Chapter 23: Proceed with caution until the very last moment

A new rune.

There was no point in explaining its meaning—it would only tire his mouth.

Soren’s eyes began to sparkle as he gazed at the rune.

A violet-colored tetrahedron rolled around, tilting this way and that with the slightest movement.

Soren slowly savored the sensation of it resting on his palm.

‘Dark power… Divine?’

The dormant energy within the rune sent a sharp jolt up his wrist.

Soren’s eyebrow twitched involuntarily.

It was a power that evoked old, worn-out emotions.

A faded force, perhaps one that no longer truly existed.

“Soren? Did you find something?”

Just as Soren was trying to calmly analyze the rune’s nature, an unexpected interruption came.

He instinctively tensed his eyes.

Under the light of the lantern, a face leaned in toward him, and their eyes met.

‘Should I tell him?’

In that brief moment, countless worries flashed through Soren’s mind, appearing and vanishing in rapid succession.

Should he inform Moss that he had found a rune? What if Moss insisted on splitting it?

If the rune turned out to be useless to Soren, he would not have minded.

But if it was something valuable to him, it would be a problem.

Moss was currently desperate to fill the party’s funds.

There was a chance he might simply decide to sell the low-grade rune for quick cash.

‘…No.’

After a short deliberation, Soren ultimately shook his head.

No matter how desperate things got, Moss would not forcibly demand to split a rune.

If anything, it was standard practice for whoever needed it most to absorb it, ensuring smoother dungeon exploration afterward.

Moss was no fool.

At least, Soren believed so.

“Actually, I found a rune.”

“A rune?!”

Moss’s voice rose sharply.

From across the room, Loreia and Bork, who had been rummaging through corpses, turned their attention to him.

“A rune?! Is that true, kid?!”

“Ah, yes…”

“Seems like good luck.”

Loreia gave a thumbs-up.

Soren scratched his head shyly and nodded.

This was his second dungeon expedition—and his second rune discovery.

He had wondered if runes might actually be more common than he thought, but judging by the others’ reactions, that did not seem to be the case.

It was simply good luck.

And thinking that way made it feel even better.

“So, what kind of power does it have?”

“One moment…”

Soren closed his eyes again.

He tried to gauge the rune’s energy as it rolled between the lines of his palm.

‘Darkness, divinity… Worn-out power, but strong nonetheless.’

The rune’s energy felt distinctly different from the low-grade Poison Rune he had found before.

Where the Poison Rune stemmed from Kahaknal, the goddess of roots and venom…

‘I can’t tell.’

Soren eventually gave up trying to identify it.

It was a frustrating realization.

A shaman was supposed to be attuned to the powers of gods, yet he could not even decipher the nature of a mere low-grade rune.

But instead of getting angry at himself, he chose to stay focused—something he had learned with experience.

There was no point in wasting energy over it.

At the very least, he understood the general type of power it contained.

“This rune… seems related to destruction.”

“Destruction, huh… Sounds like a mage’s rune.”

Moss’s face immediately drooped.

The others, who had overheard Soren’s words while scavenging, visibly lost energy as well.

After all, they had already found enough junk to burden their wallets; a low-grade rune divided among four would be worth little.

“I don’t think it’s exclusively for mages.”

“Oh? Then…?”

Soren was not particularly disappointed.

The rune’s dark energy continued to tickle his palm.

‘I think I can absorb it.’

Destructive energy—definitely a type that mages often used, but somehow, Soren felt he could absorb it as well.

“Why don’t you all try feeling it once?”

“Then, if you insist…”

Moss was the first to receive the rune.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head in a prayer-like gesture, only to shiver and open his palm shortly afterward.

“It doesn’t seem to resonate with me. Besides, Eraypion would never permit such dark power anyway.”

“Next up, me?”

“My turn…”

Bork and Loreia each took a turn handling the rune.

Their verdicts were the same: they could not absorb its power.

“Seems like it’s a match only for you, Soren.”

“Shame. I really wanted to pick up another rune soon.”

“I’m… satisfied with my current rune.”

***

As they each responded differently, all eyes naturally turned to Soren.

Soren quietly gazed down at the rune, now back in his hand.

“So…?”

“Are you going to absorb it, kid?”

The decision was his: absorb the rune or sell it for travel funds.

Soren closed his eyes once again, sinking his consciousness deep toward the rune’s core.

Darkness, ancient energy, the urge for destruction.

All three braided together, whispering temptations to him.

‘Having too many runes isn’t a bad thing, especially in the early stages.’

[In the beginning, rune sockets tend to be plentiful. With low- to mid-grade runes, you do not have to be too picky. Runes are generally a case of “the more, the better,” and having a variety lets you respond to different situations.]

