In the Lingyuan Era, Year 13, the world trembled once again.
Every nation witnessed the same horror: a shroud of black spiritual fog descending without warning. Within hours, each country lost one of its cities to the darkness.
Those engulfed by the Veil were cut off completely—no signal, no sound, not even a dying scream.
Governments deployed drones, satellites, and experimental light bombs, but none returned any data. The mist devoured everything—machines, radio waves, and human hope.
In Fuchuan City, the capital of Xiga, the response was immediate. The military dispatched a hundred of its finest operatives, armed with Veil-resistant suits and reinforced exoskeletons.
They marched into the fog under the bright eyes of the command center.
The moment they crossed the threshold, their signals went dark.
One hundred red markers blinked, then vanished from the tactical screen—
as if they had never existed.
Three days after the fall of Fuchuan, something appeared across the networks of the world—a message that bypassed every firewall, language, and government.
[The Spiritual Dungeon System has been initialized.]
Randomly selecting "Chosen Souls."
Each represents their nation.
Clear the Dungeon to earn rewards—and reclaim lost cities.
Failure will result in another city consumed by the Veil.
No one knew where the message came from. It wasn't a broadcast, nor a hack—it simply appeared, engraved into every electronic device, every mind connected to the global Net.
The world called it "The Veil Game."
A survival simulation between nations.
Each country's chosen representative—its Chosen Soul—would enter a dungeon generated by the Veil. Success meant salvation; death meant annihilation.
No country was ready for the first round. The "Dungeon of Crimson Hospital" began—and ended—in less than half a day. Every participant perished.
The longest survivor, an elite from the United Federation, lasted barely six hours before his signal dissolved into static.
When the dungeon closed, a new city vanished from the map.
The age of Spiritual Dungeons had begun.
The failure of the first Dungeon brought a new wave of collapse.
Each nation lost another city. For the smallest countries, with only one left, it meant complete extinction.
Panic spread faster than the fog itself. Governments fell into chaos. Streets burned.
In some places, people looted temples for blessings; in others, they prayed to machines.
Over the next year, the Veil System continued to select nations for entry—
four more Dungeons, all forced participation.
Four more disasters.
Only once did humanity succeed: the United Federation cleared a D-rank Dungeon—barely.
Every other attempt ended in silence and ash.
Then, without warning, the voice returned.
[Ding.]
The next Spiritual Dungeon will open in three days.
Designation: "The Manor Tragedy."
Difficulty: A-Rank.
All nations, prepare your Chosen Souls.
The voice was mechanical, but female—cold and absolute, echoing through both sky and mind.
Global leaders froze. Faces pale. The last four Dungeons had been D-level, except one classified as C-level—
and even those had slaughter rates above ninety-nine percent.
Only the Federation had ever cleared a Dungeon, and that was a "non-supernatural logic puzzle," solved mostly by luck.
Their reward was obscene: ten additional years of national lifespan, and a passive ability called "One Death Exemption."
An extra life.
In this world, that single breath between death and deletion meant everything.
Xiga, Headquarters of the Special Operations Division…
The moment the global prompt echoed, Director Li Baicai—a tall man with white hair and tired eyes—let his shoulders sink.
Worry weighed on him like lead.
The Veil Dungeon selected its Chosen Souls at random. For a nation of over a billion citizens, probability itself became terror.
The first Chosen Soul had been a college student—dead within an hour.
The second? A psychiatric patient who jumped from a window before the mission even started.
The fourth was almost comical in its cruelty: an eighty-one-year-old man who was on an operating table when the selection struck.
Each time, the results grew more absurd, and the pattern more personal.
To the leaders of Xiga, it no longer felt like chance. It felt like targeting.
Five cities had already fallen. The losses were incalculable.
Even a nation vast as Xiga could not survive many more "random selections."
And now—the next Dungeon carried the label A-Rank.
Even with nationwide training programs, every official face around the command table remained grim.
---
Tiancheng City, Xiga.
In a cramped apartment glowing with the pale light of a gaming monitor, Qi Sen sat slouched in a chair, dark circles painted under his eyes.
He was grinding for digital credits in a survival game, half-awake, half-bored.
The Veil notification had appeared on his screen hours ago.
