Allen spoke again, his tone quieter now but sohow even more terrifying. "I’ll ask you one last ti. Who are you?"
Shit.
He knew. Sohow, he’d figured it out.
But how?
For the first ti since I’d woken up in this world, real fear took hold of . Not the nervous unease I’d felt around the goblins. This was sothing deeper. Primal. The kind of fear that locks your body in place and makes everything else disappear.
And it kept growing. Every second felt heavier than the last.
I tried one more ti, my voice shaking. "Allen... please... it’s ... I’m Mich..."
I didn’t get to finish.
*Shing.*
The sound was clean. Precise. The whisper of steel cutting through the air.
And then everything felt wrong.
My perspective shifted. The world tilted sideways, but I wasn’t falling. I was... rotating. Slowly.
Wait.
"What... why am I...?"
Then I saw it.
My body. Standing there in front of . But sothing was missing.
The head.
Blood was pouring from the neck in thick, pulsing streams, pooling on the ground below.
Oh.
That’s my body.
The realization hit with a strange, detached clarity.
He actually killed .
Just like that. Without hesitation.
I’d thought I could finally do sothing aningful here. Build a life. Get stronger. Maybe even thrive in this world.
But I guess not.
My luck hadn’t changed at all. Even in another world, it followed like a shadow.
I stopped fighting it.
There was nothing left to fight for anyway.
My vision darkened at the edges, the world folding in on itself. Sound faded next, the distant drip of blood and hum of the cave disappearing into silence.
Then there was nothing at all.
***
"Young master, Michael, wake up. Young master?"
Soone was shaking . A voice calling from sowhere distant, muffled.
What’s happening?
I know that voice.
"Young master, wake up! Michael, wake up!"
It ca again, sharper this ti. Clearer.
Wait. That’s Allen.
But why would he be calling ? Didn’t he just kill ? Wasn’t I dead?
Unless...
The thought hit like cold water.
My eyes snapped open.
Above was the glowing rocky ceiling of the cave, its faint blue light washing over everything in soft, eerie waves.
I was alive.
"Young master, it seems you’ve finally woken up."
Allen’s voice ca from directly beside .
I turned my head toward him. He was sitting there, close, watching with that familiar calm expression.
But the mont I t his gaze, sothing twisted inside my chest. Unease. Discomfort. Sothing I couldn’t na but couldn’t ignore either.
I pushed myself up quickly, moving back a few feet to put so space between us.
"Allen," I said, my voice still unsteady. "What happened? Why was I on the ground?"
Allen rose to his feet slowly, brushing dust off his sleeves as he answered. "You lost consciousness, young master."
I stared at him. "What do you an?"
"You fainted," he said calmly. "Collapsed just a few monts ago."
I fainted?
That didn’t make sense.
So everything I had just experienced, the sword at my throat, the cold look in Allen’s eyes, the sensation of my head being severed from my body, was... just a dream?
But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. Every terrifying second of it.
The fear. The weight of the blade. The sight of my own headless body standing there.
How could sothing that vivid not be real?
But apparently, it wasn’t.
"Right," I said quietly, still trying to process it. "Okay."
Allen studied for a mont, then gestured behind toward the goblin-filled cavern. "In any case, young master, I’d suggest you act quickly. The goblins won’t last much longer."
Shit.
I’d completely forgotten why I was here.
The mont Allen said that, everything snapped back into focus. The whole point of entering this dungeon. The reason I’d brought him along in the first place.
Kill monsters. Collect essences. Level up.
I turned quickly toward the goblins sprawled across the cavern floor. They were still writhing, struggling weakly against their severed limbs, leaving dark trails of green blood wherever they dragged themselves.
I held out my right hand. "Allen, I need your weapon. I didn’t bring one."
"Of course, young master."
Allen reached toward his left hand, and with a faint shimr of light, a sword materialized from his storage ring.
Storage rings. They looked like ordinary jewelry, but they were far from it. Crafted from the body of a rare rank monster called Gluttony, they contained vast internal dinsions that could hold nearly anything. And whatever you stored inside stayed perfectly preserved indefinitely. No rot, no decay. Frozen in ti.
I took the sword from him, feeling its weight settle into my grip.
Then I walked toward the nearest goblin.
It was dragging itself forward with its remaining stumps, saring green blood across the stone as it went.
The mont it saw coming, it started moving faster. Desperate. Frantic. Trying to escape.
Nah, nah, Not a chance.
You’re experience points now. All of you are.
I raised the sword above my head and brought it down hard. The blade cut clean through the goblin’s neck, and its head rolled a few feet away before stopping.
