The Bronze Gate

Moments later, Lu Yuan's greatsword split the dungeon spider's carapace above its skull and drove straight into its brain.

By the time he finished, Gelin's group was still locked in combat with the other one. Even with the whole team's combined attacks, they hadn't managed a killing blow. Dungeon spiders weren't especially tough defensively, so Zhuo Ming's group had been able to leave wounds — but nothing lethal. Gelin was another matter; his defense was a wall the spider simply couldn't breach. With him absorbing its attacks, the others only needed to focus on output.

The spider's claws slammed against Gelin's great shield again. It let out a furious, piercing screech.

Lu Yuan's foot hit the ground and he launched forward — two meters in a single bound — landing directly above the spider's head. His greatsword came swinging overhead.

*Crack!*

The black blade met the black carapace. A line split open in an instant, and web-like fractures spread outward from the point of impact.

*Hiss!*

The blade tore through the carapace and punched through the spider's skull. The dungeon spider went rigid. Its nearly two-meter frame crashed to the floor.

Everyone stared.

"The head carapace is supposed to be the hardest part of a dungeon spider — and the Black Knight split it in one swing? Just how strong is he?!"

"A Guardian type with this much raw power... as an Assault type, I'm honestly having a personal crisis."

Zhuo Ming turned to Lu Yuan. "You're ridiculous, Lu Yuan. Traveling with you, I feel like we'd just be dead weight."

Gelin was looking at him too.

Lu Yuan shook his head. "Not at all. The inner-circle spiders are a lot tougher than the ones near the entrance. Two at once was genuinely annoying for me. If you hadn't held one back, it wouldn't have gone as clean." He paused. "Not to mention the webs everywhere — the terrain favors them. That slows things down considerably."

He wasn't being polite. It was the truth.

Gelin laughed. "Ha, that's a relief to hear. Let's grab the materials and push on."

They looted the bodies and headed deeper.

The further they pressed into the inner circle, the wider and more labyrinthine the corridors became. Some tunnels stretched over two hundred meters across — practically small plazas in their own right. The beasts they encountered grew stronger with every step.

Some creatures gave even Lu Yuan serious trouble. A few had given no warning at all before striking — and those were the ones Gelin had caught first.

This was the value of years spent inside the dungeon. Knowledge bought through death after death. Each survival instinct, each avoidance reflex, had come at a price someone had paid.

They squeezed through a narrow passage barely ten meters wide and emerged into a larger space.

A giant sand ant lay dead on the floor — its body entirely yellow, its size unmistakable.

"That's a Palace Sand Ant! And by the size, it's an elite soldier ant! What's it doing dead out here?"

They gathered around and examined the body. It was covered in blade marks — clean, deliberate slashes and cuts.

"Gene Warriors did this. Some team killed it."

Zhuo Ming straightened up. "I heard the ruin is supposed to be near an ant nest. Soldier ants usually stay to guard the nest... does that mean we're close?"

They kept moving. The path ahead was littered with more sand ant corpses — mostly worker ants, though soldier ants appeared here and there among them.

Then Lu Yuan stopped dead.

Something hit him like a wall of pressure.

An aura unlike anything he'd felt since entering the dungeon. Oppressive, suffocating — the most terrifying presence he'd encountered in all this time underground.

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead. His gaze locked onto the corner ahead, where the faint sound had come from. He turned to Gelin.

Gelin was already looking at him. The same shadow of alarm was in his eyes.

Without a word, Gelin raised one finger to his lips. Zhuo Ming's group froze. The two of them moved carefully toward the corner and peered around the edge.

Beyond it stretched a vast, open tunnel — almost like a courtyard. Against the far wall, a creature was feeding.

Black scales covered it head to toe. A single horn jutted from its forehead. It had the heavy, low-slung build of a large canine, its shoulder rising to around 1.7 meters. Its head was buried in a carcass — a serpent, five meters long, entirely yellow but for the single black stripe along its back.

Lu Yuan's eyes dropped to the snake, and his pupils contracted.

He already recognized it. That colouring, that length — a Black Line Snake. An ordinary Black Line Snake topped out at a little over two meters. Five meters meant elite rank, no question. And elite Black Line Snakes were no trivial threat: lethal venom, exceptional speed, strength, and constitution. Even Lu Yuan wouldn't casually provoke one.

And the thing in front of him had turned it into a meal.

He cross-referenced everything he'd memorized.

*Black Scale Horn Wolf.*

An apex predator distributed across the entire Sandy Rock City region. Rare in number, but a pack was a catastrophe. Even the weakest individual was elite rank with tempering above 80%. By all accounts, their packs occasionally produced boss-tier specimens.

*What a terrifying aura.*

If he tried to fight it head-on, he didn't give himself a single percent chance.

The two of them traded a look — fear written clearly in both pairs of eyes. They eased back from the corner without a sound.

Gelin's voice dropped to a low murmur. "Bad news. There's a Black Scale Horn Wolf over there. It's feeding."

"*What?* A Black Scale Horn Wolf?!"

Every voice fell instantly to a hush. Zhuo Ming and the others went wide-eyed, faces draining. The tension was immediate.

"How is something at that level even here? All of us together wouldn't be worth a mouthful to it."

All eyes turned to Lu Yuan and Gelin.

Gelin looked at Lu Yuan. "You're the strongest among us. Any thoughts?"

Lu Yuan frowned, thinking it through. "It's too dangerous," he said quietly. "Just feeling that aura from around the corner is enough to shake anyone's nerves. We can't take it on. Let's find a way around."

Gelin nodded. "We can backtrack a bit. There's a fork not far back — it should connect toward the ruin from a different angle."

Decision made. The group retreated with deliberate care, watching every footstep, making sure not to draw the wolf's attention while it was occupied with its meal.

They switched corridors and pressed on.

As they advanced, the number of dangerous elite beasts kept climbing. Some creatures gave even Lu Yuan cause for caution; a handful had gone completely undetected until Gelin flagged them. But his own strength was solid, and with Gelin anchoring the front line and the rest of the team filling in, they ground through each encounter — some fights harder than others, but always moving forward.

Soon, they came out into a small plaza.

Gene Warriors were scattered across it in pairs and small clusters, their low voices mixing in the air. Humans, elves, cat-kin, gnolls — the four races keeping loosely to their own, with a handful of mixed-race teams sprinkled among them. The gathering was large enough that it clearly wasn't coincidence. Everyone was here for the same reason.

And at the far end of the plaza, a gate stood sealed.

Bronze-colored. Massive. Strange, intricate patterns carved across every surface.

Every pair of eyes in Lu Yuan's group lit up at once.

"It's the ruin gate!"

A wave of excitement swept through them.

"Hold on." Lu Yuan's voice was calm and measured. "Don't start celebrating yet. Stay sharp — the last thing we need is someone getting the drop on us in here."