MTLNOVEL Chapter 138: Tell me your name.
Time seemed to freeze around Ricky.
The blood coating his hand was still warm—thick, rich, and unnervingly tender. It clung to his skin like a cruel memory, refusing to fade.
Ricky slowly raised his hand, his cold, steely eyes locked onto the crimson smear as if trying to sear its image into his soul.
A battlefield was not a place for sentiment. This was a truth carved into his bones, but even so… this moment served as a brutal reminder. One slip. One hesitation. And this could be him—lifeless, cold, forgotten.
The lifeless body of the undead princess at his feet hadn't even cooled yet, her death a brutal echo of that truth.
But his attention was no longer on her.
His gaze had already shifted—to her.
The one who had just appeared.
The number bloomed in his mind, unbidden.
Twenty-nine.
It struck him as if someone had whispered it directly into his thoughts.
The difference between this one and the others was staggering. Her aura... it didn't ripple, flare, or dominate. It simply wasn't there. No pressure. No presence. No trace of mana in the air around her.
It was as if the world had simply accepted her as part of the background, as if she'd always been there—unnoticed.
Ricky's heart skipped a beat. His instincts screamed.
This wasn't some suppression technique or illusion. This was mastery. It felt less like hiding and more like absolute, effortless control.
If he hadn't been staring right at her, he wouldn't have known she existed.
An icy chill seeped into his bones.
Such invisibility should belong to mortals, to the weak. Not to the elites of the undead court. But there she stood—no tricks, no drama, no grand announcement—just her presence, or lack thereof, and that silent weight that smothered the battlefield like falling snow.
Now he understood.
It wasn't that she couldn't be found.
She chose not to be.
And no one—no one—could find her unless she allowed it.
Her eyes met his. Calm. Still. Deep as ancient waters before a tsunami.
Twenty-nine.
She didn't need to speak for Ricky to feel it. She was different. A storm hiding in plain sight.
Thud!
The soft, final impact of a body falling broke the spell.
The dead princess's corpse collapsed, her limbs loose, her head lolling to the side in a silent surrender to death. That quiet, hollow sound snapped Ricky out of his trance.
His eyes narrowed.
No words were needed.
The storm of darkness inside him surged to life, and without hesitation, Ricky's figure blurred—his body dissolving into a tempest of shadows.
He launched forward.
Straight toward Twenty-nine.
Felicia and Darius exchanged shocked glances, their eyes mirroring the same raw disbelief.
Just moments ago, they had witnessed the overwhelming power of the undead princess—an aura that should have shattered their will just by existing. Yet now, her cold body lay lifeless, and the one responsible stood calmly in the aftermath.
Ricky had ended her in the blink of an eye.
The two seasoned warriors, despite their experience, took a second longer than usual to digest what they had just seen. But at least they managed to process it.
Kale, however, was a different story.
The proud scion of the Iron Fang Legion stood paralyzed, emotions twisting violently in his chest. It was like the floor beneath him had crumbled. One moment he had been a heaven-blessed warrior, striving for an ancient legacy passed down through generations. The next, he had become a mere pawn—no, worse, a puppet—dangling on the strings of someone he detested.
Ricky.
Kale hated everything about this situation—the unfairness, the powerlessness, and above all, the man who had turned his pride into a joke. Rage festered inside him, but his fists were clenched in futility. There was no path forward. He wanted to scheme, to plan, to seize back control. But seeing Ricky now… any flicker of hope he'd been nurturing died a cold death.
Meanwhile, those who had not yet stepped into the ranks of Stage 3—people like Boar and Ramon—could barely comprehend what had just happened. Their perception failed them entirely. To their eyes, the undead princess had merely appeared... and then died without resistance.
A dream.
That's what it felt like. As though they were sleepwalking through a myth unfolding before them.
Their hearts beat with excitement—how could it not? Yet, not a single one dared to cheer. Not now.
They understood something instinctively, something primal: cheering in front of a predator was foolish.
Their steps didn't falter, but they grew heavier with reverence.
And behind them, silence once more wrapped the battlefield in a suffocating stillness.
Ricky had no idea what his subordinates were thinking—nor did he care.
