Finally, after what felt like an eternity of battle, Oberon's health points dropped to thirty percent.
"What a fucking monster… wiping out two hundred ninety-six players," I muttered, still pressed against the slab. "And I'm running out of health potions, damn it…"
Claire spotted me and blinked, her hand covering her mouth. "He survived?" she muttered in disbelief, shaking her head. "But how?"
Adam raised his lance, activating a skill: Banner of War. A crimson aura enveloped them, spiking their attack damage. "Let's finish this before I run out of mana," he said.
Oberon roared as he braced to fly.
"Time to clip those wings," Leon said, slamming his sword into the ground as he activated a skill: Soul Chain. Dark chains surged from his blade, wrapping around Oberon and pinning him to the floor, stopping any attempt to escape into the air.
Oberon whistled, channeling a skill: Nature's Barrier. It was a glowing leaf-like shield that blocked any potential attacks for five seconds.
But before the skill could fully manifest, Claire stepped forward, pulsating with pink radiant light.
"Time to shine, baby!" she shouted, pointing her palm toward Oberon as she activated a skill: Pure Love. A massive pink energy beam shot forth, piercing his half-formed leaf-like shield, disrupting his attempt to regenerate.
Oberon froze in place as his health plummeted to twenty percent.
I exhaled slowly, glancing at Leon, Adam, and Claire as they regrouped after attacking. "So… that's what a party of world-ranked players can do against a dungeon boss, huh?" I said, my voice a mix of awe and disbelief.
"I'm gonna go for the final blow with a kiss," Claire said, winking at Adam and Leon before smirking. "Y'all have my back, right?"
Claire then sprinted toward Oberon, giggling softly.
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. "How greedy…"
"Claire, get back!" Adam yelled, slamming his lance into the ground as he activated a skill: Banner of Defense. A green aura enveloped them, boosting their magic and physical defenses.
"Claire, listen to me!" Adam yelled again, waving his arms frantically. "Something's not right!"
Claire didn't bother to listen or turn back.
"Go for it, Claire!" Leon shouted, swinging his sword in a quick arc as he prepared to activate a skill: Soul Chain. "I'll make that pest unable to fly. You'll be safe!"
"Leon!" Adam yelled at him, stomping the ground.
"What?" Leon said, shaking his head and canceling the skill cast. "You know Claire can finish that thing easily, right?"
Claire raised her palm as she got near Oberon, activating a skill: Pure Love. A massive pink energy beam shot forth, striking Oberon and pinning him against the wall. Dust and debris exploded around him, filling the area.
"I got him!" Claire shouted in joy, jumping slightly and pumping her fists in the air like a kid. "Yay!"
But as the dust began to settle, Oberon's form darkened, his wings spreading wide. Sharp seeds erupted from them, shooting like jagged arrows straight at Claire. They slammed into her stomach with sickening thuds, embedding deep beneath her skin.
Then Oberon crashed to the ground again like a lifeless body.
We assumed it was finally dead, despite not seeing a system message that said it was over.
"CLAIRE!" Adam shouted, rushing forward and grabbing her shoulders. "ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!"
Claire touched her stomach, frowning for only a moment before straightening. "The attack hit me, but it didn't do any damage," she said, giving a confident smirk. "I'm a world-ranked player after all. This is nothing."
I stepped away from the giant stone slab where I'd been hiding, letting my legs shake as they adjusted to movement. "Is it over?" I said, my voice small but steady, glancing warily at Oberon's motionless form.
Claire's expression softened, and she let out a faint smile as she looked at me. "Oh… the kid's alive!" she said, relief tinting her voice.
I nodded, trying to push down the lingering fear and exhaustion. "Yeah… still breathing," I muttered, more to myself than anyone else.
Adam's eyes narrowed as he looked at me. "You were hiding all this time?" he said, shaking his head. "What a coward."
"I'm sorry," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "My legs wouldn't move, even though I forced them to… and I was out of health potions."
