The mouth of the cave was like the gullet of a colossal beast. The instant we stepped inside, the birdsong of the outside world, the howl of the wind, and the warmth of the sun were severed as cleanly as if by a blade. In their place settled a heavy, metallic silence and the lung-scorching stench of mold.
"Light up!"
Lucas's commanding voice echoed from behind me. The Rare-grade sword in his hand flared to life, bathing the damp cave walls, the chalky stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and the wet stones underfoot in a golden glow. It didn't flicker like a torch—it shone steadily and powerfully, like a miniature sun.
"Stay close to me," Lucas said, signaling to Titus as he raised his massive shield. "We don't know what's hiding in the shadows. Don't break formation."
Titus grunted, his voice reverberating off the cave walls. "The shrimp's probably pissed himself in fear already. Bet he froze ten meters in."
While their voices echoed behind me, I had already slipped deeper into the darkness—into that pitch-black void where Lucas's light couldn't reach. Fear? No. The only thing I felt was the calm of a man returning home.
I narrowed my eyes and focused my will.
[Entropy Eyes: Active]
The world changed.
The pitch-black darkness gave way to a three-dimensional neon wireframe map composed of purple, green, and gray lines. I was no longer just seeing matter—I could see its density, the stress along the cracks in the cave ceiling, the humidity of the air… everything reduced to pure data. In this mode of vision, there were no colors, no emotions. Only geometry and mathematics.
And within that perfect geometry, there were flashes of red.
About five meters above the ground, clinging spider-like behind a thick stalactite, was a hunched silhouette holding its breath.
[Target: Goblin Scout]
[Rank: F]
[Status: Preparing an ambush. Target: Lira Valen.]
The creature gripped a rusty—likely poisoned—dagger, carefully tracking the passing light source below (Lucas). But it wasn't stupid. It wasn't planning to attack the strongest one. It was aiming for the vulnerable ones in the rear—the healer, Lira.
A cold smile formed on my lips. The tattoo on my arm—Grim—stirred excitedly beneath my skin.
"Sorry, ugly," I whispered, my voice lighter than a breath. "But in this corridor, I'm the hunter."
I sped up. My footsteps were silent. My breathing inaudible. Thanks to my newfound agility and my Glitch nature, gravity was little more than a suggestion. I climbed the cave wall, sliding through the shadows like a ghost.
When I reached the goblin's level, the creature tensed its legs, preparing to leap. It was just about to launch itself toward Lira. At that exact moment, I threw the rusted dagger—not upward, but into the space between the goblin and Lira.
I targeted the space-time coordinates of the path where the goblin would fall.
Grim vibrated at the tip of the dagger. The metal was coated in a violet nothingness—an energy of nonexistence.
ZIIIP.
There was no sound. No wet slice of flesh, no crack of bone. Instead, there was only a brief, unsettling static—like the snow on a broken television screen—scratching across reality itself.
The goblin jumped.
But it didn't land in one piece.
The instant it touched that invisible Error line suspended in midair, its physics collapsed. Its body split apart like a poorly rendered character in a broken game—its head flying one way, its torso the other. When they hit the ground, the only sound was a wet thump. There was no blood. The severed surfaces were sealed with shimmering purple pixels. Space itself had rejected the loss of matter and stitched the void closed.
I approached the corpse. The tattoo on my arm grew warm. Grim seeped out like black smoke, reaching toward the body and drawing in the gray vapor rising from it. This wasn't like a vampire drinking blood—this was the recycling of pure energy. The fatigue in my body vanished. My mind cleared.
[Aether Absorbed.]
[Chaos Reserve: 12% → 13%]
"Nice," I muttered, spinning the dagger between my fingers. "Not bad for a warm-up."
I kicked the corpse behind a rock with the tip of my boot and continued walking, hands in my pockets, as if nothing had happened.
Five minutes later, the group caught up to me.
Titus sneered in disappointment when he saw me still in one piece. "You're still alive? Shocking. Thought you'd hide in a hole somewhere."
Lucas lowered his sword in relief. "Arthur! You went too far ahead. Don't break formation. If something happened to you—"
Just then, Jin Ryer's sharp, merchant-like eyes caught something on the ground. "Hey… look at that."
He shined his lantern behind the rock. The goblin's bisected, anatomically impossible corpse lay there. Lira let out a sharp scream, clapping a hand over her mouth. Jin recoiled.
Lucas frowned and stepped closer. The heroic smile had vanished from his face. "An ambush… but who killed it? And this wound… this isn't normal."
Titus leaned his axe on his shoulder and shrugged. "Probably tripped and fell, the idiot. Or a rock dropped from above. Look—no blood. Just a dried-up carcass."
Everyone seemed willing to accept the explanation to suppress their fear. After all, in an F-Rank dungeon, goblins could even kill each other.
Everyone except one.
Elena Frost.
The silver-haired girl crouched beside the corpse. Her blue eyes locked onto the perfectly smooth, flawless cut along the goblin's neck. She removed her glove and ran a finger across the sealed surface. It was cold. No burn marks. No cut marks. As if… as if the flesh in that area had been erased from the universe by an eraser.
Elena lifted her head. Her gaze didn't go to Titus or Lucas. It went straight ahead—toward where I was standing. Our eyes met in the darkness. My face wore that stupid, frightened expression. I slumped my shoulders.
