The Fallen Queen
The passage was pitch black. But to Zeon's eyes, it gleamed as bright as midday.
His sharp gaze missed nothing—not the scratches on the walls, not the craters gouged into the floor.
Crunch!
Something underfoot crumbled powerlessly.
Zeon reached down and picked up the shattered remnant.
"Larva shells? Some of them have already molted, huh."
Like any monster, ghost dragonflies grew more dangerous as they matured into adults.
The floor was littered with empty larva husks.
Clearly, a great many had already shed their skins.
"That's way too fast."
Zeon furrowed his brow.
Every living creature in the natural world followed its own timeline.
Humans were born, grew to adulthood, aged, and died.
Races and innate DNA varied, but the span of growth and decline was much the same.
Monsters were no different.
Timelines differed by species, but individuals of the same kind followed nearly identical paths.
Ghost dragonflies were the same.
From egg to larva to adult—the process always took a fixed amount of time.
Naturally, the size of the larvae at molting was consistent.
Yet the shells scattered across the floor varied wildly in size.
Meaning they had hatched at different times.
And yet, they had all molted around the same period.
Something utterly impossible in nature.
"Something forced their molting, no doubt."
It was a deduction only Zeon, with his deep knowledge of monster biology, could make.
He crushed more shells underfoot as he pressed on.
The cave widened steadily.
Both its breadth and height expanded noticeably.
Another impossibility in natural formations.
But Zeon didn't find it strange.
Dungeons were like that by nature.
Remnants of Kurayan, warped by failed terraforming, had turned into dungeons.
Wraiths caught in dimensional rifts, neither dead nor alive, clinging to existence.
Some dungeons even shifted like living organisms, reshaping at whim.
The ones Zeon knew behaved that way.
So a vast open space appearing out of nowhere was no surprise.
Just like now.
Moments ago, he'd been in a cramped tunnel. Now he stood on a broad plain under an open sky.
The space had changed in an instant.
Bzzz!
Countless ghost dragonflies swarmed to greet him.
They blackened the sky in a writhing mass.
Zeon had never seen so many in one place.
"Well, well."
His eyes gleamed coldly.
What caught his attention were the hovering dragonflies' eyes and wings.
Blood-red eyes, and translucent wings glowing with indecipherable runes.
"Artificial berserk state. Someone's tampered with them, alright."
No wonder the dungeon had felt off from the start.
Clexy's capture by the hell moles, the impossible coexistence of two boss entities—it all screamed unnatural.
Everything about this place was wrong.
Then—
Whoosh!
The hovering swarm dove at Zeon in unison.
A meteor shower of ghost dragonflies raining down.
Zeon unleashed Sand Step, dodging the assault.
Boom! Boom!
The spot he'd just vacated erupted like a bomb site.
Suicide attacks.
Ghost dragonflies were living creatures.
They knew the value of their own lives.
Only one reason would make them throw it away so recklessly.
"Something's wrong with the queen."
Bzzz!
As if in response, the swarm pressed their assault.
They poured down like rain, the thunderous flap of wings alone enough to inspire terror.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions chained one after another.
Zeon evaded them all by the slimmest margins.
Flames surged like a tidal wave, immense pressure crushing in from all sides. Yet Zeon's expression never wavered amid the chaos.
No matter how many ghost dragonflies there were, they couldn't outnumber the grains of sand in a desert.
And this dungeon was full of sand.
"Cremoa!"
The moment Zeon spoke, nearby sand detonated.
Each grain erupted like the old-world claymore mines—deadly shards rivaling steel balls.
Innumerable grains clashed with innumerable dragonflies.
Pop! Pop-pop!
Sand pierced wings, gouged massive eyes, shredded bodies.
The dragonflies shattered, tore apart, disintegrated.
A gaping hole yawned in the airborne swarm where Cremoa had bloomed.
Any other Awakener witnessing this would have gaped in awe.
The sheer destructive power was staggering.
Boom! Boom!
Zeon chained more Cremoa blasts.
Each one erased swathes of the swarm from existence.
Cremoa guzzled mana like nothing else. Yet Zeon unleashed them effortlessly, one after another.
Wingless, mangled dragonflies plummeted.
They looked almost pitiful in freefall. But Zeon spared them not a glance as he strode forward.
Nothing blocked his path now.
