In the virtual world of Dungeon Heroes, looting was a clean, satisfyingly sterile affair. A quick tap of the 'F' key, a bright chime of success, and a neat, pixelated icon would materialize in a tidy inventory grid. There was no mess, no smell, and certainly no moral weight to it.
Reality, as Lenus was quickly learning, was significantly wetter. And much more revolting.
He knelt on the cold, slime-slicked stone beside the bisected remains of the Corpse-Crawler. Even in death, the creature was an affront to the senses. Its blood was cooling rapidly, emitting a faint, rhythmic hissing sound as the latent Miasma within the ichor reacted to the stale cavern air. Through his [Aura Perception], the corpse was no longer a vibrant threat; it was a fading ember of dull, sickly crimson, leaking heat into the floor.
I need its core, Lenus thought, his stomach performing a slow, nauseating somersault.
The prompt in his mental vision—[Condition: Miasma Infection (Minor)]—wasn't just a line of flavor text anymore. He could feel it. It was a phantom itch deep within his lung tissue, a creeping, leaden sluggishness that made his joints feel as though they were being filled with cold mercury. In the game, starting with this debuff was a minor inconvenience, easily ignored until you reached a town healer. Here, it felt like a ticking time bomb wired to his nervous system. If the infection meter peaked, his mind would shatter, and his body would become just another mindless horror wandering these lightless halls.
Lenus grimaced, his teeth bared in a snarl of disgust, and plunged his bare hands into the creature's severed torso.
The wet, suction-like squelch of warm, rotting viscera made him gag. He pushed past shattered, jagged ribs and sliding, gelatinous organs, relying on the faint, pulsing resonance of the Miasma to guide his fingertips. It felt like reaching into a bowl of warm, oily leeches. Finally, his hand closed around something hard, hot, and jagged—roughly the size of a plum.
He wrenched it free with a sickening pop.
[Item Acquired: Lesser Beast Core (Corrupted)]
There was no inventory sub-space to hide the gore-covered prize. Lenus wiped the thickest of the slime onto his tattered haori, his breath hitching as he pressed the pulsating core directly against his chest, right over his own heart.
"Absorb," he rasped, his voice cracking.
The core didn't just disappear. It crumbled into a fine, stinging ash that seemed to burn through his clothes and skin. A shockwave of absolute, frigid energy pierced his sternum, spreading through his veins like liquid nitrogen. Lenus bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, stifling a scream that would have alerted every predator within a mile.
Ding.
[Miasma Infection suppressed. Duration: 12 Hours.]
[EXP Gained: 15]
[Level 1: 15/100 EXP to Next Level]
Lenus slumped against the damp cavern wall, his chest heaving as the icy sensation faded into a dull, lingering ache.
"Twelve hours," he muttered, wiping sweat and blood from his forehead with a trembling hand. "And only fifteen EXP for a Crawler. The devs really did hate casual players, didn't they?"
He forced himself upright, his legs feeling like jelly. He needed to move. Staying in one place was an invitation for scavengers. He tapped the brass chape of his scabbard against the stone floor.
Tap.
The sonic ripple cascaded outward, mapping the environment in transient, beautiful flashes of silver wireframes. He "saw" a narrow tunnel ahead, sloping upward at a grueling angle. The walls were jagged, scarred by massive, ancient claw marks that suggested things much larger than Crawlers lived here. There was no ambient life—no insects, no moss. Just the oppressive, rhythmic drip of water and the distant, tectonic groans of the dungeon settling deep underground.
He began to walk.
His gait was careful, each step a calculated probe. To any observer, he would have looked like a ghost or a madman—a blind youth with scarred eyes and a blood-stained blade, navigating a pitch-black abyss with eerie confidence. But for Lenus, the darkness was overflowing with data.
The subtle draft of cold air brushing his left cheek told him of a hidden chasm nearby. The change in the pitch of his footsteps warned him when the ceiling arched into a cathedral-like height or dipped so low he had to crouch. He existed in a world of sonic topography, where every rustle of his haori and every scrape of his sandals acted as a brushstroke on his mental canvas.
Twenty minutes passed in a blur of concentration. The air grew stale, heavy with the scent of dried bone and rusted iron.
Tap.
The echolocation wave expanded, but this time, the acoustic feedback felt... hollow. He had stepped into a massive, cavernous chamber. The walls were too distant for his light tapping to reach.
Suddenly, a localized draft swept over him, carrying the sharp, metallic tang of old, dried blood.
Lenus stopped dead. His hand clamped onto the hilt of his katana, his knuckles white. He slowed his breathing until his chest barely moved, expanding his auditory range to its absolute limit.
Nothing.
No heartbeat. No rasping breath. No sound of claws on stone.
