Two days later, the summons came.
A crimson seal flickered on the guild's mission board — pulsing faintly like a heartbeat beneath the glass. Hunters crowded around it, muttering, their faces half-lit by the glow of the holographic notice.
[Emergency Quest: Dungeon Subjugation – Tier D Rift Breach, Sector 9]
Threat Level: Moderate
Reward: 10 silver per participant
Most glanced at the details and turned away. D-rank breaches were messy — unstable, unpredictable, and far deadlier than their modest pay suggested.
But when the guild ran short on hands, it didn't ask for volunteers. It summoned them.
That was how Adrian found himself among the chosen.
⸻
By the time he reached Sector 9, the air had already changed.
It shimmered — like heat haze over scorched metal — warping the view of the ruined street ahead. Cracks laced the pavement, glowing faintly with black light that crawled upward like smoke. A steady hum filled the air, low and hungry, vibrating in his bones.
The rift stood at the center — a wound torn open in the world.
Shadow mist bled from it, pooling at the edges of crumbled walls. The sky above was a bruised violet, and birds avoided it entirely.
A squad of hunters was already assembled nearby — four of them, armed, armored, and restless. Their guild crests gleamed gold and red, marking them as mid-rankers. One man stood at the front, the leader, his armor polished to a mirror sheen, a sword at his hip and arrogance in his smile.
When he spotted Adrian approaching, his grin sharpened.
"Well, would you look at that," he drawled. "They're scraping the bottom of the ranks now."
A few snickers followed from his squad.
Adrian didn't rise to it. He simply adjusted the strap of his satchel and kept walking until he stood at the edge of the formation.
The leader stepped closer, close enough that Adrian could smell the oil and metal on his armor. He clapped a gauntleted hand on Adrian's shoulder.
"Relax, F-rank," he said with mock comfort. "If you die first, at least we'll know where the traps are."
Laughter rippled through the group — loud, careless, the kind of laughter that tried to mask fear.
Adrian didn't flinch.
He checked his sword, ran a hand across the cracked leather of his gauntlet, and adjusted his breathing until the noise faded into the background.
Mockery didn't sting anymore.
Not after years of it.
What did sting — quietly, like an old scar beneath the skin — was how easily they dismissed him.
Just like the world had dismissed his mother.
He looked toward the rift, where the mist curled like a living thing, whispering faintly in a tongue older than fear.
Somewhere deep inside that darkness, something waited — and for the first time in a long while, the pendant under his shirt felt warm.
The air shifted the instant they crossed the threshold.
It wasn't merely cold — it breathed.
Each inhalation tasted of rust and rot, as if the dungeon itself exhaled through unseen lungs. The light of their torches bent unnaturally, flames sputtering blue before settling into uneasy amber.
The tunnel ahead twisted downward, walls glistening like wet flesh. Black veins pulsed faintly beneath the surface, carrying a slow, rhythmic throb that echoed in time with their footsteps. Drops of thick ichor fell from the ceiling, sizzling when they struck the ground.
Adrian gripped his sword tighter. Every instinct screamed leave.
But orders were orders, and no one wanted to be the first to break formation.
The leader lifted his torch higher, forcing confidence into his voice.
"Keep your spacing! It's just a D-rank! Probably slimes or shades!"
No one believed him.
⸻
The corridor opened into a cavern, vast and echoing.
The air was thick — almost liquid — and each breath left a metallic taste on their tongues. The hunters' torches painted the darkness in trembling strokes of gold. For a heartbeat, there was only silence.
Then came the hiss.
It wasn't loud. It was intimate — the kind of sound that brushed against the back of your neck before you realized it was behind you.
Something moved in the dark.
From the shadows, she emerged — a shape that slid and coiled, glimmering in torchlight. Scales caught the light like shards of green glass. Her upper body was human — terrifyingly beautiful — while her lower half rippled with the power of a serpent far larger than any natural creature.
Her eyes gleamed — not red, but an eerie, hungry gold.
A whisper escaped one of the hunters. "L-Lamia… Queen."
The leader's jaw clenched. "Impossible. That's… that's a B-rank—"
He didn't finish.
The Lamia struck. Her tail lashed across the cavern like a whip of steel, slicing clean through a man's chest. He didn't even have time to scream before his body hit the wall with a wet crunch.
Panic erupted.
"Fall back!" the leader shouted, voice cracking. "Everyone retreat—!"
But the command dissolved into chaos. The creature surged forward, her tail snapping again. She caught the leader mid-step, coils wrapping around his torso. Bones gave way under the pressure — a brittle, awful sound that echoed louder than any scream.
Blood ran down the scales of her tail, glinting darkly in the torchlight.
⸻
Adrian didn't think.
He moved.
A roar tore from his throat as he lunged, driving his fractured blade into the Lamia's arm. Sparks flew. The blade barely scratched her, the metal screeching as it bent against her scaled skin.
Her head snapped toward him — eyes narrowing, lips curling into something halfway between amusement and disgust.
"A weakling dares raise his hand to me?" she hissed, her voice a melody sharpened by malice.
He barely saw the tail before it hit him.
The impact sent him flying. Stone shattered. Pain lanced through his ribs and shoulder. He hit the wall so hard that his vision burst into white, then bled to black. He tried to breathe — nothing came. His sword lay several feet away, the blade cracked in half.
As his vision dimmed, he saw movement — not from her, but from something on his chest.
The pendant.
It pulsed — once, twice — then flared with golden fire, brighter than the torches, brighter than the dungeon itself. The light reflected in the Lamia's eyes, and for the first time… she hesitated.
Then, everything went white.