The Hand That Curses

Clack!

The instant Bennett touched the director's keycard to the panel, the heavy vault door gave way without the slightest resistance. Had any surviving members of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the Thief Clan been present to witness it, they would have choked on sheer futility. Not that the dead had any say in the matter.

Peering ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into the recessed interior, Bennett reached inside and retrieved its contents: a compact cylinder capsule and a sheaf of documents densely inscribed in Dungeon Language.

The capsule was peculiar. A transparent, glass-like viewport ran down its midsection, revealing the interior packed tightly with indeterminate granules. At a glance, it looked like a viscous liquid; shift the angle, however, and it seemed distinctly solid. No matter how closely he scrutinized it, he couldn't begin to fathom its intended purpose.

The documents offered little immediate clarity either.

Of the entire dossier, Bennett could decipher precisely one element: the photograph depicting the Curse Hand.

Come to think of it, he recalled hearing rumors long ago that continental magic capable of capturing "photographs" or "moving images" had originally been inspired by relics scavenged from the dungeon world.

'I should be able to hand this over to Marco.'

Marco, whom Bennett had rescued from the Locked Prison, was currently living a quiet, orderly life as a dungeon scholar. They remained in contact every now and then. Glancing once more at the unidentifiable capsule, Bennett stowed both items into his Sub-space Pouch.

"Gather the corpses."

"Right away, sir!"

They dragged the dead rogues together into a pile, excluding only the middle-aged man Bennett had slain earlier in the corridor. Having voided their bowels in death, the bodies gave off a pungent, acrid stench, but Bennett's party had picked through far too many cadavers to care. Even Erika, the least seasoned dungeon crawler among them, was grinning faintly, far more absorbed in the prospect of coin than repulsed by the smell.

Their first priority was the cloaking gear. Even with limited charges, any gear inscribed with active stealth enchantments commanded an exorbitant market price.

"This one has one use left," Erika announced after examining a charm, "and this one here has two."

As soon as she finished her appraisal, Kyle jotted the details down on adhesive paper and stuck it onto each piece. The most valuable enchanted items went straight into the Sub-space Pouch, leaving behind mostly standard fare—daggers, short blades, and specialized lockpicking sets tailored for thieves and assassins.

The daggers appeared to have been bought in bulk, sharing identical designs and dimensions, yet their balance and steel were respectable. Unfortunately, none of the rogues carried extra spatial pouches of their own, relying instead on personal rucksacks. Several backpacks contained pieces of gear evidently plundered from other unfortunate scavengers.

As Bennett methodically rifled through one of the packs, his hand paused.

"...?"

Tucked within was a bundle of brightly colored women's undergarments.

'Ah, right.'

He remembered the very first rogue he had cut down in the research wing—the woman who had lunged at him under the shroud of an invisibility shroud. This pack had to be hers.

'She seemed to hold rank in their clan.'

True to that hunch, the haul from her belongings was considerably sweeter. While the other members' gear wasn't bad, her kit ran distinctly upmarket. Still, she appeared to have preferred keeping everything in her pack; a thorough pat-down of her body yielded almost nothing else. Beyond a razor-honed karambit and the cloaking charm they had already confiscated, she harbored no hidden treasures even beneath her clothes.

"Bennett-nim, we've gathered everything."

"Good."

Turning away from the dead, Bennett turned his attention to sweeping the Life Research Lab itself, which they had bypassed during the skirmish. He had assumed the Thief Clan would have stripped the place bare, but a surprising amount of equipment remained intact.

Before them sat an array of research apparatuses whose sheer precision was unmistakable. Alchemists back on the continent employed similar instruments, yet none possessed craftsmanship even approaching what lay on these tables. The gulf in manufacturing quality was plain as day.

Bennett gave the word to crate as much of it as they could carry. Though they couldn't begin to comprehend the function or operational method of certain devices, that was a headache for the merchants back in the city. So long as it fetched coin, there was zero reason to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠leave it behind.

By the time Bennett's party finished stripping the room, the Life Research Lab looked hollowed out.