"You can't really blame him," Leon said calmly, folding his arms. "He's probably a low-level player. Survival comes first for them. You know that, Adam."
"Whatever," Adam grumbled, turning away. "The fight is already over."
"Is it really over?" I asked, warily glancing once more at Oberon's motionless form.
"Yes, it's—" Leon started to say, but the ground suddenly shook violently beneath us.
"O-Oy! What's going on?!" I shouted, stumbling to keep my balance.
"Is the dungeon timer still up?!" Claire said, her hands gripping her head. "W-What's happening???"
"No! There's still twenty-seven minutes remaining on the timer!" Adam yelled.
The shaking stopped.
Then, with a thunderous motion that made our heads turn, Oberon pushed himself up onto his knees. His form darkened, muscles swelling and wings spreading wider. He had grown larger and bigger.
A system window appeared above Oberon's head:
[FAIRY KING OBERON IS ENRAGED!]
Our eyes widened in disbelief as we stared at Oberon.
"Enraged," I thought. "Just like the Leviathan Hermit..."
"It's not dead yet?" Adam muttered, his voice tight with disbelief. "You've gotta be kidding me…"
"We became too confident that it was dead…" Leon murmured, lowering his sword slightly. "We should've finished it before it entered its enraged form..."
Oberon's voice roared out, echoing off the room like a funeral bell. "Bloom and rejoice! For you have been reborn as a child of Mother Nature!"
Claire's eyes darted down to her stomach. Something was wrong. She knew it too. Her hands trembled as she stared more closely, eyes widening as she noticed the movement. The skin there… it shifted. Subtly at first, like a muscle twitching under strain. Then—a slither, a bulge. Something inside her writhed, pressing outward.
"Uhm, guys… I'm getting a funny feeling inside my body," she said, trying to sound calm, but her voice cracked halfway through.
"I—" she started to say, but instead she let out a scream. It didn't even sound human—it was high and scraping, like a metal fork dragged across a porcelain plate. Her back arched as her mouth opened wide, eyes blown with terror.
"What the fuck is happening to her…" I muttered.
Then, from deep within Claire's chest, a monstrous flower erupted with brutal force, swelling grotesquely to the size of a car. Its petals were thick as blades and wet with black sap, unfolding one by one, forcing her ribs apart. And it kept blooming. Spreading. Growing.
Claire screamed until her voice was gone, until there was nothing left of her but the flower.
My eyes widened. "Shit!" I yelled in panic. "Shit! Shit! Shit!"
"CLAIRE!!!" Adam and Leon's screams collided, filled with horror and disbelief.
"You do not make noise in front of the king!" Oberon roared, activating a skill: Nature's Wrath.
Giant scarlet thorns erupted from the ground, impaling Adam before he could react. And just like that, he was killed in an instant.
"Punishment for those who are not obedient," Oberon said, a cruel grin spreading across his face as he turned his gaze to us.
The attack nearly caught me and Leon, but I managed to avoid it with my spirit dagger's skill: Intangibility, phasing just in time. Leon activated a skill: Death Shroud, making his form dissolve into a swirl of black smoke, granting him a precious second of invincibility.
"Hey, kid," Leon said, narrowing his eyes as he rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. "Let's finish this before we turn into a flower or… a human barbecue skewer."
"You're level seventy-one, right?" He asked, tapping the side of his helmet. "If we manage to catch it off guard, we should be able to take it down in one blow."
"Yeah…" I replied, gripping my dagger tightly, knuckles white. "Oberon's health should be at fifteen percent now. We should be able to kill him in one strike."
"Wait—how do you know that?" I said, raising an eyebrow.
"Player inspect," he said, shrugging his right shoulder. "Everyone has it. Didn't you know?"
"Oh…" I muttered, brushing a strand of hair from my face. "I completely forgot about that."
"Now let's do this!" we said in unison, fists tightening around our weapons, squaring our shoulders, ready to charge forward.
"Die Intruders!" Oberon shrieked, his wings flaring as massive stone shards launched toward us. "For you were not invited but still came!"
