The sun was just rising over the horizon when Leo walked out into the chilled morning air. The district's shadows still clung to the edges of buildings as city lights gradually dimmed, yielding to natural daylight.
He didn't feel nervous. But he was expectant, after all, this was his first dungeon run.
Today, It was time. A new stretch of road on the path he had decided.
The city solo Dungeon was hidden beneath an old observation outpost, converted years ago into a secure tutorial zone. Its metallic double doors opened at his arrival, sensors quietly acknowledging his presence. The attendant, a polite young woman in an armoured vest, scanned his comms badge.
"Level 1, one-legged Awakened... advanced prosthetic?"
Leo nodded. "Version 3.7 neural-mimic."
She glanced over the readout. "Stabilized integration. Good enough. You're clear."
He stepped through.
The wind whispered as Leo stood before the shimmering gate.
It wasn't grand, no sculpted stone archway, no sigils, no floating runes. Just a ripple in the air, like a curtain of thick glass trembling in place. The kind of thing you'd walk past if you weren't looking for it. But to the trained eye, or to Leo, it pulsed with quiet intensity. Not with welcome, but inevitability.
He took one step forward. His prosthetic leg clicked faintly against the gravel.
No guards. No ceremony. No audience.
Just Leo, the dirt underfoot, and the ghost of a dungeon that wouldn't exist in a few hours.
He exhaled.
Not because he was nervous.
Just because breathing helped.
He stood still for a moment, breathing in the static-charged atmosphere. His left leg hummed—mechanical, confident, integrated. A quiet whir as he stepped forward.
The solo dungeon was small. Personal. Designed for a single person, a one-time use gate. Expensive and rare for most. But Leo had been lucky. Or rather, he had a father.
This was a solo-type dungeon. Unrepeatable. Once cleared, it would destabilize and vanish completely—its core dissolving into the ether.
In the early days after the Descent, people thought dungeons could be farmed endlessly. That they were resources, renewable, and exploitable. And that's true for most dungeons.
Solo dungeons were different. They were personal. Crafted, some said grown, for a specific challenger. Whether that was true or just universal design philosophy, no one knew. But the system was consistent:
One challenger. One chance. One collapse.
Leo stepped forward and passed through the veil.
...
The shift was instant.
Air pressure dropped. Light bent. His ears popped.
He blinked.
The world around him had changed.
He stood at the edge of a forest—if it could be called that. Towering, gnarled roots curled out from the soil like petrified fingers. The bark of the trees shimmered with a thin sheen of colorless resin, and the leaves above gave off a dull, cyan glow, casting the entire dungeon in a washed-out luminescence.
No birds. No wind. Just stillness.
And breath.
His.
And something else.
10 points of perception at work. He noted.
Leo didn't draw his weapon yet. Instead, he turned around, looked at the stretch of trees behind him, but a stretch of his hands was met with a thin transparent film.
Nodding slightly, he crouched down and ran his fingers across the mossy ground. It was soft—deceptively so. His fingers came away sticky.
He sniffed.
Acidic. Fungal.
This wasn't just a dungeon. It was a designed ecosystem.
Something rustled to his left.
He moved.
A blur shot from the underbrush—a thin, whip-fast silhouette of jointed limbs and mandibles.
Leo pivoted with no hesitation. His prosthetic leg took the brunt of the force as he slammed it into the creature's side, then twisted his body to roll with the recoil. The beast skidded back—an insectoid mass of jagged chitin and twitching antennae.
Shard Beetle.
Leo moved in before it could regroup.
Three slashes.
One downward diagonal—splitting its shoulder plate.
One quick thrust beneath the thorax.
And one final cross-cut through the head.
The beast collapsed with a faint gurgle.
[You have gained 5 EXP.]
Leo stood still, breathing through his nose. His hand tightening repeatedly on the knife handle.
Too rigid.
Ease up on the follow-through next time.
A second rustle came, then a third.
Two more beetles emerged from the brush, circling him now.
This time, he smiled.
[You have gained 5 EXP.]
[Basic Combat Sense Lv.3 → Lv.4]
Ten minutes later, along with a prompt from his watch, he stood alone in a clearing of cracked bark and ichor-stained roots.
The combat hadn't been clean.
But he was learning.
Faster than expected.
It was like his body was primed to respond. Like he wasn't reacting, but remembering.
No.
Not remembering. But Predicting.
Still, no level up. No prompt. Just EXP.
He didn't wonder why.
Everyone's leveling curve was different. He'd heard of someone needing just two kills to hit level 2. Another had needed over thirty. Theories circulated, but nothing concrete. Some blamed mental alignment. Others suggested hidden stats. Leo didn't bother chasing the answers.
He wiped his blade on the moss and kept walking.
The next corridor opened into a wide gulley carved through the forest floor, likely artificial. He slid down carefully, boots slipping against the slick undergrowth. The dungeon curved downward, deeper into its belly. From above, faint shafts of light trickled in through the glowing canopy.
It was beautiful.
And silent.
Too silent.
He paused halfway through the gulley and crouched.
The air was vibrating.
It was pulsing.
Low-frequency.
He closed his eyes and shifted position. His foot gently nudged a small stone downhill. It tumbled once, twice—then froze in midair, suspended against an invisible field.
A Trap.
He stood and pivoted left, just as vines struck.
They lashed out from the walls, thorned and twitching like muscle fibers. One coiled toward his face. Another for his ankle.
Leo dropped low. The knife in his hand flicked upward, cutting one vine in half. He grabbed another as it wrapped around his wrist, yanked it forward, and used its own momentum to swing himself sideways.
The wall slammed into him.
His shoulder screamed.
