The silence was deafening.
Marie sat motionless, her back against the cold stone wall, her legs sprawled out before her, arms limp at her sides. Her entire body ached, a dull, hollow throb that had crept in now that the adrenaline was fading. Her skin was caked with grime, blood—some hers, some not—and sweat. She tasted copper and bile.
For a long time, she just breathed. In. Out. Shallow. Uneven.
Then she blinked.
It was over.
She didn't remember standing up, but she did. Somehow. Her legs felt like rubber, her joints like cracked glass. But she pushed herself off the wall and staggered forward, toward the body of the Ork.
It was massive even in death, its limbs twisted and broken beneath the weight of the stalactite that had pierced its skull. Black ichor pooled beneath its head.
Marie didn't look at the corpses of the others. She couldn't.
Instead, she stared at the monster.
"I lived," she whispered.
And then—
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📣 SYSTEM MESSAGE
Timestamp: 14:36 – DUNGEON INSTANCE 045-F
Type: Success
[D]-RANK MONSTER SUCCESSFULLY DEFEATED
--------------------------------------
Target: Ork Mutant [D]
Awarded XP: 1,000,000 XP
Share Earned: 100%
New Attribute Points Available: +1,000
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Marie stared at the window that materialized in front of her. The numbers didn't make sense.
"One million..."
Her stomach turned.
One fight. Alone.
Before she could even react, another message popped up.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📣 SYSTEM MESSAGE
Timestamp: 14:36 – DUNGEON INSTANCE 045-F
Type: Information
SKILLSHARD DROP DETECTED
------------------------
Found: 1× [D]-Rank Skillshard
Available Option: Learn New Skill
Skill: Enhanced STR [D] (Passive)
Effect: +20% to STR
Do you want to learn this skill?
[Y] / [N]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Marie stared at the final line.
A skill? A real skill?
She hesitated only for a moment. Then said in a hoarse whisper: "Y."
The window flashed briefly and vanished. It was replaced by an entirely new interface.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🧩 SKILLSHARDS – MARIE WILLIAMS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📦
TOTAL STOCK:
F-Rank: 0 E-Rank: 0 D-Rank: 0 C-Rank: 0 B-Rank: 0 A-Rank: 0 S-Rank: 0 SS-Rank: 0 SSS-Rank: 0 EX-Rank: 0
📈 UPGRADE PROGRESS:
Echo's Luck [F] → [E]: (0/5) Enhanced STR [D] → [C]: (0/20)
📝 NOTES:
Skills can level up without limit. Higher-rank shards count as multiples. Duplicate drops are automatically converted to shards.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
She studied the new skill window with a furrowed brow. Something about it felt... official. More than anything else she'd seen from the System so far.
She took a slow breath and called up her status screen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📊 STATUS WINDOW – MARIE WILLIAMS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏷️ NAME: Marie Williams
🎂 AGE: 16
📍 RANK: E (1,835 Points)
💰 CREDITS: 43
📈 ATTRIBUTES:
STR: 460 (+20% from Enhanced STR [D] = 552) DEX: 470 CON: 135 END: 120 INT: 230 WIS: 0 PER: 113 CHA: 160 PSI: 0 VIT: 120 ADP: 0
📘 ACTIVE SKILLS:
None
✨ PASSIVE SKILLS:
Echo's Luck [F] Enhanced STR [D]
🔮 BUFFS / DEBUFFS:
No active effects
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
She stared at the new entry. Enhanced STR [D] – a 20% bonus to her already massive Strength stat. That was... significant.
And yet her chest felt tight.
Four people had died.
She had survived.
But not from skill. Not from courage. As much as it gnawed at her, it had been luck.
Or... was it her skill?
She didn't know.
Slowly, she walked back to the Ork's corpse and leaned over it. As expected, the Dungeon had already begun to absorb it. Only one thing remained: a crystalline, bluish stone—its Mana Core.
A [D]-Rank Mana Stone.
She picked it up with trembling fingers. Heavy. Valuable.
It was all that remained of the nightmare.
She straightened, took a few shaky steps toward the exit. Her legs screamed, her lungs burned. But she had to go. Back to Wiesbaden. Back to the Association.