Outside, the fake vendor waited as he glanced down at the time on his antique watch for the hundredth time, then sighed. He paced around the place with his hands clasped behind his back, restless, unable to keep still.
"If I’m not wrong, Larry and the others should be out by now. Why is it taking so much longer than expected? They’ve been inside that dungeon for two whole weeks, feeding the boss with the blood of countless victims just to keep from being killed themselves. So why is today taking forever?" He muttered the words under his breath, then paused as a figure began to emerge from the entrance of the building.
His expression changed the instant he saw it. An auburn haired young man stepped out, the severed head of the dungeon boss held loosely in one hand, and let it fall to the ground without a trace of care.
The stare the young man gave him sent a shiver straight through his chest, though he caught himself before it showed. It was ridiculous, he told himself, to be unsettled by someone so young. And yet the feeling of intimidation refused to leave him.
The man forced a smile onto his face. "Whoa, what a wonderful surprise. It must have been pretty hard in there, huh?"
Mark’s expression did not change, and it was that stillness which finally cracked the man’s composure. The smile fell from his face as his eyes narrowed, something colder surfacing behind them.
"Ah, forget it. Who am I kidding anyway," the man spat, the pretense gone from his voice. "Now don’t tell me you cleared this dungeon all by yourself. Where are the others?"
A faint smile curved at Mark’s lips as he tilted his head slightly to one side. "You tried to throw me to those ritual maniacs and thought you could walk away from it? I’ll make sure you join them instead."
His eyes gleamed, and something enormous took shape behind the man, a shadow stretching long and heavy across the broken ground. The man turned, and his eyes went wide with the last thought he would ever have. The massive foot of a twenty foot tall giantess came down on him with a crushing, earth splitting crash.
Dust exploded outward in every direction as the ground shattered beneath the force of her stomp. He was crushed before he could even call upon his summon, gone in an instant, without a scream.
Cassandra twisted her foot deeper into the broken floor, a spark of hatred still burning in her eyes. Then, slowly, she dissolved into a swirl of light, drawn back into Mark’s soul space as quietly as she had appeared.
He stood there, staring at the ruined corpse of the man in the suit, his expression as passive as ever. He did not know why, but his mind had felt numb ever since the first time he had killed a human inside that dungeon.
It was not as though he had a choice. If he had not been strong enough to defend himself, he would have been the one lying dead on the ground, another victim added to their count, while they walked away as victors. This was simply how the world worked now, no matter what laws or rules claimed to hold it together.
He could not help himself, and yet that quiet, aching feeling never truly left his heart. It was because his emotions had been rigid and guarded since childhood, shaped around the one thing that had ever truly mattered to him: his family.
He had grown up without warmth from anyone beyond them, without care from the world outside, and so his family had simply become his entire world. It was no wonder, then, that this man before him had come to mean nothing at all.
Still, something within his chest ached, beating a little faster than it should have. His gaze swept across the abandoned construction site, as desolate and silent as it had been before.
No one had seen what happened here, and for that he was grateful, because he had been careless in letting Cassandra loose in such an open place.
She had grown from tier 3.8 to tier 4.2 after absorbing the elite tier dungeon core, her strength surging in a way that still amazed him with how quickly it had happened. It was remarkable that the process had taken so little time.
This growth would also help deepen the percentage of symbiosis shared between the two of them.
His summon could grow simply by absorbing dungeon cores, gaining an incredible boost in power like a warrior retracing old, familiar steps.
Still, he wondered if there might be another way for them to grow, since he had expected something more unique, something special, to come from the Amazon Order.
His time in the dungeon had given him experience that outmatched most young summoners back at the academy. Unlike ordinary class lessons, this had been real, dangerous, and unforgiving, the kind of near death experience that forged both resolve and ambition in equal measure.
And yet he had found no trace of what he had truly been searching for in that place.
It was disappointing, but he refused to give up so easily. Not for his mother’s sake. Not for his family’s.
Closing his eyes, Mark stepped into his soul space, where he stood before a great set of double doors framed by towering pillars. The doors were gray, sealed beneath a layer of petrifaction. The moment he pressed his palms against the surface, fragments of stone crumbled away, revealing a gleam of copper hidden beneath.
He gasped, though no sound escaped him. With every dungeon he conquered and every core he assimilated, the doors grew a little freer from the grip of that ancient petrifaction. It was a sign, he knew, that he was drawing closer to unlocking his second summon.
Some might call it foolish, chasing power so blindly, but if he wanted to survive in this world, let alone thrive in it, there was no other path left to take but to grow stronger.
Opening his eyes back to the real world, Mark’s gaze drifted toward the blue sedan parked beside the building. He did not look away from it as a quiet thought settled into his mind.
***
A blue sedan pulled into the parking lot of a sprawling hospital complex. Mark stepped out, closing the car door behind him with a soft click, and looked up at the eight storey building that loomed over the smaller facilities surrounding it.
Some might have said he was too young to be driving, but in truth, this was far from his first time behind the wheel.
He had ridden bicycles since he was a child, then learned to handle road vehicles through his teenage years under his sister’s guidance. And privately, he liked to think he had become the better driver between the two of them.
The neon glow of the hospital’s sign, mixed with the streetlights and the passing headlights of vehicles, lit up the night around him. It was late, well into the early hours of the morning, and he understood that the dungeon’s warped flow of time was the reason for it.
He had to admit that exhaustion weighed heavily on his body now, a bone deep tiredness that begged him to simply go home and sleep. But he remembered his duty to his mother, the visit he had already put off for far too long, and pushed the thought of rest aside.
He walked quickly through the reception area and climbed the stairs until he reached the floor where his mother’s room was located. When he finally reached the doorway, he paused, his eyes falling on Tasha, who stood there quietly waiting for his arrival.
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