Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler-Chapter 75: [The Heir of Thornspine 9] The Ganker and the Queen

Raven gasped, steadying himself as the last threads of the pact snapped into place. Lady Ostreva slumped to her knees, the thorns receding like a retreating tide. The battlefield fell still. No choir. No poison. No light.

[Optional: Silence Resonance Nodes (3/3)]

Then—a scythe whistled through the dark.

Raven’s instincts screamed. He barely twisted in time, raising his chain edge to deflect the blow. Steel rang against steel. The impact hurled him across the chamber, crashing him into a cluster of shattered alchemical tanks.

Glass splintered. He groaned, blinking through the haze.

Someone else was here.

From the shadows between the ruined vats, she stepped out.

NekoNekoNyan.

A familiar figure, long black braid swaying, cloak fluttering like a pageant performer exiting a stage. Her eyes gleamed crimson, but not with power—with amusement. Sadistic. Detached.

"Tch. Not dead yet? And here I thought I lost all the fun. C’mon, dipshit. Let me play with you for a while."

Raven’s mind raced. NekoNekoNyan.

Ranker. Summoner. Sponsored by Helix Media.

A media group famously known for their game industry coverage.

Known across the net for her cute and bubbly persona, but this wasn’t her stream.

There were no filters here. No smile. No staged cute persona. Just a bored predator looking for toys to break.

"You know how boring it is to do speedrun but find the dungeon is empty, even with the boss almost dead like this?? Come on, dipshit. At least you have to entertain me. Crawl for me."

She grinned, stepping further into the chamber. As her boots clicked against the moss-slick tile, another version of her blinked into existence behind her. Then another—a flicker of shadow, a laugh from nothing. Her passive was triggering. Duplication.

Raven’s muscles ached. Blood dripped from his ribs. But his eyes were sharp.

He staggered left, dragging his foot. Deliberate. Calculated. Not toward the door— Toward the shadows.

Ostreva’s pact isn’t stable yet. If she sees this chaos, she might trigger again.

I can’t afford that. Can’t fight both.

No.

If Ostreva triggered again, that would be a wildcard. So it’s a lose-lose probability.

Threeway fight.

Behind him, Lady Ostreva’s form still knelt—barely held in place after subjugation process. She was flickering, reality tugging at her edges.

Raven let himself fall.

NekoNekoNyan laughed.

"Yes, that’s more like it. Crawl like the animal you are."

Her voice was sweetened venom. Another copy flickered into being.

Raven’s chain slithered beneath his coat. Quiet. Ready.

NekoNekoNyan rested the scythe across her shoulders like a bat, pacing in slow, wide arcs.

"Okaaay~ let’s line this one up... right here," she cooed, crouching beside Raven as if sizing up a golf swing. Her duplicate behind her even mimicked holding a pretend scoreboard.

She raised the scythe’s blunt edge above her shoulder with an exaggerated windup. "Aaaand—wheee!"

CRACK.

The edge slammed into Raven’s ribs like a nine-iron against bone. He twisted from the blow, coughing violently—but still refused to give her the scream she wanted.

"Oh, come on," NekoNekoNyan pouted in mock disappointment, leaning over him again. "That shot was beautiful. At least let me see some blood. Maybe next swing?"

She twirled the weapon with one hand, the other making a peace sign beside her cheek as if posing for a stream thumbnail.

"Hey chat-nyan...look what we got here! A rat that will entertain me in this dungeon. Just him and me, baby."

She let out a cute laugh as she usually did in her stream to the imaginary viewer, before dropping low tone, "Now. Let’s make this personal, shall we?"

Her smirk widened as she closed the distance. With a fluid motion, she spun her scythe—not with the intent to slice, but to punish.

She brought the blunt edge down in a brutal arc.

CLANG.

Raven raised his chained edge to parry, but the angle was wrong. The impact hit his forearm and shoulder, driving him to one knee with a grunt. The blow reverberated through his bones, and the force cracked tiles beneath him.

He didn’t scream. He refused.

The pain lanced through his ribs, but he bit it down, jaw clenched tight. To cry out would only feed her.

NekoNekoNyan cackled.

