The tunnel stretched before them, an endless maw of jagged stone and creeping shadows. Each step forward felt heavier than the last, the air growing thicker, carrying with it a damp, cloying chill.
Nick kept his sword in hand, his senses sharp, but it wasn’t just the dark that put him on edge. Something felt… wrong. A presence. A weight pressing down on them, more than just the lingering tension from the old man’s appearance.
The goblins had retreated this way, yet the deeper they went, the less goblin presence they found. No scattered weapons, no signs of occupation, no crude traps hastily laid in the path. Just silence. The kind that made his skin crawl.
Lexi’s ears twitched. “They’re watching us.”
Ray adjusted her grip on her halberd. “Then why aren’t they attacking?”
Lexi hesitated before answering. “I think… they’re scared?”
Nick glanced at her. “Scared of our mysterious threat, you think?”
She didn’t answer.
Jantzen kept walking without hesitation, showing no sign of concern. If anything, his pace was deliberate, purposeful.
Maybe… too purposeful?
Nick fell into step near him, though the priest’s amble size made it impossible for them to walk side-by-side in the narrow tunnels. ‘You seem unbothered.”
“Because I am,” Jantzen acknowledged.
“You’ve seen this before?”
Jantzen didn’t answer right away. His gaze remained fixed on the path ahead, his expression unreadable. “Change the topic or go away.”
Nick paused. “If you have info, you need to share it. We have no idea what we’re walking into—”
Jantzen finally turned his head, meeting Nick’s gaze. In the dim light, his eyes seemed harder than before. Calculating. Measuring.
“Knowing changes nothing,” he said. “You’ll see soon enough.”
A shriek tore through the tunnel.
Nick’s head snapped toward the sound.
“The goblins…” Lexi muttered. “They’re screaming.”
But it wasn’t the battle cries of creatures preparing to fight—panicked wails echoed in the tunnel, followed by the thunder of approaching footsteps.
Nick barely had time to raise his sword before a wave of goblins crashed into them. The goblins didn’t try to attack, they simply ran as fast as they could.
The first goblin barreled past him, its claws scraping against the cavern floor as it skidded in blind panic. Another darted between Ray and Lexi, its jagged dagger forgotten in its grip. More followed—dozens of them—guttural cries twisting into raw terror.
Lexi stumbled as a goblin slammed into her. It bounced off like a frightened animal, scrambling backward with wide, glowing eyes. Her chains jingled as she instinctively raised them, but the creature didn’t even glance at her. It just kept running mouth gaping in a silent, breathless scream.
A spear shot toward Nick’s ribs. He twisted, catching the wooden haft under his arm, then yanked the goblin forward. Its yellowed teeth snapped at his threat, but it was too slow. He drove his sword through its neck and kicked the body free.
=You have defeated (1) Goblin=
=You gain 0.01 skill points=
=Current skill points: 0.98=
Ray lunged into the fray, her halberd arcing through the air in a perfect crescent. The first goblin didn’t even scream before the blade cleaved through its skull. The second staggered back, barely clinging to life before her reverse swing split its ribcage open. A third tried to flee—but she caught it with the shaft of her weapon, driving it into the cavern wall with a sickening crack.
A presence coiled around her like a predator licking its lips. The goblins closest to her flinched, their eyes widening in fear. Bloodlust clung to Ray like a second skin.
Another goblin overcame the urge to flee and lunged toward her blind spot.
Lexi’s chains snapped outward. The iron links coiled around the goblin’s ankle, wrenching its feet from under it. The creature hit the ground hard, rolling to its feet with a frenzied snarl—only for Jantzen’s glowing fist to meet its skull.
The goblin’s body crumpled, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.
More goblins swarmed from the shadows, blades flashing in the dim light. Nick moved on instinct, his sword whirling in an arc of steel. A goblin snarled and swung a rusted cleaver—Nick ducked low, pivoting on his heel before driving his blade into its exposed side. He twisted the hilt, feeling the resistance of flesh and bone, then wrenched it free.
