Max
With the image of that willfully sarcastic little dragon still fresh in his mind, Max tightened his grip on his rapier and stepped onto the stairs of Floor 12.
As they entered, he felt the transition immediately. The suffocating, stationary fog of the 11th floor receded, replaced by a humid, swirling mist that clung to the stone floor like dry ice in a low-budget music video. The terrain here was a nightmare for anyone prone to vertigo—narrow stone bridges arching over bottomless chasms, leading to wide plateaus littered with jagged, obsidian-like rock formations, but the visibility was technically better, only for the mist to make everything look like a dream—or a trap.
Waiting for them on the first wide plateau was a welcoming committee that clearly didn't get the "do not engage the blue-haired devil" memo. Orcs, Imps, and Bad Bats were lined up, but Max felt something was different.
"They're moving in sync," Max muttered, eyes narrowing in observation.
Instead of the usual chaotic rush, the Orcs formed an interlocking shield wall. The Imps scurried behind them like skirmishers, and the Bad Bats hung back, waiting for a signal. It was a proper tactical formation. The Dungeon was learning, adapting its "operating system" to counter his blitz tactics.
Floor 12. The final exam before the Middle Floors, Max thought, his mind cataloging the changes. Designed to punish anyone who wanted to dive deeper.
He smirked. "Good try. Kairu, let's clear this."
Max flickered forward, his rapier singing. He didn't just slash; he used precise thrusts, his PoD coating the blade like a black film that turned iron shields and thick muscle into smoke.
On his shoulder, Kairu was a one-slime artillery battery. When the Bats tried to swarm, the slime didn't just fire water jets. He innovated. Max felt a series of tiny pops as Kairu pinched off pieces of his own mass and fired them like buckshot. These sentient jelly bullets adjusted their trajectory mid-air, tracking the Imps even as they dodged.
Pop-pop-pop-SQUELCH.
"Nice aim, buddy," Max praised as the last Imp fell.
Max was reaching for the scattered magic stones when he felt it—a deep, guttural vibration that shuddered through the stone plateau.
Thrummm... Thrummm...
It was a low-frequency sound that bypassed the ears and went straight for the marrow. Max's Devil instincts prickled. That was a roar, but muffled by distance and scale. Curiously, he and Kairu moved toward the source, jumping across the narrow chasms with the ease of experienced platformers as they picked up their loot.
As they neared a massive cavern, the sounds of battle became visceral. Max peeked around a jagged pillar and froze.
This was the 11th floor in reverse.
Dozens of Silverbacks were being systematically dismantled. The culprits were two Infant Dragons, each roughly five feet tall and four meters long from snout to tail. Their scales were a deep obsidian that caught the faint dungeon light, and they moved with a predatory grace that made the monkeys look like toddlers. One dragon caught a Silverback with its tail, sending the five-hundred-pound ape flying into a chasm with a sickening crunch.
But what truly caught Max's eye was what they were guarding.
Deep in the mist behind the dragons, he caught a glimpse of something sparkling—an unmistakable, rhythmic twinkle of gold and gems.
Max actually let out a muffled laugh. "No way. Is that treasure?"
It was a stereotype he knew from Earth—dragons hoarding shiny things. Seeing it play out in a dungeon, with living dragons defending a real pile of loot, made him want to laugh at the absurdity.
"Alright," Max grinned, cracking his knuckles. "I want a piece of that."
He shifted his stance, feeling the familiar hum of demonic power pooling in his legs. "Kairu, hold on tight. We're crashing the party."
Shunshin.
He vanished, reappearing mid-air above the melee, intending to drop on the dragons like a meteor.
But the Dungeon had other plans.
CRACK.
The stone floor directly beneath his landing zone exploded upward. Not from a wall, not from a shadow—from the solid ground itself.
Hard Armors.
Three massive Armadillos, larger than a grown man, burst from the earth. Max's eyes widened in genuine shock. Ground spawns? He'd only seen the dungeon birthed from walls or ceilings. This was a violation of the rules!
The surprise cost him a precious second. The lead Armadillo, a rolling ball of spiked chitin, initiated a spin-dash at Max's chest while he was still descending.
