[Notice: This Chapter title is purely fictional and does not reflect or promote any real-life actions or thes. It is used within the context of the story only.]
『DO YOU WISH TO TAKE ON THE FABLE OF THE ITEM [???]?』
『[ACCEPT] / [DECLINE]』
[ACCEPT]
「You have entered the Fable: [The Naless Smith].」
「Objective: Survive the trial of the Silver Guard. To acquire the item [???], you must partake in the sa challenge as the Hero who died to forge the blade.」
『THE FABLE’S OUTCO CAN CHANGE DEPENDING ON HOW THE PLAYER CLEARS IT.』
Kang Min opened his eyes. The air was white. It was cold. It was so cold that the moisture on his eyelashes turned to ice imdiately. He stood in a hall made of transparent ice. The ceiling was so high that he could not see it.
He was back here.
Kang Min looked at his hands. He was currently using his exclusive skill [Floor 600 All Master]. Because of this skill, he could enter the Fable of any item he had owned in the old world. This specific Fable was from Floor 512. In his previous life, it was one of the hardest trials.
He rembered the Stone of Regression. He had found one that allowed him to rewind ti by 24 hours. He had used it ninety-seven tis in this room. He had died ninety-seven tis. This led to a deep mory of every movent of the enemies.
Kang Min stretched his arms. His muscles were tight because of the temperature. He reached into his inventory and pulled out a black mask. He put it on.
He looked ahead.
Huge figures were patrolling the hall. They were thirty feet tall. They were made of silver ice that glowed with a faint light. These were not golems. They were Silver Guardians. They were a type of Angel that protected the treasures of the stars.
Kang Min was small. He was the size of a wasp compared to them. But he knew their perception was imnse. They could feel the vibration of a single heartbeat from a mile away.
Kang Min jumped into the air.
He moved a distance of ten feet. In that microsecond, every Silver Guardian in the hall turned its head toward him.
"They noticed ," Kang Min thought.
He did not wait. He activated the [Hands of Ruin]. These were the gloves he had obtained recently. Blue mana flowed out of the gloves. The mana was holographic. It ford a skeletal armor around his forearms.
The armor expanded.
Kang Min’s actual arms remained the sa size. But the blue holographic mana grew until it was the sa size as the Guardians’ limbs. It looked like he was controlling two massive spectral fists.
The first Guardian moved. It was an Archer class. It held a bow made of solid silver. It pulled the string. An arrow of compressed ice appeared. The arrow was as thick as a tree trunk.
The Archer fired.
Kang Min used [Singularity] Level 4: [Orbit].
A gravitational well ford around his body. The air curved. The massive ice arrow did not hit him. It entered the gravitational field. Because of the gravity, the arrow began to spin around Kang Min’s body.
Two more arrows ca. Kang Min caught them too. He now had three massive arrows orbiting him at high speed.
"Return," Kang Min said.
He released the gravity. The three arrows were re-fired. They flew back at the Archer Guardian.
CRASH!
The arrows hit the Archer’s chest. The silver ice cracked. The Archer stumbled back. This led to an opening.
Kang Min used [Exchange].
He switched positions with one of the ice shards falling from the Archer’s chest. In an instant, he was right in front of the Archer’s face.
He swung the massive blue holographic fist.
BOOM!
The punch hit the Guardian’s head. The head shattered into thousands of pieces. The body of the Guardian dissipated into light.
But there were many more.
A group of Warrior Guardians approached. They held silver shields and maces. They moved in a formation. They were heavy, but they were fast. Because they were Angels, their movents were precise.
Kang Min landed on the ground. The ice floor was slippery. He used [Singularity] Level 2: [Gravitational Pressure].
He applied gravity to the area in front of him. The pressure was ten tis the normal weight. The Warrior Guardians slowed down. Their heavy feet sank into the ice floor.
One Warrior raised its shield. It tried to bash Kang Min.
