The climb was impossible. At least, it would have been for the old Ezra.
The walls of the chasm were slick with a dark, viscous slime that smelled like ozone and old blood. The jagged rocks were razor-sharp, designed by nature—or the dungeon—to slice open anything trying to crawl out of the abyss.
Ezra looked up. The slit of light was miles away. A normal man would have looked at that distance and felt despair. Ezra looked at it and felt only a cold, calculating hunger.
[Active Skill: Shadow Step (F-Rank) initiated.]
He didn't jump. He didn't climb. He sank.
Ezra stepped into the shadow cast by a jutting rock. The world twisted. For a microsecond, he felt weightless, compressed into a two-dimensional existence. The cold rushed past his ears like a wind tunnel.
Pop.
He reappeared twenty feet higher, his boots digging into a narrow ledge.
"Incredible," Ezra breathed, looking at his hands.
He remembered the Hunters he used to carry bags for. He remembered seeing an A-Rank Assassin use a skill like this once. It had cost that Assassin half his mana pool to teleport ten feet. Ezra had just moved twenty, and he barely felt a drain.
[Note: Normal spatial movement requires tearing through space. You are not tearing space. You are slipping through the cracks. The cost is negligible.]
The voice in his head—the Entropy—sounded almost smug.
"Efficient," Ezra muttered. "I like efficient."
He aimed for the next shadow above him. Step. Pop. Step. Pop.
He ascended the pit in a rhythm of flickering darkness. But the Abyss wasn't going to let him leave that easily.
About three hundred feet up, the wall shifted.
The rock face groaned, vibrating against Ezra's chest. He froze, digging his fingers into the stone. A section of the wall, camouflaged by moss and gloom, peeled away.
It wasn't rock. It was a hive.
A screech echoed, high-pitched and grinding, like metal on glass. From the holes in the wall, things began to pour out. They were the size of large dogs, insectoid, with translucent wings and mandibles that dripped green acid.
[Enemy Detected: Abyssal Drone (Level 4)]
[Enemy Detected: Abyssal Drone (Level 3)]
[Enemy Detected: Abyssal Drone (Level 4)]
There were dozens of them. A swarm.
In his past life, a single Level 4 monster would have required a full party of E-Rank hunters to take down. A porter like him would have been told to hide behind a rock and pray.
The leading drone dived, its wings buzzing furiously. It aimed its acid-tipped stinger right for Ezra's throat.
Ezra didn't flinch. He didn't have a shield, but he realized he didn't need one. He watched the monster move. It seemed... slow.
No, Ezra realized. It's not slow. I'm just processing it differently.
To his new eyes, the drone was a collection of data points. He could see the muscle tension in its wings, the trajectory of its flight, and most importantly, the flaw in its existence.
Ezra released his grip on the wall.
He fell backward, plummeting into the open air. The drone missed him by inches, its mandibles snapping at empty space.
As Ezra fell past the creature, he reached out.
"Got you."
His hand clamped onto the drone's leg.
[Authority Activated.]
The black corruption spread instantly. The drone didn't even have time to screech. The moment Ezra's entropy touched it, the creature's chitinous armor turned to ash. The structural integrity of its body failed.
Mid-air, the monster disintegrated into a stream of black particles that swirled violently into Ezra's chest.
[Devour Successful.]
[Energy Gained.]
Ezra used the momentum of the kill to twist his body. He spotted the shadow of another drone hovering below him.
Shadow Step.
He vanished from mid-air and reappeared on the back of the second drone.
The insect bucked wildy, trying to throw him off, but Ezra was already digging his fingers into its carapace. He didn't just want to kill it. He wanted to drain it.
"More," he snarled.
The drone withered beneath him, turning to dust within seconds. Ezra leaped off the dissolving corpse, launching himself toward the wall where the swarm was thickest.
It was a massacre.