Just because he was stunned didn't mean he was defenceless. The moment the pinball closed in on Max and passed the 10 foot radius, 2 things simultaneously happened.
Ping.
Auto-Evade kicked in and before Max could even process the threat, his body jerked backward. His legs kicked out, propelling him ten feet away in a frantic backflip. The Armadillo blurred through the space he had just occupied, missing him by inches.
But Max was still disoriented, his landing clumsy. The other two Armadillos, sensing weakness, adjusted their trajectory and charged.
Max braced himself, trying to bring his rapier up, but Kairu was faster.
The slime launched himself from Max's shoulder. Mid-air, Kairu expanded, stretching his blue mass into a wide, gelatinous wall directly in the path of the charging monsters.
THUD-SQUISH.
The Armadillos slammed into the slime wall with the force of a battering ram.
Nothing happened.
Their hard shells, designed to crush rock and bone, simply sank into Kairu's amorphous body. The impact was absorbed, dispersed through the slime's non-newtonian structure. The Armadillos stopped dead, stunned by the physics-defying resistance. They uncurled, confused, looking around for the enemy they were supposed to have flattened.
That confusion was their last mistake.
Kairu didn't plan to simply block; he countered. A tendril shot out from his body, hardening into a razor-sharp blade infused with magic.
Shluck.
The blade punched through the soft underbelly of the lead Armadillo, bypassing its armor entirely. The monster squealed once before dissolving into ash.
On cue, the remaining two Armadillos charged, seemingly incapable of learning that physical attacks were useless against a sentient puddle. Kairu met them with the same efficiency, turning their momentum into their own demise.
Watching his familiar handle the pesky rats snapped Max out of his shock.
"Good save, Kairu!" Max called out, his shock replaced by adrenaline.
He didn't waste time. The Armadillos were just the appetizer. Max charged the main group, flickering through the mist with Shunshin. He decided to introduce himself properly.
A wave of crimson-black energy erupted from his sword, erasing three screaming Silverbacks in the rear who were trying to flank the dragons.
The battlefield went silent instantly. Every head—hairy and scaled alike—snapped toward Max.
The Silverbacks looked at the smoking voids where their pack mates had stood, then at the dragons, and finally at Max. The logic of the apes was simple: the dragons were a territorial obstacle, but the adventurer was an existential threat. The intruder had just become Priority One.
With a collective, deafening roar that shook the stalactites, two dozen Silverbacks abandoned their siege of the dragons and charged toward Max.
"Wait, wait! I'm a friendly, I'm on your side!" Max groaned, realizing he'd accidentally gathered 100% of the aggro. "Priorities, you over-grown rugs! The gold is over there!"
But the "over-grown rugs" didn't care as they continued their charge. Max sighed at his failure. It better be worth the headache, he thought as he prepared himself.
The first Silverback reached him in a minute, leaping with a roar. Max decided to test the creature's physical limits. He braced his feet, shifted his weight, and swung his rapier in a broad, horizontal parry.
CLANG.
The sound was like a hammer striking a steel rail. The Silverback's forearm, thick as a tree trunk and reinforced by dungeon-grown muscle, didn't just block the blade—it punched back. Max felt the sheer kinetic force travel up the length of his sword, through his wrists, and into his elbows. It ended in a sharp, electric sting that made his entire palm go numb.
"Owww! OWWWWW!" Max yelled, his hand vibrating with a stinging sensation. He hopped back, shaking his arm. "What are you guys made of? Vulcanized rubber and spite?"
The Silverback landed and stood tall, its chest heaving. It didn't rush immediately; instead, it bared its teeth in a terrifyingly human-like expression of smugness, sensing the human's discomfort.
Behind Max, Kairu was still fighting as more Armadillos had burst from the floor, spin-dashing into the slime like rolling boulders completely ignorant. Kairu, being the kind slime he was, just extruded spikes and blades, thinning their numbers.
But something was wrong.
Max's Magic Sense prickled. He expanded his senses while showing his frustration at the smug ape in front of him.
