Shards of stone were still rolling across the ground.
Greer took a step forward.
It wasn’t the stride of an old man with a bad leg. There was no hesitation in it, only a steady, almost weightless ease. One hand on the brass-headed cane, he walked slowly toward the center of the camp.
Rayne opened his mouth, then swallowed the words.
It struck him, suddenly, that he’d never once seen the Guildmaster fight.
The towering corpse at the center of the camp had been standing motionless until now, like a silent statue.
Until Greer stepped past the edge of the camp.
Then it moved.
The battered armor let out a teeth-grating scrape as the lowered head lifted, inch by inch. Two points of dark red light kindled in the depths of its eye sockets and locked onto Greer.
It tightened its grip on the rusted longsword.
But it didn’t lunge in right away.
It only turned side-on, bringing its broad round shield up in front of it, adjusting its footing one step at a time.
“Oh?” Greer stopped, one eyebrow rising. “It even knows a bit of form.”
He was in no hurry to attack. He reached up, gripped the brass head of the cane, and gave it a gentle twist.
Click.
A rapier slid slowly from within the cane.
The blade was utterly ordinary. No enchanted sheen, no ornate engraving. Just a perfectly plain rapier.
Yet the instant the rapier cleared its sheath, goosebumps rose along Rayne’s arms, though he couldn’t have said why.
He couldn’t put the feeling into words.
He only knew that the old man in front of him carried an entirely different presence now.
“Come on, then.” His tone was as easy as small talk. “Or do these old bones of mine really have to make the first move?”
◆ ◆ ◆
In the Core Chamber, Owen’s entire crystal was flickering without pause.
He stared hard at the camp view on the management interface.
That old man.
From the moment the old man entered the dungeon, Owen had kept his attention fixed on him. The warning alerts had been going off nonstop the whole time.
And yet, up to this point, the man hadn’t made a single move.
But those abnormal warning reports left Owen more and more uneasy.
“Oh. Looks like I’ve got myself a serious problem,” Owen muttered.
On reflex he tried to pull up the man’s stats. Only, a dungeon’s permissions at this stage could only vaguely sense the strength of someone’s energy, not quantify it into hard numbers.
Judging by energy alone, the old man genuinely wasn’t overwhelming. Somewhere around Mid Bronze, maybe, and carrying old injuries on top of that.
The two sub-bosses ought to be more than enough to handle him.
And yet that knot of unease in Owen’s gut refused to be tamped down, no matter how hard he pressed on it.
He hesitated, and held back the order to attack.
“…Just feel him out. That’s all,” he said quietly, half an instruction, half an attempt to convince himself. “Don’t rush it. Let’s see what he’s made of first.”
The Garrison Captain received the order, the red light in its eyes flickering.
It didn’t charge in rashly. It dropped its stance low, shield raised steady, and advanced at a slow, measured pace.
◆ ◆ ◆
Then it struck.
The rusted longsword came slashing down at an angle from the side of the round shield, fast and heavy, dragging a hiss of cleaved air behind it.
Greer didn’t retreat.
He didn’t even try to meet it head-on with the rapier. A turn of the wrist, a light flick of the point, and the tip came to rest precisely against the flat of the longsword, riding its momentum and guiding it outward.
Clang.
The longsword was steered off course and slammed heavily into the dry earth at his side.
The Garrison Captain’s assault stalled.
Greer used the opening to fall back half a step, unhurried, and with a flick of the wrist opened a cut along its arm in passing.
The motion was natural, almost casual.
But behind him, Rayne’s breath caught.
That seemingly effortless little technique had turned aside a heavy blow with ease.
This was experience: the kind of skill forged only through countless brushes with death.
The Garrison Captain raised its shield again and closed back in.
This time it had learned its lesson, leading with the shield out front, trying to crowd Greer’s movement and watching for a chance to jab out short attacks from beneath the rim.
Greer circled it, taking a few exchanges, returning a stroke or two now and then.
He didn’t press the attack. Beating the monster wasn’t his goal, after all. Understanding how it behaved was the priority.
