Night had already folded over the city when Airen finally trudged back to the hotel room he'd booked.
His legs still buzzed from the long run, but his thoughts spun faster: Guru Karaoke's stash, the warehouse address, the stacks of cash hidden behind walls.
He locked the door, drew the curtains, and dropped onto the bed. For a moment he lay still, staring at the ceiling fan. Its blades whirred at full speed, yet in his eyes they seemed to turn slowly, almost lazily.
I really did a lot today… and made a lot of money, he thought, a faint grin curling on his lips.
His eyelids grew heavy. The weight of food and fatigue pressed over him like wet sand.
The instant sleep claimed him, the world fractured.
When Airen opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the hotel. He stood exactly where he had left off in the Cubic World.
The ground stretched in a seamless carpet of grass blocks, their edges glowing faintly in soft sunlight. Scattered among them bloomed flowers—some perfectly cubic, others startlingly natural, their petals swaying in scarlet, gold, and sky-blue. The mix of geometry and lifelike shapes was surreal, like a painting caught between two realities.
Beyond the field rose a colossal mountain: jagged cliffs of stacked stone blocks veined with green moss. Near its peak, white blocks gleamed like snow, and from one slope a river spilled in a shining cascade, scattering shards of light as it raced across the plains.
Even after seeing this view before, Airen paused, letting the breeze wash over him.
Still beautiful, he admitted silently.
He started forward, boots brushing through the grass. The clean air filled his chest, cool and sharp.
"Ah… this freshness," he murmured aloud. "You can't get anything like this in the city."
After a while he reached the base of the mountain.
"Rivercrossing should be just behind this," he said, looking up. "Climbing won't be a problem."
He scaled the slope with casual ease, not a drop of sweat on his brow. But at the summit he stopped short.
Set into the stone was a staircase, its mouth yawning black against the sunlight. The steps descended in neat, square lines, vanishing into a darkness so deep it seemed to swallow the light around it.
[This is a underground dungeon I mentioned,] the System said.
Airen's eyes widened, a spark of excitement flickering in their depths.
"So this is where I can find the God-Fallen pieces?"
[Correct.]
He studied the stairway, its edges fading into shadow.
"Can I clear it?"
[Hard to say. I don't know how many floors it has. Dungeons vary—some ten floors, some fifty, some a hundred. Some only one.]
[What I do know: the deeper you go, the stronger the monsters… and the better the rewards.]
[Because you have me the system, you can level up endlessly. Theoretically, you could descend forever.]
Airen chuckled, shaking his head.
"Right… I keep forgetting I can just level up." His grin sharpened. "Then let's see how far I can go."
From his inventory he drew the crimson-handled sword. The blade caught the sun, reflecting a hard glint across his face. A smile—sharp, predatory rather than merely menacing—spread across his lips.
"Let the hunt begin."
He stepped into the stairwell. Each pace took him deeper, the daylight fading until only cold stone surrounded him. After several seconds he reached the first landing.
"System, what kind of monsters should I expect?"
[Each dungeon has its own creatures. I can only promise the difficulty matches other dungeons' first floors.]
Airen glanced upward, expression caught between confusion and mock annoyance.
"You do realize this is my first dungeon, right? How the hell am I supposed to know the 'usual' difficulty?"
The System gave a faint, almost amused pulse. [Yes, I know.]
He sighed and descended the final steps.
The stairs opened into a vast underground chamber. Flame torches lined the walls, their light blazing with a violent steadiness, as if no wind could ever snuff them out. The stone floor stretched wide, rough yet unnaturally clean, save for one thing.
A sound rolled through the space—high-pitched, endless.
Squeak… squeak… squeak…
Not one or two cries, but thousands, overlapping like a living storm.
Airen's gaze swept the room—and froze.
Rats. An ocean of them covered the floor, each one gaunt as if starved for weeks, their ribs pressing through patchy fur. Their eyes glowed a furious red, and when they turned toward him, it was with the raw hunger of predators who had just found a meal.
Airen tightened his grip on the sword, lips curling in anticipation.
"So, that's the welcome party."
The torches threw jagged shadows across the floor, highlighting every twitching whisker and gleaming fang. The whole chamber felt alive, pulsing with the restless energy of thousands of starving bodies.
And all of them were staring straight at him.
A split second later, the horde erupted.
The rats surged forward in a living tide, claws scraping stone, bodies climbing over one another in a frenzy. Their eyes burned crimson with hunger, and the sound of their squeals became a single, suffocating roar.
Airen's stomach lurched. Should I run? The thought flashed, but he crushed it. No. They're already here. Running won't solve a damn thing.
He ripped the crimson-handled sword free and slashed. The blade cut down a handful, but more poured in, scrambling over their fallen kin. He swung again, and again, each strike leaving a spray of black ichor—but the mass didn't thin. They just kept coming, an endless, writhing carpet.
"Shit—!" Airen's curse tore from his throat as the first wave leapt, latching onto his boots and calves. Others clambered up his arms, gnawing through cloth to get at flesh. Their teeth sank into him with searing pain, like a hundred tiny knives stabbing at once.
"Ahhh—dammit! Get off!" He thrashed, rolling across the floor, trying to shake them loose, but the swarm only tightened, their bodies pressing closer, hot and slick with saliva.
[[Airen!] The System's voice cracked through the chaos, sharper than usual.] [Stop wasting time—use the torches! Burn them before they strip you to the bone!]
Airen grit his teeth, eyes wide and wild with pain. Blood streaked down his sleeve where a rat had torn through the fabric. His muscles trembled under the weight of the living mass. Still, he forced himself up on one knee, gaze snapping toward the blazing torches fixed along the walls.
A grim smile tugged at the corner of his mouth despite the agony. "Fine… you want fire? Let's see how you like this."