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It was a phenomenon that would usually prompt a quick response from adventurers or a quest from the guild, as a dungeon growing too large could lead to a monster outbreak or other catastrophic consequences, such as changing the land itself.

The sky reddened further with the appearance of the beam of light, and the skeletal-looking zombies increased in number, pulling themselves out of the cracked earth until there were easily dozens of them packed into that courtyard.

Even large numbers of monsters would be able to eventually overpower the strongest of Awakeners. Either way, they weren’t our target. If we cleared the dungeon, then monsters spawned by the dungeon would also vanish.

“We should hurry before they reach the city.”

Rhil’s voice brought me out of my thoughts.

The creatures didn’t seem to care about us. Instead, they plodded towards the city, goaded by orders we could not hear.

“How do you think he’s doing this?”

I asked her, thinking over what I knew of the Snake’s leader. I hadn’t had any personal interactions with the Snake before, though he was well-known to be a ruthless and cold man. I was thinking that Rhil, in her previous experience as an adventurer, might have better insight.

“I would guess that it’s something System-related, judging by how he seems to have some control over the dungeon. I couldn’t guess what it was… An artifact, maybe?”

It wasn’t unheard of for an artifact to have unique territorial effects or abilities that they could grant to the wielder, so it was possible that the Snake had found something that was empowering him. But what about the people he had attacked? Was there another purpose other than just turning people into those mindless creatures like the elf had been turned into?

I pushed on the large iron doors at the entrance to the castle.

In contrast to how the rest of the castle would make it appear, the doors swung open effortlessly, revealing a dark interior with flickering candles along the walls that were casting a dim light down the hallways in lieu of the magical lighting that I would usually expect to see.

The hallway led deeper into the depths of the castle, into a darkness that we couldn’t see the end of from the doorway.

We took our first few steps forward through the doorway, cautious of anything that might be lurking just out of sight past the dim circles of light cast by the candles over the hallway.

A tattered, piecemeal, rugged thing lay where I might have usually imagined a soft carpet over the stone floor down the hallway, so thin that our footsteps echoed down the hallway even when we did step on the material.

Step, Step.

The doors swung silently shut behind us when we advanced, dimming the hallway even further by blocking out the natural light that had previously flooded through.

The darkened corners and void-like ceiling made the entrance hall seem even larger than it should have been, tricking my brain into imagining an endless abyss in all directions where I knew there would logically be a solid wall holding up the building’s foundations, blocking in light from the outside.

Each step we took down the hallway only sent more cascading echoes through it. The air grew colder until we could see our breaths leaving our mouths in little clouds of white vapor.

We passed side passages and offshoot hallways that led into darkness. The candles were leading us somewhere, and despite us knowing that our intended destination had already been laid out by the dungeon, we followed the path anyway.

Eventually, a final doorway loomed into view at the end of the hallway. The candles increased in density and lined the floor as well, highlighting the entry portal in soft, flickering orange hues.

It was nothing more than another pair of double iron doors leading to, presumably, the main audience hall of the castle itself, yet it seemed almost as if those doors would lead us to an entirely different world altogether.

Rhil and I stopped to look at each other again. The flickering light made it difficult to see, but I could see the tension in her jaw, the way her eyes scrunched slightly with some unseen worry.

Our eyes locked as she looked at me and nodded, signifying that she was ready for whatever lay beyond that doorway. I took a deep breath and we took those last few steps together, each of us pushing against a half of the doorway until it swung open into the wider chamber beyond.

Whatever it was, at least I had someone to face it with me.

Rather than more candles, the chamber was lit by a deep crimson light leaking from cracks in the stone along the floor and walls. The chamber was a long, auditorium-like hallway with thick pillars spaced along at regular intervals down to the end.

The red light leaking through the cracks contained a bright and vivid energy, making it seem as if the chamber itself was drifting within a phosphorescent red sea.

Perhaps it even was—dungeons were often known for how they played with rules of reality and perception.

At the end of the hallway, the man we had been searching for waited. He stood before the lord’s seat of authority on a raised dais at the end of the chamber.

