Chapter 43: Wyverns of the Scorching Desert
After being forcibly pulled through the portals—each one a swirling maw of crimson and shadow that spat them out without ceremony—the couple found themselves in a new and unforgiving world.
A scorching hot desert stretched to every horizon. The ground beneath their feet was cracked baked clay, pale orange and ochre, fissured like the skin of an ancient beast. Waves of heat rose from the earth, distorting the air into shimmering curtains. In the sky above, an artificial sun blazed—too bright, too relentless, hanging at a fixed point with no intention of setting. There was no breeze, no cloud, no relief. Only heat. Only silence.
But neither Gabriel nor Lilith paid the temperature any mind.
They stood face to face, perhaps twenty meters apart, on a dune of fine, burning sand. Their clothes were immaculate—not a speck of dust, not a bead of sweat. The desert’s fury was beneath their notice.
Both wore the same expression: smug satisfaction, barely contained.
Without a word, they raised their wrists in unison, presenting their golden bracelets to each other like duelists presenting pistols.
The numbers glowed.
204.
206.
Lilith’s lips curled into a triumphant smile. Her crimson eyes sparkled with delight, and a soft, melodic laugh escaped her throat—a sound that danced across the desert air like a bell chime.
Gabriel stared at his bracelet. Then at hers. Then back at his.
He blinked once. Twice.
His shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly. His smugness evaporated like morning dew under that artificial sun. In its place came a wry, defeated smile—the smile of someone who had been thoroughly and utterly outplayed.
"First round goes to you," he admitted, his voice carrying a note of genuine admiration despite the loss.
Lilith floated closer, her tattered dragon wings folding against her back. She reached out and patted his cheek with one clawed finger, leaving no mark but plenty of mockery.
"Fufufu. Don’t worry, my love. There’s plenty of floor left."
Gabriel sighed, but his eyes had already hardened with resolve. He cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, and turned to survey the endless desert.
On this floor, I have to work harder, he thought. The competition runs until we clear this place.
The artificial sun blazed on.
Suddenly, from the distance, they could feel something approaching.
At first, it looked like a flock of aviary monsters—large birds, perhaps, or winged beasts migrating across the scorching desert. But as the shapes grew larger, sharper, more defined, the couple realized the truth.
Wyverns.
Dozens of them. Their bodies were long and serpentine, covered in scales the color of sun-baked copper. Leathery wings stretched wide, catching the artificial sunlight and casting jagged shadows across the dunes below. Their eyes burned like molten amber, and their jaws hung open, revealing rows of dagger-sharp teeth. From those jaws, smoke curled—thin plumes at first, then thicker, darker.
They were flying directly toward Gabriel and Lilith with clear enmity.
As they drew closer, the wyverns breathed flame.
Torrents of orange and red erupted from their throats, merging into a wall of fire that rolled across the desert sky like a tidal wave of molten fury. The heat was intense enough to melt stone, to turn sand to glass, to reduce lesser beings to ash before they could even scream.
The couple exchanged a look.
Then they smiled.
And shot toward the sky.
Lilith moved first.
Her bastard sword—dark as dried blood, crackling with purple lightning—materialized in her grip. The lightning coiled around the blade like living serpents, hissing and spitting, casting violent violet flashes across the desert. Her crimson robe billowed behind her, illusionary flames licking at its edges. Her silver hair streamed like a comet’s tail.
She did not charge into the wyvern flock blindly.
She isolated.
With a flick of her wrist, she activated her spatial ability. The air around the wyverns shimmered, twisted, and split. A dozen of the flying beasts—more than half of the flock—were torn from their formation, dragged into a separate pocket of distorted space. They tumbled through the air, roaring in confusion, their flames spraying harmlessly into the void.
Lilith followed them into that pocket.
Inside her spatial bubble, the sky was hers. The wyverns spun and snapped, trying to locate their prey. But she was everywhere and nowhere—appearing behind one to slash its wing, vanishing before its tail could strike, reappearing above another to drive her lightning-covered blade through its skull.
CRACK!
Purple lightning erupted from the wound, spreading through the wyvern’s body like a parasite, cooking it from the inside. The beast convulsed, screeched, and fell—not toward the desert below, but into an endless void within the spatial bubble.
Another wyvern lunged, jaws wide. Lilith tilted her head, let the teeth graze past her cheek, and drove her elbow into its throat. The impact sent a shockwave rippling through its body. Bones cracked. Scales shattered. The wyvern’s eyes went wide, then dim.
