The system timer buzzed its countdown, and every second felt like a drop of sweat sliding down Seth's neck.
[Return Time: 00:00:03][00:00:02][00:00:01]
"Please… let time pass slower out there…" he muttered, eyes tense.
[RETURN INITIATED]
The world around him twisted like liquid glass. The desert's heat vanished, replaced by a cold, metallic chill. The sand beneath his feet gave way to damp, rocky terrain, and the blinding sun was swallowed by a dim gloom lit only by scattered magical lights and muffled screams.
BZZZZZRRRRRRRRMMM!
Seth landed on his feet—dazed—right in the middle of an active dungeon.
Explosions echoed in the distance. Magical beams sliced through the air. A hunter dashed past him, panting, blood dripping from his forehead.
"EVACUATE! EVERYONE OUT, NOW!"
Another hunter hastily cast a wall of ice to block a thrashing creature with multiple stone arms. Behind it, colossal shadows shifted as if the dungeon itself had become sentient.
Seth froze.
This wasn't where he was supposed to be.
Or at least... that's what he thought.
[You were teleported to a Rank-C Dungeon due to dimensional instability in your original location.]
"~Instability?..." he muttered, watching several hunters battle a towering golem-like monster.
[Apparently, two extremely powerful auras were overwhelming the area near the Player's original location. Teleporting the Player there could have compromised their integrity.]
"Two auras... they were... fighting?" Seth murmured, just as the Golem landed a crushing blow on a hunter, sending the body flying several meters.
Seth didn't have time to think.
The hunter's body hit the cavern wall with a sickening crack, blood splattering like paint across the black stone. A cry of horror rang out from a nearby group.
The Golem advanced with relentless force, each step shaking the ground like a war drum. A mix of elemental magic and physical strikes rained down on it—but the creature absorbed it all with a layer of living stone that regenerated by the second.
Seth narrowed his eyes.
"This… isn't a normal monster," he murmured, involuntary sparks flickering in his eyes.
[You are facing: 'Rune-Crypt Guardian' (Rank-C+)]
The creature roared, unleashing a shockwave in all directions. Seth braced himself, arms crossed in front of his face. The force pushed him back a few inches… but that was all.
"I really have gotten stronger," he said quietly—almost surprised—as the monster's aura felt utterly insignificant.
"...The system threw me in here by mistake. But now that I'm here... maybe I should make this mistake count." Seth stretched as he watched the group fighting.
The shadow at his feet rippled like liquid, and Bastet emerged — her sleek black fur gleaming with an ethereal shimmer. She growled low, eyes locked on the Golem.
"You wanna play too, huh?" Seth said with a crooked smile, leaning down to give her a quick scratch behind the ears. Bastet wagged her tail with mock innocence — a smooth motion that left trails of shadow dissolving into the air like smoke.
But then Seth raised a hand, fingers signaling her to stop.
"Hold it."
Bastet, as if she truly understood, froze and lay down right there, resting her head on her paws, eyes still trained on the battlefield like a panther watching a wounded deer.
"We're in foreign territory. Unknown dungeon. No tactical info." Seth glanced around, calmly analyzing the surroundings. "And to make it worse... the guild politics here in England are tighter than the Queen's Guard on parade. If we jump in now, we might end up worse off than that golem by the time we're out."
He looked sideways at Bastet, who was now purring softly like she was just napping through an apocalyptic collapse.
"So no trouble... for now. We watch. If it all goes to hell... then we play."
Bastet gave him a sideways look and let out a sigh that was almost human — like she was saying, "Whatever you say."
Seth crossed his arms, leaned casually against a nearby boulder, and just watched. Every movement of the Golem. Every spell cast. Every scream.
The battlefield pulsed with chaotic energy.
The group of eight hunters was giving it their all — magic, steel, sweat, and desperation. A mage conjured pillars of ice that shattered like glass under the Golem's stone fists.
An archer fired enchanted arrows that simply ricocheted off. A tank stood his ground, coughing up blood, barely managing to hold the monster's attention as his vision flickered from exhaustion.
"HOLD THAT DAMN THING! JUST TEN MORE SECONDS — I NEED TEN—!" a support caster shouted, gripping a staff that shook under the strain of raw mana.
Seth stayed against the stone, eyes half-closed, watching in complete silence. A faint wisp of shadow occasionally slid from Bastet's tail, like her growing impatience was beginning to leak into the ground.
"...They're dead." The words came low, almost a whisper, but sharp as a verdict.
He watched with the detached clarity of someone who'd seen this show before — an overtaxed tank on the verge of collapse, a drained mage, a team with no real synergy... and an enemy already deep into berserk mode.
The Golem roared — not with a voice, for it had no vocal cords — but with the sound of its own body fracturing, the magic binding it tearing apart.
Crimson cracks split across its stone body. Magic poured from its joints like molten blood — hot, alive.
"He's already past the point of return... This isn't a boss anymore. It's a sentence." Seth's eyes narrowed.
The Golem slammed its hands down, cracking the terrain in every direction. Two hunters were thrown like leaves in a gale. The archer was hurled against the cavern wall — she didn't get back up.
"Five..." One of the casters erupted in a burst of light, trying to sacrifice himself with a suicide spell — but the Golem absorbed the energy like a sip of wine. He didn't even get the chance to die heroically. He just collapsed, injured.
