Noah fell to his knees, breathing hard, surrounded by a sea of black blood already beginning to evaporate into wisps of dark smoke.
The corpses of the shadow demons dissolved slowly around him, as if the castle itself were taking care of cleaning up the evidence of the slaughter.
In front of him, his inventory window remained open, displaying a considerable list of stored pieces of flesh: different shades, different textures.
“This should be enough,” he panted, propping both hands on the ground. “I’ll try a few different cooking methods before deciding if it’s worth using [Devourer’s Hunger.] If in the end I have to eat this raw… I’m going to think twice about it.”
He checked his level almost out of habit.
[Level increased: 6.]
“Six,” he murmured, letting himself fall onto his back against the cold floor. “And even with my extra skills as an advantage, it’s still hard to level up. I don’t even want to imagine what it’d be like if I had to do this as an ordinary Rank F, with nothing stolen.”
He thought about Belle. About how she, without help, without returning from death, without stealing skills, had made it all the way to floor 500 on her own.
‘She must have incredible skills,’ he thought, closing his eyes for a moment. ‘No one gets that far on raw effort alone. She’s… amazing.’
He leaned back against a nearby wall and pulled his phone out of his pocket. In his contacts, the number was saved under the name “Belle.”
His fingers hovered over the screen, indecisive.
‘What do I write to her? Something casual? Something polite?’
He knew, after thirty-three deaths’ worth of research, that she hated excessive formality, that she preferred things natural. But knowing that in theory was one thing; writing to her without seeing her, without being able to read her expression, without any margin for error, was something else entirely.
‘I don’t want to waste a famous SSS-Rank’s time with some stupid message.’
His heart raced and nerves knotted in his stomach. He swallowed hard, weighing several possibilities. He wanted to talk to her, but kept reminding himself she was a famous, busy woman.
He put the phone away without writing anything.
“Some other time. I still don’t have the level for this boss.”
He looked at his dagger, its edge now noticeably worn down from constant use.
‘I need to buy something decent when I get out of here.’
He opened the inventory again and confirmed he’d also stored the kinds of items he used to see other Hunters selling on the news: teeth, claws, fragments of hide.
Since his Mark had only awakened that very day, he still didn’t know the Fortress’s economic system well, but at least he knew there were blacksmiths willing to pay good money for monster parts to forge special weapons.
That was when hunger hit him hard, followed almost immediately by an unbearable thirst.
“I’m an idiot,” he told himself, gripping his head with both hands. “I should’ve brought water, food, something basic. How did I not think of this?”
But, he reminded himself, this was really his first time exploring.
No one had taught him anything. There was no manual for surviving inside the Fortress, and he didn’t plan on asking Belle for advice just yet; for some reason he didn’t fully understand, she seemed bothered whenever people asked her about that kind of thing. He’d wait until he had more trust between them.
His thoughts, without him noticing, drifted back to her.
‘She’s so beautiful… I’m still amazed I have a famous Hunter as a friend. Not in a thousand years could I have pulled that off if it weren’t for [Return].’
[Awareness] snapped on.
Noah opened his eyes and threw his body to one side on pure instinct.
A spear embedded itself right where his head had been, splitting the concrete with a dry crash.
He leapt to his feet, stumbling backward with his heart racing. Standing up, he felt a burning sting on his cheek: a thin, bleeding cut, the result of just how close the blade had come.
‘I barely dodged that,’ he thought, terrified. ‘That was faster than anything I’ve faced so far.’
From the shadows of the ruined corridor, a knight in black armor walked forward with absolute calm, retrieving his spear from the ground the way someone might pick up a dropped object, without the slightest hurry.
Noah’s entire body was shaking. A constant buzzing rang in his skull, a silent alarm he couldn’t fully interpret.
‘Is this [Awareness]? Warning of imminent danger?’ If so, that meant something powerful stood before him.
He didn’t need to think twice.
He ran.
The knight, never losing his composure for even a moment, grabbed his spear and leapt in his direction with the clear intent of cutting him in half.
Noah activated [Swift Step] just in time, tearing straight through an entire wall in a cloud of dust and rubble. He rolled across the ground, got up, and kept running down another corridor.