At the base of the dais lay the still forms of the lord and the lord’s administrator, recognizable by the party attire they still wore as well as the lord’s sword lying next to him on the floor.

As the Snake watched us approach, I noticed that his eyes glowed with a different orange luminescence compared to the normal eyes of the human that I had seen at the party.

As we got closer, I could better make out a circle on the ground around the bodies of the lord and his administrator, glowing with a darker red light than what leaked from every other surface.

We stopped just before the circle around their bodies as if it were an invisible barrier blocking our pathway. We weren’t sure what the purpose of that circle was or if it would be safe to step into it.

The Snake finally acknowledged our presence then, and I could better make out the mutations over his skin, where scaly protrusions had begun to grow. It wasn’t enough to say that he was completely inhuman yet, but it was clear that he was in the process of changing.

He raised his arms outwards towards us in a beckoning sort of gesture.

“I realized the two of you had escaped after I couldn’t find your bodies at the party, lying with the rest, ripe for the harvest.”

‘Harvest?’

I was curious as to what he had ‘harvested’ from his victims and simultaneously feared finding out.

“…But I didn’t really expect you to have the nerve to walk right into my domain, so I commend you for that.”

Some of it made sense to me. For example, I could understand why the city lord might have viewed it in his best interests to form an uneasy alliance with a powerful leader of the criminal elements of the city.

What I had more trouble understanding, however, was the Snake’s motivations. For what purpose had he personally enacted the murders, and why had he given up his already secure position as one of the most powerful figures in the city to overturn everything and make himself an enemy of Awakeners?

My hands clenched. I couldn’t imagine how many more lives had already been lost in the city at that point, but I hoped that the things he had turned his victims into would also vanish with the death of their master.

* * *

Reaper Scans

[Author – Farlight]

[Proofreader – Harley]

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* * *

The boy’s fist tightened in what I presume was anger.

So quick to judge. We all had our share of hardships and we all had our ways of dealing with them.

Money, power, status as an Awakener, none of it mattered in the face of time. I had come to realize that as my body betrayed me in a slow, insidious pull. What had started as a simple bout of forgetfulness that could easily be waved off as fatigue had crept up on me over the coming months and years.

From forgetting if I had eaten that day to repeating sentences, not recognizing my own advisors, and losing my own sense of being. Brief moments of clarity punctuated the hellscape of my mind, the realization of my decline only bringing further suffering.

Eventually, I had to recede from the public eye completely, the Snake had become naught more than the decayed, shed skin of his former self. I had all but given up hope.

Healers couldn’t make heads or tails of it, traditional doctors from the old world suggested it could be a new affliction brought about by the Merge, and other, more esoteric types had called it a curse.

In the midst of my desperate attempts to cling to the ever-shortening bouts of clarity I had left, a gift was granted to me.

Borne on invisible wings, the book had appeared one day, lying on my desk. Though from outward appearances it seemed nothing more than a worn, leather-bound journal, the cool, suffocating aura around it marked it as something else.

Who would have done differently in my situation? They could judge me all they liked, but we were all the same. What were the souls of a city compared to the promise of boundless intellect, power, and life?

The book promised all that and much more, bestowing upon me a way to manipulate the System to my whims. A drunkard in an alley here, a wretch cast out by society there. The cost had steadily increased until the System itself offered me an opportunity.

Something I couldn’t pass up.

[[Claim the Castle as Your Dungeon]]

With that single quest, but a few words long, endless possibilities opened up.

I imagined a dungeon that claimed the land, expanding and devouring all in its path into my domain.

The simple costs for my empowerment would become trivial in the possession of such power. I could turn the powerful to my whim, control their every action, and be a true lord of lords, never again bowing to the cruelty that was human frailty.

I could see the judgment in their eyes, glaring at me from the bottom of that dais. The boy, a cripple before the system granted him the boon of health, might have been able to understand me if I explained it to him, but why would I bother when I could show him instead?

The old lord and his advisor, their bodies empty of the vital energy that was their essence, would serve as both an experiment and an example. The two were lucky to be able to bear witness to my rise above humanity.

Reaching out my arms, I activated the circle.