But his [Aura Perception] flared with a dull, sickly gray warning. There was a "void" in the ambient noise—a dead spot where sound should have bounced back, but didn't. To his right, the faint, distant sound of a water droplet hitting the floor had been momentarily muffled. Something physical, something cold, had passed between him and the sound.
Grave-Stalkers.
Lenus's heart turned into a drum. These were the undead assassins of the Abyssal Floors. Desiccated husks wrapped in ancient burial shrouds, lacking hearts to beat or lungs to breathe. They moved in a state of near-perfect silence, hovering an inch above the ground. His sonar was useless against them—unless they moved first.
Swish.
The displacement of air was his only warning.
A gray silhouette lunged into his mental map from his blind spot on the left, a rusted, serrated dagger aiming directly for his kidney.
Lenus pivoted on his heel, swinging his scabbard forward to intercept the strike.
CLANG.
The high-pitched ring of metal on metal acted like a flashbang of sonar. For a split second, he saw the attacker—a tall, spindly thing with a face hidden by rotted linen. The sheer physical force of the blow jarred his arm to the shoulder. These weren't low-level mobs he could just swat away; these were killers.
Before he could draw his blade, a second shift in air pressure registered behind him. Then a third, coming from the darkness above.
Three of them, Lenus calculated, his mind shifting into that cold, hyper-focused state he usually reserved for high-stakes boss raids.
He ducked, feeling the wind of a rusted scythe cleave the air where his neck had been a millisecond prior. Abandoning the Quickdraw style, Lenus rolled forward over the rough cobblestone, fully drawing his katana as he righted himself.
The chamber fell into a deadly, suffocating silence once more.
They were circling him. Hunting. They knew he was blind, and they were waiting for him to exhaust himself by swinging at shadows.
Lenus closed his unseeing eyes, centering his gravity. In the game, you countered Stalkers by using environmental noise—throwing a rock or a flash-bomb to create a soundscape. I don't have a rock.
But he had something else.
Lenus inhaled deeply and let out a sharp, piercing, resonant whistle.
The shrill sound exploded outward, bouncing off the distant walls and creating a chaotic web of sonar lines. For one glorious second, the invisible chamber was illuminated in brilliant blue wireframes.
He saw them. Three skeletal figures, mid-pounce, suspended in the acoustic flash.
[Skill Activation: Phantom Step]
Mana drained from his core with a painful tug, pulling at his very stamina. Lenus vanished from his spot, moving with supernatural, blurred speed. He slipped under the guard of the first Stalker, his blade singing a lethal, rising arc.
The katana bit through the creature's ancient collarbone, severing its spine. No blood sprayed—only a cloud of stale, choking dust and the dry rattling of bones hitting the floor.
The noise of the falling skeleton created a new, continuous soundscape. Lenus didn't hesitate. Using the auditory feedback of the clattering bones, he tracked the remaining two.
The second Stalker thrust its dagger. Lenus parried it with a flick of his wrist, the metal screeching as it slid down his blade. He stepped into the creature's guard, reversed his grip, and drove the katana straight through where its heart would have been.
Crunch.
Two down. But the third was a veteran.
Lenus felt a sudden, white-hot agony slice across his left shoulder. A rusted blade had bitten through his haori, grazing the muscle.
He gasped, staggering back. The pain was unlike anything he'd ever felt—a searing, poisonous burn that felt like acid being poured into an open wound. The Miasma coating the Stalker's weapon was already eating at his nerves.
Panic threatened to break his focus. The silence rushed back in as the bones settled. The third Stalker was a ghost once more.
"Focus," Lenus hissed through gritted teeth, blood beginning to soak his sleeve. "It's just mechanics. Read the data."
He ignored the scream of his nerves and focused on a new sound: the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of his own blood hitting the stone floor.
Drip. The floor was empty.
Drip. Still empty.
Drip. The sound changed. The droplet didn't hit stone; it hit soft, ancient fabric.
Below me!
The Stalker had dropped to a crawl, moving like a centipede to sweep his legs.
Lenus didn't swing. He reversed his sword, pointing the tip toward the floor, and drove the blade down with every ounce of his weight.
The steel sank through the Stalker's chest cavity, pinning it to the cobblestone like an insect on a board. The creature thrashed silently for a moment before bursting into a cloud of gray ash.
[EXP Gained: 30]
[EXP Gained: 30]
[EXP Gained: 30]
[Level Up!]
[Inias is now Level 2. All stats increased. 2 Free Attribute Points available.]
Lenus collapsed to his knees, his grip slipping from the blood-slicked hilt of his sword. He clutched his burning shoulder, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
The level-up provided a small surge of stamina, knitting the edges of the wound together, but the phantom burn of the poison remained. He was bleeding, he was exhausted, and he hadn't even reached the first checkpoint of the first floor.
He let out a low, dark chuckle that echoed ominously in the black chamber.
"I'm going to need to get a lot better at this," he whispered to the void, "or I'm going to die in the dark before I ever see the sun."