FrenzyAren
patreon
SM/DC Chapter 89 : Legacy Shadow Legion Dungeon Level 3
🕑 Added 2025-04-14 21:03:04 +0000 UTCThe world shattered and reformed around him like glass melting in fire, bending and snapping until it finally spat him out into a place that reeked of ice, silence, and death.
[Legacy Shadow Legion Dungeon – Level 3]
Arthur landed with a grunt, snow crunching beneath his boots. A burst of white powder flared up at impact, swirling around his figure like a shroud. He straightened slowly, brushing frost off his shoulder as his breath curled in front of his face like fog.
The air was bitter. The cold dug into bone like knives. Towering obsidian pine trees surrounded him in every direction, stretching so high their tops vanished into a veil of pale white mist.
The silence was wrong, no birds, no animals, nothing.
"I'm getting real sick of these damn shifts..." Arthur muttered, his voice hushed in the dead forest.
"Feels like if I were just some regular guy, I’d be drooling in a corner from all this mind-bending nonsense."
He took one step forward
FWIP. FWIP. FWIP!
That silence was gone and the world exploded into motion.
Arrows screamed from every direction.
Arthur’s instincts flared his eyes blazed icy blue.
He twisted sideways, letting one arrow whip past his cheek. Another came from behind he ducked. A third, he caught with two fingers.
Then a fourth.
Arthur’s expression didn’t even change as his free hand raised lazily.
Ruler’s Authority.
The final arrow froze mid-air. Without even looking, Arthur rotated his wrist, and the arrow spun back like a deadly boomerang, zipping into the canopy above.
A shriek of pain.
A pale body crashed down from the trees, landing face-first in the snow. The impact kicked up a puff of white, but Arthur didn’t flinch. His glowing gaze stayed locked forward.
The fallen figure groaned.
It wasn’t human.
Long, slender limbs. Frost-covered armor etched with runes. Skin as pale as the snow itself, with glowing blue eyes.
Arthur narrowed his gaze.
“Tsk… Ice Elves.”
As if that name summoned them, the forest awakened.
Figures dropped from the trees, almost silent, like ghosts. Dozens. Their armor gleamed like cracked glaciers, some of them had their faces covered in intricate masks of bone and frost. Bows were drawn. Blades unsheathed. Their breath didn't even fog the air.
They were the storm.
Arthur rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck with a sigh. He extended his hand.
With a pulse of pure darkness, his Demon King Longsword erupted into being, its obsidian blade crackling with veins of blue lightning. He rested the sword casually across his shoulders, one hand holding it lazily, as if this were nothing more than a stroll through the woods.
“You could’ve waited until I warmed up a little, you know,” he muttered, glancing left and right. “But alright…”
****
[Elsewhere, Earth-3]
The landscape was a smoldering carcass of what once may have been a Syndicate blacksite, now just twisted metal, broken satellite towers, and blackened earth. Power Ring hovered above the wreckage, glowing green energy scanning every inch of terrain in spiraling rings of data.
His ring pulsed faintly.
[Scanning... Scanning... No strange lifeforms detected.]
He grit his teeth. A vein pulsed on his temple.
“Damn it all!” he snarled, clutching his head, his body lurching midair as if struck by an invisible force.
Pain lanced through his skull like a thousand needles. The ring hissed, not unlike a parasite feeding too long on a host.
“I can’t keep doing this…” he growled to himself, staggering through the air, one hand still clutching his head. “This bastard’s nowhere. Not a soul. No trace. The guy who fought Johnny Quick just...just vanished.”
He slammed into the ground, sending up a cloud of dust and gravel.
A moment passed. Then
He tapped the side of his mask.
“Owlman.”
There was a click. A pause.
The voice that answered was cold. Crisp. Calculated.
“Report.”
“There’s nothing,” Power Ring hissed through clenched teeth. “Not even residual energy. It’s like he blinked out of existence.”
Owlman didn’t respond right away. Just that uncomfortable, calculating silence that always made Power Ring's skin crawl.
“I can’t go on,” Power Ring admitted, breath ragged. “If I push this thing any further… I’ll be in a sorry state.”
Silence again.
Then Owlman spoke, calmly.
“It’s the ring, isn’t it?”
A pause.
“…Yes,” Power Ring muttered, barely able to finish the word. His hand trembled. The green glow around his body flickered.
Owlman finally gave a small, slow exhale. Not quite a sigh. Something colder.
“Return, then. No point in searching further. He’ll show himself… eventually.”
“You sound too sure about that,” Power Ring muttered, pressing his fist to his temple again.
