The Shadowfen Marsh announced itself long before Dante reached it.
The trees grew twisted and sparse, their branches reaching toward the sky like skeletal fingers.
By the time Dante stood at the marsh's edge, the sun was setting, painting the horizon in shades of blood and copper.
[Location Discovered: Shadowfen Marsh][Warning: High concentration of corrupted mana detected][Threat Level: B+ to A-][Recommended Party Size: 4-6 adventurers]
"Good thing I'm not an adventurer," Dante muttered, stepping off solid ground and onto the spongy earth of the marsh.
His boots sank slightly with each step, water seeping up through the moss. The air was alive with insects, clouds of them that dispersed and reformed with every movement. In the distance, something large moved through the water, sending ripples across the surface before submerging again.
[Blood Sense Activated - Range Extended][Life signs detected: Multiple. Pattern suggests...][Warning: Signatures are wrong. Corrupted. Possibly undead or demon-possessed.]
Dante's hand went to his dagger. He'd dealt with undead before; reanimated corpses, lost souls bound to decaying flesh, and the occasional skeleton held together by dark magic. They were rare in the Era of Peace, remnants of the Demon King's armies that occasionally stirred in forgotten battlefields.
But this felt different.
The mana here wasn't just dark, it was old magic, like the tavern keeper had said. The kind that predated the Demon King's reign. The kind that shouldn't exist anymore.
He moved deeper into the marsh, following the strongest concentration of corrupted mana. The water rose to his ankles, then his knees. Dead trees loomed on either side, their bark black with rot. Mushrooms glowed with sickly bioluminescence, casting everything in shades of green and purple.
A sound cut through the marsh's ambient noise; a voice, high and frightened.
"—don't know what it is! Please, someone help us!"
Dante's pace quickened. He rounded a cluster of dead trees and found them; three people huddled on a small island of solid ground, surrounded by dark water. Two men and a woman, dressed in travel-worn clothes. Merchants, probably, who'd taken the wrong road and ended up here.
One of the men was injured, a deep gash across his leg that bled freely into the marsh water.
"Help!" the woman cried when she saw Dante. "Please, we've been trapped here for hours! There's something in the water, something that won't let us leave—"
The water exploded.
A shape erupted from beneath the surface; humanoid but weird, its body bloated and covered in weeping sores. Its face had once been human, but now the features were stretched and distorted, the mouth hanging open to reveal rows of needle-like teeth. Waterlogged flesh hung from its bones in strips.
[Target Identified: Drowned Revenant][Threat Level: C+][Status: Corrupted by ancient magic. Highly aggressive. Drawn to blood.]
The creature lunged at the merchants with horrifying speed.
Dante was faster.
[Shadow Step]
He materialized between the revenant and its targets, one hand already coated in crimson energy. His claws met the creature's throat mid-lunge, tearing through waterlogged flesh and blackened bone.
[Blood Claws - Critical Hit]
The revenant shrieked—a sound like drowning backwards—and collapsed into the water. Its body began to dissolve, flesh sloughing off bones that crumbled to dust within seconds.
[Drowned Revenant Eliminated][+800 XP]
But Dante was already moving, his senses screaming warnings.
[Blood Sense Alert: Multiple hostiles emerging][Count: 7... 12... 18...]
The water churned. More shapes rose from the depths; men, women, even children, all wearing the faces of the dead. Their eyes glowed with that same sickly light as the mushrooms. They moved as one, surrounding the small island from all sides.
"Get behind me," Dante ordered, not looking at the merchants. "Don't move. Don't make noise. And whatever happens, stay out of the water."
"What are you going to—" the woman started.
The revenants attacked.
They came from every direction at once, clawing their way onto the island with diseased hands and gnashing teeth. Dante met them head-on, his body moving with the fluid precision of twenty-five years of combat experience.
