In the wee hours of the morning, Adrian was up and out of the camp, his destination towards the deep ruins.
The air was colder than usual, or maybe it just felt that way. The Scar always had a way of making things feel slightly off, even when nothing obvious had changed.
He adjusted the strap of his bag and moved along the path at a steady pace, the lantern in his hand casting a soft, consistent glow ahead of him.
The first ward line passed without incident.
Then the second.
By the time he reached the third, the familiar markers had begun to feel less reassuring.
He slowed slightly as he stepped past them, more out of awareness than hesitation.
Beyond this point, things didn't behave the same way.
He had learned that much already.
Twenty minutes in, something shifted.
It wasn't dramatic. His sense of direction just drifted slightly, the way it had when the Shade found him on the patrol route. The broken tower he was using as a landmark moved in his peripheral vision even though he wasn't turning his head.
He recognized it this time.
He stopped immediately and looked down at his footprints.
They were already curving.
His balance shifted unexpectedly, the ground feeling uneven beneath his feet in a way that hadn't been there a second ago.
"Not this again," he muttered under his breath.
He tried to steady himself, but the sense of direction kept slipping just enough to throw him off.
He closed his eyes and found the pulling sensation instead. The low rhythmic pulse from somewhere deep beneath the ground that he had been hearing at the edge of perception for three weeks.
He oriented himself toward it and walked, ignoring everything his sense of direction was trying to tell him.
The pressure built steadily behind his eyes but he kept walking.
Something moved in his peripheral vision but he spared it no glance.
A few minutes later, the pressure peaked and then fell away.
When he opened his eyes, the broken tower was directly ahead on his left.
He exhaled slowly and kept moving.
The ruins appeared gradually out of the grey landscape. Walls of dark stone half buried in the soil, their surfaces dense with carvings that seemed to go deeper the longer you looked at them. Archways leading into darkness.
The collapsed arch was exactly where the documents said it would be.
And behind it, an entrance. The stone around the doorway pulsed with something faint and dark, barely visible in the grey morning light.
He checked the blade at his hip, raised his lantern, and went in.
***
The corridor led downward.
The walls were covered in the same dense layered carvings as the outside, but more detailed here, like the ones on the exterior were a rougher version of what was inside.
The sensation was stronger now. He could feel it in the soles of his boots now, a steady vibration that matched something in his chest he couldn't quite identify.
He walked for several minutes without encountering anything.
Then the lantern flickered and Adrian stopped immediately. He stood completely still in the half-dark and waited.
Then something came out of the side passage to his left.
A creature with three horns. A Drakul known as Feeder. It moved with a slow, deliberate pace as though stalking its prey.
Its form was solid where the Shade's had been translucent, its single visible eye tracking him with an attention that felt uncomfortably specific.
Adrian quickly backed up and the creature followed up.
He backed up faster and his heel caught on an uneven stone and he went down hard, the lantern skidding sideways across the floor and spinning to a stop three meters away. The light tilted and threw strange shadows across the corridor walls.
The Feeder moved toward him.
He scrambled upright and pressed his back against the carved wall, drawing his blade in the same motion. He knew it wouldn't do much, but he held it anyway.
Having something in his hand felt better than having nothing at all.
As the Drakul inched closer, out of nowhere, the crack of a spirit discharge split the air.
The Feeder lurched sideways, its three horns scraping against the stone wall as it stumbled. A second discharge followed immediately after the first and the creature's attention swung sharply toward the corridor entrance.
Adrian exhaled sharply, the pressure easing just enough for him to regain his footing.
"You really don't learn, do you?" a familiar voice said from behind him.
Jarvis walked in.
He moved without urgency, his right hand still faintly glowing, his expressionless face calm as ever.
Adrian glanced back in relief, not particularly surprised.
"Was wondering when you'd show up," he replied confidently to hide his trembling hands.
He had a feeling that the man would surely come with him after seeing his hesitant expression the night before.
Jarvis didn't answer as he walked past Adrian.
The Feeder turned fully toward him and charged in rage.
Jarvis discharged a third time, directly into its path, and the creature hit the force and staggered back.
It was still standing. A three horned Drakul was equivalent to a C-rank Spirit Bonder. And although they had lower intelligence than the shades, they made up for it with their near indestructible physique.
Jarvis discharged again. And again. The Feeder absorbed each hit and kept moving forward, slower now, its form flickering at the edges, but still moving.
That was when the ground shifted. A faint tremor passed through the ground and ragged walls.
Adrian paused for a second, as his survival instincts kicked in.
A section of the corridor between Adrian and Jarvis, maybe four meters wide, simply collapsed inward without warning.
The sound was enormous in the enclosed space, stone grinding against stone, dust billowing upward in a thick cloud that swallowed the lantern light entirely.
Suddenly, the surface beneath his foot gave way, the support disappearing instantly.
"—Wait—"
The rest of the thought didn't finish as the ground collapsed beneath him. He tried to reach for the wall but missed by an inch.
Stone, dust, and empty space rushed upward as he fell, the lantern slipping from his hand and vanishing into the darkness below.
