Chapter 87

Breathing was a struggle. His heart hammered like a frantic bell, threatening to burst at any moment, and his limbs felt as heavy as leaden weights.

Still, Hugo Grafton didn’t stop running. He couldn’t—not with the nightmare at his heels.

A pack of at least twenty Spiral Moles closed in, shaking the cavern floor and kicking up clouds of grit. Hugo was no superhuman; he wasn’t strong enough to handle more than a handful of monsters solo. Facing this many at once was a death sentence.

His only choice was to run with everything he had. If they caught him, he was toast.

He forced power into his buckling legs and pumped his arms desperately. In a straight line, he should have been able to outrun them easily, but the cave’s winding passages played to the monsters' strengths. They knew this terrain; he didn't.

He only had his own greed to blame for this mess.

He had found a treasure chest in one of the many small chambers deep within the ruins. There had been only a single Spiral Mole guarding it. He’d underestimated the creature, thinking he could take it down quickly, and this was his retribution. Just before he could deliver the finishing blow, the monster had let out a call for help.

Three more Spiral Moles had appeared. If he had fled then, he might have stood a chance.

In truth, Hugo had wanted to retreat. But luck wasn't on his side; the newcomers stood squarely in the room's only exit. They were already in a frenzy, leaving him no time to think.

He’d managed to slay two of them, but when only one remained, Hugo hesitated. If there was only one left, he could force his way out. He was wounded from several glancing blows, and his stamina was flagging.

He wanted to run, but the monster was still in a blood-frenzy. If he left it alive, it would just call more reinforcements, making escape impossible. That split second of indecision was all it took.

The Spiral Mole let out a grating, ear-piercing screech—the signal for the rest of the pack.

"Dammit! I should’ve just run!"

Cursing didn't help; it was already too late. He bolted from the room, and suddenly, Spiral Moles were welling up from every crack and crevice in the walls. From that moment on, it became a life-or-death game of tag.

Fending off a relentless barrage of claws, he finally spotted an exit leading to a wider, open cavern.

"Nuuuuuoooooohhhhhhh!"

He dove through the opening, narrowly evading a reaching claw. He hit the ground hard, tumbling across the jagged stone floor and scraping his arms and legs. His momentum only stopped when his stomach slammed into a large rock.

"Guh...!"

The impact knocked the wind right out of his lungs. Pain flared, and the lack of oxygen made his vision swim. His strength failed him. He knew he had to get up, he knew he had to keep moving, but his body refused to obey his panicked mind.

Groaning, he forced himself upright, only to find the Spiral Moles already surrounding him. Their numbers had grown even larger.

"Shit... so this is it..."

Victory was impossible; escape was a fantasy. As an adventurer, he’d always known his life was at risk, but he hadn't expected the end to come today.

Death, it seemed, was an abrupt visitor. He was just about to give up when it happened.

A single streak of light flashed through the dim ruins. It wasn't flashy or grand; it was a sharp, white glint—there and gone in a heartbeat.

But in that heartbeat, everything changed. In the empty space between Hugo and the pack of monsters, a figure now stood.

The stranger had his back to Hugo, his face obscured by a deep hood, but his build suggested a man. Hugo didn't even have time to wonder who he was before the head of the nearest Spiral Mole simply slid from its shoulders. Blood sprayed everywhere as the carcass collapsed. The robed man didn’t move an inch, letting the red rain soak into his cloak without flinching.

"Stay face-down in the dirt if you don't want to be caught in the crossfire."

For Hugo, who was too injured to move anyway, the advice was redundant. But a second later, he saw exactly why the man had given it.

The frenzied Spiral Moles, seeing their comrade slaughtered, lunged at the man in a unified mass.

First, an arm flew through the air. A set of razor-sharp claws traced a bloody arc over Hugo’s head, spinning end-over-end.

The scene felt wrong—as if the middle steps of the process had been edited out. One moment the Spiral Mole was attacking; the next, its right arm was gone. Hugo assumed the robed man was responsible, but his eyes couldn't track the movement.

Then, the world turned into a blur of impossible violence.

Torsoes were severed from waists. Heads were split perfectly in two, drills and all. In the blink of an eye, the monsters were subjected to a storm of dozens—no, hundreds—of slashes.

The Spiral Moles were decimated, dying before they could even register a need to resist.

The robed man himself was invisible during the slaughter. He was moving and striking at a speed far beyond human perception. Even accounting for the poor visibility of the ruins, this wasn't just "fast"—this was something else entirely.

This man existed on a level of power Hugo couldn't even fathom.

"Hey. Are you dead?"