The knight tore through the wall in front of him without slowing down, coming straight at him. Noah slid beneath his body using [Swift Step], dodging by mere inches a blade aimed at his neck.
Getting back to his feet, he decided to confront him head-on, crossing his dagger against the knight’s spear.
The impact shattered his dagger into a thousand pieces.
Noah’s eyes went wide with such absolute shock that time seemed to slow down around him, as if his own brain refused to process what it had just witnessed.
‘He broke it?! In one hit?! I need to get out of here,’ he thought, staggering backward. ‘This guy is going to kill me.’
The chase continued. Noah ran toward any visible exit, but every corridor seemed to fold in on itself, trapping him again and again in dead ends.
[Swift Step] let him dodge the slashes, but they came so relentlessly that fear overwhelmed him. At one point he couldn’t keep up, and a cut caught him, tearing open his bicep, followed by another across his collarbone.
Desperate, he called out to his system.
“Give me something, anything!”
[The only offensive skill in your repertoire, aside from the ones already used, is Requiem.]
‘Requiem,’ Noah thought, his heart pounding against his chest. ‘Belle’s skill. Stores the damage taken and releases it in a single attack, right?’
The knight closed in head-on, spear ready for the finishing blow.
In a fraction of a second, Noah thought of all the deaths he’d stacked up just to get to talk to Belle.
Thirty-three times stabbed and bled dry.
Added to the damage taken during this very expedition.
‘That should be enough.’
“Requiem!” he shouted.
A white light burst from his body, concentrating violently into his right fist.
The knight launched his frontal attack. Noah dodged it with [Swift Step], ending up directly in front of him, and drove the blow straight into his chest.
The impact was devastating: the black armor shattered completely, Noah’s fist punched clean through the knight’s body from one side to the other, unleashing a shockwave that blew out nearby windows and shook every piece of clothing around him.
He had driven through the knight’s torso all the way to the shoulder. When the gust of wind died down and he felt the body starting to sway, he yanked his arm back hard, letting the lifeless corpse collapse to the ground.
Noah staggered back, dropping to a sitting position, drenched in sweat, in absolute shock.
“I survived that by pure luck,” he murmured, staring at his hand, still vibrating with the residual energy of the blow. “So that’s how it works. I’m guessing my deaths make it stronger.”
He got up on trembling legs, suddenly noticing an annoying detail: he was completely unarmed in the middle of Floor 2.
He went to pick up the fallen knight’s spear, but the moment his fingers brushed it, the weapon dissolved into a black mist that faded into the air.
“Great. Can’t take weapons off the dead in here. At least not once they’re already dead.”
Still, he noticed something glinting inside the shattered body: a diamond-shaped stone, a deep sapphire blue. He pried it out carefully and stored it in his inventory before getting back to his feet and running again, this time toward the exit.
When he finally reached the main hall, an alarm rang out through the entire structure, a deep, piercing sound, similar to a nuclear emergency alert.
[Time has elapsed. You are free to leave the Castle.]
“Leaving isn’t mandatory,” Noah murmured, still panting, “but for today, I’ve had enough.”
Crossing the threshold back outside, the sky greeted him stained a deep orange. He’d spent the entire day inside the Fortress without even realizing it.
And then he saw the spectacle waiting for him in the plaza.
Black crows pecking at decapitated bodies, scattered in piles of corpses. The ones who hadn’t made it in on time.
Noah walked among them, noticing abandoned weapons, scattered coins, fragments of armor tossed like garbage amid the dried blood.
For a moment, he was tempted to take something.
But he decided against it.
Behind him, a sizable group of Rank F Hunters was already fighting over the remains, looting corpses without the slightest shame, tearing off pouches, rings, anything that glinted.
Noah turned and kept walking, leaving them behind.
‘I don’t need to sink that low,’ he thought. ‘I already have enough of an edge to get my own things.’
He thought of Lily, of how she’d be getting out of the academy soon.
“I need to go get her,” he murmured, quickening his pace.
He looked down at his ruined clothes, covered in dried blood, sweat, and stone dust.
“Although, first…” he added, with a tired half-smile, “I’m definitely taking a bath.”