Dungeon Corpse Stacker: I Absorb Everything to Become Ominous Monarch
Chapter 15: The Ascent of Blood

Chapter 15: Chapter 15: The Ascent of Blood

The interior of Apex Guild Headquarters smelled of expensive leather, polished marble, and burning circuit boards.

Inside the fifty-story central atrium, two hundred remaining mercenaries from the Iron Blood Corps stood clustered around the glass elevator shafts, their high-tier enchanted rifles and heavy plasma broadswords aimed blindly at the smoke-filled entrance.

"Hold the line!" a mercenary captain shouted, his voice echoing off the glass walls, laced with cold sweat. "The elevators are locked down! The emergency stairwells are reinforced with three-inch titanium plates! He can’t get to the upper floors without—"

BOOM!

The words died in his throat as the heavy titanium doors of the express elevator shaft blew outward with a deafening screech of tearing metal.

A towering, seven-foot silhouette stepped through the thick smoke and twisted steel girders.

Shadow General Ignis didn’t look at the two hundred mercenaries. It simply gripped the hilt of its eight-foot executioner’s broadsword, its burning crimson eyes glowing through its horned dragon visor.

"Sovereign’s Order," Ignis’s voice boomed like thunder inside the hollow atrium. "Clear the path."

FWHOOSH!

Ignis raised its left arm, activating its synthesized skill: [Phantom Mirage (Rank-S)].

In less than a microsecond, the seven-foot Shadow General split into twenty distinct shadow clones. Each clone, radiating a terrifying 1,800 Strength stat density, lunged into the ranks of the mercenaries like black lightning.

Screams of pain, the shattering of enchanted armor, and the thunderous explosions of useless plasma grenades filled the atrium.

The fifty Shadow Knights followed behind, moving floor by floor in a methodical, terrifying sweep. They didn’t take the stairs; they leaped straight through the concrete floor slabs, breaking through three stories at a time, turning the five-star headquarters into a vertical slaughterhouse.

Renan didn’t participate in the carnage on the lower floors.

He stepped onto the central glass elevator platform, his boots crunching over the shards of broken glass. He calmly reached out his bare hand, pressing the top button labeled PH — PENTHOUSE.

BEEP.

The high-speed express elevator, powered by its own independent mana-generator, began its fifty-story ascent through the center of the hollow atrium.

As the glass platform rose, Renan looked through the transparent walls. On every floor he passed, he saw the same picture:

Floor 12: Ten mercenary vanguards slammed through the exterior glass windows by Ignis’s shadow clones, plunging hundreds of feet to the pavement below.

Floor 25: Apex Guild’s elite mages firing high-tier fireballs that evaporated harmlessly against the obsidian shields of the Shadow Knights.

Floor 40: The executive security division dropping their weapons and begging for mercy, only to be bound in shadow tendrils and forced onto their knees.

Fifty floors. Two hundred elite mercenaries.

Cleared in less than three minutes.

DING.

The express elevator came to a smooth halt at the fiftieth floor. The polished brass doors slid open without a sound.

Renan stepped out onto the plush, burgundy carpet of the Guild Master’s private penthouse suite.

The vast room was illuminated by the pale moonlight filtering through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, mixing with the rain streaming down the exterior panes. The city below was a sea of glittering neon lights, but inside the penthouse, the air was cold, still, and heavy with the stench of fear.

Standing at the far end of the room, behind an obsidian desk strewn with empty mana-potion vials, was Guild Master Richard.

Richard had discarded his suit jacket. He wore a heavy, golden-infused mithril chest plate over his blood-stained medical bandages. In his right hand, he held his backup legendary weapon—a massive, two-handed golden claymore named [Excalibur’s Vengeance], glowing with an unstable, blinding yellow aura.

Richard’s hands were shaking so violently that the heavy tip of the golden claymore tapped against the mahogany floorboards.

TICK-TACK. TICK-TACK.

"You... you made it all the way up here..." Richard wheezed, his voice raspy, his eyes bloodshot and wide with unadulterated madness. "You slaughtered three hundred men... you destroyed my life’s work..."

Renan stopped ten paces away. He didn’t raise a guard. He didn’t summon a weapon.

He stood quietly under the moonlight, his dark combat coat fluttering gently in the draft from a cracked glass window. His purple pupils glowed like cold embers in the dark.

"Your life’s work was built on a foundation of corpses, Richard," Renan said softly, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "You took nameless F-Rank porters—desperate men with sick families, young kids with no options—and treated them like disposable mana-batteries for your dungeon raids."

Richard let out a harsh, hysterical laugh, spitting blood onto his golden breastplate.

