Dungeon Corpse Stacker: I Absorb Everything to Become Ominous Monarch
Chapter 21: The March of the Abyss

Chapter 21: Chapter 21: The March of the Abyss

The rain over the Northern Highway had stopped, but the sky did not return to its normal azure blue.

A permanent, hundred-mile-wide mantle of pitch-black shadow clouds covered the sky from Sector 1 all the way to the outer perimeter of the Capital City. The atmospheric pressure inside the shadow corridor was so dense that birds fell from the sky, their wings pinned to their bodies by the sheer gravitational weight radiating from the highway below.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The sound was not a chaotic rumble; it was a single, terrifying, rhythmic heartbeat echoing through the earth.

Two thousand eight hundred Shadow Knights marched in five perfect military columns across the eight-lane concrete highway.

At the front of the legion stood Shadow General Ignis, its seven-foot frame clad in black-and-gold synthesized armor, its eight-foot broadsword resting on its shoulder, dripping with dark violet flames. Beside Ignis marched the newly raised Shadow Commanders—the dark silhouettes of Marcus Vane, Catherine Vance, and Kaelen Voss—their eyes glowing with cold, absolute loyalty to their new master.

At the center of the marching army, walking with calm, unhurried steps, was Renan.

His sleek, midnight-black combat coat fluttered gently in the cold mountain draft. He didn’t carry armor. He didn’t carry weapons. Yet the passive radiance of his [5,280 Strength] and [9,800 Mana] made the space around his boots warp, leaving faint, distortion ripples in the air with every step he took.

[System Status: Tier-3 Monarch Awakening (Active)] [Current Shadow Army Capacity: UNLIMITED] [Monarch’s Passive Aura: Terrifying Pressure (Domain Range: Global)]

In the sky three miles above the marching legion, four stealth military news drones hovered on silent rotors, streaming high-definition optical feeds directly to every news network, government office, and military command bunker across the continent.

The broadcast ticker running along the bottom of millions of screens was plain, white, and frozen in absolute dread:

[NATIONAL EMERGENCY LEVEL 5: THE SOVEREIGN LEGION IS MARCHING ON THE CAPITAL]

Inside the subterranean war room of the National Military Command Center in the Capital City, forty miles ahead of Renan’s position.

The air was ice-cold, yet every general, senator, and high-tier military strategist in the room was drenched in sweat.

President William—a sixty-year-old former S-Rank Hunter who had served two terms as the head of the National Hunter Association—stood at the head of a massive mahogany war table. His knuckles were white, pressing so hard against the polished wood that the mahogany creaked under his weight.

On the three-story central holographic display, the satellite map tracked the red dot marking Renan’s army as it moved steadily down Highway 9 at thirty miles per hour.

"Mr. President!" a four-star general slammed his hand onto the control console, his face flushed red with desperation. "Garrison Division 4 has been completely overrun at Checkpoint Delta! The automated plasma turrets overheated and melted before the shadow soldiers even crossed the bridge!"

"What about the heavy artillery?!" President William barked, his voice raspy. "Where are the tactical mana-warheads we authorized from the central armory?!"

"They... they fired three tactical mana-warheads ten minutes ago, sir..." a young female communications officer stammered, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "The warheads detonated directly over the center of his marching formation..."

"And?!" William demanded, leaning forward. "Did it vaporize him?!"

The officer pulled up a secondary thermal display on the main screen.

The satellite feed showed the massive, mushroom-cloud explosion of blue tactical mana energy clearing over the highway.

Standing in the exact center of the scorched, hundred-foot-wide crater was Renan.

He hadn’t even taken his hands out of his coat pockets. The dark violet sphere of his [Monarch’s Domain] had absorbed the entire ten-megaton plasma blast like a sponge absorbing a drop of water. Not a single shadow soldier in his army had taken a single point of damage.

A dead, suffocating silence fell over the forty generals in the war room.

President William stumbled backward, hitting his leather chair, his jaw slack, his chest heaving with shallow, panicked breaths.

"A ten-megaton tactical mana-strike... didn’t even scratch his coat..." William whispered, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror. "He’s not a human Hunter anymore... He’s an apex calamity... a god walking on Earth..."

"Mr. President!" the four-star general shouted, grabbing a red leather binder from the table. "We have one final line of defense before he reaches the Capital gates! The Capital Iron Wall!"

William looked up at the holographic map.

The Capital Iron Wall was a legendary defense system constructed fifty miles south of Sector 1. It consisted of a two-hundred-foot-tall wall made of solid mithril-adamantine alloy, fortified with forty Class-S defensive barrier nodes, six thousand elite Association Hunters, and led by the country’s top three National-Level Hunters—the men known as the Three Pillars of the Nation.

Commander Thorne (National-Level Vanguard): The strongest physical tank in the continent, possessing an indestructible titan body skill.

Archmage Zephyr (National-Level Elementalist): Capable of summoning continent-wide blizzards and meteors.

Shadowblade Ren (National-Level Assassin): The fastest blade master in the Eastern Hemisphere.

