The roar came from deep below, so loud it shook dust from the ceiling and sent cracks spider-webbing across the chamber walls.
"Third level," Rook said grimly, already moving. "Whatever's down there knows we're coming."
The team scrambled, grabbing their gear and falling into formation. "I really hope that wasn't a twilight giant," Rook said while moving.
"Second time you've brought it up. What's that?" Kurt asked, his curiosity piqued.
Rook glanced at Kurt for a second then back on the path. "I'll take anything other than that. They are tough sons of bitches to put down. When one escaped its dungeon, it nearly laid waste to an entire city in the C rank district." That was all he said as he hastened his pace and moved ahead.
They moved through a narrow passage that opened into a wider corridor lined with thick stone pillars. The air was hot again, the smell of sulfur creeping back in.
Another tremor hit, smaller this time, but enough to send cracks spreading up the nearest pillar and Kurt's eyes narrowed as he watched the stone shift.
"Move!" Rook barked.
The pillar collapsed with a deafening crash, huge chunks of stone slamming into the ground where one of the fighters dove aside, heart pounding, inches from almost being crushed.
"Fucking hell," he wheezed. "That almost—"
Kurt was already at the base of the fallen pillar, crouching down to examine the rubble. His fingers traced the edge of the break, and his look got more serious. The stone wasn't shattered cleanly. It was fractured in a pattern, like someone had deliberately weakened it.
"This wasn't an accident," Kurt said, standing and turning to Rook. "Someone rigged this."
Emma moved closer, her grey eyes scanning the pillar. "You're sure?"
"Look at it," Kurt said, pointing to the cracks. "It's too clean and precise. This was cut just enough not to collapse on its own, but the next tremor or fight? It'd come down like a bloody guillotine."
"That's not possible," someone whispered. "Dungeons are regulated—"
"Someone did it anyway," Rook cut him off. "Which means we've got bigger problems than monsters."
Kurt lit a cigarette and studied the marks. "Someone's been busy. Question is: for us specifically, or for anyone dumb enough to take this contract?"
"Does it matter?" Emma responded.
"Not really." Kurt exhaled smoke. "Either way, we're walking into a trap."
***
They pushed forward, and the wrongness only grew. The next chamber was crawling with fire worms, serpentine creatures with molten skin that left trails of scorched stone behind them. They weren't massive, but there were dozens of them, writhing across the floor and walls.
"The hell are these doing here?" Emma said, slashing at one that got too close. Her blade cut through it, and it burst into embers that incinerated everything around. Her reflexes kicked in as she leapt back in time to avoid it.
Rook frowned, his gauntlets glowing. He crushed another worm beneath his fist and walked through the resulting embers like they were nothing. "Fire worms shouldn't be this far from the lava flows. They can't survive long without extreme heat."
Kurt, catching on, dodged one that lunged at him and drove his knife into its head then jumped away quickly. "Yeah, but what if someone funneled them here? Seal off the right tunnels, open up others, and you've got yourself a nice little death trap."
Emma's gaze shifted to him. "You're saying someone herded these things?"
"I'm saying it's bloody convenient." Kurt said. "This isn't random... all of it."
Rook's scowl deepened. "Keep moving. Eyes open."
The next tunnel was way to obvious. The walls were lined with crude traps of tripwires connected to falling rocks, pressure plates that triggered spikes, and one particularly nasty contraption that would've filled the corridor with fire if Emma hadn't spotted it first.
She crouched beside the mechanism, her fingers tracing the metal components. "This is man-made," she said. "Dungeon spawns sure as fuck didn't set up this kind of shit."
Rook stopped and clenched his fist. "We've been set up."
"No shit," Emma snapped, standing. "The question is by who."
Kurt ran his fingers through his hair. "Someone who wants us dead. And they went through a lot of trouble to make it look like the dungeon did it."
Before anyone could respond, a scream: "Weak!" echoed through the corridor ahead that sounded very much human.
"Move!" Rook roared, and the team sprinted toward the sound.