For a brief moment, he caught a glimpse of the Feeder falling too and Jarvis above, engaged with something else that had appeared.
Then everything dropped away.
---
The fall didn't last long.
Adrian hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the air from his lungs as pain flared through his side.
For a second, he couldn't move. Then he forced himself to breathe.
"Inhale… okay… still alive," he muttered, voice strained.
He pushed himself up slowly, wincing slightly as he tested his balance.
His shoulder ached deeply. His arm was torn from catching at the wall on the way down. But everything else seemed to be working.
The space around him was dark. Stone walls on both sides. It was most likely an underground corridor shrouded in darkness.
Not completely, but enough that his vision took a moment to adjust.
Above him, through the broken section of floor, he could hear the sounds of the fight continuing. Jarvis was still up there fighting with the newcomer. The gap between them was at least six meters of collapsed stone with no obvious way back up.
Something moved in the darkness near him and he went completely still.
A low growl close by. Then he remembered.
The Feeder had fallen in with him.
He couldn't see it. He couldn't see anything. His lantern was somewhere around him but it hadn't survived the fall.
He couldn't see beyond his feet so he pressed his back against the nearest surface and felt carvings beneath his palms.
He began to move along the wall with his hands, following the carvings, trying to put more distance between himself and the sound of the Feeder recovering in the dark.
The sensation was stronger here. Much stronger.
Not just on the floor anymore but in the walls, in the air, in whatever space existed in his chest where his soul frequency was supposed to be.
Something pulled at him, like a current and he followed it.
The Feeder moved behind him. He could hear it now. It was drawing closer.
"…Of course it is," he said under his breath.
He moved faster along the wall.
The the carvings changed under his hands, the patterns growing sharper.
Then his fingers met the open air of a doorway and he stepped through it.
The space beyond opened up into a wide chamber, dimly lit by a faint, unnatural glow that pushed back the darkness just enough to see.
At its center stood a pedestal.
Adrian didn't slow down and rushed towards it.
"This has to be it," he muttered, breath uneven as he crossed the distance.
This was the source of the sensation he'd been feeling. It was stronger than ever before, pulling him closer to the pedestal.
He reached it and placed his hand against the surface.
Nothing happened.
He froze.
"…No."
He pressed harder.
Still nothing.
Behind him, the Drakul entered the chamber.
Adrian's thoughts raced.
'This is how it works. There's always something here. Something that activates—'
He'd read something like this before. Finding an old underground chamber and activating something to get some powerful cheats.
He tried again and again and yet nothing happened.
"You've got to be kidding me," he said, a sharp edge slipping into his voice now.
The creature moved closer.
Adrian swallowed, forcing himself to focus.
"Think," he muttered. "Think."
He tried again.
Still nothing.
The Drakul was almost on him now. He could hear the rough sound of its breathing.
Adrian stepped back instinctively, his hand slipping slightly against the surface—
—and a drop of blood fell from a cut on his arm..
The moment it touched the pedestal, something answered.
A surge of dark blue energy erupted from the pedestal and the darkness became irrelevant. The force hit the Feeder and threw it backward through the doorway.
Adrian's hands felt fused to the stone and heat climbed his arms toward his chest. It found the empty space there and filled it with something that had no equivalent in either of his lives.
Suddenly, the darkness was shattered by glowing, jagged texts that burned into his vision.
[System Initialization in progress.]
[Host detected.]
[Condition: Unregistered / Anomalous]
[Recalibrating…]
Adrian stared at it.
For a second, his mind went completely blank.
Then he let out a quiet breath that turned into something halfway between a laugh and disbelief.
"…You're kidding me."
Adrian couldn't believe it. He'd gotten a system!.
Of all the cheats he was expecting, a system was what he really wanted. And although it could have appeared sooner, he wouldn't complain.
[System online.]
[Designation confirmed.]
[Compatibility established.]
[Authority recognized.]
'Authority?' What was it talking about?
[Direct Bloodline Detected: Melvyn's Inheritance Confirmed.]
[Host Identified: Apex Soul Resonance Found]
[Welcome, Host.]
[You have been recognized as the Monster King.]
The pressure in the room became unbearable, like the weight of an ocean settling on his shoulders.
Adrian let out a gasp, his knees buckling, but his eyes were wide, glowing with a reflection of the blue interface.
"Monster... King?" he choked out, a wild, jagged laugh bubbling up in his throat despite the pain.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling, but not from fear.
For the first time in seventeen years, the hollow feeling was gone. In its place was a roar of power so dominant it made his previous desire for a spirit bond look pathetic.
'Seventeen years of being a footnote,' Adrian thought, his teeth bared in a grin that was more predator than noble. 'The tutorial is officially over.'
The system's final prompt flickered, its tone shifting into something warmly chaotic.
[Nine bonds available. Zero bonds, active.]
[Warning!: Sovereign presence detected in immediate vicinity. Evaluation beginning.]
At the edge of the blue light, behind the recovering drakul, an unknown figure with menacing presence slowly stepped into the dim-lit cavern.