=You have defeated (1) Goblin=
=You gain 0.01 skill points=
=Current skill points: 0.99=
Another goblin shrieked and leapt at him.
“Last one…” he muttered to himself.
At the last second, he sidestepped, catching its wrist mid-air. The goblin yelped in shock as Nick spun and hurled it forward, splattering the monster against the cave wall.
=You have defeated (1) Goblin=
=You gain 0.01 skill points=
=Current skill points: 1.00=
Jantzen moved with brutal efficiency, his fists glowing with holy energy as he massacred every goblin that tried to flee past the group.
Lexi danced between the chaos, her chains snapping like twin vipers. One wrapped around a goblin’s arm, pulling it off balance before she looped it around its throat. She pulled tight and the body jerked once, then went still.
The fight was over in seconds.
As suddenly as they came, every single goblin was stopped, not a single one making it past Jantzen’s massive form.
Nick wiped the blood from his blade, frowning.
That wasn’t a battle. It was a massacre.
He glanced at the bodies. Even in death, their faces will still twisted in horror.
“What the hell was that?” Ray muttered.
Lexi crouched beside one of the fallen goblins, her fingers brushing against its trembling form. Its mouth still moved, lips trying to form words. A low, rattling hiss escaped before it finally went still.
She whispered, almost too softly to hear:
“It’s here…”
Jantzen exhaled through his nose. “Good.”
Nick sighed. His patience was running out.
“Jantzen.” His voice was low, steady. “You’re gonna tell me what you know. Now.”
The priest still refused to answer.
Nick’s jaw tightened. He stepped forward, his boots scraping against the cavern floor. “I’m…”
He stopped.
Something was wrong.
Without any sign or transition, the ground beneath them had changed.
The jagged, uneven stone that had lined the tunnel from the entrance was gone—replaced by carved marble. It wasn’t just the texture—the very temperature of the air seemed to drop, the scent of damp earth replaced by something almost metallic.
His breath came slower now, visibly lingering in the air as a billowing white fog. The marble stretched ahead, vanishing into the dim light of the cavern beyond. Faint, spiraling lines crisscrossed its surface—etched into the stone with an unnatural precision.
He followed those lines, his gaze drifting forward toward the opening at the end of the tunnel.
A chamber.
The walls, no longer crude rock formations, were covered in carvings. Not just the strange, jagged markings they had seen before—these were larger. Deeper. They twisted up the stone like creeping veins, their edges sharp and deliberate, forming patterns too complex for his eyes to follow.
And at the center of the chamber, partially collapsed under rubble, stood a massive throne.
Nick exhaled slowly. “Shit.”
The throne loomed, its structure ancient and cracked with age, its once-pristine stone fractured beneath fallen debris. The back of the seat had caved inward slightly as if something had struck it with immense force. Despite its ruined state, it still commanded a presence.
Jantzen finally spoke.
“Master.”
His voice was reverent—but not awed. Not fearful. Just certain.
It was simply acknowledging.
Ray stiffened beside him. Her fingers twitched against the shaft of her halberd. “If it’s your master, then…”
Jantzen said nothing. At this point, his actions spoke much louder than words.
There was only one being they knew of that Jantzen would call ‘master’.
Dallin, the God of Strength.
Nick took a step forward. He didn’t know what he had expected to feel the first time he met a god… but it wasn’t this.
Standing at the entrance of a place that felt wrong down to his bones, he examined the aura emanating from the throne.
His breath hitched. It was subtle… but he knew this feeling.
A weight. A pressure that curled around his lungs and squeezed, pressing into his skull with an almost mocking familiarity. It coiled around his senses, testing them, assessing, waiting.
This wasn’t just some powerful dungeon boss.
This was something else.
Something he had felt before.
His knuckles whitened around the hilt of his sword.
“No…”
It couldn’t be.
