Chapter 93 – The Bitter Shortcut.

The second day in the underground cavern brought no quick relief to Diana's body.

When the Commander opened her eyes that morning, the pain in her ribs remained ever-present, constant, and heavy. Every deep breath made the right side of her chest click from within, and her left arm, though set back into the shoulder socket, refused to rise more than a few inches from the straw mat without firing a sharp jolt of pain through the tendons.

The continuous regeneration from the Crown of Arcane Sovereignty had restored her mana pool to its absolute limit, but flesh and bone battered by the kinetic hammer demanded biological rest that no long-range magic could speed up overnight.

Sitting on the same stone stump beside the green-ember fire, the gray-haired man was scraping the bark from a dark root with a rusty hunting knife.

Diana propped her right elbow on the straw, slowly raising her torso until she could sit propped against the cave's stone wall. She exhaled through her nose, checking the stabbing ache in her ribs, and locked her dark eyes with golden rings onto the man.

She had set aside vague questions about names or identity.

A strategist needed concrete data to recalibrate the board.

“That automaton in the sanctuary...” Diana began, her voice steady despite the weariness. “The impact of its hammer shattered a volcanic steel shield with nearly a thousand hit points and tore through dragon scales like thin cloth. Ordinary Level 40 constructs do not possess kinetic penetration of that caliber.”

The man stilled the knife's blade against the dark root.

He raised tired amber eyes, staring at Diana's two obsidian horns for a few seconds before answering:

“You have sharp perception for someone who was almost crushed to death.”

He tossed the root bark into the fire and continued:

“That titan wasn't an ordinary guardian spawned by the dungeon's rules. The shoulder gears and that hammer's core carried welds from an occult forge. Someone took the temple's ancient shell, tore open the mechanical structure, and drove forbidden resonance cores into it to create a weapon specialized in shattering heavy armor and nullifying barriers.”

***

Diana gritted her teeth slightly, processing the information.

The trap had not been mere bad luck in dungeon crawling. Someone in the Second Circle, a nobreza da cidadela ou alguma guilda com acesso a forjas clandestinas, had prepared that automaton specifically to grind intruders into mincemeat.

“And what about the fall?” Diana asked, looking toward the cave opening. “How long does it take to clear the rubble shaft in the chamber and climb back up to the south sector?”

The man let out a short, dry, mirthless laugh.

“There is no climbing back up.”

Diana narrowed her eyes. “I have a scout with one hundred and three Agility and a squad at the top of the chasm. They will dig.”

“They could dig for a whole year and find nothing but rotten rock and poisonous gas,” the man said directly, cutting through her illusions without hesitation. “That ceiling collapsed across more than two thousand meters of depth. The entire structure of the fault line gave way. The stone down here is unstable shale. If anyone tries to dig a tunnel from the top down with pickaxes or magic, the rest of the mountain will crash down and bury everyone.”

Diana felt her throat go dry.

“Then what is the way out of this place?”

The man pointed the tip of his hunting knife toward the back of the cave, where a wide, dark tunnel sloped steadily down into the depths of the earth.

“The only way out is forward,” the man said. “You fell into the Abyss of the Exiles, the underground rift running beneath the border between the Circles. If you trek through that tunnel for three days, you will emerge right on the outskirts of the Third Circle.”

***

The Third Circle.

The domain of Beelzebub. The Circle of Gluttony.

Diana looked at the dark maw of the tunnel opening deep in the rock.

Any ordinary hunter who discovered a secret route to cross the border into the Third Circle without paying aristocratic fees, without facing city hall trials, and without waiting to reach Level 50 would consider it the greatest victory of their life.

It was a clandestine shortcut straight to the world's next floor.

But in Diana's chest, that discovery brought no sense of triumph.

The taste of that achievement was bitter.

It meant she was physically cut off from her squad. It meant that Rhea, Kael, Aurelia-Elysia, and Seraphina were high above the abyss thinking she might be dead, while she would have to cross the threshold of the Circle of Gluttony alone, injured, without the rampart of Kael's shield and without Aurelia's healing backline.

She did not like losing things. And losing contact with her crew felt like a direct insult to her Greed itself.

—A clandestine shortcut to the Third Circle... The System's voice echoed in her mind, in solemn black gold. You intended to cross that threshold at Level 50 with Cassian's map. Destiny just pushed your passage forward through crooked paths.

I didn't want this passage like this, Diana answered mentally, her fingers gripping the leather of her jacket tightly. I built that faction so we would march together. Not so I could be hurled to the next floor like a wounded rat.

—The ground gave way, Diana. Now you only have two choices: lie on this straw complaining about your luck, or mend those ribs and conquer the Third Circle to open the path back for your own.

Diana looked at her hands, feeling the firmness of her black Archdemon claws and the steady pulse of her more than one thousand mana points sustained by the crown upon her head.

She exhaled slowly, cold and stubborn resolve returning to fill her dark eyes.

The System was right. Mourning the cave-in was useless.

She would let the bitter broth knit her broken ribs over the next forty-eight hours. She would gather the rare ores stored in her pouch and march down that dark tunnel.

If the Third Circle was the only way forward, she would take that Circle by force and carve the path back to her squad, no matter how many Level 50 monsters stood in her way.