I'd gone maybe two hundred paces when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It wasn't the mana coming from the dungeon. It was something else; it was human Instinct. I froze mid-step as the thing was closing in, getting close to me, forcing me to steel my nerves.
To my left, a branch the thickness of my wrist snapped. I pivoted, sword rising to prepare for an attack. But there was nothing, only the rustling of bushes and the echoes of my surroundings. Then the smell hit me: wet fur, hot breath, and the copper tang of old kills lingering in the air.
The wolf came out of nowhere, surprising me, but I was ready. During my training, I had read up on most monsters from the Duchy of Ravencourt and the surrounding dungeons. A First Circle Forest Wolf, this will be a good fight for my first monster.
It was a grey-brown blur, bigger than any wolf had any right to be, easily the size of a pony and as ferocious as a tiger. So these are Lumira's monsters, exactly like the books describe, and nothing like the animals back on Earth.
Moments later, it exploded from the underbrush on my right, jaws wide, yellow eyes locked on my throat, ready for the death blow. I didn't think. I just moved like it was second nature to me. Dropping low, twisting my hips the way Garrick had drilled into me a thousand times during our training, letting the momentum carry me under the leap instead of meeting it head-on.
Hot breath washed over my face as the beast sailed past, claws raking empty air where my head had been half a heartbeat earlier. It landed with a heavy thud, skidded, and spun. Already preparing for the next lunge. I rolled to my feet, sword up, heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could taste it in my throat.
As this happened, I remembered everything Selene and Garrick taught me. The Forest Wolf snarled, lips peeling back from teeth longer than my fingers. Its hackles were raised, ears flat, tail stiff. It circled left, keeping the distance, trying to keep a thick pine trunk between us when I could.
''First one,'' I muttered under my breath, half to myself, half to the two gods who may be watching. ''Let's see what you've got.''
The monster lunged again, lower this time, going for the legs. I stepped in, not away, and chopped down hard. Steel met meat with a meaty wack. The monster yelped, a sharp, surprised sound, and slewed sideways, blood spraying across the ground. But it didn't go down.
It twisted mid-air, impossibly fast, and snapped at my sword arm. I yanked back just in time. Teeth clacked shut an inch from my wrist but still managed to nick me. Pain flared hot along my forearm, shallow, but burning. I'd been grazed, but it didn't hurt as much as I expected thanks to the brutal training I endured.
Blood welled up immediately, soaking my sleeve. The wolf staggered, limping now, left foreleg hanging at a bad angle from where I'd hacked into the shoulder. We stared at each other. Its breathing was ragged. Mine wasn't much better. Then it bared its teeth one last time and charged. This time, I didn't dodge.
I planted my feet, sword in both hands, and met it head-on. The impact jarred every bone in my body. The blade punched deep into the wolf's chest just behind the front leg, right where the heart should be. Hot blood gushed over my hands, my forearms, my chest, covering me all over.
The beast gave one last shuddering snarl, legs buckling, and collapsed against me. I stumbled back, barely keeping my footing, and wrenched my sword free. The wolf twitched once and went still. Silence rushed back in. Just my breathing now, harsh and loud. The drip of blood, mine and its, onto the forest floor. I looked down at the corpse.
When I calmed down, I realised my hands were coated in blood. ''Well,'' I said to the empty forest, voice rough. ''That's one, feels strange now I've done it.''
I wiped the blood from my blade across the wolf's fur, then sheathed it with a soft click. The corpse sank slowly into the dungeon floor like melting wax, leaving behind a small, faintly glowing orb the colour of storm clouds. A grey monster core. It pulsed once, quietly calling to something deep inside me.
I hesitated, fingers hovering. I'd only skimmed the chapters on cores, enough to know this was the weakest kind, the ones beginners harvested and still felt lucky to get. F-rank, but it's still something compared to how the old prince was.
Curiosity won out over caution. I crouched and plucked the orb from the ground. The moment my skin touched it, a gentle current tugged at my palm, warm and strangely alive, as though the core recognised me. I clenched my jaw and pushed the sensation down, refusing to let it pull me in.
With a slow breath, I slipped the glowing core into my pocket and stood, the faint light dimming behind thick fabric. The dungeon wasn't done with me yet. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure I wanted it to be. I sheathed my sword, the blade still warm from the kill, and wiped my bloody hands on my trousers.
The wolf's corpse lay sprawled across the pine needles, steam rising faintly from the gash in its chest. I should have kept moving; every instinct screamed to put distance between myself and the entrance, to prove I could handle this alone, but something stopped me. A pull. Not physical, not quite.
