CHAPTER 114: CHAPTER 114

Satou sat down against the wall, his body still healing from the previous floor. His Regeneration was working slowly now, conserving energy since he had no mana potions left to fuel it.

He’d been in the dungeon for sixty-nine days. Six days had passed outside. He had one day left,ten hours inside time before his scheduled fight with Richard Clay.

Which meant he had ten hours to rest, then face whatever was on Floor One Hundred.

Satou closed his eyes and focused entirely on recovery. His Regeneration worked steadily, repairing damage, restoring stamina, clearing his mind of the accumulated mental strain.

When he opened his eyes eight hours later, he felt... ready. Not perfect. Not fully healed. But as ready as he’d ever be.

[Status Check:]

[HP: 3847/4100]

[Stamina: 78%]

[Mental Coherence: 89%]

[Abilities Active: 73]

[Race: Dragoblin ]

[Level: 45]

Satou stood and walked toward the final door. His reflection in the pristine white walls showed what he’d become—no longer the goblin who’d entered seventy days ago. His scales had an iridescent sheen. His eyes glowed with inner fire. His presence radiated power that would make lesser creatures flee in terror.

He’d gained seventy-three different abilities from devouring hundreds of creatures. He’d died five times and come back stronger each time. He’d been broken and rebuilt so many times that he wasn’t sure where the original Satou ended and the accumulated powers began.

But he was still himself. Still fighting for the same reason he’d entered.

To protect his people. To build something better. To prove that strength could be used for more than domination.

Satou placed his hand on the door to Floor One Hundred.

[Final Floor: The Apex]

[Warning: The Guardian of Floor One Hundred has never been defeated.]

[The three who "completed" the dungeon all chose to bypass this floor through special conditions.]

[If you proceed, you will face absolute death or absolute transcendence.]

[Do you wish to continue? Y/N]

Satou smiled grimly. "I didn’t come this far to take the easy way out."

He selected Yes.

The door opened onto absolute darkness.

And from that darkness came a voice that made even his draconic heart skip a beat—ancient beyond measure, powerful beyond comprehension, terrifying beyond description.

"AT LAST. AFTER ALL THESE CENTURIES. A CHALLENGER WHO DARES FACE ME RATHER THAN FLEE."

"I AM NIHILUS, THE VOID INCARNATE. THE END OF ALL THINGS. THE NEGATION OF EXISTENCE."

"AND I HAVE WAITED SO VERY LONG FOR SOMEONE STRONG ENOUGH TO ENTERTAIN ME."

Satou stepped through the doorway into the darkness.

The door sealed behind him with finality.

There was no turning back now.

The darkness beyond the door was absolute. Not merely the absence of light, but the absence of everything. Satou’s enhanced vision showed him nothing. His Enhanced Hearing picked up no sound, not even his own heartbeat. His Tremor Sense

detected no ground beneath his feet, yet he wasn’t falling.

He existed in a void where existence itself was questionable.

Then light came—but it was wrong. A pale, sickly luminescence that seemed to drain color from reality rather than illuminate it. And in that terrible light, Satou finally saw his opponent.

Nihilus was vast beyond comprehension. Its form was vaguely humanoid but shifted constantly, as if reality couldn’t decide what shape it should hold. One moment it appeared as a skeletal giant wrapped in chains of frozen starlight. The next, it was a swirling mass of dark energy with too many eyes. Then a perfect mirror of Satou himself, but hollow, empty, wrong.

The only constant was its eyes—if they could be called eyes. Voids within the void, darker than the darkness around them, pulling at Satou’s very existence just by looking at him.

[Nihilus, The Void Incarnate - Level ???]

[WARNING: POWER LEVEL BEYOND MEASUREMENT]

[LEGENDARY BOSS - DUNGEON GUARDIAN]

No level. No measurable power. This was what stood at the peak of the Dungeon of Eternal Nightmares.

"You have done well to reach me, young hobgoblin," Nihilus spoke, its voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. "Seventy floors cleared. Countless enemies overcome. Deaths survived. Limits shattered. You have grown from a mere goblin into something worthy of notice."

The entity’s form solidified slightly into something more humanoid—a figure in tattered robes that seemed woven from the fabric of space itself, a hood that contained galaxies dying and being born.

"But growth means nothing if it cannot survive the final test. I am the end of all things, child. I am what waits at the conclusion of every story. I am the silence after the last word. And you"—it pointed a finger that seemed to extend across impossible distances—"are merely another story waiting to end."

Satou activated Predator’s Gaze, his eyes flashing crimson. The supernatural fear that had cowed countless enemies washed over Nihilus.

The entity laughed. The sound was reality breaking apart and reforming.

"Fear? You try to frighten the void? I am the source of all fears, child. I am what lurks in the darkness of your mind. I am the inevitability you deny. You cannot frighten that which has no existence to preserve."

Nihilus raised its hand, and Satou felt reality shift.

The ground beneath him—the ground that hadn’t existed moments ago—suddenly solidified, then began to crumble. Not breaking apart, but ceasing to exist, particles of stone simply vanishing from reality as the void consumed them.

Satou activated True Flight, launching himself into the air just as the ground beneath him was erased from existence. But the void followed him, a spreading wave of non-existence that devoured everything it touched.

I need to attack! Can’t just dodge!

Satou unleashed Fire Manipulation at maximum power, flames erupting from his hands. The fire struck Nihilus’s form and Vanished. Simply ceased to exist the moment it made contact. The flames didn’t burn out or get absorbed. They were deleted.

