Two days had passed.
The sun had long ceased to shine in its usual warmth. Thick black clouds loomed over the battlefield, casting the world in a perpetual twilight. No birds sang. No winds blew.
Only smoke…and the cries of monsters echoing across a ravaged wasteland.
Once, the clearing surrounding the dungeon had been lush—verdant meadows kissed by sunlight, home to fluttering mana butterflies and whispering breezes. Now, it resembled a graveyard carved into the crust of the world.
Scorched earth. Shattered trees. Ashes and blood.
Crater upon crater had formed from explosion spells and colossal impacts. Scattered along the edges were weapons—bent, broken, abandoned. Shields embedded in the soil, swords cracked down the middle. Some were still clutched in the hands of the fallen.
The once-glorious banners of the Dawnstead Knights now lay half-torn, fluttering limply on their poles.
And still… the monsters came.
Wave after wave.
Grotesque beasts, twisted by dungeon miasma, poured from the entrance without end. Some crawled. Some flew. Some bellowed so loud they shook the bones in the soldiers' chest.
And waiting for them—was the wall. The last wall.
The Dungeon Suppression Squad.
Knights and adventurers.
Some veterans. Some barely more than hopeful youths. All standing shoulder to shoulder, bloodied and sleepless, eyes red with fatigue but never turning away.
Their armor was no longer shining. It was dented, scorched, and covered in ichor. Their faces were smeared with dirt, soot, and sometimes their own blood.
Yet they fought. They endured.
The clang of steel against claw was relentless.
Spells lit up the dusk like fireworks—bursts of flame, blasts of lightning, walls of ice—each cast draining the user, but buying just a little more time.
And beyond the defensive lines, just past a field of hastily raised barricades and fortified walls of mana stone, sat the command post.
Or what remained of it.
A massive canvas tent, stitched from weather-resistant beast hide, was tethered to the fractured ground by glowing rune spikes. One side collapsed from a beast's charge earlier that morning. Healers had used a levitation enchantment to prop it back up.
Even now, the inside was chaos.
Dozens of cots lined the interior, filled with the wounded.
Some groaned softly, feverish and pale. Others lay still—too still. The stench of blood was masked only partially by pungent herbs and the metallic tang of enchanted tools.
White-robed clerics and healers worked non-stop, circles under their eyes like bruises. Mana crystal lanterns hummed faintly, flickering from overuse.
A soft chant rose—a healer invoking a greater restoration spell. Green light spread over a knight's body, sealing jagged wounds. The knight didn't even scream. He just stared at the ceiling, eyes empty.
At the tent's entrance, a pair of young adventurers stood silently, faces drawn tight.
One of them, a brown-haired boy with a makeshift sling around his arm, kept his eyes fixed on the dungeon entrance in the distance. A never-ending fog oozed from its mouth—thick, like it was alive. Dark and ominous.
"…It's been two days," he murmured, voice cracking from dehydration and sleeplessness. "Still no signal. No word. Not even a flare."
The other—an older girl, face smeared with dried blood, armor hanging loose on her frame—paused from sharpening her blade.
"You mean the two who went in alone?" she asked quietly. "The silver-haired girl and the guy with red hair?"
The boy nodded.
Silence lingered between them.
Then, slowly, he said what neither of them wanted to say out loud.
"…We should've heard from them by now. If they were alive." His voice dropped to a whisper. "With the monsters still coming… doesn't that mean they failed?"
The words hit like a hammer. A bitter truth given form.
From a few paces away, someone shifted.
Heavy armored boots clanked against the stone floor as Captain Roderic Lorne stepped into view.
He looked like a man carved from battle. His once-polished armor was battered and blackened, dried blood streaking across the silver plating. His dark blue cape was half-torn, caked in dirt. His gauntlet trembling slightly from magical exhaustion.
But his eyes—those steel-gray eyes—were steady. Unyielding.
He had heard the conversation. But he didn't speak right away.
Instead, he looked toward the dungeon entrance in the distance.
He stared for a long time, as if trying to pierce the veil of smoke and shadow with his will alone.
"…They're still alive."
The words were soft. But certain.
Both adventurers turned to him.
The boy blinked. "H-How do you know?"
Roderic exhaled slowly, like a man carrying a weight too great to share.
"Because I've seen what both of them are capable of."
His voice was hoarse. Worn. But resolute.
"That girl—Belle. She's not someone who breaks easily. Not even in the face of something impossible."
He looked down, almost smirking faintly. "And Kai… that reckless bastard's too stubborn to die. Even if he has to crawl back with broken bones."
He turned then, slowly walking toward the outer barrier where other knights were preparing for the next wave.
He paused at the edge of the ward.
