The group gathered in a tight circle within the quiet chamber, exchanging uneasy glances.
"What do you think happened?" Toya asked, looking around the barren stone walls.
Ivory crossed her arms, her brow furrowed in deep thought. "Wait... as far as I remember, Layer 5 is a critical checkpoint layer. The test here is completely different—it's almost as dangerous as a Layer 10 boss, and it actively cuts off easy level-up progression. But... the thing Toya just cut down wasn't a real boss. It was basically just a glorified slime, nothing like the actual apex monster that's supposed to spawn here."
Lilith pressed her hand to her forehead, letting out a frustrated sigh. "That means the real boss hasn't spawned yet. It must have been killed by someone else."
She pointed forward down the intersecting tunnels. "Let's not waste time standing around. Let's fan out and check the alternate spawn locations nearby."
Without wasting another second, the team moved out, sweeping through sectors 4 and 5, checking every hidden alcove and secondary cavern in the surrounding area. But no matter how thoroughly they searched, the chambers were completely empty—there was no sign of the true boss anywhere.
The heavy silence in the cavern was broken as Toya checked his gear inventory, his face falling. "Guys... our food and water supplies are getting dangerously low. We've been wasting too much time wandering around this single layer."
Lilith gently set Aeterna down onto her feet, kneeling to inspect the dirt and scorched stone on the cavern floor. She ran her fingers through the debris, her eyes narrowing as she analyzed the residual aura.
"This battle..." Lilith muttered, her voice dropping as a spike of sudden anger flared in her chest. "This fight happened around fifteen days ago."
Toya blinked, stepping closer. "What? What are you talking about?"
Ivory crossed her arms, her expression darkening. "Some people hunt down floor bosses, take the transition keys, and instead of opening the gate, they sell them to weaker teams who can't beat bosses on their own so they can skip ahead and level up. Though usually, that sketchy black-market stuff only happens way above Layer 20... not down here."
"No," Lilith corrected, standing up and dusting off her hands, a fierce edge in her tone. "If it were smugglers, they'd leave traces of a messy, prolonged struggle from desperate teams or multiple lower-tier fighters. But look at this..."
She pointed to the clean, absolute devastation carved into the stone walls. "There's barely any trace of a real fight here. Whatever did this wiped out the spawn in a single, overwhelming shot."
Ivory's eyes widened as the pieces clicked together. "Ah... yeah, that's entirely possible."
Lilith pulled out her regional map, tracing her finger across the grid. "And according to this, the remaining active spawn locations on this floor aren't close by at all—they're scattered nearly 150 kilometers away."
The group stared at the map in dismay. Traveling that distance on depleted rations through a dead, glitched zone was a massive risk.
"This is getting out of hand," Toya said, shaking his head. "We need to pull back and resupply before we push any further."
Lilith shook her head fiercely, stepping back. "You guys go ahead and loot up. I'm not leaving without Haruto."
"Don't be stupid," Ivory snapped, grabbing Lilith's arm. "You can't just camp out down here alone without supplies!"
"I'll wait right here," Lilith replied stubbornly, brushing her hand away. "Floor bosses respawn every thirty days. If I have time to kill, I'll just wait for the boss to respawn, take it down myself, and head straight to the next layer alone. Besides, I'm well aware of the food chain and survival constraints. Looking for Haruto here won't give me any trouble."
She offered a calm, unbothered smirk, crossing her arms.
"Besides, in my past life, I spent over 150 years living in environments much worse than this. Staying here is nothing to me—hell, I used to live way up in the jungles of Layer 15, so a little downtime in the abyss is nothing new."
Toya firmly planted his feet, crossing his arms with a stubborn grin. "Well, if you're staying, I'm not leaving either. No way I'm turning back now."
Ivory let out an amused sigh, shaking her head. "Honestly, I don't have any problem staying put either. Let's see this through."
Aeterna beamed brightly, clapping her hands together. "Wherever everyone else goes, I'm going too!"
Rutherford stepped forward, bowing respectfully toward Lilith with absolute, unwavering loyalty. "Where my Queen goes, I go. I will remain right here by your side."
Lustra and Bellona exchanged a lazy glance before nodding in unison. "Count us in, too. No point turning back empty-handed now."
With the entire team unanimously agreeing to hold their ground, they immediately set to work, establishing a sturdy camp right near the arena clearing. Since they had decided to wait out the remaining days for the boss to naturally respawn, food and water management instantly became their top priority.
Rutherford stepped up, rolling his shoulders with a calm, capable smirk. "Leave the supply runs to me. I'll slip back up to the surface quietly and bring back fresh rations for everyone before anyone even realizes we're gone."
