Glen Isla and Caleb crashed onto the polished floor of the Johannesburg Gate Hub skidding across the tiles in a tangle of bruised limbs and heavy breathing.

Alarms instantly began to blare.

The Gate Hub which had been a calm organized military facility just an hour ago erupted into absolute chaos. Red emergency lights flashed from the ceiling painting the room in a harsh crimson glow.

Glen pushed himself up onto his hands and knees coughing violently. His chest felt like it had been hit by a wrecking ball. He looked back at Gate Four.

The portal was no longer a swirling vortex of dark purple energy. It had solidified into a jagged crystalline structure glowing with a terrifying blood red light. The spatial fracture was completely sealed.

"Red Gate" the clearance officer screamed from behind his reinforced glass booth slamming his fist onto the emergency lockdown button. "Gate Four has mutated! We have a rank S spatial anomaly! Evacuate the civilian personnel!"

Heavily armed Association guards rushed into the room forming a defensive perimeter around the glowing red portal. They raised their mana rifles their hands shaking. Everyone knew what a Red Gate meant. It meant the dungeon had disconnected from Earth’s spatial grid. Nothing could go in and nothing could come out until the boss was dead.

"Are you three alright?" a medic yelled rushing over to Glen and his team.

"We are fine" Isla gasped pushing herself up and checking her runic pistols. "But you need to call the Guild Masters. Right now."

"What happened in there?" the clearance officer demanded running out of his booth. "A B Rank ruin does not just spontaneously mutate into an S Rank Red Gate. Did you trigger a core collapse?"

"We did not trigger anything" Caleb groaned leaning heavily on his wooden staff. "Someone else came in. Duncan Carmichael."

The officer froze. "Manager Carmichael? That is impossible. He is at the local branch office."

"It was not him" Glen said his voice dark and raspy. He stared at the sealed red portal the burning sensation in his chest finally beginning to fade. "It was something wearing his skin. It took over the dungeon and kicked us out."

The officer looked at Glen like he was insane. Monsters did not kick Hunters out of dungeons. Monsters killed.

But the glowing Red Gate was all the proof they needed.

Over the next forty eight hours the entire city of Johannesburg went into a state of high alert.

The Hunter Association quarantined the Gate Hub building a massive containment shell around Gate Four. The Valor Guild and the Astra Guild temporarily suspended their corporate wars pooling their resources to investigate the anomaly.

Glen, Isla and Caleb were interrogated by Association officials for hours. They told them exactly what they saw. A man with dead eyes, an aura of absolute zero.

The officials assumed it was a new type of humanoid monster. A rare mutation.

Glen knew they were wrong.

...

Three days after the Sunken Necropolis sealed the true nightmare began. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

It started in Sector Four. A full team of A Rank Hunters from the Grimhunt Guild was clearing a standard A Rank jungle dungeon. According to the surviving porter the raid was going perfectly.

Then the shadows in the jungle tore open.

A man in a gray Valor Guild logistics uniform stepped out of the spatial tear. He did not speak. He simply raised his hand. The jungle rotted instantly. The A and B Rank Hunters the elite veterans who had spent years honing their skills were slaughtered in less than two minutes. Their armor turned to ash. Their bodies withered into husks.

The man did not take the dungeon core. He simply stepped back into the shadow tear and vanished.

Two days later it happened again.

An Astra Guild research team was wiped out inside a C Rank crystal cavern. The security footage recovered from a damaged drone showed the same man. Duncan Carmichael’s face. Dead silver eyes.

Panic swept through the Mega City.

The media dubbed him "The Ghost of Valor." The Guilds realized that the Red Gate at the Gate Hub was not just a sealed dungeon. It was a nest. The entity was using the Sunken Necropolis as a staging ground tearing micro fractures into other active dungeons to hunt humans for sport.

Glen sat in the courtyard of the Sinclair estate watching the news broadcast on a holographic projector.

Footage of the slaughtered Hunters flashed across the screen. Some of them were men and women who could level city blocks. They were veterans. And they had been swatted like flies.

Glen looked down at his hands. He clenched his fists feeling the mana circulating through his veins.

He was Level 15. He possessed the power to steal classes.

But as he watched the destruction on the screen a cold hard truth settled into his bones.

He was weak.

If he had stayed in the Necropolis, if the Ghost Of Valor had decided he was "ripe" enough to eat Glen would be dead. No amount of stolen skills could bridge the gap between a Level 15 rookie and whatever that thing was.

"He is hunting them" Isla said walking onto the porch holding two cups of coffee. She handed one to Glen her green eyes fixed on the glowing broadcast. "He is clearing out the high ranking Guild teams one by one."

"He is bored" Glen said taking a sip of the bitter coffee. "He is treating the city like a buffet."

"The Association is panicking" Caleb added stepping out of the mansion. "They are talking about calling in an SS Rank. They are petitioning Chairman Jin or Valeria Vance to step in."

Glen stared at the red emergency ticker scrolling across the bottom of the news feed.

He wanted to fight. He wanted to dive back into the dungeons and steal enough power to rip The Ghost of Valor apart. But he knew the rules of the world now.

Some mountains were too high to climb in a single day.

"Let them call the legends" Glen said his voice quiet but filled with a dark burning resolve. "We have to stay out of his way. We have to survive. By watching how those at the top of the world deal with such a threat. And we learn."