With a tense gaze, he watched the arrow cut through the heavy air, tracing a high, sweeping arc across the sky. It began its descent, ultimately falling just a few tens of meters off the exact, precise spot he had originally aimed for.

BOOM!

The resulting explosion was mighty, loud, and utterly terrifying, tearing through the oppressive silence of the zone. The sudden shockwave took every single monster in the vicinity completely by surprise.

Within the next few minutes, the entire sector where his arrow had detonated was violently swarmed by tons of agitated shadow monsters. They screeched and lunged forward, mindlessly attacking the fading ball of fire and the crackling heat that erupted from the blast, mistaking the sudden burst of energy for a threat or a meal.

William exhaled a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. The explosive arrow he used had been crafted using raw materials harvested from the upper realm, and the bow itself was a high-quality piece taken from the spoils of war after defeating upper-realm spirit masters. Yet, even with superior equipment, the gear couldn’t fully make up for his glaring lack of personal physical strength.

"Overall, it went well in the end," William whispered, a relieved smile tugging at his lips.

Luckily, despite his reduced strength, the arrow had still managed to land safely within the borders of the mine area. He had aimed for the dead centre of the empty crater, but ended up hitting the rocky outer edge of it instead. Regardless of the slight inaccuracy, the arrow had done the trick perfectly.

The intense heat and concussive force of the upper-realm explosives had successfully ignited the volatile, energy-rich ores buried just underneath the surface of the mine, creating a self-sustaining reaction.

Looking down at the chaotic frenzy of thousands of shadow monsters converging on the burning ridge, William knew his window of safety had just slammed shut.

"I need to leave, fast!"

Seeing the ground surrounding the far edge of the mine suddenly getting brighter and brighter made William feel a jolt of instant panic. The crimson glow bled through the cracks in the earth, illuminating the swarming shapes of the shadow beasts.

He knew exactly what he had just done. He knew that the single explosive arrow he had sent flying into the ravine was just a minor precursor, a mere spark for something far more terrifying that would inevitably consume the entire zone in the next few minutes.

Without even looking behind him to gauge the distance, William jumped off the high rock. He braced for impact, but his current, weakened body simply wasn’t ready for such a jarring fall from that height.

A sharp, agonising jolt shot up his legs upon landing. Ignoring the blooming bruises, he forced his limbs to move, running as fast as he could manage. Gritting his teeth against the throbbing ache, he frantically reached into his pouch, pulled out a healing elixir, and gulped it down in one desperate swallow.

Even if the elixir was a low-grade potion made entirely from materials harvested back in the lower realm, it still served its purpose, soothing the sharpest edges of his pain by a great deal. Feeling the medicine dull the ache gave his muscles just enough renewed strength to keep moving.

He ran blindly into the dark, and the next ten minutes felt like an entire lifetime to him, each second stretching out into an agonising eternity of frantic footfalls and ragged breaths.

The specific ore vein he had targeted was a deposit of Vibrant Fiery Ore. It was a notoriously volatile material, highly unstable thanks to the massive, unnatural amount of raw spirit power it had absorbed from the surrounding world over countless centuries.

Yet, despite being saturated with energy, the ore itself couldn’t be eaten or digested by the native fauna. It held absolutely no biological value or benefit for the shadow monsters. Instead, its true worth lay in the hands of skilled blacksmiths, holding immense value in the art of weapon forging. But to William, it wasn’t a crafting material today.

To him, it was a massive, buried ticking bomb, a cataclysmic trap he had deliberately triggered to rid himself of the overwhelming number of monsters infesting the vicinity.

Just as the initial arrow explosion triggered the volatile, fiery nature of the underlying ore, the mine began to react violently. The deep chasm started gushing a massive, suffocating amount of high-density spirit power into the sky. It was a dense, irresistible plume of energy, attracting far more monsters to the epicentre than William had even dared to hope for in his wildest calculations.

As he kept running for his life away from the epicentre, the entire zone woke up. Tons of monsters were dashing out from every dark corner of the landscape. They flashed past his sides like blurred shadows, ignoring his presence entirely as they raced in a mad frenzy to arrive at the mine before the others.

The sheer momentum of the stampede threatened to knock him over, but the creatures were too blinded by greed to notice the flesh-and-blood human steering clear of their path.

And then, the real explosion came.

It wasn’t just a normal, loud detonation. The exact moment the entire mine erupted, the world seemed to instantly fall under a heavy, suffocating silence. It was a profound, unnatural type of quiet that would drive anyone utterly terrified, the absolute vacuum of sound that causes the hair to stand up on the back of William’s neck.

Feeling this sudden pressure drop made him realise, with a grim surge of satisfaction, that his plan had worked perfectly. And yet, he never stopped his frantic sprint for even a single second.

He didn’t dare turn his head to look at what was unfolding behind him. He focused his mind only and solely on running as fast as his legs could carry him, putting as much distance as humanly possible between himself and the impending blast wave.

Then, the world truly tore itself apart.