High above, where the shadows clung and webbed the vaulted ceiling, a presence detached itself from the darkness.

  Dust fell in thin strands as a gargoyle that was perched atop a blackened archway began to crack. The stone beast flexed its wings silently as it preyed on the lone hunter walking along the empty corridor beneath it.

  Its claws dug into the masonry as it prepared to dive-bomb the intruder, letting out a piercing screech that would have paralyzed any raiding party below B-rank.

  The human paused. He glanced up, shielding his eyes from the falling dust with a grimace.

  But it was too late.

  The gargoyle pushed off the archway, diving with terrifying speed with its talons extended, ready to tear its prey into wet ribbons.

  A [Fireball] met the monster’s chest.

  BOOOM.

  The explosion shook the temple’s foundation, and the echo slammed against the walls, rolling down the halls like a thunderclap trapped in a jar.

  The gargoyle slumped to the ground.

  Shane brushed the dust off his shoulders, frowning at the mess on his coat.

  He had lost count how many monsters he’d fought now. Any more and his [Mana Hypersensitivy] might start to flare up again.

  He planted his shoes on the back of the monster that hadn’t even lasted three seconds.

  The gargoyle was an A-rank. It should’ve turned him into mince meat before he could move an inch, just as any elite mob designed to wipe out full parties should.

  If this was a typical dungeon.

  The [Forsaken Fane] was an S-rank, but it was also a limited-time event that had been completed years ago. Reopening it with the glitch forced the monsters to revive, but they were far from their normal state.

  All it took was a specific elemental trigger to remind the AI that this zone was ‘Cleared,’ causing the mobs to die. Or rather, return to being dead.

  This was also why, sadly, his [Skill Copy] didn’t work on them.

  In this case, the Fire attribute acted like a kill-switch, which was also why Shane had bothered to copy a skill off of an F-rank snail.

  It didn’t matter what rank the skill was; as long as it was fire-based, a single strike could return the monsters to their graves. Shane didn’t know the underlying mechanics of the code, but he certainly had no complaints about the results.

  “Still,” Shane muttered, rubbing his ringing ear. “Never thought the skill would get this loud.”

  Apparently, the server’s method of reverting the monster back to a corpse involved violent detonations.

  The constant explosion must have woken up the whole floor, if not the entire dungeon. Thanks to the aggro radius in this place being the same as what he’d remembered, he’d been very popular after his first fight.

  Better the monsters came for him than the other way around, though, because finding them himself would’ve been a pain in the neck with his [Bad Navigator] quirk.

  [Bad Navigator (EX)]

  Direct navigation to your intended destination will be blocked. This quirk is always activated unless you are accompanied by another person or have the route fully memorized.

  He continued down the passage until he reached a T-intersection. To his left, there was a dark corridor lined with broken statues stretching into the shadows. To his right, there was a staircase winding upward, lit by torches burning with golden flames.

  A vein throbbed in his temple.

  “Son of a...”

  He’d been here before. Shane hooked a finger under his collar and tugged it loose.

  Last time, he’d picked the dark path, walked for ten minutes, only to end up back where he started. He’d been attacked by the very statues that were littering the floor now, their broken bodies a testament to his earlier irritation.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  This maze was his personal hell on earth, all thanks to his fucking quirk.

  The only reason he could sort of find his way was by process of elimination, using the monster corpses he left behind as breadcrumbs.

  He thought back to Josh Miller, the NPC he’d walked away from at the entrace.

  In hindsight, Shane should’ve brought the NPC along to avoid getting lost in the maze. He hadn’t accounted for the fact that the most dangerous thing in here was going to be the damn floor plan.

  This dungeon wasn’t even classified as a labyrinth, why were there so many routes that circled around?

  Desperate, Shane had gone so far as to try reverse psychology on himself. If he felt a strong gut instinct to go left, he’d deliberately go right.

  Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t worked.

  An EX-rank quirk was not that easy to outmaneuver. Perhaps the very idea of using reverse psychology had been planted by the Quirk, which seemed to actively gaslight him to counter his attempts to shake it off.

  Having already tried the left corridor last time, he chose right.

  He trudged up the stairs, the golden torchlight casting dancing shadows against the walls. The ceiling began to dip lower as he climbed, forcing the shadows to stretch and warp into contorted shapes that seemed to reach for him.

  The stairwell ended abruptly at a small landing.

  Two heavy oak doors blocked his path with deep gouges scarring the wood near the bottom, as if something had once tried desperately to claw its way in.

  Shane sighed and reached into his inventory. His fingers brushed past several mana potions until he found a coin. He pulled it out. George Washington’s profile gleamed under the torchlight.

