The bridge ended sooner than I expected.
A faint blue haze pooled at the base of the floating island, blurring the shape of an ancient wooden door whose shingles clung on like they'd forgotten how to fall. Rocky mounds circled it, all grounded on a floating island of mossy dirt.
My ear twitched.
A soft scrape. The kind you tell yourself is just dust settling.
But dust doesn't bulge. Dust doesn't glow with cold light. Dust doesn't drag itself an inch toward you.
"...No way."
A second rock twitched.
Then a third—its movement jerky, like its limbs were remembering how to move.
Cracks spidered across their surfaces. Shards of stone split apart as something inside pushed outward, splintering the shell like an egg.
A crawling ripple of mana stitched the fragments together as stone sloughed off, revealing raw, incomplete bodies.
Twitchers.
Three.
Waiting.
"Okay," I muttered, my throat raw from the last fight. "Just a small group. Same as before. Don't get surrounded."
I backed onto the bridge, moss crumbling beneath my heel—the blue mist swirling below ready to swallow one wrong step. Good—narrow terrain. A funnel. One way in.
The Twitchers followed, their bodies clicking into place, bones punching through translucent skin, loose strands of sinew stretched taut as their limbs snapped into place.
Sweat flicked from my hair as I scanned, keeping awareness of all the threats.
I don't want to do this again...
But I could. Because the alternative to doing it again was dying. Fear didn't offer choices. Only direction. Forward.
My heel touched the ridge of the bridge. The stone vibrated.
Resonance Vision: ACTIVE
Translucent lines veined across my sight, tracing attacks that were to come.
Three lunges.
Two feints.
One killing line.
All of them at my throat.
"…shit."
The Twitchers surged forward—
The first lunged, spike-arm slicing directly for my carotid. The arc flashed in my vision an instant before it committed.
I dropped low.
The spike carved empty air above me, stinging the side of my face with the speed.
You saw that. You actually saw that.
Later. I could think later. Right now—move.
The second Twitcher cut right, traces of light whipping around its legs—aiming low.
Sweep attack.
My body responded faster than my thoughts. A single step back, heel striking stone—
I stomped.
The impact rippled outward, a vibration shockwave.
The Twitchers spasmed, limbs firing out of sync.
That was enough.
"Kinetic Blast!"
A burst of force slammed from my palm, snapping across the nearest Twitcher's jaw. Its body twisted mid-air and collapsed with a wet, unpleasant crunch.
I inhaled sharply.
I can do this.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ +162 XP ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The third Twitcher darted forward, rattling like chattering teeth.
Resonance Vision flared—three possible paths. Stab. Pounce. Twist.
All wrong.
I stepped into the single blind spot they didn't cover.
It flashed past me, bone arm sweeping nothing.
My forearm slammed across the back of its skull. My arm went numb for a second.
It shrieked.
The first Twitcher—recovered already—launched straight at my chest.
A blue line carved its perfect killing arc.
I raised my hand.
"Kinetic Blast."
The invisible force blasted outward—stronger than before. Strong enough to shove me two steps back.
The Twitcher's head twisted sideways, its body collapsing into an ugly, disjointed sprawl.
My magic really was stronger.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ +162 XP ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
My breath came in broken bursts. My shoulders burned. My fingers tingled from overusing magic.
But I wasn't losing.
The final Twitcher lunged—desperate, faster.
Resonance Vision flickered—straight-line dive at my heart. I sidestepped—then twisted left—anticipating the second attack before its body even committed. It stabbed the wrong direction.
My hand closed around its forearm bone. I punched into the gap in its ribs.
CRUNCH.
The Twitcher jerked violently, bones clattering like kicked silverware, then dissolved on my knees—jittering, resisting—until the last fragment surrendered to grey smoke.
A pulse lit the air.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ +162 XP ]
LEVEL UP!
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I stared at the fading smoke. My heart wouldn't slow.
…I can keep going.
The thought terrified me.
The bridge grew quiet. Mist curled around my ankles. The wooden door waited at the island's center.
My steps sank into the soft moss as I approached.
My hand hovered over the wood. The door groaned. Air stale enough to taste drifted out. A spiral staircase wound down into blue fog.
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[Floor 3]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I descended a chipped stone staircase stained with green moss.
Keep going.
Cold wrapped around me.
And gently, the path in front of me illuminated as I took my last step.
