Chapter 298: S-Rank Dungeon (4)

“The heavens...,” the Holy Sword muttered. It sounded shaken in a way Ketal had never heard from it. Only now did it understand how much he had been holding back. He had fought in earnest, yes, but he had fought with the brakes on, and the realization left the spirit grasping for a floor that would not appear.

Where were his limits? Where did the bottom begin?

the sword wondered. It had no answer and, for a rare heartbeat, no words.

Ketal did not wait for certainty to return. He drove forward, shouldering monsters aside and tearing others open with a violence that felt almost cheerful. Creatures built to know no fear, even when the world ran red, began despite themselves to show it on their faces. Orders were etched into their very bones, leaving them no path but forward. They charged because charging was all they had been made to do, and Ketal met them with the calm delight of a craftsman returning to a familiar tool. He broke them one by one, moving without hurry and without waste.

A hooked claw raked at his flank. He slipped and let it pass, but a talon caught his coat, and the fabric tore with a long, complaining rip.

“My clothes...” He sighed, clicking his tongue.

Myst sheathed him well enough to keep blades and curses from his skin, but cloth was cloth. Unlike muscle and bone, fabric did not grow stronger under pressure; it frayed and gave way under the same force that left his skin unmarked. He had packed spares, yet even those were nearly gone. He made a note, almost idly, to find something sturdier when he returned to the surface, and while he thought about it, his hands cleared the floor.

There were more than a hundred monsters down here—each one, if left to its appetites, strong enough to ruin a nation. Ketal took his time and still finished in about an hour. Had he hurried, the work would have taken less. He did not hurry; he let himself enjoy the movement.

The floor opened. Unhurried, he walked into the fifth level. The chamber was vast and empty of everything except a single presence that altered the air simply by existing. When it moved, the light seemed to step back.

A dragon made of bones spread its wings and screamed.

“A Bone Dragon,” Ketal breathed, eyes bright. “Excellent.”

Among monsters, it was one of the mightiest. He had met living dragons; the chance to face a dead one had its own kind of weight. The creature lofted higher and beat its ribbed wings. Decay billowed like a storm front. Magic that rotted anything it touched filled the chamber, eager to turn flesh to paste and iron to powder. Its killing intent shook the air, and its presence had the heavy steadiness of rank.

Ketal measured it in an instant. The Bone Dragon stood at the level people called Hero-class. Set it against Karin, and the fight would be honest and long. However, there were tiers even within the Heroes; that too was clear.

“It is less than the Ugly Rat’s poison,” he said.

“That does seem true,” the Holy Sword admitted, surprise easier to hear for the steadiness it tried to reclaim.

The difference from the White Snowfield Ugly Rat was obvious, which made this the right place to test a thought he had not yet tried. He stepped in, pushed through the cloud of decay, and closed the distance before the dragon could adjust its footing. He struck once—no play, no pull.

The blow landed like a bell struck underwater. Bone screeched. The Bone Dragon skidded backward in a hideous scrape of rib on stone, but not a single shard flew. It had thrown up a barrier just in time. The barrier shattered under the fist; what lay behind it held.

“Of course,” Ketal murmured. He had already learned that a Hero opponent could meet his earnest best and not immediately break.

What about my full power?

Ketal thought.

The dragon’s reply was a slash that would have cut a carriage in half. He let it bite air and stepped into the gap, moving too fast for counting. The creature layered fresh barriers. Ketal drove power through his arm, into his knuckles, and swung. He had never shown this kind of power in the Mortal Realm.

The barrier broke like spun sugar. His fist did not stop there. It sank into the chest and powdered ribs. The Bone Dragon tumbled across the stone like a cart wrenched from the road. It screamed, a long wind through graves.

Ketal nodded once, satisfied. “As expected. Full power works.”

The strike had not only cracked the bone cage; it had hammered through the defense to smash the chest outright. Even so, the Bone Dragon did not die. Ribs re-formed with unnatural speed, lines of cold light sketching them before matter filled the shape. The creature lurched upright. Ketal whistled softly.

“You’re one tough opponent,” he said, almost admiring.

“Is it?” the Holy Sword said faintly, as if it needed to hear the words spoken to believe them.

A Bone Dragon’s body was composed of power dragon bones and guarded by magic. Under normal conditions, neither steel nor spell marked it without an appalling price. Even Ignisia would have to spend the effort she hated to spend to crack those ribs. Ketal had done it with a single punch, and the fact was difficult to hold in the mind without wincing. The Holy Sword knew he was a monster who spoke plainly, but seeing it and knowing it were different kinds of knowledge; the difference made its edge prickle.

Ketal’s thoughts stayed clinical. He realized a single full-power strike would not be enough to kill a Hero opponent; it would hurt, not finish. However, that was the extent of it. If he struck again before recovery, they would fall. Against ordinary Heroes, not the rare few who sat at the very top, full power without pause would end the matter, provided he did not let them breathe.

