Still... He endured. One wolf fell. Then another. Then the third.
With every exchange, his understanding deepened. He stopped trying to follow their movements and instead focused on the fabric of space itself. The instant before each displacement, he sensed the faint disturbance left behind by the collapsing distance.
It was only a fraction of a second. But that fraction was enough. The final Rift Wolf lunged.
But Stan was already moving.
Both Bloodfangs crossed in a crimson arc, one deflecting the beast’s claws while the other pierced straight through its heart.
The wolf collapsed.
"Finally." Stan dropped to one knee, drawing ragged breaths as the adrenaline slowly ebbed from his body.
Only then did the voice return. "Clever. I thought I would have to guide you like last time."
Stan let out a dry scoff between shallow breaths. "Come on. It’s pretty obvious this is all connected. I have to use what I’ve learned to hurt beasts I couldn’t have fought otherwise. What was I supposed to do? Swing a normal sword harder?"
The voice chuckled, sounding genuinely pleased. "Don’t worry. These beasts are all in the same realm as you. Their techniques haven’t fully matured yet. As long as you don’t get reckless, you should be able to handle them."
Stan noted, almost absently, that the voice spoke to him with a warmth that suggested he was not considered an enemy. Ever since the endless corridor, he had been quietly piecing together a working theory of its motives.
So far, every observation pointed toward the same conclusion. The voice had possessed countless opportunities to kill him over the past hour. It had chosen not to.
At the very least, that suggested a neutral relationship. He still didn’t lower his guard. Neutral did not mean trustworthy.
The voice could decide, at any moment, that he had outlived his usefulness.
He remained alert as it spoke again. "The next guardian is coming."
A brief pause followed. "Try not to die, kid."
A faint amusement colored the final words. "I promise you... the gains will be worth it."
The next chamber held a single beast.
It was a mantis.
Over two meters tall, its body was a pure, light-devouring black that seemed to swallow the ambient glow around it. Its blade-like forearms were raised in a poised striking stance, long, curved scythes that shimmered with the same spatial distortion the Rift Wolves had possessed.
"Void Mantis," the voice said softly before falling silent once more.
Stan’s mastery immediately began analyzing it.
Its scythes did not simply cut flesh. They severed distance itself. With a single swing, the space between the mantis and its target collapsed, allowing the blade to arrive instantly regardless of how far away the target had been a heartbeat before.
Stan understood the principle before he even stepped into the chamber.
And he used that understanding against it.
He fought with a refined variation of the technique that had brought down the Rift Wolves. He no longer reacted to the visible strike. Instead, he read the space itself, sensing the subtle distortion gathering around the mantis’s scythes before they moved. He dodged the collapse of distance rather than the blade that followed.
Even so, he was struck twice.
Either blow would have killed an ordinary cultivator. His tempered bones endured.
Meanwhile, Bloodfang drank eagerly. Every time the mantis’s razor-sharp limbs scraped against the crimson blades during a block, tiny traces of its blood were absorbed. With each exchange, the twin daggers grew noticeably warmer in his hands, their faint hum deepening ever so slightly.
Stan waited.
One mistake.
One opening.
It came when the Void Mantis committed to a killing strike. As one scythe carved through empty space where his head had been a fraction of a second earlier, Stan slipped through the gap created by the collapsing distance and drove Bloodfang straight through the center of its body from behind.
The blade burst through its chest.
The Void Mantis shuddered once before collapsing in silence.
The next guardian came without warning. A ripple spread across a shallow pool of still water at the edge of the chamber.
Something rose from within. A serpent, nearly four meters long, its scales smooth as polished obsidian, slithered onto the stone floor. The instant its body fully emerged, it vanished.
A heartbeat later, it appeared within the reflective sheen of the chamber’s ceiling.
Then in the glossy surface of a nearby stone pillar.
Then, to Stan’s surprise, within the blackened surface of one of his Bloodfangs.
"Mirror Serpent," the voice murmured before falling silent once again.
Stan narrowed his eyes. The serpent wasn’t moving through space. It was moving through reflections.
Every polished surface in the chamber became a gateway. It could strike from the reflection in his own dagger, from the faint sheen of the stone walls, or even from the thin puddles of blood scattered across the floor.
There was no safe direction. Only safe moments.
Stan fought with deliberate precision. Every reflective surface within reach was shattered beneath controlled strikes. He kept Bloodfang in constant motion, ensuring neither blade held a clear reflection for more than a fleeting instant. Whenever the serpent lunged from one mirror to another, he tracked the subtle ripple that preceded its emergence instead of the attack itself.
The battle became one of patience.
Then, finally. The serpent emerged from the reflection of a fractured pillar a fraction too slowly.
Stan seized the opportunity.
One Bloodfang slammed its head against the stone floor, pinning it in place before it could retreat into another reflection. The second dagger descended immediately after, driving cleanly through its skull.
The Mirror Serpent convulsed once.
Then its body dissolved into countless motes of black light.
By this point, Stan found himself genuinely relieved that the guardians had faced him one at a time. Had even two of them appeared together, if the Void Mantis had hunted alongside the Rift Wolves, or the Mirror Serpent had shared the chamber with either of them, he would already be dead.
With a thought, he willed the remains of all three guardians into his inventory.
The system accepted them without a sound.
Whatever value their corpses possessed could be examined later.
Exhaling slowly, Stan straightened and turned toward the next passage.