They burst into a massive chamber, and the sight stopped them cold. A woman was in the center of the room, surrounded by three hulking creatures that looked like they'd been pulled from a nightmare.
They were reptilian, their scales black and cracked like cooled lava, and their claws left gouges in the stones. If the fire golems they met earlier were trucks, these reptilians were bloody tanks.
The tall woman had blue long hair like a waterfall and eye lashes that matched. She was laughing. She stood in the center of the chamber, surrounded by three hulking reptilian creatures, and she was fucking laughing.
Blood ran down her arm from a gash in her shoulder, ice shards spinning in orbit around her, and her pale blue eyes were bright with something that looked dangerously close to arousal.
"Come on," she purred, beckoning to the nearest creature. "Is that all you've got?"
It lunged, jaws wide, and she let it get close, closer than any sane person would, before an ice spike erupted from the ground and impaled it through the throat.
She sighed, almost disappointed. "Pathetic."
The other two charged together, and her smile widened. "Now that's more like it," she said, raising her hands as ice began to form, only for nothing to happen.
Her essence was spent, and for the first time, the smile faltered, replaced by surprise that quickly twisted into annoyance.
"Tch. How disappointing." She lowered her hand, unsheathed her blade and shifted into a fighting stance, prepared to face them physically.
That's when Kurt noticed it—the subtle sway in her posture, the faint tremble in her left leg. She was already injured, exhausted, running purely on fumes and adrenaline.
"Someone gonna help her!?" Lizzie shouted, and without hesitation, Kurt was already moving.
Just then, one of the creatures lunged at her, jaws wide and hungry. She tried to sidestep, but she was too slow, too tired.
Kurt didn't think twice. He ran forward and slammed into her, shoving her out of harm's way. The creature's jaws snapped shut around him instead.
The pain was immediate and overwhelming as teeth tore through muscle and bones snapping like twigs. He tried to scream, but his lungs filled with blood.
And then the creature bit down harder, and everything went black.
When the creature's jaws closed around him, Lizzie's scream cut off abruptly. She went very still, eyes locked on the space where Kurt had been standing, where now there was just blood and torn fabric.
"No no no no—" She pressed her hands against her head. "Not again."
"Lizzie," someone tried, reaching for her.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" She spun, wild-eyed, and started rocking slightly. "He comes back in thirty minutes. He promised. Well, not promised-promised, but he's done it before, so..."
"Yeah." Lizzie's grin was back. "Yeah! Of course! He's fine! Everything's fine! I'm fine! Super fine! The most fine!"
Emma on the other hand had a different reaction. The moment Kurt went down, rage flooded her veins and she reached into her essence she'd been reserving, summoning the seventh weapon in her armory. Not her strongest, but more than enough for this.
Two handguns materialized, sleek and black, their barrels glowing faintly with spatial energy. She raised them, and the air around her rippled as dozens of tiny portals opened across the chamber, each no larger than her fist.
The creature that had killed Kurt turned toward her, blood dripping from its maw, and Emma pulled the trigger.
The bullets didn't travel in straight lines. They entered the portals and exited from impossible angles: behind the creature, above it, to its sides.
Each shot tore through space itself, leaving trails of distorted air, and when they hit, they didn't just pierce. They erased.
The creature roared as bullet sized chunks of its body vanished, swallowed by the spatial rifts. Emma didn't stop as she emptied both clips, the portals multiplying, the bullets ripping through the monster until there was nothing left but silence.
The other creature tried to flee, but Rook was already on it. He took off his gauntlet, slamming his palm into the ground, and the stone beneath him rippled.
His body shifted, skin hardening as he absorbed the rock, transforming into a living statue of granite. Then he charged like a landslide, smashing it into powder.
The chamber fell silent.
Kurt lay dead and half eaten, but the rest of the guild seemed to be more interested in Emma and Rook, staring at them with a mix of awe and terror.
Paul had backed against the wall, hands shaking. "That's... that's not even fair. How do you fight someone like that?" He sighed and shook his head. "That's a C-rank for you."