After a dozen or so exchanges, Greer abruptly stopped and stepped back two paces, opening the distance.
He glanced toward the entrance of the camp.
No mist gate had appeared.
Last time, when Rayne’s party had run into Cassandre, a grey mist gate had sealed off their retreat and trapped them inside. But this time, after he’d been trading blows with the Garrison Captain for so long, that mist gate still hadn’t come down.
Which meant this wasn’t the boss room yet.
This thing was just the guard dog at the boss room’s door.
Greer felt sure of it now.
“This thing’s no real threat on its own.” He waved a hand at the young people behind him, his tone sliding back into that lazy register. “But don’t get cocky and trip over your own feet. Your turn.”
“Guildmaster, then you —”
“I’m old.” Greer withdrew to one side and once more leaned on his — no, gripped his rapier, settling against a length of broken wall. “You young ones need the practice. This old man will watch from the back. Go on.”
Rayne didn’t waste words.
“Barton!”
“On it!”
Barton drew a deep breath and moved up, shield raised. With the Guildmaster’s little demonstration fresh in his mind, his fear of the “big guy” had eased considerably. He settled into the same stance, holding the front rock-steady, squaring off against it face to face.
Tyren dropped to the flank, arrow after arrow greeting whatever joints the Garrison Captain left exposed. Asar circled to the other side, waiting for his moment. Serin held the center of the party, her oak staff glowing a soft blue-green, a steady stream of blessings settling over Barton.
The fight resumed.
The Garrison Captain was solid as a boulder, true, but compared to the overwhelming dread of Cassandre, Barton could at least catch each of its swings cleanly. Asar and Tyren managed, time and again, to find their openings and leave at least a few wounds on it.
Greer watched quietly, leaning against the broken wall.
He observed closely. Not just the way the Garrison Captain moved. He had a complete read on every member of the party, down to their smallest motions.
These young ones were performing admirably.
When the Garrison Captain suddenly slammed its shield forward and knocked Barton off balance to the side, Rayne could surge in on the instant to catch its swing, and could direct Serin in time, telling her exactly when to land her blessings.
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A promising one. Greer nodded inwardly. A pity —
His gaze stopped abruptly.
Not on anyone in the fight.
On the corner of the camp: that one battered tent that had stayed silent the whole time.
The linen of the tent had stirred.
Faintly. Like ripples raised by a passing breath of wind.
In the shadow beneath the tent, something was sliding outward along the ground, without a sound.
Not toward Barton, and not toward Rayne.
Toward Serin, absorbed in her casting, completely undefended.
Greer’s face went cold.
No time to shout.
The figure had already shot out, nearly flush with the floor, a curved blade in each hand, their points glinting with a cold and ghostly light, like a venomous snake loosed from a string, hurtling straight for Serin’s back, right over the heart.
Greer vanished from beside the broken wall.
No one saw how Greer moved.
They only heard a crisp clang as the rapier came to rest precisely between the two slashing curved blades, less than a single step from Serin’s back.
The ringing hum of clashing metal burst right beside Serin’s ear.
She shuddered all over, only now realizing how close she’d come to death’s door.
The Dual-Blade Executioner clearly hadn’t expected the strike to be intercepted. Its curved blades were jammed against the rapier, its movement stalled.
Greer dropped his wrist, pinning both curved blades down, and his other hand closed around the rapier’s grip.
That rounded brass pommel came down with merciless force, smashing square into the Dual-Blade Executioner’s skull.
Crack.
A sharp report. The Executioner’s head snapped down, a crater caving into its skull, and it staggered back several steps, plainly hit hard.
Greer pulled his blade in and planted himself in front of Serin. His right leg wavered faintly, and the easy expression from before was gone.
“…Filthy little gutter rat.”
He gave a cold snort.
The next moment, the Garrison Captain had already pressed back in.
Barton was forced back half a step, his shield letting out a dull, heavy crash.
The Dual-Blade Executioner dropped low again too, prowling around the edges of the party.
