Drop.
Drop.
Drop.
Blood dripped from the ceiling in perfect rhythm.
I stared at the crimson pool spreading under my boots, and for a moment, I couldn't tell if it was mine or theirs.
It didn't matter.
Everyone else was already dead.
The tank's shield was split clean in half. The healer's staff lay next to her, still glowing faintly as if refusing to die out.
The mage's body was nowhere to be seen—only the scorch marks where she had stood.
And me?
I was just the janitor.
The guy who cleaned dungeons after raids.
The guy who scraped monster guts off the walls for fifty credits an hour.
"…This wasn't supposed to happen."
A C-rank dungeon wasn't supposed to have a boss like that.
It was still there, lurking in the dark—an armored silhouette with eyes like twin blue suns, standing perfectly still among the corpses.
I tried to crawl toward the exit, but the gate behind me had already sealed.
The portal shimmered for a moment and then went dark.
No escape.
The thing moved.
Each step echoed like thunder, shaking the stone beneath my hands.
My breath caught in my throat as it stopped in front of me. Its face was hidden behind a cracked visor, leaking faint trails of light.
Then—
a sound.
Not a roar.
Not a growl.
A voice.
"Authorization check… unknown entity detected."
"Record not found."
"Root access… granted."
The air trembled.
Symbols of light spilled out of the creature's eyes, spinning around me like a storm of code.
Then everything stopped.
The blood froze mid-air. The sound of dripping ceased. Even the smell vanished.
And a window—something no Hunter had ever seen before—appeared before me.
[WELCOME, ADMINISTRATOR]
[INITIALIZING MANUAL OVERRIDE...]
[REBOOTING INSTANCE: DUNGEON_47-SEOUL]
A blinding pulse of blue light swallowed the world.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing at the dungeon entrance again.
The corpses were gone.
The air smelled clean.
The portal was open and stable.
The raid team was there—alive.
The tank laughed, slapping the mage on the shoulder. The healer was checking her inventory.
They were all fine. As if nothing had happened.
"Hey, janitor!" the tank shouted. "You coming or what? Don't make us pay you for standing around!"
My heart pounded in my chest. My hands were trembling.
I had died.
They had all died.
But now… everything was reset.
Then I saw it again.
A small flicker of blue light in the corner of my vision.
[ACCESS PERMISSION: READ / WRITE]
[COMMAND PROMPT AVAILABLE]
"What… what is this?" I whispered.
The letters shimmered, rearranging themselves.
[THE ARCHITECT HAS CHOSEN YOU.]
A cold wind swept through the dungeon entrance.
Behind me, the portal pulsed once — like a heartbeat.
For seven years, I'd cleaned up after Hunters.
Now the world itself was asking me to rewrite it.