Lilith raised a hand, stopping Rutherford in his tracks. "Wait. If you head back up to the surface now, you'll trigger the security gates and have to clear the boss all over again just to get back down."
Rutherford offered a calm, reassuring smile. "Don't worry, my Queen. I can handle a surface-tier boss entirely by myself if I need to."
Lilith narrowed her eyes playfully, tilting her head. "Oh? Just how high is your level, anyway?"
Rutherford flinched slightly, a drop of cold sweat forming on the back of his neck. He quickly scrambled to cover his tracks, keeping the truth about his true nature as a high-tier weapon spirit hidden, since Lilith still didn't know his full origins. "I'm... sitting comfortably at Level 60."
Lilith stared at him for a second before waving a dismissive hand. "Level 60? Fine, whatever. But wasting time running back and forth to the surface is too risky. Let's just stay put, wait out the month here, and we won't have to bother clearing extra bosses out of schedule."
The rest of the group nodded in agreement, locking in the plan. With camp officially established, they settled down right there in the glowing blue-soil biome, spending the next ten days keeping watch, resting, and preparing for the boss's inevitable respawn.
The next ten days melted away into a steady, disciplined rhythm under the dim, shifting glow of the blue-soil biome.
Camp life was far from easy, but Lilith handled it with absolute precision. She managed the dwindling rations, organized watch rotations, and kept a sharp eye on everyone's physical condition, moving through the camp like a seasoned commander. Her vast experience and razor-sharp intellect far outmatched any lazy, stagnant schedules of the upper deities, and because her own true power was on a divine scale, the harsh environmental pressure of the deep layer didn't phase her in the slightest.
Under her leadership, the group held strong, keeping their morale high as they marked off the days, waiting for the shadows of the arena to finally stir back to life.
The ten days of quiet waiting were suddenly interrupted when a cloaked figure stumbled into their campsite, hauling a heavy pack filled with strange, glowing trinkets and polished steel.
Toya stared at the newcomer, tilting his head in bewilderment. "Wait... a merchant? Out here?"
Lilith glanced up from her tactical map, her expression calm. "Wanderer traders. They're adventurers who make a living traveling solo across normal ground. But up here in the abyss, they specialize in trading custom armor, rare weapons, and survival gear. You usually only find low-tier wares down in the lower layers. Once you push past this zone, they practically vanish."
Toya looked around at the eerily quiet cavern tunnels. "Then how do they even survive here. Is it because there aren't many monsters around to fight?"
Lilith leaned back, resting her chin on her hand. "Right, up until Layer 15, there aren't many aggressive monster swarms. The environment itself is the real filter—it's designed to make leveling up a brutal grind. Once adventurers cross Layer 15, pushing higher levels becomes nearly impossible for casuals. That's why the vast majority of normal adventurers, especially people around our age usually cap out around Layer 7, to 15."
The hooded wanderer trader blinked in surprise as he stumbled into their camp, taking in the group of heavily armed youths gathered around the blue soil. He tipped his hat back, flashing a knowing grin. "Well now, what do we have here? You kids look awfully settled in for a place where most adventurers don't last a week."
Lilith stepped forward, crossing her arms with a cold, dismissive stare. "We're fine. Move along, we don't need to buy anything from you."
Instead of walking away, the trader chuckled, reaching into his heavy pack and pulling out a gleaming, rune-etched transition key that hummed with dungeon magic. He held it up, letting it catch the dim blue light. "Are you sure about that? Trying to get down to the next layer, aren't you? I happen to have the key right here."
Lilith's eyes narrowed instantly into a sharp glare. "Smugglers..."
The trader let out a low, mocking laugh. "Guilty as charged. You save yourselves weeks of waiting for a respawn, I make a tidy profit. Everyone wins."
Hearing that word sent a raw spark of fury straight through Toya. Memories of the past month—the wasted time, the endless searching, and the fact that Haruto had been missing and unaccounted for because of garbage black-market gate-keepers like this—snapped his patience in half.
Before anyone could stop him, Toya lunged forward, grabbing the trader aggressively by the collar of his cloak. His voice shook with barely contained rage. "You bastards! Because of trash like you and your little shortcut rings, Haruto has been missing for over a month!"
"Toya, wait!" Lilith called out, stepping forward to catch his arm and pull him back just as the trader panicked and reached for his hidden blade.
Lilith's expression was ice cold as she pushed Toya aside, stepping between them with an aura of absolute dominance that made the smuggler freeze in his tracks. She looked down at the key in the trader's hand, a dangerous smirk touching her lips.
