Headless Anomalies and the Lurking Boss
Everyone stared up at the headless Neshi in tense silence, too stunned to speak. Ignoring their reactions entirely, she set the food from the tray down in front of them with utterly natural movements before slipping back into the kitchen.
They all just sat there, not touching the food, staring at it in frozen shock. Only after some time passed did Seoya finally break the silence.
"…Why doesn't she have a head?"
"This is driving me insane. What the hell is going on?"
"When I saw it earlier, the cut was clean—no blood at all. And yet she moved just like a living person without a head, navigating without bumping into anything even without eyes…."
Even Kwon Yooseok, who always wore that sly grin, looked genuinely rattled this time. As they whispered about what they'd just witnessed, Neshi emerged from the kitchen again—this time with her head perfectly attached to her neck.
"Why aren't you eating? The soup's gonna get cold—hurry up and dig in~."
Seoya met Neshi's eyes with a face stiff as ice. It was definitely her.
"…Haha, something came up for us."
"Yeah, sorry about the food you prepared, but we've got urgent business. Gotta head to the market real quick."
Kwon Yooseok and Baek Yena spoke in eerie unison, grabbing Seoya and bolting from their seats. They raced up the stairs back to their room, minds too rattled for calm judgment. If a ghost had appeared, all three might've laughed it off and beaten it down—but this unnatural event unfolding so casually left them utterly lost.
Baek Yena, barely regaining her composure, spoke up to sort things out.
"Pack light. This has to be a precursor to something—grab essentials like meds, weapons, and items for monster fights."
"Got it. And yeah, the market's our best bet~? Lots of people around. Even if everyone's headless, they don't seem hostile toward us."
"Right. Head to a crowded spot, gather some intel."
As they finished talking and stepped onto the top-floor hallway, they spotted something black blanketing the corridor.
"Crows?"
A flock of pitch-black crows—god knows where from—had filled the hallway in front of their room. They sat motionless, neither flying nor cawing, all turning their beady eyes toward the group in unison.
"Damn it!"
Baek Yena grimaced and stepped back, only to trip over something. Glancing behind her, she groaned.
"The stairs too…!"
The staircase they'd just climbed was now packed with huddled crows. Hundreds of them, all eyes locked precisely on the trio.
"…These might be monsters after all."
Kwon Yooseok's voice wavered slightly, and Baek Yena picked up in a shaky tone, fighting to stay sane.
"Yeah… For now, they're just crows, so let's kill 'em all and—"
"No need."
Seoya shoved past Baek Yena and Kwon Yooseok, who were shielding her, and stared down the hallway crows.
"Move."
Her eyes gleamed yellow like a predator spotting prey. A top-of-the-food-chain killing intent poured from her tiny frame.
Predator's Aura
Flutter flutter—
The crows, hit by her killing intent, panicked and scattered into the air to evade her. Feathers rained down as they collided mid-flight, turning the hallway into a mess. It wasn't a pretty sight, but the fear from before had shifted to something more ridiculous and chaotic.
Seoya turned to the stairwell crows next, and they too fled upward. Unlike the hallway ones, these could escape to the first floor, clearing the stairs quickly.
"Now's our chance. Let's go—packing in the room's pointless anyway."
"Agreed. Who knows what else might crawl out of this inn."
Baek Yena led the dash down the stairs, with Kwon Yooseok keeping Seoya in front of him as they followed. At the bottom, Baek Yena cried out in fresh horror.
"Shit, it's back!"
Headless Neshi sat in the first-floor dining area again. Baek Yena cursed freely—forgetting Seoya was right there—before kicking the inn door open with a bang and charging out.
"What the hell is wrong with this inn?!"
The morning sun now hung in the sky. Out in the sunlit space, Baek Yena caught her breath and checked on Seoya.
"Baby, you okay? Not scared?"
"Yeah."
If anything, Kwon Yooseok and Baek Yena looked more terrified than Seoya, who seemed perfectly fine.
"Now I get why the previous hunters freaked out… Never heard of a dungeon with stuff this bizarre~."
"This is all your fault for dragging Seoya into a creepy dungeon like this! Ugh, it's messing with my head. I'm clearing this place as fast as humanly possible."
Baek Yena set off toward the market with a grim face, scanning for more anomalies. While she and Kwon Yooseok tensed up, convinced the System was glitching out, Seoya pondered the dungeon's purpose.
This can't be one of Ibin unnie's dungeons, right?
Ibin's systems were always tailored to help Seoya—even disasters that crushed others were trivial for her. Like the maze dungeon she could've smashed out of, or the S-rank with Toda backdrop and mutants. But this one was utterly alien even to her, which meant….
'It's a dungeon from the higher world.'
Seoya bit her lip at the realization. Earth now mixed higher-world dungeons with Ibin's creations.
"Ah, damn it."
Baek Yena's voice snapped Seoya from her thoughts. She whipped around—and gasped.
"Ah."
The inn's nightmare scene unfolded before them. The market, usually bustling, was filled with people—some headless.
"Everyone else seems to treat this like it's normal~?"
As Kwon Yooseok said, the village NPCs chatted and bartered with the headless ones. The headless couldn't speak, but their conversing partners nodded along as if understanding perfectly. The harmonious market was peaceful yet utterly grotesque.
"The whole village is messed up."
It didn't end there.
Caw—caw—caw—
A massive flock of jet-black crows swarmed the sky. And…
"…Those are earthworms, right~?"
Earthworms that should crawl were walking upright on stiff, straight bodies. Leashed dogs walked on hind legs—backwards, no less. Something in the grass blinked white light open and shut; a blood-red cloud drifted amid white ones; fresh sinkholes pocked yesterday's solid roads.
"Things that shouldn't happen… are happening…."
Kwon Yooseok murmured a line he'd seen spammed in chat logs.
"Yo, Kwon Yooseok. Check your mental strength."
Baek Yena pulled up her status window, and Kwon Yooseok followed suit.
"Damn, mental strength's dropping. You?"
"Yeah, same here~."
Seoya, standing unfazed amid their worry, realized she had to handle this. She spread her mana wide for a scan.
But then—
"Ah!"
"What? What's wrong?!"
The moment her mana expanded, something snagged in the net—a chilling sensation that dropped Seoya to her knees.
Baek Yena reached for her shoulder, but Seoya instinctively swatted the hand away. They stared in shock.
"Hah… hah…."
Blinking slowly, Seoya took deep breaths.
Stay calm. It's weaker than me anyway.
But was it? How to even describe that feeling? An unimaginable horror no one could fathom.
Shaking it off after a moment, Seoya stood.
"Baby, what's wrong? Hurt? Don't push if it's too much—please."
"Hmm. Seoya, you don't have to go that far~. No need to hunt monsters right now, right?"
Reading their concern, Seoya waved it off.
"…No, let's go. Right behind our inn—something's there."
It hadn't been there during her morning scan, but in that short time, something creepy had appeared. Its presence was unmistakable.
"Definitely the boss monster."
They wove through the anomaly-riddled village back to the inn, tension high. Seoya warned them.
"Mental strength's draining fast, so if it feels off, run."
Had Seoya ever felt that in her life? If that was mental drain, the other two would suffer massively.
"Back here after all. Didn't wanna return."
Kwon Yooseok joked as they rounded to the inn's rear—and froze, face-to-face with the dungeon's boss. Seoya's instincts screamed.
'Higher-world dungeon means… higher-world monsters. So….'
Tension made her swallow hard.
'I might not beat this one.'