him assumed the shades of negative against absence of color one more time.

A heartbeat before Shinji’s reappearance, Miles felt it, moving not to where Shinji was, but to where Shinji would be. He pivoted, spun low, and slashed upward in a diagonal cut that forced Shinji to parry off-balance.

A groan of effort slipped from behind the mask.

"You’re still learning..." Shinji staggered back. "Still not fast enough."

Miles didn’t say a word again, and something in Shinji’s stance faltered.

"SPEAK, YOU DAMN WRETCH!". Shinji charged.

No more vanishing, no more folds in space, just raw, outright violence.

Their weapons met again and again, edge to edge, darkness against end. Miles bled from a dozen cuts, Shinji’s purple robe were torn, his mask chipped, the thin lines of exhaustion just beginning to show in the way he moved. Too perfect, too deliberate, compensating for something fraying beneath.

And then, in the center of the battlefield, their weapons locked again.

"You think you’ve grown just because you’re angry?" Shinji hissed, breath hot against Miles’ cheek. "Because you have purpose, now that you’ve become The Ender? I got news for you... I’ve killed people with purpose before, and you’re just a number on the list."

Miles didn’t answer.

He just pushed harder.

Their weapons separated in a burst of force that hurled them apart. Miles skidded back across the stone floor, boots digging into shattered tile. The gem in his scythe glowed again.

And Shinji struck.

But his blade didn’t find Miles.

Shinji was somehow prepared for it this time, though, turning around and seeing Miles with the corner of his eye, and as he raised his katana for the killing blow, Miles looked at him, and smiled, his scythe was already in motion.

However, it was not aimed at Shinji, but at the floor.

It struck the stone with a chime like a funeral bell, and the gem embedded in the heart of the weapon flared, the air around it rippling.

"I learned many things since I met you the last time." Miles finally said, breaking his silence. "None of the lessons were painless, but there was one I actually liked most than the others."

Instead of time, something else rippled around the golden gem in his scythe, the images of Sarissa’s countless deaths echoing in his mind in first person, like a movie.

And a system window popped up from it, visible even to Shinji.

[The End and the Beginning]

From the ground, silver veins of light surged outward in every direction, chasing Shinji back with a hiss. He retreated, his arm raised against the sudden radiance.

"What did you just do?" Shinji barked.

"I made a choice." Miles said, standing tall. "To be more than a player."

His shadow extended behind him, and then it split.

For a breathless moment, it curled upward into something humanoid, a silhouette with hollow eyes, like a ghost.

And then, it dove into the flesh-like floor, disappearing from view.

"I’m not fighting this alone."

Miles surged forward, his scythe now just a blur of movement. Shinji barely blocked the first strike, and the second carved through his arm as if made of judgment itself.

Then the third, the forth, and the fifth.

Shinji screamed, and the air shifted.

Something opened behind them, and Miles knew that his shadow had done its job well.

Sarissa and Mara arrived.

Shinji faced Miles, his limbs ragged, his body a torn piece of skin and muscle.

"I see..." He grunted, bleeding. "I’m not fighting you alone, either."

He snapped his fingers, and just like that, he vanished.

He was simply gone, like he was never there to begin with.

The silence that followed was almost heavier than the fight. Miles let the scythe fall to his side, and Sarissa reached him, her hand warm on his chest before he could fall.

"You okay?" She asked, quietly.

"I don’t know." He whispered back.

Mara kept watch on the spot where Shinji had stood, her lips a tight line.

"Damn you, Shinji!" She said. "Why does he always do that?"

Miles shook his head.

"He won’t stop until his pact with the [Demon] is fulfilled..." Miles sighed. "And I guess the [Demon] won’t let him die until it’s done.

Then, a scream echoed through the floor, and the floor beneath them began to give.

And while the floor reformed itself below them, Miles felt a sudden wave of heat going up his arm. He looked down...

His ring was glowing bright red.

***

Floor 100

Diego’s lungs screamed from the pressure.

From the moment his [Holy Light] had touched the boss, the atmosphere had changed. The stitched-eye man had dissolved into ash, limbs curling inward as if praying to something that never answered. His body burned from the inside out, and the last thing to go was his stitched eye, ripping open in a final, shuddering glare.

Then he was gone, but the Dungeon Boss remained.

It did not roar, it did not move, it simply watched.

A sphere of black so dense it pulled light toward it, ringed by a hundred green irises, each blinking slowly, opening from what should’ve been its face. It was as if a god had collapsed in on itself, forgetting what shape it once wore.

And Diego felt it looking at him.

Then, it spoke.

It did not speak in words, though, but they arrived all the same, fully formed, fully known.

"You reek of the Elusive One, child of light..."

Dee staggered back, his nose starting to bleed.

"I’m not afraid of you!" He said, a seedling of understanding taking root in his mind, though his knees still shook.

"Like your patron before you..."

A single eye blinked, and the floor around him melted.

The entire 100th Floor groaned like a throat clearing, the walls stretching into infinite spirals of organic flesh and black glass. The roof peeled open into void, and gravity stopped working in the way it should.

Dee floated, or fell upward, he couldn’t tell anymore.

And the Boss’s words came again.

"The light inside you burns with stolen authority."

A tendril of darkness reached toward him, making him flinch away, firing a blast of [Holy Light] again.

Once more, just like before, it hit the chained thing, and it screeched in pain.

"You are a mistake." The Boss whispered again, the words reaching Dee’s ears above the screeching of the physical thing in front of him. "A desperate measure."

Something cracked inside Diego’s mind.

He screamed from the sheer force of the truth pressing into his thoughts. It wasn’t that the Boss wanted to kill him.

It was worse.

It wanted to rewrite him.

To make him forget he’d ever been human. To make him believe he was a lie, a flicker.

A temporary warmth in an infinite darkness.

But then, his skin began to glow, brighter and brighter.

He remembered Mara holding him when he couldn’t breathe. He remembered Sarissa teaching him how to hold a sword with a proper grip.

He remembered Miles whispering, "You matter," when no one else was there for him.

Diego wasn’t the strongest, or even the smartest.

But he was here, and he refused to disappear.

The Dungeon Boss flinched at the sudden brilliance.

One of its many eyes blinked faster, confusion rippling across its grotesque form. It had spoken truth, and yet, Diego still burned.

Still shone bright, still existed.

"I’m not a mistake." Diego whispered, raising his hand. "I’m the light that will guide the Ender’s path."

The Dungeon itself howled, loud and deafening for the first time.

The sound was impossible, the language older than time, and yet Diego stood against it.

Bleeding, shaking, glowing.

[You have unleashed – Sacrifice – with its full potential]

[Your life burns brighter with the light of the Elusive One]

The 100th Floor trembled, engulfed in light, and as Diego screamed in agony and determination, he only thought.

"Goodbye, big bro..."