Soren’s rune sockets were still mostly empty.

Recalling the strategy guide’s advice, he felt reassured.

There was no harm in stockpiling runes.

Also, erasing a low-grade rune later would be cheap compared to erasing a mid-grade one.

Furthermore, considering the dark and destructive aura he sensed, Soren had a few ideas.

[Violet-hued runes fall into three categories: shadow, chaos, and destruction. If you can absorb one, do so. All three are highly useful in the early stages.]

What he was feeling leaned closer to destruction.

That alone was enough to decide.

Soren tightened his grip around the rune.

“I’ll absorb it.”

“Sounds good.”

“Besides, we made enough money anyway.”

“Agreed.”

Soren closed his eyes once more.

In the pitch-black darkness, with even the lantern light extinguished, he felt the rune pulsing warmly in his grasp.

Even in the dark, the rune’s faint energy shimmered.

The soft surge of dark power slowly climbed up Soren’s arm.

He calmly accepted it.

It was new power—and it was his to command.

Zzzt—

A sharp, needle-like jolt shot through his brain, but the pain was fleeting.

Soren exhaled a long breath.

Inside his nearly empty rune socket, another rune barely settled into place.

Moss approached, a tense look on his face.

“Is it done?”

Soren slowly opened his hand to reveal the scattered remains of the rune, gently fluttering over the treasure chest.

Crack!

From the tip of Soren’s staff, a blast of ominous violet lightning shot forth.

Moss’s stunned eyes followed the arc.

Across the room, the wall scorched black, with ashes crumbling and falling from the burnt mark.

“I absorbed it.”

[Low-Grade Destructive Strike]

Soren had acquired a new rune.

But the celebration would have to wait—cleanup came first.

“Nothing but junk here.”

“Yeah. Real trash.”

Moss grimaced as he surveyed the corpses sprawled on the floor.

Understandable, considering the state of them: one with half his face crushed, the other with his skull physically split open.

Not a metaphor, but quite literally torn apart.

“Bork.”

“…I couldn’t hold back.”

Soren silently stared at the corpses strewn before him.

There was nothing worth salvaging from the corpse whose skull Bork had split open.

If the brain had been intact, Soren could have taken it out carefully, but it was almost impossible to find an undamaged brain in a head smashed by a hand axe.

At least the sorceress’s eyes still held some value.

Soren had already picked up one eye that had popped out, but he approached the Sorcerer’s body to check the rest.

The side where the eye had been removed was nothing more than pulp.

However, the other side was relatively intact.

The eye, rolled up to show the whites, had only minor damage and was still worth collecting.

‘Good enough.’

***

After a moment of hesitation, Soren shook his head.

If the person were alive, it would be different, but taking an eye from a corpse was nothing special.

However, now that he had companions, he had to be mindful of how he appeared to others.

‘What would the party think if he suddenly started gouging out a corpse’s eye while everyone was watching?’

At the very least, it wouldn’t make him look like a sane person.

“Soren?”

“No, it’s nothing. There’s really nothing worth taking.”

“Ah, yeah. I guess so.”

In the end, Soren dusted off his hands and straightened up.

It couldn’t be helped.

If he got greedy, he might end up losing what he already had.

Though Soren desperately needed money, he wasn’t about to let greed blind him.

“We’ll settle the loot either when we make camp or once we get back to the settlement.”

“There’s no need to drag it out. Sounds good.”

The party members packed up their belongings.

They slung their bags over their shoulders, gathering whatever loot they had secured.

Before leaving the room, Soren glanced around at the remains of the shattered golem.

The room was silent, almost awkwardly so, with only a treasure chest sitting forlornly at its center.

‘Was this a treasure room? Or just a slightly fancier junk room? Perhaps an elite monster’s lair?’

After a moment’s thought, Soren pulled out his map and scribbled a few words with a piece of charcoal.

‘Treasure Room.’

It might not seem like much to others, but to Soren and his party, it was indeed treasure.

The new rune they had found was an unexpected bonus.

Calling it a treasure room was more than fair.

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah. Let’s move.”

“Haah… I feel fired up again. Like I could take on anything.”

“Bork, don’t get too careless.”

After a brief rest, Soren and the party reformed their formation and quickened their pace.

Finding a treasure room had been a huge gain.

They had earned more than enough here, so even if they wandered around the dungeon a bit before escaping, it wouldn’t be a problem.

But money was something you could never have too much of, and in a dungeon, the more thorough you were, the richer you got.

“This way.”

“Hmm… Alright.”

That was the kind of person Soren was.

He hated tedious tasks but understood that if something had to be done, it was better to tackle it quickly.

He knew that leaving a tedious job unattended would only make things even worse later.

