[Tower Of Abyss]
The tower of Abyss, the only SS-rank dungeon to have appeared on Earth, and claimed the lives of millions of hunters.
With one hundred floors and bosses that would put any other dungeon to shame, the tower of Abyss was known as the 'calamity', one that brought the planet Earth to shrambles, with no hope of ever recovering.
Within its shadow, the Final Army—100 souls clad in shattered armor—formed a trembling ring of defiance around the four who might yet rewrite fate.
William Steel, his greatsword cleaving through dragonbone, roared as acid blood seared his flesh. Hirokos Kratos danced amid the storm, twin katanas a blur, her laughter sharp as the gales she summoned. Kang Hansoo's staff spat sparks, its once-gleaming glow reduced. As for the fourth hero, Long Tzu knelt at the eye of the storm, the [Time Space Crystal] pulsing in his trembling hands.
"Do it!" William bellowed, parrying a claw the size of a tank. "Before the swarm closes!"
The crystal's glow bathed Long Tzu's face—a face that had seen it all, fought it all, and failed.
'Twenty-five years', he thought, 'Enough to undo the Cataclysm. To save them all'
The Final Army's screams crescendoed as dragonfire melted steel and bone. They were buying seconds with lifetimes.
He shattered the crystal.
A sound like the universe inhaling.
Then—nothing.
No surge of chronal energy. No vortex through time. Only a brittle laugh from the shadows as a figure emerged—a draconic warlord, scales glinting with stolen starlight.
"Mortals" it hissed. "Did you think we'd leave true power unguarded?"
The heroes froze. The crystal was a decoy. A joke.
Despair befell the army, the heroes. Their hope, never once diminished, had been stomped, recycled and stomped again.
Hirokos was first to fall, a spear of ice through her heart.
Kang's arcane circles exploded in a fireball that lit the dead sky, his focus wavering under the immense revelation downsizing their efforts.
William fought on, a one-armed dragon, until the earth itself cracked and swallowed him.
Long Tzu crawled, fingers bleeding, toward the crystal's shards. So close. So—
A shadow loomed. Jagged fangs descended.
Then, light.
A young man—no older than thirty years old, armor scoured by battle—leapt from the rubble, the crystal's core clutched in his hand. Greem Knight, the prodigy who'd slain his first A-rank titan at twenty, who'd been dismissed as too reckless, too young. His eyes, twin emeralds, met Long Tzu's.
"See you, bastards" he whispered. "Turns out the future belongs to the brave ones"
The crystal reacted. Not with time—but potential, a raw scream of energy that tore reality asunder.
As the tower collapsed, as dragons howled in primal fury, Greem vanished. Not into the past, but into the crack between seconds—where destiny is a loom, and even gods fear to tread.
The last thing Long Tzu saw before the dark took him was a boy's grin, fierce and unyielding, and a single word etched in the light:
Rebirth.