In the darkness of the dungeon, a lone figure cut through hordes of monsters with frightening ease. Creatures lunged from every direction, yet he was already moving before they reached him. Each strike landed with brutal precision, shattering bodies and bursting stomachs like rotten sacks.
A pack of wolf-men rushed him, trying to surround him. It was a mistake. The figure slipped between them with fluid motion, and their claws swung at empty air. A sudden shift in his stance made them turn on one another.
One wolf-man froze, eyes turning pale white, then he lunged at his nearest companion and sank his teeth into his throat. Another followed, then another. In seconds the pack was ripping itself apart, snarling and shrieking as flesh and fur tore.
The figure watched them for a moment. No emotion. No hesitation. Then he continued onward.
…
Aaron climbed the passage slowly. The tunnel ahead was swallowed in darkness, yet his new rat-born senses allowed him to see far clearer than a human ever could.
He moved with caution. Every sound made his instincts twitch, every chill in the air set his nerves on edge. His senses kept spiking, warning him of danger that he could not see.
System displayed a message that appeared in tiny window at the top of his vision.
System:Level: Bliss of Ignorance
Aaron waited in silence. When he was certain nothing was nearby, he moved forward again.
The walls were wrong.
They didn't feel like real walls. They weren't built to protect or divide anything. They stood there for show, as if whoever created this place wasn't building a dungeon, but trying to copy one. Like an amateur's first attempt at making something terrifying, without understanding why it should be terrifying in the first place.
A hatch symbols were all over the wall, making a weird esoteric pattern of eye inside a shell, a life's first attempt. The patterns looked like they weren't carved but instead they were torn into the stone. Claws and teeth had scraped them over countless years, crossing in ragged lines that looked like scars. Every mark felt like the last thing something ever did before it died here.
'What is this place...it feels raw.. and foolish.' Aaron thought.
Aaron felt a prickle of unease, but he pushed it aside and kept studying the grooves.
Some scratches were shallow. Others were dug so deep the stone almost looked soft, as if something had torn at it over and over without ever stopping. Dark stains filled the cracks. Old, but not lifeless.
Pieces of bone pushed out of the surface in a few places. Not full bones, just fragments. Like something had begun to grow there… then suddenly stopped.
Aaron didn't need the system to warn him.
Everything in these walls remembered pain.
Suddenly a brutal stench hit him without warning. Thick. Metallic. Rotting. His nostrils burned and his whole body convulsed. Instinct pushed him to turn and flee, to run until he found safety.
He forced himself to stay. He swallowed down the panic and stepped toward the source.
The sight ahead was monstrous. Intestines and organs were smeared across the walls of the cave like wet ropes. Limbs lay scattered in pieces. The wolf-men had torn each other apart.
Only one remained. A massive beast slumped against the stone, half-alive and chewing weakly on the corpse of its kin. Its breath rattled. Bones jutted from wounds. The creature should have been dead already.
Then its gaze snapped toward Aaron.
Its pale pupils flared. A starving madness returned to its eyes. With a broken jaw hanging loose, it lurched forward and attacked without hesitation.
Aaron reacted at the last moment. His small body shot sideways, the beast's claws scraping stone where he had been standing. The creature skidded across the ground, then launched itself again with its hind legs. Aaron ducked under the swipe, his body moving faster than he ever could as a human. Another lunge came, wild and desperate, but not a single strike hit him.
The beast roared, breath thick with blood. It gathered everything it had left for one final leap.
As it came crashing down toward him, Aaron pulled the doll-form from his inventory and threw it upward with all his strength.
The creature bit down on the doll. Its shattered jaw could not take the impact. Bone splintered. The jaw snapped apart completely.
A howl of agony echoed through the chamber.
The beast writhed once, collapsed to the ground, and lay still. Its pale eyes closed at last.
The system blinked in front of him.
"Leveled up!"
Level 1 → Level 3
He stared at the screen for a moment. He had leveled up twice.
There were no stats, no numbers, nothing to show how much stronger he had become. But he could feel it. His body felt different. His bones felt thicker, heavier. His skin carried a faint tension beneath the surface, like it had hardened. His life force pulsed inside him, stronger and louder than before.
He didn't know the exact increase, yet his instincts told him one thing very clearly.
He was tougher now. Stronger. Harder to kill.
"Alright, it feels good." He said while clenching his tiny fist.
He did not wait anymore. He crawled closer to the corpse and sank his teeth into the flesh. Warm or cold, clean or rotten, none of it mattered to him now. He tore at it, gnawing, swallowing. Blood smeared across his jaw as he triggered Corpse Memory.
Images exploded in his mind.
A dark room. A laboratory buried somewhere far from sunlight. A man with a crooked nose leaned over a workbench, brewing a potion in a cloud of smoke. His face was full of delight, his hands trembling with excitement as he poured the final ingredient.
Beside him lay a wolf pup, chained and crippled. One of its legs twisted at the wrong angle. Its ribs were sharp under its skin. It tried to whimper, but the chain around its throat only rattled. The pup stared at the man with wide, helpless eyes...
The vision cut out.
Aaron dropped to the floor, clutching his head. A sharp pain split through his skull. He couldn't hold it in and a scream tore out of him, echoing through the catacomb.
He tried to stop, but his body wouldn't listen. His nerves shook on their own.
After a moment the pain eased. Not fully, but enough to breathe again.
He lay still, panting. His teeth were still in the corpse without him realizing.
But he couldn't stay there for long. Something should have heard his dreadful screams. He tried to slowly get up and move as quickly as he can...