It was deeper, like a fishhook lodged behind my sternum, tugging gently but insistently toward the dead wolf. The sensation was warm, almost pleasant, like the first sip of strong wine on a cold night. My adventurer card pulsed again at my belt, brighter this time, silver light flickering in time with my heartbeat.
I frowned and took a step backwards. The pull tightened toward the corpse. Not painful, but… hungry. I shook my head hard, as if I could dislodge the feeling like water in my ear. ''Not today,'' I muttered. ''I'm not some scavenger.''
I turned my back on the corpse and started deeper into the forest. The first floor wasn't done testing me. Over the next two hours, time already felt slippery here, and I killed four more things. A pair of oversized Forest Rats, their beady eyes glowing the same sickly yellow as the wolf's.
They came at me in a squealing rush, and I put one down with a clean thrust through the skull, the other with a backhand slash that opened its belly. Once they were dead, I pried the cores out with the tip of my dagger, feeling the faint heat of stored mana against my palm before dropping them into the pouch at my belt.
Then a lone boar-thing, tusks like curved daggers, hide thick as leather. It charged straight through the bush, splintering them like kindling. I sidestepped at the last second, let it thunder past, and drove my sword into the soft spot behind its shoulder as it tried to turn. It screamed once, a sound far too human, and collapsed.
Another core, this one larger, the colour of fresh blood. Each time I harvested a core, the strange pull from deep inside returned, stronger after each kill, always pointing back the way I'd come, toward every monster I'd left behind. It gnawed at me, a quiet insistence that grew louder with every heartbeat.
I ignored it and kept walking, kept killing. Until the fifth encounter. This one was different. A stag, but wrong. Antlers black as obsidian, dripping with some tar-like ichor. Eyes like burning coals. It didn't charge like the boar. It simply appeared between two pines, twenty paces away, and stared at me as though it had been waiting.
The moment our eyes met, the pull exploded. Not gentle anymore. A fist around my heart, yanking so hard I stumbled forward a step before I caught myself. My mouth went dry, then flooded with saliva. I could taste metal and salt and something richer, something alive. The stag lowered its head.
The black ichor dripped faster, hissing where it touched the ground. I drew my sword with shaking hands. It moved first, silent, impossibly fast for something that size. Antlers swept low, aiming to gut me. I parried with the flat of the blade; the impact rang up my arms like a hammer strike, sparks flew where steel met bone.
I felt the pull was screaming now, drowning out thought. My stomach growled, loud, obscene, like I hadn't eaten in days. My tongue felt thick. My teeth ached. The stag lunged again. I didn't dodge, only stepped inside the sweep of the antlers, grabbed the base of one and drove my sword upward under its jaw, through the soft palate, into the brain.
It convulsed once, legs buckling, and crashed to the forest floor in a spray of black blood. I stood over it, chest heaving. The pull didn't fade; it only sharpened, causing pain to rush through my entire body. The next thing I noticed was that I was staring at the centre of the stag's chest.
My vision tunnelled. The rest of the forest blurred. There was only the corpse, only the heartbeat I could still feel. My mouth watered so heavily I had to swallow or choke. I dropped to one knee beside the body. My dagger was already in my hand; I didn't remember drawing it.
The blade slid between the ribs with sickening ease. Hot blood welled over my fingers. I worked the knife, sawing, prying, until I could get both hands inside the cavity. And then I found it, the heart. Still twitching. Larger than it should have been, dark red-black, veined with threads of silver mana.
It pulsed weakly in my palm, warm, alive. The hunger roared. I lifted it toward my face. My teeth parted. And for one endless, terrible second, I wanted to bite down. To tear. To consume. The hunger didn't vanish. But it… retreated. Just enough. I stared at the dripping organ in my hands.
Then, without thinking, I chewed on the heart and felt something click inside as my body absorbed the pure mana, sending it somewhere. I staggered into the clearing just as the pain detonated. My hand flew to my chest; it felt like a volcano had erupted behind my ribs. Legs buckled.
I dropped hard to my knees, the impact jarring through already numb bones. I tried to scream for Garrick, but only a wet croak scraped out. The monster's heart was still working inside me. I could feel it: every frantic pulse dumping raw, molten energy straight into my Mana Core and Well.
Too much. Far too much. Then something deep inside gave way with an almost audible snap, like a rusted chain finally breaking, a dam burst. A cage shattered. Something ancient and starving uncoiled in my chest, tasting freedom for the first time since it had fed on that black, beating heart.
My vision smeared and doubled, colours bleeding at the edges, but even through the haze I heard it: steady footsteps crunching leaves, closing fast from the tree-line. My limbs had turned to lead. I couldn't stand. Couldn't run. All I could do was kneel there, gasping, while whatever had just awakened inside me.