“Kid. We need more oil for the lantern.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Though a lot had happened today, the cave remained unchanged.

It was still cold, dark, and ominous.

Spending too much time exploring such a place was pure madness.

“Haaah…”

Especially for Soren.

Thanks to the curse he had cast earlier, his exhaustion felt twice as heavy as usual.

Cursing was an act of placing overwhelming malice upon a target.

It meant trapping lingering resentment so that even death couldn’t free it, and the burden of that act always fell on the caster.

Whether the medium was a lizard or a human, the fatigue it caused was the same.

‘I’m so tired I could die.’

‘How long had they been walking?’

Forcing his dry eyes open, Soren peered into the darkness ahead.

From deep within the blackness, a soft glow began to rise.

The frost moonflowers were blooming again.

“Let’s set up camp here for today.”

And so, another day in the dungeon quietly came to an end.

***

Time spent in a dungeon was relative.

Some felt it passed too quickly, while others felt it stretched into an eternity.

Soren wavered between the two.

He was only on his second dungeon expedition, so there was no way he could judge properly, but compared to the last time, this journey felt much shorter.

That was thanks to the fact that, unlike the overgrown lair they had previously explored, where strange phenomena kept them on edge, here they only had to fight a frost golem.

At least they hadn’t been forced to stay awake for an entire day under constant threat.

As a result, time seemed to flow faster.

One day, two days, three days… They picked the safest routes and steadily moved forward until finally, on the seventh day…

***

“Today’s the day we escape, but let’s not drop our guard until the end.”

Moss’s expression hardened.

It was true—there was nothing more humiliating than getting wiped out at the last moment because of carelessness.

Soren and the others understood this well.

So, maintaining a healthy level of tension, the four pushed through the darkness.

Boom!

After walking for half a day, a faint tremor shook the ground.

Leading the group, Loreia quickly pinpointed the source.

“Over there.”

No one doubted her.

Without a word, Soren and the others followed Loreia.

‘Having a party really is nice.’

Soren quietly watched Loreia move ahead.

She disarmed traps with ease, warned them of nearby enemies, and made traversing the dungeon so much easier.

Bork, standing firm at the vanguard, and Moss, offering buffs and supporting Bork, made the party flow smoothly.

It was so much better than moving forward alone, worrying about every little thing.

The party formation made them tactically stable, and their exploration speed was faster than ever.

“Hm?”

Just as they were making swift progress, Loreia suddenly stopped.

They had just entered a new room.

Soren peeked out from behind Bork’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong?”

“Kid, get behind me for a second.”

“Huh…? What?”

“It’s that woman.”

Soren didn’t immediately understand Bork’s words.

But when he cautiously stepped further into the room, he realized what Bork meant.

“This person is…”

“The archer who escaped back then.”

It was the same unknown party they had encountered at the treasure room.

The only survivor, the archer, who had fled from Soren’s group, was now slumped in a corner of the room.

She was dead, brutally murdered.

Next to her was the portal leading to the surface.

Soren frowned.

Having to escape from right beside a corpse felt incredibly ominous.

“What happened here?”

“Completely… butchered.”

Just as Loreia said, when Soren approached, he saw that the archer’s body was in tatters.

Her torso had been sliced open from her navel to her collarbone, and her spilled intestines were already rotting.

Soren instinctively scanned the body.

Her heart was missing.

“No heart… How bizarre.”

“This woman’s a fae hybrid. There’s a rumor that a fae’s heart can be used in rare alchemical recipes.”

Sure enough, the archer’s ears were long and pointed, a typical trait of fae bloodlines.

Soren gazed at the hollow where her heart had once been.

If someone had deliberately harvested her heart, it would explain the condition of her body.

Alternatively, some scavenging kobolds might have feasted on her organs.

‘Clean.’

Soren’s eyes grew serious as he examined the incision.

The cut was clean.

As if it had always been that way, with very little bleeding—an incredibly precise technique.

“This was no amateur.”

“I think so too. I doubt this archer went down without a fight. Whoever did this must have been extremely skilled…”

Rising to his feet, Soren brushed himself off.

Whether it was a master or not, their priority now was to escape.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Agreed. Even if the corpse is old, it feels unsettling.”

Soren and the others stepped onto the teleportation circle, and Bork slowly closed the door behind them.

Until the very end, Soren kept his eyes on the archer’s mangled body.

‘A master…’

Someone capable of slicing open a person’s chest, bone and all, without facing resistance.

Such a powerful individual was roaming this dungeon.

Clang—!

“We’re going up. Hold on tight.”

“Ugh… Here we go again.”

That was why no matter how deep or low a dungeon was, one could never afford to let their guard down.