Dungeon Mutation
Dullahan. The appearance of a boss-class monster from a C-rank dungeon so close to the entrance meant something far more horrific was nesting deep inside.
Even the terrain is warping.
Even in this very moment, the dungeon was rebuilding its own ecosystem.
I tightened my grip on the sword I had seized and stared the Dullahan down.
Whoosh—!
Black flames coiled around the blade and roared with savage intensity. Was it just my imagination, or had the color of those flames grown far denser and darker than before?
Looks like the mana’s affecting it somehow.
Either way, that wasn’t important right now. The skeletons behind the Dullahan began to move.
Mages raised their staffs while knights locked shields into formation and advanced. Their disciplined movements looked exactly like well-trained soldiers pressing the battlefield.
The Dullahan simply stood there with its sword planted in the ground, as if it had no need to lift a finger.
Even better.
If the Dullahan had joined in it would have been a real pain, but skeleton mages and knights? Those I could handle.
I adjusted the shield in my left hand.
Ominous mana began to condense at the tips of the skeleton mages’ staffs.
“You idiot, dodge…!”
Kim Ha-eun screamed from behind me, but—
Swoosh-swoosh-swoosh—!
Dozens of magic bullets sliced through the air. Their sole target was me.
I thrust the shield forward. Then I ignited flames in my left hand as well; fire swallowed my hand and the shield was completely engulfed in pitch-black flames.
The ordinary iron shield drank in the heat and radiated a majestic, oppressive aura, like a barrier risen straight from hell.
BOOM!
An explosion sent violet shards flying in every direction.
Yet my body wasn’t driven back even an inch. Instead the black flames cloaking the shield burned even more ferociously.
Every magic bullet that struck the shield was purified by the flames and vanished.
“It’s got a purification effect too.”
Even with this color, its essence still retained the extreme yang power that burned away impure energy.
Against undead, nothing could be better.
I kicked off the ground. Circulating the Immortal Blood Art, mana flooded every corner of my body in time with my heartbeat. Each individual muscle swelled with power until it felt ready to burst.
In an instant I appeared before the skeleton knights’ shield wall and swung my sword in a horizontal arc.
CRACK—!
The black-flame-wreathed blade cleaved through steel shields and bone joints at once. It wasn’t merely cutting.
The moment the edge touched them, the flames purified the skeletons and burned them whole.
“……Crazy.”
Someone’s shocked voice floated from behind me, but I never stopped moving. Knights and mages desperately held formation and launched coordinated attacks. To my eyes, though, their movements looked painfully slow.
Slow.
My accelerated nervous system read every trajectory of their attacks down to the finest detail. I slipped past magic by a paper-thin margin and smashed the nearest skeleton mage’s skull with my shield.
CRUNCH!
A skeleton knight immediately swung from the side, but the sword in my hand was already moving first. Black flames carved a perfect arc and sliced the knight’s torso clean through.
WHOOSH!
“Four, five… nah, no point counting.”
I danced across the battlefield. Every time the black flames traced a path, dozens of undead simply ceased to exist. It was less a battle and more a one-sided extermination.
Then it came.
THUD!
The Dullahan that had been quietly observing finally took a heavy step forward. When it swung its black-iron greatsword in a wide circle, the remaining skeleton minions dissolved into black smoke and were absorbed into the blade.
Having forcibly taken its subordinates’ mana into itself, the Dullahan’s aura swelled stronger still.
“So the real game starts now.”
I adjusted my grip and faced it head-on.
The Dullahan’s black-iron sword slowly rose. Mana erupted from its entire body, and frost began to crystallize across the cave floor.
Ice, huh.
The heat in my dantian churned violently in answer.
The Dullahan brought the black-iron sword down.
BOOM—!
A shockwave rocked the entire cavern and rolled outward in every direction.
It wasn’t mere physical force. The sword aura carried a vicious cold that felt ready to freeze a man solid to the marrow. Nearby stone pillars froze solid in an instant and crumbled to powder.
“Kyaaah!”
Kim Ha-eun and the rest of the party were flung by the shockwave and tumbled across the ground. I didn’t take a single step back.
CLANG!
My left-hand shield met the Dullahan’s blade head-on.
Cold and heat collided, belching thick steam. Its chill tried to freeze my body solid, but the flames greedily devoured that cold and only grew hotter.
“Thanks. My flames got even hotter because of you.”
I laughed and drove the shield upward.
CLANG—!
The Dullahan’s massive sword bounced into the air. Not missing the opening as its chest lay exposed, I thrust the longsword in my right hand in a straight line.
But as expected of something that had been a C-rank dungeon boss, it defended cleanly. It rotated the sword at a bizarre angle, deflected my blade, and immediately countered.
We traded dozens more exchanges after that.
So this is what a real knight looks like.
I held the advantage in both speed and raw power, yet I was losing in pure technique.
My sword was crude violence powered by brute force; its sword was refined skill that sought fatal wounds with the least possible movement.
CLANG! CLANG-CLANG!
Sharp metallic rings filled the cavern.
Every time my black flames grazed its armor the fire surged higher, yet the Dullahan expertly crossed shield and sword and refused to allow a decisive blow. In fact, one of its opportunistic counters even lightly scraped my shoulder.
Pushing with pure force has its limits after all.
But I possessed something it did not.
I stepped back and steadied my breathing. When I violently circulated the energy method of the Immortal Blood Art, the blood in my veins boiled and mixed with mana in a terrifying rush.
If technique was lacking, then I simply needed to crush it with firepower so overwhelming that technique itself became meaningless.
I casually discarded the shield and gripped the sword with both hands. I condensed the black flames all the way to the tip of the blade.
“Try blocking this too.”
