The last of the un-dead crumpled into a pile of scorched bone and decaying flesh. The flickering blue glow in its hollowed eyes extinguished, leaving silence again in the ruined temple.
Asher breathed out, shook his hands. The brute power that had coursed through his form mere moments before now lay as a hushed vibration under the surface of his flesh. It wasn't mana, but it also weren't the Awakening energy Hunters used. It was something completely different — and it was his.
The other Hunters were remained frozen in his direction.
Garret, who was just removing his blades from a creature's spine, squinted. "That punch you threw… what the fuck was that?"
Another Hunter, a woman with short red hair and a sniper rifle strapped to her back, grumbled, "He's not even officially Awakened yet, but he hit that thing harder than a C-Rank brawler."
Asher just shrugged his shoulders. "Lucky hit."
Garret snorted. "Bullshit. I've been battling for years, and I can recognize calling when I see it. That wasn't just luck."
Before anyone could follow up, a voice crackled in their earpieces.
"Keep moving. You're nearing the dungeon core chamber.
It was Dr. Linara, hovering over them from the outside.
Garret activated his communicator. "Got it. Moving in."
He gave Asher one last look but didn't press.
For now.
They advanced through the destroyed hallways, boots thudding against the cracked stone. The further they went, the denser and heavier the air felt.
And then…
A deep rumbled reverberated throughout the whole hall.
The Hunters stiffened and pulled their weapons.
They had arrived.
You had reached the final gate at the end of the corridor with pulsing blue runes engraved into an enormous gilded gate like a heart rate monitor. Beyond it, a throne-like altar loomed, shadowy mist encircling it.
The Hunters fan out, weapons drawn.
"Lesser Boss chamber, I think," Garret said.
"Ordinary dungeon layout," the sniper woman said. "Kill the boss, collect the core, get out."
One of the Hunters a younger man with a shaved head stepped forward. "I'll breach it—"
BOOM.
Before he made another step, the gate exploded outward.
A huge, decaying figure appeared out of the fog.
A Wraithbound Knight.
Standing three meters tall, it wore successive layers of rotting armor on its body, its bones moving with sickly wisps. In one hand it wielded a rusted greatsword, the head of which oozed with green necrotic energy.
Its hollow eyes glowered with unnatural loathing.
And then it moved.
Quicker than something that size had any right to be.
The first Hunter barely had time to react. With a flash, the rusted blade whooshed down, and sliced off his arm in an instant.
He cried out, falling to the ground.
The others fired. The gunshots echoed, mana-infused bullets hitting against the knight's armor. Sparks flew but the onslaught hardly stopped it.
Garret cursed. "Shit! It's harder than we realized —"
The knight lifted its sword, and a blast of green energy radiated outward, throwing two more Hunters to the ground.
Asher narrowed his eyes.
This thing… it was unlike the lesser undead they had battled before.
It was stronger. More complete.
It was more than just a dungeon creature.
It was an artifact of something more ancient.
The knight's head whipped around toward him. Its empty stare fixed on him, as though it knew him.
Then it charged.
Asher moved on instinct.
The knight's sword came crashing down — but Asher was already gone, darting back outside its reach. He twisted his body, his new power flaring again, and landed a pinpoint counterstrike directed at its exposed ribcage.
The knock reverberated through the air.
The knight staggered.
For the first time, it seemed… surprised.
The other Hunters saw it too.
"Did he just—?"
"He knocked it back?"
"What the hell is this guy?"
Asher didn't stop. He pressed on, dodging the knight's unsteady, clumsy attacks. Each time it struck, he felt out the flow, playing on the fly.
This was not a fight like those the past.
He couldn't rely on magic.
He couldn't rely on spells.
But he would have his instincts to go on.
This is a memory, a phantom echo of a life past, our hunter had thought, of a fight against a death-due warlord, a right of combat from a man that had once ruled deep within an abyssal dungeon.
How his body had thrashed back then. How he had leveraged his opponent's attacks against him.
He used that now.
The knight swung wide. Asher crouched, moved into its guard and punched a vicious palm to the end of the gap in its chestplate.
A shockwave erupted.
The knight staggered and flared with necrotic energy.
Garret saw the opening.
"Now!"
The other Hunters pounced in, throwing the kitchen sink. A flurry of arrows, then gunfire, then sword strikes, followed by a blast of mana—an overwhelming attack against the knight.
With a last, echoing wail, the knight fell. Its body melted into vapor, leaving only a pearlescent crystalline core suspended where it had dropped.
The dungeon core.
Garret sighed and dropped his weapon. "Well, damn. It shouldn't have been that hard,"
The sniper lady shook her head. "That thing wasn't normal."
Linara's voice crackled in their earpieces again. "Confirmed dungeon clearance. Core retrieval in process. Stand by."
Asher stared as the mist whirled where the knight had dropped.
Even now, he could sense it—a lingering presence.
That thing had seen him. Recognized him.
Like it knew what he once was.
His fingers clenched.
These weren't just random monster spawns in an empty dungeon.
And if he wanted answers…
He would need to climb up higher.