Dungeon Entry – The Whispering Stacks
Domain: Knowledge
Risk Level: ???
Dungeon Type: Static (Cursed Library)
🔹🔹🔹
The moment Jinho stepped through the dungeon gate, he knew something was wrong.
It wasn't the ruined library halls, or the fact that every book floated slightly off the shelves like they were deciding whether to attack. It was the sound.
Or lack of it.
No footsteps. No breathing. Not even the low hum of the system UI.
Just… whispers. Constant, insidious, crawling in from the edges of his hearing.
"You forgot to lock your door this morning."
"Your childhood goldfish didn't die of old age."
"That pan you're carrying? Sentient."
"…Is anyone else hearing this?" Jinho whispered.
"Shhh!" hissed Yura, finger to her lips. "The mission log said silence is survival."
Daeho nodded solemnly and held up a whiteboard with:
"NO TALKING. NO LOUD NOISES. NO FLATULENCE."
Hari's cats hovered protectively, their fur bristling.
They moved carefully down rows of floating shelves. The books watched them. Yes, actually watched them with blinking eyes where the titles should be.
Every few steps, another whisper tried to pry into Jinho's head.
"You peaked in middle school."
"You'll never be promoted."
"Yoo Mirae called you 'Bugboy' in the staff group chat."
He clutched his frying pan tighter.
"Pan," he muttered. "Please don't be sentient."
[System Warning: Glitch detected. Frying Pan affinity – 87%. Personality override pending…]
"Nope," Jinho said. "Don't you dare develop sentience in here."
Halfway through the stacks, the dungeon glitched.
Literally.
Daeho stepped into a reading alcove and vanished.
Yura's buffs started targeting enemies instead.
Hari began reciting Twilight in Latin.
Jinho's UI flickered.
[Warning: Dungeon Domain conflicting with Hunter's Error Field]
[Temporary effect: Illogical Outcomes Active]
He blinked.
"Wait, what's that mean—"
The next step he took landed him sideways on the ceiling.
"Okay, okay," Jinho whispered, crawling across the ceiling. "I just need to stabilize the field. Maybe turn it off? Reboot?"
He tapped the pan like it was a laptop. It glowed.
[Skill Acquired: Reality Reroute (Beta)]
Description: "Don't like the rules? Change the code."
Side effects: All of them.
"...This'll go great," he muttered.
He pointed the pan at a locked door ahead. It opened inward through the wall. Books screamed.
They entered the main reading room.
At the center stood a woman in tattered robes, face hidden behind a broken catalog card drawer. Her fingers were quills. Her voice was a whisper in all directions.
"SILENCE VIOLATED. KNOWLEDGE STOLEN. TRUTH MUST BE RETURNED."
[BOSS ENCOUNTER: The Forgotten Archivist – Rank: ???]
The team froze. Daeho (back from wherever) raised his shield. Yura tried to cast a silence ward only for the spell to whisper "No thanks" and vanish.
Hari's cats screamed and fled into a copy of Kafka on the Shore.
Jinho stepped forward.
"Hi. Can we maybe not fight? We're new."
"YOU ARE A CORRUPTED FILE."
[Boss casts: Silence Lockdown Lv.99]
[Jinho is immune due to: Error Field]
"Oh," Jinho said. "Neat."
🔹🔹🔹
What followed could only be described as:
Daeho getting stuck in a recursive loop of running into a wall.
Yura trying to buff a book, which exploded.
Hari summoning a spirit called Dewey Decimal that refused to fight unless they used MLA formatting.
Jinho, meanwhile, started pinging random glitch commands with the pan.
[Reality Reroute: Applied to Space-Time Logic]
Result: Gravity reversed again.
[Bug Injection: Applied to Boss AI]
Result: Boss begins questioning its own cataloging system.
"...Why is 'Cooking with Fire' under philosophy?"
Jinho ran forward, pan raised like an idiot hero, and smacked the Librarian square on the mask.
The dungeon froze.
Then shattered.
[Dungeon Core Stabilized]
[You have acquired: Forbidden Skill Book – "Debugging God"]
[New Glitch Unlocked: Passive – Reality Doesn't Know What You Are]
[System Note: "We are officially concerned."]
The team stumbled out of the gate just as the dungeon collapsed behind them.
Hari was muttering conspiracy theories about cats and book clubs.
Yura filmed a vlog about "hunting in extreme silence."
Daeho was asking his shield if it still loved him.
Jinho held the frying pan like a relic and whispered, "I'm never reading again."
Yoo Mirae was waiting at the gate, sipping iced coffee.
"So," she said. "You survived."
"Barely."
"And the boss?"
"Defeated via frying pan. Again."
Mirae nodded like that was normal.
"Welcome to Tiger Gate, Kang Jinho."