The Bluefield was more of a cavern than a "floor". Wide. Hazy.
The last step dropped me into an open field of swaying cyan grass, each blade glowing faintly like it was drinking the mana from the air. Above me stretched a sky that shouldn't exist underground—a swirling nebula of drifting lights, threads of mana drifting through it like constellations torn loose and set adrift.
It was the same space I saw around the bridge, somehow present even as I descended to floor 3.
Rocky formations jutted from the ground at impossible angles, some half-melted, some broken clean as if clawed open. They dotted the shimmering field like broken monuments.
Shadows moved between them.
Not just Twitchers.
Shapes far too large. Far too warped.
Bones splintering.
Two shapes tore themselves free of the rock—one Twitcher, its limbs snapping into place with wet cracks, and one armless, dragging itself forward with its jaw grinding against stone like it meant to chew its way through the world.
Dread climbed my spine.
"Small group… same plan… keep distance…" I murmured, slipping back between two leaning boulders.
My body responded before my fear could catch up—smooth, sharp, automatic.
Resonance Vision flared open on its own. I could see their intentions before they attacked.
They lunged.
I moved.
The Twitcher's path lit bright across my sight—stab to the neck. I ducked under it, grabbed a fist-sized stone, and slammed it into its skull.
The creature burst into smoke.
The armless one rushed next, dragging itself with frightening speed, jaws wide, teeth scraping sparks from the stone.
"Kinetic Push!"
The force struck its side, sending it skidding off-course. I stepped in—one brutal stomp crushed its head with a sickening snap.
My breath quickened.
The haze thickened as I moved deeper.
Then I saw them.
Two skeletons slumped against a stone outcrop—hands still locked together, bone fingers woven tight in a grip even death hadn't pried apart.
But everything else had.
Their bodies lay dragged in opposite directions—arms broken at the elbows, ribs warped, the stone beneath them carved with deep grooves like something had tried to tear their final moment apart.
My throat tightened. For a moment, the whole cavern went soundless.
Up close, details surfaced. A damaged pendant still hung from the smaller skeleton's neck, its gem split clean down the center. Scraps of fabric clung to the ribs—deep red, soft, lace along the edges. A woman's clothes.
The larger skeleton wore the remains of leather gear—thick straps, metal studs, the shape of protective padding. A man's outfit. He had died leaning forward, as if bracing to shield her even after his arms were broken.
The pair weren't strangers or just explorers.
They died holding on to each other.
"…Lovers," I breathed.
The idea struck harder than I expected. They had come here together—fought together—trusted each other enough to reach this far.
And the dungeon still forced them apart.
Between their outstretched hands lay a rusted short sword and a cracked indigo vial.
They fought until everything ran out.
For a long moment, I knelt there, staring at the remnants of people who had meant everything to each other.
They had someone. Someone to cling to. Someone worth dying beside.
"…Not again," I whispered.
The words weren't for them.
They were for me.
I wouldn't end as a pile of bones in the dark. If they could hold on until the end—then I could hold on now.
My hand tightened around the sword's hilt.
I rose.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ ITEM ACQUIRED: RUSTED SHORT SWORD ]
[ ITEM ACQUIRED: BASIC MANA POTION (Common) ]
[ SYSTEM BEARERS — STATUS: DECEASED ]
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I didn't separate their hands.
"...I'm sorry."
Sword. Spell. Stats. Survival.
The blade was dull, heavy, but balanced.
I moved deeper.
Each fight stripped something away—fear, hesitation, pieces of who I was—replaced by simple movement, violence, instinct.
By the tenth corpse, I felt the truth creeping in.
I was getting used to this.
Then the bodies changed.
A Twitcher had been ripped perfectly in half—as if something with a vertical jaw had clamped straight through it.
An armless one with a perfect hole punched through its torso.
Two more were shredded beyond recognition, faint drag marks leading away into the field.
I froze.
"I… didn't kill these."
Something else was here.
Something bigger.
A deep rumble rolled beneath the stone—then the system slammed into my vision.
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QUEST GENERATED:
[ ELIMINATE THE MAWGLUT ]
Threat Level: SEVERE
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Something wet tapped rhythmically somewhere ahead—slow, deliberate, predatory. A dragging sound echoed in the fog.
My grip tightened on the rusted sword.
"…here we go."