I kicked off the ground and charged like a flash of light.
BOOM—!
It was no ordinary charge. The propulsion born from the exploding ground beneath my feet far outstripped the Dullahan’s reaction speed. It hurriedly raised its black-iron sword into a defensive stance, but it was already too late.
The condensed black flames exceeded their critical point and erupted.
HISSS! CRUNCH!
Making its refined swordsmanship completely irrelevant, my heat-laden blade melted straight through the Dullahan’s sword and sliced cleanly through its waist.
“……Kiiiiiieek!”
A scream-like burst of cold erupted from the neckless armor.
The Dullahan’s body gradually crumbled into powder, and the black-iron sword I had just melted fell to the floor in perfect condition.
“Oh, it dropped its sword.”
I walked over slowly and picked it up. A heavy weight traveled up through my palm.
“……That’s impossible.”
Choi Jae-hyuk’s voice reached me from behind.
I lowered the sword and turned around. My eyes met those of Choi Jae-hyuk, trembling with fear and awe, and Kim Ha-eun standing beside him.
“What are you standing around for? Aren’t you going to pick them up already?”
I pointed at the mana stones scattered across the floor—exactly the way they used to treat me.
“W-what?”
Choi Jae-hyuk asked back with a blank look.
“You deaf? If you want to keep living from now on, do your porter job properly.”
“Y-you little shit, for real…!”
Choi Jae-hyuk clenched his fist in a flash of anger, but only for a moment.
I kicked the shield that had fallen at my feet.
—BOOM!
With an ear-splitting crash, the massive tower shield grazed past Choi Jae-hyuk’s body by a paper-thin margin and buried itself deep into the cave wall.
“……Hup!”
Choi Jae-hyuk froze solid. His face went deathly pale as he realized that if the shield had hit him, he would have died instantly.
“You getting the picture yet?”
When I took a single step closer, Choi Jae-hyuk instinctively scrambled backward and collapsed onto the floor.
“……N-no. I’ll pick them up. I’ll pick them up, Seo-jun…!”
Face flushed red with wounded pride, Choi Jae-hyuk began crawling across the ground in the most pathetic fashion, scooping up mana stones.
Watching the bastard who used to treat me like a servant now crawl at my feet made the old knot of resentment in my chest dissolve completely.
Then Kim Ha-eun, who had been watching from the side, cautiously sidled up to me.
“Hey, Seo-jun… I’m really sorry about earlier. I must have lost my mind for a second. As you know, I can be a little—”
“What the hell are you babbling about, you cunt. You pick them up too.”
At the crude vulgarity that left my mouth, Kim Ha-eun’s expression instantly hardened.
“…C-cunt…?”
She looked dazed, as if the blatant contempt she had never heard in her life had short-circuited her brain. For a woman who had always lived bathed in men’s gazes and praise, this kind of treatment must have been unimaginable.
I ignored her stare and pointed at every person present.
“If you want to survive in this place where a dungeon mutation has already occurred, you know exactly what you have to do, right?”
At my cold words, the panicking party members all trembled as one.
This was a lawless zone where neither law nor ethics held any power. No one would ever know what happened inside a gate completely cut off from the outside world.
Only the strong decided everything. The weak either obeyed or died.
“Until I find a way out of this dungeon, every last one of you will thoroughly become my dogs. Anyone who talks back gets sent to join the Dullahan.”
At my declaration, Choi Jae-hyuk sped up his crawling and stone-gathering, while Kim Ha-eun bit her lip in humiliation yet still watched my face carefully as she squatted down and began sweeping the floor.
“Once you’ve picked everything up, we move. Choi Jae-hyuk, you take all the luggage and stay at the rear.”
“……Got it.”
Leaving the miserable Choi Jae-hyuk behind me, I started walking deeper into the dungeon.
The E-17 zone on the outskirts of Gapyeong had been completely sealed by the Management Bureau.
Layer upon layer of yellow no-entry tape surrounding the gate and the armed Management Bureau hunters stationed there spoke volumes about the tense atmosphere.
“Currently, dungeon mutation is in progress inside the E-17 Gate. This area is strictly off-limits!”
The voice booming through the megaphone was urgent. A place that had been an ordinary D-rank dungeon mere hours earlier had now transformed into an unknown C-rank dungeon that didn’t even exist in the Management Bureau’s internal database.
“How many parties entered the dungeon?”
“Seven parties total.”
“Survival probability?”
“Close to zero percent. There’s no way a D-rank party can hold out in a C-rank mutated dungeon.”
“I heard there are a few C-ranks among them though.”
At the words of field response team leader Kang Cheol-ho, the analyst shook his head.
“Someone who knows this better than anyone keeps asking the same question.”
“I’m asking in case a miracle happens.”
“I hope that miracle happens too.”
Kang Cheol-ho nodded bitterly and asked,
“More importantly—the Openers?”
“Same as always. The S-rank exclusive Opener is permanently on standby, and the other two belong to Hanul and Cheonsan, so they won’t move an inch.”
“Ha… these pieces of trash.”
Kang Cheol-ho exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke.
Openers.
A rare class capable of forcibly opening closed gates.
Only three existed in all of Korea.
One of them was the sole individual who could forcibly open the entrance to S-rank dungeons; he was managed at the national level and treated as a strategic asset.
The remaining two had become exclusive property of the major guilds and refused to move without their guild’s permission.
“They strut around saying they can open a gate once a day, but the major guilds never actually cooperate. It’s enough to drive a man insane—using the excuse that they never know when a break might happen on their own turf.”
“Tsk. We’ll have to prepare for a dungeon break.”
Kang Cheol-ho flicked the cigarette he had been smoking to the ground and crushed it under his heel.