Lucian moved like a machine with light steps. Light Blades materialized and fired — one, two, three, four — each one cutting through a beast mid-charge. The Sword of Aikis sang in his hand, slashing through fur and flesh and bone. Scarlet Threads erupted from his palms, binding three hounds at once before he decapitated them with a single horizontal slash.

But they kept coming.

A peak F-Rank lizard clamped its jaws around Lucian’s forearm. He felt the pressure — not enough to break his enhanced bones, but enough to hurt like hell. He drove his sword through its eye. It released him, thrashing as it died.

"Lucian! There are too many!"

Ryan’s mana was draining. His ice attacks were getting smaller, weaker. And the beasts showed no sign of thinning out.

Time to tip the scales.

Lucian jumped back, creating space. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second and reached into his Sea of Consciousness — into the Crimson Origin Palace, where the first star burned with a furious red light.

Blood Clone.

A sphere of blood erupted from his chest — dense, pulsing, alive. It hit the ground and expanded, shaping itself with impossible speed. Arms. Legs. Torso. Head. Silver hair. Crimson eyes.

A perfect replica of Lucian materialized beside him.

The clone held a sword of hardened blood in its hand, identical in shape to the Sword of Aikis. Its expression was blank — no emotion, no thought beyond combat. Fifty percent of Lucian’s stats. Sixty seconds of independent action.

Ryan nearly tripped over his own feet.

"What the fuck!" Ryan screamed, stabbing an ice blade through a rat that had leapt at him. "How did you do that?!"

"Blood manipulation technique," Lucian said, slashing through a hound. "I learned it from a scroll."

"A scroll?! That’s a — that’s a fucking solid clone! With its own weapon!"

"It’s temporary. Sixty seconds only."

The clone didn’t wait for the conversation to finish. It charged into the horde with mechanical precision — faster than the F-Rank beasts could react. Its blood sword cut through two shadow hounds in a single swing. It pivoted, ducked under a lizard’s jaw, and drove the blade through its throat.

Three kills in four seconds.

"Wow, that’s so freaky," Ryan breathed, blasting an ice shard through a centipede. "You’ve got to teach me that."

"Dude, It’s a blood ability."

"Details, details."

Lucian murmured, "You know, sometimes, I feel like that iq evaluation of yours had some error."

The clone fought like a reflection of Lucian stripped of hesitation. No wasted movement. No mercy. Every strike was calculated to kill. It carved through the lower F-Rank beasts with brutal efficiency while Lucian and Ryan handled the peak F-Rank ones.

A shadow hound lunged at the clone from behind. The clone spun, caught the hound by the throat with its free hand, and crushed its windpipe without breaking stride.

Another kill. Another EXP notification that Lucian registered in the back of his mind.

The horde thinned. Forty became thirty. Thirty became twenty. The beasts’ formation collapsed into scattered pockets of desperate resistance. Some tried to flee. Lucian’s Light Blades caught them in the back.

The clone dissolved at the sixty-second mark — collapsing into a splash of blood that evaporated before hitting the ground. In that minute, it had killed eleven beasts.

The last shadow hound — a peak F-Rank, larger than the others, its fur matted with the blood of its packmates — snarled at Lucian. He met its yellow eyes. It lunged. He sidestepped and brought the Sword of Aikis down in a clean vertical cut, splitting it from skull to tail.

Silence.

The clearing was a graveyard. Fifty beast corpses lay scattered across the rocky ground, their blood pooling in dark, iridescent puddles. The air smelled of copper and dust.

Lucian stood in the center of it, his sword dripping. His breathing was controlled but heavy. His mana reserves were at sixty-five percent — his larger capacity giving him significantly more staying power than Ryan.

Ryan leaned against a rock, panting. His mana was at forty percent. His ice gauntlets were cracked. His uniform was torn in three places.

"Remind me," Ryan gasped, "to never complain about having an F-Rank dungeon again. They are so fucking hard."

Lucian wiped the blade of his sword on a dead hound’s fur and sheathed it in his shadow storage. "You were the one that said you wanted only two of us."

"Well, I made a mistake. Next time, only the two of us are still coming."

"You are so greedy."

"Come on, who doesn’t want all the resources for themselves. I’m already pissed I have to share with you."

Lucian looked at him with a deadpalm expression.

"What!"

The path to the dungeon core was clear. The orange crystal pulsed steadily, its light washing over the corpses and the blood-soaked ground.

Ryan pushed himself off the rock and walked toward it. His hand trembled slightly from mana exhaustion, but his fingers reached out.

"Wait—" Lucian started.

Too late.

Ryan’s fingers brushed the crystal.

The dungeon shuddered.

Lucian’s hand went to his sword. But the dungeon didn’t collapse. It should have. Touching the core was the completion condition. The dungeon should have dissolved, the portal should have closed, and they should have been teleported back to the surface.

None of that happened.

Instead, the crystal changed color. Orange bled away, replaced by a deep, pulsating crimson — the exact shade of blood. The light it emitted shifted from warm to cold. The air pressure dropped.

The ground cracked.

Behind the core, the massive rock wall split open. Stone ground against stone, revealing a hidden passage — a stairway carved into the earth, descending into absolute darkness. A gust of cold, ancient air rushed up from below, carrying a scent that Lucian recognized instantly.

Blood.

Ryan stumbled backward, his face pale. "What the hell—"

Lucian’s system pulsed.

╔═══════════════════════╗

║ ⚠ — HIDDEN LAYER DETECTED — ⚠ ║

║ The F-Rank dungeon contains a concealed sub-layer. ║

║ Estimated Threat: ??? ║

║ Analysis: The dungeon’s surface layer was a shell. The true core lies below. ║

║ ⚠ — QUEST GENERATED — ⚠ ║

║ CLEAR THE SUB-LAYER DUNGEON ║

║ Objective: Descend and destroy the true dungeon core. ║

║ Reward: ??? ║

╚════════════════════════╝

Lucian stared at the notification. Then at the staircase.

The crimson light from the transformed core cast long, blood-red shadows across the clearing. The staircase yawned open like a mouth, waiting.

Ryan looked at Lucian. His eyes were wide.

Lucian said nothing. His crimson eyes were fixed on the darkness below, and for the first time since he had awakened the system, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Curiosity.