The last goblin dropped with a wet gurgle.
I stood over its twitching body, breathing hard, my short sword dripping dark blood onto the damp stone floor.
The thing had taken three more hits than it should have. My form was sloppy. My arms were tired and my stomach had been growling for the past hour.
'Another perfect run for Adonis Thorne'
I wiped the blade on the goblin's ragged tunic—a disgusting habit, but I couldn't afford proper cleaning oils—and looked around the small chamber.
It was empty. No treasure chest. No hidden alcove. No stray coin pouch left behind by some careless adventurer.
Just moss, rubble, and the faint smell of decay that clung to every F-rank dungeon in Rhodenia.
'Same as always'
"Alright, chat," I said, forcing a smile toward the hovering camera drone. The little brass-and-glass device bobbed in the air, its enchanted lens capturing my every expression. "That's four goblins, zero injuries. Clean sweep. You know what that means."
I paused for dramatic effect, hoping against hope that someone—anyone—would type something.
Nothing.
I glanced at the viewer count in the corner of my vision. The red numbers felt like a personal insult.
Viewers: 3
Three. Three people were watching me right now. Two of them were bots. I had memorized their generic usernames months ago.
Viewer_8921 and Viewer_4453. They never typed anything except the occasional automated "Great stream!" that felt more like mockery than genuine support.
Probably generated by Delvecast's engagement algorithm to make new streamers feel less alone. A digital placebo.
The third was different. A silent account with no unique name or avatar.
Just "Viewer #1" in plain text, as if the system itself refused to acknowledge whoever was on the other side.
That account had been following me for six months. Every stream. Every dungeon run. Every desperate plea for viewers that I tried to dress up as "engaging with the audience."
It never commented or donated a single Power Stone. Never even reacted with an emote or a like. But it was always there. Watching.
I tried not to think about how creepy it was or why someone would spend six months watching an F-rank nobody struggle against goblins without saying a word.
Some questions didn't have answers I wanted to hear.
"Anyway," I continued, sheathing my sword and crouching down to harvest the goblin's mana core.
The small blue crystal was lodged just beneath the sternum, a weak point I'd learned to target after my first hundred kills.
I dug my fingers in, ignoring the cold, gelatinous texture of the corpse, and popped it free. It glowed faintly in my palm, about the size of my thumbnail.
I held it up to the camera drone. "One more for the collection. That makes four today. At current market prices, that's enough for—"
I did the math in my head. Mana core prices had dropped again last week. Too many F-rank adventurers flooding the market. Supply and demand. Basic economics. Too bad basic economics didn't pay my rent.
"—a hot meal and half a night at an inn. If I share a room with three strangers."
I laughed. It came out hollow.
The bots didn't respond and Viewer #1 remained silent.
I dropped the core into my leather pouch and stood up, wincing as my knees cracked. The pouch felt pitifully light, maybe a dozen cores in total, most of them smaller than this one.
A week's worth of work for a day's worth of bread. The math never worked in my favor.
I checked my status display. The standard adventurer interface shimmered into view, showing my rank in crisp blue letters:
[Adonis Thorne – F-rank]
[Solo Adventurer]
[Current Funds: 12 silver, 8 copper]
[Monthly Rent Due: 50 silver]
[Days Until Eviction: 4]
Twelve silver. Fifty required. I was short by thirty-eight silver, and I had four days to find it.
I closed the display and started walking back through the dungeon corridor. The camera drone bobbed behind me, its enchantment humming softly.
The walls were rough stone, carved centuries ago by hands long dead. Faint torchlight from my belt crystal cast dancing shadows on the uneven ceiling. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, a metronome counting down my remaining time.
"You know," I said, more to myself than to the nonexistent audience, "I didn't always suck at this."
The words echoed off the walls. I kept walking.
"Back at the academy, they said I had potential. 'Adonis has good instincts,' they said. 'Give him a few years, and he'll make C-rank easy.' My instructors used to pull me aside after drills. Told me I had the fastest reaction time in my cohort. That my mana control was above average. That I just needed experience."