He bit down on a breath, rolled, and severed three more vines in a quick circular arc.
Then he stopped moving.
All at once, the vines froze. Their tips hovered in place, shivering faintly.
Not mindless.
Responds to motion.
He held still.
The vines trembled.
Waited.
He exhaled slowly through his nose—and then lunged forward in a single burst.
He reached the stone, flipped over it, and landed behind the trap's sensor field. The vines hesitated, confused, then began to retract.
Leo didn't give them the chance.
He dashed forward and cleaved into the central bulb—an organic mass hidden in the ground that pulsed with soft blue light. He had sensed it when he was holding still.
His blade pierced it once, twice, then shattered the outer shell.
The vines spasmed—then fell limp.
[You have gained 10 EXP.]
[Basic Combat Sense Lv.4 → Lv.5]
Leo sagged against the wall, chest heaving.
The sweat on his back was cold.
He checked his prosthetic.
Still functional. Slight strain on the actuator.
He pulled a small repair capsule from his belt, injected it into the maintenance port, and let the nanogel work.
Stopping to rest, he reviewed the fight.
He rested for about ten minutes in a shallow alcove before moving on.
He didn't know how much further until the boss, but he could feel the dungeon reacting.
It wasn't random.
The environment was learning from him.
Every trap was more precise. Every creature more aggressive. As if the dungeon itself had a will. Not an intelligence, but a pressure.
A quiet push toward growth.
Then came the Sonic Crabs.
They struck in pairs, coordinated, shrieking with dissonant bursts of sound that made Leo's skull rattle.
One clipped his side before he took them out. The edge of its claw carved through fabric and grazed skin.
[Your HP has dropped by 6.]
[Basic Combat Sense Lv.5 → Lv.6]
He leaned against the root wall, breathing steadily but deeply. The pain wasn't bad, but it had caught him off guard.
His reaction time was better now. Not just sharp—instinctive.
But apart from that, he felt something was wrong with the way the skill level was increasing
[Universal System Status]
Name: Leo
Level: 1
Current Role: [None]
HP: 75/75
Strength: 8 | Agility: 7 | Endurance: 8 | Intelligence: 9 | Perception: 10
Skills: Basic combat sense Lv 6.
Unique Energy Attribute: [Absent] | Occupation: [None]
Notes: A One-legged Awakened.
I know dungeon environments accelerate skill growth, but—
Not this much. Right?
Three levels under 30 minutes? That's fast. Too fast.
Hmm, first off, my body really feels more integrated, and I can react more quickly.
Maybe I'm just syncing with my stats? faster than average?
I don't know if +10 perception has anything to do with it.
But my body felt that way before the skill levelled up.
So, am I the one driving the skill to level up instead of the other way around?
Hmm.....
Or does it have something to do with this particular dungeon, or solo dungeons in general?
After thinking about it for a while to no avail, he took note of it and continued with his run.
He reached a wide, hollow basin that sloped into a natural bowl. Luminescent vines dangled from above, and at the center sat a mist-filled pool.
He stepped cautiously.
The ground was moist. Spongy.
Halfway across, the mist parted.
A Mana Serpent rose.
It was... breathtaking.
Long and serpentine, nearly three meters from head to tail, its scales refracted light like glass, shimmering in overlapping colors. Its eyes held no emotion, only a dull, thrumming pulse of mana that resonated through the ground.
Leo didn't move; he studied the serpent.
The serpent studied him.
Then, it attacked.
Its body coiled faster than expected. Leo ducked the first swipe, side-rolled, and came up beneath its flank.
His knife scored a glancing blow.
The serpent spun mid-air, and its tail slammed into his ribs.
He flew backward, skidded across the moss, and rolled to his feet with a wince.
The prosthetic leg took the brunt of the impact, but his side ached.
There were prompts from his watch, which he ignored.
He forced his breathing into rhythm.
Don't chase the body. Chase the pattern.
He closed his eyes, and he felt his perception heighten.
The serpent hissed.
He listened.
Three pulses.
Spin.
Feint.
Strike.
He opened his eyes and moved.
Each step flowed from the last, minimal, and efficient.
He didn't attack first.
He let the serpent dance.
After a bit of back and forth with him dealing some damage.
When the rhythm broke, he struck.
Upward.
Through the chin.
Clean.
Precise.
[Final Blow Delivered.]
[Dungeon Core Destabilizing...]
[Level Up: You are now Level 2.]
The dungeon began to shake.
The light dimmed.
The ground faded beneath his feet.
Leo blinked and found himself standing on a dirt path just outside the gate.
Behind him, the portal collapsed, shimmering into motes of blue before vanishing completely.
The air was quiet.
He looked up.
The sky was clear.
The sky stretched wide and cloudless above him, streaked faintly with high-altitude contrails. Silent. Serene.
And suddenly, memory flooded back.
---
The first thing humanity reclaimed... was the sky.
In every story he'd read, the sky was always the first to fall. Overrun. Choked with monsters. Dragons. Flying horrors.
But not this time.
When the Descent happened, the skies were secured before the streets. Before the shelters. Before the chaos had even finished erupting.
Defence grids had gone active. Satellites realigned. Jets scrambled. The orders were clear: eliminate anything that flies.
And it worked.
Most of the monsters hadn't even reached First Order. The few that did were erased in minutes.
The sky stayed ours.
---
Leo exhaled slowly.
It's strange, he thought, how quiet the sky feels now.
Leo stared at his hand.
Is this how leveling feels like?
Well, it feels good.
Nothing visible had changed.
But he did feel different.
As if the pieces had already been there, waiting.
And now, they'd simply… aligned.
He didn't know it yet.
But this was the beginning.