← I've possessed a body, so let me just clear dungeons.Junho's vision rotated.
Below became above, and above became below—that moment of weightlessness. The impact of his back striking stone rippled through his spine, and his brain seized for an instant. His nervous system, taut from mana reinforcement, sent out extreme pain signals.
Junho threw his body forward, chasing the flashlight's beam.
The skulls are moving. That was all the information his brain could process.
He bent his fingers. He tried to push off the ground. His body didn't respond. His mana reinforcement state had shattered. The recoil of his body came crashing down. His muscles convulsed.
The monster's cry echoed again.
From behind. From above. From every direction.
Junho threw his body forward. Unintentionally. His feet kicked off the ground as his body rolled forward. The flashlight's beam swept past. In that moment, the skulls illuminated by the light became clearer.
Black clothing.
Human bones.
And——
"Ah."
A sound escaped Junho's lips. Not from pain. From recognition.
Following the movement of the flashlight's beam, Junho saw something glinting in the pile of skulls. Metal. Hunter badges. Several of them.
And beside them.
Something moving.
Finger bones were crawling. A jaw bone opened and closed smoothly. As if trying to speak. As if——
More cries erupted.
Not just one, but several. Simultaneously.
Junho's eyes widened. A terror that suddenly awakened. Skeletons were moving everywhere the flashlight's beam touched. Arm bones bent. Spines writhed. Skulls rolled.
"Shit."
Junho threw his body forward. Direction didn't matter. All that mattered was getting away.
His foot caught on a skull. His body tumbled forward. He tried to brace himself with his hands, but his fingers touched something soft.
Fabric. Cloth.
Junho quickly pulled his hand back.
"I have to get out."
A murmur. A voice trying to calm himself. But the voice was trembling.
The 2-meter giant monster cried out again. Smaller cries followed behind its cry. As if they were singing in chorus.
Junho crawled toward the flashlight. He had to grab it. He had to regain the light.
When his fingers were almost there, the flashlight rolled.
The light slowly rotated, beginning to illuminate a different area.
And then Junho saw it.
Beyond there. Where the flashlight's beam reached.
There was no ceiling.
Or rather, there was a ceiling, but it was too high. Too high for the flashlight's beam to reach.
At that height, something was moving.
Large, black shapes were clinging to the area around the ceiling. Like spiders. No, the things that had climbed up there were——
Junho's breathing stopped.
Moving skulls. One, two, three.
More were climbing up the walls.
Where were they going?
Upward. Higher and higher.
Junho's fingers touched the flashlight. He grabbed it. He directed the flashlight's beam upward.
The movement on the ceiling accelerated faster.
At that moment, the 2-meter giant monster charged at Junho.
Junho rolled his body. Again. And again.
His clothes tore. His body grew hot. This time it wasn't from mana reinforcement. It was friction heat.
The ground ended.
Junho realized it in that moment. That the ground had been sloped. That he had been rolling continuously.
And now——
"Ah."
Junho's fingers flailed through empty air.
Falling.
Into the depths.
The flashlight's beam grew farther and farther away. The shapes visible in that light also receded. The moving skulls. The 2-meter giant monster. The black somethings on the ceiling.
All of them above.
Junho below.
"Shin Eun-mi."
He murmured. He didn't even know why he called that name. Was it because the screams from 14 years ago echoed in his ears? Or was it the realization that he was following the same path?
His consciousness was growing hazy.
Vertigo from the fall. Fear. Pain.
They all mixed together and wrapped around his brain.
Junho was gripping the flashlight. But there was a darkness the flashlight's beam couldn't reach. The darkness below him. The darkness he was falling into.
How deep was it.
Was there a bottom.
His finger pressed the flashlight's button. He directed the light downward.
He wanted to see where that light reached.
Or did he not want to see.
His consciousness drifted further and further away.
The last thing he saw was——
Beneath the flashlight's beam.
Something glinting.
Water perhaps.
Or——
Black.
Pure black.
A color that consumed even the flashlight's beam.
Into that.
Falling.
Cold came first.
It wasn't water. Something far colder than air brushed against Junho's forearm, then his face. In that instant, the speed of his fall dropped sharply. Slowly. Too slowly.
'What...?'
His consciousness grew clearer. It was strange. He was falling, yet his speed was decreasing. Had gravity weakened? Or was he already dead, existing in another dimension?
