Come to think of it, I’d found the Core exceptionally fast.

  Unless a core was an executioner type, they were supposed to be inside the hardest room at the very top of the dungeon. But there were shifting rooms on floor one and a big room on floor two. Meeting the Core checked out.

  Although I’d expect a core with that kind of power to be at least a three-star. Maybe Star ranking used age as a factor?

  The whole dungeon flickered.

  Walls corroded as the Mana channels leeched from their reserves, reforming the fallen network.

  I braced myself as the room filled with color.

  A carpet of concrete grass appeared from the ground, bent in rhythmic waves as if the wind was blowing, then suddenly froze.

  Instead of trees, buildings appeared, splashed orange and yellow in wet, bloated colors like a toddler’s finger painting.

  People rose from the housing, following their predetermined routes.

  This was supposed to be the market.

  I shook my head, walking forward.

  “You’re not doing good, as far as cores go,” I stated. “Most have some sort of combat-based ability. All you can do is summon minions. Rather limited minions.”

  There was silence.

  A blob formed behind me.

  ‘Sern’ appeared with her hands clasped behind her back.

  I smited the fake town with a hundred and twelve individually targeted orbs. Blackened concrete cracked explosively under the extreme heat, crumpling buildings with each impact

  “And this is a waste of mana,” I sighed.

  The room flickered.

  There was the town again, filled with more people. Their features were actually worse than before. Even their usually pristine concrete forms had lumps and snags. This was a rushed job.

  I didn’t bother waiting, triggering another explosion. By the time I walked through the room, it was already cleared.

  The next room was a melty puddle of color, much like the room after it, so unfinished as to tug at my shoes with every step, leaving smeared concrete stains.

  The next room was empty.

  Beyond that point, I saw only flickering as the Core tried and utterly failed to form her rooms.

  This Core was sloppy, not to mention wildly inexperienced.

  Perhaps she hadn’t put much thought into her dungeon. Perhaps she assumed I’d take one look at the fake replicas of my loved ones and just give up.

  Most likely, she never seriously expected to need a dungeon.

  What a joke.

  Rooms floundered to take form, creating muddy images, only vaguely similar to the thing I remembered. At one point, I passed a palm tree.

  I stopped and just looked at it.

  “Seriously?”

  The palm tree shifted into a pine tree, then a cactus.

  I kicked a hole through it.

  “Where’s your stats?” I called. “There’s supposed to be loot in a dungeon, isn’t there?”

  Loot is the incentive that drives a player into a dungeon. Devourerers need strong fighters more than any other core, as the strength of their host ensures their own survival. Master tentazui taught that Devourers left a quarter of their loot to players. So any half-decent Devourer ought to have a ludicrous amount of loot stockpiled somewhere.

  The next room had no floor. It extended down, down, down into an abyss. Chains were frozen in the air, mid-swing, surrounded by the falling rubble of a fake union blimp.

  I Reached through my heels and walked along the walls, skipping all the bumpy concrete monsters half-heartedly tucked inside the wreckage.

  Again, the room after it was utterly blank.

  I clicked my tongue. “Try a little, would you?”

  The whole dungeon shook. Cracks split rooms in half. Mana channels were severed. I punched through the ceiling, emerging inside the dungeon’s systems. Everything was falling apart.

  My eyes widened.

  The dungeon was shrinking.

  This core has overexerted herself. She no longer had the mana to sustain a dungeon of this size.

  But her total mana must’ve been in the millions, equivalent to hundreds if not thousands of what it’d take to sustain an ordinary two-star dungeon.

  How inefficient could she possibly be?

  All the rooms crushed against another, locking together into a single, massive room. After a certain point, even the mana to move rooms gave out, sending the concrete blocks crashing down, splintering into mountains of shrapnel.

  Thanks to my durability, I stepped on it all without issue.

  The Core shook, clenching a withered hand. Crumbling chunks fell from her form, cracking against the dungeon.

  She hissed, snapping around to face me.

  There was a sharp pop and the dungeon flickered back to life.

  I was in a village.

  Not one of the cities I’d been to. Not any market. Not some vague notion I’d received in a past dream.

  I was in a village I didn’t recognize, which was odd considering the clarity of it all. I could see the drops of dew on the flowers.

  Natives sat frozen beside a campfire, laughing, passing potions and food around the ring. These were clearly monsters, judging by their elongated ears and discolored markings.

  Which begged the question, whose memory was this?

  Everyone sat facing a girl with white lines down her arms and neck.