"Bastard, you're dead," Max snarled, his eyes flashing with irritation.
He pointed a finger directly at the smug ape's head. "Bang."
A PoD Bullet shot forward. The Silverback, possessing instincts far superior to a simple Orc, sensed the erasure coming and jerked its head to the side. The bullet missed the forehead but clipped its left ear—erasing the cartilage and a significant chunk of the skull behind it in a clean, red-rimmed crescent.
The ape collapsed with a wet thud, dead before it realized it had failed to dodge.
For a heartbeat, the cavern went silent again. The rest of the pack skidded to a halt, their roars dying into uncertain whimpers as they stared at their fallen leader. But the fear didn't last long. It was replaced by a mindless, berserk rage. They began to beat their chests until they sounded like war drums, their eyes turning a deep, bloody red.
Looking at their berserk state, Max made a decision pushing more mana into Auto-Evade, expanding its radius to thirty feet.
He knew it was risky as it was clear from his experiments that having Auto-Evade at 30 feet would drain his reserves faster, but getting pinned between apes and dragons with only ten feet of warning was suicide—not to mention the dungeon might spawn ambush monsters like those rodents Kairu was slaughtering while he was distracted.
Let's see if I regret this. He thought as he prepared himself to slay more apes.
Just as the said apes prepared to rush him all at once, Max felt the temperature in the cavern skyrocket.
Inhale...
He looked past the apes and saw the two Infant Dragons retreated toward their hoard, their long necks arching back. Their throats were swelling, glowing with a volatile, orange-red light that shimmered through the mist.
Oh, I am caught in a sandwich, Max realized.
He was the anvil, the apes were the hammer, and the dragons were about to provide the blast furnace.
"Fine! If we're doing a total party wipe, let's make it colorful!"
Max dropped into a wide, grounded stance and raised both hands, palms facing the charging primates. He didn't just want a quick blast; he needed the density. He needed the crushing weight that only a full aria could provide. He spoke the words with a conviction that made the surrounding air hum:
"Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man!
"On the wall of blue flame, inscribe a twin lotus. In the abyss of conflagration, wait at the far heavens!"
The air curdled around his palms into a high-pressure vortex of blue light.
"Hadō #73. Sōren Sōkatsui!"
A massive deluge of blue flames erupted from Max's hands. At the exact same microsecond, twin streams of searing, molten orange fire erupted from the dragons behind the Silverbacks.
The apes were caught in the middle.
It was a literal furnace. Blue flame met orange-red flame with the white-furred Silverbacks acting as the wick. They didn't even have time to scream; the dual heat sources created a thermal shock that turned muscle and bone into carbon instantly. Like forgotten cookies in a blast furnace, the apes were incinerated, their forms dissolving into ash within seconds as the blue and orange fires clashed in a spectacular display of pyrotechnics.
Max cut his stream of fire as soon as the last ape fell, gasping for air that was now hot enough to sear his lungs. He wiped soot from his brow, expecting the dragons to stop.
He was wrong.
The Infant Dragons shifted their aim, their fiery breath continuing through the smoke of the dead apes, roaring straight for his head.
"Rude!" Max hissed.
Ping-ping.
Auto-Evade screamed twice. No safe direction.
He slammed his palms together, a geometric magic circle forming between them with a sharp metallic ring.
"Bakudō #73. Tozanshō!"
An inverted pyramid of blue-rimmed crystal slammed down around Max just as the dragon fire engulfed his position. The flames licked against the barrier, the intense heat making the crystal walls glow and vibrate, but the spell held firm.
Safe for the moment inside his barrier, Max looked out through the flickering orange distortion at the two dragons. They were snarling, smoke curling from their nostrils in thick grey ribbons, their tails whipping the ground in agitation. They were ready to defend their twinkly hoard at any cost.
Max's grip loosened on his sword. I could walk away. Let them keep their treasure.
Then Floor 9 flashed again. The shredded gear. The Enhanced Ant feeding on human magic stones. Rookies dying because they had no escape, no funds, no options.
I need that loot to clear Hedin off my back and experiment with the Uber service. He thought as his resolve hardened.
