Eren woke to the buzz of his phone.
His hand moved before his eyes opened, grabbing the cheap burner from his nightstand. The caller ID read: KASIM.
He answered on the second buzz.
"Yeah."
"Brother, where are you?" Kasim's voice was rough, urgent, the way it always was before dawn. "Job came in. D-rank dungeon, southeast sector. W.A.A. cleared it at 4 AM. We got the cleanup contract."
Eren sat up, rubbing his face. The clock on his phone read 6:03 AM. He'd slept less than three hours, but he felt more rested than he had in a decade.
In the back of his mind, he was still there. The obsidian platform. The weight of the greatsword. The fold of the wings. His other self stood guard beside the Core, burning eyes scanning the void, always aware, always watching.
"Who else is going?" he asked.
"Just us. Small breach, only a dozen corpses. Easy money if we move fast." A pause. "You sound different."
Eren stood, stretching. His joints didn't pop. His back didn't ache. His body hummed with a low, steady vibration—the echo of the Demon King's power flowing through him at 1.5% sync.
"Different how?"
"Clearer. Like you actually slept for once." Kasim snorted. "Must be nice. Get your gear and meet me at the east gate in twenty. Bring extra bags. I heard there was an Uncommon-grade spawn in there. Corpses might have salvageable cores."
The call ended.
Eren stared at the phone for a moment. Kasim had been his partner for two years—the closest thing to a friend he had in this life. A former hunter aspirant who'd failed his physical eval three times before settling for cleaner work. He was loud, optimistic, and completely unaware that the world had already decided men like them didn't matter.
He doesn't know I'm carrying a Demon King in my soul, Eren thought. He doesn't need to. Not yet.
He dressed quickly: the same stained tactical trousers, the same worn boots, the same grey undershirt under his scavenged jacket. But when he strapped the old cleaning kit to his belt—tongs, sample bags, a cheap mana detector—he felt the lie of it.
He wasn't bringing this gear to clean.
He was bringing it to feed.
---
The dungeon entrance was a tear in the side of an abandoned warehouse, the air around it shimmering with residual mana. W.A.A. stabilization seals had been plastered across the brickwork, their blue light pulsing in slow, rhythmic waves—a warning that the gate was "processed" and safe for non-combat personnel.
Eren ducked under the yellow caution tape and stepped inside.
The interior was a cavern, not a warehouse. Dungeon spaces always twisted reality that way—pocket dimensions that ignored the laws of physics outside. This one was small, a D-rank by W.A.A. classification, already cleared of anything that could fight back.
The bodies of the monsters were scattered across the stone floor. Most were Goblin-class—small, green-skinned creatures with jagged teeth and crude weapons. A few larger corpses lay deeper in: a Gnoll warrior, its fur matted with black blood, and near the back, the Uncommon-grade spawn Kasim had mentioned—a Hobgoblin captain, nearly seven feet tall, its face frozen in a snarl of defiance.
The kill wounds were clean. Efficient. A hunter's work.
Kasim was already there, kneeling beside the Gnoll, his collection bags spread out around him. He was a stocky man with a shaved head and a beard that never grew evenly. His cleaning gear was better than Eren's—he still believed, somewhere deep down, that looking professional might lead to something more.
"Eren." He looked up, grinning. "Heard you were late last night. Finally get a girlfriend?"
Eren snorted, pulling on his gloves. "Something like that."
He walked past Kasim, his eyes scanning the corpses. A new awareness bloomed in his mind—the System interface, pulsing softly in his peripheral vision.
[ GLUTTONY: ACTIVE ]
[ NEARBY BIOMASS DETECTED: 14 CORPSES ]
[ ESTIMATED MANA YIELD: 42-56 UNITS ]
[ WARNING: CONSUMPTION MUST BE DISCRETE. HUMAN WITNESS DETECTED. ]
Eren's heart rate didn't change, but his focus sharpened. He couldn't feed here, not with Kasim watching. But the bodies would be here for hours—cleaning was a slow, meticulous process. He'd find his moment.