She grabbed its horn, spun, and hurled it into two others. All three exploded in a shower of copper scales and purple sparks.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each explosion was a symphony. Each kill was a verse. Lilith danced through the sky like a demon queen at a ball, her bastard sword singing deadly chorus, her lightning roaring like hungry beast, her laughter trailing behind her like a veil of silk.
’This, she thought, is what I live for apart for him.’
On the other side of the battlefield, Gabriel faced the remaining wyverns.
He did not charge. He did not dodge. He simply raised his hands.
Two long golden spears materialized—one in each palm. They were forged entirely from the Light element, their shafts translucent, their tips burning with a radiance that outshone the artificial sun. The light spilled from them in waves, washing over the desert below, turning shadows into day.
The wyverns hesitated. Their instincts screamed at them to flee. But they were creatures of the dungeon—born to kill, programmed to attack. They overcame their fear and lunged.
Gabriel smiled his benevolent smile.
And for the first time in this dungeon, he used his temporal ability.
Bullet Time.
It was not a dramatic gesture. No incantation, no glowing runes, no thunderous declaration. He simply willed it—and time around the wyverns ground to a crawl.
The beasts froze mid-lunge. Their flames hung in the air like frozen waterfalls—motionless, beautiful, harmless. Their wings beat once every ten seconds. Their amber eyes took an eternity to blink.
Gabriel walked through them.
He moved at normal speed, stepping from one frozen wyvern to the next. His golden spears flickered. A thrust here. A slash there. A spinning arc that severed three heads with a single motion.
Time resumed.
The wyverns did not even have time to scream.
One moment, they were lunging. The next, they were falling—their bodies torn apart, their scales scattered across the sky like copper rain, their blood painting the artificial sun in shades of crimson and gold.
BOOM.
The sound arrived late, as if even the shockwaves had been delayed by Gabriel’s power. A series of concussive blasts rippled outward, shaking the desert below, sending waves of sand racing toward the horizon.
Gabriel hovered in the center of the carnage, his golden wings spread wide, his spears dissolving into motes of light. His benevolent smile remained—soft, serene, utterly terrifying.
Too easy, he thought. But stylish.
On both sides of the divided battlefield, intense fights erupted.
Lilith’s pocket of distorted space flashed with purple lightning and crimson fire. The wyverns within roared and thrashed, but every attack missed, every lunge struck empty air, every breath of flame was swallowed by spatial rifts. Lilith moved through them like a ghost—untouchable, unstoppable, eternal.
BOOM!
A wyvern exploded from the inside as she drove her lightning blade through its chest.
CRACK!
Another was torn in half by a spatial slash she unleashed from fifty meters away.
FWOOSH!
A third was consumed by Hell flame—black fire that burned even as the beast tried to douse itself in the void.
Meanwhile, Gabriel continued his elegant massacre. He discarded the spears and created a bow of light—a massive, golden longbow that hummed with temporal energy. He drew back the string, and an arrow of condensed time materialized.
He released.
The arrow flew—not fast, but inevitably. No wyvern could dodge what existed outside of time. The arrow struck the lead beast, and time around it collapsed. The wyvern aged a thousand years in a second, its scales crumbling, its flesh withering, its bones turning to dust.
Gabriel fired again. And again. And again.
Each arrow found its mark. Each wyvern fell in a different way—some aged to nothing, some frozen mid-flight and shattered by follow-up strikes, some simply erased as Gabriel’s light consumed them whole.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The sounds of impact rolled across the desert like thunder. The artificial sun flickered, as if even it could not bear to watch.
In less than three minutes, the entire flock was destroyed.
Copper scales rained down upon the desert, glittering in the harsh light. Wyvern blood—thick and black—splattered across the sand, steaming in the heat. The air smelled of ozone, of burning flesh, of victory.
Lilith’s spatial bubble collapsed. She floated out of the void, her bastard sword resting on her shoulder, her crimson robe unmarred. Purple lightning still crackled around her fingertips, fading slowly.
Gabriel’s bow dissolved. He turned to face her, his golden wings folding elegantly behind him. Not a single feather was out of place, truly majestic, a sight to behold.
They looked at each other across the raining debris.
Lilith raised her golden bracelet. The number had climbed.
218.
Gabriel raised his.
217.
She was still ahead—but only by one.
"Fufufu," Lilith chuckled, her eyes gleaming.
"You’ll have to do better than that, my love."
Gabriel’s smile did not waver. "The floor is long. And I’m just getting warmed up."
Far below, the desert stretched endlessly—a new battlefield, a new hunting ground.
And somewhere deep within it, the dungeon’s core trembled.
This couple is dangerous extremely so, therefore it ought to increase the intensity using everything available to it.