"Moving out."

"Yes, sir!"

Retracing their steps, they arrived back at the junction corridor. Only one route remained unexplored.

"Next."

An elven explorer roughly hauled a kneeling captive to his feet. Stripped of arms and bound in heavy rope, the man struggled frantically, but he stood no chance against the elf's grip as he was dragged forward.

Thud!

Shoved carelessly forward, the captive stumbled. With a single, deft flick of his blade, the elf severed the ropes binding the man's torso. The sudden freedom prompted the human to bolt on instinct—until the cold tip of a drawn sword leveled directly at his throat, freezing him in his tracks.

Having experienced firsthand how merciless those blades were when he was captured, the man knew better than anyone that resistance was suicide.

Another elf tossed a small wooden container toward him. Caught off guard, the captive caught it reflexively. It was an intricately carved chest that radiated an eerie, subtle energy.

"Place it inside that chest, and you walk free," the elven explorer stated in a flat, dismissive tone, as if asking him to run an errand.

The captive's throat bobbed, words catching behind his teeth, before utter defeat drained the defiance from his face. Resigned, he stepped out into the chamber.

It was a vast room encased in stark white walls and matching ceiling tiles. In the exact dead center rested a solitary, pitch-black severed hand. Its wrist cross-section was pressed flush against the floor, fingers extended stiffly toward the ceiling.

As the man drew closer, those upright fingers began to twitch, slowly curling inward.

Gulp.

Swallowing dryly, the man looked down at the markings painted across the pristine floor. Thick, uniform lines stretched across the tile, accompanied by numeric digits. The figures resembled continental numbering, clearly denoting units of distance.

The colored stripes shifted hue every ten meters. Past the fifty-meter threshold, however, the line burned a ghastly, blood-soaked crimson. In a room bleached entirely white, that crimson line practically screamed danger.

"...Haaah!"

Letting out a trembling breath, the man forced one boot forward.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

Forty.

His progress was agonizingly steady, but it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠faltered all too soon.

Fifty.

Just one more stride would take him across. Yet his foot hovered, refusing to plant itself down. And with good reason—he had watched with his own eyes what happened to the men who crossed that line—

Thwack!

An arrow slammed into the tile an inch from his toes. Jolt startled, the man whipped his head around. An elven scout stood notched and glaring, bow raised.

"Move, human."

"..."

"I will count to five," the elf warned, shifting his aim toward the captive's skull. "Fail to move, and this arrow finds a home between your eyes."

"I-I'm going! I'm going!"

Knowing full well the threat was no bluff, the man's lower lip quivered as he dragged his foot across the crimson line.

The half-curled fingers of the black hand snapped shut, clutching empty air.

"Ah... N-No...!"

The man choked out a desperate scream, but the sound died in his throat before it could form a word.

"Guh-urk! Khhk!"

Save for minor abrasions, the man had been entirely healthy moments ago. Now, a grotesque metamorphosis overtook him in real time. His eyes rolled back until the whites gave way to a glassy, hollow stare. Fresh, supple flesh shriveled into cracked, ashen husk within seconds.

From living man to animated corpse: it took less than five seconds.

The newly turned zombie lunged straight toward the elven line—

Thump!

An arrow pierced dead center through its forehead, and the corpse collapsed like a sack of stones.

Watching from the doorway, Kallion's aristocratic features twisted in disgust.

"Next!"

"Understood."

An elven scout yanked the thin cord fastened to the wooden chest. The box, which the dead man had dropped on the floor, skittered back across the tiles and into their hands. Immediately, another elf dragged forward a fresh, trembling prisoner.

Male or female made no difference. The brutal experiment repeated itself again and again, yielding the exact same outcome. Without exception, every single captive who breached the fifty-meter boundary met the identical fate. A few tried to rebel or make a desperate break for the exits, but breaking through an elite elven perimeter was impossible.

The prisoners were offered only two ways to die: turn into a rotting ghoul under the hand's unseen influence, or be slaughtered where they stood by elven steel.

"How many do we have left?"

