"Alright…"
Constantine checked his Status Window before doing anything else.
[STATUS INFORMATION]
{Name}
Constantine
{Race}
Undead
{Level}
1
{System Points}
50
{Class}
Wraith
{Title(s)}
Dead on the First Day / Died Once
{Skill(s)}
Miasma Emission (System) / Subspace (System)
{Class Traits}
1. Intangibility: The user can phase through all physical matter at will. While intangible, the user cannot be struck by physical attacks.
2. Spectral Flight: The user can move freely in any direction without surface contact or physical restriction.
3. Presence Suppression: The user becomes increasingly difficult to detect through conventional and Skill-based means as Level increases.
4. Ethereal Resilience: Physical attacks that connect with the user's form deal significantly reduced damage.
5. Terror Aura: The user's presence passively inflicts a fear-based debuff on all living creatures within a set radius. Effect and radius scale with Level.
{Equipped Items}
None
{System Note}
What a wonderful Class Advancement, Host! This calls for a celebration! Why not try the Gacha with your remaining Points? I'd love to help you settle into your new form! :)
<<Click Here to Access Inventory>>
<<Click Here to Access Gacha>>
<<Click Here to Visit Shop>>
<<Click Here to Check Map>>
<<Click Here to Reach Forge>>
<<Click Here to End Your Life (RECOMMENDED)>>
Constantine read the System Note once and dismissed the window.
Gacha had a random output, and anything the System wanted him spending his last fifty Points on was not something he was going to touch.
The answer was no before he finished reading the suggestion.
He turned his attention back to the Status Window properly.
—Level 1.
There was something almost funny about returning to the same number after everything required to reach 100, though he couldn't quite bring himself to laugh about it.
He had made it once under conditions that should have prevented it entirely. The road was familiar even if the starting position wasn't.
The Skills column was the more significant blow.
Dark Blast. Ghost Step. Null Zone. Dungeon Echo. Shadow Trace. Iron Bones: every ability acquired from Skill Crystals had been stripped out during the Class transition, leaving only the two things the System apparently had no authority over.
Miasma Emission, which had saved him against those three Adventurers on the first floor when nothing else would.
Subspace, which was currently holding everything he owned.
Everything else was gone.
The Wraith's Class Traits were the trade.
He read them carefully.
Intangibility and Spectral Flight covered most of what Ghost Step had offered and extended it substantially: the ability to phase through solid matter at will and move without physical restriction was considerably broader than a timed stealth effect.
Presence Suppression had already proven its value from inside the ceiling of the Litch's chamber.
Ethereal Resilience replaced Iron Bones to a meaningful degree.
Terror Aura was something new entirely—a passive debuff operating on everything living within range without requiring activation or concentration, working constantly regardless of what else he was doing.
Against an opponent that could reach him, it was a viable toolkit.
The problem was reaching back.
The Wraith's design was built for evasion and attrition, not output.
Terror Aura and Miasma Emission created a slow environmental damage effect, but without an offensive Skill, any fight requiring direct damage within a fixed timeframe was a losing position.
On the sixth floor at Level 1 with no combat Skills and no information on the local enemy population, that limitation was not an abstract concern.
He needed a safe position before addressing any of it.
The sixth floor was denser than the floors above—tighter corridors, lower ceilings in some areas, and a cold that exceeded the dungeon's ordinary baseline in a way that felt less like temperature and more like an absence of something living.
He moved through the walls laterally, mapping the general layout through his perception of the dungeon's structural energy, and found what he was looking for within ten minutes.
A natural alcove, sealed on three sides by stone too dense to form a functional corridor, with a single narrow gap for an entrance that most enemies would have to reduce themselves significantly to use.
He passed through the wall and went solid inside the space.
The problem arrived before he had time to settle.
Two creatures came from the corridor outside—not through the alcove's gap, but past it—and both of them stopped within a few seconds of passing.
They turned slowly toward the alcove wall, orienting with a precision that had no obvious sensory cause.
The sixth floor's native enemies apparently operated on a detection method the floors above hadn't used, because neither of them had a line of sight or an auditory trigger to work from.
Constantine assessed the situation quickly.
He had no offensive Skill.
Every weapon in Subspace were unsorted and inaccessible at speed.
Physical engagement at Level 1 against enemies that could already detect him through a solid wall was not a position he could win conventionally.
He went intangible and rose through the ceiling.
From within the stone above the corridor, he observed the two creatures. They were tall and heavily built, wrapped in bone plating that had grown into their frames rather than been fitted onto them, moving with the unhurried certainty of things that trusted their own construction completely.
They spread out across the corridor below, searching by some method he couldn't fully read.
They could detect him, but they could not reach something that had no physical presence.
He descended through the corridor floor between them.
Miasma Emission needed no activation and no specific action—it ran on proximity alone, operating the moment anything living was within range.
Both creatures were well within it, and the same corrosive effect that had gradually drained three Adventurers on the first floor was already accumulating on them now.
'The Emission has been strengthened even further, so it is more effective against Undead enemies than before.'
Constantine repositioned continuously through the floor and walls whenever one of them oriented too precisely toward his location, keeping himself within emission range while staying intangible.
It was slower than any combat method he had used before. Less a fight than a quiet erasure. But without offensive capability, patience and Intangibility were not limitations to work around—they were the strategy.
The first creature stumbled.
The second turned in a slow circle, searching for something it could not locate and could not touch, while the Miasma continued its work.
[You Have Leveled Up!]
When both had gone still, Constantine surfaced into the alcove and solidified.
He checked the corridor, found it clear, and settled against the back wall.
Then he opened his Subspace.
The contents of the Litch's chamber spread out before his perception. He calmly looked at all of it and allowed himself a moment before getting to work.