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The silence after the light died felt heavier than the roar that came before it.
Ethan didn't move at first. His pulse was still rushing in his ears, and the afterimage of violet light clung to his vision like a ghost he couldn't blink away. The cavern looked dimmer now — like the moss itself was shaken, the glow underneath it flickering uncertainly.
The door behind him was quiet again.Too quiet.
No hum, no vibration, not even the faint pulse it had a moment ago.
It was like the whole place was holding its breath.
Ethan slowly lowered his dagger, though he didn't put it away. "Okay…" he muttered under his breath, "that wasn't just me losing it."
He stepped forward carefully, boots crunching on frost and loose gravel. The air tasted sharp, metallic. The hair on his arms was still standing on end, like the mana here hadn't settled fully.
He looked toward the far end of the cavern — the place where the figure had stood.
Nothing. Just faint shadows and drifting dust.
But he knew it wasn't an illusion.Not this time.
That silhouette… the same shape he'd seen in the frozen chamber, but solid. Present. Standing there like it had every right to exist.
And that color—That deep violet glow…Mana wasn't supposed to look like that. Not here. Not anywhere he'd been.
"Great," he muttered. "Fantastic. Love that for me."
His voice echoed back at him. Too clear. Too alone.
He approached the spot where the figure had been. There were no footprints. No marks. Nothing disturbed.
Except—
Ethan crouched.
There, right at the edge of the stone, were thin lines burned into the floor. Not scratches. Not cracks.Burns.Perfectly straight, like someone had drawn them with a blade of pure light.
He touched the edge of one with his glove.
It was warm.
His jaw tightened. "So you weren't just a hallucination."
He straightened up slowly, scanning the cavern again. Nothing moved. No monsters. No whispers. Even the dripping water had stopped.
It felt like the Dungeon was waiting.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck, trying to think. That thing — whatever the hell it was — wasn't attacking him. Not directly. But it kept showing up around the seal. Around that door.
His eyes drifted toward the stone door, silent and still.
In Chapter 110, it had whispered two things:
You came back.The seal… weakens…
He didn't know if it was a warning, a threat, or something in between.
But something inside him — instinct, or maybe pure dread — told him he didn't want to be here when the seal finally broke.
He took a slow breath. "Alright. Priority one: get out. Priority two: figure out what the hell that was."
His pendant pulsed again, weak but steady. Like a compass with a headache.
"Yeah, I know," he murmured. "I don't like this place either."
He stepped away from the burned marks and turned toward the tunnel he'd come from.
Then he stopped.
The tunnel wasn't the same.
The slope was wrong. The glow was dimmer. And the air… it didn't pull upward anymore, like it had before.
It pulled down.
Ethan frowned. "No. No, no, no—"
The Dungeon had shifted the paths.
Of course it did.Because why make anything easy?
He looked left — another tunnel, narrow and twisting into darkness.Looked right — a wider passage, but colder, the frost creeping in thicker.
Neither felt right.
Neither felt wrong either.
He clicked his tongue, annoyed. "Perfect. Three doors, no signs. And Hestia isn't here to yell at me for picking the stupid one."
He forced himself to breathe and think.
The path he came from was changed.
The seal had reacted to him.
The violet figure appeared.
The Dungeon responded by reshaping the layers.
Someone or something wanted him deeper.
But he wasn't walking blind. That was suicide. Even for him.
He closed his eyes and held the pendant in his hand, focusing on its faint thrum. It pulsed—once,twice,then pulled lightly in one direction.
The right tunnel.
"…Alright." He opened his eyes. "If I die following jewelry, I'm haunting the gods."
He tightened his grip on his dagger and walked toward the right passage.
The deeper he went, the colder it became. Frost crawled over the walls again, thicker than before. The light dimmed until it was barely a glow.
Ethan slowed.
Something felt different.
He stepped forward—
—and the ground cracked under his boot.
He froze, looking down.
A thin sheet of ice sat over empty air. Beneath it, blackness stretched like a bottomless well.
"Damn." He stepped back carefully.
The ice cracked more.
Then it shattered.
The sound echoed down the tunnel, fading into the cold.
Ethan exhaled slowly. "Alright. New plan. No stepping on anything that looks even slightly shiny."
He moved to the side, testing each step with his dagger before putting weight down.
The tunnel narrowed, then widened again.The air pulsed.A distant sound rumbled — not a roar, not a whisper.
A heartbeat.
Slow. Deep.
Coming from somewhere further ahead.
Ethan swallowed.His skin crawled.
"…That's not normal."
He kept moving.
The heartbeat grew clearer.The frost thickened.And the tunnel finally opened into another cavern — smaller than the last, but dominated by one thing:
A sphere of ice, suspended in the center of the room, glowing faintly from within.
Inside the ice…
Something moved.
Ethan's breath caught.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
The silhouette inside the ice lifted its head.
The same shape.The same outline.The same unnatural aura.
But this time, it wasn't standing.
It was trapped.
Ethan stepped closer, voice low and tense. "So you're not just watching me," he whispered. "You're sealed."
The figure didn't speak.Didn't move.
But its eyes — those faint, violet eyes — flickered open.
And for the first time, Ethan felt something that cut through even his nerves:
Recognition.
It knew him.
And it wanted something.
The ice pulsed with light.
The heartbeat grew louder.
Ethan clenched his jaw.
"…Yeah," he muttered. "This just got worse."
---
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