Chapter 1: The Dungeon That Wasn't There
The silence inside the gate wasn't just silence.
It was wrong.
Not the tactical quiet hunters respected. Not the hush of cautious breathing before a fight. This was a silence that sucked the sound out of your lungs. That coiled in your ears like something ancient was listening.
Kairo Vane stood alone beneath a stone archway that hadn't existed an hour ago.
The air was thick. Not humid—thick. Like breathing syrup. Like the world had slowed down just enough for him to feel the dread crawl beneath his skin.
The others had already gone in. A mid-tier party from White Cross Guild. Five members. Confident. Experienced. Loud.
> "You'll catch up, rookie," one of them had sneered at him, slapping the back of his neck with the smirk of someone who never expected to see you again.
> "D-Rank like you? Best thing you can do is loot the scraps we leave behind."
They didn't even bother learning his name.
And yet... they still needed a sixth.
It was regulation. Dungeon gates required six to activate. It didn't matter if the sixth was useless. Disposable. Meat to keep the system happy.
Kairo didn't argue. He never did.
Even now, with the gate sealed behind him and his party nowhere in sight, he said nothing.
The corridor stretched out before him — stone, cracked and half-swallowed by roots, as if nature had tried to reclaim something it wasn't allowed to touch. His boots made shallow echoes on the floor, but even those didn't sound right.
Too soft. Too far away.
He swallowed. His throat was dry. His mouth tasted like rust.
> Why is it so quiet?
Low-ranked dungeons didn't look like this. They were simple, shallow raids. One or two chambers. A few goblins, maybe a sluggish bear-type beast at the core. This…
This felt like the earth itself was holding its breath.
Kairo checked his hunter's watch. No connection. The map feature flickered twice before dying completely. That wasn't supposed to happen. Not in regulation dungeons.
His flashlight clicked on. He swept it across the hall.
No blood. No bodies. No sign of the team.
But at the end of the corridor… something moved.
It was subtle. A shimmer. Like heat distortion. A ripple against the wall that wasn't wall at all.
Kairo stepped closer, slowly, heartbeat echoing in his chest louder than his boots.
And then he saw it.
Not a door.
Not an entrance.
A mirror.
Taller than a man. Framed by bones, twisted together like roots of a dead tree. Its surface was fractured but not broken. Silver light crawled across its cracks like veins of moonlight trapped in glass.
He didn't see his reflection.
He saw something else.
A figure. Tall, faceless. Eyes glowing with silver flame. Wrapped in tendrils of shadow that moved like smoke underwater.
He should've run.
Every part of his body screamed it.
But something held him there.
Not fear.
Not even curiosity.
Desperation.
He had no job. No guild. No family waiting at home. His rank—D. His talent—none. His body—weak. His face—forgettable.
But here, standing in front of this thing that shouldn't exist… for the first time in years, something looked back at him.
And it spoke.
> "You are not chosen."
> "You are not blessed."
> "You are not worthy."
Kairo's mouth went dry.
"Then why am I here?" he whispered.
> "Because you are empty."
The voice was not male. Not female. It sounded like a wound speaking.
> "And emptiness is a perfect vessel."
The surface of the mirror twisted, and the figure leaned closer. Kairo's breath caught as a thin fracture split the glass down the middle, black smoke spilling out like ink in water.
> "Do you wish to devour?"
The question burned itself into his ears. It wasn't metaphorical. It was literal.
> "Devour… what?" Kairo asked, throat barely working.
> "The ranks that rejected you. The power denied to you. The world that buried you."
The pressure in the hallway shifted.
It felt like gravity was folding inward.
> "Say the words. And I will feed you. Power, strength, blood, and memory. You will climb… but you will curse every step."
The mirror pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
> "So tell me, Kairo Vane—do you wish to devour?"
Kairo looked at his trembling hands. Scarred from failed gates. Callused from swinging weapons he never mastered. Bruised from fights he never started but always lost.
He remembered all the faces that passed him by. Every glance that said "You're not enough."
He thought of dying here.
Or… becoming something worse.
"…I do."
The mirror shattered.
Not with sound.
With screams.