He reached his destination amid the wreckage.
There loomed an enormous ghost dragonfly.
A monster at least twenty meters from head to tail.
"The queen!"
This was the queen herself.
But her state was wretched.
Her once-beautiful, translucent wings seemed brutally torn away, vanished entirely. Her long, elegant tail lay snapped in half.
Semitransparent shells littered the ground around her.
The queen ghost dragonfly was on her last breaths.
Her legs twitched feebly as she gasped for air.
Zeon approached. Seven orbs were embedded in her back, arranged like the Big Dipper.
He yanked one free.
She didn't resist.
Her strength was spent.
Zeon examined the orb closely.
Magical runes etched its surface—definitely an item.
"Residual mana traces... A tamer's work. Forced the molting."
Insectoid monsters molted multiple times in life.
Each molt enlarged them, amplified their power.
But only when mana reserves and body-mind maturity aligned.
To Zeon's eye, the queen wasn't due for molting yet. Yet some unknown tamer had forced it.
"Why force a molt...? The wings?"
He recalled Briel's words.
Freshly molted queen wings defied gravity.
If a tamer coveted them, it made sense.
A top-tier tamer could certainly force a molt.
"But could a lone tamer pull this off?"
Zeon scanned the surroundings.
A dual-boss dungeon.
No tamer, however skilled, could subjugate an entire monster horde alone.
Accomplices were involved.
The question was: individual or organization?
"Probably an organization."
Finding a dungeon in the desert was one thing. Infiltrating past sentries? That screamed backing.
Zeon shook his head slightly and swung his hand.
Roaring flames erupted, devouring the queen.
She crumbled to ash in seconds.
A man and woman trudged across the empty desert.
The woman wore a loose robe; the man, baggy outerwear.
Hats shadowed their faces.
"…"
The woman halted abruptly, looking skyward. The man spoke.
"Something wrong?"
"The queen's dead."
"Is she? Guess her time finally ran out."
"She shouldn't have died yet..."
The woman tilted her head.
She'd calculated precisely.
Forced molt and wing removal, yes—but given time, recovery was certain.
Yet against expectations, the queen had perished.
"Some unexpected variable cropped up."
"Could be."
The man nodded nonchalantly. No sign of worry.
His mission: protect the tamer woman.
Once inside Neo Seoul, duty done.
He hated fretting over anything beyond that.
She frowned briefly at his apathy, then smoothed it.
Whatever. My job's finished clean.
She was a B-rank tamer.
But not all monsters could be tamed. Otherwise, she'd rule this desert, not some beast.
Her capacity was limited; higher ranks impossible.
Dungeon bosses especially—rank irrelevant, untamable.
They possessed iron wills.
Monsters with such egos instinctively rejected human dominion.
The queen ghost dragonfly was no exception.
Atop her horde, her ego was unbreakable by the woman's power alone.
Subjugating her—and forcing a molt—owed entirely to the item.
The jeweled necklace at her throat.
Its central gem scattered seven colors.
A Rainbow Gem, they called it.
Thus, the necklace: Rainbow Pendant.
An S-rank item...
Her hand trembled as she caressed it.
Not hers, though.
Lent by the man beside her.
S-rank power was unreal.
It had temporarily elevated her B-rank ability to S.
Enough to briefly command the queen and her legion.
Enough to force accelerated growth and molting.
All for the queen's wings.
An raid team had complicated things mid-process, luring hell moles.
But the man's support smoothed it over.
Who the hell is he?
She didn't know his identity.
He'd never removed his hat.
But his strength was monstrous.
Proven in the dungeon.
If he willed it, she'd be minced meat in seconds.
They reached Neo Seoul's gates—not the slums, the main entrance.
The man spoke at the gate.
"We part here."
He extended his hand.
Time to return the borrowed Rainbow Pendant.
She bit her lip.
Hated to let it go. But must.
Reluctantly, she unclasped it and handed it over.
The man stored the pendant and the queen's wings in his subspace.
"See you on the next job, Claire."
"When's the next one?"
"You'll be notified. Rest up till then."
"Yes!"
Claire's voice quivered with excitement.
Inside Neo Seoul, they parted ways.
The man headed through the bustling streets to the city's tallest building: City Hall.
The guarding Awakener bowed deferentially.
"Welcome. The mayor awaits."