Junho opened his eyes. Or they were already open.
The flashlight was still in his hand, its beam still pointing downward. But what that light illuminated was no longer darkness.
Black.
Pure, absolute black spread out before his eyes.
When the flashlight's beam touched it, the light was absorbed. It didn't reflect. It didn't refract. It was consumed purely, completely, leaving nothing behind.
And Junho's body settled onto that black surface.
Softly, like water. Like falling onto desert sand. But unlike sand—something intelligent.
Junho's body began to sink slowly.
'Am I dying...?'
His limbs submerged in the black. His clothes seeped through. His chest was pulled in as if drowning in water. But there was no suffocation. Rather, something resonated from deeper within.
**A cry.**
A vibration that rang directly in Junho's brain. Not language, not sound waves—a pure cry of consciousness. It seemed to be calling, and simultaneously screaming.
'Shin Eun-mi...'
That scream was the same as fourteen years ago.
The black enveloped Junho. It rose to his neck. To his chin. To his lips.
In that final moment, Junho realized it.
This was not a liquid. It was something with substance. Something alive. Something with life force.
The black surface was closing over Junho's head.
And——
**He breathed.**
When Junho's lungs drew in the black, it was air. No—something denser than air. It functioned like oxygen but was far richer. It carried far more energy.
His eyes opened.
Junho could see.
Even within the black, whether his eyes had adapted or this was some other kind of darkness, Junho could see.
And he saw it.
**Light.**
No, it was the opposite. Not light in darkness, but something floating in pure black. A sphere as clear as a pearl. The size of a palm, it emitted a soft luminescence.
Not light, but a force pushing back the darkness.
Junho reached out his hand. His arm moved. Movement was sluggish here, but his will pierced through.
His fingers touched it.
**It vibrated.**
The world shook. No—not the world, but Junho's consciousness shook. As if someone were touching his brain directly. As if someone were grasping his soul itself.
In that moment, memories flowed.
Someone's memories.
Kang Seok-hyun.
That name was branded into Junho's brain. Not just a name, but identity itself. Existence itself.
**"Help... me..."**
A sound. A voice. But not a sound from the mouth—a scream resonating through an entire existence.
The same frequency as Shin Eun-mi's scream from fourteen years ago.
Junho didn't understand, but he wanted to know why they were the same.
His fingers clenched the sphere tightly.
And absorbed it.
**Light flowed into Junho's body.**
An explosion erupted in the black space. No—not an explosion, but a birth. Something was being born. Colors bloomed from within the black. Blue. Red. Yellow. Green.
Mana.
A pure explosion of mana.
Junho's body shone. Mana burst from his skin. Energy far purer and more concentrated than what he had accumulated over fourteen years since his regression. It flowed through his body.
And flowing in together was——
**Memories.**
What Kang Seok-hyun had seen. What Kang Seok-hyun had experienced. What Kang Seok-hyun had known.
The depths of the Tower of Ruins. Another world beneath it. What happened there. Why Kang Seok-hyun fell here thirteen years ago. What he had seen before that. Who had driven him here.
**The connection with Shin Eun-mi.**
Why the screams of two people were the same.
Junho's eyes opened.
He emerged from the black space. No—that space pushed him out, as if its purpose was complete.
Junho fell to the ground.
Onto a cold stone floor.
The flashlight was still in his hand. It hadn't broken, and it still emitted light. But now that light was unnecessary.
Because——
Mana was flowing from Junho's body.
It became light, pushing back this darkness.
Junho stood up. Slowly. As if standing for the first time.
His body had changed. A body filled with Kang Seok-hyun's mana. Mixed with the mana he had accumulated over fourteen years, it had become something new.
His fingers spread of their own accord.
Mana gathered at his fingertips.
And Junho knew. What he could do now. What the memories Kang Seok-hyun left behind showed him.
And most importantly——
**Why Shin Eun-mi had screamed.**
It was that the same thing was happening.
Now. This moment.
Above.
Junho picked up the flashlight.
The light illuminated the darkness above. Movement appeared somewhere in the ceiling. Skulls. And something larger behind them.
His lips moved.
"Let's go up."
The voice was different. Not his own voice. Kang Seok-hyun's voice and his own overlapped.
Junho moved.
Following the flow of mana. Following Kang Seok-hyun's memories.
From the moment he emerged from that black space, everything changed.
He was no longer a hunter running away.
He had become something else.