Seth stopped at the fork. Three tunnels opened up ahead, each marked by gnawed holes and deep scratches on the walls—as if hungry claws had tried to escape or drag something inside. The same smell permeated the air: rotten flesh and burnt mana. But there was something new there. Something that didn't make sense.
He frowned, his eyes narrowing like blades.
"...I can't feel it," he muttered, almost as if he didn't want to give voice to the thought.
Eliza, close behind, approached silently. "What?"
"The aura. The distortion." Seth kept his eyes closed for a moment, concentrating. "Everything is blurry. As if someone were... suffocating the world."
Eliza swallowed hard. "Is the dungeon trying to blind us?"
He didn't answer right away. Silence hung heavy between them before Seth raised his hand and pointed to the tunnel on the left.
"Let's go that way. If it's a trap, it better be quick."
They moved forward.
The tunnel on the left was narrower, its walls vibrating slightly—a low, almost organic frequency, like the echo of a sick heart. The floor was sticky, covered with a viscous substance that clung to their boots with every step. The mana stones on the walls seemed to flicker, emitting a tremulous, sickly light, as if resisting their very existence in that place.
And then... the sound.
Wet. Sharp.
CHAC.
Then another.
CHAC... CHAC... CRACK.
Seth stopped. His body stiffened, his muscles tense like strings about to snap.
Eliza took another step forward, looking over his shoulder...
And froze.
The tunnel opened into a misshapen clearing, like the infected cavity of an open wound. The ceiling arched above them in mineral spasms—and in the center, surrounded by a scene of pure carnage, stood Gregory.
Blood covered the floor like a shallow lake. Brains, severed limbs, and viscera hung from pointed stalagmites. Bodies in impossible positions, broken in half or burned to the bone, were scattered like broken dolls.
And Gregory, in the middle of it all, stood with the calmness of a doctor after surgery. A mana blade tinkled in his hand like a whispering scalpel.
His face was serene.
Almost... satisfied.
Surrounded by bodies.
Not combatants. Not victims of a fair battle.
Fragments of flesh and bone. Human scraps.
There was no fight there.
There was no resistance.
Only execution.
Gregory was kneeling over what remained of Marcus—a torso split open from side to side, ribs spread apart like exposed claws, and internal organs carefully laid out beside him, like instruments that had fulfilled their function.
In his hands, he held a still-moist lung, examining it with the precision of an anatomist. As if studying a rare collector's item.
Further away, Elias was still alive—if it could be called life. Stuck to crystal thorns that pierced him like skewers, embedded in his thighs and shoulders, he writhed in silence. His eyes bulged, his face frozen in absolute terror.
His open mouth made no sound. His tongue had been torn out.
Gregory extended a finger. A blade of mana formed—thin, translucent, sharp as intent.
It arced down across the wizard's chest.
A clean incision.
Quick.
Elias's heart was torn out with a single gesture and placed, still pulsing, on a rock beside him—like a ritual offering. A signature. A conclusion.
Doyle... was no longer recognizable.
His limbs were separated in positions that defied nature. His ribs, exposed and broken, resembled the open wings of a dead bird. His fingertips had been torn off one by one—each nail meticulously removed.
But the eyes...
The eyes were still there.
Alive.
And they watched Gregory.
With fear.
With supplication.
Gregory didn't see them as eyes. He didn't see them as life.
Just defects in a piece that needed to be discontinued.
That's when he heard the footsteps.
Light, but distinct.
He turned slowly, each movement controlled, clinical. His face clean, serene—his glasses intact, as if the blood covering the rest of his body respected his vision.
And then he saw them.
Seth. Eliza.
Time froze for an instant—a thread stretched to its limit before snapping.
Gregory tilted his head with disconcerting naturalness.
"Ah," he said, as if greeting acquaintances in a casual encounter. "You arrived earlier than expected."
The silence that followed was thick. Impassable. A soundless abyss.
Eliza covered her mouth. She wanted to scream. She couldn't even breathe.
Seth didn't move.
He didn't speak.
The air around him vibrated with an invisible, wild, dense electricity.
Gregory rose slowly, as if ending a ritual and returning to the physical world. He wiped the blood from his gloves with a tear from Elijah's robe. The fabric made a wet, sickening sound as it tore—grotesquely loud in the silence.
"Containment report," he said, his voice clear and professional. "Subjects exhibited acute psychological collapse and hostile behavior. Corrective measures were applied. Variables eliminated."
He smiled.
Small. Precise.
A gesture of absolute control.
"I warned you, didn't I?" Seth's voice cut through the silence like a sharp blade. Calm. Almost casual.
Eliza trembled. Her eyes fixed on the horror scattered across the cave. She had never seen bodies like this before — not torn apart, not dehumanized. Her mind tried to deny, to refuse, to retreat... but there was no escape. Only the raw truth before her.
She staggered back a step and vomited.
The sound echoed off the rocks like a humiliating whisper.
"Geez..." Seth muttered, frowning, almost with a touch of pity. "The first time is always the worst."
He turned slowly to Gregory.
"No witnesses, right?"
Gregory looked up. His eyes behind his glasses glowed with a perverse excitement.
"Oh... you're a quick learner." The smile that formed on his face was not human. It was a cut. A tear where there should have been empathy.
Seth sighed. A real, tired sigh, like someone who sees something inevitable repeating itself.
It was at that moment that Gregory moved.
Quickly.
Like lightning without light, he appeared before Seth, the dagger already in motion, tracing a precise arc toward his neck—a clean execution, without drama.
But he stopped.
The blade froze in the air, millimeters from the skin.
Seth had stopped it with a finger. A single finger.
As if holding a branch too light to offer resistance.
He raised an eyebrow, effortlessly.
"Are you kidding me?"
The tone was pure contempt.
Gregory tried to push the blade. Nothing.
Seth looked at the finger blocking the dagger, then back at him.
"They haven't reevaluated my rank yet, so you must be pretty scared." He shook his head. "You picked the wrong Raid."