Rein had once believed mistakes were the best teachers, but in the instant the white blaze of Flare burned his vision down to nothing, he understood he had failed the same lesson twice in a row.

  The truth was painfully simple. He'd been too confident.

  Earlier, he had used Mana Vision to examine Febru with meticulous care, and what he'd seen had reassured him: her output sat at no more than a Master Troposphere-tier, and even the illusion line she was running looked meaningless against eyes that could read mana's bones. Compared to someone like Alexander—whom Rein had already crushed—this Shapeshifter woman should have been leagues behind.

  What Rein hadn't calculated was that Tier was only a number for quantity, not a guarantee of victory in a real fight.

  He'd quietly kept Haste primed while he talked to buy time, planning to blitz in and snatch the Pandemonium Key in a single heartbeat, but the trick he'd used countless times—light as misdirection, brightness as a wedge—came back at him like an arrow shot from his own bow, and in the blind instant that followed, a barrage of Magic Missiles slammed into his chest and shoulder.

  Nighty reacted before his mind could; the black coat and bio-armor synced in an automatic reflex, raising layered mana screens that caught the impacts in time, and while the shots didn't pierce his defenses, they hit hard enough to hurl him away from the door's radius like a ragdoll kicked across stone.

  By the time he scrubbed at his eyes and his vision finally returned, the black metal rod had already been driven into a circular socket cradling the still-beating heart of the Puppet Master.

  The moment the Pandemonium Key touched that Stratosphere-tier heart, fresh red blood burst outward along the strange grooves carved into the door—and instead of spilling onto the floor, it was drawn into the rune-lines as if the ancient stone itself were alive and thirsty. Dim crimson light began to flare in segments, one after another, as if some colossal machine were being paid its opening fee in the currency of a peak mage's heart.

  Metal screamed.

  A mechanism silent for centuries groaned awake and twisted into motion, the giant door shifting open with agonizing slowness—then stopping, held at the seam by something that didn't need to force it.

  And the chamber changed.

  The air that had been heavy with dense mana collapsed into a freezing vacuum, siphoned into the crack like water pouring into a bottomless throat. The light that leaked through was not light in any comforting sense, but a bruised violet—less illumination than wound. Dark smoke followed it across the stone floor, moving like something that hadn't eaten in centuries.

  [LIZ: Messy hair! Catastrophe-class entity. Demon Realm origin. If it crosses — Arcadia is just the appetizer.]

  The Pandemonium Gate. So whatever's on the other side, Rein thought, it isn't something that knocks first.

  [LIZ: I'm scanning the door's inscriptions — don't move from that position!]

  The space in front of him began to ripple like cracked mirror-glass, the chamber shuddering as the door's edge was chewed and warped by an enormous pull from beyond. At the lip of the stone, hundreds of hands reached out—black as burnt charcoal, dried to a husk—latching onto the metal and wrenching it wider.

  And above all of it, a single colossal blood-colored eye stared from the abyss on the far side.

  Rein went rigid. That one eye alone was larger than the door by an absurd margin—big enough to make the entire mechanism feel like a toy left on the floor.

  Febru wasn't listening anymore. She dropped to her knees before that blood-red eye as if it were a god, her voice trembling with a final, desperate hope.

  "I am the connector… the one who opened the path…" Her hands pressed together. "I only wish for a blessing—please, free me and my kin from these short lives, and let us become complete humans!"

  The moment her plea ended, the black hands surged like a swarm of reapers, clamping onto her body and yanking her toward the gap.

  "Wait—no! Let me go!" Febru screamed—and then, in the last instant before the dark took her, her borrowed face turned toward Rein.

  Not pleading. Not afraid. Just the expression of someone who had finally understood the answer to a problem they'd spent their whole life solving—and arrived too late.

  Febru's scream tore once—then silence.

  "What I will grant you," the voice answered—if it could be called a voice; it was a vibration that shook the soul, a pressure-wave that made Rein clamp his hands to his ears— "is not the petty fate of becoming a human who rots with time."

  "You will become part of this realm. Immortal. Undying, within the bottomless dark."

  "My name is Abaddon."

  The vast eye shifted behind the gate, and the pressure spiked.

  "I am the first breath before creation and the last word after ruin.

  Before your kingdoms had names, I unmade them.

  Before your gods drew breath, I had already forgotten their faces.

  I am the beginning of all chaos, the end of all destruction—"

  The stone ceiling began to shed dust in curtains, the door widening with renewed violence.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "—and I have waited long enough.

  Behold the face of true might, and tremble at my feet.

  King of the Abyss."

  Rein stared up at the eye the size of a building, at the hands tearing the door wider, at the bruised violet light eating into the edges of reality.

  "Wow," he muttered through clenched teeth.

  "This guy really likes Shakespeare."

  Then the cold humor shattered.

  The massive blood-red eye moved—slowly, deliberately—until it locked onto him.

