Knowing that the king was somewhere within this tunnel, Reever instinctively raised his guard. Every step he took felt heavier than the last, not because of fear, but because experience had taught him a simple truth: when things looked quiet in this game, they were usually anything but. His senses were stretched thin, his attention divided between the walls, the ceiling, and the ground beneath his boots.
It was then that he saw him.
A player was webbed tightly against the rough stone wall, layers of thick, sticky silk binding what remained of his body in place. The man was alive. Barely. His voice was hoarse, cracked from screaming too long, too often. He begged for release in broken words, his eyes wide with desperation. Several of his limbs were already missing, torn away crudely. From the jagged wounds and the residue left behind, Reever could tell immediately what had done this.
Spider ants.
Not the smaller soldier types either. This kind of damage could only come from something much larger.
For a brief moment, instinct stirred within him. The urge to help. To act. To do what heroes were supposed to do in stories. His hand almost moved on its own.
Then his thoughts snapped into place.
A trap.
The realization hit him like cold water. The king was intelligent. Worse than that, it was learning. Using bait like this was effective, especially in a game filled with players desperate to see themselves as saviors. Anyone with a shred of humanity would rush forward, lower their guard, and die screaming seconds later.
Reever's expression hardened.
Without hesitation, he raised his weapon and fired. A single, clean headshot ended the player's suffering instantly. No hesitation. No mercy masquerading as kindness. Just efficiency.
"The king is ruthless indeed," Reever muttered quietly. "It's developing sentience… or at least something close to it."
That realization unsettled him more than the corpse on the wall. Monsters that acted on instinct were manageable. Monsters that thought were something else entirely. And there were seven kings in total. Maybe more. The system had lied before. There was no reason to assume it wasn't lying now.
He summoned his equipment with a thought.
An acid bomb appeared first, followed by a concussion bomb. Then another. And another. Soon, ten of them hovered around him in a loose formation, suspended in midair. Each one responded directly to his intent. No gestures. No commands. Just will.
After dealing with the trap, Reever advanced deeper into the tunnel, his pace slow and deliberate. He no longer moved like a predator. Now he moved like prey that knew it was being hunted.
His mind flashed back to an earlier battle, against the cockrupines. Their king had marked prey with a subtle trap, allowing them to track targets no matter how well they hid. That lesson had been burned into his memory. Overconfidence killed faster than monsters ever could.
He wasn't strong enough yet.
He would be. One day. Strong enough to ignore traps, to laugh at death, to crush kings without preparation. But that day wasn't today. Until then, humility was survival.
The tunnel twisted and widened as he progressed, the walls bearing fresh scars. Soon, he found another body.
This one was worse.
A headless corpse lay sprawled across the stone floor. No webbing. No struggle. Just a clean, brutal kill. Reever crouched beside it, examining the remains. The blood hadn't dried yet. The body was still warm.
The king was close.
Without delay, he summoned more explosives. Fire-based bombs, smoke bombs, flash grenades. Ten of each. The air around him became crowded with floating death. To further ensure his survival, he summoned one of the ten special gifts given to him by Dr. Harun. A bomb unlike the others. Its casing was unfamiliar, its energy unreadable.
They hovered around him patiently, awaiting deployment.
Then it happened.
Screetch.
The sound tore through the tunnel, sharp and piercing, vibrating through stone and bone alike.
Screetch.
Before the echo even faded, the tunnel erupted with movement.
As if they had been waiting just beyond reality itself, millions of soldier spider ants flooded toward him. Millions. Their red eyes burned with unnatural intensity, reflecting light like living embers. The ground disappeared beneath them, a writhing tide of chitin and legs.
Above, thousands of rooks and bishops poured in, their wings beating violently as they filled the air.
There was no time to retreat. No room to maneuver.
Reever didn't run.
"Deploy."
"Explode."
The words were unnecessary. The thought alone was enough.
Every explosive around him launched outward simultaneously. Acid, fire, concussion, smoke, flash, and the special bomb from Harun. Reever stood still as death bloomed around him. One of the few mercies of the game was absolute: an explosive's owner could never be harmed by it.
The tunnel fell silent for a fraction of a second.
Then the world shattered.
The explosion was apocalyptic. The shockwave tore through the tunnel, the sound loud enough to wake the dead. Stone cracked. The walls screamed under the strain. The tunnel threatened to collapse entirely, the ceiling groaning as if it might give way.
But it held.
When the chaos finally settled and the smoke cleared, Reever stared ahead in disbelief.
Nothing remained.
No spider ants. No rooks. No bishops. No corpses. No movement.
Everything was gone.
He hadn't broken a sweat.
The system itself seemed stunned.
A message rang out across the entire facility.
[Congratulations Bot 067 for achieving the impossible.
You have been awarded 20,000,000 points.
You are currently in the first position of the conquest.
Good luck surviving till the end of the game.]
Confusion erupted everywhere.
"The hell?"
"Who is bot 067?"
"What did he do to get that many points?"
"Has he killed the king?"
Questions spread like wildfire, but only one person knew the answer.
Conner froze when he heard the announcement. Twenty million points. His teammate had just leapt into a league of his own. Unless someone killed a queen, no one would come close.
As for Reever, he stood alone in the ruined tunnel, stunned. He cursed the system inwardly for exposing him so blatantly. Still, he couldn't deny the result.
Twenty million points. Free.
"I guess Harun's bomb did most of the damage," he thought grimly. "The system didn't account for that."
A darker thought followed.
Did Harun know who he really was? Or worse… did all NPCs?
Reever looked at the shattered cavern around him, still standing despite the devastation.
"Now to look for the king," he thought as he moved forward again, fresh bombs already forming around him.
After all, who wouldn't want free kills.