The rift sealed shut behind Jade with a final shiver of light. It was like stepping through the seam of the world and finding yourself swallowed by a place that breathed its own logic, obeyed no rule of the outer stars. The last sound of Nexus City—the distant hum of its sky-rails, the muffled clamor of market chatter—vanished as though a curtain had been torn down. Silence pressed in, heavy, alive.
Jade stood upon soil that looked blackened and damp, as if perpetually slick with spilled blood. A crimson mist hung low, coiling between skeletal trees whose trunks split at odd angles like broken limbs. Above, the sky was a jagged wound: cracked moons bleeding silver light across the heavens, streaking everything in a pallid glow.
He inhaled slowly, and the dungeon's breath answered back—thick with iron, damp fur, and the musk of predators. His lips curved faintly. A C-rank dungeon… and it begins with this.
[Quest: Defeat a C-ranked Monster]
Reward: Spectra's Band [SS]
Duration:1 year
Status: Ongoing
I'll find you, Lio, he thought, scanning the mist. And while I do, I'll grow stronger.
The ground trembled. A sound threaded through the trees: the low, dragging scrape of claws across stone.
---------------------------------------------------------
They came from the mist, one after another, tall as men but broader, heavier, hunched with shoulders knotted like ropes. Their hides were mottled grey and black, their maws bristling with fangs. Eyes glowed with sickly green light, burning holes in the crimson fog. Their breath steamed as though their insides were too hot for the air around them.
A pack of five circled, throats vibrating with deep growls. Their claws dragged furrows through the black soil as they stalked. The leader—larger, with a torn ear and one eye clouded white—snarled and snapped his jaw, the sound sharp enough to echo.
Jade's pulse quickened. His hands lifted with almost casual grace. Cold bloomed from his palms, and the mist thickened, crystallizing into floating shards of ice.
The first lunged. Jade didn't step back; he only tilted his wrist. A blade of frost extended outward like an extension of his thought, sliding between ribs. The werewolf froze mid-leap, its momentum broken, its body stiffening as ice raced through veins. It shattered to powder before it hit the ground.
[EXP +300]
The others hesitated, but hesitation was weakness. Jade moved. Frost spiraled at his feet, carrying him forward with speed unnatural for his small frame. His long silvery-blue hair whipped behind him like a comet's tail as he thrust his palm outward.
An arc of jagged ice surged from the soil, splitting one wolf clean in half.
[EXP +300]
The third tried to flank, circling wide. Jade didn't even turn his head; he felt it, the void whispering to him, darkness curling at the edges of perception.
The third tried to flank, circling wide. Jade didn't even turn his head; he felt it, the void whispering to him, darkness curling at the edges of perception.
The werewolf froze mid-prowl, hackles lifting, some primal instinct screaming at it that this child—this fragile-looking boy—was not prey. Not even predator. Something else entirely.
Jade raised two fingers. Shadows gathered like water breaking free of a dam. Tendrils of darkness slithered from beneath the mist and coiled around the beast's legs. It yelped, snapped, struggled—but the void tightened, crushing bone, dragging it screaming into the earth itself.
A heartbeat later, silence.
[EXP +300]
[LEVEL UP!]
The two remaining wolves tried to retreat. Pack instinct warred with terror, and terror won. They turned, but ice had already webbed itself across the trees, sealing off the path. The dungeon mist caught in the crystalline lattice, glowing faintly with refracted red light.
"Leaving so soon?" Jade murmured, voice soft, almost tender.
The ground responded for him. Spears of ice erupted, impaling one through chest and throat. The last barreled forward in desperation, fangs snapping, claws extended—straight into Jade's waiting palm.
Frost erupted. The beast froze mid-motion, like a statue carved in white glass. With a flick of his wrist, Jade shattered it into glittering shards that clinked across the soil.
[EXP +295]
Then silence again.
The mist shifted, thinner now, as though the dungeon acknowledged the pack's annihilation. The black soil seemed to sigh, drinking in spilled essence. Farther within, the scrape of claws echoed again—more, many more.