"Four…" The tank dropped to his knees. No shield. No strength. Just watching as the creature advanced.
"Three…" Seth let out a long, tired sigh. Bastet was already rising, ears perked. She knew what was coming.
"Two…" Seth uncrossed his arms. "One."
Then he spoke — low, calm, like he wasn't stepping into a battlefield... just claiming a space that had always belonged to him.
"Bastet. He's all yours."
The shadow exploded like ink in water.
Bastet vanished and reappeared behind the Golem in an instant, her claws already gripping the creature's shadow.
The battlefield fell into a moment of unnatural silence. The kind that hangs heavy — the calm before something monstrous.
SHRRRRHHH—
The shadow beneath the Golem trembled. Like a crack in reality, it split into a vortex of darkness. Bastet surged from it like a vengeful specter — silent as the void, lethal as an unsheathed blade.
She didn't growl.
She didn't scream.
She just moved.
With a feline leap, Bastet disappeared again, diving into another shadow — and emerged from a blind spot of the colossus. Her black claws sank between two stone plates as if they were made of soft bark.
CRACK!
One of the Golem's arms was torn off, ripped without mercy.
The monster howled. A deep, guttural sound echoed through the dungeon walls, shaking debris from the ceiling. But Bastet was already gone.
SHHHK!
New shadow. New angle.
She appeared above the Golem's head, spinning midair in a deadly spiral — her claws scraped across the stone skull like blades on marble, leaving deep gouges before vanishing again.
SLASH!
Behind.
CLANG!
Left side.
CRACK!
Legs.
BAM!
Spine.
It was a symphony of destruction.A warrior goddess dancing atop an altar of darkness.Untouchable. Unseen. Unstoppable.
Seth watched from afar, arms crossed again. His eyes held quiet admiration. Not for brute force — he'd seen enough of that.But for precision. For the beauty in movement. For the tactical brilliance Bastet displayed.There was no waste. No hesitation.
It was like the dungeon was her jungle... and the Golem, just another clueless intruder.
"She's playing," Seth murmured, almost chuckling. "She's testing her limits…"
The hunters stood frozen, jaws slack. The Golem, once an unstoppable wall of power, now crumbled under a flurry of strikes no eye could track. The panther was nothing but a black blur between flickering magical lights — appearing, tearing, vanishing.
Until—
She stopped.
Perched atop the Golem's head.
The creature roared, stumbling. It tried to move, but shadows already wrapped around it like living chains. Bastet crouched low on its crown, and her eyes glowed a deep, haunting violet.
[TWILIGHT VEIL: SHADOW POSSESSION — activated.]
The dungeon's shadows all converged toward the center. The Golem shuddered. Twitched.
Then… went still.
Frozen.
Bastet vanished from atop the Golem's head.
And for a moment… the Golem turned slowly, like a puppet on strings, its eyes glowing with a violet light.
Seth raised an eyebrow. "…"
One step.
Another.
Then, like a soldier kneeling before his king — or a dog recognizing its master — the colossal Golem dropped to one knee. Stone creaked under its own weight, the cracked plates groaning from the massacre Bastet had just delivered. The sound echoed like muffled thunder through the dungeon walls.
The once-feared, uncontrollable creature… now bowed.
Before Seth.
The panther's shadow slithered out of the monster's core, slipping through its shattered armor like living mist. Bastet emerged with her usual grace at Seth's side and simply… sat down. Her tail curled calmly around her body, and she let out a lazy yawn, as if she hadn't just dismantled something the size of a small house.
Seth folded his arms, eyeing the still-kneeling Golem. Then glanced at Bastet.
"Back to being lazy, huh?" he said with a slight smirk. She answered with a soft purr and a flick of her ears, as if to say: mission accomplished, human. Let me nap now.
Seth stepped forward. He placed an open hand on the Golem's forehead, right in the center of its massive head. His gaze was calm. Commanding. No anger. No urgency. Just… resolve.
"…Good job," he said.
Then gave it a light tap.
But what followed was anything but light.
CRACK!
The sound of destruction rang out like a symphony of shattering stone. The Golem's entire skull imploded beneath the pressure of that touch, as though its structure were made of glass crushed by a divine hammer. Shards flew in all directions.
At its core, buried deep within layers of ancient rock, a gem — the Core Heart — pulsed with one final burst of energy.
Then shattered into a thousand shards of purple light.
BOOM!
A wave of energy burst outward in a hot gust, kicking up dust and forcing the nearby hunters to shield their faces on instinct.
When the dust settled, only one figure remained in the chamber… and the dead Golem.
"…What just happened?" one of the hunters asked, stunned.
"…He destroyed it with a touch…" another murmured, trembling.
"What class is he…? He wasn't even in the raid…" the mage whispered in disbelief.
"Did he… disappear?" The rest were too shaken to form words.
But… in the shadows behind the mage… "What a convenient ability…" Seth muttered as he and Bastet moved effortlessly through the group's shadows.
"Shadow manipulation… Maybe I should copy that from you…" he added with a grin.
A low growl rumbled through the shadow dimension.
"Okay okay, I won't," he chuckled.
"Now… we wait for them to leave, right? Shame I didn't level up…"