The transition through the A-Rank Gate wasn't a magical teleportation. To the Heavens-Gate Hunters, it felt like a brief, dizzying flash of blue light.
But to Jinsu, it was a loading screen.
For three excruciating seconds, he watched the clean world decompose into wireframes before the dungeon rendered around him — heavy, oppressive, wrong in the way of a place that shouldn't exist but does anyway.
They materialized in a sprawling, ruined city. The sky above was a jagged matrix of dark red that pulsed like a dying heart. The skyscrapers were skeletal, choked by miles of thick rusted cables. It smelled of old iron, abandoned ambition, and ozone.
"Form up! Shield wall to the front, Casters in the center!"
Choi Sang-min stood atop a pile of rusted cars, his golden armor glowing in the dim red light. The kind of man who treated every dungeon like a photo opportunity.
"Listen up, Heavens-Gate! The Association expects a clean sweep. The cameras outside are waiting for a victory speech and I don't intend to keep them waiting. Park! Mana density?"
A tall A-Rank Mage adjusted a glowing monocle. "High, Boss. Real high. Atmospheric mana is thick enough to mess with our scanners. Multiple signatures ahead — A-Rank and B-Rank variants."
Sang-min smirked, drawing a massive jewel-encrusted broadsword. "Good. More loot. More glory. Porters! Keep your heads down and the supply crates sealed. Drop my spare potions and I'll leave you here as bait."
In the back line, Jinsu adjusted the heavy straps of his supply pack. Shoulders slumped. Eyes on the dirt. The performance of a nervous first-timer so complete it barely felt like acting anymore.
"Don't look at him too long, kid."
Jinsu glanced right.
An older porter with a heavily scarred face was tying off a loose strap on his own pack. His hands moved with the practiced economy of someone who had done this particular job in too many dungeons to count — someone who had learned that efficiency was the only luxury available to people like them. He had the look of a man who had survived too many raids to be afraid of them anymore. Just tired of them.
"I wasn't looking," Jinsu said, pitching his voice appropriately nervous. "I'm Kang Han-eol. First A-Rank."
"I'm Bae," the old man grunted, handing Jinsu a piece of dried ration without being asked. "You picked a hell of a first run, Kang. Heavens-Gate is all flash. They care more about kill-counts than their rear guard. When the fighting starts — nearest wall. Don't breathe until the screaming stops."
"Are the monsters that bad?"
"It's not just the monsters," Bae muttered, spitting onto the rusted pavement. "It's the Gate itself. Look at this place. Does this look like a natural dungeon to you? It feels wrong. Like it's sick."
Jinsu looked at the rusted environment.
Through his Eyes of the Architect he didn't see rust. He saw corrupted code — buildings that were heavily degraded data structures, dumped here by the System because they were too broken to delete properly. A landfill disguised as a dungeon.
[WARNING: Atmospheric Stability — Corrupted]
[Host Stability: 24.1% — Dropping]
Bae is right, Jinsu thought. And my body is starving for it.
"Movement!" Mage Park shouted from the front. "Sector 3! Coming out of the rust!"
From the shadows of the collapsed skyscrapers, massive shapes uncoiled. Grotesque amalgamations of rusted steel beams, concrete, and pulsing blue muscle tissue — the dungeon's equivalent of scar tissue. Wounds that had learned to walk.
[Entity Identified: Corrupted Scrap-Golem]
[Rank: B+]
"Vanguard, engage!" Sang-min roared, leaping from his vantage point.
His broadsword unleashed a wave of golden energy that cleaved the first golem in half. The Hunters cheered. Spells and arrows lit up the ruined street. To anyone watching it looked like a slaughter.
From the back line, Jinsu saw the truth.
The golems weren't dying. Their physical forms were breaking but the A-Rank mana inside them was simply leaking into the ground — pooling, settling, preparing to re-render. The hunters were hitting the shell and missing everything that mattered.
"They're not burning the cores!" Bae yelled, pulling Jinsu behind a rusted concrete pillar as debris rained down. "Stay down, Kang!"
Jinsu crouched. But his eyes were fixed on a severed golem arm that had landed a few feet from their pillar. The blue muscle tissue inside the rusted steel was violently thrashing — leaking raw A-Rank data into the air like blood from a wound.
[Stability: 23.9%]
I need that.
While the Hunters cheered and racked up kill counts, Jinsu let his backpack slip off one shoulder. He leaned out from cover, extending his left hand toward the severed pulsing arm.
Bae was watching the S-Rank leader.
Jinsu's eyes flashed violet.
"Erasure: Siphon," he whispered.
A thread of static — almost invisible — shot from his fingertips and pierced the golem's severed limb. The blue mana inverted instantly, rushing into Jinsu's palm as a stream of grey data. The chunk of steel and flesh dissolved quietly into white salt, completely unnoticed in the chaos.
Jinsu exhaled slowly as the A-Rank data hit his core.
[Nihil Engine: A-Rank Data Consumed]
[Stability: 23.9% → 28.5%]
[Strength +1]
He closed his fist. The violet light faded just as Bae turned back around.
"You holding up, kid?" Bae asked, breathless.
"I'm fine," Jinsu said. A cold, genuine smile ghosting across his lips as he felt his muscles harden. "I think I'm getting the hang of it."
A massive screeching sound tore across the sky.
The red polygon matrix above them cracked. Something dropped from it onto the battlefield — crushing two A-Rank Vanguard hunters instantly on impact. Not a golem. Something else entirely. It looked like an angel assembled from jagged rusted blades and bleeding code — a creature that had been built to end things rather than fight them.
[WARNING: ANOMALY DETECTED]
[Rank: A+ — System Executioner]
Sang-min's smirk vanished.
"Mages! Focus fire!"
But Jinsu's UI was showing something different entirely.
[Host Alert: Executioner is carrying a Fragment of the Second Founder's Logic.]
[Objective Updated: Consume the Executioner.]