He looked at the exhausted dragons, trembling from sustained fire.
"I'm sorry," Max whispered, his amethyst eyes glowing with a dangerous, predatory light. "But I can't afford mercy right now."
-◈ -
Jura Halmer
Jura was not a happy man.
"Why me?" he hissed under his breath, kicking a loose stone into the darkness of the 14th Floor. "Of all the muscle-brained idiots in the party, why am I sent on this errand mission?"
It was insulting. He wanted to be a commander, a frontline chaos-bringer. His talents—no, his vision—lay in control and manipulation, not tracking some rookie adventurer like a glorified bloodhound. This was grunt work. Scout duty. The real ambush party must be farming magic stones and drop items, and they'd get the glory when he reported about the target.
Among them were plenty of mindless thugs with big axes who would have jumped at the chance to crack a skull for a bounty. Instead, here he was, skulking through the dense, humid darkness of the middle floors, grouped with the support trash.
He clutched the silver bell at his waist—a gift from his God, allowing him to be a tamer—until his knuckles turned white. It was the only reason the seven Hellhounds trailing him hadn't torn his throat out yet.
He looked back at them with a sneer. They panted, red eyes glowing in the gloom, slobber dripping from their jaws.
"Useless mutts," Jura spat. "If not for the equipment my God provided, you'd be nothing."
Just like me, a bitter voice whispered in the back of his mind.
He shoved it down violently. He wasn't like these beasts. He wasn't a natural tamer—didn't have the innate affinity for monsters that the real tamers possessed. Those smug bastards with their Developmental Abilities and their precious Trainer skills could coax loyalty from a Minotaur with a whistle and a pat. But Jura? Jura had to break them. Had to use collars, bells, pain, and fear to bend monsters to his will.
And he hated them for it. Hated the natural tamers who looked at him with mockery and ridicule. Hated the commanders who dismissed him as "expendable support." Hated the real adventurers who got the glory while he scraped by on scraps.
But most of all, he hated that he needed this mission.
He clenched his fist around the bell, feeling the cold metal bite into his palm. One day, he thought, his lips curling into a cruel smirk. One day I'll tame something they can't ignore. Something majestic. Something strong. That's when the image of the most terrifying monster he heard of came to his mind.
A Monster Rex.
The thought sent a thrill through him. Not the petty bosses of the middle floors, but a Lord of the Deep. Udaeus. The black skeletal king of the 37th Floor. With its supposed Level 6 power under his command, who would dare look down on him then? If he could leash the Spartan Warlord and parade it through Orario like a war trophy... Evilus would have to bow. Rudra would have to recognize him. He'd be untouchable even.
He could already see it: the strongest monsters kneeling at his feet, intelligent beasts doing his bidding, creating terror across the city that called him a failure. He'd become the kingpin of Orario's black market, controlling the flow of illegal goods, monster parts, and cursed items. The Guild would whisper his name in fear, knowing he held the leash to a calamity.
But for now? For now, the future King of Monsters was stuck chasing a blue-haired bastard with a bounty on his head.
"Alpha," Jura commanded, jingling the bell. "Scratch the walls. Keep the Dungeon distracted."
The beast obeyed, dragging its claws against the dungeon wall.
SCREEEEEE.
The sound was nails on a chalkboard multiplied by ten. It wasn't a perfect system—not a 100% success rate—but it delayed the spawn timers just enough for his group to slip through the corridors relatively unmolested.
If the target's really a Level 2 dealing with monster hordes, they're probably pinned down somewhere on the 5th or 6th Floor, Jura reasoned, checking his mental map. Blue-haired rookie. That's all the intel said. I'll let the monsters tire him out, then swoop in, leash him, and drag him back or make him fight while I collect the stones. Let him do the grunt work. A pleased smirk came to his face at the thought.
He hurried his pace, moving up the stairs to Floor 13.
-◈ -
It took him a few hours to navigate the Cave Labyrinth. Along the way, they ran into a territorial pack of wild Hellhounds. And the fight was messy.
"Tear them apart!" Jura screamed, ringing his bell frantically as his pack clashed with the wild ones.