"B-rank," someone corrected, nodding at Rook.
"Hey!" Lizzie popped up between them, making Paul jump. "I'm C-rank too, ya know. Nobody ever looks impressed when I heal them."
Emma lowered her guns, her chest heaving, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop from the sheer killing intent still radiating off her.
Rook walked over, his body returning to normal as the stone sloughed off. "You good?" he asked her.
The woman pushed herself to her feet, ice already forming around her fingertips despite her exhaustion. Her blue eyes swept over the team in a calculating manner.
"You killed them." She sounded calm and cold.
Emma's hand stayed near her holster. "You're welcome."
"I didn't thank you." The woman's gaze settled on the spot where Kurt had died. "Your hunter. The one who pushed me. He—."
"He'll be fine," Emma said flatly, holstering her guns before they disappeared.
The woman's turned toward her. "Fine? Is denial how you honour your weak?"
"It's fine, he does that," Lizzie said cheerfully, kneeling beside Kurt's remains, or what was left of them. "Give him thirty minutes."
The woman stared at them, thinking that they'd clearly lost their minds but her face didn't show it. Her eyes simply narrowed. "I see."
For a long moment, the woman just stared. Then a slow smile spread across her face. One would expect a smile that was warm or grateful, but instead, hers was predatory.
"You people seem interesting." She extended her hand. "Cassandra Anova. Former Silver Tail Guild."
Rook looked at her hand like it might be another trap, then deliberately crossed his arms. "Why former?"
Cassandra's smile didn't falter. "Because I don't work with cowards who need traps to win fights."
Cassandra opened her mouth to continue, then stopped.
Light was gathering across the chamber, not from torches or lava flows, but from the spot where the dead man's remains lay scattered.
"What—" she started.
The light intensified, and reality bent inward. Bone fragments lifted, spinning in the air, flesh materializing from sparks and essence.
The team didn't react, didn't even look surprised, which somehow made it worse. A second after, a body took shape. Whole and alive.
"HUUAAAGH!"
Kurt gasped awake, his body jerking back to life as he groaned, rolled onto his side, and coughed up blood.
"I can still smell its breath," he muttered. "That was unpleasant." Kurt pushed himself up, his hand going to his ribs as the screen flashed in his vision.
[RESURRECTION COMPLETE]
[Deaths: 4]
New Ability Unlocked: [Predator - F Rank]
[Enhanced jaw, claws and senses]
+7 points awarded [Rare Death]
Available Points: 20
Reaper Detection: DORMANT (19 days)
Kurt read through the notification, his new ability description, until his eyes settled on the last line. Last time it had been 28 days. Now 19.
Nine days gone. Just from dying
'What the hell is a Reaper? And why is it counting down?'
His hands shook slightly as he lit the cigarette. Not from fear... well, not entirely. More from the growing realization that "unlimited lives" might have a fucking expiration date.
Emma was watching him, and something in her expression said she'd noticed the shake too.
"You okay?" she asked, voice carefully neutral.
"Brilliant," Kurt lied. "Never better." His eyes shifted to Cassandra who stared at him like he was a ghost.
Cassandra blinked. "You—"
"Yeah," Kurt said, lighting the cigarette. "I do that. Bit of a bad habit."
He exhaled a smoke and carried on. "Kurt Manchester. Pleasure."
She straightened, brushing blood from her torn clothing with casual elegance. "Cassandra Anova. I suppose I should thank you for the interruption, though I was rather enjoying myself."
She tilted her head. "Most people wouldn't throw themselves at a monster for a stranger. Are you brave, or just stupid?"
"Bit of both," Kurt said.
"Fascinating." She stepped closer, and the temperature around her dropped. "So if I killed you now, you'd come back?"
Emma's hand moved to her holster. "Back off."
Cassandra glanced at Emma, amused. "Relax. I'm not going to hurt him." Her eyes returned to Kurt. "Not yet, anyway."
***
A/N: I hope you're enjoying this so far. Add to Library and send a power stone or two if you're.
And a review or two would mean something to me! Thank you and peace!