In the middle of the room, the countdown on the hovering red panel continued to melt the seconds away: 29 Days 23:55:12...
Haruki sat in front of his cheap laptop with the cracked screen, his fingers flying rapidly across the keyboard. His mind was entirely locked into strategy mode against the impending catastrophe. Open before him was a map of the D and E-Rank dungeons surrounding the city.
"I need to reach Level 20 first," Haruki thought, his eyes glued to the screen. "I must maximize my speed. By then, I'll need a good secondary weapon and armor to use alongside the needle. If I clear three dungeons a day, in twenty days..."
Right at that moment, the computer screen illuminating the room suddenly went black.
Not just the computer—even the yellow light from the streetlamps shining through the window was cut off. Time seemed to freeze for a split second. The hovering red system panel began to tremble violently, and the countdown abruptly stopped. Haruki's eyes widened in shock.
[MAIN QUEST: DEMON DUNGEON]
[Preparation Phase Ended.][User Transfer Initiated...]
Haruki leaped out of his chair. "What do you mean the preparation is over?!" he shouted. "I still had 29 days!"
The System didn't answer. The gravity in the room suddenly vanished. As Haruki's feet left the floor, the walls around him melted into a liquefied blackness. His stomach lurched, and his windpipe filled with freezing air.
[ENTERING DEMON DUNGEON]
"Wait—!"
Haruki's scream was instantly swallowed by the absolute darkness surrounding him.
Thud!
Haruki's body slammed violently onto a hard, ice-cold stone floor that made his bones ache. He coughed in pain as the air was knocked from his lungs. The stench of mud and rust instantly burned his throat.
Using the ground for support, he slowly pushed himself up onto his knees. As his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, he processed the terrifying scenery surrounding him.
This wasn't a cave. He was in the middle of a massive, seemingly endless hall carved from black stone. Colossal stone pillars, each at least ten meters thick, supported walls rotting with dampness. Iron torches mounted on the pillars cast a dim light, burning on their own with a blood-red fire.
But the thing that truly made Haruki's blood run cold was the ceiling. When he looked up, he couldn't see one; there was only a pitch-black, endless void stretching upward.
The report was right. "An inverted tower, descending not toward the sky, but straight down to hell."
Haruki stood up. The fear he had felt in the worm dungeon was nothing compared to the oppressive weight here. The aura of death in the air was so thick it practically clung to his skin.
Just then, he heard a sound echoing from the depths of the dark hall. Dragging noises. The sickening clatter of flesh and broken bones scraping against the stone floor.
From the shadows, twisted silhouettes began to emerge into the light of the red torches. They looked humanoid, but their skin was completely rotten, their muscles peeling away in strips. Their arms were unnaturally long, and their eye sockets were entirely empty. They were advancing toward Haruki with slow, heavy, and staggering steps.
[TARGET DETECTED]Rotten Demon Thrall - Level 10
Under normal circumstances, a Level 10 monster should have been child's play for a Level 13 hunter. But this was a Demon Dungeon; Haruki knew very well that absolutely nothing here was normal.
Haruki reached into his pocket and pulled out that incredibly thin needle. Wrapping the invisible fishing-line thread around his thumb, he focused his mind. "Weak Tissue Analysis!"
The world turned grayscale. The rotting body of the first slowly approaching creature transformed into a complex map in Haruki's eyes. The creature had no heart or lungs. The only viable target was the main nerve ganglion controlling the body, located just below the cervical vertebra. A glowing red dot.
Haruki snapped his wrist.
Swish!
The needle pierced the darkness and struck that red dot on the creature's neck with flawless precision. The demon thrall let out a muffled gargle, instantly dropping to its knees and turning into black ash.
[Experience Point (EXP) Acquired.]
Haruki smiled faintly as he pulled the thread, retrieving the needle back into his palm. "They're slow," he muttered.
Immediately after, two more creatures lunged at him from the dark. Haruki slid backward, dodging one. He thrust his needle into the nape of the one on the left, and as he retracted the thread, he pierced the jugular of the one on the right. Two more creatures turned to ash and collapsed.
The fight seemed easy. Until... dozens, then hundreds of red eyes began to glow from the deep darkness where the torches couldn't reach.
The dragging sounds suddenly turned into a deafening roar. It wasn't just one or two anymore; a new Rotten Demon Thrall was stepping out from behind every pillar, from within every shadow. Their numbers were multiplying rapidly.
Half an hour later.
Haruki was panting, sweat dripping from his forehead and stinging his eyes as he leaned his back against a cold stone pillar. The floor in front of him was covered in the black ash left behind by hundreds of monsters. Even though his fingers ached from holding the needle, he had managed to clear the first wave.
But there was a problem.
As the ash slowly dissipated into the air, he noticed there were things on the ground that hadn't disappeared. White, calcified, and shattered objects.
Haruki dropped to his knees and picked one of the objects up. It didn't belong to a monster. It was a human skull with deep claw marks carved into it. A little further away lay rusted armor belonging to Association standards, along with shattered swords.
"There were others who entered here before me," Haruki whispered, slowly setting the skull back on the ground. "And none of them... made it out alive."
At that moment, the hovering system lit up again. However, this time it wasn't red, but a pale, cold blue.
[SYSTEM SUPPORT: SURVIVAL PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]
Right in front of Haruki, space-time warped slightly, and a small, gray metallic package dropped to the floor. Haruki opened the package in confusion. Inside were high-calorie compressed dry food blocks and several water purification capsules.
Looking at the contents of the package, he finally understood the twisted logic of the System.
He had misinterpreted the countdown. The 30 days wasn't the preparation time given to enter the dungeon. The System knew from the very beginning that it was going to lock him in here. Those 30 days... were the survival time he had to spend inside this hell, among thousands of demons. The System hadn't given him time to grow stronger; it had thrown him straight into the fire, telling him to 'Grow stronger or die.'
The dark hall fell into a deep silence once more.
But that silence didn't last long. From deep, very deep within the Tower, from the lower floors, a massive, blood-curdling roar shook the stone floor. This roar didn't belong to the rotten creatures he had just killed. It belonged to something much bigger, and much hungrier.
Haruki gripped the needle in his hand tightly. The transparent thread glowed with a blue light around his fingers. He looked up at that endless darkness with no exit, and then down into the depths of hell where the roar had come from.
"So..." Haruki whispered, a tired but insanely determined look on his face. "This is the hell I'll be living in for a month.