His body locked up. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out the distant, muffled sound of Ray shifting beside him. Memories clawed at the back of his mind, resurfacing like bile.
This thing felt too much like them.
The entities that had loomed behind the tyrant who burned his world to the ground. The ones who had made him unstoppable. The ones that made all of Nick’s struggles, all his desperate resistance, meaningless.
It wasn’t exact—there was something different. But the way the darkness moved, the way it watched…
His jaw clenched, grinding his teeth together.
‘Not again.’
The very air seemed to coil around them like something watching, waiting. An unseen force measured their presence, weighing it.
And then there was a voice.
Low.
Smooth.
Ancient.
Close.
“You’ve come further than I expected.”
The air turned to ice.
Nick felt it—the moment everything shifted. The oppressive silence was no longer empty. It was occupied by something.
By one of them.
Ray inhaled sharply beside him, her entire frame locking up as if every instinct in her body screamed at her to move. Lexi went rigid, her tail bristling, ears pinned flat against her skull.
Nick’s fingers curled tighter around his blade. His instincts screamed to move. To attack. To do something before this thing could accomplish its goals.
But that was the problem, wasn’t it?
If this thing was truly like those entities from Earth, his sword might as well be a toy.
His patience had been wearing thin for a while, but now this?
THIS?!
Jantzen moved first. He lowered his head, his voice steady. “We are here to witness.”
Nick clenched his teeth and let out a seething hiss, his heart thundering against his ribs.
The shadows shifted, something like amusement stirring within its voice.
“Are you?”
There was a shape within the darkness—a figure standing before the ruined throne, its form obscured by the shifting mass around it. A silhouette that should have been solid, but wasn’t. The shadows moved with it, coiling around its limbs, obscuring details like a living cloak. Nick couldn’t tell where the figure ended and the darkness began.
Ray inhaled sharply beside him, barely suppressing a shiver. Lexi’s tail bristled, her chains jingling faintly as she took a small, instinctive step backward.
The voice hummed, the resonance of it wrong, like it wasn’t just sound, but something deeper. “You.”
The figure in the darkness did not approach, did not move beyond the throne’s base, but its presence slithered forward nonetheless, pausing before Nick.
“You are not like the others.”
A pressure against his skin. A force weighing on his bones. It was the same as he remembered.
Twisted. Distorted. Like something that had seen the light and chosen to crawl deeper into the dark.
Not human.
His voice came out low through clenched teeth.
“So you actually were a god?”
The voice chuckled. “To weaklings such as yourselves, does it really matter? Everything operating on a different scale of power might as well be a god.”
Jantzen spoke again, calm as ever. “Master, what would you have of us?”
Nick’s stomach turned.
Master.
Lord.
Director.
God.
The words rattled through him.
He didn’t know what he hated more—the fact that Jantzen had just called this thing his master, or the creeping certainly in the back of his mind that, just like before, it wouldn’t matter what he did.
His patience, frayed beyond repair, finally snapped.
“Enough,” he growled, stepping forward.
Ray stiffened, but didn’t stop him
The shadows twisted. The presence watched him.
Nick didn’t care.
He was sick of this. Sick of gods, sick of things sitting on their thrones, speaking in riddles, manipulating everyone beneath them like pieces on a board.
And more than anything—more than anything!—he was sick of the idea that this might be the same nightmare all over again.
If it was, then this time…
This time he had magic.
This time, he was a god.
This time, he could be strong.
He leveled his blade at the throne. His voice was low, steady, and filled with a heat that barely concealed the venom underneath.
“I don’t give a damn who you are,” he said. “If you’re another one of those fucking bitches hiding behind the title of ‘god’—” His grip tightened. “—then I’ll kill you right here, right now.”
The chamber was silent.
Then, the voice laughed.
It wasn’t a cruel laugh, nor mocking—no, it was worse. It was amused. The same way someone might chuckle at a child throwing a tantrum, a thing so far beneath true consideration that it wasn’t even offensive.