The test had shown him how the Heroes of the Mortal Realm would answer Ketal’s full-power strike. Even with that knowledge in hand, he did not move. He simply looked around and made his choice.

The cavern was not part of the world. It was a separated room. No villages lay behind the wall. No river ran along the edge. No fruit trees grew under the lip of the ceiling. He was alone with a monster in a space that would not fall on anyone else if he broke it.

“An ideal place to do another test,” he said.

He drew Myst up and over him until it sat on his skin like a second self. Yet, he did not swing. He held the Myst in place and tightened his grip on the strength in his arm. Muscles swelled, veins rose full and clean.

***

From the moment Ketal had learned to wrap himself in Myst, he had carried a single thought at the back of his mind. He wondered what would happen if he kept Myst wrapped around his body to protect and reinforce himself, and then struck at full power.

He did not know what the blow would do to the world that mattered to him. When he placed Myst on his legs and stamped with intent, true earthquakes followed, the kind that changed maps. When he struck at full power without Myst, he carved sinkholes or erased pockets of space as if they were chalk wiped from a board. The combined effect of the two was something he would not discover by accident, not when a single careless test could crush the fantasy world simply because he wanted to see.

However, this was a Dungeon, and he did not care whether it was destroyed. Here, he could swing freely.

The hum sharpened. Power filled the arm to the wrist and into the fingertips with a clarity that left no room for doubt: for the first time, the container matched the contents. In the past, his full power had outstripped his body’s ability to hold it and tore at him as much as it tore at an enemy; now the Myst kept the limb intact while the strength gathered. There was no leakage, no loss. The arm drank what he poured.

“Wait,” the Holy Sword blurted, panic snapping the word. “You...!”

Across the chamber, the Bone Dragon felt it in the only way something dead could feel, an echo stirring in the ancient animal part of the being that had once stood in sunlight. There was no mind now, only orders and the magic that enforced them, yet the bare bones that could no longer grow flesh still remembered what it meant to fear. The urge to flee surged like a rising tide. It had no name for the feeling, only a crushing compulsion: not toward that, not if survival was the goal. Instincts long buried rose up together, screaming their warning.

However, it could not obey them. The command anchored in its core dragged it forward. It spread its wings and leaped.

“Thank you,” Ketal said, teeth flashing. He let the held-back power loose. The mountain jumped.

Outside, the Guildmaster’s boots left the ground. The fairy secretary squeaked and grabbed his sleeve. The coils of rope clattered and danced on stone. A blast of packed sediment blew upward in a gritty fountain, and then a column of earth burst into the air as if a small volcano had been sleeping under the forest and chosen this moment to yawn. Pebbles rattled down in a stinging rain.

“Is Ketal doing this...?” the Guildmaster said, as if saying it aloud might make it less foolish.

“That cannot—” the fairy began, then stopped because she knew what she had felt under her palm a moment ago, and because the hole in front of them did not care about rules. Impossible was a word for calmer years.

***

The blow hit the Bone Dragon’s chest and did not so much break it as remove the possibility that it had ever been a chest. Bone became dust in a push that rippled through the rest of the frame. The shock ran along arms and spine and down through the hips. The creature slammed and tumbled, limbs at bad angles, like a marionette someone had shaken too hard.

“Strong!” Ketal said, half laugh and half praise. He looked down at his hand with open satisfaction. “And intact.”

There were no cut lines, no burst vessels, not even a bruise. Myst had kept the limb whole while the weight of the strike passed through it. That meant he could do it again without pausing to let self-inflicted damage knit. He swung again. The ribs turned to glittering chalk that blew away in a dirty gust. The shock punched a hole through the cavern wall and kept going. A bright wedge of daylight fell across the stone from a window that had not existed seconds before. Ketal had cracked the Dungeon and then the world above.

The Holy Sword could not find words for a breath. This was the kind of thing a god did after choosing to come down, not a person with a grin and a weapon. It felt cold along the spine it did not have and tried to follow him as he moved.

Ketal took a light step forward, and the Dungeon floor collapsed beneath him as he appeared before the Bone Dragon. His fist moved, and with each successive strike, space itself shuddered. The Bone Dragon could not even muster a proper defense as the bones of its entire body shattered and splintered into pieces.

In less than a minute, the Bone Dragon ceased its struggle to rise. What remained of it smoked and sagged, the magic animating its bones finally releasing its hold. The structure collapsed, and the fragments crumbled away toward dust.

“You did well,” Ketal said simply. “Accept my thanks.”

He leaped and brought his fist down on the skull. The head vanished as if the world itself had swallowed it between its fingers. Silence returned like the tide. Less than a minute—that was all it had taken to bring down a Hero monster. This one had no mind and could not adapt mid-fight, but that did little to make the result easier to accept.