"Check the Hobgoblin," he said, keeping his voice casual. "If it dropped a core, that's our payday."
Kasim nodded, moving toward the larger corpse. "W.A.A. said the hunter team was a B-rank squad from Nova Haven. Took out the whole dungeon in forty minutes. Must be nice, having that kind of power."
Eren knelt beside a cluster of Goblins, pulling out his collection tongs. His hands moved automatically, stripping the corpses of visible mana fragments, but his mind was elsewhere.
Forty minutes for a D-rank. A B-rank squad.
He thought about the Demon King standing guard in his dungeon. The power that hummed in his own veins. The SSS-rank potential waiting to be unleashed.
How long would it take me?
[ SPECULATION: CURRENT COMBAT POTENTIAL ESTIMATED AT C-RANK (PEAK) ]
[ GLUTTONY NOT FACTORED. AVATAR NOT FACTORED. ]
Eren suppressed a smile.
Kasim whistled from across the cavern. "Eren. Get over here."
Eren stood, wiping his gloves on his trousers. He walked toward the Hobgoblin, already knowing what he'd find.
Kasim was holding a small, pulsing crystal the size of a walnut. It glowed with a faint green light, casting strange shadows across his face. "Uncommon-grade core. Still warm. This is worth at least two months of our usual haul."
Eren nodded, his eyes fixed on the crystal. His system was screaming at him.
[ MANA CORE DETECTED: UNCOMMON GRADE ]
[ CONSUMPTION VALUE: 75 MANA UNITS ]
[ RECOMMENDATION: ACQUIRE. FEED THE CORE. ]
"Good find," Eren said, his voice steady. "Bag it carefully. We'll split it later."
Kasim nodded, already reaching for a protective container. "I'll handle it. You finish the Goblins. I want to be out of here before the W.A.A. patrol comes through."
Eren turned back to the smaller corpses, but his mind was already calculating.
One core. Seventy-five mana. Plus the bodies.
The system had estimated 42-56 mana from the biomass of the corpses. Combined with the core, he'd have over a hundred units in one haul. Enough to start building his dungeon in earnest.
But he had to be smart. Kasim was watching. The W.A.A. would audit the cleanup eventually—they always did, making sure nothing was missing, nothing was stolen.
He'd have to take only what wouldn't be missed.
---
The next hour passed in methodical silence. Eren and Kasim worked in parallel, stripping the corpses of salvageable materials: mana fragments, unbroken bones for alchemy, the Hobgoblin's leather hide for crafting. Everything was catalogued, bagged, and tagged for W.A.A. inspection.
Eren moved slowly, deliberately, creating gaps in his collection. A mana fragment here, a tooth there. Small things that wouldn't show up on a standard audit. And with each piece he palmed, he reached out with his other self—the Demon King standing guard in the void.
The connection was instant. Permanent. He didn't need to concentrate. He simply was in two places at once. His human hand closed around a mana fragment. His other hand—the Demon King's hand—closed around nothing, but the mana flowed across the connection, drawn into the Core.
[ +2 MANA ]
[ +1 MANA ]
[ +3 MANA ]
The ring on his finger grew warmer with each offering, the crimson-black core pulsing like a second heartbeat.
By the time they reached the Hobgoblin, Eren had gathered 23 mana from the smaller corpses. Not enough. He needed the core.
"Let me handle the captain," he said, stepping in front of Kasim. "You start loading the bags. I'll be right behind you."
Kasim hesitated, frowning. "You sure? That thing's huge. I can help you break it down."
"I've got it. Go."
Something in Eren's voice made Kasim pause. His eyes narrowed for a moment, studying his partner's face. Then he shrugged and turned away, hauling the first load of bags toward the exit.
The moment Kasim disappeared through the warehouse door, Eren moved.
He pressed his ring against the Hobgoblin's chest, right over where the core had been. Through his other self, he activated the skill.
[ GLUTTONY: ACTIVATED ]
[ TARGET: HOBGOBLIN CAPTAIN CORPSE (UNCOMMON GRADE) ]
[ CONSUME? ]
Yes.
The ring drank.