President William closed his eyes, taking a long, ragged breath before snapping them open with desperate resolve.

"Authorize the deployment of the Three Pillars," William commanded into his golden encryption microphone. "Tell Thorne, Zephyr, and Ren that if they fail to stop him at the Iron Wall... there will be no capital left to defend."

Forty minutes later. The Capital Iron Wall — Border Sector 0.

The two-hundred-foot-tall mithril wall stretched across the horizon like a metallic mountain range, blocking the entire eight-lane highway corridor.

Top the reinforced battlements stood six thousand elite Association Hunters clad in sparkling mithril tactical gear. Heavy automated mana cannons hummed with dangerous blue energy every five yards. Four hundred high-tier mages stood on floating platforms, chanting wide-area defense spells that cast a shimmering, golden hexagonal barrier over the entire wall structure.

Standing in the center of the main gate platform were the Three Pillars of the Nation.

Commander Thorne—a giant of a man eight feet tall, wearing obsidian titan armor that weighed four tons—stood with his hands resting on a massive tower shield that pulsed with crimson energy.

Beside him, Archmage Zephyr—an elderly man in glowing white robes holding a staff tipped with a Tier-S Dragon Core—hovered three feet off the ground, cold wind swirling around his long beard.

To his right, Shadowblade Ren—a thin, masked man wrapped in black leather—stood motionless, his hand resting on the hilt of a razor-thin kusanagi blade that flickered in and out of physical reality.

"He’s approaching," Shadowblade Ren said softly, his voice echoing from behind his silver mask. "Three miles out. His stat density is... unnatural. I can’t even read his spiritual core."

Archmage Zephyr narrowed his glowing blue eyes, tapping his staff against the stone rampart. "It matters not how high his mana is, Ren. The Iron Wall is anchored to six subterranean mana cores. Not even a Class-SS Dragon can breach this structure."

Commander Thorne let out a deep, gravelly chuckle, slamming his four-ton tower shield into the floorboards, causing the entire rampart to vibrate. "Let the porter come! I’ve been waiting for a real fight since the Class-S Gate Break five years ago! I’ll crush his shadow soldiers into black mud!"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The ground beneath the two-hundred-foot wall began to vibrate.

The six thousand Hunters on the battlements raised their weapons, their knuckles white, sweat dripping down their faces despite the freezing wind.

From the dark fog three miles down the highway, the dark violet sky expanded outward, swallowing the golden hexagonal barrier hovering over the wall in a fraction of a second.

[Skill Activated: Monarch’s Domain (Rank-S - Expanded)] [Domain Area Established: 10 Kilometers!] [6,000 Association Hunters Suppressed by 30%!] [Three Pillars Attributes Suppressed by 20%!]

THUD-THUD-THUD!

Across the two-hundred-foot ramparts, two thousand A-Rank Hunters collapsed onto their knees simultaneously, vomiting blood as the atmospheric pressure inside the ten-kilometer domain spiked to lethal levels.

"UHG!" Commander Thorne gritted his teeth, his four-ton titan armor groaning under the sudden gravitational surge. "This domain... it’s suppressing my physical strength by twenty percent?!"

"He’s here!" Archmage Zephyr yelled, his staff glowing with blinding blue mana.

Emerging from the black fog at the base of the two-hundred-foot wall was a single young man in a black coat.

Renan stopped fifty yards from the massive mithril gate.

Behind him, two thousand eight hundred Shadow Knights stood in silence, their crimson visors burning like a sea of dying stars in the pitch-black mist.

Renan looked up at the two-hundred-foot mithril wall, his purple pupils glowing through the dark rain. His gaze swept over six thousand terrified Hunters, resting finally on the Three Pillars standing at the center.

"Three Pillars of the Nation," Renan’s voice rang out, quiet yet carrying across the ten-kilometer domain with absolute, divine authority. "You stand in the way of my retribution."

Commander Thorne stepped to the edge of the rampart, pointing his giant war hammer at Renan.

"You’ve gone far enough, Renan!" Thorne roared, his voice booming across the plaza. "You destroyed Apex Guild! You slaughtered the Regional Coalition! But the Capital is where your spree ends! Submit to the National Council, or we will erase you from history!"

Renan slowly raised his right hand, making a simple, casual fist in the open air.

"Submit?" Renan asked softly.

He didn’t draw a blade. He didn’t order Ignis to charge.

Renan stepped into a low, relaxed stance, pulling his right fist back as dark violet lightning and Marcus’s extracted blood-flame mana surged around his knuckles, warping space around his arm.

[Current Physical Strength: 5,280 Points] [Mana Density: 9,800 Units]

"A wall built by men," Renan whispered, his eyes flashing with an unholy radiance, "is just a monument waiting to crumble."

Renan threw a simple, straight punch into the center of the two-hundred-foot mithril gate.

The kinetic shockwave didn’t just break the two-hundred-foot mithril gate—it folded the entire three-mile-long Capital Iron Wall like wet cardboard, blasting six thousand Hunters and the Three Pillars into the air as a hundred-foot tsunami of dark violet fire swept directly into the Capital’s outer district.