Chapter 6
The stairway was drenched in blood.
The hunters fought like cornered beasts, their blades clashing against the endless tide of ghouls pouring from the darkness. Each ghoul's screech rattled the walls, each strike echoing with death.
Tang Shi was a storm. His daggers flashed in blinding arcs, his body moving like liquid shadow. Every step, every strike, every dodge carried lethal precision. The ghouls fell before him like wheat before a scythe, their heads rolling across the marble steps, black blood splattering across the walls.
"Pathetic things," Tang Shi spat, his voice sharp as steel. "You dare compare yourselves to hunters? To me?!"
He lunged forward, splitting a ghoul in two with one swift strike. His silver eyes glowed as his special skill, Infinite Tracker, burned at full capacity. He could sense every hostile movement before it even began, cutting down the ghouls faster than they could react.
The gulf in power was undeniable.
A-rank hunters struggled to survive. B-rank hunters fought desperately to stay alive. But Tang Shi? He was dominance incarnate, tearing through them with unshakable confidence.
Renji stumbled back, his breaths ragged, his chest heaving. His pickaxe trembled in his hands. Every scream, every gush of blood, every shriek of the ghouls—it crushed him. His legs refused to move. His heart pounded against his ribs, suffocating him.
I can't… I can't fight them. I'm going to die here. I'll die and Lily will be alone…
A shadow lunged at him.
Before Renji could even raise his pickaxe, a flash of steel intercepted the strike. Choji stood before him, his blade biting deep into the ghoul's neck.
"Stay behind me, renji-san!" Choji roared, his body trembling from exertion. Blood leaked from a wound across his shoulder, yet he pressed forward, hacking down another ghoul with sheer willpower.
He was weaker than Tang Shi, weaker than most of the A-rankers—but Choji never faltered.
Even when the ghouls clawed at his armor. Even when his own blood slicked his hands. Even when his knees shook with exhaustion.
As long as Renji lived, he would fight. Even with his dying breath.
Renji's eyes burned with tears. "Choji…!"
But he couldn't move. His fear shackled him.
Now one by one, the ghouls fell. Their shrieks filled the stairwell, then faded into silence.
Tang Shi stood tall amidst the carnage, his daggers dripping with ichor. He twirled them once before sheathing them, his chest rising and falling steadily despite the battlefield strewn with corpses.
The hunters around him slumped, wounded and panting, their faces pale with exhaustion.
But Tang Shi sneered. His silver eyes glimmered arrogantly.
"Is this all?" he mocked, stepping over a ghoul's severed head. "A hundred ghouls, maybe more, and they fall like insects before me. If this is the power of this so-called dungeon, then it is nothing compared to Tang Shi, S-rank hunter of the Shallow Guild!"
He raised his daggers, black blood dripping from their edges.
"Come at me! Come at me again! I'll slaughter you all until this floor runs red!"
His arrogance cut through the despair of the others. For a brief moment, they believed him. Perhaps he truly was enough.
STOMP STOMP!!
Then the ground shook.
The walls groaned. The torches flickered, their flames shrinking as if suffocated.
An overwhelming pressure rolled over the chamber, so heavy it pressed down on their lungs and bones. It was not the suffocating chill of the ghouls, nor the trickle of mana they had felt earlier—it was something far beyond.
Renji collapsed to his knees instantly, choking on his breath. His vision blurred. His soul screamed at him to crawl away, to flee, yet his body was frozen in place.
The hunters staggered, clutching their chests. Some vomited blood from the sheer density of the aura.
Tang Shi's confident sneer faltered. His knees bent slightly under the crushing weight. His silver eyes darted toward the depths of the stairwell, wide with disbelief.
"No… this… this isn't right."
The pressure intensified. It was not wild or chaotic like the ghouls—it was calm, deliberate, suffocating in its control. A presence so vast that even the strongest among them felt like insects caught beneath the gaze of a god.
Tang Shi's voice cracked as he whispered, "This… this isn't an SS-rank…"
The shadows at the bottom of the stairwell shifted.
From the abyss, two glowing eyes opened.
"Now," a voice rumbled, deep and resonant, echoing through their very bones.
MORTALS!!
The stairwell trembled, the torches died, and darkness swallowed them whole.
From the darkness, it emerged.