The corpse didn't dissolve—that would be too obvious. Instead, it dried. The flesh pulled tight against the bones, the skin turning grey and brittle. All the moisture, all the residual mana, all the latent life force still clinging to the dead flesh—it all flowed into the ring in a silent, invisible stream.
In ten seconds, the corpse was a mummified husk.
Eren stepped back, his heart pounding. He looked at the body. At a glance, it looked wrong—but would the W.A.A. auditors notice? They processed hundreds of cleaned dungeons a week. One desiccated corpse might be written off as a quirk of the dungeon's mana field.
It would have to be enough.
[ CONSUMPTION COMPLETE ]
[ +67 MANA ]
[ TOTAL MANA: 91/500 ]
Ninety-one mana. In one morning, he'd gone from one stone a day to nearly a fifth of the way to his first upgrade.
He looked at the Hobgoblin's corpse one more time, then turned and walked out into the grey morning light.
---
The cleanup payout came through two hours later. The W.A.A. audit officer barely glanced at the Hobgoblin's desiccated corpse, marking it down as "mana decay" and stamping the release form without a second look.
Eren pocketed his share: 1,200 credits and a stack of ration vouchers—enough for a week of food. The credits would go into his savings, the vouchers to his mother. The two low-grade mana stones he'd found were worth another 300 credits on the black market, but he had other plans for those.
Kasim stretched, cracking his back. "Same time tomorrow? There's a C-rank dungeon breach in the northern sector. W.A.A. is auctioning the cleanup contract tonight. Payout should be triple this."
"I'll be there," Eren said.
Kasim nodded, then hesitated. "You heading to your mom's? The real home, I mean?"
Eren glanced at the stack of vouchers and the credit chit in his hand. "Yeah. It's been two weeks."
"Give her my regards. And tell Mira she's still my favorite."
Eren's lips twitched—the closest he came to a smile. "She's your only fan, Kasim."
"Damn right she is."
They parted ways at the transport depot. Kasim headed toward the cleaner barracks, where most of the crew bunked between contracts. Eren walked in the opposite direction, toward the mag-rail station that connected Ironvale's outer districts.
---
The mag-rail carried him east, away from the military academies and hunter training grounds, into the older residential zones where civilians lived under the shadow of the W.A.A.'s towers. The buildings here were pre-First Gate construction, patched and reinforced with cheap mana-concrete, their surfaces cracked but stable.
Eren's family home was a third-floor walk-up in a block that had survived the early years of the Dungeon Era by sheer stubbornness. The stairwell smelled of cooking oil and disinfectant. The light on the second-floor landing had been broken for six months.
He knocked twice—a short pattern, their signal—and waited.
The door opened.
His mother, Lena, stood in the doorway. She was small, her dark hair streaked with grey, her hands calloused from years of sorting ration crates at the distribution center. Her eyes widened when she saw him.
"Eren." She pulled him inside before he could speak, her hands gripping his arms, checking him the way she always did—looking for wounds, for weight loss, for the signs of a life spent scraping by. "You're too thin. Are you eating?"
"I'm eating, Ma."
"Liar." She pulled him into a hug, fierce and quick, then held him at arm's length. Her eyes narrowed. "You look different."
Different how? Kasim had asked the same thing.
"Got some sleep," he said.
She didn't look convinced, but she let it go. That was their rhythm—she asked, he deflected, she decided not to push. Some truths were easier left unspoken.
"Mira's in her room," Lena said, taking the stack of vouchers and the credit chit he held out. Her fingers brushed his, and she paused, frowning at his hand. "Where did you get this ring?"
Eren's pulse ticked up. "Cheap market find. It's nothing."
She stared at it for a moment—the dark metal, the crimson-black core—then nodded slowly. "It suits you."
She turned toward the kitchen, already counting the vouchers, checking the credit balance, mentally stretching them across rent and food and Mira's school fees. "This is more than usual. You're working extra shifts?"
"Good week," he said.
She didn't push. "I'll make dinner. Go say hello to your sister."
