After Betrayal, I Awoke as the Game's Final Boss

Lloyd awoke to the sound of an explosion.

The chains were gone.

The floor had collapsed.

And his vision had returned… sharp.

"Balberius?" he said, looking at his companion, who was staring at him in utter disbelief.

"Chief… your eyes…"

"What about them?"

"They're shining… like two stars. As if you're…"

"Get ready. We're getting out of this stinking mess."

As soon as Lloyd took a step, shadows gathered around his body, seeping into his muscles, his bones, his wounds… and slowly began to heal him.

…

Outside the dungeon, dozens of heavily armed soldiers had gathered, surrounding the exit, their eyes glued to the entrance. Their feelings were a mixture of anxiety and terror, but their hands were steady on their weapons, ready for any unexpected move.

After all, despite the aura that had made two kings tremble like children, they weren't just ordinary soldiers. They were the elite of the joint forces, specialized units from both kingdoms, none of them below level forty.

The thing they had imprisoned here had forced two warring kingdoms to temporarily set aside their differences… just to guard a single cell. That alone was enough to show the extent of their terror.

But deep down, they comforted themselves with the remnants of cold, military logic, "He's just one man. We are dozens. The fortress is secure, and we have the weapons."

The shadows Lloyd had left behind in their first encounter still lingered in their memories, a nightmare that refused to fade. Still, they held their ground, despite the sweat on their hands inside their gloves and the tension tightening their muscles.

"No one leaves this prison without the permission of one of the two kings!," the commander shouted, his voice cutting through the expectant silence, echoing in the heavy, tense atmosphere. His eyes were fixed on the gateway, but his voice held a hint of hesitation behind its forced hardness.

As for Lloyd, standing within the darkness, he was in an incomprehensible state. His face was devoid of emotion, but in his eyes… there was a bitter sarcasm and a dormant fire about to ignite.

He smiled coldly and said in a quiet tone, charged with a hidden threat, "We'll see about that."

And in a single moment…

Swoosh—!

He vanished. As if his body had dissolved into the very air, without a sound or a tremor.

Then…

He appeared behind the soldiers.

"Behind us!" one of them screamed.

But it was too late.

His shadow tore itself into dozens of black copies, leaping, twisting, and strangling. Each copy grabbed a soldier by the neck, freezing him in place before his defenses could even react. The shadows moved as a single entity with a malevolent will, striking from every direction at once.

"Don't you dare think I'm still on the same level anymore," Lloyd said, his voice low, but sharp as a blade against bone. "You are now… already dead."

And the slaughter began.

Each soldier fell like a burning moth, enveloped by the darkness from behind, torn apart without warning. Screams, shocks, and blood splattered against the cold fortress walls. Some tried to fire their weapons, others activated their defensive skills, but it was all in vain.

Lloyd wasn't just attacking; he was playing. Every move was calculated, every shadow a finishing blow. And with every soldier that fell, the darkness expanded, as if the earth itself were cracking open to swallow them.

In the midst of the storm, Lloyd stood firm, his eyes glowing a crimson color, his face holding nothing but a terrifying stillness… like one judging the world from within the heart of chaos.

[Very good! You have truly earned my service!]

[Please, enter the "Reflection World"]

[I, Tower Supervisor Gorlam, pledge my eternal service to the revered 'Scion of the Progenitor Amora'!]

These golden messages flickered at the corner of his consciousness, dancing like sparks in the smoke of battle… but Lloyd didn't notice them. His mind was completely absorbed in the conflict.

The commander screamed one last time, "Fall back! Re-form immediately! Don't face him alone!"

But the orders no longer reached anyone.

Some soldiers were screaming without a sound, their vocal cords severed. Others lost limbs before they even understood what had happened.

The shadows crawled across the floor and walls, wrapping around legs, embracing necks, and silencing breaths. It was as if Lloyd had unleashed a starving creature that hadn't been fed for centuries.

And in the middle of this madness, Lloyd stood, his clothes slightly torn, but his eyes unblinking. His body moved with a horrifying spontaneity, as if the shadows were leading him, not the other way around.

Inside his head, something strange began to happen. As he delivered a fatal blow to a soldier trying to flee, a flash appeared in his peripheral vision.

[Entering "Reflection World" is being activated…]

But the scene didn't change.

On the contrary… everything stopped.

The air froze.

The screaming ceased.

Even the shadows froze in place, as if time itself had stopped.

Lloyd also froze, for just a moment, before realizing that the world he was seeing… was not the same.

He was still standing over the corpses, but all the colors had changed. The ground had become glass, reflecting a light with no source. The sky… wasn't a sky at all, but overlapping sheets of mirrors. And a few steps away stood a massive creature, its eyes burning with an inner blue light.

The creature said, its deep voice echoing across time and space, "Welcome… to the first floor of the Tower of Beast's Torment, Heir of Amora."

Lloyd didn't reply, just stared at the creature, then looked at his own body. There was no blood. There were no wounds. Even the shadows that had been dancing around him had vanished.

He knew only one thing. What was happening now… was not part of this world's original script. Frankly, nothing that was happening to him was part of this game's plan so far.

A few minutes earlier…

"Hah? Oh? So the Tower Supervisor has finally decided to contact me?" Lloyd muttered in a hoarse voice, tinged with a blood-soaked sarcasm. His legs could no longer support him, and he fell onto his rear, breathing heavily. "I still haven't recovered… and I've exhausted myself now."

Dizziness struck him like a hidden blow, but his mind quickly brought him back to balance. He stared at the chaos he had created around him. The scattered corpses, the blood that painted the ground like an overturned canvas, and the post-slaughter silence that was louder than the screams of death.

He looked at it all with pure coldness. Broken bodies, torn souls… but they were nothing more than dead data in a programmed system.

"Just numbers… nothing more," he whispered, as if reminding himself of this world's origin.

He hadn't noticed the three notifications at first. He had been busy using the technique passed on to him by "Antares," or that distorted creature, or whatever its name was.