"Four remaining, sir."

As the headcount dwindled, Kallion's thin veneer of patience frayed. He had assumed their initial haul of human cattle on the way here would be more than sufficient, yet they were burning through bodies at an alarming rate. He gestured sharply to a squad leader.

"At your command, Lord Kallion."

"Form a detachment and drag more in."

Though he didn't specify who or what, the meaning was unmistakable.

"Understood."

"Make it quick. We have no way of knowing how much time we have left."

It was common knowledge that temporal perception distorted wildly inside dungeon depths. While Kallion and his kin held themselves superior to humans in nearly every measure, they were not immune to the dungeon's temporal warp. The extraction portal might open in a matter of hours.

"Move, now!"

Armed and cold-eyed, a squad of elven explorers dashed into the corridors to harvest fresh meat shields.

Unlike the Life Research Lab, where glass partitions granted an illusion of openness, the deep facility felt entirely different. Here, reinforced chambers resembling colossal subterranean vaults lined the corridor, suffocating the passage under oppressive gloom. The walls and doors were built of dense, blast-proof steel, shielding the interiors entirely from outside view. The only way to discover what lay inside was to unseal the hatches manually.

Fortunately, most of the massive doors hung slightly ajar. Scattered along the hallway lay skeletons clad in tattered white lab coats, telling a silent story of panic. Whoever they had been, they had been run down by ghouls or something worse while fleeing for their lives.

A mounted terminal display flickered violently on the wall, cycling through red distress text—identical to the consoles Bennett had seen elsewhere in the complex.

Passing beneath the screen, Bennett raised a fist, signaling the party to halt.

"Someone's up ahead."

Kyle and Edgar nodded, their expressions tightening. Not far off, the sounds of structural wreckage and violent impacts echoed through the corridor.

BOOM!

Creeping forward to the edge of the opening, the party took in the scene—and their eyes widened.

A monstrous serpent was thrashing across the chamber, viciously assailing an unseen combatant. It wasn't merely large; its proportions defied natural biology, a grotesque aberration foreign even to the wilds of their homeland.

'Who is it fighting?'

Bennett leaned slightly, trying to peer around the creature, but the serpent's bulk was too massive to see past. Even so, the shafts of elven arrows and clean sword gashes scoring its scales were plain to see.

"What's the call?" Kyle murmured, staying neutral.

"Well... shouldn't we lend a hand?" Edgar muttered, glancing at Erika, who nodded in agreement.

After a brief beat, Bennett nodded as well. He wasn't acting out of altruism like Edgar and Erika. His calculus was purely pragmatic: prioritizing party survival. Right now, the beast was locked in combat with someone else, but should that target fall and the beast turn its gaze toward them, they would lose the advantage of initiative. Far better to eliminate it while its attention remained split.

Without hesitation, Bennett slotted a fresh drum magazine into Shooting Star.

Th-th-th-th-thump!

In the span of a breath, half the magazine emptied in a continuous mechanical roar. A cascade of concentrated explosive bolts engulfed the serpent's upper body in blinding fire and concussive shockwaves.

Its head blasted to cinders, the monstrous serpent collapsed heavily onto the floor. Even decapitated, its colossal, coiling mass remained an intimidating spectacle.

The system prompt flashed with stat rewards, yet Bennett's gaze never lingered on the text. His eyes were fixed entirely on the far side of the corridor.

Emerging from beyond the serpent's carcass were figures stepping through the haze.

'Elves?'

Five lightly armored elves strode forward, their gaze sweeping over Bennett from head to toe with cold, appraisal-laden insolence.

"You spared us a nuisance. You have our thanks, human."

"...We only engaged because it posed a threat to us as well," Bennett replied neutrally.

"Regardless of your intent, you assisted us, so gratitude is only fair." The lead elf's gaze slid past Bennett, taking in Kyle, Edgar, and Erika with an unhurried, chilling sweep. "Ordinarily, we would have taken your entire party into custody... but since you proved useful, sacrifice just one person, and we'll let the rest of you walk."