Gone was the chirpy, fake streamer voice. Her features twisted—not in rage, but glee. Her tongue ran across her teeth as she leaned close, eyes gleaming with sadistic pleasure.

"Ohh, yes," she whispered. "This is why I don’t stream the real fights. Look at you—shaking, breathing like a dog. It’s delicious. It’s fucking delicious, i tell you."

Her duplicate behind her laughed in unison. Another flickered into place to her left. The lab’s poisoned glow reflected off four sets of eyes, all burning with that same predatory joy.

"I’m gonna carve a new highlight reel out of your spine, rat boy," she giggled, too sweet to be sane.

Raven didn’t flee toward the walls or the exit. Instead, he dragged himself sideways—past shattered vats and overturned alchemy tables—positioning himself just right.

He wasn’t crawling randomly.

No, he was placing NekoNekoNyan.

Right between himself and Lady Ostreva.

Every staggered step, every grunt of pain—it was all to shift the battlefield in his favor.

Let her take the center. Let her gloat.

Ostreva still knelt behind her, barely stabilized, swaying like a puppet in the dark.

Raven’s breath hitched as he fell near a ruptured pipeline, but his eyes stayed locked on the angle—calculating.

Still not there. Almost.

NekoNekoNyan didn’t stop.

She strode up to him—her real self now, no giggles, no poses, just a predator—gripping the scythe by its haft.

"Come on rat boy. Let me hear the sound of your bone breaking and you screams in pain."

She twirled the weapon once, reversed her grip, and brought the blunt edge down—not to kill, but to break.

The steel smashed into Raven’s side with a crunch. He wasn’t quick enough to block it. His body folded under the blow. The sound that tore from his throat was sharp. A hiss. Instinctive. Uncontrolled.

He bit down hard—but it escaped anyway.

NekoNekoNyan’s grin widened.

"Oh yes," she breathed, playfully humming like a child toying with a bug. "That’s it. That’s the sound I wanted. That satisfying little twitch."

Her duplicate laughed in perfect sync—mocking, echoing from every corner of the lab like a broken chorus.

Raven’s arm trembled as he pushed himself up again, pain screaming through his bones.

But she didn’t notice why he moved that way.

Didn’t realize he was guiding her—step by step—into the perfect position.

Now, she stood directly between him and Ostreva’s still-kneeling figure.

He didn’t look at Ostreva.

He didn’t have to.

He felt it.

That flicker of unstable power returning.

NekoNekoNyan cocked her head. "What? Got something to say, rat boy?"

Raven’s voice rasped through grit teeth.

"Yeah... just checking if you’re stupid enough to stand there."

Her grin stretched wide, too wide for the persona she wore on streams. Gone was the sweet tone, the perky voice, the fake giggles.

"Hey, hey—I know you," she purred. "You’re that slick little ganker from the Emberstone video, right? Oh man. I’m gonna beat you until you almost die and toss your sorry ass in my next post. Imagine the view i will get!"

And in the corner of the room, as NekoNekoNyan now stood between Raven and Ostreva, Ostreva’s glitching form seemed to vanish. There she was now, just on her knees.

A wildcard was ready on the table. It’s doesn’t have to be lose-lose war, after all. But even this will turns out to be threeway fight, the calculation has been made.

So Raven ready for either aid or chaos.

Both options seemed good for Raven.

Either NekoNekoNyan died here or both of them died here.

Both still brought him satisfaction.

NekoNekoNyan tilted her head, eyes glinting as her fingers traced along the shaft of her scythe.

"Ohhh, you’re still breathing? That just won’t do."

She stepped back with a cheerful bounce, holding the scythe like a javelin. Her posture was light, almost theatrical—but her face had gone cold. Merciless. The performer had dropped the mask. What remained was a predator with a grin carved from cruelty.

She aimed with slow precision, humming a mockingly cute melody as she lined up the throw.

"Neko neko fucking Wheeeee~," she cooed—and hurled the scythe.

The weapon spun through the lab air like a killing fan, its curved blade howling a note that sang above the silence.

Raven raised his chain edge too late.

CRACK.

The blunt spine of the scythe slammed into his ribs, sending him reeling. He hit the wall hard, collapsed beside a mound of ruptured alchemy glass, blood trailing from his lips. His HP was in the red. The system hadn’t even blinked before she was already walking toward him again.