Its body towered over them, a grotesque mockery of a man. The boss stood nearly four meters tall, its frame draped in shredded black robes that shimmered like liquid shadow. Beneath the fabric were bones bleached white, yet alive—flesh clung to them in pulsing strips, veins glowing faintly with green fire. Its face was a skull crowned with twisted horns, its eyes burning like dying suns, pupils vertical slits of crimson.
And when it moved, it was not with the clumsy gait of a beast. It was graceful, deliberate, each step shaking the walls as if the entire gate bent to its will.
A low laugh crawled from its hollow throat.
"Hunters… how amusing."
Its voice wasn't sound. It was vibration that split eardrums, words that sank directly into the soul.
Tang Shi's Disbelief
Tang Shi staggered back, sweat dripping from his chin. His silver eyes, so calm and arrogant moments ago, now shook with fear.
"No… no… this aura…!" He clenched his daggers until his knuckles whitened. "This isn't SS-rank… not even close…!"
He remembered his guild master, Wang Chi, an SS-rank hunter feared across the continent. His power was like a raging sea. But this… this was an ocean swallowing the sky.
Tang Shi whispered in disbelief:
"This… this is an SSS-rank."
How is this possible there are only 8 sss ranks in the world NO! NO! NO!!!!
His legs trembled. His pride crumbled. He could not lie to himself. The gulf between them was immeasurable.
The boss extended a hand. Long, skeletal fingers tipped with claws flexed slowly, deliberately.
"Dance for me."
In a blur, it appeared behind an A-rank hunter. The man didn't even scream before his torso was split in two, entrails spilling onto the marble floor. His comrades barely processed what happened before their bodies were torn apart as well.
Choji lunged, blade raised in a desperate strike. He aimed for the creature's neck—
But the boss caught the sword between two fingers. With casual cruelty, it twisted the blade until it snapped.
Then its claws pierced Choji's stomach.
Renji screamed.
"CHOJI!"
Blood poured from Choji's mouth as he fell. His hand twitched, reaching toward renji with fading strength.
But before he could even die—before the last breath left his lungs—the boss's eyes flared with eerie green light.
"Replenish."
Choji's body snapped back together with sickening cracks, wounds sealing as if time rewound. His scream of agony was reborn with him, his mind intact, his pain renewed.
The others realized with horror what had just happened.
The A-ranker whose torso had been torn apart reappeared on the floor, gasping for air, his guts slithering back into his body. His scream echoed again as his body was shredded again by the boss's claws.
Revived. Torn apart. Revived again. Torn apart again.
It was endless.
"STOP IT!" Renji's throat tore as he screamed, his body shaking. His knees buckled, bile rising in his throat as he watched Choji die and live, die and live, over and over.
The boss walked among them like a composer conducting a symphony of screams. Each step dripped with mockery, each gesture deliberate.
Tang Shi, desperate, activated his Infinite Tracker once more. His eyes flared silver, his blades gleaming with mana.
He struck. Again and again, his daggers blurred into streaks of light, cutting faster than human sight could follow.
But the boss did not move.
Every strike landed—
Every strike tore its flesh apart—
And every wound healed instantly as its body reassembled itself.
Tang Shi's breath grew ragged. His precision strikes turned frenzied, wild. But the boss only laughed, its jaw unhinging wider than humanly possible, a hollow sound like cracking bones.
"Is this all you are, hunter? Is this the pride of mortals who think themselves strong?"
The claws slashed.
Tang Shi's arms fell to the ground. Blood geysered from his shoulders.
He fell to his knees, eyes wide in disbelief.
"No… I can't… I can't lose… not like this…"
The boss tilted its skull, eyes burning brighter.
"Replenish."
Tang Shi's arms stitched back to his body. Pain flooded his nerves as his severed muscles reattached. He screamed as if dying anew.
"Do you understand now?" the boss whispered, its voice a caress of cruelty. "You cannot win. You cannot die. You are mine… until I grow bored."
Renji clutched his head, his screams drowned by the chorus of agony surrounding him. He wanted to run. He wanted to claw his way out of this nightmare. But he couldn't move.
Every second, he watched Choji's body torn apart. Every second, he heard Tang Shi's screams of pride collapsing into despair.
Blood. Pain. Resurrection. Pain again.
Over and over.
Renji's soul began to fracture.
Why… why am I here? Why did I agree to this? Why can't I do anything?!
And then he remembered Lily.
Her smile. Her voice, soft but determined.
"Big brother… promise me you'll never give up."
Renji's tears fell onto the blood-soaked floor. His body trembled, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold his pickaxe.
But he couldn't look away.
He was forced to witness hell