Imdiately, a system notification flashed in front of my eyes.
[Congratulations, Host! You have been rewarded with 1 Monster Essence for slaying a Lesser Rank Monster! The Monster Essence has been added to your Character Profile!]
[Congratulations, Host! You have t the essence requirent to level up! You have advanced to Level 1!]
Uh... Fuck...
Finally.
I wasn’t a zero ranker anymore.
A wave of relief hit all at once, like I’d been carrying sothing impossibly heavy and it had just been lifted off my shoulders.
It felt... good. Really good.
But I couldn’t celebrate yet.
I turned my attention back to the cavern floor, still littered with mutilated goblins dragging themselves across the stone.
There was still a long way to go.
***
"Ha... ha... ha..."
I was doubled over now, hands braced on my knees, sucking in air like I’d been drowning.
My entire body ached. My arms felt like dead weight. My legs were shaking. I was drenched in a mix of sweat and green goblin blood, and honestly, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep this up.
I lifted my wrist and checked the ti through blurred vision.
***
Na: Michael Frostburne
Total Rules Broken: 0
Ti: 12:42 PM
Date: 4th February
Year: 2130
***
12:42 PM.
I’d been killing goblins nonstop for almost thirty minutes.
How many more did I need?
I forced myself to open my character interface, my fingers trembling slightly as I navigated the screen.
---
**Na:** Michael Frostburne
**Race:** Human
**Current Rank:** 0
**Current Level:** 97
**Title:** 0
**Progression to Normal Rank:** 97% (97/100 levels)
**Progression to Level 98:** 0% (0/1 essences)
---
Level 97.
Only three more to go.
That was it. Just three.
I could do this.
I straightened up slowly, forcing my legs to cooperate despite how much they protested.
Not far from , three goblins were huddled close together, still writhing weakly in pools of their own blood.
I walked toward them, each step heavier than the last, and raised the sword.
Then I brought it down. Once. Twice. Three tis.
Until none of them were moving anymore.
The mont they stopped moving, my system screen exploded into view, flooding my vision with notification after notification.
[Congratulations, Host! You have been rewarded with 3 Monster Essences for slaying Lesser Rank Monsters! The Monster Essences have been added to your Character Profile!]
[Congratulations, Host! You have t the essence requirent to level up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[You have leveled up!]
[Your current level is 100!]
[Congratulations, Host! You have t the essence requirent for a rank up!]
[You have ranked up!]
[Your current rank is Normal!]
[Congratulations, Host! For ranking up, you have been rewarded with 2 Attribute Points!]
[Congratulations, Host! Your "Free Attribute Points" section has been expanded to 10 points!]
[Congratulations, Host! You have also been rewarded with a Lucky Draw for your rank up!]
Oh my god, so many rewards.
This was amazing.
Thirty minutes of exhausting, bloody work, and it had finally paid off.
Then, without warning, three black cards appeared in the air directly in front of . They floated there, spinning slowly, almost hypnotically.
The mont I saw them, I felt a smile start to form. But I caught it imdiately and forced my expression back to neutral.
Then I turned away and kept killing goblins.
Why?
Because Allen was watching.
He’d been standing off to the side the entire ti, silent and still, his eyes never leaving . Just observing. Studying every movent I made.
And it made uncomfortable.
I’d never felt this way around him before. Not once. But ever since that dream, ever since I’d felt the cold steel of his blade against my throat and watched my own headless body from the ground, sothing had fundantally changed.
I couldn’t stop second-guessing everything now.
Allen.
I was almost certain he was suspicious of . I didn’t know when it started exactly, but I had my theories.
It could’ve been here, in the dungeon. Everything seed fine before we entered.
But then again... what if it started earlier? What if the mont I asked him to book this specific dungeon, alarm bells went off in his head?
Too many possibilities. Too many unknowns.
I pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the next goblin in front of , driving the blade down while keeping the spinning black cards in my peripheral vision.
Those cards, by the way, were only visible to . They were tied to the system sohow, which ant no one else could see them. Not Allen. Not anyone.
That’s what the system had told , at least.
Anything connected to the system existed only for . Invisible to the rest of the world.
I pushed everything else aside.
Hmm...
Which one should I choose?
Last ti, I’d made a disastrous mistake. I hadn’t trusted my heart or my mind.
I wouldn’t repeat it.
This ti, I had to walk away with sothing worthwhile.
At any cost.
I studied the cards carefully.
One breath passed. Then another.
Hmm... Yeah. This one.
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