“Very strong,” he said. “I was right not to use this on the Mortal Realm.”

The power exceeded his expectation, and it came with costs.

“Myst consumption is severe,” he muttered.

He had used it for less than a minute and had spent almost half of what he carried. This was not a tool to throw at small problems. The mental strain was not small either. Moving at full power while controlling Myst at that precision asked even his mind to stretch; the effort made the back of his head throb. The price was fair. The disappearance of collateral damage to his own body mattered more than the ache. Being able to put every grain of strength into a strike without cracking knuckles or tearing muscle changed the work. And unlike hauling the beast of Myst up into the world, this had no condition except time. If he had a quiet minute to refill the cup, he could use it freely.

“With practice,” he said, smiling, “it will become a very fine tool.”

As he spoke, the dragon’s remains lifted from the ground in a careful spiral. Dust and fragments drew inward and compressed as if squeezed by a closing fist. The mass shrank from the size of a barn to a barrel, then a brick, then a piece he could cup in one palm. It dropped into his hand with a soft, finished sound.

A length of bone lay on his skin, bright as a jewel, white as fresh snow, gleaming from within as if polished with moonlight.

“Dragon Bone,” the Holy Sword breathed, the words more diagnosis than exclamation.

Ketal’s mouth tipped upward. “Good.”

Light rolled around him. The Dungeon, its boss destroyed, dissolved and put him back at the beginning. He stepped out of the air in front of the hole. The Guildmaster and the fairy were holding each other in a way neither would talk about later.

“I see you were waiting for me,” Ketal said. “It is done.”

“Y-yes,” the Guildmaster said, nodding as if his neck were a rusty hinge.

***

Back in the headquarters, the Guildmaster cleared his throat.

“What...” He stopped, began again. “What did you do?”

“I had an experiment in mind,” Ketal said. “The result was satisfying.”

“I see,” the Guildmaster said, though he did not and would not push. Whatever the experiment had been, it had made the forest wear a new scar. That was enough truth for a day.

“Well, we have confirmed that the Dungeon has been cleared,” the Guildmaster said instead, taking ground he could hold. “The Monster Nest is gone.”

Ketal inclined his head.

“May I ask what was inside?” the Guildmaster said.

“You know the first three floors,” Ketal answered. “We can skip them. There was a fourth. It held creatures like Basilisks and Hydras. There were more than a hundred, and each sat at least at the Transcendent level.”

“I see...,” the Guildmaster said, although his face said he would need time to understand in full.

“And the fifth was a Bone Dragon,” Ketal continued.

“A Bone Dragon?”

The word came out closer to a cry than a question. Everyone who cared about the continent’s defense had heard the stories. They said such a thing was a trial only Heroes could answer honestly.

“Then what about the reward?” the Guildmaster asked him.

Ketal set the bright bone on the table between them. The Guildmaster made a sound that was not quite a word, half awe and half dismay.

“Dragon Bone...,” he said, reverent despite himself.

“You know it?” Ketal asked him.

“Only in rumor,” the Guildmaster said. “It has never circulated openly. There is an old tale that when the Mage Tower was made, a piece was used to set its heart, but it is only a tale.”

“I see,” Ketal said, pleased.

“So the boss of an S-Rank Dungeon is a Bone Dragon,” the Guildmaster said, half to himself, already writing the report in his head. “Clearing one requires a Hero or someone more powerful. The information alone is worth... more than we can pay.”

He bowed deeply and continued, “Thank you for sharing what you found. I would give you a reward on the spot if I could, but as you see...”

“It is fine,” Ketal said. “If you must give one, send it when you can.”

“Thank you. For now, you must be exhausted. Allow me to show you to a room. Please rest.”

“That would be welcome.”

He followed the Guildmaster to a clean room. The Guildmaster hurried away to pull threads together and send messages that would change how men planned their days. Ketal lay down and let his body remember softness. Then he reached into the pouch and drew out the white bone.

Dragon Bone was not an ordinary length of bone. It shone like a cut stone. If he let his fingertips rest on the surface, he could feel Myst in it, not only stored there but aligned—shaped to be used.

“What do you make of it?” he asked the sword.

“If it were ordinary Dragon Bone,” the Holy Sword said, thinking its way through the shape, “it would sit low on the ladder of truly rare materials. Hard, yes; receptive to magic, yes; but not extraordinary. This is not that.”

It took its time with the words.

“But this is compressed,” it said at last. “It is not a bone from some random dragon. It is the Bone Dragon reduced to a single piece and given by the Dungeon as a reward. It is a material unto itself.”

“How does it stand next to a Dragon Heart?” Ketal asked the sword.

“As a material?” It hesitated and then committed. “There is likely not much difference.”

“I thought so.”

He smiled. The last drop he needed to spill the cup now sat in his hand.