The darkness wasn't empty. It had texture. It felt like oil slicking over his skin, heavy and suffocating.
Ezra couldn't tell if he had been falling for seconds or years. Time didn't seem to apply here. The pain in his leg was gone, replaced by a numbness that was slowly creeping up his torso.
Is this hell? he wondered.
[Query Negative.]
The voice didn't come from his ears. It vibrated inside his skull, scraping against his thoughts like sandpaper. It wasn't the mechanical, polite female voice of the standard System that all Hunters heard. This voice sounded ancient. Tired.
[This is the landfill. The recycle bin. The place where deleted data goes to rot.]
A blue interface window popped up in the darkness, but it was glitching. The edges were jagged, and the text was bleeding like fresh ink on wet paper.
[Host Vitality: 2%]
[Status: Dying.]
[Option: Accept Symbiosis?]
Ezra tried to move, but his body was broken. "Who... what are you?"
[I am the bug in the code. I am the Entropy. I need a vessel to return to the Surface. You need a life to take revenge. The trade is equitable.]
Revenge.
The image of Markus's face—cold, calculating, dismissing Ezra's life as a clause in a contract—flashed in his mind. The rage ignited the numbness, turning it into a searing heat.
"Do it," Ezra rasped. "I don't care what the price is. Save me."
[Price: Humanity.]
[Processing...]
Pain.
It wasn't the pain of a broken bone. It was the pain of being unmade. Ezra felt his skin bubbling. He felt his marrow boiling inside his bones. The darkness around him surged, rushing into his mouth, his nose, his pores. It wasn't invading him; it was becoming him.
[System Rebooting...]
[Class: Porter (F-Rank) -> DELETED.]
[New Class: Entropy Bringer (Unique).]
[Stat Reset.]
[Strength: 1]
[Agility: 1]
[Vitality: ∞ (Conditional)]
[Mana: 0]
[Authority: 1]
Ezra gasped, sitting up. The darkness vanished—or rather, it had been absorbed. He was sitting on a jagged rock shelf. Above him, far, far up, he could see a tiny slit of light. The dungeon floor he had fallen through.
He looked at his hands. They were pale, almost translucent. Underneath the skin, his veins didn't look blue. They looked black.
He looked at his leg. The brace was gone. The leg, withered and useless since birth, was now straight. Muscled. Perfect.
"I'm... healed?"
[You are recompiled.]
A chittering sound echoed from the shadows.
Ezra froze. He knew that sound. Dungeon Rats. Usually F-Rank fodder monsters. Annoying, but manageable for a novice Hunter with a sword. But Ezra had no weapon.
Three pairs of glowing red eyes appeared in the gloom. They were massive—corrupted by the energies down here. These weren't rats; they were the size of wolves, with exposed ribs and metallic teeth.
Scavengers of the Abyss.
Ezra scrambled back, his back hitting the cold rock wall. "Hey... System? Voice? Give me a weapon. Give me a sword!"
[Weapon not found.]
[Use Authority.]
"What is Authority?!" Ezra screamed as the first rat lunged.
He threw his hands up instinctively to protect his face. He expected teeth tearing into his flesh. He expected the end.
Instead, he felt a pull. A vacuum.
When the rat made contact with his hand, it didn't bite. It screamed.
Ezra watched in horror as the rat's head touched his palm and simply... dissolved. It turned into black dust, swirling instantly into his skin. The rat's body collapsed, convulsing as its head was erased from existence.
[Devour Successful.]
[Energy Gained: 0.04]
Ezra stared at his hand. He didn't just kill it. He ate it. Not with his mouth, but with his very existence.
The other two rats hesitated. Animals had instincts. They knew when they were looking at prey, and they knew when they were looking at a predator. They hissed, backing away.
But a strange sensation washed over Ezra. The moment the black dust entered him, the hunger in his stomach—the hunger that had defined his poverty-stricken life—vanished for a second, replaced by a rush of pure euphoria.
It felt good. It felt addictive.
He looked at the two remaining rats. They no longer looked like monsters. They looked like batteries.
Ezra stood up. He didn't limp. He walked forward, a dark, purple haze beginning to emanate from his shoulders.
"Come here," Ezra whispered. His voice was different now. Deeper. Echoing.
The rats turned to run.
Ezra reached out. He didn't know how he did it; he just willed the hunger forward. Shadows shot out from his shadow, functioning like tendrils. They wrapped around the fleeing rats, dragging them screeching across the stone.
"I said," Ezra clenched his fist. The shadows tightened. Squelch. "Come here."
The rats popped. No blood. Just more black dust streaming into Ezra.
[Devour Successful.]
[Devour Successful.]
[Level Up!]
[Level 1 -> Level 2]
[Skill Unlocked: Shadow Step (Rank F)]
Ezra took a deep breath. He felt stronger. Faster. The fear was gone.
He looked up at the slit of light high above. That was where Markus was. That was where the Guild was. That was where the world that rejected him continued to spin, assuming he was dead.
Ezra smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"System," he said. "How do I get out of here?"
[The dungeon boss above prevents exit. You must Consume it.]
"The Gatekeeper?" Ezra laughed. A dry, barking sound. "It's a B-Rank monster. I'm Level 2."
[It is biomass. You are Entropy. Size is irrelevant. Decay conquers all.]
Ezra looked at his black-veined hands. He clenched them into fists.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go eat."