Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 34: [The Emberstone Massacre 3] - The Phantom Strikes

They never saw him coming.

Furnace Hollow roared with spellfire and steel, PvP flags flashing wild in the heated fog. Crimson Blades and Ebonreach Covenant clashed like warborn animals, all strategy forgotten in the heat of combat. Flashes of fireburst and barrier flare bathed the molten pillars in flickering light. It was the kind of chaos only a dungeon war could deliver.

Lava gurgled beneath cracked iron grates, and the ruined ceiling dripped molten slag in rhythmic pulses. Stone platforms shifted from accumulated damage. Each explosion caused vents to scream, coughing hot mist across the battlefield. A misstep near the edge meant falling into bubbling magma or being blown into a wall of flame.

Fifty players left from the original 60. All eyes on each other. None on the ledge above.

Raven crouched high above the fray, cloaked in darkness, unmoving on the iron-black perch hidden near the broken furnace winch. His eyes glowed dim before disappearing, chain coiled loosely at his hip. He watched.

Jumping now would be suicide. Let them bleed first.

He counted players. Estimated cooldowns. Calculated heal rotations. Two full squads clustered near the central ridge bridge, healers hidden just behind. One Crimson mage moved slightly ahead of her group every time she cast. An Ebonreach cleric hovered too long before each barrier, always exposing his flank. Patterns. Habits. Flaws.

He looked upward, then to the far right—an outcropping swallowed in unnatural shadow, high and recessed. No player would glance up there. Not unless they were looking for ghosts.

He launched his chain. The Dominion shot upward and snapped into the stone with a quiet crunch. Raven ascended, vanishing in an arc of silent velocity.

From that nest, unseen, he summoned his tools. Phantom Seer materialized beside him in a shimmer of glitched darkness, hood low, mask gleaming.

Haunting Echoes activated immediately. False footsteps echoed below. A glimpse of movement. Whispers that didn’t exist. One caster pivoted mid-cast. A warrior swung at nothing.

Mind Shatter followed—subtle, creeping. Like dread. Perception blurred. Reaction time dipped.

Then came the beast. Duskrunner Alpha dropped into the shadows without a sound, vanishing into Furnace Hollow’s steam vents. Gone before anyone could see it fully. Only the distant thump of claws told Raven it had moved.

Below, the fighting reached its crescendo. Screams. Critical hits. AoE storms. Knockback pulses.

Now.

A hiss. The Dominion Chain launched downward like a thrown javelin, piercing the stone ground behind Ebonreach’s backline.

He dropped.

A streak of black tattered blur. The chain retracted, yanking Raven downward at breakneck speed. His cloak fluttered like a dying flame. In that instant, the whole battlefield seemed to freeze.

"What the—" Someone gasped.

Above them, cutting through the smoke like a wound in the sky, a grotesque figure descended—unnatural in shape, impossible to track.

A black, tattered, blurred shadow that resembled a person with its hands wrapped in a viper-like chain.

A cold, ancient machine of a face.

Eyes glowing a deep, furious red.

A stealth ganker build so bizarre it didn’t make sense—something between rogue, illusionist, and mythic boss mechanics. No one had seen anything like it.

What they didn’t realize—what no log or alert could tell them—was that they were already under the effects of Mind Shatter.

That shiver crawling down their backs? That unplaceable dread? It wasn’t the figure itself. It was the effect. The aura. The illusion of finality.

It didn’t feel like a rogue. It felt like an angel of death had dropped from a crack in the heavens.

The first healer died before her scream could reach her throat.

Raven’s chain wasn’t just a weapon—it was a language. He twirled it overhead once, the sound lost beneath the roar of the vents. The edge shimmered, spinning fast enough to hum. Then he dropped, switching grips mid-air.

The hooked tip he had launched like a javelin now twisted into his palm, becoming a dagger.

He landed, thrust forward, and buried the jagged edge beneath her shoulder blades. The chain coiled back instantly—never clanking, never dragging. Just returning.

Later, when flares lit the sky again, Raven moved. He launched the chain sideways, caught a stone beam mid-flight, and swung around the side of the chamber—disappearing through a gap in the iron wall like a shadow pulled by its own thread.

His kills were precise. But his movement? That was art. Raven’s jagged chain struck from the descent, stabbing through her back and pinning her to the molten floor.

Everyone turned. To them, it felt like time slowed—reactions dulled, senses numbed. But it wasn’t time. It was Phantom Seer’s Mind Shatter, eating away at their perception.

Another healer—Crimson Blades this time—was already mid-cast when the second chain shot out, coiled around her waist, and yanked her skyward like a puppet. Limbs flailed.