  “Okay, Washington,” Shane said, balancing the coin on his thumb. “Tell me which one to open.”

  Heads, he’d go left. Tails, he’d go right.

  This was the only way he could think of to battle the [Bad Navigator] quirk. If he didn’t find the boss room soon, he’d have to log out before clearing the dungeon.

  That meant losing the weapon for good; the glitch only worked for a single run, and the gates would seal shut the moment he left or disconnected from the game, never to open again.

  He was about to flick the coin with his thumb, when a sound cut through the dead air, freezing him in place.

  It was a scream. A woman’s scream.

  And it was close.

  His head snapped to the right. The cry had been dampened because of the closed door, but the source was undeniable. He cocked his head as he tried to judge the distance from the initial scream. Six hundred feet, maybe less.

  Shane frowned. There couldn’t be anyone else here, besides him.

  ...Had another player wandered into the dungeon after he came in? A newbie might have stumbled in without knowing the curses that infested this place.

  Or was this a trap? But Shane’s [Curse Immunity] was high enough to negate any kind of [Hallucination] curses hidden here.

  A second wail tore through the silence. This one was shorter, cut off mid-breath.

  Shit.

  He grabbed the handle, pulled it open, and found himself in yet another long corridor. The only difference was the floor. The tiles ended abruptly, yielding to a chasm that dropped into endless darkness.

  Did that mean he picked correctly? Or not? The other door had melted away the moment he touched the handle.

  Shane had only one way to find out.

  He stepped onto the empty air, and instead of falling to his doom, his shoes met solid resistance that held his weight. As far as he knew, this dungeon didn’t have traps that led to cheap deaths, such as plummeting into a void.

  Shane picked up the pace, his footsteps echoing in the corridor. The narrow hallway curved right and he banked hard, his shoes squeaking against the glass as he drifted into the turn.

  The glass floor gave way to polished obsidian, and the air started vibrating with the hum of dense mana.

  He skidded to a halt as the corridor opened up into a cavernous circular room.

  The entire chamber was bathed in the sickly green glow of a complex curse array that dominated the floor.

  Suspended in the dead center, floating five feet above the runes, was a woman.

  She drifted on her back as if lying on an invisible altar, her head lolling backward over the edge, exposing her neck. Her mouth was open in silent agony, and her eyes had rolled back into her skull, showing only the whites.

  [Nightmare Shackle (D+)]

  The victim is pulled into a personal nightmare created by their own guilt. Forgetting who they are, the victim becomes a prisoner in their own head, repeating the same moment endlessly.

  Across the chamber—separated from Shane by thirty feet of lethal runes—stood a raiding party.

  Their desperation was palpable even from this distance. A man in armor was pacing back and forth, as if trying to find a loophole, while another had collapsed to his knees, face buried in his hands.

  And there was Josh Miller.

  His hands hovered over the edge of the curse circle, eyes glowing blue from his [Appraisal] skill, but he kept pulling back in frustration as if he was meeting some kind of resistance.

  The idiot NPC had actually followed him in.

  A mix of relief and annoyance washed over Shane.

  He had sprinted down the corridor, convinced a newbie player had stumbled into the dungeon without lowering their intensity toggle for the [Hallucination] curse.

  But seeing Josh standing there, Shane realized the victim was just one of his party members—an NPC.

  Shane was glad a real person wasn’t at risk of trauma on his account, but he was still irritated that he had run all this way simply to save some bot.

  He stepped into the chamber and sauntered toward the woman.

  “Wait! Stop!”

  The shout boomed from the other side of the room. Shane paused, his sneakers hovering inches above the glowing runes.

  Through the gloomy green light, he looked at Josh standing on the opposite edge of the giant curse circle. The older hunter looked frantic, one hand still clutching the dagger Shane had seen previously.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t!” Josh bellowed, his voice echoing through the vast chamber. “That’s a curse circle! You step in there, you’re just adding to the body count!”

  Interesting.

  It seemed that Josh already considered the floating woman dead, even though Shane had just seen him trying desperately to find a way to get rid of the curse circle.

  There were no skills that could counter a curse in this world, and purification items were rarely found as loot.

  Even if Josh could somehow find one after he escaped this place, he probably knew that the woman wouldn’t be alive for long, trapped in an S-rank dungeon.

  It was quite commendable for an NPC to be trying to save a stranger instead of prioritizing his own teammate. Perhaps the AI wasn’t as human as Shane had originally presumed.

  He ignored Josh, and his sneakers made contact with the outer ring of the runes.