Past 1: Chapter 2 Part 4 The Sultana Hollow

The Past I: Sheree Backstory Chapter 2, Part 4: The Sultana Hollow The echoing sloshing of the murky sewer water bounced rhythmically against the ancient, dripping stonework blocks as the elite S-Rank tactical squad pushed deeper past the heavy iron bars of the hidden level grid. Reaper 800 marched at the front line, his intense blue eyes scanning a tactical hand terminal inside his gloved palm. Suddenly, the device's tracking monitors violently overclucked, a flashing bright crimson alert box popping up across his scanner view to indicate a massive, unnatural distortion in the local gravity fields. Reaper came to a rigid halt, his armor plates clanking softly as he uncrossed his arms. Reaper 800: "Hey, anyone... I think we are inside a Hollow somehow, because my scanner is picking up severe spatial corruption readings. We are about to see Ethereal entities right now." Liang Huàn: [Nodding his bone-white deer skull mask in deep analytical thought, his cyan lenses flashing bright as he leans on his crystalline ice cane] "So... this ancient subterranean dungeon layout is actually a fully active Hollow sector. How interesting... a truly fascinating new discovery. If the lower tracks are already fully corrupted, then logically, I think the entire medieval castle up above is a massive Hollow as well. Whoever is currently living up there inside those royal walls has probably already turned into a mindless Ethereal mutation." Remielle Dan: [Griping her twin daggers tightly as her white angel wings flutter with aggressive shonen energy]"Oh, great! Just what I wanted today—to deal with a bunch of slimy, corrupted monsters inside a dark drain pipe! Oh well... it is officially time to take them down! Let's clear the field!" The squad broke into a full tactical sprint, navigating past fractured brick archways and crumbling masonry. They shattered small packs of roaming frontline monsters with absolute ease, driving their path all the way down to the central terminal junction of the sunken canal. Standing directly under the heavy dripping iron sluice gates, blocking their path like an unyielding metal monolith, was the first true dungeon guardian of the raid block. It was a terrifying, heavily armored Elite Ethereal boss. The creature stood over nine feet tall, encased from head to toe in thick, battle-worn plate armor panels that crackled continuously with volatile, glowing neon-green alchemical vein lines. It had absolutely no human head resting on its massive pauldrons; instead, a miniature, swirling black hole anomaly hovered violently directly above its collar plates, casting a dense, gravity-warping neon-green aura across the stone chamber. In its right gauntlet, it firmly gripped a colossal, serrated stone broadsword, while its left arm was anchored to an immense, heavy iron tower shield that scraped aggressively against the wet floor boards. Reaper 800: [His voice dropping a casual, unbothered tone beneath his white tech-skull half-mask, giving his scythe weapon a playful spin] "Is this supposed to be our grand challenge? This is gonna be so incredibly easy for us, because we only got a B-Rank Elite Ethereal on the tracking radar." Remielle Dan: [Her mouth opening in a sharp, pouting anime yell as a comical sweat drop explodes on her temple] "Don’t mess around with them, Reaper! So what if they are only labeled a B-Rank entity?! Look at those terrifying gravity metrics... I have never seen this specific type of elite Ethereal blueprint in any of our official Void Hunter reference books before!" Liang Huàn: [Stepping onto the wet moss, his boots clicking clean as his sub-zero Glacial Scalpel cane vents a dense cloud of white freezing vapor] "This Ethereal looks exactly like a legendary headless knight wielding a colossal sword and a defensive shield layout. There is no use in standing around calculating variables... let's deal with them right now!" The epic S-Rank boss fight detonated in a single microsecond! The Black Hole Headless Knight surged forward with shocking, heavy velocity, swinging its massive serrated broadsword in a sweeping horizontal arc that unleashed a cutting shockwave of neon-green gravity energy across the masonry. Reaper 800 leaped directly over the blade path with absolute shonen agility, his long black trench coat billowing as he redirected his focus. Concurrently, Remielle Dan went fully airborne, her white angel wings cutting through the dark sewer fumes as she channeled her specialized time-manipulation fields. Raining down from the ceiling panels, she unleashed a spectacular torrent of brilliant white and pink energy sparks that zipped across the knight's heavy shoulder guards. Remielle Dan: "Chrono Lumiflux Stasis! Lock down!" The white-and-pink elemental light detonated against the boss's torso, instantly forcing its massive body layer into a slow-motion animation loop. Liang Huàn didn't waste a single frame. Moving past the enemy lines with unreadable, light-speed velocity, the Glacial Surgeon firmly gripped his crystalline cane. With a sharp, ringing CLANG, he drew the hidden blade of his ice cane, unleashing a precision sub-zero freezing slash that struck the headless knight multiple times across its exposed armor seams! The extreme sub-zero metrics fractured the green alchemical core inside its chest plate layout, causing the massive shield arm to stagger backward in complete defensive failure. The stasis loop broke, and the furious boss attempted to counter-assault, throwing its heavy tower shield forward to crush the doctor. But Reaper 800 materialized his colossal blue-plasma mechanical Scythe purely out of his cosmic Path of Soul power. Rocketing forward into the blind spot, Reaper delivered a devastating, world-shearing vertical overhead smash that sliced directly through the black hole head anomaly! The massive physical impact detonated the gravity core. The Black Hole Headless Knight let out a muffled, electronic death rattle as its entire nine-foot plate frame violently shattered into a million glowing yellow sparkles, completely dissolving into digital pixels until its health bar hit absolute zero. Reaper 800: [Deactivating his plasma edge, resting the scythe calmly over his shoulder with a confident shonen smirk] "See? What did I tell you guys before? Easy boss." Remielle Dan: [Sheathing her twin daggers with a heavy, grumbling huff, her cheeks flushing with a slight cartoon pout] "Fine! You win! You got a valid point there, Reaper 800... it really was an easy warm-up fight." Liang Huàn: [Sliding his Glacial Scalpel cleanly back into his lab coat pocket with a highly sophisticated anime grin] "Now is absolutely not the time to stand around celebrating, you two. It's time to get going. No one with a functioning brain wants to stay trapped inside a hostile Hollow sector forever." The elite trio marched past the dissolving armor shards, navigating up a long, spiral stone staircase that led toward an overhead exit shaft. They threw open the heavy iron hatch doors and stepped out into the open air, fully expecting to see the clean, familiar outer walls of the fortress city. But the moment their eyes adjusted to the daylight, their dominant expressions completely froze in pure, unbridled psychological shock. The beautiful, hyper-futuristic metropolis was completely gone. The towering silver skyscrapers lay smashed into jagged digital shards, the glowing holographic pathways fractured and hanging over a colossal, swirling black void of pure gravity. The entire landscape had been completely destroyed and swallowed from the inside out, resting entirely within the reality-warping boundaries of the Hollow zone.