Kang Min reached out with his holographic hand. He grabbed the edge of the shield.
[Singularity] Level 3: [Compression].
He closed his hand. The massive silver shield began to fold. It crumpled like paper. In a second, the shield was the size of a baseball. Kang Min tossed it aside.
The Warrior was shocked. Because of that, its guard was down.
Kang Min punched the Warrior in the stomach. The holographic fist went through the silver ice. The Warrior exploded.
"My mana is dropping," Kang Min thought.
The [Hands of Ruin] used a lot of energy. This led to him needing to finish the fight quickly. But more Guardians were coming. Swordsn Guardians joined the fight. They had long silver blades. They swung the blades in wide arcs.
Kang Min dodged. He moved his body in small incrents. He was between the legs of the giants. He used [Exchange] to swap places with the swords.
Every ti a sword was about to hit him, he was suddenly ten feet away, and a different Guardian was in his place.
CLANG! CLANG!
The Guardians began to hit each other. This was his strategy.
He was fighting for thirty minutes. His breathing was becoming heavy. The temperature in the room was dropping further. It was now -100 degrees.
His clothes were tearing. The wind from the Guardians’ movents was sharp. It cut his skin. Because of the cold, he did not feel the pain imdiately. But he saw the blood.
He looked toward the end of the hall. There were two tall vertical gates. They were closing. They moved slowly, but they were already halfway shut.
"I have to reach the gates," Kang Min thought.
Ten Guardians blocked his path. They were the elite Silver Guard. They were larger than the others. They were glowing with a bright white light.
Kang Min pushed his mana to the limit.
[Singularity] Level 5: [Event Horizon] has been unlocked.
The air around Kang Min beca wavy. It looked like a heat mirage on a frozen lake. The gravity beca so dense that space itself began to stretch.
The Guardians entered the zone.
Suddenly, their movents beca slow. They looked like they were moving through thick honey. They swung their swords, but the blades took seconds to move an inch.
Kang Min moved at normal speed. Because space was stretched, he could walk past them easily.
But the stress on his brain was imnse. Level 5 was hard to maintain. His nose began to bleed. The blood froze before it hit his lip.
He reached the last three Guardians. They were right in front of the gates. They were too strong to be slowed down completely by [Event Horizon]. They broke through the slow zone.
They raised their weapons together.
Kang Min raised his hand. He pointed his fingers at the center Guardian’s chest.
[Singularity] Level 6: [Void Spasm] has been unlocked.
A tiny black dot appeared in the air. It was a coordinate in space.
RIP.
The space at that coordinate collapsed. A circular chunk of the Guardian’s chest was simply deleted. It did not break. It was gone. Because space tried to fill the vacuum, the rest of the Guardian’s body was pulled into the hole and crushed.
Kang Min did this twice more.
RIP. RIP.
The last two Guardians were torn apart by the mini-collapses in space.
The gates were almost shut. There was only a three-foot gap left.
Kang Min ran.
He was exhausted. His legs were shaking. This led to him almost tripping on the ice. He used a final burst of mana.
He slid across the ice floor. He went through the gap.
SLAM!
The vertical gates shut behind him. The sound was like a mountain falling.
Kang Min was now in a small, dark chamber. It was quiet. The cold was still there, but the wind had stopped.
He looked at his arms. The holographic armor was gone. His hands were covered in frostbite. The skin was white and hard. His clothes were in rags.
He felt the blood trailing behind him on the ice. He had many cuts on his back and legs.
Kang Min leaned against the gate. He slid down until he was sitting on the floor.
He could see his breath in the dark. It was a thick white mist.
"I made it," he thought.
"And it didn’t take 97 deaths this ti round..."
He was breathing heavily but still couldn’t help but chuckle. His chest moved up and down rapidly.
He had been in the lower floors for so long since returning and forgot how thrilling the top floors felt.
He could hear his own heart beating in his ears.
It was a loud, thumping sound.
He did not move and just sat there in the dark.
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