It wasn't a battle; it was a harvest. Ezra moved like a glitch in a video game, flickering from shadow to shadow. Every time he appeared, a monster died. Every time a monster died, he got stronger.
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Agility +2]
[Strength +2]
He tore wings off with his bare hands. He crushed skulls with a grip that could bend steel. The acid that sprayed onto his skin didn't burn; it just fizzled and vanished, eaten by the void aura protecting him.
Within five minutes, the hive was empty. The chasm was silent again, save for the sound of falling dust.
Ezra stood on a ledge, breathing hard. But it wasn't the panting of exhaustion. It was the heavy, excited breathing of an addict who just got a massive fix.
He checked his status.
[Name: Ezra Cohen]
[Class: Entropy Bringer]
[Level: 7]
[Strength: 12]
[Agility: 15]
[Vitality: ∞]
[Mana/Void: 45/100]
"Level 7," Ezra whispered. "In ten minutes."
It had taken Markus three years to reach Level 15. Ezra had done half of that in the time it took to boil an egg.
He looked up at the light again. It was much closer now.
"I'm coming," he said to the silence.
The Boss Room was quiet.
The Twin-Headed Ogre—the Gatekeeper—sat in the center of the obsidian arena. It was chewing on something. Ezra, pulling himself up over the shattered edge of the floor, recognized the armor plating.
It was Markus's chest plate. He must have dropped it to run faster.
The Ogre grunted, tossing the metal aside. It seemed bored. It was waiting for the dungeon to reset, for new adventurers to enter so it could crush them.
Ezra climbed out of the pit. He stood on the edge of the crater, dusting off his tattered jacket. He looked small compared to the cavernous room, and microscopic compared to the twenty-foot-tall monstrosity sitting on the throne of bones.
The Ogre stopped moving. One of its heads turned. Then the other.
Four eyes locked onto Ezra.
The creature paused. Its primitive brain was struggling to process what it was seeing. It remembered throwing this little human into the ground. It remembered the crunch of bones. It remembered the smell of death.
Prey didn't come back. Prey stayed dead.
"Hey," Ezra said. His voice wasn't loud, but in the dead acoustics of the dungeon, it carried like a bell.
The Ogre stood up. The ground shook with the movement. It grabbed a massive stone club the size of a tree trunk. It roared—a sound that was meant to induce paralysis through sheer fear.
[The Gatekeeper uses Skill: Tyrant's Roar.]
[Resisting...]
[Resistance Successful. Your soul is too heavy to be shaken.]
Ezra didn't even blink. He just tilted his head.
"Is that it?" Ezra asked. "You were scarier from the floor."
The Ogre, enraged by the lack of fear, charged. It closed the distance in three massive strides, raising the club high. It brought the weapon down with enough force to shatter a tank.
BOOM.
The obsidian floor exploded. Debris flew like shrapnel. Dust clouded the air.
The Ogre grinned with both mouths. It waited for the system notification of the kill.
It didn't come.
"You're slow," a voice whispered right next to its ear.
The Ogre's eyes widened. It swiped blindly at its shoulder, but there was nothing there.
Ezra was standing on the Ogre's back, balancing perfectly on the creature's massive trapezius muscle.
"You have a lot of HP," Ezra noted, looking at the red bar floating above the monster's heads. [HP: 10,500/10,500]. "This might take a while. Or..."
Ezra's eyes glowed with a deep, violet light.
"...maybe I just need to target the source."
He raised his hand. The air around his fingers distorted, turning into black ribbons.
[Skill Unlocked: Entropy Touch (Rank F)]
[Description: Direct physical contact accelerates the decay of organic matter.]
Ezra slammed his hand onto the back of the Ogre's neck.
The monster screamed. It wasn't a roar of anger; it was a shriek of pure agony.
Where Ezra touched, the Ogre's flesh didn't just rot; it vanished. The skin turned gray, then flaked away like burnt paper. The muscle beneath withered, turning from red to black to dust.
