A boundless expanse of snow covered the icy plain. At its distant edge stood a pitch-black gate, its color so deep it seed torn from another world.
Between heaven and earth, Rozelite stood alone.
The scene stirred a line of poetry in Russell’s mind: Who says heaven is inhospitable? The boundless snowstorm delivers only one traveler.
“Ah—”
Tentacles extended from Rozelite’s back, but this ti they did not form hardened tal armor. Instead, they spread outward along both sides of her torso, unfurling like colossal wings. As they expanded, their shapes began to change—as though countless feathers erged upon them. The sli-like substance shifted visibly, transforming into a pair of white wings.
【Shapeshift lv7】
【Mimicry lv5】
From Rozelite’s back, a pair of feathered wings spread wide.
With a gentle flap, a gust of wind lifted her steadily into the air.
【Flight lv8】
Russell had often wondered: What happens if I try to use a skill without the necessary organs to perform it?
The answer: nothing at all.
Just as 【Eagle Eye】 required eyes, or 【One-Handed Sword Mastery】 required sothing sword-like to wield—
Soone without wings, even if they possessed 【Flight】, could not simply glide through the sky. That wasn’t how the skill manifested.
No matter how high the level, without the organ to channel it, the skill was useless.
This wasn’t a bug, but rather a loophole born from the overpowered nature of 【Insatiable】.
Normally, if one lacked the organs to use a skill, there would be no way to acquire it in the first place.
But 【Insatiable】 didn’t care.
Eat it, and you gain it. Whether you could actually use it—that was your own problem.
So Russell devised a solution.
If I don’t have wings, then I’ll just grow them.
With the sli’s highly malleable body, he could morph and mimic. Though the substance remained sli at its core, outwardly, it was now wings.
And thus—【Flight】 worked.
Boom—
The wings at Rozelite’s back beat powerfully, gusts carrying her toward the far-off gate.
From the ground, the distance had looked imnse. But once airborne, it seed much shorter.
Soon, Rozelite descended before the looming gate.
She did not hesitate.
Passing through, the world shifted once more.
The biting chill of the icefield vanished, replaced by a cold that seeped into bone and soul. The air reeked of ancient graves, of soil steeped in rot, of decay distilled from the death of all things. Instinctively, Rozelite frowned.
She looked upward.
The sky was a solid sheet of ink-black, heavy and suffocating, like a corpse shroud soaked in death draped across the heavens.
No stars, no moon—only a sickly green glow, like the gathered light of countless rotting fireflies, suspended in the air. It faintly illuminated the ghastly contours of this world.
Beneath her stretched an endless black wasteland.
The soil was charred and cracked, riddled with deep web-like fissures.
Everywhere lay massive, twisted bones, frozen in postures of agony. Among them were rusted scraps of armor and shattered weapons, all fused into a grim graveyard of death.
In the far distance, silhouettes of dead, gnarled trees lood, their twisted branches like arms raised in despair.
“What... is this place...” Rozelite murmured.
Her wings lifted her higher.
At the horizon’s edge lood a castle of unimaginable scale, its shadow devouring the land.
Countless spires jutted upward like the broken fangs of a beast, crooked and twisted against the oppressive sky.
The walls sprawled outward, their surface irregular—neither stone nor mortar, but resembling cooled magma or monstrous bones. In the greenish glow, they glead with a clammy, sickly sheen.
All was silent. No sound, no movent. Yet the air itself seethed with malice, thick enough to feel.
Rozelite hovered, the flap of her wings jarringly loud in the deathly stillness.
“Mr. Sli, is this the fifth floor?”
Rozelite frowned. This place... felt wrong.
“In any case, let’s check the castle ahead,” Russell said.
“If this is truly the labyrinth’s final level, then there must be a boss to defeat. We—”
Before he could finish—
A soul-piercing shriek ripped across the black shroud of sky!
Rozelite’s head snapped upward.
An overwhelming shadow tore through the poisonous miasma of clouds, diving down upon her.
She saw it clearly.
A dragon-shaped monster, its body forged entirely from massive white bones. Each flap of its jagged wings stirred frigid whirlwinds of black dust and frost. At its joints burned eerie green flas, and its hollow eye sockets fixed upon Rozelite.
And riding upon its bony neck—
Was a second figure.
It wore rusted, black armor, archaic and cruel, bristling with spikes and scars. The flesh beneath was ash-gray, as lifeless as corpses.
Above its shoulders, there was no head.
Its skeletal hand clutched reins. In the other, it carried a pale bone spear, its tip glowing with malevolent green, blood dripping endlessly from it as though it would never dry.
Across its exposed flesh sprawled twisted, dark-purple sigils—the sa warped markings also crawled faintly across the bone dragon beneath it.
Russell narrowed his gaze.
“Those patterns…”
They were identical to the sigils on the tentacled horror in the swamp labyrinth—the markings of subspace creatures.
【Na: Undead Dragon Knight】
【Race: Undead】
【Level: 65】
【Status: Undead, Subspace Corruption】
【HP: 18,980 / 18,980】
【MP: 25,100 / 25,100】
【Skills: Fire Magic lv6, Greatsword Mastery lv4, Spear Mastery lv6, Riding lv7】
“Subspace corruption...? Could this place also…”
Before Russell could finish the thought, the Undead Dragon Knight spurred its steed, the bone dragon’s colossal wings flaring as it streaked toward Rozelite in silence, a storm of death descending from the sky.
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