---
[ SYSTEM SYNC INITIATED ]
[ You have been chosen by: The Forgotten System. ]
[ Classification: CURSED RANKER ]
[ Skill Gained: Rank Devour (Lv. 1) ]
[ Unique Trait: Fragment Consumption - Active ]
[ Corruption Level: 1% ]
[ Warning: Corruption is irreversible. Proceed anyway? ]
Kairo collapsed to one knee.
Something crawled under his skin. Something hot. Black. Molten. It carved a symbol into the back of his left hand — a spiked circle with a single jagged line slashing through it.
It burned like a brand.
He screamed into the silence, and the dungeon finally answered.
A roar echoed in the dark.
Massive. Inhuman. And getting closer.
The system pulsed again.
> "Good. Now run, Ranker."
---
The roar kept coming.
Heavy. Guttural. Like bones grinding against themselves beneath layers of wet muscle. It echoed down the hallways, deeper than any beast had the right to be.
Kairo forced himself up. His knees trembled. The mark on his hand still glowed — not with light, but something darker, like the absence of it. It pulsed in rhythm with the thing approaching.
His instincts screamed to run. His brain agreed. But something deeper—something new—hungered.
He turned, flashlight barely holding, and followed the corridor that curved unnaturally to the left.
No torches. No glowstones. Just shadows clinging like oil to the walls.
The deeper he went, the worse it felt.
This wasn't just a dungeon.
It was alive.
The walls were veined. Not carved. Veined. With pulsing lines of something black-red moving beneath the surface, like the dungeon itself had a heartbeat. His boots stuck to patches of viscous slime coating the floor like blood that refused to dry.
He passed a husk.
Not a corpse. A husk.
It looked human once. Or maybe it had worn a human's shape. Its chest was caved in, face contorted into a grin with no lips left to stretch. The skin was glassy, gray, as if the soul had been vacuumed out of it.
And carved into its chest, over and over again—
"I chose wrong."
Kairo backed away.
> System Message: Potential Threat Detected.
[ RAVAGER LING (E-Class) - 89% Threat Level. ]
Ravager? He'd heard of them. Hive beasts. Cannibalistic. They didn't belong in low-tier gates.
His light flickered.
Then died.
Kairo froze.
In the dark, something dripped.
Once.
Twice.
Then movement.
He couldn't see it. But he could feel it. A heavy breath against his neck. A skittering motion too fast for anything human. A blade of instinct sliced through his thoughts—
> Move.
He dove forward just as a jagged limb slammed the stone where he stood.
Kairo rolled, scrambled up, chest heaving.
Behind him — a silhouette moved into the thin moonlight bleeding from a crack in the ceiling.
It had no eyes.
Just sockets. Deep, open, dripping black. Teeth like broken mirrors. A torso stitched from the torsos of other things. Long, twisted limbs tipped with claws.
Ravager Ling.
> [ Passive Triggered: Shadow Vein - Your body adapts to cursed proximity. Reaction speed +20%. Pain resistance +10%. Duration: 60 seconds. ]
The creature screeched.
Kairo didn't run this time.
He stepped forward.
It lunged. He ducked under its slash, stumbled—but his hand moved on its own.
The cursed mark glowed — and shadow tendrils burst from his back, slamming the creature into the wall.
> [ Active Skill: Rank Devour - Initiated. Target must be dying. Proceed to extract? Y/N ]
"Y—YES!" Kairo roared.
The tendrils impaled the Ravager through the chest and skull.
It spasmed once.
And then it melted — not physically, but spiritually.
Its essence, its data, its rank, spiraled into Kairo like fire into dry lungs. He choked on it.
A scream that wasn't his own erupted inside him.
> [ E-Rank Fragment Devoured. ]
[ You have gained: +1 Strength, +1 Reflex. ]
[ New Skill Unlocked: SHADOW GRASP (Lv. 1) ]
[ Corruption Level: 3% ]
His eyes burned black for a moment.
And then silence returned.
Kairo stood over the bones of the thing he had just consumed.
He wasn't shaking.
He wasn't scared.
He felt high.
He laughed.
A broken sound.
But it wasn't madness.
It was power.
And power had never been his before.
---
The Ravager's corpse steamed. No blood. No flesh. Just bones wrapped in shadow-scorched ash.
Kairo stared at his hand.
The sigil hadn't faded.
