Lucian stood at the edge of the staircase, staring down into the darkness. The cold air rushed up from below, carrying that ancient, metallic scent of blood. His crimson eyes glowed faintly in the dim light of the transformed core, and something deep inside him — something primal, something vampiric — pulled him toward the stairs like a compass needle finding north.

His foot moved. One step. Then another.

Ryan’s hand clamped onto his shoulder. Hard.

"Are you insane?"

Lucian stopped. He didn’t turn around.

"Ryan—"

"That’s a death sentence you are asking for dude."

Lucian turned to face him. Ryan’s face was pale, his glasses slightly fogged from the temperature difference between the surface and the air rising from below. His hand was still gripping Lucian’s shoulder.

"Hidden layers," Lucian said calmly, "contain resources you can’t find anywhere else. Rare herbs. Ancient relics. Beast cores worth ten times what we’ve found so far. This could fund your zombie cure research for months."

Ryan’s grip loosened.

"Think about it," Lucian continued, his voice quiet but firm. "We’ve already found more in this dungeon than most F-Ranks produce. A hidden layer? That’s where the real resources are. The kind that don’t exist on the surface market."

Ryan looked away, his jaw tightening as he thought about it.

"And there’s something else," Lucian added, lowering his voice. "We need to get stronger. Both of us. The Du Maurier family, the vampire clans, the people who took Lena — they’re not sitting around waiting for us. They’re Grand Core Realm cultivators or higher. Monsters. We’re Neophytes. If we want our revenge, we need every resource we can get."

The silence stretched between them. The wind from below whispered against their skin.

Ryan exhaled through his nose. A long, slow breath.

"Fine," he said. "But if we die down there, I’m haunting you forever."

"We are both going to be dead, so we will haunt each other.", Lucian said with a smile.

They descended together.

The staircase was carved from dark stone. The walls were damp with condensation despite the arid wasteland above, and strange bioluminescent fungi clung to the stone in irregular patches, casting a faint blue-green glow that painted their faces in ghostly light.

The air grew colder with each step. Lucian didn’t mind — his vampiric body regulated temperature effortlessly. Ryan, however, was shivering within five minutes, his breath forming small clouds in the dark.

"Should’ve brought a jacket," Ryan muttered, rubbing his arms.

"Should’ve thought of that before you said yes."

"Shut up."

They continued downward. The staircase spiraled in a tight helix, each revolution taking them deeper into the earth. The blue-green fungi thickened on the walls, and then —

White flowers.

Small, delicate blossoms grew directly from the stone, their petals luminescent against the dark rock. They were beautiful in an otherworldly way — pure white, almost translucent, with thin veins of silver running through each petal.

Ryan stopped dead.

"Lucian. Look."

"I see them."

"No, you don’t understand." Ryan crouched beside the wall, his fingers hovering over the nearest cluster of flowers without touching them. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, gleaming with the manic intensity that Lucian had come to recognize as Ryan entering full research mode.

"These are spirit flowers. Spiritus candidus. They only grow in environments with extremely concentrated ambient mana — usually deep dungeon layers or natural mana veins. They help calm and settle the mind for cultivation. Meditation with these nearby can increase comprehension speed by up to thirty percent."

Ryan turned to Lucian, his face serious. "They’re also key ingredients in Spirit Cleansing Pills, Meridian Expansion Pills, and about a dozen other high-tier alchemy formulas. One cluster of these is worth more than everything we found on the surface combined."

"Then what are you waiting for? Harvest them."

Ryan didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled a small harvesting kit from his storage ring — scalpel, tweezers, preservation vials — and began carefully extracting the flowers from the stone. Each one was placed in a separate vial and sealed. His hands moved with surgical precision, his earlier fear completely forgotten in the face of scientific opportunity.

Lucian stood guard, his Blood Sense sweeping the staircase below and above. No threats within range.

Fifteen minutes later, Ryan had harvested forty-three spirit flowers. He stored the vials in his ring with the reverence of a man handling diamonds.

They continued down.

The staircase widened. The walls pulled back, opening into a larger passage. And then they saw bones.

Beast skeletons. Hundreds of them.

They lined the walls of the passage like decorations — stacked, interlocked, arranged in patterns that suggested they hadn’t fallen here randomly. Shadow hound skulls. Centipede carapaces. Lizard ribs the size of swords. The bones were old, bleached white, stripped of all flesh.

Ryan counted them as they walked, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Two hundred. Three hundred. Four hundred. There are... there are hundreds of them."

"What kind of beast does this?" Lucian asked.

"Something that eats. A lot." Ryan swallowed hard. "Something territorial."

They pressed on. Among the bones, scattered on the ground like pebbles, were small, translucent stones that pulsed with faint mana. Lucian picked one up.

Low-grade mana stone.

He found another. And another. Ryan joined him, scanning the ground, the crevices in the walls, the gaps between bones. By the time they moved on, they had collected fifteen low-grade mana stones — an absurd haul for an F-Rank dungeon.

On Earth, mana stones existed in three known grades: low, mid, and high. Low-grade stones were already rare enough to be traded as currency among cultivators. Mid-grade stones were the exclusive property of wealthy clans and government institutions. High-grade stones were the stuff of legends — only a handful had ever been found, and each one had sparked a minor war.

Fifteen low-grade stones. In an F-Rank dungeon. Ryan’s earlier assessment was correct.

