The smell of a dungeon wasn't sulfur or rot, as the movies claimed. It was the smell of old, wet copper.
It was the smell of blood that had never been allowed to dry.
Ezra dragged his left leg, the brace clicking rhythmically against the stone floor. Click-scrape. Click-scrape.
The sound was deafening in the silence of the cavern, but the Hunters walking ahead of him didn't care. To them, he wasn't a teammate. He was a pack mule.
"Hurry up, cripple," barked Markus, the raid leader. His plated armor gleamed under the magelights, a stark contrast to Ezra's tattered canvas jacket.
"If we miss the boss spawn timer because of your limping, I'm docking your pay."
Ezra didn't argue. He just adjusted the straps of the massive pack on his back.
It weighed eighty pounds—mostly mana potions and spare weapons for the 'real' Hunters. "I'm moving, Markus. The terrain is just... uneven."
"Excuses," a female voice sneered. Sarah, the team's healer.
She didn't even look at him. She was too busy polishing her staff. "We should have hired a D-Rank porter. This is what happens when you go cheap."
Ezra grit his teeth, swallowing the bile rising in his throat. He needed this money. His sister's hospital bills were due in three days. The 'Mana Sickness' eating her lungs didn't care about his dignity. It only cared about credits.
"Just a little further," Ezra whispered to himself. "Get in, carry the loot, get out. Get paid."
They entered the boss chamber. It was a vast, circular arena carved from obsidian. But something was wrong. The air was vibrating. The ambient mana, usually a soft blue hum, was screaming. The color of the air shifted from blue to a sickly, bruised purple.
"Markus," the team's scout, a wiry man named Jinsu, stuttered. "The... the readings. This isn't a D-Rank."
Markus stopped. "What?"
"The mana density," Jinsu's voice cracked. "It's spiking. It's... it's breaking the gauge.
This is at least a B-Rank anomaly. Maybe A."
Before Markus could scream the order to retreat, the ground erupted.
It wasn't a clean spawn. The floor didn't just open; it shattered. A hand the size of a minivan, comprised of rotting flesh and weeping eyes, clawed its way out of the earth. Then another.
A creature dragged itself up—a monstrosity that looked like three ogres fused together by a mad god.
[WARNING: GATEKEEPER DETECTED.]
[LEVEL: ???]
Panic. Instant, feral panic.
"Run!" Markus screamed, already turning tail. He didn't cast a defensive spell to cover his team. He cast Haste on himself.
The creature roared, a sound that popped eardrums. It lunged, not at the fast-moving Markus, but at Sarah.
"Markus! Help me!" she shrieked, stumbling.
Markus didn't look back. The scout, Jinsu, was already halfway to the exit. Ezra was the furthest back, his bad leg locking up in terror.
The monster's shadow fell over them. It was going to kill them all.
The exit was too far. Unless... unless it was distracted.
Markus stopped near the exit. He looked back. His eyes locked with Ezra's.
There was no apology in Markus's eyes. Only calculation.
"Sorry, kid," Markus shouted over the roar. "Porter's contract, clause 4: In the event of a catastrophic wipe, the porter is expendable assets."
Markus raised his hand. A Force Push spell.
He didn't aim it at the monster. He aimed it at Ezra.
BOOM.
The invisible impact hit Ezra in the chest like a sledgehammer. He flew backward, breathless, tumbling through the air straight toward the monstrosity's grasping claws.
"No!" Ezra screamed, but the sound was lost.
He hit the ground hard, his leg snapping with a wet crunch. He looked up just in time to see Markus and the others dragging Sarah through the exit gate.
The heavy stone doors slammed shut, sealing the room.
Ezra was alone.
The creature loomed over him, its thousand eyes blinking in unison. It didn't attack immediately. It seemed confused by the sudden offering.
Ezra lay in the muck, pain blinding him. He wasn't sad. He wasn't scared.
He was furious.
They left me. The thought burned brighter than the pain. I carried their gear. I polished their weapons. I took their abuse. And they fed me to this thing.
The creature raised a massive fist to crush him.
Ezra reached out, his fingers digging into the obsidian floor. "I curse you," he hissed, blood bubbling between his teeth. "I curse you all. If I die here, I will become a ghost and I will eat your souls."
The fist came down.
Ezra closed his eyes.
But death didn't come.
Instead, the ground beneath him gave way. Not into a pit, but into nothingness. Ezra fell through the floor, through the dungeon, through the fabric of the world.
He fell into the cold, silent dark beneath the code of the System.
[You have entered the Glitch Layer.]
[The Abyss stares back.]
[It is hungry.]
[Are you hungry, too?]
Ezra opened his eyes in the pitch black. He couldn't see his body, but he could feel the rage.
"Yes," he whispered into the void. "I'm starving."