He hissed from the pain. Reflex. Instinct.

NekoNekoNyan’s grin widened.

"There it is!" she purred. "That sweet little whimper. Don’t go quiet on me now~"

But Raven didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reply. His eyes narrowed behind the mask. His hand twitched once under his coat, where his chain slithered and primed.

He pushed himself up. Shaky. Deliberate. Small smile curled on his lips as one small thought flashed on his mind before doing his next play.

Seer would’ve loved this misdirection play. Phantom timing.

But Seer’s not here.

So I’ll do it out loud.

Let’s roll the dice, shall we?

"Root Trial Lattice!"

She blinked. "What? Your skill is mumbling fucking tree names?"

Three duplicates split from her—scythe-wielding echoes lunging forward, fangs bared.

Roots burst upward. Gnarled limbs exploded from the floor in a crisscross web—binding arms, twisting legs, snapping around torsos like the jaws of the forest itself.

All four NekoNekoNyans froze in place.

She snarled. "You little—!"

But she was already shouting at empty space.

Raven was gone.

The lab went quiet for a heartbeat—long enough for the panic to set in.

In the instant she was distracted by the root, his chain had latched to a steel brace on the ceiling. He swung upward—perched now in the dark, shrouded by smoke and broken lab vents.

Raven’s voice is low, but enough for his target to understand. He is her sovereign now anyway.

"You. Do you mind joining in?"

And from behind NekoNekoNyan—behind her entire act—a presence stood with her hands raised graciously.

Lady Ostreva. Regal. Upright.

Her eyes half-lidded in cold clarity. Her limbs slowly unfurled like petals touched by blood.

"Oh, I’m so excited to run another test. Let’s see how duplicates react under stress."

She raised her arms.

A new Regal Bloom bloomed in full.

Mushrooms flared, bursting spores like dying stars. The lab turned green—poison seeping into the tiles, vapor curling around the trapped clones.

NekoNekoNyan shrieked. She knew this mechanic. She knew it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

There was no Eldryn. No safe zone. No scripted mechanic to save her.

Only roots and venom.

Her panic lasted two seconds.

Then her face twisted back to its true state—a cold, calculating sadist.

"You think I haven’t met someone with such a shitty strategy before?"

NekoNekoNyan twitched her fingers.

The bindings held.

But her smirk didn’t fade—it sharpened.

"Let’s run a new experiment," she cooed, mocking Lady Ostrava.

She turned to one of her bound duplicates and gave a simple, cheerful command:

"Kill her."

The clone blinked once—and with a feral grin, slashed the scythe through the other duplicate.

The moment the first duplicate vanished in a flicker of pixel ash, another burst into being outside the binding range—free.

It turned, eyes alight, and impaled a second bound clone. Another free version spawned beside it.

Raven’s eyes narrowed.

A daisy chain of deaths. Sacrificing one to birth the next. Each free clone breaks further from the lattice zone.

A third duplicate lunged forward—still mid-flicker—already mimicking the real NekoNekoNyan cute giggle.

"She’s chaining herself out," he murmured. "Turning death into movement. Controlled decay."

And now, the root bindings were crumbling beneath the weight of her deliberate destruction.

Her mechanic wasn’t random. It was ritualistic.

She laughed again—wide and bright, but wrong in every way.

"Ohh, this game just got so fun."

She grinned.

She was using her own clones as stepping stones—leaving their deaths to birth her freedom.

Raven narrowed his eyes from above.

That’s it.

It’s not random. It’s a loop.

Her passive creates a new duplicate on significant action—death, attack, displacement. freēnovelkiss.com

Each clone she sacrifices spawns the next.

A smile crept behind his mask.

"Expected from a ranker. Let’s see how many times you can do that dance in DoT jungle, you sick cat" he whispered and ready himself.

Below, NekoNekoNyan’s newest clone somersaulted forward, scythe raised to plunge into Ostreva’s chest.

"If I can’t play with you, I’ll just end your pet project first."

NekoNekoNyan surged forward—aiming straight for Ostreva’s chest.

The final standoff has begun.

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