I kicked a loose rock. It skittered into the darkness.
"Then reality happened. No party wants an F-rank solo. No sponsors want a nobody. And no viewers want to watch a guy kill goblins for three hours when they could be watching the #1 Supreme clear an S-rank dungeon with her eyes closed."
I checked the viewer count again.
Viewers: 3
Still three. The bots never left. Viewer #1 never left.
That last one bothered me more than I wanted to admit. I'd spent more than a few sleepless nights staring at my ceiling, wondering who it was.
A rival? A stalker? A glitch in the system?
Sometimes I convinced myself it was just a bug, that the account wasn't real, that no one had been watching at all. But then I'd see it there, silently watching, and the doubt would creep back in.
Why did it stay? What was it watching for?
I shook off the thought and kept walking. The dungeon exit was close. I could already see a sliver of afternoon sunlight at the end of the corridor, golden and warm and completely indifferent to my problems. Another failed run. Another day closer to eviction.
Then I stopped.
Something was wrong.
The wall to my left wasn't stone anymore. It was… different. It was darker than usual.
The torchlight from my belt crystal seemed to bend around it instead of illuminating it, as if the surface was drinking the light.
I approached slowly, hand on my sword hilt. My heart hammered in my chest. I'd walked this corridor three times today. Once on the way in, twice while backtracking to find the goblins. But that wall had never been there.
Now, ancient symbols began to glow across its surface. Faint purple at first, then brighter, pulsing in a slow rhythm that matched my heartbeat.
"Chat," I whispered, my voice suddenly dry, "tell me you're seeing this."
As always, there was no response from the bots and Viewer #1 remained silent.
But the wall was definitely there. And the symbols were definitely glowing. And somewhere behind that wall, I could feel something calling to me. A strange pull that I couldn't describe.
I reached out with my free hand, hesitating just before touching the surface. My instincts screamed at me to turn around and leave immediately.
To forget I'd seen anything. This was wrong. This was dangerous. This was the kind of thing that got adventurers killed.
But my wallet screamed louder.
Hidden passages meant hidden treasure.
Hidden treasure meant money.
Money meant rent.
Rent meant I didn't have to sleep on the street next week.
I slowly touched the wall.
The symbols flared bright purple, and a section of stone slid inward without a sound, revealing a narrow passage that descended into absolute darkness.
Warm air drifted up from below, carrying a strange scent like incense and something really old.
I swallowed hard. My reflection stared back at me from the dark stones. A face full of exhaustion and desperation.
"I'm going in," I announced to the camera drone. I tried to sound brave but it wasn't working. "If I don't come back, someone tell my landlord that I tried to pay, okay?"
I stepped into the passage.
The stone slid shut behind me with a soft thud, plunging me into darkness except for the purple glow of the runes on the walls. They pulsed faster now, matching my racing heart.
I took a step forward. Then another.
Suddenly, the entire floor vanished.
"What the—"
I gracelessly fell through the floor.
My scream caught in my throat as my brain failed to catch up. I only felt the sensation of dropping into empty air, the purple glow of the ruins shrinking above me.
I crashed down below on a pile of rocks and felt my leg snap. Pain shot up my spine.
"Fuck! Does the universe hate me that much?!" I screamed out in frustration.
Then I heard another sound besides my voice. A low growl from something unmistakably not human, and it was far too close to where I was.
I tried to move but my leg wouldn't obey.
'Come on, move goddammit!'
The creature was closer than I'd thought. Something grabbed me without warning and dragged me across the stone floor, lifting and swinging me like a rag doll before slamming me hard against the jagged wall.
I couldn't see what it was. Blood flooded my vision, blurring everything into shifting shadows as the world tilted around me.
A sharp, splitting pain throbbed through my skull where my head had struck the wall, each pulse threatening to tear my thoughts apart as I fought to stay conscious.
I heard the sound of claws scraping closer across the floor, and my heart sank.
'So this is how it ends... Pathetic'
Just before my consciousness slipped away, the last thing I saw was a pair of red eyes opening in the darkness.