The young man dragged his exhausted body and looked around. All he could see was the rugged stone mountain road.
The sky was covered with thick dark clouds, and the sunlight could not penetrate the darkness at all.
A strong wind, carrying the breath of death, blew in his face.
He had no way of counting how many days it had been since he came to this place.
There was no distinction between day and night here. No matter the time, there was only darkness and dark clouds.
"…It's… like the land of the dead…"
Tatsuya Suzuki muttered to himself.
He clenched the wooden stick he found on the road, which could barely serve as a weapon.
The reason why weapons were needed was simple——
The wind blew across the mountain road in long waves, as if something like skeletons, dead spirits, or ghosts appeared from the black fog.
There were dead people with dry, sunken, and rotten faces, skeletons without a trace of muscle, and monsters hiding in dark shadows under tattered cloaks, with faces completely invisible and only eyes that glowed like will-o'-the-wisps.
In the hands of these "things" were rusty swords and spears.
Tatsuya knew he was under siege.
They exuded an aura of danger that was immediately apparent.
He couldn't let them get close. These creatures might seem unsteady on their feet, but they were actually very powerful with their weapons.
He chose the right moment and dodged the attack of the first skeleton that rushed over. He hit its cervical vertebra accurately with the wooden stick in his hand. The white bone skull rolled several times on the ground and stopped.
The skeleton staggered and fell backwards.
All the monsters made eerie sounds and rushed towards Tatsuya one after another.
His physical strength had been exhausted bit by bit after countless rounds of siege. It seemed he had reached his limit, always just one breath away from death.
But thanks to this desire to survive, Tatsuya gradually mastered the methods of dealing with these monsters and the way of fighting through repeated encounters.
He could predict the opponent's attack route the moment their sword or spear was raised, then avoid the vital points in advance and counterattack.
His body moved like a battle machine, attacking monsters with precision.
However, they were numerous, and the wooden stick wore out with repeated counterattacks, eventually shattering on the ground.
Dodging a slash from a corpse, Tatsuya rolled backwards, but unexpectedly fell into the attack range of other monsters, and various weapons fell on him densely.
A sharp red light flashed, and all the monsters were instantly turned to powder, along with their weapons.
"Oh? I didn't expect that after all this, someone could still step into this place alive. I thought it was an illusion and came out to take a look, and I found some good material."
The extremely sharp red spear was pointed at Tatsuya, and the voice of its owner was cold and noble.
The wind mixed with the breath of death still whistled past his cheeks, and the long hair of the owner of the red spear fluttered in the wind.
Even though he was exhausted and the other person was masked, he couldn't help but hold his breath at the peerless beauty of the woman in front of him.
"Now that you have arrived in the Kingdom of Shadows and have met me, the master of the alien and demonic realms, state your name, warrior."
The woman retracted the spear and stabbed it into the ground.
"Tatsuya... Suzuki..."
[Congratulations, you have successfully survived in the Shadow Fortress and met its queen. But don't think this is the end; your journey full of death has just begun.]
When Tatsuya saw his name in the newspaper, he seemed to hear someone telling him this. It was not a voice but more like the information was engraved directly into his mind.
He sensed that he was embarking on a destiny of which he knew nothing.