“Let’s just say…” Owlman said, voice laced with eerie certainty, “…if my intuition is correct, this man might be incapable of hiding for long.”
“Which is?”
A beat. The comm crackled.
Then, Owlman’s voice returned, icy and slow.
“You’ll understand once you’re here.”
The line cut.
Power Ring stood in the ruin, green flickers sparking around him, wind dragging ashes across his feet. He looked at the horizon with narrowed, twitching eyes.
“What the hell are you planning now, Owlman…”
****
The snow churned beneath Arthur’s boots as he moved like a phantom through the blizzard-stricken forest. Tall, skeletal trees loomed like frozen titans, their branches brittle with ice.
And all around him
Death followed.
A squad of Ice Elves, tall, graceful, darted between trees, their movement swift and silent. Arrows whistled through the air in synchronized volleys.
Arthur didn’t waste time.
With a flick of his hand, Ruler’s Authority snapped the path of multiple arrows mid-flight, redirecting it back into the throats of the archers, who gurgled and dropped like sacks of meat.
Arthur turned with glowing blue eyes, a smirk forming under his breath.
“Snowflakes with bows.”
Another came from behind, blade glowing with frost. Arthur sidestepped,With a single horizontal arc of his Demon King Longsword, the elf was cleaved in half mid-air, body crashing into snow as sizzling blood melted the ground.
Then he felt it thundering footsteps.
Arthur turned slowly.
Emerging from the treeline like a damn legend was the last of them a tall Ice Elf warrior clad in dark blue iron, riding atop a massive, armored ice bear with eyes glowing white and breath steaming like a furnace.
“Ah… the boss of the fodder,” Arthur muttered, slinging his Demon King Longsword over his shoulder casually.
The beast roared, charging toward Arthur with enough force to shatter a tree into splinters. The Ice Elf raised his sword high, ready to skewer him through the snow.
Arthur waited then
“Let me borrow your arm.”
Suddenly, the elf’s own muscles twitched violently, his arm jerked downward, Ruler’s Authority taking control. With a flick of Arthur’s finger
The elf’s sword plunged directly into the skull of his own mount, impaling the bear with a sickening crunch. The beast wailed in agony and collapsed, launching the elf into a tumble through the snow.
The Ice Elf barely had time to process what had happened when
CRACK.
Arthur was already standing over him, one boot crushing his head into the frost like it was made of glass and shame.
“Sit down,” Arthur muttered coldly, eyes still glowing.
The corpse twitched once. Then stilled.
Silence returned to the forest.
Only the wind howled now.
Arthur exhaled and looked up at the falling snow with disinterest.
“You brought a bear to a Monarch fight…”
The wind whistled a mournful tune through the trees, rustling the blood-stained snow. Arthur stood motionless for a moment, surveying the corpses of the fallen elves and the massive ice bear slumped in eternal slumber. His eyes glowed faintly, a pulse of power radiating from him like a heartbeat.
“Alright…”
“Time to rebuild my army. Most of them are back home anyway.”
His hand rose, fingers open, commanding with regal authority.
“Arise.”
A pulse of shadow magic exploded outward, curling like tendrils across the forest floor. The Shadows rose, eyes glowing with unnatural light. One by one, shadowed Ice Elves stood, their forms cloaked in darkness, armor enhanced with spectral black steel. Even the massive bear did, now bearing armor forged from pure shadow, growling low and ready.
And just as swiftly
Fwoosh.
They all sank into Arthur’s shadow, swallowed whole by the abyss beneath his feet.
Arthur chuckled as he casually wiped his Demon King Longsword clean against his cloak.
“Heh… I guess I really can’t cheat in this dungeon,” he said, amused.
“No shadow soldiers allowed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother fighting these guys myself.”
He paused, sword now resting across his shoulders as he slowly walked through the snow-covered path.
“Still… I get it. You want me to earn them with my own strength.”
“Fine. I’ll play your game.. like always...”
Then
A voice echoed across the clearing, sharp and laced with magic.
“Well, well… human. That was impressive.”
“For a warm-blooded savage.”
Arthur stopped mid-step. His smirk returned.
“Oh?”
“I was wondering when you’d show up.”
He turned his head slowly and spotted him standing atop a frozen rock was another Ice Elf, draped in a fur-lined cloak of frost, his body radiating raw magical power. Blue runes pulsed across his arms, and his gaze was cold enough to freeze fire.
Baruka.
[System Notification:]
[Boss Identified – Defeat Baruka, Leader of the Ice Elves]
Arthur's eyes narrowed, glowing fiercely as he lowered his sword in one hand, letting it hum with lightning once more.
"Well, what do you know... it just happens that my new soldiers are missing something... a commander,"