Leon raised his divine shield, Medusa, holding it firmly before activating its skill: Medusa's Gaze.
"Have a taste of your own cooking, Fairy King," he said, his voice steady as the shield reflected the incoming stone shards toward Oberon.
Oberon barely flinched, summoning a leaf-like barrier to block the reflected attack. Then he activated a skill: Tree of Life, causing a massive plant to erupt from the ground. A shiny droplet of water formed at its center, dripping down and restoring some of his lost health points.
"His health points… it went back up to twenty percent," Leon said, voice trembling as his hand shook around the hilt of his sword. He swallowed hard. "And I'm running out of mana. Kid… do you really think we're making it out of here alive?"
"Definitely," I said, forcing confidence into my voice. I wiped blood from my lip with the back of my hand and tightened my stance. "Oberon took serious damage when I hit him physically earlier. I think physical attacks hurt him more than magic. Try using Soul Chain, and let's charge him together with everything we have."
Leon's eyes widened, pupils dilating like he'd just seen a ghost. His expression faltered. His mind was sinking into memory, like he was reliving something only he and a handful of survivors had ever seen and lived to speak about.
And then it hit him.
A flashback.
The fifth dungeon, Volcanica.
They were deep inside the dungeon's molten core, where every breath tasted of burnt iron and ash. The air was thick with the choking stench of scorched copper and bone dust scratching at their throats. Jagged obsidian walls, etched with faint red symbols, towered around them. Beneath their feet, a cracked obsidian platform hovered over pools of molten rock that churned and hissed, bubbling like the earth's own boiling blood.
At the center, the dungeon boss, Helios, the Sun Devourer, rested on his altar of flames. Nearby, dragon head statues that seemed alive exhaled heat and whispers of fire, their breaths spiderwebbing like veins. Every step toward Helios felt like dragging their souls across a searing grate—painful, relentless, and impossible to ignore.
Helios was a towering figure with the body of a colossal phoenix, his avian form covered in blazing feathers that shifted between gold and deep crimson, constantly shedding sparks and embers. He had four massive wings made of molten light that illuminated everything around him, and his fiery talons burned into the ground wherever he stood. His head was humanoid, with pale skin etched by glowing cracks of heat, and his long, vibrant orange hair flowed like sunlight all the way down to his lower back. His eyes shone like small suns with dark centers, giving his gaze an intense, radiant presence.
As the battle began, chaos reigned inside the dungeon.
Nearly a hundred players fought for survival amid the hellish heat. Healers collapsed in gasping, broken heaps, their skin clammy and slick from sweat, unable to stem the relentless burn stacks that seared flesh like acid. Warriors sweltered in armor that felt more like a furnace, metal scorching hot against cracking skin beneath. Mages, faces contorted in pain, were cut down mid-spell by flaming javelins that screamed through the air like vengeful meteors. Assassins, silent and deadly, were mostly fallen ghosts flickering out in the fire.
After an hour of battle, twenty remained out of ninety players. And Helios was at twenty percent health points.
Leon was down on one knee, his body slick with sweat and dirt. His halberd burned red-hot in his grasp, the heat pulsing through his fingers like a live wire. A metal shield he wielded was cracked from edge to core, spiderweb fractures marring its surface—the weight of absorbing too many flames from the dragon head statues etched into every splintered line. His health bar blinked on the brink, a threadbare whisper of life clinging stubbornly. His mana points were empty, evaporated into the suffocating heat and endless fight. Every inhale tasted like ash; every heartbeat thundered like a war drum in his ears.
Then, without warning, Helios rose into the air above the altar, his wings forming a burning sigil as he activated a skill: Total Destruction. A single giant meteor, pulsing with black-violet energy, spiraled down toward the remaining players like divine punishment.
Leon couldn't run due to shock. He accepted that there was nowhere to go.
But just before the meteor came closer to them, it was suddenly cut in half—it was cut in a clean and precise way—like a knife slicing through gelatin.