If anything, it had grown deeper — carved beneath the skin now, like it had always been there. His heartbeat pulsed through it, and every beat whispered something he wasn't ready to understand.
> [ Fragment Absorption Complete. Corruption Level: 3% ]
He felt it. Power. Not raw stats, not just numbers—awareness. As if the shadows themselves respected him now. Welcomed him. Waited for his command.
For the first time in his life, Kairo Vane felt like something more than human.
And yet, the high didn't last.
Because just ahead — footsteps.
Multiple. Fast.
> "I saw light over here!"
> "Careful, something tore Vesh apart back there!"
> "If that newbie's alive, we're not sharing a cut."
Kairo froze.
The party.
The same five who left him behind.
They were still alive.
He ducked into a crevice just as the guild hunters arrived — armor dented, weapons drawn, eyes wild. Blood smeared across one's pauldron, not theirs. Another's blade was chipped, black ichor burned into its edge.
But they weren't afraid for him.
They were afraid of whatever had killed the Ravager.
> "What the hell was that thing?" one hissed.
> "I told you, this dungeon's glitched. It's not reading right. The system's not responding."
> "Maybe the newbie died and triggered it—some kind of curse gate."
> "We can blame him later. Right now, we need to—"
They stopped.
Because Kairo stepped out of the shadows.
Slow. Calm.
And changed.
His hunter uniform was torn, blood-stained. His eyes no longer just brown—they glinted silver-black, like light couldn't decide whether to reflect or retreat. Veins pulsed dark under his skin. And on his left hand, the mark burned softly.
They recognized him.
And for the first time… they hesitated.
> "Wait… is that—?"
> "Kairo?"
> "No way… you're—what the hell happened to you?"
He didn't answer.
He simply stared.
Because the system was whispering again.
> [ Threat Detected: 5 Hostile Entities. Estimated Combined Threat: 124%. ]
[ You may flee. Or you may devour. ]
His hands clenched.
He remembered the laughter. The smirks. The bruises they left when no one watched. The way they let him into the dungeon first because they needed someone disposable to trigger traps.
One of them, Cale, stepped forward, sword raised halfway.
> "You… you killed that thing?"
> "Yeah," Kairo said quietly.
> "Then maybe you're not useless after all."
> "I'm still the same rank," Kairo replied. "Still D, right?"
The group shared glances.
The kind of glances you give a dog who just bit someone.
> "Doesn't matter. He's not registered for solo kills. We report this, the core drop's ours."
> "Think he'll tell anyone? Look at him. He's half-broken."
Cale raised his sword.
> "Sorry, rookie. Can't risk you walking out of here with that kind of story."
> "Yeah," Kairo whispered.
"You're right."
The mark on his hand flared.
Shadow tendrils erupted from his back, piercing the floor, ceiling, and air around them like black spears of instinct.
The first two didn't even scream.
Cale barely turned.
> [ Active Skill: SHADOW GRASP - Multi Target Lock Acquired. ]
The corridor filled with shrieks. Blood. Cracked bone. Kairo's expression didn't change. His body moved on its own. Every twitch precise. Efficient. Brutal.
He wasn't fighting like a hunter.
He was feeding like a curse.
In under twelve seconds, it was over.
Their bodies lay twisted. Not torn apart — emptied. Their souls drained. Their stats fractured and eaten.
> [ You have Devoured: STR +2 | VIT +1 | Skill Fragment: FLICKER STRIKE (Unstable) ]
[ Corruption Level: 8% ]
Kairo dropped to one knee, panting.
Not from fatigue.
But from something else.
A dark, endless hunger.
He hadn't just killed to survive.
He had wanted it.
And part of him… enjoyed it.
The dungeon ceiling cracked again. A low hum shook the walls. The mirror — what remained of it — pulsed once more behind him.
> [ Floor 1 Cleared. Advancement Path Unlocked. ]
[ Hidden Pathway Detected — "The Maw Below" ]
He turned to face the black staircase forming in the floor.
Downward.
Endless.
Waiting.
> "So this is how it starts," he whispered.
> "Fine. Let's see how far I fall…"
And with that, Kairo stepped into the abyss.
No longer a hunter.
No longer prey.
But the first cursed ranker.
---