"Don't waste your energy on him, Toya," Lilith said smoothly, her eyes locked onto the shivering merchant.
"Besides... he's going to hand over that key to us right now, whether he wants to or not."
The trader swallowed hard, clutching the glowing rune-etched key tightly against his chest as he tried to mask his trembling voice. "F-Fine! Five hundred gold credits! That's my price!"
Lilith's eyes flared with absolute outrage, her voice dropping an octave into a dangerous, chilling tone. "Pull your head out of the clouds! Five hundred gold credits?! You aren't even asking for standard credits—you're gouging us out of sheer greed!"
The trader smirked nervously, trying to regain his footing. "Hey, look, my standard starting price for a transition key has always been five hundred. But seeing how desperate this young man here is..." He pointed a shaky finger right at Toya. "...it's pretty obvious supply and demand works in my favor today."
A sharp flush of embarrassment crept up Toya's neck at being called out for his obvious impatience, while Lilith gritted her teeth, her aura sparking with annoyance. "Fine. You want to play hardball—"
Before Lilith could finish stepping forward to shake some sense into the smuggler, a sudden, crisp rustle cut through the blue-soil clearing.
A mysterious figure dropped silently from the cavern overhang, landing gracefully between them. The newcomer was cloaked in a heavy, deep green hood, but vibrant emerald-green hair spilled out from the edges, matching a pair of piercing, luminous green eyes.
Unlike the rugged, leather-clad adventurers of the dungeon, she was dressed in sleek, high-tech tactical garments embedded with glowing digital seams.
Without missing a beat, the green-haired girl reached out, effortlessly snatching the transition key right out of the trader's stunned grip. She held it up to the dim cavern light, examining it for a fraction of a second before tossing it aside with a cold, unimpressed scoff.
"Don't bother," she said flatly, her voice sharp and authoritative. "This key is fake."
The hooded trader staggered back, clutching his chest in outrage as his face flushed bright red. "Who the hell do you think you are, kid?! Running your mouth and sticking your nose where it doesn't belong—!"
The green-haired girl didn't even flinch. She crossed her arms, fixing him with a cold, piercing glare.
"I don't like scams. Capitalizing on someone's desperation is one thing, but peddling cheap counterfeit junk in the layers? That's just pathetic."
Lilith stepped closer, her eyes narrowing as she looked between the mysterious girl and the trembling merchant.
"Hold on. How do you even know for a fact that the key is fake?"
The girl smirked slightly, tapping the side of her sleek, high-tech gauntlet.
"Experience. Black-market dealers in the lower sectors are a bunch of shady swindlers, and their gear always leaves a distinct aura signature. Even down here in Layer 5, anyone who knows materials can feel it: the metal hardness is completely off, and the core frequency is dead silent. It's a total knockoff."
Hearing that, Lilith snapped her head back toward the trader, a terrifying aura of divine wrath flooding the clearing.
The trader's blood ran cold. Realizing his scam was completely exposed and facing a gang alongside a terrifyingly perceptive tech-expert, he grabbed his scattered pack, shrieked in absolute panic, and bolted blindly, scrambling away into the shadows as fast as his legs could carry him.
Lilith turned to the green-haired girl with a grateful smile. She stepped forward and extended her hand. "Thanks for the save."
The mysterious girl reached out and grasped Lilith's hand firmly.
The very second their skin made contact, a violent jolt of pure, terrifying energy shot straight up the girl's arm. Her luminous green eyes widened in absolute shock, her mind practically short-circuiting as she sensed the bottomless abyss of power hidden within Lilith's small frame.
What... what the hell is this?! the girl screamed in her own mind. She's this strong at her age?! She might even be on my level—or higher! No, this isn't just Level 90. She's way beyond that. If we fight right here, right now... I'd lose easily. Her magic... I need that power.
Quickly swallowing her overwhelming shock, the girl let out a bright, energetic laugh to mask her racing thoughts. "Wow! You are really strong!"
Lilith's eyes narrowed slightly, a spark of amusement dancing in her gaze.
She actually sensed my true strength just from a simple handshake? Also she pinpoints that key was fake. Lilith thought, thoroughly impressed. This girl is dangerously perceptive.
"You're not so bad yourself," Lilith replied smoothly, letting go of her hand with a calm, unbothered smirk. "By the way, what's your name?"
The green-haired girl adjusted her high-tech collar, regaining her confident composure. "People around here call me Philo."
Lilith nodded, her smirk widening. "Nice to meet you, Philo. My name is Lilith."