  The first impact wasn't an explosion. It was a crushing, merciless pressure that drove straight into his spirit, and Rein's entire body locked as if a thousand invisible nails had pinned his soul to the stone, the air turning solid around him—and something far beneath bone beginning to crack.

  What— his mouth formed the word and produced nothing. His lips were lead.

  Something cold climbed from his feet and didn't stop.

  [LIZ: Warning! You are afflicted with 'Abyssal Stasis', combined with the curse 'Eldritch Fear,' and forty-two additional debuffs triggered by direct eye contact with Abaddon!]

  Just from looking!? That's cheating, Rein cursed, his thoughts already blurring at the edges.

  And through the dim distortion he saw them—the hundreds of shriveled hands, talons gleaming, drifting through the air with slow inevitability as they reached for him, ready to seize him and drag him into that violet maw the way they had dragged Febru.

  Come on… I didn't ask for any stupid blessing.

  Just as the slick-black hands were about to brush the hem of his coat, Rein's vision snapped sideways—reality itself seeming to tilt—then the azure mana circuits inside his eyes detonated into brilliance, a flare of blue-white cutting through the dark like a blade.

  [LIZ: Initiating "Mana Vision: Full Burst Mode." Overriding engraved spell-code, canceling Stasis, purging all debuffs… 97… 98… 99… 100% complete.]

  It felt like a lightning shock racing up his spine, and every muscle that had been locked in place came free in the same instant.

  The moment the last debuff cleared, his body moved—muscle memory doing the math before his mind caught up.

  He twisted and rolled away as hundreds of hands lunged for where he'd stood; they slammed into the stone with enough force to spiderweb the floor, and the wind of the swipe stung his face like a lash. He hit the ground in a tight tumble, snapped into a knee, then forced himself upright into a ready stance, gulping air and wiping sweat from his eyes.

  "Whew… that was close," he breathed, heart still running its own argument with his ribcage.

  "Thanks, LIZ. Without you I'd be down there chatting with Febru on the other side already."

  Around him, more than a dozen Magic Missile rings flickered into existence—each bolt placed rather than launched, tearing through grasping talons and reducing them to drifting black smoke, only for more to bloom from the violet seam.

  The blood-colored eye stayed fixed on Rein as he dodged and countered in a continuous stream, refusing to give the hands a clean angle.

  "That skill… you are… the current Hero of this Realm?" The voice rolled out not as sound, but as mana vibrating the air itself.

  "Wrong person," Rein shouted back, as another wave of hands snapped at him.

  "I'm Rein Rhys, not some Hero."

  Then LIZ's messages began to strobe rapidly across his vision.

  [LIZ: Calculations indicate the Pandemonium Gate is only ~30% open. Abaddon still cannot directly intervene in this world; it can only send through subordinate constructs whose power does not fully interact with baseline reality.]

  "Subordinates… you mean these annoying hands?"

  [LIZ: Yes. Recommendation: seal it and destroy the key-core before the opening reaches 50%. Past that threshold, we will not be able to stop it in time.]

  "Oh, sure. Close the gate. Easy job," Rein muttered, pure sarcasm.

  [LIZ: Worst-case scenario: if Abaddon tears the gate apart or rips the dimensional boundary through by force, forget fighting—space-time distortion alone could erase the Academy from the map of Aetheria.]

  "Who's insane enough to store a hellgate in a basement anyway… Arcadia's security is worse than I thought," Rein grumbled as he snapped his hand through another casting pattern; a dozen violet-blue missiles slammed into a reaching cluster and vaporized it, but the more he destroyed, the more the hands multiplied, crawling from the rift like a plague.

  "You cannot hold back the tide with cupped hands, little mage," the roar answered, so deep the stone ceiling began to crack.

  "Hey, big-eye—this side doesn't take walk-ins, so go home and get some sleep!" Rein yelled back, ears ringing.

  "Do not presume I will grant the request of an 'incomplete Hero' such as you." The blood-red eye regarded him without feeling.

  "As you are now, you are too small to raise a boundary and subdue demons as you did one thousand years ago."

  "Ugh—here we go again. Hero this, demon that, Dark Lord—have you guys been reading too many novels or playing too many games?" Rein snapped, but even as he talked he could feel negotiation slipping into uselessness, because the hundreds of hands were wrenching the gate wider with every second, and the ancient metal mechanism screamed like something alive being forced open.

  "Alright. If you won't talk, then let's arm-wrestle."

  He lifted his hand. "Release LIZ Hand Cube!"

  A golden cube blazed to life above his palm, bright enough to stain the chamber in golden light; six stacked spell-rings manifested around both wrists and then poured inward, converging at his chest like a massive whirlpool being forced through a needle's eye.

  [LIZ: Integrating LIZ Hand ×4 into the Cube core… resonance stability 98.5%. Enhancement boost: 100%.]

  The air around Rein warped into visible heat-waves, and two luminous golden hands manifested in front of him—each one enormous, over thirty feet long—radiating such dense mana that the Abyss's darkness seemed to recoil.