  Then other people showed up.

  Unlike the Natives, their faces were flat and blank, standing with hands drenched in red, dripping down their weapons.

  The scene blurred, like a camera out of focus.

  Several houses were reduced to black dust. The bodies of strangers and natives stood around the girl, soaking in discordant colors.

  “What is this?” I asked. “Am I supposed to feel sorry?”

  This was a monster’s memory, certainly one she killed.

  Right?

  A tall man in scalding light appeared out of nowhere with additional men behind him, noticeably stronger than the ones before. He simply flicked his wrist and the girl’s head fell from her shoulders.

  That man was Master Tentazui.

  Her body crumpled to dust, forming the edges of a white concrete doorway with a rusty metal handle.

  Master Tentazui moved toward the doorway, then stopped, grabbing his earpiece. Suddenly, he motioned toward the other men before jumping away, into the sky. The others ran into the door, vanishing from sight.

  “It’s the cycle of life in this world,” I sighed.

  Only one of those officials returned.

  He had white markings.

  I fired a blast, wiping the scene to reveal the core, crouching beside where the bodies lay.

  “Monsters kill other monsters and players,” I continued. “Players only kill monsters. Realistically speaking, this is war.”

  I stepped closer.

  “If you claim the right to kill players, players have the right to kill you too, without remorse.”

  I stepped closer.

  The Core glared at me. “Do we have any choice?”

  She was crying.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Her body had split along her ribs, breaking again at her shoulder. Her withered arm had separated from the rest of her body, lying broken on the floor.

  She had long since given up Sern’s form. Instead, the Core looked similar to the girl at the feast. Her first host.

  {Two-Star : Gauntlet of Observation}

  [1 Hp]

  [10m Str 10m Dur ]

  [This unit has been afflicted by {Unknown affliction}]

  “We eat or we die,” The Core said. “We eat either family or non-family. But we must always eat.”

  She shook.

  “What choice is there?”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” I said.

  “That makes it desperate,” She hissed, crawling away, toward escape.

  A room flickered around me.

  Another thousand of my mana and the paper-thin foundation shattered. The core staggered, cracking her side on the edges of the collapsing dungeon.

  She looked so feeble now.

  My hands tightened white.

  I wasn’t seriously pitying a literal parasite, was it?

  There was a snap and the monster’s foot broke in half. She covered her head in her hand, biting her tongue to keep from screaming.

  I just walked away.

  “Find a non-human host and try to keep a low profile,” I whispered. “Beyond that, I don't know how to help you.”

  What was a parasite if not a being utterly dependent on another. There is nothing inherently good or evil about trying to survive. The morality of that comes from how you do it.

  A needle of concrete pierced my shoulder.

  I looked back.

  {Grind : (-100000) -199002 Hp}

  Blood ran down my hand, where the screen was held frozen between two fingers.

  “You’re still slow,” I sighed.

  The Core laughed in shock, inadvertently snapping her remaining arm with a crunch.

  “There was no choice,” she hissed. “If I had another arm, I would stab you again.”

  My heart clenched.

  Sometimes people just don’t understand when to stop.

  I fired a manifestation, obliterating the entire remaining dungeon, forming clouds of dust so thick as to sting my eyes, despite the durability I’d build up. Its charred foundation snapped in a surge of intense heat.

  A moment passed.

  The utterly unharmed dungeon door flung open with a sharp metallic click, flooding the dungeon with cool moonlight.

  I waited.

  I hesitated.

  There was nothing.

  No notifications. No stats.

  I had killed her, hadn’t I? She couldn’t possibly escape that blast.

  She could’ve…she…

  Was that a clone?

  The door slammed shut with a thundering boom, shaking the whole dungeon.

  No.

  {NOTICE}

  [Timed Event]

  [Failure to kill Devourer in [0:10:00] will enable Devourer to select a new host.]

  I whipped my head around, unable to find even a hint of nefarious mana, only confirming my suspicions.

  The ground began to disintegrate beneath my feet, like a dungeon where the core had died.

  But the core hadn’t died.

  She’d left.

  Crap.

  I ran for the door, wrenching the handle. It didn’t budge an inch.

  Crap.

  When could she have possibly made the switch?!

  “HEY!” I screamed, pounding on the frame.

  [Locked.]

  What would she do? Would she try to impersonate me? No, her skills in shapeshifting weren’t nearly good enough. Meaning someone would see her, then try to fight her.

  She still had ten million strength.

  Or was she stronger?

