Undead Hidden Dungeon

"The trail ends here."

At the report from the player who had learned a tracking skill, Zhou Tianguo scowled.

"They went into a hidden dungeon?"

Open dungeons had no limit on numbers. Anyone could walk in, and anyone could walk back out. A hidden dungeon was another matter. Until the first party to enter was wiped out, no new party could set foot inside.

Clear it, and the hidden dungeon itself ceased to exist. When one vanished, a new hidden dungeon would eventually form somewhere else.

"Form the perimeter. We wait."

Zhou Tianguo fixed the entrance with a rigid stare.

Don't you dare die in there.

Hidden dungeons were vastly harder to clear. Plenty of parties went in chasing a jackpot and were annihilated down to the last member.

Clear it in one piece. Walk out alive. And then die by my hand — as slowly, and in as much pain, as I can arrange.

If they died inside, the enemy who had killed his sworn brother and his blood brother would be gone all the same. Zhou Tianguo wanted to stop that breath himself. Not quickly. Not cleanly. He wanted the man to suffer for as long as possible, writhing, and only then to die by inches.

They're the ones who wiped out Zhang Hong's party. They won't get themselves killed clearing some hidden dungeon.

Fully prepared, he waited with the elites of the Yellow Dragon Guild for the enemy who would come bursting out of the hidden dungeon.

A day passed. Then two. A full week went by, and still ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his enemies showed not the slightest sign of emerging.

Jin-soo and Shin Sua had no idea that Zhou Tianguo and the finest of the Yellow Dragon Guild were massed outside. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠They were too busy hunting.

Living sealed in, ringed by undead, laid on a crushing mental weight.

"These days I fight undead in my dreams. Even when I'm asleep."

Shin Sua said it over breakfast, inside the safe zone her Sanctuary had spread around them.

"Same here."

Dreams were the least of it. Awake or asleep, the undead's grotesque howls and the endless clash of battle never stopped, and proper sleep was a memory. They were one bad night from a nervous breakdown.

"Still. Levels are climbing like crazy, so I can stand it. Achievements too."

She said it as if the trade were more than fair.

"Yeah. That's true."

Stuck at Level 2, Jin-soo was getting level-up messages in real time.

"Mraow……"

Leo flopped onto the floor and rolled, the picture of a creature dying of boredom. They had been shut inside the hidden dungeon for over a week. There was no need to roar and drag monsters in. Undead didn't even drop meat.

He could fill his belly on the monster meat Jin-soo handed him, but from Leo's point of view the place was suffocating.

"If you're that bored, just go home."

A summon had a dimension he originally came from. If the boredom was truly unbearable, an unsummoning would send him straight back.

"Nyaaang!"

Leo spat a sharp yowl and refused, hard. The rejection slammed into Jin-soo's mind just as fiercely.

"It's where he used to live. Why does he hate it that much?"

Jin-soo genuinely could not understand.

"Maybe the meat there just tastes bad?"

Jin-soo nodded as if that had the ring of truth. Stick close to him and you might be bored, but you could eat meat until you burst.

"Could be. Or maybe Leo's hunting is so pathetic he can barely get any meat at all."

"Nyaang! Nyang! Nyang! Nyaang!"

Leo protested with everything he had. The slur on his hunting had clearly stung.

"Leo's tiny. Back where he used to live, he might've had to run for his life so the other magic beasts wouldn't eat him."

At that, Leo's mouth fell open in pure disbelief. He thumped his own chest with a tiny forepaw, the very image of a creature dying of injustice.

"No, no. Big sis misspoke. Sorry, Leo."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Shin Sua laughed and stroked his head. Leo promptly climbed into her arms, rubbing his head and body against her and laying the charm on thick.

Look at that. That's not a magic beast. That's a cat.

Jin-soo watched Leo fawn on her and let out a hollow laugh. Take away the aggro-pulling and an appetite that defied belief, and what you had left was an ordinary kitten.

Still. The ability to call monsters in is enough on its own.

Hunting efficiency was why he had regretted being able to stay only three days in the Preta Ant Burrow, and why he had come to the Undead Hidden Dungeon in the first place.

Ordinary hunting spends more than half its time just looking for something to kill.

Once Leo joined, the time spent roaming in search of monsters had dropped sharply, but they still had to move. The Preta Ant Burrow and the Undead Hidden Dungeon were different. The monsters came to them without pause, and not a moment was wasted.

Better for titles, too. And for growing the blessings.

The open field was home to every species under the sun, which meant blessings grew slowly and achievements stacked even slower. A place that spawned only a single kind of monster — the Preta Ant Burrow, the Undead Hidden Dungeon — played by different rules.

The returns are already better than I hoped.

The blessings, especially, were climbing fast. He could take zombies, skeletons, and ghouls by twos — two, twenty-two, two hundred and twenty-two, two thousand two hundred and twenty-two, twenty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-two. And whenever the growth was about to stall, a fresh undead of a slightly higher grade refilled the field. It was, without exaggeration, the finest hunting ground he could ask for.

How far does this go?

At this difficulty, two billion two hundred million of them would be welcome. Twenty-two billion two hundred million would be better.

