Chapter 23: The Throne Room

  The route was already decided. With the path Eoin provided, the trip was fast—not because the place was kind, but because Katherine wasn’t giving the “game” any room to breathe. They took the shortest path, the cleanest one, the least interesting one. Anything that smelled like a “puzzle” or a “set piece” got ignored with the same coldness you use to ignore a dead animal on the roadside.

  In her plan, there was no margin left to keep wasting time in the castle, no matter how tempting it sounded.

  There were traps. Of course.

  A corridor that tried to twist into a spiral to separate them. A floor that became “slippery” as a concept, not as a material. Spikes that came from nowhere, walls that closed. Even living suits of armor—except it turned out they had a Dinamo copy inside.

  None of it worked.

  Every one of them moved in sync, following the pre-designed route that led them, without doubt, toward the hardest challenge in the castle.

  Dinamo. The real one, obviously.

  Katherine didn’t say a word.

  There was nothing to say.

  Dinamo was waiting for them, and everyone knew it. They knew they’d soon have to entertain him again. And that, most likely, some of them would have to die for the “show” to continue.

  Thinking about it only led down a dangerous, dark road.

  The final hallway opened as if the castle had finally decided to stop pretending. The scale changed in an instant: the ceiling rose, the walls pulled back, and the air became “taller.” It wasn’t a chamber yet, but it already felt like an antechamber.

  At the far end, a door awaited them.

  Immense.

  It wasn’t golden like something. It was pure gold. No alloy. No shame. Etched with strange engravings—inscriptions that looked like letters and circuits at the same time, symbols that belonged to no known human language. A piece designed to humiliate reality, like everything else.

  In the center, carved large, a single word:

  DINAMO.

  Not a symbol. Not a title. Not a metaphor.

  His name, as if the castle needed to remind the universe who was in charge. Even the music that had followed them until now rode that tension forward.

  Katherine stopped just long enough to confirm the obvious: they’d arrived before Hanami and Dimitri. She could feel them far away. Still in transit. Still running against the clock of a place that didn’t even respect the concept of “distance” in any stable way.

  Baek didn’t wait for an order. Or a ceremony.

  He stepped forward with that calm of his that was starting to get irritating purely because of how efficient it was. He planted himself in front of the door, set one hand on the hilt of his jingum, and exhaled.

  The cut wasn’t theatrical.

  It was clean.

  The blade came down and the gold split like damp wood—not because the material was weak (after all, it was a mix of unbreakable polymers), but because the sword’s raw material was superior.

  The door gave.

  The blade finished its arc, and the entire structure divided into two perfect halves, opening with a deep, heavy groan, as if the castle had been forced to accept the disrespect.

  On the other side was the throne room.

  It was enormous.

  Mostly empty.

  Not empty from poverty or lack of design. Empty like a boss arena: space to move, space to fight, space so the spectacle didn’t feel cramped. A perfect stage.

  The floor was smooth, polished, threaded with lines that didn’t form patterns until you stared too long and realized—yes, there was a pattern. An obsessive one. Repeated. Perfect.

  The walls rose without seams or visible columns. The ceiling disappeared into a golden haze that wasn’t steam or dust:

  It was creation in its pure state.

  At the far end, on a podium that was also gold, rested a throne of marble and gold. A ridiculous object—heavy, unnecessary.

  Worthy of a god.

  And seated there…

  Dinamo.

  He looked comfortable, like the entire place was his living room.

  He wasn’t lounging like in the previous transmission from the castle. Now he sat upright, with a posture that mimicked dignity, though that natural mockery still lived in his eyes.

  He looked at them like late guests.

  He smiled.

  “Greetings, my dear guests.”

  His voice filled the room without echo. It didn’t need one.

  “I hope you enjoyed the hospitality of my castle.”

  He made a broad gesture, pointing around, as if the gold, the labyrinths, and the traps were a tourist tour.

  No one answered.

  Not out of fear.

  Out of exhaustion.

  And because, in that moment, something changed.