[Predator's Grace - Enhanced][Crimson Execution - Activated]
A blood-forged blade materialized in his hand, longer and sharper than any steel. He carved through the first wave of revenants with surgical efficiency, each strike perfectly placed to sever spines or pierce corrupted hearts. Black ichor sprayed across the moss, hissing where it landed.
But they kept coming.
For every one he destroyed, two more emerged from the water. Their movements were erratic, unpredictable; driven not by intelligence but by the ancient magic animating their corpses.
Too many, Dante realized. At this rate, I'll be overwhelmed before I can eliminate them all.
He needed to change tactics.
[Skill Activated: Crimson Domain - Full Power]
Red mist exploded outward from Dante's body, spreading across the island and over the water in a twenty-meter radius. The air itself seemed to thicken, becoming heavy and oppressive. The revenants that touched the mist began to slow, their movements growing sluggish as the blood magic interfered with whatever force animated them.
[MP: 1,650 → 890][Warning: High mana consumption. Domain can be maintained for approximately 4 minutes at current output.]
Four minutes.
That would have to be enough.
Dante moved through the slowed revenants like death incarnate, his blade rising and falling with mechanical precision. One. Two. Five. Ten. The bodies piled up, dissolving into mana and marsh water. His crimson eyes blazed in the darkness, tracking every movement, calculating every angle.
Behind him, the merchants watched in stunned silence as this stranger—this thing that looked human but moved like a predator—systematically destroyed an army of the undead.
The last revenant fell.
Dante stood in the center of the carnage, breathing hard, his blade still raised. The red mist began to dissipate, fading back into his body. His eyes scanned the water, searching for more threats.
[Blood Sense: No hostile signatures detected within range][Battle Complete][+14,200 XP][MP: 890 → 340][Blood Bank: 2.1 / 8.0 Liters]
Silence settled over the marsh, broken only by the sound of insects and distant water.
"What..." the woman whispered. "What are you?"
Dante didn't answer. He was staring at the water, at the places where the revenants had emerged. His enhanced senses were picking up something else now; a pulse of mana, deep beneath the marsh. Ancient. Powerful. Still active.
"This isn't natural," he said, more to himself than the merchants. "Revenants don't just appear. Something created them. Or sustaining them."
He turned to the injured man, whose leg was still bleeding. The wound was worse than he'd initially thought; deep enough to be dangerous if left untreated.
"You need a healer," Dante said. "The nearest town with a decent cleric is Fahl, two days east of here. Can you walk?"
"I... I think so," the man stammered.
Dante reached into his coat and pulled out one of his emergency healing potions. He tossed it to the woman. "Give him half now, half in twelve hours. It'll keep the wound from festering until you reach Fahl. And stay on the main roads. No shortcuts through wilderness."
"Thank you," the woman said, clutching the potion. "How can we repay—"
"Just leave. Now. Before something else wakes up."
They didn't argue. The three merchants scrambled off the island, supporting the injured man between them, and disappeared into the marsh's edge without looking back.
Dante waited until they were gone, then turned his attention back to the water.
Something ancient was down there. Something that shouldn't exist in the Era of Peace. Something that was powerful enough to create and sustain nearly twenty revenants simultaneously.
He had two choices: leave and report this to the local mage's guild, or investigate himself.
[Quest Updated: Source of Corruption][Objective: Locate and eliminate the origin of the corrupted mana][Warning: Estimated threat level may be higher than initial assessment]
Dante looked down at his hands. They were covered in black ichor, already beginning to evaporate. His mana was low. His blood reserves were depleted. He should leave. Regroup. Come back prepared.
Instead, he started walking deeper into the marsh.
Because that's what he'd been doing for twenty-five years. Walking toward danger while everyone else walked away. Hunting the things that hid in the shadows while the world celebrated its Era of Peace.
Behind him, the island where he'd fought slowly sank back into the water, leaving no trace that anything had happened at all.
And in the depths below, something ancient stirred, sensing the presence of a predator in its territory.