The double doors of Gate #47-D hissed open like a dying breath, releasing a puff of cold, metallic air that smelled of wet stone and old blood. Elias Crowe stepped through last, as always. His boots crunched on the gravel floor of the staging area inside the rift. Fluorescent mana-lamps strung along the ceiling flickered, casting long, jittery shadows across the party of eight.
Nobody looked at him.
He was used to it.
Elias was twenty-four, but the lines around his eyes made him look closer to thirty-five. His hair—once dark brown—was prematurely streaked with gray from too many near-misses and too little sleep. The leather vest he wore was third-hand, patched with mismatched hide from low-grade dire wolves he'd skinned himself. His only weapon was a chipped short sword strapped to his thigh and a small buckler shield that had seen better decades. No affinity crystal glowed at his neck. No guild patch on his sleeve. Just the faded E-rank tag clipped to his collar like a price sticker on clearance meat.
"Listen up," barked Captain Harlan Voss, the party's B-rank leader. Tall, broad, silver hair cropped military-short, fire-affinity gauntlets already smoldering. "This is a standard double-dungeon clear. Outer zone: goblin nests and dire rats. Inner zone: probable troll variant or ogre spawn. We go in, kill everything, loot the core, get out. Estimated clear time: ninety minutes. Participation cut is fifteen percent for support roles."
His eyes flicked to Elias for half a second.
"Corpse bait stays at the rear. Crowe, you're on cleanup and lure duty. If anything slips past the line, you pull aggro and die slow so we can reposition. Clear?"
Elias nodded once. "Clear."
A few snickers from the back line. The wind mage, a woman named Lira with expensive silk robes and a permanent sneer, muttered loud enough to carry, "At least he's good at dying. Saves us potions."
Harlan didn't correct her.
Elias didn't react. He'd heard worse.
Three years ago he'd been a D-rank trainee with promise—decent stamina, quick reflexes, a minor earth-affinity that let him harden his skin for short bursts. Then came Gate #19-F, the "Double Death" incident. A hidden boss room nobody scouted. Party abandoned him to slow the alpha dire bear while they escaped. He survived—barely. Mana core cracked like glass under a hammer. Affinity burned out. Official diagnosis: permanent unawakened status. "Living corpse," they called him in the bars. The nickname stuck.
Now he took the jobs nobody else wanted. Corpse disposal after raids. Bait runs in low-threat zones. Anything that paid enough to cover rent, cheap nutrient paste, and the occasional black-market painkiller for the constant ache in his chest where his core used to pulse.
This job paid better than most. Harlan's guild, Iron Fang, was mid-tier but ambitious. They needed filler bodies for riskier clears to pad their success rate for sponsorships. Elias was cheap and reliable. He never complained. Never asked for healing priority. Never expected credit.
They moved out.
The tunnel sloped downward, walls slick with bioluminescent moss that gave off a sickly green glow. The air grew heavier, mana density rising. Elias felt it in his teeth—a faint vibration, like standing too close to a generator.
First contact came at the fifteen-minute mark.
A pack of twelve goblins burst from a side passage, shrieking, crude iron spears raised. Harlan roared, flames erupting from his gauntlets in a sweeping arc. Three goblins ignited instantly, screaming as they rolled. Reyes—the tank, a mountain of a man in full plate—slammed his tower shield down, crushing two more. Lira flicked her wrist; razor gusts of wind shredded the runners.
Elias moved on instinct.
He darted left, drawing the attention of a lone goblin that had slipped the net. It snarled, yellow teeth bared, spear thrusting. Elias sidestepped, buckler catching the point with a clang that numbed his arm to the shoulder. He countered—short sword slicing across the creature's throat. Hot blood sprayed. The goblin gurgled, dropped.
He didn't pause to loot. Cleanup later.
"Keep moving!" Harlan shouted. "Don't bunch up!"
They pushed deeper.
The tunnel opened into a cavern the size of a small warehouse. Stalactites hung like jagged teeth. Piles of bones and rusted weapons littered the floor. In the center: a crude altar made of stacked skulls, a glowing red crystal embedded in the top—the outer zone core.
"Secure it," Harlan ordered.
Reyes planted himself in front. Lira began channeling a containment ward. The rest spread out to clear stragglers.
Elias hung back near the tunnel mouth, scanning shadows. Something felt off. The mana density was climbing too fast. His old cracked core might not sense affinities anymore, but he still felt pressure changes like a storm coming.
Then the ground shook.
Not a tremor. A deliberate stomp.
From the far wall, stone cracked. A section slid away like a door, revealing a second tunnel—darker, wider, lined with pulsing purple veins.
Harlan froze. "That's not on the briefing."
Lira's ward flickered. "Double-dungeon shift. Unstable rift. We need to—"
The thing that stepped out cut her off.
It was massive—easily nine feet tall, skin like cracked granite, arms thicker than Elias's torso. Tusks curled from a wide jaw. Eyes burned yellow. An ogre variant. But worse: black iron chains wrapped its wrists, ends dragging sparks across the stone. Enchained. That meant intelligent. That meant someone—or something—had bound it here.
And it was looking straight at them.
"Formation!" Harlan bellowed. Flames roared to life around him.
The ogre moved faster than anything that size should.
It charged.
