The morning sun had barely risen when Eli finished placing his order.
Armor.
Weapons.
A rifle.
Ammo.
Potions.
Monster storage bags.
None of them were particularly high quality, but that didn't matter. Eli wasn't trying to look impressive — he just needed tools.
Now all that was left was waiting.
He refreshed the delivery page on his phone again.
"…Come on."
A few seconds later...
HONK!
A truck horn echoed outside the clinic.
Eli's eyes lit up.
"Finally."
He rushed outside and saw a delivery truck parked by the gate.
Two workers were unloading several boxes.
One of them checked a clipboard.
"You Eli?"
"Yeah."
The worker looked back at the boxes.
"You ordered quite the collection. Planning to become a hunter or something?"
Eli shrugged.
"Something like that."
Within minutes, the boxes were stacked inside the clinic.
Eli immediately began opening them.
Inside were the items he had ordered.
A simple hunter armor set.
Two short swords.
A rifle.
Several magazines of ammo.
Basic potions.
Eli picked up one of the swords and tested its balance.
"Not bad."
The moment his hand touched the weapon...
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skill Activated: King's Physique
Weapon Compatibility Detected
Acquired Short Sword Mastery
Acquired Rifle Mastery
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli smirked.
"Still ridiculous."
He strapped the swords to his waist and slung the rifle over his shoulder.
Then he closed his eyes.
His consciousness sank inward.
A vast island appeared before him.
Bright skies.
Gentle winds.
Endless land stretching beyond the horizon.
This was Eli's Garden.
A personal world created by his class, Monster Gardener of Calamity.
Different areas of the island reflected the nature of the monsters living there.
To the west stood a dark forest.
Shadows clung to the trees and faint lightning flickered between the branches.
Kai's territory.
Deeper inside the Garden, lava flowed between rocky mountains.
Volcanoes rumbled quietly.
A small fiery slime happily bounced around molten pools.
Flare.
Eli crossed his arms.
"I'm heading into a dungeon."
Flare bounced excitedly.
𝘋𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘯?
Eli nodded.
"But I'm going alone this time."
Flare froze.
...𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵?
Eli scratched his head.
"I want to test my strength first."
Flare slowly deflated like a disappointed balloon.
Eli laughed.
"Relax. If things get dangerous, I'll call you."
Flare still seemed unhappy, but said nothing more.
"𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘺 𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘺, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭"
Eli opened his eyes.
Back in the real world.
Just then...
A system window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
DUNGEON RADAR ACTIVATED
Scanning Area...
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli blinked.
"…Already?"
Another window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hidden Dungeon Detected
Name: Hidden Dungeon of Vera
Type: Lands of the Corrupted Fairies
Rank: B
Status: Forming(time left; 11m 59s)
Distance: 3.2 km
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli grinned.
"Well then."
He grabbed his bag and dashed out of the clinic.
(@uthor): hehehe. How do you like our new system window in novel style, cool right?
Several minutes later, Eli reached the edge of a quiet forest.
The air felt unstable.
Mana gathered violently in one spot.
Then...
CRACK.
Space itself tore open.
Purple lightning flashed across the air as a massive black gate slowly formed.
A dungeon.
Freshly born.
Eli rolled his shoulders.
"Perfect."
And stepped inside.
Darkness swallowed him.
When his vision returned, he found himself standing inside a twisted forest.
Black trees towered over him.
Broken fairy statues littered the ground.
A cold wind whispered through the branches.
Eli walked forward calmly.
Then...
Rustle.
Rustle.
Small green figures jumped out of the bushes.
Goblins.
Five of them.
They rushed him immediately.
"GRAAA!"
Eli sighed.
"Warm-up time."
The first goblin lunged.
Eli moved.
Slash.
Its head rolled across the ground.
Two more attacked.
Eli spun his sword.
Slash.
Stab.
Both collapsed instantly.
The remaining goblins hesitated.
Eli pointed his blade at them.
"Come."
Moments later, the ground was covered with bodies.
More goblins appeared deeper in the forest.
Eli fought them one after another.
Blades flashed.
Gunshots echoed.
Within minutes, dozens of goblins had fallen.
Eli wiped his sword clean.
"Too easy."
But then something changed.
A strange glow appeared in the air.
Tiny winged creatures floated above the battlefield.
Fairies.
Their wings were dark and their eyes glowed purple.
They raised their hands.
A chant filled the air.
Heavy footsteps followed.
Orcs.
Large muscular monsters stepped out from the forest.
But their bodies glowed with magical energy.
A system window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Fairy Buff Detected
Opponent's strength Increased
Opponent's agility Increased
Opponent's stamina Increased
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The orcs charged.
