Panic was a solid thing. It filled the common room, thick and choking, as the sirens wailed. The metallic shriek was a sound Dae-Hyun had only heard in drills, a promise of a threat that had always remained outside. Now, it was inside.
Sub-basement. Five minutes.
The civilians scrambled, herded by shouting staff toward designated safe rooms. The low-rank Hunters he'd appraised earlier, the ones with their brittle confidence, had their weapons out, but their auras were spiking with the acidic green of fear. They were looking at the exits, not toward the stairwells leading down.
The Urgent Quest pulsed in his vision, a bloody stopwatch. [04:59].
Survival. That was the only objective. Five minutes. It felt like a lifetime and an instant.
"A breach!" Kang Min-Ho's voice cut through the chaos, his simple brown aura flaring with a sudden, focused intensity. He looked at Dae-Hyun, his eyes wide but not with fear. With purpose. "We must protect the people!"
He grabbed a heavy oak table from the common area, his muscles bulging as he lifted it with a grunt and began shoving it against the main hallway entrance, creating a crude barricade. It was a futile, almost comical gesture against a dimensional threat, but the sheer, unthinking bravery of it was a stark contrast to the frozen Hunters.
Dae-Hyun didn't move. His body was a traitor, weak and trembling despite the Stability buff. He couldn't fight. He could barely stand. His mind, however, was racing, cold and clear.
[APPRAISAL].
He swept his gaze across the room, past the panicking souls, toward the double doors that led to the service elevators and the stairwell down. He was looking for something the others couldn't see. A shift in the air. A flaw.
There. A shimmer, like heat haze, began to form in front of the stairwell door. The air itself seemed to curdle, and a scent of ozone and damp earth washed into the room. The Soul Sensor showed it as a bleeding patch of void, a tear in the tapestry of light.
[ENTITY APPROACHING. SCANNING...]
[NAME: Grotto Leecher]
[RANK: E]
[DESCRIPTION: Amorphous subterranean predator. Drains thermal energy.]
[SOUL STATE: Single-minded Hunger.]
[WEAKNESS: Sustained kinetic impact. Disruption of core cohesion.]
The door groaned, then buckled inward as if struck by a truck. Through the mangled frame, it oozed.
It was a slug-like creature the size of a large dog, its body a translucent, pulsating gray. Inside, he could see a central, darker mass—its core—and a swirling, icy blue light that he instinctively knew was stolen warmth. A proboscis, needle-sharp and dripping with condensate, extended from its front, questing the air. Where it pointed, frost bloomed on the linoleum floor.
One of the Hunters, a man with a short sword, yelled and charged. He was the one with the brash orange aura. He swung his blade. It sliced into the creature's gelatinous flesh with a wet schlock, and the wound immediately sealed, leaving only a patch of frost behind. The Leecher's proboscis darted out, too fast to follow, and tapped the Hunter's armored shoulder.
There was no blood. Just a sickening crackle. The Hunter screamed, a short, sharp sound, as a wave of hoarfrost raced across his body. He collapsed, his armor hitting the floor with the sound of solid ice, his orange aura snuffed out into a dull, frozen gray.
[04:12]
The remaining Hunters backed away, their courage shattered.
"Hey! Over here, you ugly dumpling!" Kang Min-Ho bellowed. He hurled a heavy visitor's chair. It struck the Leecher with a solid thud, causing the entire creature to jiggle. It was ineffective, but it got its attention. The proboscis retracted and swung toward him.
The Leecher oozed forward, leaving a trail of ice. Min-Ho stood his ground, his brown aura blazing, but he had no real weapon. He was going to be flash-frozen.
Dae-Hyun's eyes were locked on the creature. The [Appraisal] data floated in his mind. Disruption of core cohesion. He couldn't punch it. He couldn't cut it. But the Reaper's interface wasn't for punching.
He focused on the Grotto Leecher. Not on its body, but on the connection he could see with his Soul Sensor—the faint, pulsing thread of energy that linked its amorphous form to the central, darker core. It was a string. A single, vital string.
His hand lifted, not in a fist, but with two fingers extended, like a blade.
[SEVER - RANK F]: READY.
The command was instinctual, a whisper in the back of his skull. He didn't have mana or ki. He had something else—a sliver of his own will, sharpened by desperation and the System's crimson energy.
He made a small, slicing motion in the air.
It was silent. There was no flash of light, no roar of power.
But inside the Leecher, the pulsing thread of energy connecting the core to the body simply… snapped.
The effect was instantaneous and grotesque. The creature convulsed, its translucent body losing all cohesion. It didn't die like a beast; it unmade itself. The gelatinous flesh lost its structure, slumping into a formless, freezing puddle on the floor. The icy blue light within winked out. The hunger in its soul vanished.
Silence, broken only by the dripping of freezing slime and the distant sirens.
[URGENT QUEST: 'THE TUTORIAL': COMPLETE.]
[REWARD GRANTED: SKILL: [SEVER - RANK F]. 72-HOUR 'STABILITY' BUFF.]
The timer in his vision exploded. [119:12:44].
Five days. He had bought five days.
The remaining people in the room stared, first at the dissolving monster, then at him. He was still sitting in his chair, pale and gaunt, his hospital gown hanging off him. He hadn't moved from the spot.
Kang Min-Ho turned from the frozen puddle, his eyes wide. He looked from the puddle to Dae-Hyun's still-outstretched fingers. There was no fear in his brown aura, only a dawning, absolute wonder.
He lumbered over and bowed again, deeper than before.
"I was right, sunbae-nim," he whispered, his voice filled with reverence. "You do see the real fight."
The other Hunters were looking at him now, not with gratitude, but with a mixture of awe and terror. They hadn't seen a spell or a weapon. They had seen something they couldn't understand.
Dae-Hyun slowly lowered his hand. He felt a profound, bone-deep exhaustion, but beneath it, a new, cold certainty was crystallizing.
He had not fought the monster. He had simply informed it that it was no longer allowed to exist.
He was a Reaper. And he had just delivered his first verdict.
To be continued...