Absolute Cheater

This was the domain of the Violet Thorn Ravine.

Even before they reached the dungeon gate, they felt it—an oppressive stillness, as though the entire mountain were holding its breath. The air was thick with the scent of wilted flowers and bitter sap, and everywhere, vines curled along the cliffs, twitching faintly like they were alive.

They stopped before a natural arch of twisted roots. Within it glowed the gate, pulsing with a dim, purplish light.

Asher looked at the map.

"This dungeon formed from a dead battlefield between Dryad Queens and the Corrupt Thorn Lords—entities that used parasitic plant law. It's more than just a jungle—it's a graveyard of evolving venom."

Valeris narrowed her eyes, brushing aside a floating petal that seemed to shimmer with poison. "Toxins, venom, blood rot. All passive killing techniques."

Asher glanced to Veyra. "You'll need to adapt fast. Everything here is designed to infect and wear you down."

Veyra nodded calmly, her expression firm. "I've already fought corruption once before."

She stepped forward into the gate.

Inside, the dungeon stretched like an overgrown maze. Towering vines arched overhead, forming massive canopies that blocked out sunlight. The only light came from bioluminescent thorns and sickly glowing spores floating through the air.

The floor was soft—almost too soft. In places, it pulsed beneath her feet like something alive.

Within moments, Veyra sensed it.

The ground shifted.

The plants moved.

A low growl echoed from the deeper shadows of the ravine.

Then it emerged.

A tall, root-entwined figure rose from the ground itself. It stood nearly twelve feet tall, formed of woven thorns and bark. Its chest opened like a flower, revealing dozens of twitching eyes and a beating heart made of blackened nectar.

The boss: Thorncaller Vreith, also known as the Gorebloom Shepherd.

"Outsider," it rasped, voice like snapping branches. "You walk into sacred bloomsoil. Do you seek to cleanse… or to decay?"

Veyra summoned her glaive in one hand and her blood vines in the other. "I'm here to end your cycle."

The Thorncaller let out a hiss. Roots exploded from the ground beneath her feet.

The fight began.

Veyra leapt high, dodging the erupting vines, then landed with a burst of ice-blood energy that froze the ground in a wide radius. Her glaive spun in her grip, carving through the first wave of plant limbs—but they grew back almost instantly, like hydra heads.

Vreith didn't move like a beast. He moved like a growing tree—slow but inevitable, always regrowing. He fired spore clouds from his chest that exploded in sickly gas. One grazed Veyra's shoulder, sizzling against her skin.

She gritted her teeth and backed away, forming a barrier of frozen blood in the air. With her free hand, she pressed a blood sigil against her skin, activating her Empyrean resistance technique.

The air crackled. Her blood vines now glowed with icy light.

She countered by sending a whip of her vine around one of his legs, freezing it solid, then driving her glaive into the joint. The limb shattered—but moments later, a new one began growing from his torso.

Vreith slammed the ground. Dozens of thorn pillars erupted around her.

Veyra vanished in a blur, reappearing on a higher ledge. From there, she focused—drawing in both her Moon Bloom energy and Bloodroot essence, fusing them mid-air.

Her glaive shifted—longer, narrower, and coated in glowing frost-thorns.

She launched it like a spear, embedding it into Vreith's chest.

The creature shrieked.

His body convulsed, thorn barbs ripping themselves out and launching toward her. She raised her vines to shield, catching most of them, but one pierced through, lodging into her abdomen.

Her body staggered.

Then pulsed.

Instead of pulling it out, she froze the thorn within her—then shattered it from inside, letting her regenerative blood patch the wound.

She dove forward, catching the returning glaive mid-air, and unleashed a spinning slash infused with Duskroot frost.

This time, she aimed for the heart—the black nectar core.

Vreith snarled, forming a barrier of thorns—but she cut through it, her blood constructs slicing in spirals.

The glaive stabbed deep.

Then bloomed.

A frozen flower of crimson and white erupted from his chest.

Vreith howled.

His body spasmed. Thorns flailed wildly, ripping through the ravine's structure in a final death burst.

Then he collapsed—shattering into dead bark and frozen sap.

Asher and Valeris approached as the dungeon stabilized, the plant growth withering rapidly under the loss of its core.

Valeris glanced around. "Poisonous, parasitic, and regenerating. That was a problem."

Veyra nodded, wiping sweat and blood from her brow. "It tried to wear me down. But rot isn't the only thing that grows."

Asher looked at her, faintly smiling. "You're learning fast."

He pulled the map again. "Three left now."