"…Until they return," he said without turning back, voice now steel. "We hold this line. We hold this ground. No matter what."
A low rumble rolled across the earth just then.
A tremor. Subtle, but deep.
Several soldiers looked toward the dungeon entrance. The mist was thicker than before. Darker. And something about the air—it had changed.
Charged. Heavy. Breathing.
Roderic's eyes narrowed.
"…Brace yourselves," he said, gripping tightly onto his greatsword.
While the storm of steel and shadow tore through the battlefield around the dungeon, a second battle played out in quieter desperation several kilometers to the west.
This was not the center of the storm—but the last barrier before the eye could swallow everything.
The Perimeter Defense Squad had been stationed here.
Not to win. But to hold. To delay. To protect the sleeping town of Dawnstead, just visible in the distance—blissfully unaware of how close their end truly loomed.
The land surrounding them was scarred by earlier clashes.
Fields that once fed families were now torn up with claw marks and craters. Fences reduced to splinters. Trees broken in half. Ditches filled with black blood and the dismembered bodies of monsters—some smoldering, others still twitching.
Makeshift barricades lined the road leading into the town. They were crude: overturned carts reinforced with rune-scorched logs, enchanted pylons flickering with defensive spells, and wall segments hastily crafted from magic-fused stone.
Each barrier bore the signs of survival, not victory.
At the center of it all stood Vice-Captain Gale Valtor, a man carved by discipline and fire.
His normally pristine armor was dented and stained. His once-flowing blue cape hung in tatters, the wind barely moving it. One eye was bloodied shut, a gash traced from temple to cheekbone, caked in dried crimson.
His other eye, however—sharp and burning—remained locked ahead.
His blade was out. Not sheathed since the morning.
A faint tremor ran through his sword arm—not from fear, but from overexertion. Spell backlash, muscle fatigue, and sheer adrenaline carved into his body like poison. But he stood.
At his flanks were the Trinity Blade—Dawnstead's strongest adventuring party.
Garron Von, the iron wall. A beast of a man with arms thick as tree trunks, wielding a tower shield that bore dozens of claw marks. His armor creaked with every breath, dented but never broken.
Lena Fayne, the team's healer and guardian. Pale, steadfast, surrounded by a gentle aura of icy mana. Her enchanted bulwark glowed faintly at her side, rimed with frost that shimmered in the dim light.
Darin Cale, the mage—lean, his black sleeveless combat jacket burned at the edges, staff in hand. His eyes darted constantly, reading the battlefield like a living equation.
All three of them bore wounds. Scratches, bruises, burns.
But none of them wavered.
A shrill howl pierced the silence.
Gale turned his head.
On the eastern ridge, another wave emerged—ogres, twisted and hunchbacked, their skin blotched with sickly veins. Behind them, hellhounds, their bodies wreathed in flickering green flames. Their eyes glowed like dying stars.
A collective breath passed through the defenders.
"Positions!" Gale barked, raising his sword high. "Shield wall—lock! Casters—back row! Don't let them breach the line!"
Boots thundered into place. Blades lifted. Spells were readied.
Then—the impact.
The monsters slammed into the barricade with the force of a siege ram.
Wood splintered. Shields cracked. The clash of weapons was deafening—a storm of screaming metal and roaring flesh.
"Push them back!"
Garron roared, slamming into an ogre shoulder-first and sending it crashing into a pylon.
"Keep the mages covered!"
Lena shouted, raising her staff while casting healing mist to the surrounding adventurers and knights.
Darin's voice rang out as he cast a volley of explosive glyphs, each detonation flinging monsters back like broken dolls.
"Clear left flank! I need five seconds—!"
"Then we buy you ten!"
Gale growled, cutting down a hellhound that had leapt toward the formation.
But just when it seemed they might stabilize the line—the earth shuddered.
Not a surface tremor.
No—this came from below. Deep. Primeval.
Gale stumbled mid-step, his boot skidding over cracked stone. Around him, others lost balance. Weapons dropped. A few fell to one knee.
Even the monsters—those mindless, frothing horrors—froze.
Their snarls quieted. Their claws hesitated mid-slash. Their glowing eyes blinked, confused.
The world paused. Like the breath of something ancient being drawn inward.
BOOOOOM.
A seismic wave exploded from the direction of the dungeon.
The very air warped, the sky above the mountains shivering like disturbed water. Smoke and mist rose in spiraling patterns—unnatural, almost alive.
Birds scattered from the trees. Horses whinnied in panic back in the town stables.
Even the monsters recoiled, some whimpering. Their heads turned eastward, toward that cursed dungeon mouth—as if hearing a call only they could perceive.
"What in the gods' names was that…?"
Lena whispered, lowering her staff, breath ragged.
Darin stared toward the mountain pass, his eyes wide.
