CHAPTER 93: MIREBORN

He clenched his fists in his pockets. The air around the entrance was heavy, pressing down like invisible gravity.

"The man who saved the world, the one who stopped the calamity nine years ago, looked into this dungeon once," Raito recalled. "He was the only one who survived... but he lost one of his eyes the instant he looked inside. He didn’t even see anything clearly before it happened. He came out immediately."

His tone dropped. "Till now, no one knows what’s in here."

The blue system interface flickered again before his eyes.

[New Objective: Pass through the sealed Subway Dungeon Gate.]

[Warning: Extreme Danger Detected.]

Raito stared at the words, expression unreadable. "So the system wants me to go in anyway..."

He let out a low chuckle. "That’s dangerous rather than smart. But I don’t care."

He looked up at the towering gate, its chains trembling faintly as if sensing his presence.

"Even if Mr. Niburi’s eye was destroyed here, I want to see what was strong enough to do that to him," Raito said. "He didn’t even get to fight whatever was inside. He was weak that day, after saving so many lives."

He paused, his eyes glinting with resolve. "They said if he’d been at full strength, he could have cleared it. But that doesn’t matter to me."

Raito smirked faintly, his reflection visible in the gate’s metallic surface. "Whatever’s in here, I’m sure it’ll give me enough LP. I’ll finally level up."

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward. His hands pressed against the cold metal.

The moment he pushed, the entire structure trembled. Dust rained down from the ceiling as the heavy doors began to shift.

With a loud rumble

CRRRRKKK...

The two massive doors of the subway Dungeon slowly creaked open before him.

The screen in front of Raito flickered, and a notification appeared, sharp and commanding:

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

Location: Locked Subway Dungeon — City of Mireborn

Swords flashed. The Mireborn troops surged at Raito like a tide of pale men, human in shape but empty of mercy. Blades slashed; Raito met each arc with the cold arc of his dagger. They fought with the practiced brutality of predators. He felt the echo of something worse in them: when these things fed, they stole memories with the blood. Each corpse was a library they devoured.

A spear of bone slammed into the air and Raito shoved two attackers aside with one clean, brutal push. He turned and the world hit him.

A Mireborn, tall, malformed, reached out and punched him full in the face. Raito sailed through the air, slammed into a ruined house and punched through the wall. Dust and splinters rained down. For a second he saw the lie beneath their mimicry: a child’s hollow eyes, a woman cradling a dead thing that wore a human face. They’d built a civilization of corpses.

A system flash cut across his vision: [ALERT] . LP Cost: 300.

Raito didn’t hesitate. Shadow Phase. He phased, then activated Flight.

His dagger flared with holy light. He burst through the rotten roof and fell like a meteor. The sky above the ruined neighborhood looked ordinary, but the air tasted wrong, thick with ancient hunger. He smelled a concentration of dark mana somewhere ahead like a burn in his sinuses.

He landed between two Mireborn and struck. The holy imbued blade sliced the first skull clean through. The creature screamed as its true, black mana form bared itself for a heartbeat before collapsing. Raito didn’t slow.

He stabbed, slashed, moved invisible, lethal. Dozens came at him, fifty in total, flowing like a crowd into a bottleneck. He threaded through them, blades whispering, holy fire burning the wound. In five seconds he had driven dagger after dagger into the flanks and necks of the rushing horde. Each cry was raw and brief. The holy edge made their screams ragged.

It was ugly and fast. He didn’t save them, he made them stop hurting others.

Still, the pull ahead was stronger than the skirmish. A dark beacon hummed from the largest building in the area, a place that dragged at his senses with the force of a void. Raito rose, wind tearing at his coat, and flew toward it, toward the source of the intense, rotten mana that smelled like old graves and closed doors.

He landed at the front entrance. The door groaned as if something inside exhaled.

As Raito landed in front of the massive door, he let out a short breath. His hand hovered over the handle, ready to push it open, when a faint noise echoed behind him.

He froze.

Then came the sound, rapid, thunderous footsteps shaking the ground. Raito turned, and his eyes widened. A swarm of Mireborn, three hundred, maybe four hundred, were charging straight toward him, their dark forms blotting out the dust choked horizon. Their cries split the air, human voices warped into monstrous echoes.

Raito’s heart pounded once, but his expression sharpened.

They’ve found me.

"I’m invincible," he muttered under his breath, "but it looks like they’ve figured out where I am, or maybe they can see me now."

He clenched his dagger. Their shapes looked human, but their presence was wrong, hollow, like living corpses wearing stolen skin.

"This place, it used to be human," he thought, watching the horde rush closer. "They killed them all. Took their faces. Built their own civilization out of death."

The roar grew louder. The street trembled.

"If they reach me, I’m done for. I can’t fight that many..."

Without hesitation, Raito shoved the huge steel doors open and slipped inside, slamming them shut behind him. The noise of the horde dimmed instantly. For a few seconds, silence pressed in around him.

He let out a breath. "Did they stop...?"

No response. Then

Tap... tap...

A faint blinking light flickered ahead. The air thickened, and Raito felt it, an overwhelming wave of dark mana pressing against his skin. It was stronger than anything he’d felt outside.

From the shadows, something stepped forward. A figure clad in heavy black armor, ornate, ancient, the kind worn by generals of forgotten wars.