Chapter 5: One Survivor

Silvester wasn’t using his body cover alone. With his Close skill, he locked his smell, his body heat, and even his footsteps. Every time his small black boots touched the wet stone floor, he used a Close skill on the soles to stop the vibrations so that not a single stone cracked under his weight.

He watched how the group fought, taking mental notes on every spell, every stance, and every combat weakness.

He memorized how the front knight leaned slightly to his left after a full-weight sword swing, leaving a half-second gap in his lower side shield. He kept his eyes on the mage, who took three seconds to cast her healing light—during which her entire magic core was nearly locked due to mana exhaustion.

’High power, low skill,’ Silvester thought. His dark eyes observed the loose, burnt mana threads hanging in the air. They relied mainly on raw force in the middle of a fight before thinking of a solution. If they ever encountered something that could survive their first strike, their rigid magic habits would turn into death traps.

They walked down past Floor 2, then Floor 3, then Floor 4.

The structure of the dungeon began to shift. The wide, smooth stone tunnels turned into narrow, sharp, and dangerous cracks. The air grew colder, smelling of wet, rusty iron and blood.

The moment they reached the middle of the fifth floor—a narrow, high-walled valley known as the Pit of the Abyss—the group stopped laughing and grew serious.

"Zero visibility, and it’s getting worse," the scout said, holding a massive glowing magic lamp. "The fog down here is thick, and it’s strangely quiet. We haven’t seen a single beast since we entered this floor twenty minutes ago."

"Dungeon mistake?" Julian asked, looking anxious as she clutched her magic staff.

"More likely an area swept clean by another guild," Sir Adam said, though his grip tightened on his broadsword. "Keep moving. The way to the sixth floor is just on the other side of this bridge."

They stepped onto a stone bridge crossing a pitch-black, bottomless pit.

Silvester remained behind a huge rock pillar, refusing to take another step forward. Decades of experience as a master lockpicker finding weak spots told him something was wrong.

’The air isn’t quiet,’ Silvester realized as he activated his Locksmith’s Eye. ’The flow of magic isn’t gone. It’s being pulled inward.’

In his vision, unseen golden threads of mana moved through the valley, suddenly dragged downward into the surface of the stone bridge like water draining out of a basin. Something under the bridge was draining massive amounts of mana.

Silvester didn’t shout a warning. He was no match for these adventurers, and revealing himself would mean capture or a quick death. Instead, he pulled himself tighter against the rock pillar and locked his entire presence.

Close.

A second later, disaster struck. The stone bridge didn’t just collapse—it blew upward like dynamite.

The deafening roar of two massive beasts shook the ground of the cave. The creatures crawled up from below the pit and rose into view.

They were not normal monsters for the fifth floor. They were Abyssal Beasts, underground hunters that typically inhabited the twelfth floor. Both stood forty feet tall, covered in thick black shells. They had no eyes, only terrifying round mouths lined with concentric rows of spinning diamond teeth.

"Maintain your positions, everyone!" Sir Adam roared, swinging his broadsword upward in panic.

Red fire magic shot from his blade, but the beasts didn’t even flinch. The monster’s hard shell absorbed the fire spell like a dry sponge soaking up water. The beast then swept its heavy, spiked tail across the narrow bridge.

CRACK!

The two scouts didn’t even have time to swing their axes. The spiked tail hit them at top speed, slamming their bodies against the rock wall with enough force to crush them instantly.

"JULIAN! MAKE A WALL!" Sir Adam screamed, stepping forward to block a crushing bite from the second beast. His metal shield bent under the monster’s force, the iron frame cracking as the beast bit down.

Julian, the three-star mage, panicked.

The joyful, chubby woman was gone, replaced by a terrified mage desperate to stay alive. She thrust her staff forward, trying to unleash her level-three spell, Lightning Dome.

In her terror, Julian forced her mana paths too hard.

Silvester watched the disaster unfold in slow motion through his Locksmith’s Eye.

To create a Lightning Dome, Julian needed to rotate her six magic rings in an exact sequence. But fear consumed her, causing the pins of her mana thread paths to shift erratically along her arms.

’Internal lock,’ Silvester thought.

Julian’s mana path locked solid. The enormous power of a level-three spell, suddenly trapped with nowhere to go, exploded inside her body.

BOOM!

A muted, gruesome blast originated inside Julian’s chest. Blood poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth as her magic path crumbled, destroying her senses. She collapsed backward like a puppet with cut strings, her eyes glazing over as her staff shattered into splinters.

"Julian!" Arnold, the archer mage, cried.

He raised his bow to cast a spell, but his three-second casting time was too long. The second monster lunged across the bridge, its massive mouth snapping shut around his upper body before the spell light at the tip of his arrow could even strike.

Sir Adam was left alone.

His shield was shattered, his armor crushed, and dark blood leaked from his wounds. The raid leader let out a wild, desperate scream, pouring every last drop of mana into his sword before thrusting the blade deep into the beast’s soft throat.

The beast roared in pain and thrashed wildly. After several seconds, it died, falling sideways and crashing onto the fragile stone bridge with twenty-five tons of weight.

CRACK! RUMBLE!

The ancient stone bridge collapsed completely.

The remaining monster roared one last time. Sir Adam, his team’s remains, the bridge, and the monster plunged into the pitch-black abyss below.

The sounds of the fall echoed through the cave for a agonizing minute before dying away into complete silence.

A thick cloud of dust and pulverized stone filled the valley.

When the dust finally cleared, the fifth floor was completely altered. The bridge connecting the upper floors to the lower path was gone, replaced by a sixty-foot gap of empty air over the dark pit.

The violent impact of the beast’s death throes had caused massive structural collapse. Hundreds of sharp, massive boulders had slid down from the ceiling, completely sealing the tunnel leading back to the surface.

The path to the top was blocked.

Finally, Silvester stepped out from behind his rock pillar.

Only eight years old, he stood alone in the dark depths of the dungeon, surrounded by the stench of crushed stone, blood, and lingering threads of mana.

He walked to the edge of the blocked tunnel and analyzed the collapse with his Locksmith’s Eye.

The rockslide was fifty feet deep, packed with solid subterranean stone. It would take a team of four-star mages three weeks of non-stop blasting to clear it.

Silvester didn’t dwell on the blocked path. He turned around and walked calmly along the edge of the pit.

"The key paths broke," Silvester whispered into the cold dark, his voice steady and fearless. "They forced the pins."

He looked down at his small hands.

He had no food and no guide. He was trapped in a monster-filled dungeon with nothing but a satchel of handmade tools and a skill the rest of the world considered useless.

Silvester took a deep breath, tightened his grip on his bag, and began searching for a path to climb down into the deep, dark abyss.

The only way out was down.