"Your flames burn hot," Nihilus observed. "But fire requires existence to burn. What happens to flames when they meet pure non-existence?

"

The entity gestured, and the void surged toward Satou like a tidal wave. He activated Shadow Step, teleporting to a different location in the vast chamber that had somehow formed around them.

But when he emerged from the shadows, part of him didn’t. His left leg below the knee simply wasn’t there anymore—not severed, not destroyed, but erased. It had passed through a pocket of void during his teleportation.

[HP: 3456/4100]

[Critical Injury: Left Leg (Below Knee) ERASED]

[WARNING: Erased matter CANNOT be regenerated normally]

Satou’s Regeneration kicked in, trying to regrow the leg. But the process was agonizingly slow. Regeneration required matter to work with, structure to rebuild. Erasure left nothing—no cells to multiply, no blueprint to follow. His regeneration had to create matter from pure energy, an incredibly expensive process.

[Stamina: 78%... 65%... 53%...]

Pain shot through him as new tissue slowly formed where his leg should be. The Regeneration he’d gained from devouring countless creatures over the past seventy days was working frantically, but even its advanced capabilities struggled against complete erasure.

"Yes, struggle," Nihilus said, its form approaching with steps that covered impossible distances.

"Your regeneration is impressive. Advanced tier, born from consuming numerous foes. But even such power must bow to void. You cannot regenerate what never was."

Satou tried Lightning Manipulation, calling down bolts of electricity that could shatter mountains. They struck Nihilus and vanished into the entity’s form without effect.

He tried Metal Manipulation, attempting to pull metals from the walls to use as projectiles. But the walls themselves were fading in and out of existence, and any metal he manifested was erased before it could launch.

Earth Manipulation—the ground disappeared before he could shape it.

Magma Manipulation—the heat was erased before it could form.

Sound Manipulation—his sonic attacks simply ceased to exist in Nihilus’s presence.

Every attack, every ability, everything he’d gained through seventy floors of brutal combat—all of it was useless against an entity that could simply delete anything that threatened it.

"Do you see now?" Nihilus asked. "The futility of your struggle? You have accumulated so much power, so many abilities through your mysterious growth in this dungeon. But what good is power against that which needs merely to unmake it?

"

The entity reached out with one elongated finger, and where it pointed, reality cracked. A beam of pure void erupted toward Satou—not an attack that could be dodged, but erasure itself given direction.

Satou activated Phase Step, making his body intangible. The void beam passed through his intangible form without effect—for a moment. Then Satou felt something terrifying: his intangibility was being erased. The void was deleting not his body but the concept of intangibility itself.

He dropped the ability immediately and used the Shadow Manipulation melting into the darkness and reappearing from a different shadow across the chamber.

His claws, enhanced through constant evolution and combat, struck at the entity’s back and passed through it. Not because Nihilus was intangible, but because its back simply wasn’t there when Satou struck. The entity existed and didn’t exist simultaneously, choosing which moments to occupy physical space.

"Clever," Nihilus said, turning to face him though it shouldn’t have needed to turn since it had no fixed orientation in space. "You used shadow to travel between points, bypassing my erasure. Your mastery of darkness is notable. That is the only reason you still draw breath."

The entity’s form shifted, becoming more solid, more defined. Now it looked almost human—an old man in tattered robes, with kind eyes that held infinite sadness.

"Let me tell you a truth, child," Nihilus said in a gentler voice. "I do not enjoy this. I do not revel in ending stories before their conclusion. I am simply purpose given form. My existence is to test, to challenge, to ensure that only those truly worthy can claim the power this dungeon offers."

"And you?" The old man smiled sadly. "You are not worthy. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. You have grown strong, yes. But strength alone is insufficient. The three who came before you understood this. They saw me and chose wisdom over valor. They took the lesser reward and left with their lives."

"You can do the same. Admit defeat. Take what power you’ve gained and leave. You have grown tremendously. That is victory enough."

Satou’s leg had finished regenerating, the process having consumed a third of his stamina. He stood on both feet now, facing the entity that had offered him mercy.

"No," Satou said simply.

"No?"

"I didn’t come here to take the easy path. I didn’t fight through ninety-nine floors just to give up at the end." Satou’s eyes blazed with determination. "You’re right—I’m probably going to die here. But I’m going to die trying, not running."

"And why?" Nihilus asked, genuinely curious. "Why throw your life away for pride? For glory? For some abstract concept of completing what you started?"

"Because people are depending on me!" Satou shouted, his voice echoing in the void. "Because Richard Clay is waiting to kill me in less than a day! Because I have a settlement full of people who believe I can protect them! Because I promised Lyra I’d come back! Because I told Kelvin I wouldn’t die! Because I—"

He stopped, breathing hard.

"Because if I give up now, everything those people sacrificed for me means nothing. The elder goblin who died to save us. The settlers I couldn’t protect. Everyone who trusted me to build something better. If I don’t give everything I have, if I don’t push past every limit, then I’m betraying their faith in me."

"Ah," Nihilus said softly. "Purpose. The one thing even the void cannot entirely erase. Very well, child. If you insist on dying with purpose rather than living with wisdom, then I shall grant you a warrior’s death."

The entity’s form shifted again, becoming something terrible. No longer an old man, but a being of pure destructive intent—armor made of solidified void, a sword that was the edge of reality itself, eyes that held the heat-death of the universe.

"Come then, Satou the Determined. Show me the full extent of what you have become. Die with honor, if die you must."

Nihilus attacked for real this time.