Reyes met it head-on, shield up. The impact rang like a bell. Reyes slid back five feet, boots gouging furrows in the dirt. Harlan flanked, punching fire into the ogre's side. Skin sizzled, but the beast barely flinched.
Lira unleashed a wind blade. It carved a shallow gash across the chest.
The ogre roared—a sound that pressed against Elias's eardrums like physical weight.
Then it swung one chained arm.
The chain whipped out like a flail. Caught Reyes across the chest plate. Metal crumpled. The tank flew backward, crashing into the wall. Bones snapped audibly. He didn't get up.
"Shit—Reyes!" someone yelled.
Chaos.
Harlan tried to rally. "Focus fire! Crowe—pull aggro!"
Elias was already moving.
He sprinted forward, banging his sword against his buckler. "Hey! Over here, ugly!"
The ogre's head swiveled. Yellow eyes locked on him.
Good.
Elias dodged the first swing—barely. The chain whistled past his ear, close enough to tear fabric. He rolled, came up, slashed at the leg. Blade bit shallow—barely a nick.
The ogre laughed. A wet, grinding sound.
Then it backhanded him.
The world tilted. Elias flew. Hit the ground hard. Air exploded from his lungs. Pain bloomed in his ribs—something cracked. He tasted blood.
He pushed up on shaking arms.
The party was crumbling.
Lira was down, wind magic guttering as the ogre stomped toward her. Harlan burned bright, flames wrapping his body like armor, but the ogre tanked hit after hit. Two DPS were already dead—bodies torn apart.
Elias staggered to his feet.
This was it.
The moment he'd known would come eventually.
He could run. The exit tunnel was still open. He was fast enough—maybe.
But running meant leaving them. Meant proving every insult right. Meant another Gate would claim more lives because nobody warned the Association about the unstable shift.
He tightened his grip on the sword.
"Hey!" he shouted again, voice raw. "Still here!"
The ogre turned.
Elias charged.
He didn't have a plan. Just momentum. He leaped, drove the sword into the beast's thigh with everything he had. The blade sank halfway to the hilt.
The ogre bellowed.
It grabbed him by the vest. Lifted him like a doll.
Pain exploded as ribs ground together.
Then it hurled him.
Elias slammed into the altar. The red core shattered under his back. Shards dug into flesh. Mana surged—wild, uncontrolled. His vision whited out.
Darkness rushed in.
He felt his heartbeat stutter. Slow. Slower.
This was death.
Not the dramatic kind from stories. Just... fading.
No light. No tunnel. Just cold.
And then—
A voice.
Not sound. Not words in his ears. Words in his blood. In his bones.
**[System Awakening: Shadow Leveling Protocol – Fragment Recovered]**
**[Host Status: Critical. Mana Core: Shattered. Vitality: 3%.]**
**[Unique Trait Unlocked: Shadow Harvest (Level 0)]**
**[Condition: Death imminent. Emergency Initialization.]**
**[Do you accept the Shadow Monarch's remnant will?]**
**[Y / N]**
Elias didn't think. He didn't have time.
He thought *yes*.
Pain.
Not the clean kind. The kind that rewrote nerves.
Something tore into his shattered core—cold, black, liquid shadow. It filled the cracks. Burned. Froze. Rewrote.
His body convulsed on the broken altar.
The ogre loomed over him, raising one massive foot to crush his skull.
Then—
**[Shadow Harvest Activated – Target: Living Entity (Ogre Variant – Enslaved)]**
**[Shadow Fragment Acquired: 1/??]**
**[Level Up Impossible – Current Level: 0]**
**[Experience Overflow Redirected to Shadow Storage]**
**[Summon: Shadow Soldier – Rank E (Ogre Echo) – Available]**
The ogre's foot came down.
Elias rolled—impossibly fast. Adrenaline? No. Something else.
He felt it: a pull. Like strings attached to his will.
He looked up.
A shape peeled itself from the ogre's shadow on the ground—black, translucent, but unmistakably the beast itself. Smaller. Eyeless. Silent. Chains still dangled from its wrists.
The shadow ogre lunged.
It tackled its living counterpart.
The real ogre staggered, surprised.
Elias stared.
The shadow version tore at the chains—ripping them free. Then drove black claws into the ogre's chest.
The living beast howled.
Elias felt a surge—cold energy flooding his veins.
**[Shadow Soldier Kills Enemy – Experience Redirected]**
**[Host Vitality Restored: 18%]**
He pushed to his feet.
The party was gone. Bodies everywhere. Harlan lay crumpled, flames extinguished. Lira's robes torn. Reyes unmoving.
Elias felt nothing. Not yet.
The shadow ogre finished its work. The real one collapsed, dissolving into gray motes.
**[Enemy Defeated – Shadow Fragment Acquired: 2/??]**
**[New Soldier Unlocked: Shadow Goblin (x3 from prior kills – Auto-harvested during blackout)]**
Elias looked down at his hands.
They trembled—but not from fear.
From power.
Raw. Unrefined. Hungry.
He whispered to the darkness.
"More."
The shadows around the dead stirred.
Small shapes rose—goblins, eyeless, obedient.
They waited.
Elias took one step toward the inner tunnel.
The Gate wasn't cleared.
But he wasn't bait anymore.
He was the predator now.
And the shadows were listening.