---
Eren walked down the narrow hallway to the room at the end. The door was cracked open, and through the gap he could see Mira sitting cross-legged on her bed, a tablet balanced on her knees. She was watching a hunter combat stream—some B-rank squad from Nova Haven showing off against a pack of C-rank monsters.
He knocked lightly on the doorframe.
Mira looked up, and her face transformed. She was twelve, all sharp angles and growing limbs, with their mother's eyes and a stubbornness that came from somewhere else entirely.
"Eren!" She launched off the bed and slammed into him, her arms locking around his waist. "You said you'd come last week!"
"Work," he said, ruffling her hair. "Busy."
She pulled back, already talking, the words tumbling out in a rush. "Did you hear about the B-rank squad that cleared the D-rank dungeon this morning? They said the leader cut a Hobgoblin captain in half with one swing. One swing, Eren! That's insane. I'm going to be that strong someday. I've been practicing the forms from the academy's public vids. Watch—"
She dropped into a stance, arms raised, feet shifting. It was clumsy, untrained, the movements of a child copying what she'd seen online. But there was something there—a natural fluidity, a willingness to commit.
Eren watched her, and for a moment, he saw himself at that age. Before the hunger, before the grinding reality of survival had worn away his dreams.
"Not bad," he said.
Mira beamed. "I'm going to take the qualification test when I'm sixteen. I'll pass on the first try. I'll get into the Ironvale Academy. I'll be a hunter, and then we'll never have to worry about money again."
Eren's chest tightened.
I'm taking it in five days. And if they find out what I am, what I carry, everything you're dreaming about becomes impossible.
He forced a smile. "Work on your footwork. You're crossing your stance."
Mira's eyes lit up. "You'll help me?"
"Maybe." He looked past her, at the drawing taped to the wall above her bed. A hunter in silver armor, sword raised against a shadowy monster. The hero every child in the Dungeon Era dreamed of becoming.
His ring pulsed against his finger.
If I become a hunter, I put them at risk. If I don't, I can't grow strong enough to protect them.
He sat on the edge of her bed, watching her run through the forms again, her small face scrunched in concentration. His mother's voice drifted from the kitchen, humming an old song from before the First Gate.
Five days until the test.
He would take it. He would pass. And he would hide the truth for as long as it took to become strong enough that the truth no longer mattered.
The ring pulsed once, warm and patient.
---
Later that night, after dinner, after Mira had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, Eren stood on the small balcony of his family's apartment and looked out at Ironvale.
The city sprawled beneath him, a maze of old buildings and new towers, of hunter academies and civilian slums, of people who believed the world had been mastered.
He pulled up the system interface.
[ DUNGEON MASTER SYSTEM ]
[ CURRENT MANA: 91/500 ]
[ DUNGEON LEVEL: 1 ]
[ FLOORS: 1 ]
[ MANA STONE PRODUCTION: 1/DAY ]
[ GACHA SYSTEM: ONLINE ]
[ — SUMMON GACHA: 50 MANA ]
[ — SERVANT GACHA: 500 MANA ]
[ — AVATAR GACHA: 10,000 MANA ]
[ OBJECTIVES: ]
[ — REACH DUNGEON LEVEL 10 (UNLOCK TIME DILATION + 10 FLOORS) ]
[ — REACH DUNGEON LEVEL 20 (UNLOCK REALM MANIFESTATION + 20 FLOORS) ]
[ — PASS HUNTER QUALIFICATION TEST (5 DAYS) ]
He needed more corpses. More cores. More mana.
He needed to become a hunter.
The qualification test was in five days. Until then, he would clean every dungeon he could get his hands on. He would feed his system in the shadows. He would grow.
And one day—when his dungeon was strong enough, when his sync was high enough, when he could stand beside the nine rulers of the world—he would never have to hide again.
The ring pulsed against his finger, a steady crimson heartbeat. In the back of his mind, his other self shifted, the greatsword scraping against the obsidian floor, the burning eyes scanning the void. Always there. Always aware. Always him.
One step at a time.
He turned and walked back inside, where his mother was washing dishes and his sister was dreaming of heroes