The air was thick with tension.
Floor 18's sky, falsely serene in its illusion of a twilight paradise, was split by the echoes of distant roars.
Cracks of thunderous force rattled from the western rim of the camp, drawing eyes and panic alike.
Campfires flickered. Weapon grips tightened. Whispers of the word "Goliath" spread like fire through dry grass.
But something else was moving, something faster, sharper.
A shadow darted between the thick trees of the outer glade, skimming the earth like a predator chasing blood.
It wasn't running toward the Goliath. Not yet. It had caught wind of something else, strays.
Monsters lesser than the beast that towered above the center of the floor, but still deadly.
And they were closing in, drawn by the tremors of battle, by the scent of mana.
Lesser adventurers would have been overwhelmed.
Toji Fushiguro grinned.
He stopped just short of the clearing and dropped his cursed spirit pet beside him.
With a click of his tongue, it opened like a grotesque storage case. Metal gleamed in the dim light.
Toji rolled his neck. No stealth. No shadows. No toys. Not this time.
He chose violence.
From within the cursed spirit's maw, he retrieved a thick, heavy blade, more cleaver than sword.
Not the slender weapon of a killer, but something meant to split bone and armor in equal measure.
He flexed his fingers around the handle and surged forward.
The first monster, a scaled, hunchbacked ogre with tusks the size of daggers, barely had time to growl before Toji was on it.
His blade came down like a guillotine.
Crunch.
Skull split clean. The rest of the beast spasmed before dropping in a heap.
Another lunged at him, claws raised to rake.
Toji didn't dodge. He stepped into it.
The claw caught his shoulder, tearing into the fabric of his jacket and drawing blood, but it meant nothing.
His fist slammed into the monster's throat, collapsing its windpipe.
He followed with a pivot and brought the cleaver down in a sweeping arc that cut the beast clean in half.
His movements were efficient, yes, but they were also brutal, savagely so.
Each swing carried weight meant to end, not to threaten.
He made no effort to conserve stamina or protect vital points. He didn't have to.
This was a man who traded away magic for raw power, and now, with cursed energy slowly returning to him like an old friend, just a trickle, just a taste, it amplified him in ways this world wasn't prepared for.
Another three came.
One bore a hammer, twice his size, and swung with enough force to crater stone.
Toji caught the shaft of the weapon on the flat of his blade, twisted, and ripped it free from the monster's hands with a brutal yank.
The hammer swung once more, this time under his grip, and shattered the beast's ribcage into paste.
The others hesitated.
A mistake.
Toji leapt forward, not dashed, leapt, like a predator pouncing with joy. The sheer force cracked the earth beneath him.
He landed between them and drove an elbow into one's chest, dislocating joints and puncturing lungs.
Without pause, he turned and flipped the cleaver into a reverse grip before driving it into the back of the second one's neck.
Blood sprayed upward like a geyser.
He pulled the blade free with a flick and rotated it again, exhaling through his nose like it was just another day in the office.
Somewhere behind the chaos, Loki Familia's scouts had begun circling the perimeter.
The moment the side monsters appeared, they mobilized, but what they found instead was a slaughter.
From the edge of the forest, Tione and Tiona stopped cold.
"What the hell...?" Tiona whispered, her voice caught between awe and disbelief.
The clearing was stained in red. Monster corpses, cleaved, shattered, or simply broken, lay in crude piles. And in the center, a man who hadn't even drawn his second weapon.
Toji cracked his knuckles.
Tione narrowed her eyes. "That's him again, isn't it?"
Tiona nodded slowly. "The guy Aiz mentioned..."
They didn't approach. Something about him repelled interference, not by force, but by presence.
A chill, almost feral silence followed in his wake after the last monster fell.
Toji stood amidst the carnage, covered in splatter. His cleaver dripped gore.
He didn't smile.
Didn't look around.
Just crouched beside one of the larger corpses and examined the weapon embedded in its flesh.
