"The dungeon should reset in around half an hour since one of the larger parties, Scorchveil Company, has already engaged with the Frostspine Centipede,"
"So, Sir V... if you don’t have anything in particular planned, I can share our team’s strategy to earn the most coins from our dungeon run," Elisha said and waited for his answer.
"V is fine," Vlad replied smoothly, adding, "While I do want sothing in particular, I will tell you about it later. For the ti being, I am fine with anything you guys want to do... as long as I get to kill beasts."
"Yes. Yes, sure," Elisha said quickly, her voice flaring with nervous energy before she smoothed it down again.
Elisha quickly explained how she had planned to do the dungeon raid while Fritz and Jade, who stood to the side, stayed silent, stealing glances at Vel every other mont.
They tried their best to look calm, but standing next to what had to be a King-grade spirit wasn’t sothing one experienced every day, and then there was also the familiar-sounding na of their new teammate.
While the na, the trait rank, and the high-ranking spirit scread that they might be looking at the player who recently rose to fa, they knew it wasn’t their place to start throwing questions, at least not yet.
As agreed, the group waited until the next dungeon cycle, then passed through the mist wall the mont the system allowed fresh entries.
As they entered the dungeon, the world turned silent and white. Snow blanketed the open expanse, and the wind here was sharp and dry, muffling all but the sound of boots crunching underfoot.
Frozen trees stood scattered throughout the field like petrified bones, their branches coated in layers of blue frost.
The party moved with precision, quickly falling into formation as they road the Frostveil Expanse. Their focus was on gathering beast cores, pelts, and rare drops from the roaming monsters.
They hunted Frostfang Wolves, Snowlurkers, and packs of snowhounds within the first hour. Each battle was quick but clean, as Jade provided ranged support, Fritz held the front line, and Elisha healed from the back, her fla-imbued spells lighting up the cold air with golden warmth.
Vlad moved like a ghost—fast, silent, brutal. He didn’t try to show off, but it was hard not to stand out since he wielded chained sickles and used ghost weave, which looked like a strong legacy skill.
The dungeon sessions typically lasted two to three hours, occasionally longer if both unique bosses happened to appear together.
At one ti, up to one hundred players could enter the dungeon, and unlike normal dungeons, the field-type dungeons operated on shared progression, and the bosses only spawned after a certain number of creatures were slain or a specific amount of ti had passed.
When one of the main bosses spawned, the system notified all players within the dungeon. When it was lost, another notification inford the player, telling them to leave the dungeon or die with the reset.
The team enjoyed their ti, and as expected, two and a half hours later, the Frost Wolf King appeared, but to Vlad’s dismay, the second unique boss, the Centipede, did not make his appearance.
The team recovered from their minor injuries and joined the next cycle, hoping that this session would be the one where both unique bosses appeared.
But once more, luck was not on his side.
Until both bosses appeared in the sa cycle, Vlad could only focus on leveling, and that’s what he did, making his level climb higher, which was frozen on 54 after the battle with the Eclipseborn.
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The chamber was dark, dimly lit by a pale, unnatural glow that bled in through a seamless glass wall stretching along the far side of the room.
Outside, there was no cityscape, no skyline, no stars as they were known from the world.
There was only an ocean of blackness, deep and endless, dotted with clusters of color that shimred like oil across still water. Galaxies, maybe dust storms or fractured nebulae.
None of them mattered.
At the center of it all, visible through the glass wall, rested sothing that defied form.
It might have been a flower, its petals blooming, or a beast, frozen mid-roar, or maybe sothing utterly alien, composed of a kaleidoscope of violent, clashing hues.
It appeared to be millions of miles away, and yet sohow also just inches from the glass.
Its presence gave one the sensation of being on the brink of a dream or a nightmare. A mix of awe and terror, of witnessing sothing so vast it crushed the mind trying to comprehend it.
This chamber would have easily served as a peak of status, power, wealth, prestige, and control. The view alone was priceless, a private window into the unknown.
But right now, it was a torture chamber.
In the center of the room, a man hung lifelessly from chains, his arms bound above his head, wrists strained against reinforced tal cuffs that held him aloft.
The only light that touched him was from a pale star suspended in the void, distant yet focused perfectly through the glass.
His physique was nothing short of perfect, chiseled like a statue, every muscle earned through agony and persistence. His face could have belonged on a billboard, the envy of sponsored fighters and noble house heirs alike.
Yet now, he was a ruin. A monunt to suffering.
He wore nothing, his dignity stripped alongside his strength, revealing the full cost of the tornt he endured.
At first glance, his ash-brown skin seed untouched, spotless, and healthy, but that healthy glow was broken as veins bulged all over his body.
But they were wrong. They weren’t veins. They were worms, small and thin, and there were thousands of them, no, maybe tens of thousands.
They were not anything that belonged in a human body, and as they moved, shifting beneath his skin like flowing wires, the lifeless body moved.
Moved in Agony.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
The man scread, his voice erupting from deep inside his chest, in a pitch no human should reach. His head snapped back, eyes rolling white, mouth open too wide.
Blood seeped from under his skin, not from cuts, but through the pores, rising in a mist, too thin to escape properly.
The real damage was inside, as his iron-hard muscles, trained to perfection, collapsed. One after another, they deflated like torn balloons, and his legs also buckled, going limp and quivering as if the bones had liquefied or shattered by the abomination running wild in his body.
It lasted less than a few minutes.
But in those minutes, the man’s body was turned into a bag of skin, barely able to contain what remained of his bones and organs. His chest heaved, then fell still, the breath gone from him once again.
Silence returned, but only for a mont, as the worms began to move again, this ti not to destroy but to heal.
They shifted directions and rearranged. A new pain blood inside the man’s soul, and to his misfortune, the healing was no less agonizing.
The tissue stitched itself back together but in raw flashes of pain. Nerves regrew alive, screaming with each mont of reconstruction. His voice returned only to be torn loose again by another ragged scream, animalistic and broken.
He wailed, not in resistance, but in sheer, helpless tornt. It ended several minutes later, and the worms went silent, ready to deliver the sa cycle once again.
And the man, now whole again in body, hung lifelessly, a quiet wreck of blood, sweat, and shuddering nerves.
A mont passed, and then the chamber doors slid open with a soft chanical hiss. A tall, poised woman in a deep crimson gown entered.
If any player was here, he would have recognized her as the Red Angle, Angela Zane.
Her white hair reflected the star’s glow as she moved. Her blood-red and unblinking eyes settled on the broken man without pity.
"Marin... are you still there?" she asked, her voice smooth but carrying a cold edge, the kind that offered no pity.
"Well," she continued, walking a slow circle around his hanging man, who did not respond, "I am here to inform you that your friends are still suffering."
She paused.
"Most of them are broken, as even healing their bodies back to peak condition... their minds are degrading. Fading like ash, just as yours,"
She ca to a stop before him.
"Tell who you were working for," she said, "and I will show rcy to them."
"Stay silent... and they will continue to suffer until nothing of them remains,"
Marin said nothing. His head sagged, but his jaw clenched faintly, barely showing any sign of strength. Angela tilted her head, a ghost of amusent flashing in her crimson gaze.
"Silence, huh..." she murmured. "I always liked that about you." Her voice lowered. "But as I have always said, staying silent only makes your suffering grow."
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