The Ogre thrashed, throwing itself backward to crush Ezra against the wall.
Ezra Shadow Stepped away a split second before impact.
The Ogre slammed into the wall, cracking the stone, but the pain didn't stop. The black spot on its neck was spreading. It was like an infection, eating its way down the spine.
[HP: 9,800... 9,200... 8,500...]
"It hurts, doesn't it?" Ezra walked slowly toward the thrashing giant. "Being erased. Being treated like you don't matter."
The Ogre scrambled to its feet, eyes wide with terror. It swung the club again, but the swing was clumsy. Its movements were sluggish. The entropy was eating its stamina, sapping its strength.
Ezra ducked under the club, sliding across the floor. He lunged forward and punched the Ogre in the knee.
Crack.
The knee joint disintegrated. The massive leg collapsed, and the Ogre fell forward, crashing onto its face.
Ezra didn't stop. He leaped onto the fallen monster's head.
The Ogre's other hand came up to grab him. Ezra caught the massive finger.
[Devour.]
The finger dissolved.
Ezra looked down into the Ogre's four terrified eyes.
"This is for the leg," Ezra said. He stomped on the right head. The skull collapsed under the weight of his gravity-enhanced kick.
[Critical Hit!]
"This is for the betrayal." He stomped again.
The Ogre was gurgling now, its health bar flashing red. [HP: 5%].
Ezra crouched down. He placed his palm on the Ogre's remaining forehead. The monster whimpered. A B-Rank Gatekeeper, a nightmare for experienced hunters, was whimpering.
"And this," Ezra whispered, his face inches from the monster's, "is because I'm hungry."
[Maximum Output.]
Ezra didn't just drain the rest of the health. He pulled the essence out.
A massive torrent of shadow erupted from the Ogre, rushing into Ezra. The monster's body didn't leave a corpse. It didn't leave a loot drop. It simply ceased to exist. The twenty-foot giant became a pile of gray ash, and then, nothing.
[You have consumed a Dungeon Boss (Rank B).]
[Massive Experience Gained!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Current Level: 12]
[Loot Obtained (Internalized):]
1. Skill: Titan's Strength (Passive) - Strength +10 permanently.
2. Skill: Heavy Impact (Active) - Adds concussive force to attacks.
Ezra stood in the center of the empty room. The silence was absolute.
He closed his eyes, feeling the new power settling into his bones. He wasn't F-Rank trash anymore. He wasn't a cripple. He was something else entirely.
He walked over to the exit gate. It was sealed tight. Usually, you needed a key or the system to unlock it after the boss died.
Ezra didn't look for a key.
He placed his hand on the heavy stone doors.
"Open," he commanded.
He poured the Void energy into the stone mechanism. The ancient magic sealing the door didn't unlock; it corroded. The lock mechanism rusted into dust in seconds. With a heavy thud, the stone doors groaned and swung open.
Fresh air hit his face. Not the recycled air of the dungeon, but the air of the outside world.
Ezra walked out of the gate and into the twilight.
He was in the forest outside the city. In the distance, he could see the lights of Sector 4. He could see the floating holographic billboards advertising Guild recruitment.
He reached into his pocket. His phone was crushed, but the SIM card might still work if he could find a burner.
He needed to go home. He needed to check on his sister.
But first...
He looked at his reflection in a puddle of rainwater.
His hair, once a dull brown, was now pitch black. His eyes were sharp, predatory. He looked like a different person.
"Good," Ezra said. "Ezra the Porter is dead."
He stepped onto the main road, his shadow stretching out behind him long and jagged, like the teeth of a beast waiting to snap.
[Quest Generated: The Debt Collectors.]
[Goal: Markus and his party are celebrating their survival at the 'Golden Lion' tavern. Interrupt them.]
[Reward: Karma.]
Ezra smiled. It was the first time he truly liked the System.
"Accept," he said.