I Died and Received an SSS-Rank Unique Ability-Chapter 103: Night

The two remaining monsters didn’t hesitate.

They crashed through the shallows with thunderous force, water and mud spraying in every direction as their hulking forms charged toward Vale. Their snarls echoed through the marsh, feral and unrelenting. He didn’t have the stamina to drag the fight out, nor the patience.

Pain flared with every breath. His ribs were likely fractured, his armour shredded beyond recognition, and blood clung to his boots like oil. Each step felt heavier than the last.

But his mind was sharp, cutting through the haze of fatigue like a blade through silk.

He moved like a shadow given purpose.

With a flicker of Voidstep, he vanished in a blur and reappeared behind the first beast mid-lunge. Before it could react, Vale plunged his flaming blade between its ribs. The creature shrieked—a sound more nightmare than animal—and collapsed in a heap of bone and fire. Black flames coiled and raged across its twisted form until there was nothing left but scorched earth and silence.

The second monster barely had time to register its companion’s death.

Vale activated Voidstep again—reappearing directly before the beast’s face, eyes narrowed, breath shallow. With a clean, decisive slash, he severed its neck. The sheer force cracked the blade, sending splinters of steel into the air as the monster’s head hit the mud with a wet thud.

[ You have slain a D-Rank, Unhallowed Monster: Abyssal Howler ]

[ You have slain a D-Rank, Unhallowed Monster: Abyssal Howler ]

[ You have received an Artifact: Dawn’s Barrage ]

Vale stood still, his chest rising and falling as the exhaustion crept in like a cold tide. The adrenaline was fading. Every part of him screamed.

"A new Artifact?" he muttered, raising a brow.

He summoned his status window and focused on the glowing icon pulsing at the edge of his vision.

***

Dawn’s Barrage Artifact Description: [

At dawn, his village fell. His family died, and his life ended in fire and screams... until the next dawn, when he rose again, reborn in vengeance. The blade he forged under moonlight carried the weight of a dying star—too heavy for any to lift, too dull to cut—except for him. To all others, it was a curse. To him, it was clarity, purpose, and wrath reborn. Those deemed worthy by the weapon may wield it freely. All others will break beneath its weight. ]

Enchantments: [ Dawn ]

Dawn Enchantment Description: [

To the unworthy, the blade is nothing more than a slab of dead metal—blunt, heavy, useless. But to those who’ve faced death and walked back through flame, it is light as a feather and sharper than vengeance. In the hands of the chosen, each strike grows faster and stronger—the blade remembers rage and answers with fury. ]

***

Excited by the detailed revelation of his new Artifact, Vale didn’t waste a second.

He dismissed his old weapon with a flick of his hand and summoned the new one—Dawn’s Barrage. It began to coalesce from light and shadow, not forged but willed into existence, as though it had been waiting for this moment... waiting for him.

The weight settled into his palm—oddly perfect.

When he swung it, the blade tore through the air with a satisfying whistle, the edge sharp enough to hum. Yet in his grip, it felt almost weightless and perfectly balanced.

Then he noticed something strange.

A thick strap crossed his shoulder. A scabbard had appeared on his back the moment the weapon was summoned. That alone was unusual. Most conjured weapons appeared bare, ready to be wielded the instant they materialised. But not this one. This one came sheathed—as if it demanded reverence.

Vale frowned slightly.

"Why would I need a scabbard if I can dismiss and summon the weapon at any moment?"

He tried to dismiss it, flicking his hand as he had with his old blade. But instead of vanishing, Dawn’s Barrage slipped from his fingers and crashed into the ground with a thunderous thud—one that shook the earth far more than its size should’ve allowed.

"...What?"

Brows furrowed, Vale picked it up and tried again. And again. Still, it refused to disappear.

It wasn’t just weighty—it was anchored.

For a few long moments, he just stared at it, the blade’s surface reflecting the flicker of dying flames around him. The weapon pulsed faintly, almost... stubborn.

Eventually, with a sigh of reluctant respect, Vale slung it over his shoulder and slid it into the scabbard. The fit was seamless.

A quiet click echoed as the blade locked into place.

"Guess you’re not just any sword," Vale muttered, his gaze drifting toward the horizon.

The marsh lay still, the chaos from before reduced to memory—but something about the weapon’s presence made the world feel just a little heavier. As if the earth groaned beneath his steps, crying out in pain with every footfall.

