I cracked my knuckles slowly while hovering above the shattered clearing.
"I hope you live long enough," I said calmly, watching the ogre's body tear through ice and splintered trees like something the world had already given up trying to stop. "For me to level up again."
The last fragments of frozen debris rained down as the creature finally crashed into the far end of the forest, its massive frame skidding through shattered ice before coming to a halt in a low, grinding scrape. For a moment, it didn't move.
Then it did, slowly forcing itself upright, its towering frame grinding against the frozen ground as though its own mass had become a liability. That last attack had definitely hurt.
Good.
I was still in the air.
The moment my boot left its skull, I adjusted mid-motion, my body continuing forward before gravity could argue. The pressure didn't fade. It stretched—anchored between where I had been and where I had already chosen to be.
That was enough.
I landed hard and didn't break stride. Each step left fractures in the ice. I didn't rush. I didn't need to. This time, I was the one doing the hunting.
One step.
Then another.
The pressure surged instantly, the ground bracing beneath my feet as my ability came alive. I committed forward, and the next step shot me through the forest. I didn't bother avoiding the trees as I cleared the distance in a heartbeat.
The ogre forced itself upright just as I came into range.
But it was too late.
I stepped into range and drove my fist into its chest. The impact didn't explode outward like I expected. Instead, the force folded inward—and the ogre followed it.
The frozen armor caved inward where my knuckles connected, stone and bone warping like metal under pressure. I felt the resistance for a fraction of a second—just enough to know it was there—before it gave way completely. The ogre's torso jerked violently as the rebound tore through it, forcing its massive frame backward a half step. Not enough to fall.
This one held together longer than it should have.
I didn't stop.
Another step carried me forward before it could retaliate, my elbow driving into its ribs where the armor had already begun to buckle. The frozen stone crumpled further, and this time I felt something deeper give beneath it—bone, maybe.
The ogre roared, the sound breaking halfway through as it tried to swing. Its arm came down like a falling pillar.
I stepped into it.
The moment it touched me, the impact ceased to make sense.
The limb collapsed inward at the point of contact, momentum compressing instead of transferring. I felt the bones crack as the stored force reversed direction, snapping the arm backward with a sharp, violent motion that twisted the ogre's entire frame off balance.
That was the opening I needed.
I attacked again.
And again.
Punch, step, kick—repeat.
Each movement fed the next, my body settling into a rhythm that didn't feel like fighting so much as it felt like maintaining direction. The ogre tried to recover, tried to plant its feet and resist, but every attempt to stabilize only gave me more to work with.
A faint notification flickered at the edge of my vision.
Successful Hit Registered
312 / 600
Not enough.
I shifted slightly, circling just enough to keep it turning, forcing its weight to move where I needed it. Its size was working against it now. Every adjustment came slower, heavier, more strained. Easier to break.
My knee drove into its abdomen as the armor collapsed completely this time, folding inward as the impact crushed through it and into everything behind it. I felt its internals give way, the force traveling deeper before snapping back through the same path.
The ogre staggered and dropped to one knee.
Good.
I accelerated.
The next series of strikes came faster, tighter, each one landing before the last had fully settled. My fists drove into its chest, its ribs, its jaw, returning again and again to what was already breaking until the entire frame started to come apart.
It tried to grab me.
Missed.
Tried to stand.
Failed.
Successful Hit Registered
367 / 600
Still. Not. Enough.
I adjusted again.
Less force. More contact. More accumulation.
My strikes changed, no longer driving as deep, instead snapping against its body in rapid succession, each one triggering the same sequence—impact, compression, release—without fully committing to a finishing blow.
The ogre's body jerked with every hit now, its movements becoming erratic as it struggled to reconcile what was happening to it.
Successful Hit Registered
389 / 600
Closer.
It roared again, louder this time, desperation bleeding into the sound as it forced itself upward in one last attempt to fight back. It struggled as my blows landed one after another. Its remaining arm swung wide, aiming to crush me outright.
I stepped into it, letting my fist meet its own.
Again.
The ogre's attempt failed instantly.
The limb snapped back under its own momentum, the force tearing through the arm as the ogre's balance collapsed completely. It took a few steps backward trying to remain upright.
Successful Hit Registered
401 / 600
That was enough.
I shifted my stance.
This time, I didn't hold back.
