I chose a medium-sized pack as my target so that if something went wrong, I could finish the fight with my spear. Far beyond their detection range, I embedded a thousand aura threads into my veins, releasing tiny golden droplets, skillfully enveloping each one with my aura and making them orbit around me in an orderly formation.


    Once everything was ready, I used the technique of twenty-seven consecutive steps and instantly appeared next to the pack. Dozens of droplets shot out at the same time, each hitting its mark and blossoming into fiery explosions.


    Smoke and thunder echoed all around, forcing the remaining monsters to flee in panic. But I ran alongside the terrified pack, methodically eliminating dozens of them with each new barrage. In just a few seconds, it was all over—only a handful managed to escape, hiding in the thickets.


    It was a phenomenal success! Behind me stretched a wide, several-hundred-meter-long strip of scorched earth, mixed with the remains of monsters. I drew my dagger and set off to collect the cores.


    From that moment on, I attacked any pack I could detect without hesitation, unafraid even of encountering sixth-class monsters among them. In this way, I spent about a month meticulously clearing the sixteenth level. It was time to move deeper.


    On the seventeenth level, as I had expected, the pack leaders were sixth-class monsters. Because of this, I slightly adjusted my tactics—attacking the leaders first with a larger droplet before wiping out the rest of the pack. Occasionally, I also encountered lone sixth-class monsters, making them even easier to hunt.


    Every few days, I returned to the transition point to absorb the collected cores, and after a few weeks, I had completely transformed the bones in both arms up to the shoulder joints. I also noticed that the blood used in hunting was immediately replenished with mana from my bones, making my endurance in battle nearly limitless.


    Overall, I believed that in terms of actual combat strength, I had long since caught up to an average Battle Ancestor, yet my breakthrough into that class still hadn’t occurred. It weighed on me—my breakthrough was the condition for my return, and I was sick of this dungeon.


    Almost a year had passed since I descended here, left alone with the monsters. Starting from the seventh level, I hadn’t encountered a single person. Given that I had thoroughly cleared levels eleven through seventeen, I was certain that no one had been there at all.


    It was strange since I had been told that powerful warriors and mages occasionally ventured into the deeper levels. But I hadn’t met a single one. Did they go even deeper, or had something happened to keep them away entirely? With these thoughts, I descended to the eighteenth level.


    This level’s environment was drastically different from the previous ones. Black rock formations dominated over the red and yellow vegetation. The behavior of the monsters also changed—they rarely formed packs, moving alone or in pairs instead. But they were everywhere, and almost all were sixth-class.


    On one hand, this allowed me to better adapt to fighting sixth-class opponents. On the other, it slowed me down. However, there was a benefit—the mana contained in sixth-class cores was so abundant that my bone transformation accelerated significantly. And the closer I got to completing my entire skeleton, the more I could sense my impending breakthrough.


    Finally, after a few months, the feeling became so strong that waiting any longer was impossible. I carefully cleared a massive area of monsters so that nothing would interfere with my breakthrough, which could take several days.


    I couldn’t do it in the safety zone of the transition point because I wasn’t sure if it could withstand the process. And destroying a potential teleportation site while being inside it might be the dumbest mistake of my life.


    So, after ensuring there were no living creatures for dozens of kilometers around, I assembled the mana and rune circles. Sitting in the center, I poured out tens of thousands of blue cores before me and began the absorption process.


    For a while, I observed the changes in my bones, but before I realized how, I slipped into a state akin to sleep. I was fully aware that I was sitting on the eighteenth level, yet at the same time, I was also sitting in a dark cell, at a table, writing with a quill on yellowed sheets of paper under the light of a candle.


    — “Our world, the World of the Ring,” — I wrote, — “was never meant to be. Because we are all a mistake. Our world was a trap for the Old God, an ambush set by thirteen young gods. But they miscalculated. To break free from the trap, the Old God ignited his Spark, becoming the sun of the inner side of the ring—the land of demons. The young gods, realizing that he would escape and punish them, also ignited their Sparks, becoming the thirteen suns on the outer side of the ring—the land of humans—to keep him contained. Thus, it can be assumed that all living beings of the World of the Ring are the ashes of the gods. Gods who are neither alive nor dead. And the true name of our world should be the Graveyard of Gods!”


    Breathing heavily, I opened my eyes. Holy hedgehogs, I had seen these pages before, bound into a thick manuscript. I had seen them twice before, in similar feverish visions. The only difference was that this time, I didn’t feel a splitting headache.


    But what was this? Forgotten memories? A transmission of images, something akin to telepathy? Was this information even real, or just the ravings of a sick mind? Although, it was through a similar vision that I had learned about magical circles and runes. I closed my eyes and tried to slip back into that state, but I couldn’t force it to happen.


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    No matter. My skeleton was almost completely transformed, the bones absorbing the last drops of mana, releasing dense waves of energy that shattered the rocks around me. Gradually, these waves became more rhythmic and orderly, spreading farther and farther away.


    Boom! With an ear-shattering roar, a thick white beam shot into the sky, creating an entire ocean of fire among the billions of insects and piercing the rocky ceiling, revealing a dark violet void beyond. Within seconds, the fire in the sky was extinguished, and the eighteenth level plunged into darkness—the flames had consumed nearly all the insects that provided light to this level. Only above me remained a violet blot where the sky had been destroyed.