"All right. Back to it."

"Yeah."

Breakfast done, Jin-soo and Shin Sua released the Sanctuary.

"Graaaaaah!"

"Uwaaaagh!"

The moment the barrier fell, undead too hideous to look at straight came charging in from every side.

Flame roared. A blast detonated.

Jin-soo opened with a magic attack skill. Shin Sua spun her buffs up, then, sheltered by the stone golem and the shadow knight, swung the staff gripped tight in both hands straight at an undead skull.

Well slept and well fed, the two of them threw themselves back into the hunt — and outside the Undead Hidden Dungeon, Zhou Tianguo and the Yellow Dragon Guild were finally running out of patience.

Zhou Tianguo bellowed it. At the start he had waited blind, eyes rolled white with rage. A hidden dungeon usually fell in a matter of hours. Waiting had seemed obvious.

When the first day passed, he had only thought it was taking a little long. Then two days. Three. Four. Past five, and on beyond a week, and the rage curdled into sheer irritation.

One of the Yellow Dragon guild members, needled by that irritation, tried the entrance of the Undead Hidden Dungeon.

"They aren't dead."

"Gaaaah! Then why won't they come out?!"

At the report, Zhou Tianguo roared again. The hidden dungeon had neither opened to entry nor vanished.

Which meant the ones who had wiped out Zhang Hong's party were still in there, still killing monsters.

"One more week. We wait."

He forced the words out through clenched teeth.

"Understood."

The Yellow Dragon guild members answered, discontent thick in their voices.

Damn it.

The enemies who refused to come out of that dungeon were going to drive him mad.

Every player gathered here belonged to the Yellow Dragon Guild's very best.

Which also meant they were the ones with the least time left to them on Floor 100.

The guild's elites had all lived in the Tower for more than ten years. Their memories of Earth had gone faint; their memories of the Tower were the sharp ones. The way of life up here sat more naturally on them than anything they had known back home.

For people like that, more than a week without a hunt was a serious loss. No experience. No items. And they weren't even resting. No proper camp — just sleeping rough on bare dirt.

On top of that they were buying their meals at the auction house with their own points and standing night watch for an enemy who might never appear. Of course they were unhappy.

At first, caught up in their guild master's fury and in the demand that a comrade be avenged, they had swallowed the complaints. A week later, that had changed.

Come out within the week. Please.

If they still hadn't shown themselves by then, he would have no choice but to leave a watch behind and pull the rest out.

The week passed.

Jin-soo and Shin Sua, somewhere inside the Undead Hidden Dungeon, remained utterly silent. They were not dead in there either.

"We're pulling out."

In the end, Guild Master Zhou Tianguo had to give the order.

"Cycle the fast ones through. Watch the entrance. Nothing else."

"Understood."

The Yellow Dragon Guild's elites withdrew having wasted two full weeks, and in their place the swift-footed members stationed in a nearby city began rotating through, taking turns at the hidden dungeon's mouth.

Jin-soo and Shin Sua never learned that the Yellow Dragon Guild had wasted two weeks and gone home. They kept hunting undead at an easy, steady pace.

The closed-in discomfort, and the undead's shrieks, gnawed at them. Even so, the two of them were holding up well enough in their own way.

The rewards kept pace with the strain on body and mind. For Jin-soo, achievements and blessings were the things climbing hardest. For Shin Sua, it was achievements and level.

They had to cast the instant their mana returned, so skill levels rose at a brutal clip, and items dropped in heaps. Gear they could use and skill books worth learning came up often enough; whatever they didn't need went to the auction house and came back as points. The points themselves were coming in at more than ten times the rate of hunting in the field.

For Shin Sua, it amounted to a thorough course of financial therapy. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Camping alone with Jin-soo, no privacy to speak of, chafed now and then — but the bond between them felt deeper for it, and that part she didn't mind.

Good. She was holding up better than he had expected, and Jin-soo's own drive surged to match. Achievements were one thing. The growth of his blessings inside the undead dungeon was genuinely thrilling.

Not a single step of growth. A chain of them.

Hunting the same monsters really was the answer.

Unlike achievements, the blessings didn't announce exactly why they had risen. He could still make a fair guess.

Looks like we've broken into the two-point-two-two million range.

Killing a given monster in amounts tied to the number two did heavy work for a blessing's growth.

And at the scale of millions, like now, all the more.

Barely any time had passed since the last chain of growth, and the blessings grew again.

The last one was zombies. This time, skeletons?

Ghouls, he figured, would take a little longer. No reason to worry. Past the ghouls waited giant zombies and skeleton warriors, and beyond those, fanged ghouls, giant two-headed zombies, and skeleton champions.

Nothing up through dullahan, death wizard, death knight, banshee, and specter, then?

Jin-soo wanted the variety of undead to keep widening. The broader it got, the faster he could stack achievements and push his titles higher.

First, let's see what this round of growth actually raised.

On the strength of the blessings gained so far, his stat increase rate had climbed to 72.2 percent. His fixed item level stood at 322, his fixed skill level at 422. And a new blessing had appeared — one that locked level itself.