Useless. No craftsmanship.
He let out a sigh and stood. Blood clung to him like it belonged there.
In truth, the battle hadn't tested him.
Not really.
Even without going all out, even without the Ten Shadows... it felt like a warmup.
But more importantly, it felt right.
His body still moved like a killer's.
His instincts remained sharp.
But now... now, there was something else humming in his chest.
Like a second heartbeat.
He raised one hand and focused.
Just a trickle of cursed energy flowed through it, wrapping his fingers in a faint, angry aura.
It felt foreign now.
Earned, not inherited. Not like before.
He clenched his fist and let it fade.
Still early. Still growing. But it was there.
A binding vow made long ago, the Heavenly Restriction that severed his cursed energy, had found a loophole.
In this world, it wasn't cursed energy he traded for strength. It was magic. And without a god's blessing... there was nothing stopping it.
He could feel the old power returning.
He rolled his shoulders and walked toward the treeline.
Another roar split the sky.
The Goliath.
...
The Dungeon. Floor 18. Dusk.
The ground trembled beneath the colossal weight of the juggernaut that stalked across the floor of the safe zone, if it could even still be called that.
Monsters weren't supposed to spawn here.
But what stood before them now wasn't some misclassified beast.
It was an aberration, something the Dungeon had spat out like bile.
A test. A punishment.
Or perhaps, just something bored gods willed into existence for their amusement.
Toji Fushiguro didn't care about the "why."
The beast towered like a godless titan, and adventurers had already spilled blood trying to slow it down.
The main threat was Bell, dodging and weaving, looking like he was holding on by sheer desperation and instinct alone.
The white-haired boy was fast, unrelenting, persistent to the point of madness, and just maybe, he had a shot.
Toji stood on a crag above the fray, dust swirling around his feet as he exhaled slowly through his nose.
"He's going for it," Toji murmured, eyes narrowing. That radiance, that swelling aura wrapping around Bell's body, it wasn't just willpower.
It was that so-called skill they talked about.
Something divine.
A gamble of life and death given form.
And Bell was betting it all.
But the other monsters wouldn't wait for him to take the shot.
From behind the massive aberration, lesser monsters surged forward, ogres, war shadows, even a particularly feral lizardman swinging dual axes.
Maybe they were drawn to the spectacle. Maybe the Dungeon itself was pissed that Bell might actually win.
Toji stepped forward.
Enough watching.
He didn't leap down gracefully.
He fell, landing like a meteor at the head of the pack of charging monsters. The floor cracked beneath his boots.
The shockwave kicked dust and wind outward, knocking a few smaller monsters off their feet.
The lizardman roared.
Toji grinned.
No cursed tools. No tricks. Just fists.
What followed was not the precise, calculating combat Toji had displayed countless times before. This wasn't the assassin at work.
This was a brute, unchained, indulging in raw slaughter.
He met the ogre's club with his bare arm, the impact snapping bone, but not his.
Toji stepped inside its guard, grabbed the monster's wrist with a single hand, and ripped the arm off at the elbow.
The ogre howled once before a knee shattered its jaw, silencing it permanently.
He didn't dodge the war shadow's claws. he let them scratch across his skin, a shallow cut. He used the opportunity to grab its face and crush it into the wall.
The lizardman? It swung, fast, twice, overhead and then across.
Toji ducked under both blades and headbutted it with a crack that echoed louder than the battle cries.
The beast staggered, dazed, before Toji grabbed its twin axes, one in each hand, and cut it down with its own weapons, cleaving through armor, scale, and muscle with a single spinning blow.
Adventurers nearby had stopped.
Ryuu, panting from her own bout, froze mid-step as she saw him. Hermes, always grinning, now wore a look somewhere between curiosity and unease.
"...He's enjoying it," Hermes said under his breath.
Lili stared in open-mouthed horror. Welf had a hand on her shoulder, as if to stop her from stepping closer.
