The second floor of the Dungeon of Greed was quieter than the first.
That was the first thing Constantine noticed as he reached the bottom of the descent corridor and set foot on the lower level.
It wasn't entirely silent, though.
The dungeon still carried the ambient presence of an active space, but the quality of the noise was entirely different.
The shuffling, bestial sounds of the Hellhounds and Goblins above had given way to something drier and more deliberate. A rhythmic clatter that he recognized before his mind fully caught up with hearing it.
—Bones.
'Skeletons. Right on schedule.'
The architecture was also markedly different from what he'd left behind.
Where the first floor had been a network of rough cave tunnels and natural caverns, the second floor felt more structured—wider corridors with high, vaulted ceilings, the preserved skeleton of what might once have been a proper underground fortress. Torch brackets lined the walls at measured intervals, their fires long since extinguished, leaving everything illuminated by the same faint phosphorescent glow that ran through the dungeon rock everywhere below the surface.
It was an appropriately grim setting.
Constantine moved in and made first contact within minutes.
A Skeleton Soldier—the most basic variant on this floor—emerged from a side corridor and oriented on him immediately.
Unlike the Undead Goblins of the first floor, it didn't hesitate or test the situation. It raised the rusted blade in its grip and advanced with mechanical directness.
'Direct and predictable… just like in the game.' He drew a Ghost Fang Dagger and grinned.
'That's great!'
The fight was clean.
The Skeleton Soldier was weaker than any of the Hellhounds in raw terms, but its construction gave it a different quality of durability—it felt no pain, no exhaustion, and strikes that would have stopped a living opponent barely registered.
The trick was the joints. Disconnect a skeleton's limbs and the body lost function regardless of what remained intact.
Constantine had known this for a decade.
He dismantled the Skeleton Soldier in three precise strikes and stored the drops—two Bone Fragments and a corrupted Skill Shard too degraded to activate—in his Subspace without breaking stride.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
This was the other thing he noted quickly.
The second floor's EXP curve was steeper than the first. A single Skeleton Soldier advanced his Level at roughly twice the rate of the early Undead Goblins—likely due to the increased difficulty classification of the floor's basic enemies.
'If this holds, Level 25 won't take long.'
He pressed forward.
What followed was the most methodical combat stretch he'd experienced since arriving in this world. Second floor Skeletons were more tactically varied than the Hellhounds—weapon usage, rudimentary formation keeping, an occasional flanking attempt that caught him off-guard the first time and never again after that.
But they were also more predictable in a different way.
Mechanical precision, once read, was simply a pattern, and exploiting patterns was his greatest strength as an experienced gamer.
Skeleton Soldiers fell to joint strikes while Skeleton Archers, which appeared in the narrower corridors, required closing distance before they could nock a second arrow. The occasional common Skeleton Knight presented a more serious challenge with its heavier armor and disciplined shield work.
These he dispatched using the dark energy component of his Ghost Fang Daggers, exploiting the minor magical damage to bypass the physical resistance that conventional strikes couldn't touch.
He filed that observation away carefully.
'If common Skeleton Knights need energy damage to work through, the Boss variant is going to need something significantly stronger.'
He already knew what.
The Dungeon's second floor dropped a wider variety of loot than the first—Bone Fragments, Skeleton Steel Shards, Common weapons in better condition than he expected, and two more Skill Shards that were unfortunately too degraded to use.
'I can sell them in the Shop or use them as Forge materials. The former is a much better choice…'
He stored everything in his Subspace without deliberating.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
[You Have Leveled Up!]
By the time he located the Danger Zone on the second floor's map display, he could already feel the difference in his own frame, which added to his newfound confidence.
He checked his Status Window.
—Level 25.
'A quarter of the way to the human race-change threshold,' Constantine thought with quiet satisfaction.
It hadn't even been a week since he landed in this game.
Not long ago, he had been a Level 1 Ghoul with no weapons, no Skills, and a System actively trying to get him killed.
This was meaningfully better.
'But things will only get more difficult from this point on…'
He turned his attention to the Danger Zone ahead and shifted focus entirely to the Boss.
—A Skeleton Knight.
It was four meters tall, larger than the Dark Ghost Hellhound, though less physically imposing in terms of raw mass. What it lacked in brute force it compensated for in construction. The Skeleton Knight was built for a specific defensive purpose and executed it without exception.
It was nearly impervious to conventional physical attacks.
Bladed weapons skittered off the reinforced bone armor and blunt impacts achieved almost nothing against a skeleton whose frame had been enhanced far beyond the basic floor variants.
Even the joint-targeting that worked reliably on ordinary Skeleton Soldiers was no longer effective against the Boss, whose construction was dense enough to absorb the same strikes with minimal consequence.
It only had one major weakness.
—Energy attacks.
Magic-based damage, to be precise.
Anything that bypassed the physical layer entirely and struck directly at whatever force animated the bones underneath.
Constantine flexed his awareness of the Dark Blast Skill.
'This is why this Skill matters so much,' he thought toward it. 'Early Players who were lucky to get the Skill Crystal as a drop had a significantly better time going forward.'
The corridor leading to the Boss Room was easy to identify. It was wider than the surrounding passages, with a shift in the dungeon's gloomy energy that revealed a significant presence just beyond. He moved through it steadily, one hand resting on a Ghost Fang Dagger hilt, the Dark Blast Skill primed at the edge of his focus like a held breath.
The chamber beyond was circular, with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into darkness far above. At its center, kneeling on the bare stone floor with its enormous frame folded inward, was the Skeleton Knight.
It did not move.
Four meters of dark-armored bone, joints fused with solidified energy, a broadsword as long as Constantine was tall resting across its knees.
Everything about its posture was akin to a ritual.
Constantine crossed the threshold.
"Hmm…?"
The Skeleton Knight's head rose and its enormous figure followed, revealing its full height.
The broadsword that was nearly as tall as the creature also lifted. Empty eye sockets found Constantine and held him, and the air between them cooled perceptibly.
"…You have interrupted my penance." The voice was low and calm—nothing like the hot aggression of the Hellhounds.
Constantine looked up at four meters of armored skeleton towering above him and smiled pleasantly.
"I sincerely apologize for the interruption," he replied. "Please become EXP for me."