Right now, it felt as though he were walking a razor's edge, one misstep away from death. The stakes were far too high. Every breath was laced with danger, every moment a gamble with fate.
His heart pounded like a war drum, deafening in his ears.
He could hear the blood surging through his veins.
Badum! Badum!
Drawing a deep breath, Ricky stepped forward from the folds of shadow. His figure emerged like a wraith from the void, and his eyes... they radiated a frigid, predatory chill—enough to freeze a soul mid-scream.
He didn't utter a word.
Yet somehow, Twenty-nine—the silent reaper who stood before him—heard something. A whisper slithered through her ears like a prophecy being fulfilled.
"Darkness Pulse."
It was as if the world itself had spoken.
Swoosh!
In an instant, reality dimmed.
The light—gone.
The clatter of undead bones—gone.
The wet, sickening flow of blood—gone.
All of it was swallowed into an unnatural silence, devoured by a singularity of darkness that twisted space into a blackened knot.
And then—an explosion.
No time to breathe, no time to recover.
The same voice echoed again.
Cold. Unstoppable. Divine.
"Darkness Pulse!"
Then once more.
"Darkness Pulse!"
Three waves of obliteration.
Each one, a void unto itself.
If a single Darkness Pulse could suffocate the very air, then three in tandem resembled an extinction event—pure annihilation wrapped in silence and fury.
The space around Ricky warped, shadows clawing wildly, as if the fabric of reality were being torn apart.
And yet... even as the pulses erupted point-blank in front of her, Twenty-nine's expression remained eerily calm.
Not a flicker of fear. Not even a ripple of surprise.
She simply stared into the abyss—
As though she had been waiting for it all along.
The land for tens of kilometers… simply ceased to exist.
There was no crater, no scorched earth—just a void. A stretch of pure, oppressive nothingness where matter itself had been devoured. It was as if the very concept of existence had been swallowed by an unseen mouth of nihilism.
Darius and the others could only gape at the dome of total darkness looming before them, stretching impossibly high into the sky like a curtain drawn across reality. No light. No sound. No movement. Just an overwhelming silence that pressed against their ears like cotton stuffed into their heads.
The undead horde was gone—erased so thoroughly that not even bones remained.
Twenty-nine had vanished too.
It wasn't an explosion. There was no roar, no shockwave, no crumbling of earth or rupture of air. Sound itself had been consumed. Like a black hole that swallowed not just the physical, but even the rules that governed it.
Slowly, steadily, the void began to shrink.
The suffocating darkness thinned, dispersing into the ether like mist retreating at dawn, just like ocean water on a moonless day.
A complete and utter stillness settled across the battlefield. The kind of silence that weighed on one's soul.
Ricky stood in the eye of it all, taking deep, controlled breaths. He didn't lower his guard. Not even slightly. His hands remained clenched, his body half-crouched in readiness.
His compound eyes glowed faintly, unwavering as they scanned the dissipating gloom.
He wanted to believe Twenty-nine had been destroyed—crushed beneath the weight of his triple Darkness Pulse. But logic clawed at that hope like a whisper in the back of his mind.
She won't die that easily...
And just then…
A figure emerged from the lingering smoke.
Tattered. Charred. Her skin blackened and peeling. But she stood tall, back straight like a spear stabbed into the ground.
Twenty-nine.
Her rabbit mask was half-melted, revealing part of her pale, emotionless face beneath. The hole in her chest still oozed corrupted energy, but her eyes—one hollow, the other glowing faintly red—locked onto Ricky with inhuman focus.
Ricky's pupils narrowed into razor-thin slits.
She's still alive…
Then came a silence that felt infinite—an unnatural stillness that seemed to stretch beyond time itself, weighing down on the world like a suffocating veil.
Even the air held its breath.
Ricky remained poised, tension crackling through every fiber of his being. He could feel something stirring—an unseen gaze, ancient and cold, crawling across his skin like phantom fingers.
And just as he braced himself for the next clash…
A voice—icy, regal, and impossibly distant—echoed directly in his mind.
"How… interesting."
"A mere pest, yet you've managed to impress me."
"Tell me… your name."