    Holy hedgehogs! I hadn’t expected such consequences. I stood up and looked around. Well, I just wouldn’t admit to anyone that I did this. And I’d simply walk away.


    The sensation of my body and the surrounding environment was completely different now.


    So this is what it means to be a Battle Ancestor!


    I laughed, recalling how not long ago I had considered my strength equal to that of an average Battle Ancestor. What a naive fool. I felt invincible. I knew that now I could tear apart any sixth-class monster with my bare hands.


    And I decided to test it immediately.


    My heightened senses now perceived every distant corner of this level. I instantly identified all the monsters, not just their numbers but also their exact strength. I even felt their utter confusion at the changes in the dungeon.


    I compressed a disk of aura in front of me like a step and stepped onto it. Then another. And another… I was walking on air.


    I remembered how amazed I had been during my first flight with the Raven. Now I was doing almost the same thing, as naturally as if I had known how to all my life.


    During this skywalk, I spotted a bewildered bigur a few kilometers away. A sudden urge struck me—to see if such a monster could even harm me now. So I turned toward it.


    This time, I didn’t use my spear, daggers, or even my blood as a weapon. I simply walked up to it and gave its terrifying face a light slap. A few teeth clattered to the ground.


    — “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to!”


    But the bigur didn’t appreciate my apology and roared, slashing at my neck and shoulder with the claws of its right paw.


    Absolutely nothing.


    Not even a scratch, aside from my torn clothes. It seemed even the bigur couldn’t believe it, as it continued striking me again and again—with the same result.


    Realizing its attacks were useless, it roared and tried to bite me with its bloodied maw, dripping from the teeth it had just lost.


    Oh no, I definitely did not agree to that—the stench from its mouth was so foul that I nearly threw up.


    I leaped upward and smacked it on the crown of its head with my palm. The monster’s skull simply exploded, showering me in blood, shards of bone, and chunks of brain matter.


    Yeah… maybe I overdid that.


    I pulled the core from its corpse and moved on.


    There were still over a hundred thousand monsters left on this level.


    The extermination took nearly two months. I didn’t absorb the cores right away but stored them—I needed to adapt to my current power before increasing it further.


    The nineteenth level greeted me with bright yellow light, something I had grown unaccustomed to over the past months.


    From my very first steps, the skyborne insects began behaving strangely. At first, they descended toward me one by one, circling as if scouting. Then by the dozens. Then by the hundreds…


    Small, translucent beetles, each the size of my fingernail.


    For about an hour, everything seemed to settle.


    But it was only the calm before the storm.


    At some moment, the insects simply dropped, like a massive glowing blanket, onto the ground.


    And the monsters roared, going berserk.


    It was as if, all at once, they had seen me—and from every direction, they surged toward me in a frenzied attack.


    I saw them clearly. Hundreds of thousands, charging with one inhuman desire—to kill, to tear, to crush me into dust.


    Heh… Are those insects controlling them? But why did they designate me as a threat? Did they somehow find out how I burned their kin on the level above?


    Well, fine.


    I drew my spear and cleaved in half the fastest of the monsters that was the first to attack me.


    This massacre lasted for many days without pause. When things became too dire, I would rise into the sky and watch as the monsters crushed each other in blind fury, each trying to be the first to reach me. I think most of them died in that stampede alone. From above, it all looked utterly surreal.


    Billions of insects flooded the black rocks and red vegetation with their light, while rivers of red blood from the torn and trampled abominations flowed across the plains between those rocks. And above us, instead of a sky, loomed a black stone ceiling.


    When everything finally fell silent, and even my senses could no longer detect a single living monster on this level, the insects, as if on command, all took flight at once.


    I pulled out my dagger and got to the most unpleasant part—gathering the cores. Most of the corpses had already begun to decay, and the stench was enough to make me lose consciousness.


    I suffered through this for several days until, unable to endure it any longer, I drew forth several thousand tiny droplets of my blood and burned everything to hell, collecting the cores from the ashes instead.


    Damn insects.


    I seriously considered taking revenge for their treachery and burning them all to hell as well. But then I just waved it off and headed toward the passage to the next level.


    The twentieth level was almost an exact repeat of what happened on the nineteenth. The insects once again directed all the monsters into a relentless attack on me until they were completely annihilated.


    What the hell was going on?


    It felt as if some will was directing them to do this. Because two times in a row was definitely not a coincidence.


    After collecting the cores, I stopped before the passage to the twenty-first level and sat down to reconsider my strategy.


    Sooner or later, seventh-class monsters would start appearing, and even as a Battle Ancestor, I wouldn’t be able to withstand an onslaught of them.


    So, I had three options.


    Option one. Turn back right now.


    But I had yet to become a higher-tier Battle Ancestor, and although my stockpile of cores would be enough for that, I still needed time to adapt to each tier. And making breakthroughs on the surface was definitely not a good idea.


    Option two. Try to burn all the insects the moment I step onto the level so they wouldn’t have time to do anything.


    That would immediately solve the problem of the monsters’ collective attack on me, but the amount of blood required for such a strike in one go would be measured in liters, and I couldn’t afford that.


    And option three—try to burn the insects in zones to disorient them and break one massive attack into several smaller ones.


    This was the most theoretical approach, but also the most convenient one for me.


    I decided it was worth trying option three and headed for the twenty-first level.