"That wasn't a normal tremor. That was—"
He stopped. Because he didn't have the words.
"…It came from the dungeon."
Gale said flatly. His voice wasn't loud. But everyone heard it.
And then—the monsters changed.
As if triggered by that pulse, they suddenly howled and lunged—not with strategy, but with frenzy.
They surged like a tidal wave, shrieking in chaos, clawing over each other, no longer held back by fear or pain. Something inside them had snapped.
Instinct screaming. Obey. Kill. Destroy.
"They're going berserk!" Garron yelled. "ALL UNITS—FORM TIGHT!"
The frontline collapsed inward into a tighter formation. Spells flew. Shields locked. Voices shouted in overlapping commands.
And in the center of it all—Gale gritted his teeth, parrying another strike with a snarl.
But a cold pit had settled in his chest. Not fear. Not doubt.
A realization.
Something inside the dungeon had shifted.
The ground at Floor Nine gave way beneath them like a crumbling illusion.
Belle didn't even have time to scream.
One second she stood on solid stone. The next—she was falling. Darkness swallowed them whole, faster than thought, deeper than fear. Cold air rushed past her skin like the breath of some ancient beast exhaling from the earth's bowels.
There was no bottom. Only descent.
IMPACT.
The world jolted to a stop.
A sickening thud. Air blasted from her lungs as her body collided with something unyielding—stone, maybe, but colder than ice and slick with unseen moisture. Her limbs sprawled in awkward angles. Dust, debris, and shattered echoes scattered through the void… and then, stillness.
A silence so deep, it hurt.
Not the kind of quiet that came after a storm.
This silence was alive. Pressing in. Listening. Waiting.
Belle's fingers twitched against the floor. Her ears rang with a dull pressure. Her silver hair spilled across her face like silk, tangled in grit and fragments of stone. Every muscle ached, but her body—miraculously—was intact.
She blinked.
The darkness didn't lift. It pressed in, heavy and unnatural.
And then—a groan.
"Kai."
Her eyes snapped wide, focus slamming back into place.
"Kai!"
She scrambled upright on shaky arms. The air was thick. Heavy. Each breath felt like inhaling oil and ash. Her heartbeat pounded—slow, thunderous. She crawled across the jagged floor, slapping away dust and shards of broken rock until—there.
Kai lay on his side, unmoving.
Belle rushed to him.
His skin was pale, bordering blue. His chest rose in shallow jerks, like each breath had to fight against invisible chains. Sweat beaded along his brow, but his lips were chapped and faintly violet. He looked... drained. Like something was siphoning the life straight out of him.
"Kai, no no no—look at me!" Belle shook him gently. "Come on, open your eyes."
He stirred, barely. His eyes fluttered half-lidded, unfocused. A strained cough escaped his throat—wet and sharp. A trace of crimson lined the corner of his lips.
She froze.
Then—her blood ran cold.
The air. The haze. It wasn't fog. It wasn't mist.
Miasma.
Thicker than anything they had encountered on the upper floors. So thick it was visible—tendrils of violet-black vapor slithering through the air, coiling like serpents, curving unnaturally as if drawn toward them.
She knew about this from Garrick back at the guild.
Humans and all living beings couldn't survive in saturated miasma zones. Long exposure even to small doses of miasma would also cause irreversible damage to the body. Not unless they were protected by specialized relics or enchantments.
And even then—barely.
But she was still breathing. She'd always known that she was immune to miasma after spending days in the Forbidden Forest, where miasma is the most concentrated in the world.
She tore open her pouch, hands fumbling against the buckle. A vial of high-grade healing potion emerged, gleaming faintly with golden shimmer. Carefully, she cradled Kai's head and tilted the liquid to his lips.
"Drink. Please. You've done enough stupid heroic things for one day, so drink the potion."
His lips parted slightly. Some of it went down.
The glow dimmed almost immediately. The potion's magic… was fighting the miasma. Not purging it. Just delaying it. The healing was slow.
"Damn it…" She gritted her teeth.
Then—her gaze lifted.
Something loomed ahead of them.
Not a wall. Not a doorway.
A structure. No—a heart.
Suspended in the air, held aloft by thick obsidian roots that pulsed with sluggish, red glow—the Dungeon Core.
It was enormous—easily the size of a carrier—shaped like a jagged crystal wrapped in chains of shadow. Every few seconds, it pulsed with a dull red light… like a heartbeat. The sound was low, muffled. Like hearing your own pulse underwater.
And every beat pulled the miasma inward.
Like it was breathing.
Belle stood slowly, knees trembling. Her aura was screaming now, flaring up and down her spine like static.
This floor wasn't just full of miasma.
It was the source.
End of Chapter 67