  But didn’t the proportions have to be the same?

  I gritted my teeth.

  Ten million strength or not, a Core’s weight was based on the size and density of their shell. Since her shell was so thin and her strength was so high, she could move fast.

  I glanced up, punching the door. Nothing.

  I froze the screen.

  [Locked.]

  Nothing.

  The notification addressed a system, but it didn't control it. Stopping its processes wouldn’t have any effect on the door’s actual mechanism.

  And, given the rate the dungeon was crumbling, it’d take at least fifteen minutes before I escaped.

  That wouldn’t work.

  I pulled one of Xoiae’s last few enchanting crystals from my inventory, along with the gauntlet, praying something didn’t go horribly wrong.

  All my manifestation abilities were already enchanted, I used it on Reach.

  The dungeon disappeared, replaced by the endless plane of devastated city.

  My party surrounded a pale woman with a roughly scarlet dress.

  The Core was impersonating master Jujud.

  Or she had been, before a wave of Xoiae’s resounding mental energy tore her ability to pieces, tossing the core backward as a loose blob of discolored concrete.

  [EVOLUTION - REACH]

  {Reach and Press}

  [Grab things from slightly further away. This effect increases as things are closer. Direct contact gives a substantially better grip.]

  Oh hey.

  That was pretty cool.

  I grabbed a rock, Reaching onto it. Even after I de-activated the ability, the rock stuck to my hand for a second.

  Hang on, what if I needed to grab something and quickly release it?

  Didn’t my ability already basically grab things fine?

  How was this supposed to be useful?

  Perhaps Range was already such an incredible ability that there just wasn’t much to improve on, even with one of Xoiae’s crystals.

  Although it would've been nice to get straight-up telekinesis.

  “GRIND!” Ardenidi shouted. “KIll this thing!”

  Oh yeah.

  I unleashed a volley of orbs.

  The blob snapped into Master Jujud’s shape, flickering out of sight. While we couldn’t know any of the specifics of Master Jujud’s techniques, just her efficiency of movement was already a massive increase in speed in power.

  The orbs trailed pitifully into the distance, popping with little puffs of sparkly mana.

  “Alright!” Sip grinned. “We scared it away!”

  A blade pierced through his side.

  The concrete soldier behind him stepped back, raising up for another strike. Catania snapped it by the neck and pulverized the monster with its own head.

  “Sip!” Soise shouted, grabbing him, summoning all her medical supplies. “Don’t you dare die on me!”

  Sip blinked. “Relax.” He adjusted his robes, showing where the blade had pierced through several thick layers. “It’s not like he actually hit me.”

  “Take off your robes and let me check.”

  Sip blinked. “Nah.”

  “SIP!”

  Other soldiers appeared around us, cracking as they staggered forward.

  Catania blew at one and it fell apart. “Is it just me or do the parasite’s minions get weaker the more she has.”

  “That’s what it looks like,” I huffed. “This Core’s wildly inexperienced. I don’t think she knows how to move that many monsters at once.”

  Toya rolled his eyes. “Don’t let your guards down. She’s got to be at least a four-star.”

  “Two star.”

  He stopped. “A-are you—”

  “Yes.”

  “Well okay then.”

  {NOTICE}

  [Timed Event]

  [Failure to kill Devourer in [0:00:34] will enable Devourer to select a new host.]

  “Get together!” I shouted, pulling all my orbs down, forming a shield all around us.

  I downed my second to last potion, creating enormous abstracting manifestations to overlap with one another, planting the largest orb directly beneath our feet, in case the Core tried an attack from below.

  Soise grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay freezing all this at once?”

  My face was pale and my hands were going numb. “It’s only ten more seconds.”

  The core landed in the distance, kicking up a shockwave of dirt, splitting the earth.

  Soise frowned. “What makes you think she’ll pick a new host immediately?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Desperation.”

  [Failure to kill Devourer in [0:00:01] will enable Devourer to select a new host.]

  The Devourer knelt to the black-stained ground.

  She vanished in an instant.

  [0:00:00] Devourer has regained the ability to take a host.]

  ~

  {Gauntlet of Observation}

  [New host obtained - Nightmare]

  The nightmare’s shallow black lake shook. Slowly, the three corpses rose in the air, collapsing into one another, dribbling smoldering black goop. Their liquified remains followed only moments behind, bunching up around a single point in open defiance of gravity.

  Sip swallowed.

  “So…are we going to start running or…?”

  // {Notice} //

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