The fifth floor was called the Hall of Wailing in Eccel Accel's original map descriptions.
It earned the name.
Wraith-type Undead populated the space in numbers that made every previous floor look sparse.
They moved through walls when cornered, phased through conventional attacks without response, and only fully materialized when they chose to engage—typically from multiple directions at once.
Constantine had spent four days on this floor and hated every hour of it.
Wraiths resisted Ghost Step because they used a variant of the same Skill themselves.
Dark Blast worked when he could channel it, but the Wraiths relocated the moment they detected the charge. He'd eventually solved it by combining Dark Blast with Null Zone—acquired from the third floor Boss—which suppressed movement Skills in a fixed radius for a short window. It wasn't elegant. But it cleared them.
Two weeks, five floors, seven Skills, and enough SR equipment that his Status Window's Equipped Items section had become something he was genuinely proud to look at.
And yet—
—Level 90.
He stood in the corridor feeding directly into the fifth floor's Danger Zone.
Level 90 felt simultaneously very far from where he started and frustratingly close to where he needed to be.
Ten Levels separated him from the threshold that changed everything.
Level 100 meant a choice: advance the Ghoul class, or shed the Race entirely and return to human.
He had known since the beginning which one he would take. Every decision in this dungeon—the careful Leveling, the resource management, the floor-by-floor approach—had been building toward that single moment.
He let himself imagine it briefly: walking out of the Dungeon entrance as a human.
A face that didn't corrode the air around it… Registering properly as an Adventurer…
It was close.
'Just the fifth floor Boss,' he thought, and started toward the Danger Zone.
Then something activated without his input.
Dungeon Echo—the passive detection Skill from the fourth floor Boss—fired with a cold pulse that spread outward through the floor's stone.
He recognized the sensation immediately. It triggered on living presences, multiple and purposeful, entering the floor above.
'Hmm…?'
He went still.
Six presences were moving with direction.
'Adventurers.'
He activated Shadow Trace and pushed his perception carefully through the corridor network above him.
He found them within seconds.
Six humanoid figures were in a tight formation. They possessed movement that was efficient, conserving nothing unnecessarily.
Equipment weight from their footfall was substantial.
These were not Novices.
The one at the front moved differently from the rest. He was a full beat ahead of everyone else in reading the space around him.
'Rank 5, at minimum.' Constantine silently thought with a grim frown.
He was still assessing positions when the leader stopped.
The entire formation halted behind him.
The man at the front raised his head and turned slowly until he was facing the exact shadow Constantine's perception was threading through.
There was no way he should have been able to do that.
The man pointed once directly at Constantine's location.
'...?!'
Constantine severed the Shadow Trace connection and ran.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!"
He muffled his shouts.
He didn't know what detection Skill the Rank 5 carried.
He didn't need to.
The result was identical regardless—they knew where he was, and between him and safety was one option.
The Boss Room.
Constantine sprinted through the fifth floor's corridors with his mental map running constantly, stripping the route to its essentials.
He knew this floor.
Four days of clearing it had embedded every junction and shortcut into his immediate awareness.
He picked the fastest line to the eastern corridor and held it.
The Adventurers were one floor above him.
… For now.
He reached the descent stairs in under two minutes and took them at pace, hitting the lower section of the fifth floor without slowing.
The Boss Room was six minutes at a standard run.
He aimed for four.
The fifth floor's Wraiths drifted past without engaging as he moved. They weren't territorial in the aggressive way the lower floors' enemies had been.
He blew past them and ignored any System notification that appeared as a result of proximity.
Everything but hiz survival was irrelevant right now.
A sound in the descent corridor behind him.
They were already on the floor.
Something cut through the air to his left—fast, deliberate—and he ducked under it without breaking stride. It struck the wall and left a mark deep enough to register from his peripheral vision.
'It's not a Skill, but a thrown weapon. Someone has good aim.'
He activated Ghost Step and vanished mid-run.
The corridor behind him erupted immediately—three or four simultaneous impacts across a wide spread, trying to catch his trajectory despite the stealth. Suppression rather than targeting. They'd prepared for this.
He kept moving.
A voice from behind, carrying cleanly through the dungeon's acoustics without effort.
"Shadow Step variant. Duration's roughly eight seconds. Cover the next junction."
Constantine's jaw tightened.
'He knows the Skill.'
He resurfaced five seconds early and changed direction—away from the direct line, into a narrower side passage that added distance but created a new variable.
The Rank 5 would need to recalculate.
An impact hit to his right almost immediately.
Close enough to shove him sideways. He felt his Level drop.
Level 88.
He kept running.
The narrow passage opened into a wider convergence chamber—one he recognized, which put the Boss Room two corridors east. He crossed it at full speed and caught a second hit across his back from an angle he didn't see coming.
Level 86.
Constantine gritted his teeth and shook.
'A few more of those and this is over before I get there.'
He activated Null Zone behind him—not to catch anyone directly, but to suppress whatever the Rank 5 was using to track him through corners and closed sightlines.
Then Ghost Step again.
Then a hard turn east.
The Boss Room door appeared at the end of the passage.
He hit the threshold at full pace and crossed it, spinning immediately to watch the entrance.
The Adventurers arrived at the doorway within seconds. The Rank 5 came to a stop at the exact boundary line with his arm already raised—a signal to the group behind him.
He looked at Constantine through the open threshold with an expression that gave nothing away.
Then he lowered his arm and stepped back.
'They can't enter,' Constantine thought, chest heaving from a habit he technically no longer needed. 'Active Boss Room boundary. Even Rank 5 can't force that threshold.'
He exhaled.
Then the temperature dropped.
It was a cold that went past the physical and reached something that had nothing to do with air.
The dungeon itself seemed to register it.
He hurriedly turned around.
At the center of the chamber, something that had been stationary was no longer stationary.
It rose from a kneeling position with the unhurried motion of something that had been waiting a very long time and had no particular feeling about the wait ending.
The Litch stood over three meters tall, wrapped in robes that moved like smoke.
A long staff radiated pale light from its tip. Beneath the hood was a skull with twin points of green fire burning in both sockets.
Those eyes settled on Constantine.
"A Ghoul," it said, with faint contempt.
"How did something like you reach this floor?"