Darkness swallowed everything.
Suho felt like he was falling endlessly through an empty void.
No sound.
No light.
Only the echo of that ancient voice remained inside his mind.
“You are evolving…”
Then—
BEEP.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Penalty Zone Cleared]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Returning Host to Original Dimension━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Light exploded before his eyes.
BOOM.
Suho crashed back onto the floor of his apartment.
He gasped violently for air.
Sweat covered his entire body.
His heartbeat pounded like crazy.
“…I’m back…”
The room looked normal again.
The desk.
The broken chair.
The medicine bottles.
Everything felt strangely peaceful after that nightmare desert.
But something had changed.
He could feel it.
A cold dark energy moving slowly inside his chest.
Then—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Shadow Fragment Integrated]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Synchronization Rate: 41%━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho placed a hand over his chest.
“…Integrated?”
The moment he spoke— pain shot through his body again.
“GHH—!!”
He fell to one knee immediately.
Black smoke leaked briefly from his shadow before disappearing again.
His eyes widened.
“My shadow…”
It moved on its own for a second.
Like it was alive.
Then suddenly—
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Someone pounded on the apartment door.
“SUHO!!”
Jinho’s voice.
Suho quickly stood up and opened the door.
Yoo Jinho looked panicked.
“You vanished!”
Suho froze slightly.
“…What?”
“You disappeared right in front of me yesterday!”
Jinho stepped inside immediately.
“The association thought another gate opened or something.”
Suho looked confused.
“Yesterday…?”
Jinho blinked.
“Yeah.”
“You were gone for almost ten hours.”
Suho’s eyes widened slowly.
But inside the penalty zone, it felt much longer.
The system… was affecting space itself.
Jinho suddenly narrowed his eyes.
“…Your mana changed again.”
Suho stayed silent.
At this point, hiding it was becoming impossible.
Then—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Observe Activated━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Information appeared above Jinho automatically.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Name: Yoo JinhoRank: D-Rank HunterEmotion: ConcernedThreat Level: Low━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho frowned slightly.
The Observe skill was evolving too.
Jinho sat down nearby.
“The association wants to re-evaluate your rank.”
Suho looked up instantly.
“…Already?”
Jinho nodded.
“Surviving a double dungeon is one thing.”
“But your mana keeps increasing.”
Suho looked away quietly.
If they discovered the system… things could become dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Then suddenly— the room temperature dropped.
Cold air spread unnaturally through the apartment.
Suho’s eyes sharpened immediately.
“…Did you feel that?”
Jinho looked confused.
“Feel what?”
A shadow moved across the wall behind him.
Not naturally.
Something was there.
Watching.
Suho slowly turned.
His own shadow on the wall was moving independently again.
This time longer.
More clearly.
Jinho still noticed nothing.
The system suddenly appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Warning]Shadow Resonance Increasing━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The shadow beneath Suho’s feet slowly expanded.
Dark smoke leaked upward.
And then— a humanoid figure began emerging from the darkness itself.
Jinho finally noticed.
“…W-What the hell?!”
The black figure fully rose behind Suho.
One of the shadow wolves from the penalty zone.
Its glowing purple eyes opened slowly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Shadow Summon Successful━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho stared at it in disbelief.
“I summoned it here…?”
The shadow wolf kneeled slightly toward him.
Like it recognized him as its master.
Jinho backed away nervously.
“You can summon monsters now?!”
Suho looked at the shadow creature carefully.
“…They’re soldiers.”
The shadow wolf suddenly growled softly.
Its eyes shifted toward the apartment window.
Alert.
Dangerous.
Then—
CRACK.
The glass shattered instantly.
BOOM!!
A creature crashed into the apartment from outside.
Jinho shouted.
“A MONSTER?!”
The creature looked humanoid but distorted.
Its skin was dark gray.
Its eyes glowed red.
And black veins covered its body.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Corrupted Human Detected━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho’s expression darkened.
“…A corrupted human?”
The creature roared and charged immediately.
The shadow wolf intercepted it instantly.
CLASH!!
Darkness collided with corrupted mana.
The apartment walls cracked from the impact.
Jinho stared in horror.
“What is happening in this city…?”
The corrupted creature suddenly looked directly at Suho.
Then it spoke in a distorted voice.
“…The Fragment…”
Suho froze.
“What?”
The creature’s mouth twisted unnaturally.
“…The King’s Fragment has awakened…”
Suho’s heartbeat accelerated instantly.
King’s Fragment.
Again.
The same words from the double dungeon.
The creature charged wildly.
But before it could reach him—
SLASH!!
The shadow wolf tore through its body completely.
Black blood splattered across the room.
Silence.
The corrupted creature slowly dissolved into ash.
Then— a small purple crystal dropped onto the floor.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Shadow Energy Crystal Acquired━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Suho stared at it silently.
His instincts told him something terrifying.
This wasn’t random.
Something had noticed him.
Something connected to the shadow fragment.
And deep within the darkness beyond the human world… something ancient had finally awakened.
TO BE CONTINUED….!!
PulseTalesSTUDIOS Telegram👇👇 Telegram Channel Link :- https://t.me/pulsetalesstudios