"I-I heard a sound, but I didn't see anything," I stammered. "It was too dark…"
Elena narrowed her eyes. Her stare was so sharp that if she'd used ice magic, my eyelashes would have frozen. She didn't believe me. But she had no proof.
"Be careful," she said as she stood, never taking her eyes off me. "There's something… sharp in here. And it's closer than we think."
As we descended deeper into the cave, the whispers grew louder. The sound of the wind turned into the skittering of thousands of tiny legs.
And then, that familiar, spine-chilling sound rang out.
SKREEEE!
In the wide, cathedral-like gallery ahead, hundreds of red eyes flared to life in the darkness. Not a goblin army.
Worse.
A swarm of Cave Spiders.
They poured down from the ceiling, the walls, the cracks in the floor. Each one was the size of a dog, their chitinous armor gleaming in Lucas's light.
"Battle positions!" Lucas shouted, raising his sword.
[Sun Flame]
A blinding wave of fire burst forth, instantly reducing the front line of ten spiders to ash. The cave filled with the stench of burnt flesh.
"Lira, stay back! Titus, hold the left flank! Elena, slow them down! Jin, take the ones above!"
The battle erupted like a symphony of chaos.
Lucas shone like a lighthouse, drawing the spiders' attention. Titus stood like a wall, crushing anything that came near with his shield. Elena slammed her hand into the ground, turning the floor into a slick of ice, freezing spiders in place.
And me?
I cowered behind Lira and Jin, pretending to be scared. I shook as if trembling—but my eyes… my eyes were constantly scanning. At least, that's how it looked from the outside.
In reality… I was hunting.
In the midst of the chaos, while everyone focused on their own fights, I was the master of the shadows. When Lucas wounded a spider and knocked it back, the creature tried to flee into the darkness before dying.
That was my moment.
I spun the rusted dagger between my fingers. No one was looking. I took a step into the darkness.
[Flicker]
My body skipped a frame. One moment I was beside Lira; the next, I was standing in the shadow of the wounded spider. My dagger plunged into the tiny, glowing red Error point between its armor plates.
CRK.
The spider disintegrated into dust without even a scream. Grim greedily vacuumed up the remaining life energy.
[+15 Experience]
[Chaos Reserve: 18%]
I retreated immediately. Flicker. I was back beside Lira. The entire sequence took less than a second. No one even noticed I was gone.
"Arthur!" Jin shouted, his crossbow shaking as he fired a bolt through a spider's eye. "Watch our backs! Did you see anything?"
I nodded, faking ragged breaths. "C-clear! The back's clear! I can't see anything!"
Just then, a massive spider—an Alpha, far larger than the others—broke through Lucas's and Titus's defense and lunged straight for the unprotected Lira in the rear.
The healer was defenseless. She raised her staff, but it was useless. Jin froze in terror. Lucas was too far away to turn back. Titus was locked in combat with another monster.
"Lira!" Lucas shouted, his voice filled with desperation.
As the spider flew through the air, time slowed.
Lira closed her eyes, waiting for death.
I didn't.
Everyone's focus was on the spider. No one saw me raise my hand slightly from my waist. My index and middle fingers made a subtle scissor motion in the air. Grim burned painfully along my arm.
This wasn't a simple cut.
This was bending space.
[Space Fracture: Shear]
Just as the spider was about to crash down on Lira's head, it came to an abrupt stop, as if it had slammed into an invisible wall.
Then… it collapsed.
No—it didn't explode. It folded inward. Its legs twisted into its torso, its head crushed into its abdomen. As if a giant hand had crumpled it like a piece of paper in the void of space. Reality itself imploded at that point.
What hit the ground was no longer a spider—just an unrecognizable, bloody sphere.
Lira opened her eyes. No blood had splattered on her. Instead of screaming, she simply trembled. "W-what happened?" she whispered.
The swarm retreated. With the Alpha dead, the rest fled in fear.
Lucas and Elena rushed over. "Are you okay? Is anyone hurt?"
"S-someone…" Lira said, staring at the twisted mass on the ground, tears in her eyes. "Someone stopped it. But… how? It was… crushed. In midair."
Titus arrived, drenched in sweat, resting his massive hammer on the ground. He looked at the lump of flesh and grimaced. "Some kind of magical trap? It just popped on its own. Disgusting."
Everyone was shaken. Lucas scanned the area, searching for a hidden guardian.
I, meanwhile, leaned forward with my hands braced on my knees, head lowered, playing the role of a perfectly traumatized civilian. "It was… it was terrifying," I said breathlessly. "It was going to fall on us…"
Elena's gaze shifted—from the dead spider, to Lira, and finally to me.
There was no longer just suspicion in her eyes.
There was pure, icy fear—and an uncontrollable curiosity.
Unlike the others, her Ice Domain ability had let her feel the atmospheric change at that exact moment. Just before the spider was crushed, she had felt the air pressure vanish at the tips of my fingers.
She sees me, I thought.
My heart raced—not from fear, but from excitement. This girl… she was far more dangerous than I'd expected. Smart. And at the same time, she made this dangerous game far more enjoyable. The best way to hide a secret is to hide it right in front of someone's eyes.
Hiding the thin, arrogant smile at the corner of my lips, I looked at Lucas.
"Shall we move on, Captain? We still have a long way to go. And I think…" I glanced at the mangled mass on the ground. "…we're safe for now."