Gun-woo's voice rang out.
"Lower the shields."
---
The crimson crystals dissolved.
Turning to dust mid-air.
Drifting once.
Then gone.
---
Two soldiers stepped forward.
Red and black armor.
Capes pinned to their right shoulders.
The same crimson as Gun-woo's.
They pulled heavy miniguns from their backs.
---
The system spoke.
*Fire Spit — activated.*
*Flaming Seat Shot — activated.*
*Lower skills — fusion complete.*
*Mana flowing through both bodies, in and out.*
*Building flow.*
*Energy complete.*
*Lower-high skill — Imperial Flame Blazer — activated.*
---
The guns opened up.
---
Fire poured out in long arcs.
Fireworks made of flame instead of light.
Erupting into the dark forest from both barrels at once.
The mechanical sound of it almost alive.
Screeching.
Tearing.
A noise that didn't belong to anything natural.
---
The forest burned where it landed.
Trees that bent at wrong angles now bending differently.
Collapsing.
The dark consumed by orange and red until there was no dark left in that direction at all.
---
Gun-woo watched it happen.
Patient.
Then it ended.
---
He moved forward.
The soldiers parting to let him through.
He looked back at the cameraman.
"Come."
A pause.
"Follow me. I want to show you what this looks like."
---
They followed.
---
What remained in the clearing was massive.
A gorilla-shaped creature.
Black.
Its skull split open.
Blood and matter spread across the scorched ground in every direction.
---
Gun-woo stood beside it.
Looked at it the way someone looks at something they've seen many times before.
"Three point zero five meters."
He glanced at the camera.
"For those of you used to American measurements — roughly ten feet."
A breath.
"That's the average height for these creatures."
---
He continued.
"They don't have stomachs in any functional sense. But they consume constantly. Rocks. Trees."
A pause.
"Hunters."
---
His eyes moved away from the camera for a moment.
Toward the wreckage.
---
"I know this is difficult to watch."
His voice quieter now.
Still steady.
"But I have to ask something of all of you."
A breath.
"Don't look away."
---
He looked directly into the lens.
"This is the truth of this world. The brutality of it. The ugliness underneath everything we tell ourselves to get through the day."
A pause.
"Deeper into this forest we'll find more of them."
---
He straightened.
His tone shifting back toward instruction.
---
"One important thing before we continue. Every dungeon has two bosses."
He gestured at the creature beside him.
"This is a sub-boss. The leader of this particular group."
A breath.
"The main boss is always located deeper. At the core."
He looked at the formation around him.
"Stay close. Stay safe."
---
The camera lingered on what remained of the creature.
The wreckage of its skull.
Matter spread across blackened ground.
---
Blood moved slowly through the dirt.
Finding its way downhill.
Reaching the cameraman's boots.
---
His legs shook.
Small.
Involuntary.
Not from cold.