Jade's eyes narrowed.
A den. Packs. Not scattered. Organized.
That meant this dungeon wasn't empty chaos—it had hierarchy. And if there was hierarchy, there was a king. A C-rank monster. His target.
....
The shards of ice settled into silence, the last wolf reduced to nothing but frozen fragments. Jade's breath misted in the air, his heartbeat steady, too steady for a child who had just slain a pack of monsters.
[EXP +295]
The numbers whispered like reassurance, but his mind had already moved on.
Lio.
He turned his gaze deeper into the crimson fog. Somewhere beyond the skeletal trees, his friend was trapped. Alive, if fate still had meaning.
Jade knelt, running his fingers across the black soil where the wolves had fallen. No blood. Dungeons rarely left traces of death for long; their worlds devoured everything. But faintly—just faintly—there were grooves. Claw marks. Not from monsters. Smaller, erratic, the kind a panicked human might leave when dragged.
His jaw tightened.
He's close. These wolves… they were circling. Guarding. That means they smelled him too.
The mist stirred, carrying a low, distant howl. This one was deeper, resonant, not from the throats of scavengers but from something older, commanding. The pack lord.
A chill passed through the air—not from Jade, but from the dungeon itself, like the world was bracing for its master's arrival.
Jade rose, frost still curling from his palms. His silvery-blue hair shifted as though tugged by unseen currents, dual irises gleaming faintly in the gloom.
I'll find you, Lio. But if I must carve through every wolf in this cursed den to reach you—then so be it.
---
The fog seemed thicker the deeper he went, curling like smoke that refused to disperse. The skeletal trees leaned inward, their limbs arching together as though conspiring to cage him. Every step was muffled, black soil swallowing sound, until even the crunch of frost under his boots felt muted.
Jade crouched again, brushing aside damp moss clinging to the ground. The faint grooves continued—narrow, dragging lines, the signature of fingernails clawing into earth. Fresh. The dungeon hadn't devoured them yet.
His chest tightened. Lio was here.
The silence broke.
A ripple shivered through the crimson mist, and out of it padded more wolves. These were leaner, faster, their pelts darker, marked with streaks of bone-white fur that glowed faintly under the fractured moons. Their eyes blazed that same sickly green, but sharper now, more intelligent. Scouts.
They didn't circle this time. They darted, quicksilver in motion, testing his edges.
Jade inhaled, steadying the flare of excitement that always came before a fight. Ice bloomed at his fingertips, jagged crystals spiraling outward, while shadows thickened behind him like a cloak.
I don't have time to waste. Lio first. Monsters second.
The wolves lunged together. Jade moved faster.
His body flickered through space, teleportation bending distance so he reappeared behind the first wolf. A blade of ice bloomed from his palm, skewering through its spine before it had time to register.
[EXP +260]
He spun, frost spiraling outward. The second wolf leapt directly into the storm, its body encased mid-air, shattered to fragments.
[EXP +270]
The third veered wide, aiming for his blindside. Jade's dual pupils flared—silver and violet catching the creature in their gaze. Darkness erupted, dragging the wolf down into the soil like a stone dropped into a pond. Its shrieks cut off in an instant.
[EXP +285]
Jade exhaled sharply, shoulders rising and falling. He should've felt satisfaction at the numbers tallying higher, at the clear rise of strength building inside him. But beneath it was only urgency.
He wiped frost from his palm, eyes tracking the faint scratches again. The trail turned sharper here, angled toward a narrow break between two skeletal trees. Beyond them, the fog deepened to a blood-red shade, pulsing faintly as if alive.
Jade pressed forward. His boots sank deeper into the soil as though the ground resisted his passing. The mist thickened, until even the sound of his own breath seemed swallowed.
And then he heard it—so faint he almost thought he'd imagined it.
A voice. Weak. Hoarse.
"…help…"
Jade's heart jolted, sharper than any rush of EXP could give.
Lio.
.....