By the time the dust settled, Jura had lost three of his original dogs. But he was a Tamer; losses were just opportunities for recruitment. He threw his subjugation collar, lashing out at the survivors of the wild pack.
Crack. Snap.
Five new hounds, cowed by the pain and the magic of the bell, joined his formation, bringing his count up to nine.
"Pathetic," Jura muttered, examining his Alpha. The beast was bleeding from the face; a wild hound had clawed its eye out during the brawl. It whimpered, pawing at the ruin of its socket.
Jura's hands tightened. The Alpha wasn't just any mutt—it was his meatshield. His enforcer. The one beast strong enough to keep the rest of the pack in line without constant bell commands. Losing it would mean managing nine unstable hellhounds manually, and Jura didn't have the power—or the natural talent—to do that for long.
"Shut up," Jura kicked it in the ribs, harder than necessary. "You can still smell, can't you? You can still bite, can't you? Then move."
The Alpha snarled weakly but obeyed. Good enough, Jura thought, even as unease coiled in his gut. It's still functional. I just need it to last until we're out of here.
He didn't want to waste a collar on a replacement now. As long as it could kill, it was useful.
The climb to Floor 12 took another hour of skulking through narrow corridors, the Alpha's ragged breathing a constant reminder of how thin his margins were. Finally, they reached the bottleneck.
Jura slowed, signaling the pack to hold. He knew this corridor. It was the bottleneck between the Upper and Middle Floors. The Dungeon loved to stack this area with everything it had to keep adventurers from escaping or descending.
He peeked around the corner and nearly did a spit-take.
"You have to be kidding me."
The number here was in the hundreds. Silverbacks, Orcs, Hard Armoreds, Imps and he assumed Bad Bats were skulking in the shadows—packed wall-to-wall. He hadn't encountered such large numbers in all his dives so far.
There's no way we're getting through that, Jura thought, sweat beading on his forehead. Even with the pack tactics.
ROAAAAR!
On cue, a loud sound shook the floorplates—a Dragon's roar, echoing from deep within the western cavern.
The monsters in the corridor stiffened. Like a tide, the massive horde began to shift, moving away from the main path and toward the source of the noise.
Jura's eyes lit up. Opportunity.
"Move," he hissed to his pack. "Quietly."
He ghosted past the distracted rearguard, slipping into the shadows. Curiosity, or perhaps the instinct of a scavenger sensing a kill, pulled him toward the commotion.
As he neared the large central cavern, the temperature spiked. The air tasted of ash and ozone. Jura crept to the edge of the viewing ledge and looked down.
And froze.
The scene below was a portrait of the apocalypse.
In the center of the cavern, two massive storms of fire were clashing. One was a searing orange-red—classic dragon fire. The other was a brilliant, blinding blue torrent that swirled like a horizontal tornado. It looked like a living volcano had erupted in the room.
In front of his eyes, dozens of Silverbacks were screaming—no, they weren't even screaming anymore. They were vaporizing. The apes turned to charcoal statues and then crumbled to dust in seconds.
As the blue fire dissipated, the orange flame roared on, relentless.
That's when Jura saw him. A lone figure, leaping into the inferno like a mindless idiot.
Reckless fool, Jura thought reflexively. He'll definitely die.
But he didn't. On closer observation, a thin barrier flared into existence—an inverted pyramid of light that parted the flames like water around a stone.
Magic barrier, Jura realized, eyes narrowing. High level mage who is stupid enough to dungeon dive in the night? Is that him?
He watched intently as the figure landed amidst the flames, unharmed, already charging a counterattack. Here already? Shock rippled through him as his eyes confirmed the briefed features. This deep, that fast? A record—even for a Level 2. But his feline senses prickled—a metallic gleam slicing his periphery like a claw through silk—yanking his focus across the battlefield.
As he scanned past the combatants, with the thick mist of the 12th Floor was burned away in the heat, revealing the back of the cavern.
There, behind the two roaring dragons, something sparkled.
He squinted. It was faint, obscured by smoke, but unmistakable. A pile of glittering items.