He didn't care.
With billions of citizens, his odds of being chosen were lower than winning a lottery worth fifty million credits.
He laughed, closed the alert, and kept playing.
Somewhere in the static between heartbeats, the System was already watching.
Qi Sen grew up in an orphanage.
The headmistress had been kind—too kind. She gave him food, shelter, an education, and never once asked for anything in return.
But kindness didn't feed the future.
Like most graduates of the Lingyuan Era, Qi Sen walked straight from school into unemployment.
No connections, no special skills—only the ability to grind.
So he did. In the digital world.
He farmed virtual credits in games to pay for rent and cheap food.
It was a miserable way to live, but it worked. He'd saved a few thousand credits already.
Enough for snacks, an old monitor, and—tonight—half of an emperor crab spread across his table like a small act of rebellion.
He didn't think too far ahead.
In this world, any city could vanish tomorrow.
Maybe even Tiancheng.
Maybe even him.
Three days later, the countdown to the next Dungeon Selection reached its final minutes.
Across the world, people were praying, hiding, or crying.
Some begged not to be chosen.
Others, like Qi Sen, couldn't bring themselves to care anymore.
Then the air changed.
Inside the narrow bathroom, black fog seeped from nowhere—
curling through the vents, coiling along the tiles.
The walls began to rot in fast motion, as if centuries were collapsing into seconds.
The mirror clouded, then cleared, and something looked back.
A silhouette stood behind the glass, its outline wrapped in mist.
Two crimson eyes opened within the dark.
They were not reflections.
They were waiting.
The figure in the mist stepped closer, one silent footfall at a time, until she stood beside the sleeping Qi Sen.
The fog rippled around her, revealing glimpses of a slender silhouette—
elegant, almost human—
but if Qi Sen had been awake, he would have never called it beautiful.
A minute passed.
The figure leaned forward, the fog breathing with her, and reached out.
Two hands—pale as porcelain, drained of every hint of blood—extended toward his throat.
They were too perfect.
Too still.
The beauty of something that should not be alive.
Her fingers tightened.
Qi Sen's body convulsed; his eyes snapped open, wide with disbelief.
There she was—a woman of mist and moonlight, face hidden, eyes glowing crimson.
A ghost.
In his room.
It was impossible.
Spiritual anomalies existed, yes—but only inside the cities consumed by the Veil.
Not here. Not yet.
Seconds stretched into eternity.
His face turned purple; breath fled his lungs; consciousness wavered.
Then—
a surge of red light burst through the apartment, swallowing both of them whole.
[Ding.]
Congratulations, Chosen Soul.
You have been selected to represent the nation of Xiga in the upcoming Spiritual Dungeon.
Complete the Dungeon to receive rewards for yourself—and your country.
Allocating innate ability… scanning…
Warning: Unknown anomaly detected. Scan failed. Error code… corrupted…
[Ding.]
Congratulations. Innate Talent acquired — SSS Rank: Devour.
And then there was silence.
Xiga, Headquarters of the Special Operations Division…
The conference hall was filled to capacity.
Psychologists, mystery writers, criminal investigators—every kind of expert that Xiga could summon.
Each nation was granted three chances to contact its Chosen Soul during a Dungeon run.
Their job was to analyze the feed, gather data, and deliver advice when survival demanded it.
Now, the screens flickered to life.
Across the globe, the live feeds of the newly entered Spiritual Dungeon stabilized into view.
Dozens of nations held their breath.
Then they saw her.
The room fell silent—completely, terribly silent.
No one spoke. No one even breathed.
On the main monitor stood the image of the Xiga participant.
Pale skin. No trace of blood.
Hair long enough to brush the small of her back, hanging loose in the stagnant air.
Her head tilted slightly downward, hiding her face—but her eyes, those crimson eyes, glowed like rubies under moonlight.
Her hands—delicate, elegant, wrong—ended in razor-sharp nails that shimmered with a cold metallic sheen.
A once-white dress clung to her form, stained with dark, dried blossoms of blood, like crimson petals etched into silk.
From her body, tendrils of black fog coiled and drifted upward, pulsing like something alive.
Someone in the room finally whispered, voice trembling:
"That's… not human."