The air grew colder.
It wasn't just the Rift temperature plummeting; it was something deeper, more primal. As though the rules of the world were warping by degrees—sound dulled, shadows elongated, and even breath felt like it came from someone else's lungs. A heavy, wet fog crept between the broken pillars and collapsed buildings of the urban dungeon, swallowing up light and color.
They had already lost the sky.
Yoon Taesung stood still in the center of the ruined plaza, his boots coated in a thick smear of blood and ash. Behind him, the rest of the pack re-formed their line. Doohyuk's hand was smeared red across his ribcage. Kim Yerim's barrier spell flickered like a dying lantern. Jung Hyejin crouched low, her bow drawn and aimed, while Han Gilsoo was panting beside a partially collapsed kiosk, his sword trembling in his grip.
And in front of them… it stood.
The beast was not like the others.
It had emerged from the fog without warning, limbs like jointless stilts stretching far too long for its skeletal torso. Where its face should've been, there was a misshapen coil of eyes and mouths—some human, some not—whispering to each other in maddening, fragmented speech.
> "Don't move," Taesung said quietly, eyes never leaving the thing.
"What… the hell is that?" Yerim whispered.
No one answered. No one needed to.
It was above Class C. Far above.
A corrupted Rift Lord—or worse, something left behind by one. A mistake in the system. An error in judgment. The kind of thing that should have wiped a team like theirs off the map in seconds.
And yet it hadn't.
Because Taesung was still here.
The beast tilted its head, one of its mouths giggling like a child in a dream. Then it charged.
Gilsoo shouted, raising his sword, but it was Taesung who moved first—cutting left, sliding beneath a collapsed streetlight with inhuman precision. The air exploded behind him as the creature crashed through the barrier Yerim barely had time to cast.
> "We're not making a dent in that thing!" Doohyuk barked.
"Then stop swinging like you're in a training hall!" Yerim snapped, voice raw. "Gilsoo—status?"
"I can still move!" Gilsoo growled. "But if that thing hits me again—"
It roared again, and the fog deepened, pulsing with the sound like it was breathing through the ground itself.
That was when Taesung saw it.
There—between its shoulders, where the spine twisted unnaturally—a glimmer. A dense knot of Rift mana. A core cluster. Hidden beneath the plating of flesh and bone.
> "I'm going up."
"What?!" Hyejin gasped. "That thing will rip you in half—"
But Taesung was already moving.
He ducked beneath the beast's next swipe, rolled into a dead sprint, and launched off the crumbled side of a vending machine. Wind whipped past him as he scaled the thing's elongated limb—kicking off with impossible balance—and drove his blade down into the core cluster with a precise, surgical thrust.
A shriek exploded across the plaza. The beast convulsed, writhing like it had been stabbed in the brainstem. Blood and something blacker sprayed upward, coating Taesung's shoulder.
> "NOW!" he barked. "FOCUS FIRE!"
Even Doohyuk didn't question it.
Hyejin loosed three arrows in rapid succession, pinning joints. Yerim reinforced the strike zone with a glyph-laced zone of amplified impact. Gilsoo and Doohyuk rushed in tandem, swords flashing in perfect sync as they tore through exposed sinew.
It screamed.
And then, finally, collapsed.
The silence afterward was deafening. Only the distant hum of the Rift's unstable energy remained.
Taesung stood over the body, blade dripping, chest rising and falling with controlled breath. His face was calm. Too calm.
> "That…" Gilsoo panted, falling to one knee. "That was a damn boss monster."
"More than that," Yerim said. "No way that thing should've been here. That wasn't on the mission brief."
"He saw it," Doohyuk muttered, glaring at Taesung. "He knew."
Taesung didn't reply.
> "Who the hell are you really?" Doohyuk demanded, stepping forward. "You don't fight like a C-rank. You don't think like one. You're hiding something."
Taesung looked at him for a long moment, expression unreadable.
> "You want to know who I am?" he asked, voice low. "Then survive the next Rift. Maybe you'll earn the right to ask."
That silenced them more effectively than any threat.
Then the ground beneath them rumbled.
> "Shit—Rift destabilization," Yerim said quickly, checking her device. "The core's collapse is triggering a feedback loop. We have to go, now!"
They didn't argue.
The team scrambled toward the exit gate, half-carrying Gilsoo between them. Taesung lingered a second longer, glancing once more at the twisted corpse. He felt it again—that thing he'd sensed before. The presence. Still watching. Still waiting.
And then it vanished.
He stepped through the portal last.
—
Elsewhere.
> "Footage is unstable. Mana interference scrambled most of the visuals," the analyst muttered, enhancing the frame. "But this sequence is clear."
The screen froze—Taesung, mid-air, blade buried in the monster's spine, eyes glowing faintly.
The executive watching leaned forward.
> "You said he was a C-rank," she said coldly. "This isn't C-rank work."
"Seong Jinhwan has vouched for him," came the reply.
"Then Seong Jinhwan better be right. Because if he's not—"
"We'll handle it."
The footage looped again.
And again.
Like a hunter watching its prey.