Treasure.
It clicked instantly. Out of all possibilities, only one made sense. The dragons were guarding a hoard.
Greed bloomed in Jura's chest, hot and heavy.
If I could get my hands on that...
His mind raced. He could see it so clearly now—himself, dragging a sack of rare drops into the Rudra Familia home. He could picture the scene: his God, standing in the center of the hall, surrounded by the higher-ups. Rudra, with his sharp eyes and sharper tongue, doling out equipment like a king bestowing favors.
Jura had watched from the crowd a dozen times. Watched as Rudra handed advanced taming collars to the real tamers—men who didn't need them but got them anyway because they were favorites. Watched as Level 3s and 4s were gifted enchanted armor, cursed blades, magic-amplifying rings. Watched as the commanders walked away laden with tools that turned them into forces of nature.
And what did Jura get? A second-hand bell and a pack of mutts he had to break just to keep functional.
But if he came back with this—a dragon's hoard, something rare and valuable enough to make even Rudra's eyes widen—everything would change.
Rudra would have to give him better tools. Better monsters. Access to the advanced taming equipment that could turn even a mediocre Tamer into a force to be reckoned with. He'd finally get the cursed collars that could bind stronger monsters from the middle/lower floors.
And if the hoard was valuable enough? He wouldn't even need Rudra. He could sell it on the black market. Take his cut, disappear into the underground, and start building his own empire—becoming the kingpin of Orario's underworld.
He'd show them. He'd show all of them.
One big score, Jura thought, his pulse quickening. That's all I need. One. Big. Score.
He looked at Max, who was busy holding back what Jura realized were two Infant Dragons, not one Dragon as he'd first assumed.
The mage is distracted, Jura plotted, a grin spreading across his face that was all teeth. He does the heavy lifting. I take the prize.
But as his hand moved toward his belt, Jura hesitated. If he grabbed the treasure now, the noise might alert the mage. Mission blown. The ambush party would skin him alive for compromising the operation.
But if he succeeded... if he snatched the hoard and slipped away unnoticed... he wouldn't need the mission reward. He wouldn't need Rudra's scraps. He'd have his own fortune.
But seeing the mage pinned down by the dragons and still fight, sent a pang of bitter envy twisting in his gut. Flashy magic. Barriers. Speed. If I had power like that, Jura thought, his hands trembling with resentment, I wouldn't be treated like trash. I would be a commander. I would control monsters so terrifying even Level 4s would beg me for mercy.
He shook his head, forcing the useless thoughts away.
"Alpha," Jura whispered, kneeling beside the one-eyed hound. "With me. The rest of you, stay back and stay quiet."
He crept along the outer ridge of the cavern, using the stalagmites for cover. He didn't want to be discovered.
-◈ -
Below, the battle raged. Max was shouting something, his magic flaring with terrifying power.
Jura was close now. Just another thirty feet to the treasure pile behind the dragons. The lizards were fully focused on Max, their backs turned to him.
Jura took a step forward, eyes locked on the glitter of gold.
CRACK.
A stray bolt of magic—maybe a deflected spell, maybe a misfire from the chaotic melee below—seemed to ricochet off the dragons.
It slammed directly into the Alpha Hellhound. Specifically, into the socket of the eye it had lost earlier.
The beast didn't have the discipline to stay quiet. It threw its head back and let out a high-pitched, gurgling scream of agony.
"OWROOOOOGH!"
Jura froze.
In the center of the cavern, the battle stopped. Max turned. The two Dragons turned.
Three pairs of eyes locked onto the ledge where Jura stood, his hand hovering over the treasure, looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
FUCK!
Jura's mind shrieked.
He snatched the silver bell from his belt, ringing it frantically. "Protect me! Kill them! Kill the Dragons! Kill him!"
The command was desperate. He expected the Alpha to leap between him and the mage. It's my meatshield, Jura thought, reassuring himself as panic began to rise. It has to obey. It HAS to—
But as the beast turned its head, Jura's stomach dropped.
It wasn't a stray firebolt.
Half of the Alpha's face was simply... gone.
