CHAPTER 3: FATAL RESET
"Shit… I'm actually… alive."
The words were a ragged whisper, echoing hollowly against the damp stone of a cavern he didn't recognize. Yo-han lay on his back, staring up into a darkness so thick it felt like a physical weight. Every bone in his body screamed in protest, a symphony of dull aches and sharp, stabbing pains.
With trembling fingers, he fumbled at the small leather pouch strapped to his thigh. He pulled out a cracked vial containing a murky, pale-green liquid a low-tier healing potion. It was the cheapest kind available, the sort that tasted like fermented dirt and only knitted together the shallowest of wounds. He uncorked it with his teeth and gulped it down, his throat burning as the weak magic trickled through his system.
As the potion began to dull the sharpest edges of his pain, Yo-han sat up and sighed. The relief was short-lived.
"Surviving the monster was the easy part," he muttered, clutching his head in his hands.
Anguish washed over him as he did the mental math of his life. To afford the gear for this raid, he had taken out high-interest loans from lenders who made dungeon monsters look like cuddly pets. If he went back empty-handed or worse, if Naim reported him as dead the debt would hang around his neck like a millstone until it eventually drowned him.
And then there was the harsh reality of his status. An F-Rank with no skills. If he crawled back now, the Association would likely revoke his license for his own "safety." He would be forced back into the gray world of pizza delivery and floor scrubbing, only this time with permanent injuries and a debt he could never repay.
The frustration was a physical knot in his chest.
"My body feels like it's made of lead," he groaned, trying to stand. "I guess that's what Agility Stat 1 feels like in a crisis."
He stood on shaky legs and surveyed his surroundings. This wasn't the obsidian cavern where the shadow beast had been feasting. This place was different ancient. The air didn't smell like the ozone and decay of the upper floors; it smelled of dry parchment and cold, stagnant time.
"Where the hell am I?" Yo-han shouted, but only the silence answered.
He turned in a slow circle until his eyes caught a glimmer. At the far end of the chamber, a narrow pathway began to glow. One by one, torches held by stone gargoyles flickered to life, their flames a strange, ghostly violet. The path stretched forward like an invitation.
He looked up at the hole he had fallen through. It was a pinprick of darkness hundreds of feet above. Climbing was impossible.
"Great. Forward it is," he whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs.
As Yo-han followed the violet light, the corridor opened into a vast, circular chamber. In the center stood a small, shrine-like structure carved from a single block of obsidian. Inside the shrine sat a statue of a hooded figure, its features worn away by eons. In its outstretched hands, it held a box a small, matte-black chest bound in silver chains.
"T-That's… that's a treasure box," Yo-han stammered, his eyes widening in awe.
Finding a treasure chest in a standard raid was a once-in-a-career event for most mid-tier Raiders. Many veterans spent decades clearing dungeons without ever laying eyes on a genuine loot crate. To find one here, in a hole he had accidentally fallen into, was a stroke of luck that bordered on the miraculous.
A surge of pure, unadulterated joy washed over him, momentarily erasing the trauma of Naim's betrayal. He clenched his teeth, his eyes fixed on the silver chains.
"This is it," he whispered, his voice trembling with hope. "If there's a skill stone in there… or a mid-grade artifact… I'm set. I can sell it on the black market or the auction house. I can pay off the debts. I can buy better gear. I can finally be something."
The desperation that had fueled his life for years now turned into a fierce determination. He didn't care if the shrine was cursed. He didn't care if there were traps. He had been a meat shield; he had already looked death in the face and blinked.
"Nothing is going to stop me. Not today."
As his hand reached out to touch the cool, dark wood of the chest, a sound echoed through the chamber a sharp, digital ding that sounded like a bell tolling in a cathedral.
[Ding!]
[You have discovered a Hidden Dungeon: 'The Tomb of the ??????.'] [Condition Met: No living soul has entered this domain for 1,000 years.]
[Congratulations!]
[You have been granted a unique inheritance.]
[You have received the Passive Skill: 'Fatal Reset'.]
Yo-han froze. His hand hovered inches from the box. "A... skill? I actually got a skill?"
His breath hitched as a translucent blue window expanded in front of his eyes. He read the description once. Then twice. By the third time, his brain felt like it was short-circuiting.
[Skill Name: Fatal Reset] [Grade: ???] [Description: A blessing or a curse carved from the essence of one who refused to stay dead. Whenever the user suffers a fatal blow or death, time and causality are manipulated to return the user to life. No matter the method of demise, death is no longer your end.]
"What the hell..."
Yo-han's legs gave out. He collapsed to his knees, his strength vanishing as if his bones had turned to jelly. He stared at the notification, his mind racing at a thousand miles an hour.
In a world where death was permanent, where "respawning" was a fantasy, he had just been handed the keys to immortality. It wasn't a fireball. It wasn't a shield. It was something far more terrifying.
He looked at his hands, then at the black box, and finally up at the faceless statue. A hysterical laugh started to build in his chest. He had spent his whole life terrified of a single mistake, terrified of the F-rank fragility that meant one hit would kill him.
Now, it didn't matter.
"I can't die?" he whispered, the realization sinking in. "I really... I can't die?"
He looked back toward the path he came from, his eyes glowing with a new, dangerous light.