The tunnel seemed to narrow as they advanced, as if the dungeon itself were trying to compress them, squeeze them, force them into its dark throat. The smell was damp, with a metallic undertone—not just rust, but dried blood.
Eliza walked in silence, but her mind was a whirlwind of questions. Bastet, the denied Rank-S, the panther that disappeared into the shadows as if she were part of them...
And above all, the almost absurd certainty with which Seth had stated that the Boss was in that direction.
She finally couldn't resist.
"How do you know?" she asked, her voice low, almost a whisper so as not to disturb the thick air. "How can you be so sure that the boss is that way?"
Seth replied without looking at her.
"Aura."
Eliza blinked, confused. "Aura?"
"Every living being emits some form of presence," he said. "But monsters... really powerful monsters... they vibrate differently. Like a silent scream. You don't hear it—you feel it. Like pressure deep in your soul."
He stopped suddenly.
He raised a hand, fist clenched, a warning sign.
Eliza froze instantly, her eyes scanning the surroundings, but she saw nothing but rocks. Jagged walls, mana moss, sections where the ceiling seemed to be... breathing. Everything was normal. Or as normal as could be expected in a cursed place.
Then she saw Seth slowly lower his other hand. A slight crackle crackled between his fingers. Condensed energy—arcane electricity—hissed in his fist, forming a concentrated bolt that vibrated with contained power.
He launched the discharge at a seemingly random point on the wall to the left.
There was a sharp crack, a bluish glow... and then a sound.
Something heavy fell.
Eliza instinctively took a step back as a creature plummeted from the wall, hitting the stone floor with a viscous thud. It was a spider. But not an ordinary one—it was over a meter wide, its body covered in stone plates and moss, its multiple eyes reflecting the light in shades of dead amber.
Camouflaged.
Perfectly blended into its surroundings.
"It was watching us," Seth murmured, almost without emotion. "Probably waiting for the right moment to attack."
Eliza swallowed hard.
"Did you feel... its aura too?"
"Not exactly. But when you learn to feel what screams... you also learn to feel what is too quiet."
He kicked the arachnid corpse lightly, and it cracked with a wet sound. Electricity had charred part of the creature's abdomen, which was still twitching in residual spasms.
"These things live stuck to the walls, pretending to be rock. If you're not scanning everything all the time, one of them can jump right into your spine."
Eliza didn't answer. She was busy trying to control her nausea.
Seth just kept walking, as if it were routine.
[Meanwhile... in the other tunnel...]
The other tunnel was narrower, with a lower ceiling, and the air was thick, as if they were breathing through a damp cloth. The smell of dead mana grew stronger with every step. Marcus walked ahead, muttering under his breath, while Elias followed close behind, his hands glowing with an unstable spell of light, his fingers trembling. Doyle brought up the rear, his eyes wide, barely blinking.
Gregory followed them in silence. His detector spun slowly, but his gaze did not stray from the prisoners—like a jailer who knew the guillotine was ahead, and all that was left was to watch.
The first sound came as a damp click.
Then another.
And then hundreds of them.
From the corners of the ceiling, from cracks in the walls, from holes in the floor... the spiders began to emerge.
Different from the ones Seth and Eliza had faced. These were smaller, the size of dogs—but faster. Agile. With dark shells and hungry eyes. And they came in swarms.
Marcus shouted something, pulling a makeshift axe from his back — a crooked blade held together with ropes. Elias unleashed a burst of poorly formed fire that lit up the cave and for a second revealed the horror: twenty, thirty, maybe more spiders advancing across the walls and ceiling like a living wave.
"SHIT!" Doyle yelled, throwing a magic dagger that disappeared into the darkness.
The combat turned into a noisy and desperate massacre. Marcus roared as he swung his axe, crushing arachnid heads in frenzied bursts. His eyes were wide, foaming — laughing and crying at the same time, like a bitten dog that bites back with fury.
Elias cast shaky spells, missing half of them. The other half exploded on the enemies with irrational power, destroying pieces of the wall along with the creatures — and almost hitting Doyle in one of them.
"YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US, YOU DAMNED CREATURE!" Doyle yelled as he split a spider with an iron bar. His leg was bleeding — one of them had bitten him, and the flesh was beginning to blacken.
The floor became a swamp of torn-off legs, broken shells, and screams.
Gregory remained at the entrance to the tunnel, his expression impassive. His detector still spun slowly, ignored. His eyes, behind dark lenses, merely observed.
Every time a prisoner screamed, got hurt, bled — Gregory didn't move.
Marcus crushed a spider so hard that his axe stuck in the ground. He didn't try to pull it out. He just grabbed another one by the legs and bit it, tearing off a piece like a crazed animal.
Elias was crying openly now, his hand burned by his own magic. Doyle yelled profanities as he kicked what was left of the last two spiders.
And then, silence fell.
Gasping. Dirty. Covered in blood and black slime. Alive — but broken.
Gregory walked slowly to the center of the carnage. He looked around, analyzing.
"What... what was that...?" Elias moaned, his hand against his chest, trembling. "You... you knew...!"
Gregory simply replied in a low voice:
"Real combat reaction test. Considering the conditions, acceptable performance."
Marcus spat spider blood on the floor. "You're a psychopath..."
Gregory just smiled coldly.
"No. Psychopaths care about the outcome. I just collect data."
And then, without caring about the prisoners' moans or wounds, he turned the detector once more.
The needles trembled.
Something big was approaching.
"Very well..." thought Gregory as he walked slowly behind the prisoners, his eyes analyzing every movement like a patient predator. "It looks like I can start the real work now."
The prisoners' voices echoed ahead—gasping, weak, filled with pain and adrenaline. Gregory didn't even hear them anymore. His focus was elsewhere, inside his own mind, where the gears were already turning with surgical precision.
Kill them all... quickly, cleanly, before they realize it.
If the others suspect... kill them too.
Say that the Dungeon rose in rank, that it swallowed them without warning. A sudden distortion, an instability.
No one will question an unstable dungeon...
He ran his fingers over the detector as if caressing a blade. His gaze was empty of empathy — but full of intent.
"Nothing personal," he thought. "Just containment policy."
And in his mind, the next steps were drawn with deadly clarity: What happens in the Dungeon... stays in the Dungeon...
Gregory smiled briefly. "Nothing happened, right?"