There was no burn mark. No charred flesh. It was as if someone had made a smooth, surgical cut with an invisible blade, slicing everything from the snout to the ear clean off. Bone gleamed white in the firelight. Blood poured in thick rivulets.
What kind of magic does that?
Worse—the Alpha was broken. The pain, the shock, the loss of its dominant eye—it shattered whatever tenuous control Jura had left. The beast's survival instincts overrode the bell's compulsion.
Instead of protecting Jura, the Alpha did what wounded predators do. It lashed out at the nearest threat.
With a collective howl, the Hellhounds surged past Jura, ignoring his commands entirely. They leaped off the ledge, throwing themselves at the two roaring Infant Dragons below.
Chaos erupted.
Jura stood alone on the ledge, his bell ringing uselessly in his hand. His only real tool—the one thing that made him more than a disposable grunt—was gone. The Alpha, his enforcer, his meatshield, the beast that kept the pack functional, was dying in a frenzy below.
For a split second, terror clawed at his throat. I'm nothing without them. I'm just another nobody. I should run. I should—
But his eyes caught the glitter again. The treasure. His treasure. His one chance to matter.
No, Jura thought, his greed warring with his fear. I'm so close. I just need to grab it and go. The mage should be distracted. The dragons are busy. I can still—
He spun around, turning his back on the slaughter, his greedy eyes seeking the sparkle he had seen earlier.
Only for his hand grasped empty air.
Jura stopped. He looked at the spot behind the rock formation where the glint had been.
Nothing.
Just damp stone and swirling mist.
"What..." Jura whispered. "Where is it?"
"Looking for something?"
The voice was cold. Close.
Jura spun around.
Standing less than a foot away was the blue-haired mage.
He didn't make a sound. He simply materialized from the chaos below like a phantom. His eyes burned with a terrifying, crimson intensity, boring into Jura's skull.
This is him. The realization hit like a hammer. The anomaly. The one who vaporized our desert experiment. The one they flagged as "abnormal" in the reports.
Jura had overheard the commanders talking. They'd said he wasn't a normal Level 2. That his magic output was abnormal. That he'd killed monsters he shouldn't have been able to touch.
And looking at those eyes—those inhuman, predatory, Demonic eyes—Jura understood.
There was nothing human in that gaze. No anger. No mercy. Just cold, clinical intent. Max didn't look at him like prey. He looked at him like a task. Like something to be removed.
He's going to kill me.
He realised and instinct took over—the instinct of a coward. Jura dropped his shoulders, widening his eyes in a caricature of fear. He raised his hands, trembling visibly. It was a practiced routine, one he'd used to escape tight spots before.
"P-please!" Jura stammered, his voice cracking perfectly. "I—I'm just a lost adventurer! My party, they—they left me behind! I didn't mean to—"
Max didn't blink. He didn't speak. He just pulled his arm back.
CRUNCH.
Max's fist connected with the bridge of Jura's nose with the force of a battering ram.
There was no magic. No fancy technique. Just the raw, kinetic hatred of a Devil punching a scumbag in the face.
Cartilage shattered. Jura's vision exploded into white starbursts. His feet left the ground, and he was launched backward, sailing through the air like a ragdoll.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
After the intense dungeon dive in the last chapter, this feels like a much needed breather. I mean Max getting stuck on Floor 12 and stumbling into EXTRA loot not to mention the encounter with the cockroach of Danmachi. Not in the plans, but obviously things always change.
I don't have much to say about him except I have something planned for him in the coming chapters and rest of his party will get a big surprise when Max reaches Floor 14. For those who might think how did they make to Floor 14 that fast? I'm sure we all remember the familiar shortcut through Rivira.
As always, don't forget to share your thoughts on the story and any suggestions you have on what else Max could try in a review/comment.
If you'd like to read 4 chapters ahead, support my work, or commission a story idea, visit p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash.
Please note that the chapters are early access only, they will be eventually released here as well.
or
If you just want to tip or get me a coffee, you can do so on k.o-f.i.c.o.m./b3smash.
Next update will be on Tuesday.
Ben, Out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.