"THEY WERE TRASH!" Richard screamed, his voice cracking as he slammed the butt of his claymore onto the floor. "They were F-Ranks! Weaklings! Parasites who added nothing to humanity’s fight against the dungeons! I gave them a purpose! I let them serve the strong!"

Richard stepped forward, his eyes burning with a desperate, murderous glare.

"I am an S-Rank Guild Master!" Richard roared, his yellow aura expanding into a sixty-foot storm of golden holy fire. "I am one of the pillars of this country! The world needs men like me to survive! Who the hell are you to judge me?!"

"Who am I?" Renan took a single step forward.

[Skill Activated: Monarch’s Domain (Rank-S)]

CRACK-LE!

A wave of pitch-black shadow energy erupted from Renan’s boots, instantly painting the plush burgundy carpet black. The shadow domain expanded across the entire penthouse, suffocating Richard’s golden holy aura like a wet blanket thrown over a tiny candle flame.

The temperature in the room dropped to thirty degrees below zero. The rain outside froze against the glass panes into jagged crimson ice.

Richard felt a sudden, crushing weight slam onto his shoulders—as if a mountain had been dropped straight onto his spine. His knees buckled, cracking the mahogany floorboards beneath his boots as his golden aura was suppressed by thirty percent.

"WARNING: Physical Attributes Reduced by 30%. Mana Output Suppressed."

"I am the porter you left to die in the dark, Richard," Renan whispered. His voice didn’t just fill the room—it echoed inside Richard’s mind, vibrating straight through his skull.

Renan opened his right palm. Dark violet lightning sparkled around his fingers, reflecting off the cold glass walls.

"And tonight, I am the one taking back everything you stole."

"DIE, YOU DEMON!" Richard screamed, snapping under the sheer psychological pressure.

Richard used the last reserves of his S-Rank mana, pushing his body past its physical limits. He kicked off the cracked floorboards, blurring into a streak of desperate golden light—[S-Rank Skill: Dragon’s Judgement].

He crossed the ten-meter gap in a fraction of a millisecond, aiming the glowing six-foot golden claymore straight at Renan’s throat in a two-handed decapitation strike.

It was the strongest, most desperate attack Richard had ever delivered in his twenty-year career as an S-Rank Hunter. An attack meant to split a Class-S Boss monster in half.

Renan didn’t dodge. He didn’t use [Aegis Shell].

He simply raised his left hand, spreading his bare fingers wide.

CLANG!

The sonic shockwave shattered every single floor-to-ceiling glass window in the fifty-story penthouse simultaneously.

A hundred-mile-per-hour gale of rainy wind blasted into the room, blowing away curtains, papers, and empty potion vials.

Guild Master Richard’s jaw dropped so low his breath hitched in his throat.

The six-foot legendary golden claymore—delivering thirty tons of kinetic force—was stopped completely in mid-air.

Renan’s bare left hand had caught the razor-sharp edge of the blade.

Not a single drop of blood leaked from Renan’s palm. The enchanted golden steel, capable of slicing through adamantine, couldn’t even indent the skin of his [1,770 Vitality] and [Aegis Shell] passive density.

[Strength Check:] [Renan: 1,500] [Richard (Suppressed by Domain): 520] [Result: Absolute Domination.]

"Is this... all the power of an S-Rank Guild Master?" Renan asked softly, his purple eyes looking directly into Richard’s terrified pupils through the dark rain.

Richard tried to pull his claymore back, his face turning purple with exertion, but Renan’s grip held the blade like a solid titanium vise.

"M-My full-power strike..." Richard whimpered, tears of absolute terror mixing with the sweat on his face. "With your bare hand...? You’re... you’re not human..."

"No," Renan whispered, stepping into Richard’s personal space.

He twisted his left wrist.

CRACK-SHATTER!

The eighty-million-credit legendary golden claymore shattered into hundreds of glowing yellow metal shards, raining down onto the wet carpet like dying sparks.

Before Richard could even scream, Renan’s right hand shot out like a striking viper, grabbing Richard by his throat and lifting his entire three-hundred-pound armored body five feet off the ground with one arm.

GRAB!

Richard thrashed wildly, his boots kicking empty air, his hands frantically clawing at Renan’s wrist, but Renan’s arm remained as unyielding as cold iron.

"This is for every nameless porter you sacrificed, Richard," Renan said, his voice dropping into a dark, terrifying register as dark violet lightning began to erupt from his palm.

[Target: Live S-Rank Guild Master (Richard) Detected.] [Initiating Final Extraction...]

As Richard let out his final, blood-curdling scream, the dark violet lightning consumed his body in front of the shattered penthouse windows—while across the entire city below, every electronic billboard flickered back on, broadcasting the live feed of Apex Guild Headquarters’ dark flag falling from the fifty-story roof.