  The ambient music swelled. It went from a rising tension to shameless epicness—like someone had turned a dial on a console.

  And in the air, with the delicacy of an interface that didn’t need permission, a health bar began to appear.

  At first it was just an outline. Then color, volume, symbols. A huge horizontal line floating in the void, with segments, numbers that didn’t belong to any human system, and a name above it:

  DINAMO.

  Not “Final Boss.” Not “God.” Not “Creator.”

  His name.

  As if reality had surrendered and accepted that this was a game.

  Freya let out a short laugh—no joy in it, just a way to underline how hilarious the situation was.

  Yehiel stared with scrutiny at the existence in front of him. He refused to acknowledge him as a god. But he couldn’t keep the curiosity out of his expression—after all, Dinamo was an unlimited source of knowledge. Still, Yehiel knew this wasn’t the moment for questions. That moment had passed.

  Katherine didn’t look at the bar for more than an instant. To her, it was just another data point: Dinamo was setting the pace. Setting the tone.

  He was saying, Here I am. His way of presenting the stage.

  Dinamo rose from the throne slowly, as if deliberately giving the health bar time to “lock in.” His cape—this time, yes, there was a cape—fell perfectly over his shoulders. His white tunic had no wrinkles. His blond hair looked lit from within.

  He smiled like someone about to open a gift.

  “That’s why, for the final event, I’ve created the perfect stage,” he said. “A throne room vast enough that we won’t feel suffocated.”

  He took a step forward. The sound of his footfall wasn’t a sound—it was a conceptual “click.” Like the place confirming the host was moving.

  “I even prepared some nice rewards for when this is over.”

  Rewards.

  The word sounded filthy in a context where most of them didn’t expect to survive.

  Katherine watched him without changing her expression. If she thought anything, she didn’t show it. She only adjusted her synthetic posture—minimal correction, like a weapon calibrating.

  Caetano, to Katherine’s side, didn’t react. He was too focused on what was coming, searching for ways to support without wearing himself down too much in case everything else failed and he had to intervene.

  Right then, the air behind them trembled.

  A playful presence entered like a badly placed joke.

  “Faster! Redhead, we’re missing the cutscene.”

  Hanami appeared at the edge of the room with a huge grin, like she’d arrived late to a theater show and found it funny. Beside her, space tore open with violence.

  Dimitri.

  He landed like a human projectile. Eyes red with fury, body loaded, breathing heavy. He didn’t greet. Didn’t look at the room. Didn’t admire the gold.

  He only aimed at the throne, the podium, at Dinamo.

  And he roared.

  An animal sound, without language.

  He tried to advance immediately, like the health bar was a personal insult. Like the concept of “waiting” was an offense—or simply no longer meant anything to him.

  Hanami dodged him naturally, like she was used to Dimitri trying to crush her every time she spoke.

  “Ay, ay, ay—easy, big guy. Let the Final Boss finish talking.”

  Dimitri tried to grab her again.

  She wasn’t there anymore.

  Dinamo, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch.

  He watched them arrive with genuine satisfaction, like a host whose table had finally filled.

  “Good,” he said, as if closing a chapter. “But let’s leave the words for another time.”

  He raised his left hand.

  And the object appeared.

  A staff.

  It didn’t look like a golden-gas “creation” like the improvised weapons they’d already seen. It was too real. Too stable. Too solid to be a whim.

  The material had that pale, almost indifferent sheen—indigo.

  A sheen Katherine knew far too well.

  The same miraculous material.

  The one that could kill him.

  The one Dinamo avoided crossing with stupidity.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  The staff was shaped like a royal symbol, with fine details, engravings that weren’t decorative but instructional—as if every line were a clause in a contract.

  In his right hand, a crown appeared.

  Simple, by the standards of the place. Which was saying a lot.

  Dinamo held it calmly, looking at it like someone checking an accessory before stepping onstage. Then he placed it on his head—slowly.

  There was no explosion.

  No aura.

  Just a change in the air.