Greer drew a deep breath.
“Fall back — out!”
Rayne didn’t waste a word.
“Barton, hold! Asar, cover Serin! Tyren, keep your eyes locked on that two-bladed bastard.”
“Got it.”
Barton gritted his teeth and braced his shield, taking a longsword stroke from the Garrison Captain head-on. Asar fell back quickly to Serin’s side, and Tyren drew his bow to full, the arrowhead fixed dead on the Dual-Blade Executioner crouched low to the ground.
Step by step, the group backed out of the camp.
Strangely, the Garrison Captain didn’t pursue.
The Dual-Blade Executioner only stayed crouched in the shadow beside the tent, its dark red gaze fixed on them.
As if guarding some invisible boundary line.
It wasn’t until they’d retreated back onto the rubble-strewn ground outside the camp that Rayne let himself breathe a little easier.
Greer leaned on his cane, his breathing a good deal heavier than before.
“That’s far enough,” he said.
Rayne looked at him.
“Guildmaster?”
“We’ve got enough intel for today.” Greer stared at the two corpses in the camp, his face darkening. “Everyone’s spent. Forcing the issue with those two does us no good. We go back, work out a plan, and pick it up next time.”
He paused.
“We withdraw.”
◆ ◆ ◆
In the Core Chamber, the heart Owen had been holding suspended finally settled back into place.
Watching the [Challengers Withdrawing] prompt on the management interface, his whole crystal seemed to slacken with relief.
“Phew… they’re leaving, they’re leaving.”
He let out a long breath. He had no lungs, but he did it out of habit anyway.
Honestly, the moment that old man caught the Dual-Blade Executioner’s strike out of the tent’s shadow, Owen had nearly thought he was about to go bankrupt on the spot. He’d already started calculating whether his remaining energy would be enough to rebuild both sub-bosses if they got wiped out in a single wave.
Instead, the other side was the one to withdraw.
And withdraw decisively: no clinging to the fight, pulling out the instant they confirmed things had gone wrong.
“Never underestimate the old guys,” Owen murmured, a note of admiration in his voice. “My old self would’ve definitely thrown in a couple more swings, just to see if I could get lucky and snag the boss outright.”
Muttering all the while, he pulled up the yield panel out of habit, curious how much he’d earned from playing host this round.
Then he froze.
[Daily Cumulative Yield Settlement]
[Trial Return Yield: Death Threshold Yield +0 / Emotional Fluctuation Yield +382]
Fine. That checked out. Nobody in Rayne’s party had died this run, so the yield came entirely from the tension and fear thrown off during the fighting.
But there were two more lines below it.
[Dormant Trial Record I]
[Death Threshold Yield: +125]
[Emotional Fluctuation Yield: +113]
[Dormant Trial Record II]
[Death Threshold Yield: +25]
[Emotional Fluctuation Yield: +42]
Owen stared at those two lines, dumbstruck for a moment.
“…Huh?”
His crystal flickered twice.
“What is this?”
He read them over and over, growing more confused the longer he looked. These two yields weren’t from Rayne’s party. He’d watched those five plus the old man the entire time, and not one of them had died.
Yet the record stated it plainly: Death Threshold Yield.
And not just one someone.
Owen racked his memory, but all of his attention earlier had been glued to the old man with the cane. Besides, while he’d been awake, he hadn’t noticed any adventurers entering apart from Rayne’s group.
He hurriedly spread the panel open and pulled up the records from the past few hours.
The footage rewound in his mind.
There.
Last night. A party had slipped in while his core was dormant. Five young people, gear shabby, movements painfully green. Obvious fresh-out-of-the-tutorial rookies. They took a real beating at the hands of the corpses in the opening stretch, scattered in a panic the moment they got chased, and ended up surrounded by a pack of corpses and cut down on the spot.
Then Trial Return had kicked in and sent all of them back to the starting chamber together.
Death Threshold Yield of two-fifty, halved by Trial Return down to one-twenty-five…
So where had the extra twenty-five come from?
Owen dug further down.