For the next two hours, Vale wandered through the twisted terrain of the Demon Realm. The land was unnatural, fragmented—ominous structures rose like jagged bones from the ground, half-shattered towers and crooked archways looming from the mist. A dense, choking fog had begun to creep in, curling around his ankles, thickening as he moved deeper into the unknown.

The sky gradually darkened. Night was approaching.

Vale didn’t think much of it. He still had energy in his limbs and fire in his lungs, and nothing around him looked safe or even remotely hospitable. The rest could wait.

But that nonchalance vanished the moment the atmosphere changed.

It began subtly—an unnatural stillness, followed by distant echoes. Low, guttural growls rose through the mist. Bone-rattling thumps, sharp shrieks, skittering noises danced at the edge of hearing.

He frowned and quickened his pace.

"Perhaps it is time to find shelter," he thought, unsettled by the sudden orchestra of sounds tearing apart the once-dead silence.

Then he saw it.

A blur—just a streak of darkness, a shadow tearing across the fog-covered field ahead of him with impossible speed.

He stopped cold, every sense flaring to life. Without hesitation, Vale drew Dawn’s Barrage from its scabbard. The blade made no sound as it left the sheath—just a low pulse, like the beat of a war drum only he could hear.

He shifted his stance, eyes scanning the shifting grey around him.

But nothing followed.

Silence returned for a moment. Then—movement again. Two shadows this time, darting across his peripheral vision like phantoms, faster than thought.

"What the hell is going on?" he muttered internally, teeth clenched.

Frustrated by the unseen enemy, Vale summoned his relic.

The four-eyed raven burst into the sky with a silent flap of wings, and his vision stretched outward, overlapping with the bird’s elevated view. Through its eyes, he scanned the landscape.

But even the relic failed him.

The fog was thicker than he anticipated—thick enough to blind even a creature with four enchanted eyes. No shapes, no forms—only the faintest glimmers of mana signatures flickering in and out of range.

There were many.

Too many.

And they moved with erratic precision—splitting, reforming, and looping in disorienting patterns—like a pack of predators playing with their prey.

Vale’s heart kicked up a beat. He turned his eyes toward a broken structure in the near distance—a ruined cathedral or fortress, its spires collapsed but its walls still partially standing.

Shelter... hopefully.

He walked faster, blade at the ready, his grip tightening as every instinct in him screamed for caution.

But he didn’t make it far.

Out of the mist, a monstrous form exploded into him.

A massive, six-legged, wolf-like beast crashed into Vale with terrifying speed and weight. He barely managed to twist his body and raise his blade in time, intercepting the blow with a reverberating clash that echoed through the field.

The impact was brutal. Vale’s boots skidded through the dirt, and the air was knocked from his lungs.

But what unsettled him most wasn’t the strength of the creature. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

It was the silence.

There had been no sound. No rustle or warning of any form. Not even a whisper of mana from the relic’s point of view. The monster had simply appeared, as if reality had peeled open for it and stitched itself back closed behind.

The creature loomed above him, its grotesque form finally visible through the shroud of fog.

It was massive—easily the size of a warhorse, but twisted in a way that defied natural form. Six legs bent at unnatural angles, their joints jutting out like malformed spears, each one ending in claws that glistened like obsidian. Its body was a hideous patchwork: half of it covered in coarse, matted fur, dark and slick with something that looked too thick to be water—blood, maybe, or worse. The other half was raw, exposed flesh, stretched taut over muscle and sinew like it had been peeled open and left to rot, yet somehow still alive.

Its ribs jutted through its side like broken bars of a shattered cage.

And its face—

Vale felt something twist in his gut.

The creature’s head was elongated and canine in shape but distorted, its jaw far too large for its skull. When it opened its mouth, it did so in complete silence, revealing rows upon rows of serrated, uneven teeth that curved inward like hooks meant not just to tear but to hold. Its tongue was long and split, twitching as if tasting the fear in the air.

Two black eyes burned from deep within its skull, but there were more—dozens of smaller, lidless orbs dotted along its face and neck like parasitic growths, all blinking out of sync.

It didn’t breathe. It didn’t growl. It simply was—a thing carved from nightmare and suffering, shaped by the madness of the Demon Realm.