  As if the castle, the room, the health bar, and the whole broadcast had recognized a state.

  King.

  Dinamo smiled, pleased with himself.

  “For this fight, I’ve prepared two weapons worthy of a king,” he said.

  The staff rested in his hand like it had always belonged there.

  The crown sat perfectly.

  Dinamo lifted his gaze to them.

  “I hope you can entertain me.”

  Silence tightened.

  It wasn’t a dramatic pause.

  It was the exact instant before the world broke again.

  The battle was about to begin.

  Dinamo finished adjusting the crown like he was fixing an accessory for a photo.

  And before the first clash exploded, Katherine spoke.

  “Since when do you possess that material?”

  Her gaze didn’t leave the staff. Not the design. Not the symbolism. The pale sheen of the miraculous material—the one that shouldn’t exist in the hands of someone like Dinamo as a “tool.”

  She had no interest in conversation.

  But she did want to understand.

  ?It’s the first time I’ve seen him use it. If he’s had it for a long time, every calculation changes. I have to redesign strategies.?

  Dinamo raised the staff like a cup.

  “Ah, this?” he said with a light smile. “It’s just a trinket.”

  And he pointed to the crown with a slower gesture, almost theatrical.

  “Unfortunately, I’m incapable of using my creation ability while I’m acting as the final boss. Don’t you think I need something to defend myself?”

  The line was absurd—and coming from him, too specific to be just a joke.

  Katherine narrowed her eyes. She wanted to ask again. And Dinamo seemed more than willing to keep “explaining” in that satisfied host voice.

  But someone couldn’t wait.

  Dimitri roared.

  The sound cut through the room like a strike. There was no technique, no plan, no reading the environment. Just pure fury—an animal need to reach Dinamo and split him in two.

  He forgot Hanami. Forgot the podium. Forgot everything.

  He attacked.

  In his current state, he didn’t have the mental capacity to understand the situation—or to care.

  Dinamo watched him coming and sighed, almost disappointed.

  “How rude.”

  And with irritating calm, he added:

  “You’re lucky I want to let you live a little longer.”

  Then, instead of responding to Dimitri, he did the unthinkable.

  Hanami felt it first.

  Not because she saw it—because she smelled it in the air, in that strange pressure that appears when something impossible is about to happen. She’d developed that reaction out of necessity: too many times she’d appeared behind an enemy, and too many times someone had tried to anticipate her.

  But this time the danger felt different.

  It wasn’t coming from “someone fast.”

  It was coming from herself.

  From her ability.

  “…Huh?”

  The sensation turned into certainty an instant before it happened.

  “I am the rose on your back… Kagebara.”

  Her own conceptual ability was being used against her.

  Dinamo appeared behind her.

  Not as a speed trick.

  As a perfect conceptual exchange—a flawless copy of Hanami’s gesture. And in his hand there was a ninjato.

  The same as hers.

  Same length. Same curve. Even the same intent—like the weapon wasn’t just an imitation, but the real thing.

  Dinamo was about to stab her.

  Hanami didn’t scream.

  She didn’t have time.

  She moved instantly, backward on instinct, and pressed herself against Katherine’s back as if it were physical and mental shelter.

  Her safe place.

  But the danger didn’t leave.

  Dinamo chased her, replicating the logic of her entire path in an instant to appear behind her again—his lethally similar ninjato aimed at her heart.

  Everything happened too fast for most of them.

  Baek tensed. Hassan took half a step. Irina lifted her gaze. Yehiel startled. Freya frowned, like the trick struck her as tasteless.

  Katherine saw it.

  Not because she was faster, but because her mind was already in battle mode. She’d deduced the crown’s functionality long before Dinamo used it, so she—

  Turned.

  The weapon in her hand aimed straight at Dinamo’s head.

  And fired.

  To her, if Hanami’s death bought her the victory in that stupid game, it was an acceptable price.

  If Dinamo continued the attack, he’d take the shot.

  As fast as he had arrived, he vanished. Dinamo wasn’t willing to lose a game over a single casualty—at least not yet.

