'Everything or nothing.'
Constantine didn't retreat.
He stepped forward and inside the sword's arc as it fell—close enough that the flat passed behind him rather than through him—and drove both Ghost Fang Daggers into the exposed core with everything his Level 22 body could produce.
The dark energy made direct, unobstructed contact with the Skeleton Knight's animating force.
The Boss went still.
Then it began to disassemble—joints unlocking one by one, the armored frame separating with the quiet inevitability of something that had finally run out of what held it together. The broadsword hit the chamber floor first. The rest followed.
[You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!] [You Have Leveled Up!]
He counted to the last one.
Level 33.
Constantine looked at the disassembled remains of the Skeleton Knight in the quiet chamber and said nothing for a moment.
'Two floors cleared.'
The drops were generous.
He could tell before he even crouched to examine them—the spread was broader than the Dark Ghost Hellhound's, and two of the items were large enough to be visible from halfway across the chamber. Constantine moved through the smaller loot first: Bone Fragments, Skeleton Steel Shards, three degraded Skill Shards, a modest Gem pouch. He moved them all into his Subspace without stopping.
Then he picked up the sword.
[Penance Blade (SR)]
{A broadsword condensed from the animating force of a defeated Skeleton Knight. Retains the Boss's inherent energy penetration, allowing it to bypass physical resistance layers that deflect conventional weapons.}
'Energy penetration on a sword,' he thought, turning the blade in his hand. 'If I'd had this at the start of the fight it would have been over in a third of the time.'
He set it down and picked up the shield—something that hadn't been visually present on the Skeleton Knight during the fight, which was normal enough for Boss drops. They reflected what the entity fundamentally was, not just what it carried.
[Sentinel's Bulwark (SR)]
{Forged from the reinforced bone plating of a Skeleton Knight. Maintains exceptional structural integrity against physical impacts and absorbs a portion of kinetic force before it reaches the bearer.}
He thought about the moment in the first Boss fight when the Ordinary Sturdy Shield had been crushed through in a single bite. The distance between that and this was almost difficult to measure.
He equipped both.
The final drop was a Skill Crystal—smaller than the two he'd received from the Dark Ghost Hellhound, but dense in a way that suggested something compressed rather than something small.
[Skill Crystal: Iron Bones]
Obtained from: Skeleton Knight (Boss)
{The unyielding endurance of an ancient undying warrior is transferred to the user. Grants high resistance to all physical attacks, permanently reducing physical damage received by 50%.}
Constantine read it twice.
Fifty percent physical damage reduction. Permanent. Passive. Compounding onto the Spectral Hide Armor he was already wearing and the Undead durability that came with his Race.
He absorbed it immediately.
[Skill Acquired: Iron Bones]
He stood and checked his Status Window properly for the first time since the fight ended.
Level 33. Four SR pieces of equipment. Four Skills, including a permanent passive and the Boss's own ranged ability. His Potion supply was still functional. His Subspace was stocked with two floors' worth of materials and sellable drops.
A week ago, he had been a dead Level 1 Ghoul lying in a pool of his own blood.
'It keeps getting better,' Constantine thought, and the observation carried a weight that surprised even him.
It wasn't just this fight.
It was the pattern of the past several days—the Full Recovery Potion appearing in the treasure chest at exactly the right moment, the two Skill Crystals from the Dark Ghost Hellhound, the SR Boss drops that had steadily built his loadout from almost nothing.
These weren't things that happened to average Players.
In his decade with Eccel Accel, he had never seen this concentration of high-value drops in an early game run. Whether it was compensation for the System's attempts to kill him or something inherent to this version of the world, he couldn't say.
But he intended to keep riding it.
He turned toward the corridor and moved out of the Boss Room, mind already on the third floor.
...
At the entrance to the Dungeon of Greed, six figures gathered at the gate.
They were not Novice Adventurers.
The equipment alone made that clear—not flashy, but well-maintained and clearly used, the kind of gear that accumulated scratches and repair marks rather than sitting unused in a storage chest. The youngest of the six wore a Rank 4 plate. The man at the front wore Rank 5.
His name was Edric.
He was tall, with the unhurried stillness of someone who had stood at dungeon entrances enough times that the anticipation no longer registered on his face. The others had been talking since they arrived. Edric had said almost nothing.
"It's been eleven days," said the woman to his left—close-cropped hair, twin short swords at her hips, a Rank 4 plate catching the light. "For a first-run Novice team in the first floor of a Dungeon, it's likely that—"
"I know," Edric interrupted with a sigh.
She didn't push further.
His younger brother had entered this dungeon eleven days ago alongside two girls from the same cohort—all three fresh Rank 1 Adventurers taking their first joint run.
None of them had come back.
"Guild report?" asked the broad-shouldered man behind them, a large hammer slung across his back.
"Nothing actionable." Edric's hand rested on his sword hilt without gripping it. "Which is why we're handling this ourselves."
He looked at the dungeon gate for a moment longer.
Then he stepped through it.