While Noah and Damien sleeping at their dormitory.

Back to dungeon.

The dungeon entrance was quiet at this hour.

Most of the staff who had been on duty during the day had been replaced by a smaller night crew, their temporary lights casting a steady white glow across the trampled ground in front of the stone arch. The forest around them was dark and still.

The woman who had taken Noah’s report was standing near the station when the vehicle arrived.

She watched the man step out and walk toward her.

Late twenties. Short black hair, green eyes, more than six feet tall. He wore a dark grey suit with no visible armor over it, which on anyone else in this situation would have looked like poor preparation. On him it simply looked like a choice. His expression as he approached was completely indifferent, taking in the setup, the staff, the entrance, all of it, without any particular reaction.

She straightened and gave a respectful nod.

Oliver Carter. Guild Master of Crimson Vale. One of the youngest S rank heroes currently active, sitting at Astra Core, mid stage. He had come personally, which told her everything about how seriously the report had been received.

"That’s everything, sir," she said, finishing her summary. "The creature’s body is still in the lower chamber. The core is still there as well. Untouched, as the student reported."

"Understood." Oliver glanced toward the entrance. "Good work. I’ll check it myself."

He walked into the dungeon without waiting for anyone to accompany him.

He moved through the passages at a steady and calm pace.

The guild members he had sent ahead were already in the lower chamber when he arrived, spread across the room in small groups, documenting what they found. Photographs, written observations, measurements of the ritual circle. They looked up when he entered and bowed immediately.

Oliver acknowledged them with a slight nod and walked directly to the dead creature.

He crouched beside it and looked it over without touching it. The burned sections across its body and cut chest.

The broken horns. The wide frozen mouth with its rows of overlapping teeth. He studied it with the calm focused attention of someone who had seen many things in many dungeons and was trying to determine which category this one belonged to.

His conclusion, based on what he was seeing, was that it didn’t belong to any of them.

He moved to the chest cavity where the body had already been opened. The black heart sat exposed where it had been left, and inside the split tissue the red core pulsed its slow rhythmic glow.

Oliver reached out and touched it with one finger.

He pulled his hand back immediately.

The burning crawling sensation shot up from the point of contact exactly as the student had described it. Sharp and wrong, an energy that pushed back against his own mana with something that felt almost intentional. He straightened and looked at the core without expression for a moment.

"Don’t touch this with bare hands," he said to the nearest guild member without raising his voice. "Bring containment equipment. Proper handling gear. Get it stored safely but don’t rush it."

"Yes sir."

He turned away from the creature and crossed the chamber to the second body.

The robed man was where he had fallen. His head had been separated cleanly at the neck by the creature’s jaws, rolled a short distance from the body.

Oliver crouched and searched through the robes methodically. Pockets, inner lining, anything that might identify who this person was or who had sent him here or what he had known about this chamber before arriving.

Nothing useful was there.

There was no identification. No written materials. Nothing that connected him to any organization Oliver could immediately recognize.

He stood and looked at the hole in the center of the floor.

The ritual circle around it had gone dark, its lines no longer glowing. The hole itself was perfectly circular and dropped into complete darkness below. Oliver stood at its edge and looked down for a moment.

Then without any particular deliberation he stepped off the edge and dropped in.

His descent was controlled. He let his mana regulate the fall, no rush, no panic, just a steady drop through the narrow dark of the passage as the light from the chamber above shrank and disappeared behind him.

The walls of the hole were smooth and uniform. Whatever had made this passage had done so with intention, not by accident.

He fell for longer than expected.

Then the width of the passage expanded suddenly, the walls pulling away on all sides, and a moment later his feet connected with solid ground.

He landed cleanly and straightened. There was complete darkness around him.

He raised his right hand, palm flat and open, and a sphere of white light formed above it. Bright and steady, pushing the dark back in every direction.

Oliver looked at what the light revealed.

He was standing in an underground space of enormous scale. Not a carved chamber. Not a structured room. A cavern, natural in its formation, the ceiling and walls uneven earth and rock, extending outward further than even his light could fully reach.

And across every surface of it, covering the floor in every direction he could see, were creatures.

Hundreds of them.

The same kind as the one lying dead in the chamber above. The same white oily skin. The same body structure. The same horns, the same proportions, the same green veins visible beneath the surface.

All of them still. All of them with their eyes closed.

They were sleeping. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Oliver’s expression did not change. But he was really surprised, his eyes moved steadily across the space, taking in the scale of what he was looking at, counting in rough estimates, adjusting those estimates upward, and then adjusting them upward again.

Hundreds was not the right number.

Thousands was closer to it.

Possibly more beyond the reach of the light.

He stood completely still in the center of it and looked for a long moment.