  Hanami survived this time.

  The silence that followed was brief, but heavy. A fraction where no one could put what they’d seen in order—only that they’d witnessed something that shouldn’t be possible.

  Katherine lowered the barrel slightly, without relaxing.

  And she said it out loud, because if she’d deduced it, the rest needed to catch up.

  “So that crown lets you replicate abilities you’ve seen.”

  A simple deduction.

  And correct.

  Dinamo reappeared walking from behind his throne, as if he’d never moved far at all—a trick that not even Hanami could do with that kind of naturalness: appearing behind an object. A concept too far outside Hanami’s mind to reach.

  “Yes,” he confirmed calmly. “But only starting from when I created the castle.”

  He gestured up at the ceiling, the walls, the health bar.

  “It would be far too boring otherwise.”

  He leaned on the staff for a second, like testing its weight.

  “Though I have to admit—I can’t perform more than one ability at a time.”

  Katherine didn’t respond. She just watched him, measuring that limitation.

  Dinamo raised a finger, like he was giving a lecture.

  “A self-imposed limitation, of course.”

  And he smiled again.

  As if he were proud of setting rules for himself—just so the fight would last longer.

  Dinamo stopped playing with Hanami and Katherine as if the joke had run its course.

  His gaze dropped onto Baek.

  And, unhurried, he walked toward him.

  Baek stepped forward as well—serious, silent. The kind of silence that only exists when two swordsmen have already accepted what’s about to happen.

  Dinamo raised his hand, and the staff deformed.

  It wasn’t metal melting.

  It was role changing.

  In a blink, the staff was no longer a staff: it was a jingum, identical to Baek’s. Same length, same line, same presence. A copy so precise it was nauseating.

  Dinamo smiled.

  Baek didn’t stop.

  Both executed the same technique at the exact same time.

  “Haidong Gumdo: Tornado.”

  The air warped.

  The Tornado erupted like a crown of invisible blades—a circle of cuts assembling and disassembling in micro-layers, spinning with a clean violence. Baek had used it before. One of his many techniques meant to butcher large groups.

  But this time there were two tornadoes.

  And Dinamo’s didn’t move the same.

  The blades in Dinamo’s tornado adopted a pattern impossible to memorize. It wasn’t “faster.” It wasn’t “stronger.”

  It was malicious—like the spin understood the future and spat it out early.

  Dinamo’s blades moved ahead of Baek’s.

  They didn’t collide head-on.

  They slipped between them, using Baek’s own force as a guide. Every cut Baek made opened a gap, and Dinamo used it like a doorway.

  Baek clenched his teeth. Tried to adjust the rhythm. Change the angle. Step out of the sequence.

  It wasn’t enough.

  That was when experience—the real kind—imposed itself:

  Baek was a master of his techniques.

  Dinamo was a master of the situation.

  He wasn’t outmatching Baek through superior jingum skill. Or through swordsmanship.

  He was outmatching him because he thought outside the box even when the box was a storm of swords.

  Dinamo’s tornado began to close in on Baek.

  Too late to stop.

  An invisible edge was about to split him in two.

  Yehiel appeared.

  Not from the air. Not from a corner.

  He appeared as if the world owed him that position.

  The goat messenger grabbed Baek by the shoulder and yanked him out of reach at the last instant—right as the cut would’ve gone through his torso.

  Baek landed on his knees several meters away, breathing hard, eyes cold—

  but alive.

  Dinamo turned his head slightly, like he’d noticed an unexpected detail.

  “Oh.”

  He didn’t sound annoyed.

  He sounded entertained.

  Yehiel didn’t stay beside Baek. It wasn’t his job to “protect.”

  It was his job to solve.

  The messenger’s goats surrounded him in an instant, forming an irregular ring. They didn’t get too close.

  They already knew the rule.

  They couldn’t be touched by that material.

  There was no defense against it.

  Cap—goat, half fish—opened its mouth and the air changed density, as if the environment accepted an ancient, wet threat.