It turned out most of the rookies had been scared out of their minds, all except for one hot-headed kid. He’d caught his breath in the chamber for a while, and once he realized he was whole, limbs and all, unhurt apart from a slight headache, he’d actually —
Run right back in.
And died a second time.
“…”
Owen had no words.
This time he’d died even more cleanly. Barely out of the chamber, he’d been tripped up by the first corpse, then swarmed and hacked apart by two more behind it, without putting up anything resembling a fight. He coughed up the emotional yield generously enough, though: that “I can’t believe I survived” euphoria, the “let’s go again” adrenaline, plus that last split-second of pre-death terror, all of it converted to energy and deposited straight into Owen’s pocket.
How exactly the kid had managed to charge back in completely unbothered was the real question.
“Buddy…” Owen got out with difficulty. “Do you not have pain receptors?”
The grisly replay sent a chill through him, crystal or not.
The crystal’s light shuddered.
On the kid’s second Trial Return, it seemed the Soul Damage had been heavier, because he’d passed out cold and been carried back through the portal by his teammates.
No telling whether a second round of injury in such a short span could even heal.
“Should I maybe look into adding a daily entry limit?”
And right then.
The management interface erupted without the slightest warning.
[External Activity Detected]
[External Activity Detected]
[External Activity Detected]
[External Activity Detected]
Line after line, packing the entire panel in a dense flood.
Owen went rigid.
He flung his consciousness out past the gate of light in a panic.
And then, he “saw” it.
Out beyond the gate, the once-empty ground at the foot of the hill was now gathering great swathes of life-sources.
One cluster, two clusters, three… no, too many to count. They were converging on the gate from every direction: some still far off, some already pressing up to the entrance.
That kind of density was something he’d never felt since the day he was born.
[External Activity Detected]
[External Activity Detected]
The prompts were still firing.
Owen hung dazed in the center of the Core Chamber.
“…”
It was a long while before he managed, in a tone close to stupefied, to push out a single sentence.
“I just… made an offhand comment about wanting adventurers to show up.”
The crystal’s light gave a feeble little flicker.
“It’s not like I actually made a wish.”
◆ ◆ ◆
When the gate of light spat Rayne’s party back out, the daylight outside was bright enough to make them squint.
Greer walked at the rear, one hand on his cane, his breathing not yet fully settled. That string of movements earlier had, in the end, overdrawn this old body of his.
Rayne started to turn back to lend him an arm.
Then he stopped.
And not just him.
Barton, Tyren, Asar, and Serin all froze in place the instant they stepped out of the gate.
The space outside the portal, empty when they’d gone in, was now packed dark with people.
Seven or eight adventurers clustered in twos and threes: some bent over checking their gear, others rising on their toes to peer toward the gate, undisguised eagerness in their eyes. Further out, two or three more parties were hurrying up the road toward them.
Someone in the crowd recognized Rayne.
“It’s Greyhound! Greyhound’s party is out!”
“Hey, how’s it look in there? Is it true you can’t die?”
“Is there really a dungeon that brings you back to life?”
The clamor of voices surged toward them all at once.
Rayne didn’t answer.
He slowly turned his head and looked behind him.
Greer had stepped out of the gate at some point and was standing at his side.
The old man wasn’t looking at the crowd of adventurers. He had lifted his head toward the portal, still giving off its hazy white glow, and stayed silent for a long time.
“I told you it was real!”
A pale-faced young adventurer shoved his way out of the crowd.
“I went in last night, died twice, and both times I woke up in the starting chamber. Look. I’m standing right here in one piece, aren’t I?”
He even held up a hazy blue magic crystal in his hand.
“And it really does drop these inside!”
Greer stared at him.
His face sank, degree by degree, until it had gone an iron grey.
He said nothing.
He only stood there, wordless, looking out at those faces: excited, greedy, itching to throw themselves in.
Wind swept across the hilltop.
Greer knew the worst thing had already happened.
The dungeon hadn’t spiraled out of control yet.
The adventurers had beaten it to it.