And through the storm of dust and fire...
A woman walked.
Her face was never seen, hidden beneath a moss-colored veil that trailed behind her like vines caught in a hurricane. Her hair flowed like a living cascade of the earth—loam brown, lichen green, and riverstone black—shot through with flickers of silver, like starlight trapped in roots.
In her hand, she held a divine weapon called Oceania. Its hilt was made of polished black stone set with three azure gems that pulsed with a soft, rhythmic glow like a heartbeat beneath the ocean depths. The blade resembled a cresting wave, translucent, endless, and alive, frozen in a perfect arc that rippled subtly with motion yet never spilled a single drop.
And then came the system ping, projecting across the dungeon:
[WORLD RANK PLAYER DETECTED]:
[Player 3]: [Isola Ashur] — (Level 80) — [World Rank 2]
Leon's eyes widened.
"W–World Rank 2?" he stuttered.
A beat of silence passed.
Then, a roar of voices followed, tearing through the battlefield like crashing thunder. Ragged cheers, shaky laughter, and even tears broke free. One archer, his leg burned raw and crawling on scorched earth, dropped to his knees and kissed the ground as if it were a sacred promise. Nearby, two healers clung to each other, their shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
Then Isola charged forward as Helios roared, unleashing twelve blazing spears of fire toward her.
She gracefully dodged eleven of the blazing spears. Her movements were smooth and fluid, impossible to hold or catch, like water slipping through clenched fists. Then, as the last blazing spear came inches closer to her, she suddenly shimmered like a mirage.
"W-What just happened?" Leon thought, his eyes widening in shock. "Where did she go?"
And then, as if the lens of a camera had sharpened its focus, Isola reappeared two meters away from where she had been.
"W-WHAT?!" Leon shouted mentally. "IS THAT CLASS REALLY THAT OVERPOWERED?!"
As she continued moving forward, she slipped past flames that erupted from the mouths of the dragon head statues. Then she leapt upward, gliding through the air as if carried by an invisible current toward Helios. The blade in her hand suddenly gleamed with a shimmering blue light, alive and flowing like a river as she drew closer.
Isola shimmered like a mirage once more.
Helios roared, activating an area of effect skill: Hell Fire. Giant fireballs began forming below the tips of his wings. But before his attack could fully manifest, he suddenly froze in place like a mannequin.
A whisper of a cut echoed throughout the dungeon.
Isola suddenly reappeared in front of Helios like liquid water solidifying into ice. Her blade sank deep into his chest, slicing through as if it were nothing but soft moss.
Then came the system message in gold:
[FIFTH DUNGEON]: [CLEARED!]
"Leon! HEY!" I shouted, snapping my fingers right in front of his face. My voice cut through his daze like a whip. "This is not the time to space out!"
Leon blinked rapidly, shaking his head as if clearing fog from his mind. His shoulders straightened, and he tightened his grip on his sword. "My sincerest apologies," he said, voice steadying. "Now… let's get back to business."
"Such assumptions, mortals! You think I'm inferior to physical attacks?" Oberon sneered, tilting its head as glowing energy gathered in its maw. "A king does not have a weakness!"
A blinding sky beam shot from his eye, slicing through the air like a blade of pure light.
Leon reacted instantly. He raised his divine shield, activating its skill as the beam slammed against it. Sparks and waves of energy rippled outward, but the shield held—and then reflected the attack directly back at Oberon.
As Oberon staggered under the reflected strike, Leon didn't hesitate and braced to attack. He gritted his teeth and activated a skill: Soul Chain. Dark chains surged from his blade, wrapping around Oberon, paralyzing him in place.
"Now, Kiddo!" Leon shouted, eyes blazing. "Finish that stinking moth!"
I didn't wait a second longer. I lunged forward, gripping my dagger tightly, adrenaline flooding every nerve of my body. "THIS IS IT!" I shouted mentally. "THIS IS THE OPENING I NEEDED!"