  Akem—goat, half reptile—flexed, and the floor vibrated, loading with liquid static.

  The combined strike came out like a sentence:

  A jet of compressed water and a bolt of lightning tore across the room straight into Dinamo.

  Dinamo lifted his jingum.

  For a second it looked like he was going to cut the attack.

  But no.

  The weapon changed role again.

  The jingum expanded into a plate, and the plate became a shield.

  The impact hit it dead-on and dissolved like it had struck empty space.

  Water evaporated. Electricity swallowed.

  Nothing.

  Dinamo didn’t even move.

  Amaltea—the golden goat—attacked in that same instant, shining like her body was a living coin, lunging toward Dinamo’s exposed side.

  Samuel—the monstrous sheep—followed, a mass of muscle and warped wool, aimed straight at the physical collision.

  The idea was simple:

  As long as Dinamo wasn’t holding that miraculous material as a weapon, he couldn’t block everything with that unfair advantage.

  Dinamo smiled.

  The crown gleamed.

  And suddenly, the world had weight.

  A sudden gravitational pressure smashed them back as if the castle had decided to eject them. Amaltea and Samuel were repelled violently, halted by an invisible force that tore them off their attack line and hurled them away.

  It was the same technique.

  The same signature.

  The same conceptual gravity of Yael—used with an impunity so excessive it almost couldn’t be called fair.

  Dinamo took a step forward as if nothing had happened.

  “Honestly, I expected your numbers to be half by this point.”

  He said it while dodging a sequence of attacks that, in any other context, would’ve been monstrous coordination.

  Irina threw cotton like white whips—tense fibers trying to bind joints and cut movement.

  Ramiro detonated dense bubbles that tried to trap Dinamo in pressure chambers, slow him, isolate him.

  Mila and Tirsa combined heat and cold, creating a blast that burned the cold and froze the heat, pushing him toward a blind angle.

  Dinamo slipped through everything like he knew the script.

  His body “coincidentally” wasn’t where it should’ve been.

  “Have I been holding back too much?”

  It didn’t sound like a real question.

  It sounded like an excuse.

  And then he changed the pace.

  “But I suppose I can solve that problem.”

  Dinamo disappeared.

  Reappearing behind Hassan.

  Hassan didn’t even have time to turn his head.

  The ninjato went into his chest with clinical precision—short, silent, final. Like Dinamo had chosen the exact point where life stops insisting.

  Hassan went rigid for a fraction.

  Then collapsed.

  Dead.

  He hadn’t even finished falling—hadn’t even finished becoming dust—before Dinamo was already on Mila.

  Hand raised. Weapon ready. Intent crystal clear:

  A fast death. One more number off the “team.”

  Mila’s eyes went wide—too late.

  Tirsa shoved her with her whole body, pulling her out of the line.

  And paid the price.

  The cut hit her.

  It wasn’t a graze.

  It was undeniable: deep, bleeding, disabling. Tirsa screamed once—choked—and dropped to her knees. She had no way to keep her body whole because of her hooves; the blood wouldn’t stop pouring out.

  Mila ended up to the side—alive, trembling—staring at her sister like she’d just understood the real cost of that room.

  Dinamo straightened calmly, like he’d just checked two tasks off a list.

  Katherine watched him.

  The health bar still hovered up there—huge, obscene—and it hadn’t even moved in any meaningful way. As if all of this—Hassan dead, Tirsa maimed, the chaos—was still just the introduction.

  Katherine took a step.

  Her posture shifted slightly. Not dramatic.

  Real preparation.

  ?I suppose it’s time?? she thought.

  And she decided to end the farce.

  She couldn’t keep bleeding resources.

  Hassan was dead. Tirsa was injured. Baek had been one breath away from being cut in half by his own technique. And Dinamo was still smiling like it was all a long tutorial.

  Katherine didn’t want to keep playing that game.

  And why should she follow the rules?

  “No.”

  In that instant, she made the decision.

