The Depths shifted.
Beneath the fractured roof of a sunken sanctuary, Reinhart sat alone, unmoving. Broken stone mosaics stretched around him, whispering of gods long forgotten. His greatsword rested across his lap. His eyes were half-lidded, not asleep — focused.
Each breath he took sank deeper into his core.
He wasn't meditating for peace.
He was listening.To the weight of the world pressing down on him.To the Ironsing.
"Don't force it," Alen had told him once. "Let the pressure teach you."
The Depths hummed faintly, always alive. Monsters roamed beyond the sanctuary walls. But Reinhart had grown used to that. The noise outside no longer moved him.
He was listening to something else.
A shift.A disturbance.A... presence.
He's here.
Reinhart rose slowly, lifting his blade with one arm, the other clenched tight. The faint hum around him deepened. The air bent subtly, as if gravity itself had become uncertain.
Behind him, a voice rang out.
"You don't flinch at all. I like that."
Reinhart turned. A boy stood in the sanctuary's archway — maybe fifteen, maybe older, draped in a tattered Academy uniform, blindfolded, yet somehow staring directly into Reinhart's soul.
"Who are you?"
"They call me Hollow," the boy said. "I lie a lot. But this is true: you're about to meet something worse than me."
He stepped aside.
And the King Thresher emerged.
It wasn't just large. It wasn't just powerful. This one… radiated cognition. Its aura alone was suffocating — like a monarch demanding submission.
But Reinhart didn't bow.
Instead, he narrowed his eyes.
The beast charged.
Before the claws even moved, its aura hit — a crushing wave of primal dominance meant to paralyze weaker prey.
But Reinhart moved anyway.
Pressure is a language.
And he had learned to speak it.
He raised his blade and parried not the strike — but the aura itself.
There was no clash of weapons.
There was a rupture.
The very air cracked around them. The pressure wave reversed, rebounding into the Thresher like a collapsing dome. Its limbs buckled mid-lunge, stumbling in confusion.
The aura, once suffocating, now recoiled against its user.
The Thresher screamed — not in pain, but in disorientation.
Reinhart stepped forward, silently, eyes sharpened. His muscles didn't bulge. His voice didn't chant. His power came from focus — an internal storm of compression and control.
He was no longer just reacting to force.He was commanding it.
The Thresher rushed again, furious now.
Reinhart stood his ground, pivoted, redirected the beast's claw with a slight shift of his shoulder — and slammed the flat of his blade against the Thresher's flank. The hit wasn't loud.
But the pressure behind it flattened the nearby wall.
The Thresher skidded, rolled, and crashed into a column of jagged stone.
Reinhart exhaled, a low, sharp breath.
Behind him, Hollow clapped softly.
"That was it. That was the moment."
Reinhart didn't respond. He just stood there, watching as the Thresher twitched, struggled to stand — then collapsed.
A moment passed.
Then two.
And then the voice came. A deep, internal resonance vibrating within his bones:
POWER 5 ATTAINED.
New Talent: Dirge of DisbeliefA high-tier Ironsing technique that compresses ambient pressure around your enemies' minds instead of their bodies. When you parry an enemy's aura or mantra, Dirge of Disbelief seeds hallucinations into their senses by disrupting their equilibrium. They can no longer trust what they see, hear, or feel — allies appear as threats, safe zones feel dangerous, even gravity may lie. Prolonged exposure can cause existential dread, hysteria, or surrender.
Reinhart blinked slowly, the pressure dispersing.
The world was quiet again.
Hollow grinned. "You broke its will. Not its body. That's rarer."
Reinhart slung his sword over his shoulder. "It attacked with dominance. I gave it doubt."
The boy's grin widened. "You're getting close. Soon, they'll fear your silence more than any spell."
Then he vanished.
Reinhart stood alone in the broken temple once more, his breathing steady, the Depths silent.
Meanwhile, above ground…
Subaru ducked behind a tree as three bounty hunters sprinted past him.
"Wind-Wiper my ass," he muttered. "I warned them before I farted."
He peeked out, spotted his own wanted poster nailed to a tree again, and sighed.
"Fifty enchanted Megurgers is insane…"
He turned and ran.
Back below, far beneath the pressure of the world…
Reinhart stepped out of the sanctuary, feeling heavier — but not burdened.
He understood now:Ironsing wasn't just breath and force. It was pressure over perception.
And he was ready to use it.
Meanwhile Julius and Emilia..
Deep within a different stretch of the Depths, far from Reinhart's calm devastation, chaos reigned in a much messier form.
"EMILIAAA I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS!" Julius screamed, buried waist-deep in the mud after trying to suplex a crabbo twice his size.
"You jumped into that swamp, Julius!" Emilia yelled, hurling a fireball overhead. "Stop eating random glowing mushrooms and blaming me for the hallucinations!"
"But it was purple and shaped like a Megurger!"
"No it wasn't!"
A shriek rang out behind them. A Sharko was sprinting toward them — not to attack, but in full retreat. Behind it, the crabbo Julius had angered was now fused with two others. It had formed some kind of unholy Depths crustacean chimera.
Julius wheezed and tried to crawl, his belly scraping the ground like a sled.
"I'm too tasty to die like this…"
Emilia, flame crackling in both hands, looked to the sky in despair.
"Why do I always end up stuck with the most useless person alive—!?"