The air inside the C-Rank dungeon felt like cold needles. Ren gripped his cheap, chipped bronze dagger, his knuckles white. He was an E-Rank hunter, the lowest of the low—a "human shield" for the raiding party.
"Stay back, Ren! Don't get in the way of the real hunters!" the party leader, a C-Rank Tank named Bak, laughed as he swung his massive shield.
Ren didn't reply. He couldn't. He was too busy trying to keep his heart from jumping out of his chest. This was his tenth raid, and he hadn't even killed a single goblin yet. His job was simple: carry the luggage and lure the monsters.
But today, the dungeon was different.
After clearing the main boss, the party discovered a hidden door. A "Double Dungeon." Against common sense, driven by greed, they entered.
And then, the doors slammed shut.
"What is this place?" someone screamed.
Huge stone statues lined the walls, their eyes glowing with a faint, malevolent red light. In the center sat a king on a throne, a giant made of stone that looked more like a god than a monster.
In an instant, the slaughter began.
Bak, the C-Rank leader, was crushed into a bloody pulp by a single footstep. The screams of the hunters echoed through the hall, but Ren was frozen. He saw a young man with messy black hair—Sung Jin-Woo—shouting orders, trying to find the "rules" of the dungeon.
Ren tried to follow, but a stray blast of energy from a statue's eye caught him in the chest. He was thrown across the room, his body slamming into a dark, shadowy altar tucked away in the furthest corner of the hall.
Blood leaked from Ren's mouth, staining the ancient black stone of the altar.
I'm dying, Ren thought, his vision blurring. Jin-Woo is trying to save them... but who is going to save me?
Suddenly, the screams of the others faded into a deep, heavy silence. The blue windows that Jin-Woo was seeing were invisible to Ren. Instead, his world turned Pitch Black.
[Conditions Met: Heart of the Forsaken.] [The 'Void' has found its Vessel.] [Do you wish to exist, or do you wish to 'Nullify'?]
Ren's fingers twitched. In his mind, he saw every time he was bullied, every time he was called trash, every time he was left behind.
"I want... to erase... it all," Ren wheezed.
[Acceptance Confirmed.] [Initializing 'The Void System'.] [Initial Skill Granted: 'Gaze of the Abyss'.] [New Quest: Survive the Awakening.]
A shockwave of dark energy exploded from the altar. The stone statues nearby didn't just break—they dissolved. No rubble, no dust. Just nothingness.
Ren stood up, his broken ribs knitting back together with a strange, dark smoke. His eyes, once brown, were now swirling pools of absolute darkness. He looked toward the center of the room, where Jin-Woo was losing his leg to the altar's guards.
Ren took a step. He wasn't the same E-Rank hunter anymore. He was the first glitch in the Architect's grand design.
"Let's see," Ren whispered, his voice vibrating with the power of the void. "How much of this 'game' I can delete."