  She was going to activate something she’d kept stored for nearly one hundred thousand years: an experimental weapon designed for a single purpose.

  Kill Dinamo. With no margin for reaction.

  But there was an obvious question in all of this: why now? Why not before or after?

  Because the conditions were right.

  Because she still had resources.

  But above all, because Dinamo’s guard was down.

  He never took anything seriously—not when he killed Seo. Not even when he killed Hassan. Not even when he wounded Tirsa. To him, it was still part of the “spectacle.”

  Katherine would make him regret it.

  The first phase of the plan was brutally simple:

  A frontal attack.

  Eoin released his summoned creatures.

  They weren’t elegant. They weren’t “heroes.”

  They were just a squad of ragged soldiers on horseback and poorly kept hunting dogs.

  And they caught him off guard.

  Dinamo raised an eyebrow.

  “What are you plotting?”

  The creatures were fused with technology developed in the dome they’d come from—an experimental hybrid, never truly tested in the field. They knew it.

  But they had no choice.

  It was all or nothing.

  And for a moment—

  it worked.

  Inside the phantom charge of those beasts, the key piece activated:

  Frequency distorters.

  It wasn’t “anti-magic,” and it wasn’t a cute conceptual trap.

  It was dirty engineering, meant to break what Dinamo took for granted:

  the channel between his will and his technology.

  It distorted the commands he sent.

  It distorted how they were processed.

  It even distorted his own chain of thought, like someone had poured sand into his head.

  And for a blink, his creation ability stopped feeling “instant.”

  Katherine saw it in his eyes.

  Not fear.

  No.

  But irritation.

  And confusion.

  Dinamo was going to adapt. He’d do it fast—probably in instants.

  But Katherine didn’t need to “win the exchange.”

  She only needed a moment.

  A moment where he was perfectly still.

  Where his coordinates were clear.

  It arrived without warning.

  The throne room showed something impossible: a strange, almost ridiculous slow-motion scene.

  A projectile entered through a hole in the wall.

  But it entered in reverse.

  The hole was closing while the projectile “returned” inward, as if the world were rewinding an action that had already happened. It came in a straight line, without deviating.

  And it passed through Dinamo’s shattered head—

  —only his head was rebuilding at the same time, as if the damage was being “undone” while the projectile rewound back through the path it had taken.

  It kept traveling backward, crossing the immense castle, slicing through corridors, voids, and layers of gold.

  Then it crossed space.

  Almost a full light-year.

  It returned to what had once been Earth.

  It pierced the dome Dinamo had created to “protect” the planet from his own actions. It entered through a hole in the central dome—one that could only exist if CORE had coordinated it with perfect precision.

  And it ended inside a futuristic cannon planted somewhere in the real world.

  The cannon “fired” backward.

  Shut down.

  Its reserves were spent.

  There would not be another shot for a very long time.

  Time seemed to freeze.

  Total silence—like the castle itself didn’t believe what it had just shown.

  Then a faint distortion rippled through the air, and the sequence stopped being a rewind.

  It became reality.

  The wall opened.

  The cannon fired.

  The projectile crossed the dome.

  Crossed space.

  Entered the castle.

  And went through Dinamo’s head.

  This time there was no reconstruction.

  No “copying an ability” to save himself.

  No funny line.

  No “immortality” that could protect him.

  Dinamo stood still.

  And fell.

  Dead.

  That was the only thought in Katherine’s mind.

  ?Is Dinamo dead??

  It was a near-infinite-speed strike—a shot designed so no one could react. She was sure no being existed that could anticipate that.

  Not even him.

  Not even with his copies.

  The health bar still floated in the air.

  It took a fraction to update.

  Then it emptied.

  Katherine didn’t move.

  Didn’t celebrate.

  Didn’t breathe easier.

  She just stared at him, like she expected the world to tell her, not yet.

  ?Did I win??

  It felt strange to get the achievement you’d fought for your entire life.

  And in that strangeness, for the first time in a long time, Katherine didn’t know what to do with the silence.