The air in the cavern didn't smell like rot, as it usually did in dungeons. It smelled like… nothing.
"Hey, Porter! Hurry up with the bags!" The shout came from Park, the C-Rank raid leader.
Kang Min-Soo adjusted the heavy strap digging into his shoulder, wiping sweat from his brow. "Coming, sir!"
He was twenty-four, but he looked older. Gaunt, tired, and perpetually anxious. As a Hunter with zero mana—literally 0/0 on the measurement device—he was a biological impossibility. The Association let him work only because he was immune to "Mana Poisoning," a condition that made regular humans sick in dungeons. He was a mule. Nothing more.
"This is supposed to be a D-Rank Golem den," Park grumbled, holding up a torch. "But where are the Golems?"
The tunnel they were walking through was smooth. Too smooth. The walls weren't rough stone; they looked like polished obsidian.
"Leader," the healer whispered, her voice trembling. "My mana… it's draining. I'm not using any spells, but it's just… leaking out of me."
Min-Soo felt it too, though he had no mana to lose. He felt a pressure in his chest, a primal urge to turn around and run. The air was heavy. Gravity felt wrong here. His backpack, usually 40 kilograms, felt like it weighed 100.
"Stop whining," Park snapped. "We just need to find the boss room, kill the Core Golem, and—"
CRACK.
It wasn't a sound of rock breaking. It was the sound of the world snapping.
The torch in Park's hand didn't go out. The flame simply detached from the wood and was sucked sideways, vanishing into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.
"What the…?"
"Run!" Min-Soo screamed, his survival instinct flaring like a siren. "Everyone run!"
But it was too late. The smooth obsidian walls began to twist. The floor didn't collapse; it folded.
"Aghhh!" The tank, a burly man in steel armor, was lifted off his feet. He clawed at the air, screaming as he was dragged toward the center of the room. But he didn't just fly through the air. His body stretched—elongating like taffy—before snapping into a thin red line and vanishing into a pinpoint of darkness floating in the center of the chamber.
Spaghettification. Min-Soo remembered the term from a physics documentary he'd watched when he was a kid.
"A Void Fracture!" The healer screamed, clutching a stone pillar. "It's a spatial collapse! It's not a dungeon!"
One by one, the party members were claimed. The mage's fireballs were swallowed. The leader's sword bent like rubber. They were erased, silence following their screams.
Min-Soo was the last one left. He clung to a jutting rock, his fingernails tearing off, blood slicking his grip. The black sphere in the center of the room was small, no bigger than a marble, but it felt heavier than a mountain.
Is this it? Min-Soo thought, tears streaming sideways across his face due to the gravitational pull. I lived a trash life. Now I die a trash death. Erased in the dark.
His grip failed.
He fell.
The pressure should have crushed him instantly. He waited for the pain of being stretched into atoms. He squeezed his eyes shut.
But the pain never came.
Instead, he felt… cold. An absolute, absolute zero.
He opened his eyes. He was floating in a space without stars. The marble-sized black hole was hovering right in front of his chest. It pulsed, like a heartbeat.
[Requirement Met: A vessel completely empty of Mana.]
The voice didn't come from his ears. It vibrated in his bones.
[Mana interferes with the Void. Only the Hollow can contain the Infinite.]
The black sphere slowly pushed into Min-Soo's chest. He gasped, his back arching as liquid darkness flooded his veins, turning his eyes pitch black.
[System Booting...] [Initializing 'Singularity' Protocol.]
[Welcome, Host.] [You have leveled up.]