The eighth mountain rose jagged and bleak, like a broken spine piercing the clouds. Unlike the previous mountains teeming with elemental fury or corrupted overgrowth, this peak exuded silence. No wind. No birds. Not even the ambient hum of distant power. It was as though the very mountain was holding its breath.

They followed a winding trail carved through lifeless black stone, descending toward the hollow that gave this place its name:

Lurker's Cradle.

The gate wasn't at the summit—it was buried within a deep crater, almost like the mountain had swallowed the dungeon whole. Massive, spiraling stone ribs jutted from the crater's edges, giving it the appearance of an ancient creature's maw. Thin mist clung to every surface, unnaturally dense and cloying. Lights and sound dimmed the deeper they descended.

Finally, they reached the gate.

It wasn't made of flame or roots or metal. It was a membrane—semi-transparent and pulsing like a heartbeat. Behind it lay absolute blackness.

Asher paused.

"This dungeon isn't elemental. It's abyssal. It's the leftovers of a sunken civilization—one that traded their souls to something beneath the world."

Valeris frowned. "Darkness? Or something else?"

"Worse," Asher replied. "Stillness. The kind that devours."

He turned to Veyra. "The boss here is called the First Maw of Stillblood, a being that feeds on motion, memory, and the soul's echo. It's not a beast. It's an absence given form."

Veyra didn't flinch. She stepped forward.

"I'll silence it."

The moment she crossed the threshold, everything changed.

Sound vanished. Light faded. Even her heartbeat was muffled in her own ears.

The dungeon interior was a winding hollow made of obsidian bone and wet stone, slick and pulsing like veins. Pools of dark liquid lined the sides, occasionally rippling with unseen movement. Strange whispers flitted through her thoughts—not from the air, but from within her own blood.

She summoned her glaive—but even the motion felt muted.

Then the shadows stirred.

It didn't walk.

It formed.

Like oil pooling together, the First Maw of Stillblood rose from one of the obsidian trenches. A hunched, fluid shape, with arms too long and fingers too sharp. Its head was a vertical slit filled with twitching black teeth, and its chest opened to reveal dozens of shriveled faces, all screaming silently.

Its voice was a dry hiss in her skull.

"You carry sound. You carry heat. You carry memory. I will take them all."

It lunged.

Veyra twisted to the side, narrowly dodging the slash of a tendril-limb, then retaliated with a spinning strike of her glaive. The blade struck—but did not cut. The flesh shifted around it like sludge, absorbing the impact.

She leapt back and cast a net of blood vines laced with frost. They froze mid-air and launched forward like spears. The creature absorbed the first few—then began melting the others, oozing shadow that dissolved the ice.

Veyra frowned. "Tch. It doesn't bleed."

Still, she adapted.

She summoned blood sigils in the air, then created copies of herself—phantom forms formed of condensed blood and moonlight. The First Maw whipped a black lash through two of them, but they burst with icy backlash, freezing part of its form in place.

She dashed forward and struck that frozen section—this time, her glaive cut deep.

But it didn't scream. It didn't recoil.

Instead, the faces in its chest opened their eyes, and one of them spoke in her own voice.

"Do you remember the pain when you first fell sick?"

Her body shuddered involuntarily.

For a split second, the image of her fever-ridden childhood flashed before her—and the Maw struck.

It latched onto her shoulder with its warped limb and pulled, not her body, but her soul—or tried to. She roared and severed the limb with a blood blade forming from her ribs, driving it away.

Her breath was heavy now.

"This thing eats through memory. It's trying to unravel me."

She summoned new vines—not just frost-laced, but sewn with memory seals. The Duskroot family's forbidden technique. She chanted under her breath and released them—spiked chains of blood and light that latched onto the Maw and began injecting her memories into it.

The creature spasmed.

"Too loud… too hot… too—alive!"

She didn't let up.

She fused all three aspects—Blood Bloom, Moon Bloom, and her newfound Empyrean Vampiric Authority—into one. Her body glowed red and white. Her glaive transformed into a sweeping crescent blade with six frost-blood petals rotating along its edge.

She used her final move: Thorned Eclipse.

One wide arc.

The entire cavern cracked with the impact.

The Maw shrieked, its form rupturing. Its chest shattered—releasing the faces it had devoured. The darkness evaporated like smoke caught in sunlight.

Then it collapsed, writhing into nothingness.

The light returned. The cold faded.

Asher and Valeris entered moments later.

"She's alive," Valeris said.

Veyra exhaled, looking down at her blade.

"I think I've learned something new," she said quietly.