Hugo had been staring, dazed by the sheer unreality of the massacre. The voice of the robed man—who had wiped out over twenty monsters in mere minutes—snapped him back to reality.

Why ask if I'm dead instead of checking if I'm okay? Hugo wondered.

"N-no... I'm alive. Thanks for the save."

He managed to stammer out a response. Up close, the man’s voice sounded remarkably young—likely younger than Hugo himself.

His face remained hidden beneath the hood, but the moment he turned toward Hugo, the stranger stiffened unnaturally. The hesitation lasted only a second before the young man spoke again, his voice laced with irritation.

"I see. Now, what the hell is this situation?"

"W-well, you see..."

Hugo choked on his words. He had ignored the most basic rules of ruin exploration and nearly gotten himself killed. It was a pathetic display of risk management. It was embarrassing as an adventurer, and he’d clearly inconvenienced this young man.

The stranger seemed to guess the truth. Seeing Hugo’s sheepish silence, his suspicion turned to certainty, and he let out a heavy, theatrical sigh.

"Avoid combat within the ruins whenever possible. Under no circumstances are you to incite a frenzy. I was told those were the ironclad rules of this place."

"I... I’m sorry..."

Hugo could do nothing but bow his head. Not only had he made a rookie mistake, but the carnage had likely riled up every other monster in the vicinity. The thick stench of blood now hanging in the air was practically an invitation for more predators to move in.

To fix this, they’d need to clear the corpses immediately and impose a cooling-off period of a week or more, restricting access to the ruins. It was standard safety procedure, but it meant every adventurer currently in the area would have to stop their work to help with the cleanup.

In short, Hugo was about to become the most hated man in the ruins.

"Hmph. Fine. Not my concern."

Dismissive to the last, the robed man began walking across the blood-soaked floor as if he were taking a casual stroll. He headed straight for the tunnel Hugo had just fled from.

Hugo scrambled to stop him. "Whoa, whoa, wait! Where do you think you're going?"

"I have business in the depths."

"Look, we all do, but it’s suicide to go in there right now!"

Hugo desperately tried to explain the dangers, his voice rising with the lingering heat of his own near-death experience.

The man’s response was a verbal blade that cut right through him: "You're the one telling me this?"

Hugo winced but stood his ground. "I'm saying it because it was me! I don't want you getting caught in that mess!"

"You're tedious. How long would this cleanup and 'cooling-off' period take?"

"Probably about ten days."

"Out of the question."

"That's why you have to wait! It's too dangerous!"

"For someone like you, perhaps. To me, it is nothing."

It was a statement of staggering arrogance, but after watching him turn twenty Spiral Moles into mincemeat, Hugo found it hard to argue. Still, he couldn't just let him go. Being strong wasn't the only thing that kept an adventurer alive.

"The monsters aren't the only problem! There are traps, and puzzles you have to solve to move forward. Exploring ruins is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to wait for the right conditions so you don't waste your stamina and items."

"...Hmph. I suppose that makes some sense."

Surprisingly, the robed man relented.

Relieved, Hugo was about to suggest they return to the surface to report the situation, but a hand suddenly clamped onto his shoulder with a crushing grip.

"Then you’re coming with me. You can at least act as a guide for the upper floors."

"Wait... what? Why!?"

Despite being shorter than Hugo, the man possessed terrifying strength. He began dragging the 180-centimeter-tall, muscular adventurer along as if he weighed nothing at all.

"Quit your squawking. You're noisy."

"I'm squawking because we're going to die! This is a suicide mission!"

"You were effectively dead five minutes ago. Dying now shouldn't make much of a difference to you."

"That logic is insane! ...Wait, who are they!?"

Two more figures, also shrouded in robes, had appeared silently behind them. Hugo found himself surrounded by a trio of mysterious, hooded strangers.

"My luggage carriers."

"Oh... your friends? Hey there. I'm Hugo. Must be tough for you guys, being bossed around by a tyrant like this."

Hugo threw the word "tyrant" out with a bit of bite, hoping for some solidarity.

But the "luggage carriers" didn't react. They simply followed in eerie silence. The oppressive quiet of the tunnel was more than Hugo could take.

"...Man, they're really quiet."

"Of course they are. Those two don't possess the capacity for speech."

"What? That's creepy as hell!"

The more he learned, the more suspicious this group became. The tyrant's companions were clearly as abnormal as he was.

A man of overwhelming, terrifying strength who refused to listen to reason, and two unsettling, mute servants. Realizing he had been forcibly drafted into a party where communication was a lost cause, Hugo cursed the God he didn't even believe in.

Without a doubt, this was the unluckiest day of his life.