[ACCESS TO SYSTEM DATABASE AUTHORIZED]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW YOUR STATS? (Y/N)]
Hope stared at the question echoing in the depths of his mind, a question that felt as if it were being asked by the universe itself.
After the Yeti's death, the heat of those enormous green flames still lingered in his body, that wild adrenaline still coursed through his veins. After the long and dark days beneath the ocean, the surface world had not only greeted him with something deadly… it had also offered him the key to one of the things he desired most: the mysterious door behind the System.
He took a deep breath. There was not even a single second of hesitation in his mind. Ignorance had been his greatest enemy until now. He didn't want to move forward blindly in the darkness anymore. He should be the one setting the rules.
With a mental command, he touched the glowing (Y) – YES button on the massive black panel.
And in that moment… the world stopped.
This was not a metaphor. Physical reality literally froze solid.
The large snowflakes falling from the cave's ceiling hung in the air before they could reach the ground. The deafening roar of the blizzard outside was instantly cut off, replaced by an absolute, airless silence. The green sparks still smoking over the Yeti's burned corpse froze in place.
Lypin, with her hands against her chest and her eyes widened with worry, became trapped in that single second while breathing in.
Hope wanted to turn his head and look at Lypin.
But he couldn't.
Every connection with his physical body had been severed in an instant. He couldn't move his fingers, blink his eyes, or draw air into his lungs. He wanted to panic, but he couldn't even produce the biological reaction necessary to feel panic. He simply existed. Completely detached from the tangible world, he had become pure consciousness. Only his thoughts and the System interface shining in the endless blackness before his eyes remained.
In the pitch-black void in front of him, a thin green loading bar appeared and slowly began to fill.
[SOUL SCANNING…]
Hope felt a strange chill run through him as he read the message. The System was not scanning his blood, his mana, or his muscle structure. It was examining the very essence of his existence… his soul, which carried the lives he had taken and the dark shadows within him. When the loading bar reached 100%, the green light turned blood-red.
[TARGET CONFIRMED.]
The black void suddenly filled with complex streams of data sliding from top to bottom, where ancient runes mixed with modern digital code. It was as if the source code of the universe itself was flowing before his eyes. Then the codes slowly stabilized and transformed into a clear, sharp interface that Hope could understand.
This was the legendary, true statistics screen he had been dying to see ever since he first stepped into the surface world.
[USER STATISTICS]
NAME: Hope (CodeName)
CLASS: Dungeon Architect
LEVEL: 30
[BASIC ATTRIBUTES]
STR (STRENGTH): 41
AGI (AGILITY): 63
VIT (VITALITY): 52
INT (INTELLIGENCE): 78
MANA: 310
[SKILLS]
• Soul Power• Dungeon Architect Powers
[SUMMONS]
• Ignis• Ancient Glacier Yeti• Bonebreakers• Ice Wolves• Obsidian Alpha• Spectre• Flame Tyrant• Two Head Ogre
As Hope examined the screen line by line in his mind, his thoughts spun rapidly.
The first thing that caught his attention was his name. It said Hope (CodeName). CodeName. The System was saying that his real name was not "Hope," that it was only a nickname given to him. Then what was his real name? Did the System have a past it was hiding even from him?
His gaze shifted to his attributes.
STR: 41. His physical strength wasn't bad. For someone who wielded a scythe and wore leather armor, it was above average… probably. He might not be a pure tank like Deniz, but he wasn't weak either.
AGI: 63. His agility was high. Now it made sense where his incredible reaction speed in battle and abilities like Shadow Step came from.
VIT: 52. His endurance was at a level that allowed him to withstand the blows he received.
But the real critical point was the two lines below.
INT: 78 and MANA: 310.
His Intelligence and Mana capacity were terrifyingly high. For a level 30 player, those numbers were completely unbalanced. But considering that his class was Dungeon Architect, it made sense. He was not a warrior who fought with physical blows. He was someone who commanded armies with his mind, ruled over souls, and summoned ancient spirits into the physical world with his mana. Awakening and controlling a Mythic Soul like Ignis required a massive pool of mana.
His gaze slowly shifted down to the SUMMONS list.
The list of his army looked pretty solid.
At the very top was Ignis, the one who burned the ocean. Right below him was the Ancient Glacier Yeti he had just killed. And after that came the weak but numerous Ice Wolves he had gathered in the cave.
But as he moved further down the list, he saw the names from those early, harsh days in the outside world. Flame Tyrant, Two Head Ogre, Spectre. Monsters he had once killed without much effort and barely cared about were now just small pieces of his inventory.
However, when he looked at the very bottom of the screen, where all the statistics ended, he encountered the System's true dark and mysterious nature.
Beneath the statistics was a thin red bar, blinking slowly as if it had been written in blood. And next to it was a single line of text.
[Architect Transformation: 10%]
Hope's mental consciousness froze the moment he read it.
Transformation? he thought. Am I not already an Architect? Then how am I transforming?