And then the sound. A monstrous growl echoed from the shadows.

Duskrunner Alpha exploded from behind a vent, jaws wide. The healer disappeared into a snarl and a snap of bones.

Silence. Then— Panic ensues.

"Who was that?!"

"Did Crimson just gank our backline?!"

"No—we didn’t! That wasn’t us!"

"Healers are down—we need cover!"

"Find the rogue, the...the monster, whatever it was—just fucking FIND HIM!"

Both sides cast flares in desperation, hoping to reveal whoever, or whatever, had assassinated their healers.

But Raven had already vanished, cloaked by misdirection and shadow. Their detection spells bounced off Null Echo like arrows against stone.

Then the battlefield fractured further.

The heat dimmed. The molten flow beneath the cracked grates dulled from bright orange to a muted red. It wasn’t natural—it was illusion, distortion. Lava shimmered like a mirage, flickering in and out of focus. Shadows lengthened across the arena floor, stretching further than they should, twisting like tendrils.

"The lava’s cooling?" a Crimson archer whispered aloud. Then a blur struck her from behind. No scream followed—only the sound of her bow clattering against stone.

The shadows danced without rhythm. The battlefield, once alive with light, was now painted in ghostlight and hallucination. Phantom Seer cast Haunting Mirage—a wide-area illusion.

What followed was confusion weaponized: Glimpses of a jagged chain recoiling into shadows like a living thing. A mechanical face with fiery red eyes peering through the smoke—gone before they could focus. A tattered cloak fading into the walls, seen just at the edge of vision.

More terrifying still—friendly fire broke out. A Crimson firemage turned too fast and launched a burst at her own healer, mistaking a flicker for an enemy. An Ebonreach ranger flared a hallway and spotted a clone that resembled his own guildmate—he fired anyway.

They shouted, pointed, cast more flares. Each one landed in an empty hallway.

Panic took over logic. Mages launched fireballs at corners. Archers loosed volleys into fog. Area spells lit up nothing but walls.

"There! No—there!"

"That’s not him, that’s—"

Boom. A flare detonated too close. A Crimson cleric hit the ground coughing, mana reserves visibly drained.

They were casting faster than they could regenerate. And it showed. Spells fizzled. Buffs expired. Arrows thudded harmlessly against metal.

Above it all, Raven remained still. Watching.

"They’re burning their cooldowns. I don’t even have to move yet," he murmured.

During the hysteria, more screams rose—some real, as Duskrunner struck from behind; others false echoes conjured by the illusion.

The lines broke. And panic took root.

"Black cloak—red eyes—I saw it!" "I think it’s some glitch illusion!" "Why would Ebonreach bring psychic illusions to a fire dungeon?!"

No one answered. Because the figure appeared again. Just a flicker—behind a group of mages, then gone.

Another scream. One of the rangers fell to her knees, struck from behind by a jagged link of Dominion chain.

Blood hit the stone.

Now both guilds were yelling. "Stick to formation!"

"Protect the remaining healer!"

"No, don’t group up—he wants that!"

The glowing flickers of forced logouts were like a firework display of death.

Both guild healer and DPS ranks began to fall, one by one, picked off during cooldown lulls or pushed out of formation. Every time they regrouped, another flicker of red-eyed shadow emerged from the fog—and another player vanished.

Twenty dead. Ten from Crimson. Ten from Ebonreach. The remaining thirty were no longer soldiers. They were prey.

"Fall back!" "To the boss room—we regroup there!" "No one move alone!"

Above the chaos, two voices shouted with command—Kaelthasx and Lymira, each trying to rally their shattered squads.

"Crimson—stack on your group lead! Regroup! Find your group lead!" Kaelthasx’s voice rang with authority, but it was swallowed in the panic.

"Ebonreach—pull back to formation Delta! Hold your casters in the rear!" Lymira’s tone crackled through party comms, sharp and commanding.

Kaelthasx shouted a flare ping—but it only drew Duskrunner. Lymira barked formation code—only for her squad to stack too close and get caught by Mirage AoE.

But no one truly listened. Half their parties had no clue what formation they were in. The others were too busy watching shadows.

"Move! To the boss room—now!" Lymira shouted again. Kaelthasx echoed, "Fall back! We’re bottlenecking this! GO!"

But even as they ran, more than one turned their head. Back into the fog. Back toward the whispering silence. Toward the place where the chain had struck. And wondered if the thing they’d seen—if the figure they whispered about now—was even a player at all.

The panic spread like fire.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