The next step threw me into the air as I forced my inertia upward. I shot forward fast enough to tear the air apart behind me, the space behind me cracking with the violence of my acceleration. My fist aimed directly where its heart should have been.
The remaining armor didn't even slow me down. The structure collapsed immediately, bone and flesh parting under a force that no longer needed to be controlled. I felt the resistance for a fraction of a second—
Then it was gone. I passed through the ogre with little effort. A hole the size of my body was left behind—clean, absolute proof of what my ability could do. That hadn't been the plan, but I couldn't exactly argue with the outcome.
The ogre's body froze.
For just a moment.
Then it gave.
The massive frame collapsed forward, hitting the ground with a heavy, final impact that created cracks in the ice. The sound echoed outward, then faded, leaving the space in a sudden, unnatural silence.
I exhaled slowly as the realization set in—I was covered in the ogre's internals. Blood slowly dripped from my face. My suit never stopped venting heat, the excess energy vaporizing the blood as it stabilized the damage to my body.
"…Yeah."
Never doing that again. The smell alone was more than enough to convince me.
A faint chime echoed in my head.
The forest shifted.
At the center of the dungeon, where the ogre had fallen, something began to form.
Light folded inward from the ruined clearing, condensing into a semi-translucent sphere that hovered just above the broken ice. Its surface rippled faintly, energy folding in on itself in slow, controlled pulses.
The core.
A prompt unfolded in front of me.
Dungeon Clear Condition Met
Select Outcome:
[Destroy Core]
[Become Boss]
I didn't need to think about it.
"Boss."
The sphere pulsed once.
Then compressed.
The core collapsed inward, its structure rewriting itself as the energy condensed into something denser, smaller, and far more stable. It hovered in front of me for a moment before shifting again, its form reshaping into something I could hold.
Item Acquired: Frostfall Colossus
Rank: S-Class
Description:
A weapon born from condensed dungeon authority. Frostfall Colossus amplifies kinetic motion into crushing mass while converting repeated impact into internal freezing.
Sustained attacks against a single target progressively increases frost accumulation. Once critical mass is reached, the target is frozen solid.
Power scales with continuous movement. Loss of motion reduces effectiveness.
Note:
Target switching disrupts accumulation.
I paused.
"…S-class?"
That didn't make sense.
This dungeon wasn't ranked high enough to produce something like this.
Then again—
I wasn't supposed to clear it like that either.
The item pulsed once more before compressing further, its form shrinking until it wrapped around my finger, settling into place as a simple ring.
No glow. No flare. Just… presence.
Convenient.
I flexed my hand once, feeling it there, not as weight, but as certainty.
"…Yeah. I'm not letting the guild know about this."
I returned to the bear and stripped what mattered. This beast was going to fetch a good price. Anything that hard to kill usually did.
Now it was time for the most important step.
Collecting the boss core, or in this case, cores. This was a unique dungeon, seeing as most dungeons usually only have a single boss. This one had three. Each core resembled a sphere of ice, a blizzard raging within. They had a hefty weight to them signifying how powerful each one was. The final core was the heaviest, which tracked. It had taken the most effort to kill.
***
By the time I stepped out of the gate, the shift in atmosphere felt immediate. The damp, heavy air of the dungeon vanished, replaced by something lighter, cleaner.
The guards glanced at me. Both had the look of men who had expected the gate to vanish. They definitely had not expected to see me walk out with blood dripping from my face.
They both paused.
Then looked away.
Good.
***
Inside the guild, nothing had changed. Still efficient. Still controlled.
I stepped up to the counter and placed one of the boss cores down along with my guild credentials.
The clerk looked up from his tablet and picked up my credentials to pull my account up in the system.
"Verification of gate clearance approved," the clerk said after a moment. "I will update our system to reflect the closure."
I smiled faintly.
"Actually… the gate is still open. I took ownership of it."
The clerk stopped typing and looked up from the screen.
"You left a low rank dungeon open? Most higher rank adventurers clear and close lower tier dungeons to allow the higher tier ones to spawn," he said with a look of confusion. "I will add it to your account, if that's something you want. We will lease it at market rate for that rank and you will receive a daily payout. All I need to complete the registration is a complete description of the dungeon and the reward as guild policy."
"Oh… I did not realize I was supposed to close it. This is only my second gate."
The clerk reached down to grab a spare tablet and slid it over to me to begin filling out the registration for this dungeon. He looked up after hearing that this was only my second one and asked, "where is the rest of your group?"