His curiosity overpowered his fear. With a mental motion, he clicked the small, dim [INFO] icon beside the red text.
The screen suddenly went dark. The writings disappeared instantly, replaced by pale white, pixelated text that looked as if it had been torn from an ancient book. Holding his breath, Hope began to read.
[DATABASE ENTRY: DUNGEON ARCHITECT]
A Dungeon Architect is not merely a summoner who controls creatures. A Dungeon Architect is a godlike entity who personally creates the Dungeons of the surface world and beyond, establishes their rules, and constructs their ecosystems.
Architect Transformation is the stage where a newly awakened and raw Architect Soul in the universe breaks the mortal body it inhabits and begins transforming into its true form.
A freezing chill ran through Hope's mind.
The mortal human body he inhabited? True form?
Wasn't he human? Wasn't being an Architect just a class?
If the transformation reached 100%, what would happen to his body? Would he lose his humanity completely and turn into a monster… or perhaps the dungeon itself?
The text continued to scroll downward.
The transformation accelerates whenever a new soul is absorbed, whenever a new level is gained, and whenever a new dungeon is conquered. When the transformation is complete, the Architect—
The text stopped suddenly at that exact point, right at the most critical moment.
The words trembled. The pixels began to break apart.
A massive, blood-red error message slammed onto the pale white text, tearing across the screen.
[!!! SYSTEM ERROR !!!]
[INSUFFICIENT AUTHORIZATION]
[THIS DATA FILE IS SEALED BY THE SYSTEM]
[USER CONNECTION TERMINATED]
"Wait! No!" Hope wanted to shout within his mind. He had been just about to reach the answers he was looking for, the truth of his own existence.
But the System didn't listen.
The deep dark void surrounding his mind shattered with a massive crack, like a glass ceiling breaking apart. Hope's consciousness was violently thrown out of that deep database, as if he had been physically dragged away.
And suddenly, the heavy, cold, exhausted sensation of his physical body returned all at once.
The absolute stillness over time disappeared.
The snowflakes hanging from the cave ceiling fell to the ground. The deafening howl of the wind outside flooded his ears again. Lypin's worried breath escaped her chest as a cloud of vapor. The Yeti's ashes scattered in the wind.
Hope collapsed to his knees, pressing his hands against the icy cave floor as he began taking deep, ragged breaths. His lungs burned like someone who had been underwater for too long and had suddenly resurfaced. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead.
"Hope!" Lypin ran to his side and grabbed his shoulders. "Are you okay? You suddenly froze. You just stared into empty space. What happened?"
Hope swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in his throat. He raised his trembling right hand and gestured that he was fine.
"I'm okay," he signaled. "Just… a little tired. It was an intense fight."
It wasn't entirely a lie. The pitch-black interface before his eyes had disappeared, but the System's normal menus still waited quietly at the edge of his vision.
He glanced at the notifications.
A huge number of unused stat points from reaching level 30 were waiting for him. New branches and new traits had also unlocked in the skill tree.
Hope took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. With Lypin's help, he slowly stood up. The dark secret in his mind, the possibility of that 10% transformation, gnawed at his brain like a worm, but he couldn't focus on that right now.
He looked at the stat screen in front of him.
Becoming stronger would now be much easier. That locked interface had shown him just how unbalanced and immense his stats were. If he invested his new points directly into INT (Intelligence) and MANA, he might soon gain the capacity to summon not just dungeon bosses… but perhaps an entire army at once.
His confidence in his own power was returning. Deniz's words, the insults of that fanatical gladiator who had tried to crush him by saying "You are weak," were now completely meaningless.
He was not a pawn.
He was an Architect, a being walking the path toward a divine power that created dungeons.
On the road he had begun with Lypin, he would not only find the World Tree… he might even rewrite the rules of this System with his own will.
The approaching Royal Army, Negra, King Khronos…
None of them could stand in his way.
He was far stronger than before.
"Let's prepare the supplies," Hope said, turning to Lypin. A new, unshakable confidence resonated in his voice. The green flames in his eyes flickered faintly. "We'll rest here for a bit while I organize my stats. Then we'll head north, straight into the depths of the forest—"
Hope's sentence never finished.
From the cave entrance came a shrill, savage, blood-freezing scream that cut through even the howling blizzard outside like a blade.
It wasn't the roar of an animal.
It wasn't the cry of a monster.
It was the death scream of a human being whose flesh was being torn apart while still alive.
And the direction it came from was the same path Hope and Lypin had taken hours earlier.
The stat screen in Hope's hand disappeared instantly. His scythe flared into existence within seconds. Lypin turned toward the pitch-black storm outside the cave, staring into the direction where the scream had come from.
"What was that?" Lypin whispered, her voice trembling.
The confidence in Hope's eyes instantly turned into pure, deadly seriousness.
The Royal Army couldn't have found their trail this quickly.
Then what… was hunting in this freezing darkness?