The shadows didn’t lurch forward. The presence did not bear down on him.
It simply regarded him.
“Fascinating.”
The amusement in its voice made Nick’s blood boil.
Jantzen stood tall, head bowed as he sighed. “I wondered if it would come to this.”
Nick’s eyes snapped to him. “That makes two of us.”
Jantzen started to move, a blinding flash of golden light erupting from his fists—divine energy coalescing, radiating from his knuckles in a blinding arc. The chamber shook as the force of it cracked the marble beneath his feet.
Nick didn’t hesitate.
With a flick of his fingers, he summoned his Infinite Wardrobe.
A second later, Jantzen was crushed.
The cavern trembled as the indestructible weight of the entire wardrobe slammed into the priest’s body. The impact dropped him to the ground, the golden glow around his fists fading as his concentration shattered.
Nick didn’t waste the opportunity. He stepped forward, leveling his free hand directly toward the enormous mass.
“Burn in hell, asshole.”
One, two—six consecutive blasts tore through the air, each impact rattling the chamber, each explosion consuming Jantzen in white-hot flame. The stench of scorched flesh filled the room.
The last fireball detonated, sending a gust of searing heat whipping through the space. When the flames died down, all that remained was charred remains beneath an immovable piece of furniture.
Ray blinked. “Holy shit…”
Nick exhaled, feeling marginally better after venting some of his anger.
Lexi looked between Nick and the burnt corpse of her owner, chains coiled tightly in her fists, her entire form tense and unreadable.
Nick turned back toward the throne. His blood still burned, his limbs heavy from exertion, but he lifted his sword once more.
The presence before them had not reacted. The figure regarded the smoldering remains of its so-called follower with complete neutrality.
“Predictable.”
Nick didn’t get a chance to move. The figure barely lifted its hand. It wasn’t an attack or spell that he could perceive, just a shift. A mere flexing of the shadows around the entity.
It was enough.
The world turned inside out.
Nick felt something punch through his ribs—not a blade or element, but force itself. It was weight. It was gravity. It was suffocation. All were compressed into one moment.
He tried to raise his sword—only to realize his fingers weren’t responding. His limbs, heavy and unyielding, felt distant, disconnected. Was he… falling? Or was the ground rising to meet him? He couldn’t tell anymore.
The last thing he saw was Ray shouting something, Lexi lunging forward.
Then, there was nothing.
***
Stillness.
Not the heavy silence of the dungeon. Not the suffocating weight of that thing’s presence.
Nick’s eyes cracked open, and the first thing he noticed was the twilight sky, frozen in perpetual dusk. Soft hues of violet and deep blue stretched endlessly, clouds unmoving, as if the world itself had stopped.
His body felt… weightless. Untethered. Like he wasn’t entirely here.
A slow inhale. The scent of flowers, damp earth, something crisp and cold.
His fingers curled against the grass beneath him—too soft, too perfect. Not a single blade out of place.
He knew this place.
A familiar voice reached him, smooth, amused, mocking.
“With a showing like that, I’d be too embarrassed to call myself a so-called ‘god’.”
Nick exhaled through his nose, turning his head. Evelyn Raymond sat at the base of a massive silver-leafed tree, her legs crossed, one arm lazily draped over her knee. Her crimson eyes gleamed with dry amusement.
She smirked. “‘I don’t give a damn who you are, if you’re another one of those fucking bitches hiding behind the title of ‘god’, then I’ll kill you right here, right now.’” She gestured vaguely as if replaying the moment. “Even I got chills at that declaration.”
Nick sighed, rubbing his face. The last thing he remembered was—pain. An impossible weight crushing him. The sensation of something forcing him down, suffocating, breaking him without ever touching him.
Then—nothing.
And now he was here.
“Well then,” Evelyn continued, smirking as she tilted her head. “Let’s talk about killing a god.”
Project Knightfall 