I let out a short breath, considering how exactly I was supposed to explain clearing a dungeon that size alone. It was going to be even harder to explain how this dungeon had three bosses instead of one.
"I cleared this alone actually. I also had a question regarding dungeon bosses. Is it common for there to be more than one?"
The clerk choked when he heard the question.
"More than one?! That is highly irregular. We only have a handful of verified dungeons that have had that in the past."
He reached for a phone and began calling someone frantically.
The conversation was short. He gave my name and guild number to the person and slowly nodded his head as he was listening.
I watched as shock briefly flashed across his face and was quickly replaced by a look of reverence.
He slowly put the phone down and turned to me.
"We would be more than happy to process all cores for you. Would there be anything else you wanted processed?"
I reached into my bag and placed the other two cores down. The last one landed with a heavy thud that left a crack in the marble counter. I dumped the rest of my materials on the counter as well.
He placed a scanning plate down and began processing the first core.
I leaned forward to see what the plate was scanning for and saw a digital screen on the side facing the clerk. It displayed the type of monster, its rank, and its level.
Frost Ogre
Rank: D-Class
Level: 10
That definitely explained how that first hit with the spear almost killed me.
I was curious to see the level for the last ogre. The second one was level 13 and the last one was level 16.
The clerk kept a professional face on, but I could see the slight tremor in his hands as he completed the processing of my materials.
I finished the registration of the dungeon and listed the dungeon clear reward as a C-class weapon to avoid any further issues with the guild.
The clerk tallied up my total and turned the monitor for his screen towards me to have me verify the amount.
That was it.
No more questions.
"There is a new assignment available," he added, sliding a different tablet toward me. "High-priority. International request."
I glanced down and skimmed the screen.
Irregular Gate.
S-Rank Required.
Multi-National Team.
That was… fast.
I had just recently become an adventurer and the guild was already trying to send me on a special assignment. I had known this would happen sooner or later. The higher-ups knew what I was. Still, I saw no reason to say no, so I accepted.
I went to return the tablet to the clerk and he smiled while pushing it back across the counter.
"That tablet is now being issued to you. Moving forward please keep it on or near your person at all times. We will send requests and information through the tablet. Information regarding the assignment will be sent over shortly. Thank you for your continued business, Mr. Vale."
'Mr. Vale?!'
This clerk's tone was completely different since the phone call, now that I thought about it.
"Is this how everyone is going to start acting around me?" I mumbled.
I hope not.
***
The others were already there when I arrived.
Four of them.
I felt it immediately. Pressure.
The first leaned casually against the railing, tall, relaxed, like none of this mattered. Heat moved around him in faint distortions, as though the air itself couldn't quite settle.
"Marcus, right?" he said, pushing off the railing. "Kael."
His smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Try not to die."
Next to him stood a woman with her arms crossed, her posture still, but not passive. Light moved across her skin in thin, shifting lines, as though something were writing beneath the surface.
"Felicity," she said. "We will cover the details once we are in the gate."
Across from them—
Two more.
One was massive. It wasn't just his height. He wasn't just large. He felt dense, as though gravity had chosen him as its center. The pressure off of him alone seemed to carry a weight in and of itself. I was pretty sure this guy had abilities related to gravity.
The other—
Didn't feel like anything at all—and that was worse. I struggled to sense any pressure from him. He looked like a normal person. His armor was plain and his face had a soft smile. For some reason, that made me wary of him most of all.
"Gate opens in two minutes," one of the guards nearby said.
I still didn't fully understand not just how they were able to predict where a gate would appear, but also when and what rank. I never paid much attention in the past to information related to gates since my ability never manifested until recently.
"Thirty seconds," the same guard spoke again.
The gate opened with a kind of violence that didn't belong in reality. It tore reality open and slowly grew in size until the gate stood ten feet tall. Once it stopped growing, guild scientists and mechanics rushed to apply a stabilizing device around it to prevent early dungeon breaks. Once they finished, a reinforced archway contained the gate and the area around the gate was secured with barriers.
"Here goes nothing," I said as I stepped forward into the gate.
The distortion shimmered.
We regrouped on the other side.
The moment we crossed—
Something felt wrong.
The air felt thinner, wrong in a way the briefing hadn't prepared us for.
Nothing about this dungeon seemed to match what we were told to expect.
I didn't realize it yet, but this dungeon would end up defining who I was as an adventurer.