But Oberon anticipated the move. A shockwave burst from him, sending me flying into a wall as I closed in.
The impact knocked the wind from me. Pain shot through my spine as I hit the ground not far from Leon.
My health points plummeted to seven percent, and darkness crept at the edges of my vision. A system window flickered in front of me as my body felt light and weightless, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.
[WARNING]: [LOW HP!]
[HP]: [7/100]
[MP]: [90/100]
"Fuck..." I muttered in my head. "I can't feel like I'm moving a muscle..."
I heard Leon's voice, faint but urgent.
"Kiddo!"
"Hey!"
"Wake up!"
He thrust a greater health potion into my hands and said, "Don't you die on me, Kiddo. We're clearing this shit together."
I gulped it down, coughing as the liquid slid harshly down my throat. My health points surged back to a hundred. I wiped sweat and blood from my face with the back of my hand, then slowly pushed myself onto my knees.
"One more time…" I muttered through gritted teeth. "One last fucking time!"
"I don't have any mana left..." Leon muttered to himself, almost like a mantra. "I should use it..."
Oberon activated a skill: Tree of Life, summoning a droplet to heal himself as the Soul Chain effect faded.
But before the droplet reached his head, a crimson slash cut through him, interrupting the healing process.
A system window appeared over Oberon's head:
[FAIRY KING OBERON] — (LEVEL 100)
[HP]: [3/200]
I turned to Leon. He was holding a crimson longsword with a mouth-shaped handle that sucked blood from his hand. It was his unique weapon: Bloodthirsty Sword. The sword's ability: Insatiation, drains fifty percent of the user's health points to conjure an attack equivalent to the lost health points with a bonus random effect.
Leon crumpled to his knees as blood trickled from his hand, and his health points dropped to thirty percent.
"THAT INSECT WON'T BE ABLE TO MOVE FOR A FEW MOMENTS, KIDDO!" he shouted, one hand pressed to his side while the other jammed the sword into the ground like an anchor. His voice cracked, but stayed loud. He pointed a finger toward Oberon. "A RANDOM EFFECT JUST HIT IT—I'M PRETTY SURE IT'S A STUN, SINCE IT'S ON ITS KNEES. EXTERMINATE IT NOW!"
My eyes locked onto Oberon. Then, I sprinted toward him, gripping my dagger tightly. It was a gamble. No one really knew what bonus effect was applied. Stun effect or not, I was going for the kill. I kept my spirit dagger's activation at bay to avoid repeating past mistakes.
As I came two meters away from Oberon, a system window appeared above his head:
[FAIRY KING OBERON]
[Status]: [Immobilized] — [17 seconds remaining]
[HP]: [3/200]
"Immobilized… how unlucky for the fairy king," I muttered, a confident grin spreading across my face. "I'll try copying that girl's ability. Maybe it'll work this time. The boss is already as good as dead anyway."
"Copy skill: Pure Love."
A system window appeared in front of me:
[New Skill Detected]: [Pure Love]
[Copy Skill?]: [Y/N]
I pressed yes with an excited look on my face.
[Skill Copied]: [Pure Love]
[ATTACK CHOICES]:
[Quick Burst Damage]: [Y/N]
[Full Burst Damage]: [Y/N]
I chose the first option to avoid a long casting time.
"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!" Leon's voice rang out as a surge of pink magic energy flowed through my body.
I raised my right hand, aiming directly at Oberon.
"Fairy King…" I said, my voice low but steady. The pink energy flared brighter, forming into a massive beam that shot forth from my palm, homing in on Oberon with unstoppable force. "Exterminated,"
The immobilized Fairy King's eye widened in shock as the beam struck. The beam cut through him, erasing his existence in a single, brilliant pink flash.
Leon panted heavily, eyes locked on the swirling pink energy gathering in my palm. "That move… it can't be…" he muttered, disbelief written across his face. "It's Claire's..."
Then came the system message in gold:
[DUNGEON CLEARED]: [TREASURE ROOM UNLOCKED!]