The three small demons with cracked skin fell one after another, exactly as they had the first time, though now Noah barely needed to think about the movements. His body simply executed them.
He advanced down the golden corridor without stopping, without getting distracted by the statues with too-human eyes or by the artificial glow of the greenish torches. He was still level 2. He still had work to do.
‘The curse won’t lift until the crimson moon ends,’ he thought, calculating the time remaining. ‘I’m going to use every minute of this to level up. No reason to waste it.’
He reached the boss chamber.
The pig with the inverted head greeted him exactly as always: six meters tall, grayish skin covered in folds, that axe with metal teeth hanging from its deformed hand.
Noah drew his dagger with a smile that held nothing friendly in it.
“I still remember the pain you put me through,” he said, walking slowly toward the center of the chamber. “This time it’s my turn. And I’m going to make you suffer, slowly.”
The boss roared and raised its axe.
The fight began, but this time something was different: Noah no longer improvised. Every dodge, every roll beneath the monster’s legs, every opening toward its neck, all of it was etched into his memory with the precision of a ritual repeated hundreds of times.
Strike to the neck. Wait a second and a half. [Echo Thrust] finishing the job.
“With this skill I can land two hits in the same instant,” he murmured, dodging an axe swing that barely grazed his shoulder, “and even so, it barely bleeds. If I’d come here as some ordinary Rank F, with no stolen skills, without the advantage of coming back from death… I’d probably still be stuck on this floor weeks from now.”
The boss’s dark blood kept flowing, pooling into an ever-widening puddle, until the monster finally collapsed to its knees with the same crash as always.
But this time, something went wrong for the boss: the wound on its neck, struck so many times, so deep, began oozing a black liquid that reeked of pure decay.
Fat white maggots writhed their way out of the open flesh, dropping to the floor with wet, disgusting sounds.
Noah covered his nose immediately.
“Ugh. You desperately need a detox. This pig’s rotten on the inside.”
The stench was so unbearable that even his thirst for revenge started fading little by little. He repeated the strike to the neck a couple more times, weakening the area until it grew as fragile as wet paper.
He walked over, took the pig’s inverted head in his hands, and drove the dagger into the top of its jaw.
With a brutal yank, he tore the head clean off the body.
The sound was horrific: a porcine shriek choking off halfway through, followed by a pressurized jet of blood that soaked his entire arm.
Noah lifted the head above himself, like some grotesque trophy.
[You have defeated the Floor 1 Boss.]
“Yeah, no kidding,” he replied, flinging the head to the ground with contempt.
Experience surged through his body like an electric current.
[Level increased: 3.]
[Level increased: 4.]
“Nothing new unlocked yet,” he murmured, checking his system window. “No unique weapon? No item I can use later? Anything?”
[What do you think this is? A video game? You can already steal skills, don’t be greedy.]
The chamber began transforming around him: the greenish lights went out, replaced by a pure white that bathed every corner. From the ceiling, a staircase of pristine marble slowly descended to the floor.
“I guess that’s the entrance to Floor 2.”
He climbed without hesitation.
The moment he crossed the threshold, his pupils dilated in surprise.
Nothing like the golden, crimson luxury of the first floor. Here, the corridors lay in ruins: cracked columns, partially collapsed ceilings, and entire stretches sunk in a darkness so dense he could barely make out his own feet.
As if the place had been abandoned for centuries.
‘I need to get a flashlight,’ he thought, narrowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. ‘If every floor is as different as this one, I’ll probably need specific gear to explore them. I should visit the Hunter Mall when I’m done.’
He advanced carefully, and along the way thought of something else: ‘I’d like to try out [Devourer’s Hunger]. I need to bring back some piece of monster or demon flesh to test it.’
That was when he sensed them before he saw them.
[Awareness] activated on instinct, and Noah felt presences approaching from both sides of the ruined corridor.
He threw himself to one side just in time to dodge the claw swipe of a creature entirely different from those on the first floor: skin so black it seemed to swallow what little light there was, as if it were shadow given shape and fangs.
“Well, well,” Noah said, smiling as he rolled away from another strike. “Already getting a welcome to the second floor.”
The shadow demons attacked in a group, coordinated, appearing from angles his eyes alone could never have covered. [Awareness] gave him the edge of sensing them before they arrived, but there were many, too many, and the moment he took one down, two more appeared to replace it.
‘Careful,’ he told himself, dodging another swipe with [Swift Step.] ‘I’m on a new floor. I don’t really know what I’m up against. And I don’t want to die right now… I’d lose the progress I’ve built with Belle.’
The fight dragged on longer than he expected. Every corridor led him to another cluster of shadows, every ruined chamber concealed two or three more creatures lying in wait.
Relying on his physical strength would have been suicide; [Swift Step] was the only thing keeping him alive, slipping between claws and fangs like water through fingers.
The hours passed without Noah even noticing.
When he finally stopped, leaning his back against the broken frame of a window, his body felt like it weighed a ton. He was covered in black blood, filth, and sweat. Even with good skills, he still had scratches and minor cuts across various parts of his body.
Even his clothes were torn in nine different places.
“I need a break,” he panted, sliding down until he sat on the floor. “Damn it… yeah… I really am exhausted.”
He checked his system almost by reflex.
[Level increased: 5.]
“Five? I didn’t even notice.”
But that wasn’t the only new thing. An entirely new tab had appeared on the interface, something that hadn’t existed before.
[Inventory]
“This is new?” Noah opened it out of curiosity.
It was completely empty.
“Hey,” he said to his system, “how does this work?”
[The Inventory allows you to store items and retrieve them whenever you want, with no need for bags, backpacks, or any other primitive method of carrying things.]
Noah tried it immediately, storing his dagger in the empty space.
The weapon vanished from his hand in a faint flash.
“Ha.” He summoned it back, and it reappeared, solid, real, exactly as he had stored it. “This is great. Absolutely useful.”
He repeated the process a couple more times, almost like a kid with a new toy, before stopping to think about something more important.
“Will more features unlock as I level up?”
[Find out yourself.]
“What a helpful system I have.”
[I know. It’s my best quality.]
Noah sighed, getting to his feet with his legs still trembling from the exertion. He walked over to the broken window and looked outside.
The sky was still stained crimson, the moon with its fanged grin still hanging up high, motionless, patient.
The curse still hadn’t ended. He still had time inside the castle.
“Alright,” he murmured, straightening his stained clothes. “I’ll keep leveling up.”
He looked toward the ruined corridor stretching out before him, vanishing into the darkness.
“And since I’m already here… it wouldn’t hurt to try to find this floor’s boss room too.”
NOTE: I’ll be uploading one chapter a day. :D
Remember, if the novel gets enough support, I’ll increase the release rate to 2 chapters a day. ^^