This dungeon was abnormal.

Two hours passed.

The descent continued. The staircase had long since ended, replaced by a natural cavern system that twisted and branched like the roots of a massive tree. Lucian navigated by Blood Sense, following the strongest mana signature deeper into the earth.

The vegetation thickened. The bioluminescent fungi gave way to actual plants — thick, dark moss climbing the walls, clusters of pale ferns growing from cracks in the stone, and vines. Thin at first. Then thicker. Then everywhere.

The air grew heavy. Wet. The smell of blood intensified until it was almost palpable — a thick, copper taste on the tongue that made even Lucian’s vampiric senses ache.

And then Lucian’s Blood Sense found it.

Behind a wall of thick, intertwined vines that stretched from floor to ceiling, blocking the entire passage. The vines were dark — almost black — and pulsed faintly, as if they were... breathing.

"Stop," Lucian said.

Ryan halted immediately. He’d learned to trust Lucian’s instincts.

Lucian closed his eyes. Blood Sense mapped the area behind the vine wall. One signature. Massive. Dense blood flow that pulsed in rhythm with the heartbeat he’d been tracking for the last hour.

The vine wall shifted.

"Move!" Lucian grabbed Ryan’s collar and yanked him backward just as the vines exploded outward — thick, whiplike tendrils lashing through the air where Ryan’s head had been a fraction of a second before.

CRACK.

A vine struck the stone floor, cracking it.

More vines poured from the wall. Dozens. They twisted and coiled and writhed like a nest of serpents, and from the center of the mass, something emerged.

It was enormous. A massive, plant-like beast with a body made of twisted black vines — each one as thick as a human arm and covered in sharp, backward-curving thorns. At its center was a "mouth" — a circular maw lined with rows of jagged, bone-white teeth that glistened with moisture. Red fluid leaked from between the teeth, dripping onto the ground in thick, viscous drops.

Lucian’s eyes turned gold.

Eyes of the Eternals.

╔══════════════════════╗

║ EYES OF THE ETERNALS — SCAN ║

║ Species: Blood Lily Flower (Mutated) ║

║ Rank: Mid E-Rank ║

║ Type: Plant / Blood-Devourer ║

║ A carnivorous plant beast that feeds on the blood of living creatures to sustain itself and accelerate growth.

║ Attracts prey with sweet fragrance, then immobilizes with vine tendrils before draining blood through its central maw. ║

╚═══════════════════════╝

Lucian dismissed the scan. He reached into his shadow storage and pulled out a small porcelain vial — a Mana Restoration Pill he’d purchased from the academy for 50 Academy Points. He tossed it to Ryan.

"Take it. You’re at forty percent."

Ryan caught it, popped the cap, and swallowed. His expression tightened as mana flooded back into his meridians. Lucian took one himself, feeling the warmth spread through his core.

"What is it?" Ryan asked, staring at the creature.

"Blood Lily Flower. Mid E-Rank."

Ryan’s eyes widened. Then he exhaled slowly, his shoulders dropping. "Mid E-Rank. Okay. Not great, but not impossible. We killed the scorpion."

"This one’s different." Lucian drew the Sword of Aikis. "It’s a blood-devourer. It feeds on blood to get stronger. Every creature it’s eaten —" he gestured at the skeletons in the passage behind them, "— made it stronger. And it’s a plant. Its body is going to be tougher than a beast’s shell."

"Great. So it’s a vampire plant."

"Essentially."

"Fantastic. I hate this dungeon and love it at the same time for its resources."

The vines moved again. They spread outward from the creature’s body, feeling the air, searching for prey. The mouth opened wider, and the sweet, cloying fragrance of the Blood Lily hit them — a scent designed to lure prey, to dull reflexes, to make victims walk willingly into the maw.

Ryan staggered. His eyes glazed for a split second before he shook his head violently, dispelling the effect.

"Fuck, that smell is strong," he muttered, pinching his nose.

The vines surged forward.

Ryan slammed both palms into the ground. "ICE WALL!"

A wall of solid ice erupted from the stone floor — three feet thick, six feet tall, stretching across the passage. The vines struck it.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

The wall shattered. Ice shards flew in every direction. The vines punched through like they were tearing paper.

Lucian was already moving. He raised his hand. Golden chains of light energy materialized from his palms — the E-Rank Light Chains spell he’d purchased from the academy for 150 Academy Points. The chains shot forward, wrapping around Ryan’s torso.

"Wha—"

Lucian yanked. Ryan was ripped sideways, out of the path of three vines that slammed into the ground where he’d been standing. The stone cracked under the impact.

Ryan landed hard on his side, sliding across the wet floor. He looked up, gasping.

The vines turned. All of them. Every single tendil reoriented — away from Lucian, toward Ryan.

Ryan scrambled behind a rock formation. Three vines smashed into it, shattering the top. He ducked, crawling backward as more vines pursued him.

"Hey! HEY! Why is it only attacking me?!"

Lucian watched the vine wall part of the creature completely ignore him and focus entirely on Ryan. He tilted his head.

Ryan dove behind another rock. A vine pierced through it. He rolled, gasping.

"Lucian! A little help here?!"

Lucian shrugged. "You were the one that harvested its spirit flowers."

Ryan stared at him from behind a crumbling boulder, his face a mixture of disbelief and outrage. A vine smashed the boulder in half.

"ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!"

A/N: 🙄🙄🫤This two.