  Sweat broke instantly across his forehead; it felt like every drop of blood in his body was being siphoned to feed the spell, and the first bite of Mana Depletion gnawed at his senses until the edges of the world threatened to blur.

  “Do it, LIZ.”

  One of the golden hands turned and gave him a jaunty thumbs-up, like it was a game.

  [LIZ: Don't worry, you idiot. I've been waiting for a chance to go wild like this for a long time. King of the Abyss, huh? Then try the Hands of the Demon King!]

  "Hands of the—" Rein's brow twitched.

  Of course she named it herself.

  Both golden hands slammed onto the rim of the half-open gate, and the impact cracked through the underground hall like thunder; ancient gears and metal teeth shrieked as they took the impossible load, and an absurd scene unfolded—Rein's two colossal hands pushing to close the gate while Abaddon's hundreds of hands on the far side clawed to pry it open.

  And despite their numbers, the demon-hands were losing.

  The pure, compressed force of LIZ Hand drove forward with brutal clarity, overpowering the swarm by sheer quality; the mechanism inside the gate rattled and screamed, and the opening—still only a few inches—began to shrink, slowly, painfully, inch by inch.

  "A mortal dares to close what eternity opened." The voice shook the stone, and for the first time something in it sounded less like thunder and more like irritation.

  "I dare exactly like this!" Rein ground out through clenched teeth, blood running freely from his nose now, the taste of copper sharp on his lip.

  "LIZ—seal it."

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Relics and Artifacts

  Pandemonium Gate

  The colossal sealed door mechanism activated by the Pandemonium Key. Once fed with a Stratosphere-tier “heart” and blood into its rune-grooves, it begins opening as a paid mechanism—less like a lock, more like a machine that requires an opening fee.

  Key Socket / Heart Cradle

  A circular socket built into the gate’s core structure, designed to house a still-beating heart as a living power source. The Pandemonium Key is inserted here, synchronizing with the heart’s mana output to fuel the gate’s awakening.

  Blood-Fed Rune Grooves

  Carved channels across the gate that draw fresh blood into rune-lines instead of letting it spill. The blood functions as a catalytic “payment medium,” igniting segmented crimson activation lights across the door.

  Phenomenon

  Abyssal Vacuum Intake

  A phenomenon where the dense mana atmosphere of the chamber suddenly collapses into a freezing vacuum as the gate cracks open, as if the other side is a bottomless throat siphoning air, mana, and heat through the seam.

  Catastrophe-class Entity (Demon Realm Origin)

  LIZ classifies what appears beyond the gate as Catastrophe-class and specifically “Demon Realm origin,” warning that if it crosses fully, Arcadia becomes merely the appetizer—implying nation-scale extinction risk.

  Demons and Creatures

  Abaddon — King of the Abyss

  The entity beyond the gate. It manifests primarily as a single colossal blood-colored eye and a field of soul-crushing pressure. It self-identifies with mythic-scale titles and claims authority that predates kingdoms and gods.

  Abyssal Hands (Subordinate Constructs)

  Hundreds of charred, shriveled, talon-ended hands emerging through the seam. They operate as Abaddon’s “subordinates,” capable of physical interaction in the current world even while Abaddon itself cannot fully cross. Destroyed hands dissipate into black smoke, only to be replaced by more.

  Magic and Spell Techniques

  Abyssal Stasis (Debuff)

  A status affliction triggered by direct eye contact with Abaddon. It locks the body and compresses the spirit, making even speech impossible and turning the air “solid” around the victim.

  Eldritch Fear (Curse)

  A soul-level fear curse layered with Abyssal Stasis. It manifests as overwhelming dread and spiritual pressure rather than emotion alone, and it can trigger multiple additional debuffs simultaneously through “direct gaze” contact.

  Debuff Stack Burst (Forty-Two Additional Debuffs)

  A mass-trigger effect: LIZ detects Abyssal Stasis + Eldritch Fear plus forty-two more debuffs activated at once, showing the Abyss operates via layered “status warfare” rather than conventional attacks.

  LIZ Hand Cube (Update)

  A new application of the Cube core: instead of striking, Rein merges LIZ Hand ×4 into the Cube and manifests two colossal golden hands (over thirty feet) to physically force the gate shut, entering a literal strength contest against the Abyssal hands.

  “Hands of the Demon King” (LIZ Naming)

  LIZ’s improvised (and very LIZ) label for the gate-sealing version of the golden hands. It functions as both intimidation flavor and a comedic pressure release in a horror-scale moment.

  Heroic Skills

  Mana Vision: Full Burst Mode

  An emergency override state initiated by LIZ. It forces Mana Vision into a maximum-output mode that cancels Stasis, purges all debuffs, and restores Rein’s mobility by brute-force rewriting/overriding engraved spell-code.

  Engraved Spell-Code Override

  A hidden capability of LIZ: she can overwrite or force-cancel hostile status effects by directly intervening in the “spell-code” interacting with Rein’s body—treated like hacking a magical OS rather than dispelling by normal means.