"He's not like us," Welf muttered. "That guy... he's something else."
Blood stained the floor. Toji stood in the center of it, chest heaving not from exhaustion, but excitement.
Old instincts rose again. He hated this part of himself, and yet, part of him reveled in it.
The adrenaline.
The control.
The power.
He could end this. Right now. Intervene. Strike the beast from behind. Be the hero.
But... he wouldn't.
This wasn't his fight. It was Bell's.
He turned from the gore, looked at the massive monster beginning to sense its prey was getting ready for something. It started to move, slow and lumbering.
"No," Toji said. "You stay right there."
Something is in his mind, a binding vow he can make, a simple domain play by his rule...
Well... not really his rule.
Kuchisake-Onna
A Simple Domain that freezes time and enforces a binding vow of non-violence between the caster and the target until the question that the caster asked is answered. Once the question is answered, time resumes and the caster and target can attack each other.
He raised one hand. Cursed energy pooled in his palm, coiling in tight spirals. The air rippled, warped, like heat above fire.
A circle of shifting symbols formed around him and the monster.
The monster slowed. The ripple extended and the space between them shimmered unnaturally.
Then, to the shock of every adventurer watching, the monster froze mid-step.
Completely.
Even its drool hung suspended in air.
Toji stood within a Simple Domain.
Time had stopped for both of them. He stepped forward, until he stood directly in front of the beast's unmoving face, less than a meter away. Its breath had halted.
Its eyes locked in a moment of instinctual rage. But it couldn't move. It couldn't act.
It couldn't answer.
Because the question Toji had set for the domain to release was simple:
"What do you see when you look at me?"
It was a question that no monster could answer.
Because there was no answer.
Not even Toji himself knew anymore.
And so, time within that space stayed locked. And the others, Ryuu, Hermes, Lili, Welf, watched from afar, dumbstruck.
"Wh-What... is that?" Lili whispered.
"Is that a spell?" Welf asked, even though he already knew it wasn't.
Ryuu's eyes narrowed.
"No... That's something else. That's..." She didn't finish the thought. She just felt it.
Magic users could feel magic. But this wasn't magic.
This was something alien. Something colder. Sharper. Like a blade pressed to the nape of one's neck. It didn't warm the air like fire spells or tremble like earth. It froze the world.
Hermes exhaled slowly.
"I see now," he said with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "That energy... from a different world altogether."
They looked back toward the center.
Toji stood alone inside the shimmering dome. Around him, time flowed. But inside... nothing moved.
Except one thing.
The boy.
Bell Cranel.
His body glowed now, pure white, fierce, radiant like a newborn god. His feet slammed against the floor, launching him like a bullet. Toward the monster. Toward his moment.
And as Bell entered the domain's edge.
Toji stepped back.
And the domain collapsed.
Time resumed.
The monster blinked—
—and then screamed as Bell's blade pierced its chest, the divine skill detonating on impact.
The creature howled, cracked, and fell in slow motion. The impact rocked the floor. The blast light illuminated the cavern. Echoes roared out, reverberating through the entire Floor 18.
Bell landed with a skid, panting, the monster behind him dead.
Silence followed.
Then cheers erupted.
The adventurers screamed in triumph.
Lili sobbed in disbelief.
Welf let out a long, slow exhale.
Hermes chuckled. "Now that was dramatic..."
But one person wasn't cheering.
Toji was already walking away.
No fanfare.
No interest in glory.
Just the job.
Just the hunt.
Ryuu Lion watched his back disappearing into the stone shadows beyond the campsite. Her brows furrowed.
"You helped him," she said quietly, loud enough that only Hermes could hear.
Toji didn't look back. He raised a hand in a lazy wave, then vanished into the dark without a sound.
Hermes gave a small, sly grin.
"He didn't do it for Bell," he said. "He did it because the Dungeon tried to interrupt a man's moment. And he hates interruptions."