Eli met them head-on.
CLANG!
An axe slammed into his sword.
The impact forced him back.
Another orc attacked from the side.
Eli dodged narrowly.
"These guys suddenly became freakishly strong?!."
He continued fighting, but the orcs were unusually tough.
Then Eli paused.
His eyes shifted upward.
The fairies.
Still chanting.
Still glowing.
Eli smirked.
"So that's the trick."
He raised his rifle.
BANG!
One fairy exploded into sparks.
The aura around the orcs weakened instantly.
Eli grinned.
"Got you."
BANG!
Another fairy fell.
Without the buffs, the orcs were far easier to deal with.
Eli dashed forward.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
Within seconds, the battlefield fell silent again.
But suddenly...
A roar shook the dungeon.
The ground trembled.
A massive figure stepped out of the forest.
An enormous Orc Warlord.
Three meters tall.
Bone armor covering its body.
Its aura was overwhelming.
A system window appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Boss Encounter Detected
Orc Warlord
Rank: B-
Status: Buffed by Fairy Magic
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli frowned.
"…Where's the fairy?"
He scanned the surroundings.
Nothing.
No fairy in sight.
"Strange."
The Orc Warlord roared and charged.
The battle exploded instantly.
Axes crashed against steel.
Eli activated Shadow Fang repeatedly.
Dark claws slashed across the air.
Each use drained more mana.
The fight dragged on.
Minutes passed.
Finally..
Eli activated skill.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skill Activated: Shadow Fang
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Dark energy tore across the warlord's chest.
The giant monster collapsed.
Eli dropped to one knee, breathing heavily.
"I… won."
But something felt wrong.
No experience.
No loot.
No notification.
"…What?"
Then...
A terrifying aura filled the dungeon.
Wind exploded outward.
A figure slowly descended from above.
A beautiful woman with enormous wings.
The Fairy Queen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hidden Boss Encounter Detected
Fairy Queen
Rank: A+
Status: Hungry For Flesh And Mana
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Her eyes glowed with cold amusement.
Eli's heart sank.
"You… were buffing everything?"
The Fairy Queen smiled.
The battle began.
But Eli was exhausted.
His mana was nearly empty.
The queen easily overpowered him.
Blow after blow landed.
Finally...
Eli crashed into the ground.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
HP: 1
WARNING: Host in Critical Condition
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The Fairy Queen raised her hand.
A massive spell formed.
Just as it fired...
A blur of shadows intercepted it.
BOOM.
The attack shattered.
Eli looked up.
A five-eyed shadow hound stood before him.
Kai.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Evolution Complete
Three-Eyed Shadow Hound » Pentocular Shadow Hound
Level Up
HP Restored
Mana Restored
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli grinned.
"KAI!"
The shadow hound growled proudly.
Eli opened the Garden.
Flare popped out, clearly pouting.
𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶ˊ𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘧 𝘪𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘩𝘮𝘱𝘩~
Eli laughed awkwardly.
"Alright, alright. I owe you jerky."
Flare immediately brightened.
Now all three faced the Fairy Queen.
The boss suddenly roared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Boss Skill Activated
BERSERK
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The queen's aura exploded.
Eli raised his hand.
"Let's try this. I've been saving it."
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Cursed Skill Activated
YGGDRASIL'S GRIP
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Glowing dark-green roots spread across the battlefield.
The Fairy Queen slowed.
Even her berserk aura weakened.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Boss Skill Activated
BERSERK(weakened)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Eli grinned.
"Oh?"
"Looks like my trump card was more trumpy than I expected."
Kai vanished.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skill Activated: Phantom Step
Speed and Stealth Increased
Skill Activated: Shadow Claw » Dark Lightning Claw
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Flare amplified Eli's and Kai magic through Energy Transmission.
━━━━━━━━━━━━ SYSTEM ━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skill Activated: Energy Transmission
Amplified Mana Output
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The three attacked together.
The Fairy Queen couldn't keep up.
Finally...
A final strike ended the battle.
The boss collapsed.
Then the dungeon exploded with notifications.
Massive experience flooded in.
Loot rained everywhere.
A necklace.
A massive dark scythe.
Boots glowing with magic.
And piles of items.
The dungeon had been cleared.
But outside...
Authorities had already arrived.
Hunters surrounded the area.
At the center stood a tall man with a long nose.
Adrien Longnose, the association's best investigator.
He frowned at the empty dungeon.
"It was cleared… instantly?"
No hunter in sight.
No trace of battle.
He looked around suspiciously.
But hidden nearby—
Eli vanished silently using Phantom Step.
And slipped away unnoticed.