Before Dr. Ray Spencer had dropped into this hellish swamp, the hotel room he occupied had been a disaster zone... of his own making.

  An empty bottle of whiskey lay on its side next to a half-eaten room service tray.

  Dr. Spencer was a wreck, face down in a pillow, and the only reason he was awake was because his System messages wouldn’t stop buzzing.

  He had foolishly configured his interface to ping him whenever keywords like his name, the conference, or his specific field of research were mentioned in the System forums.

  -“Paranthropology” and “Xenobiology” are just fancy words for “How do we weaponize hunters?” and “How can we control the monsters?”

  ?It’s not that deep. My cousin’s there presenting a paper on hunter nutrition.

  -yall see this? a five-star hotel just to jaw about us. hell i’m blessed if my guild covers a roach motel after a c-rank damn near took my arm clean off

  -OMG i saw all the security and was like what is going ON?? This is SO COOL

  -The security perimeter for this #ParahumanConference is insane. My commute just doubled. Couldn’t they hold this thing on a remote island or something?

  -And so they gather in their modern-day Tower of Babel, led by their chief architect, Dr. Splicer. They seek to understand what is not meant for man to know. These Dungeons are a trial sent to test our faith.

  ?With all due respect, what’s your solution? Just pray while monsters tear through our towns?

  ?What profit is there in saving the flesh, only to lose the soul? You are all heading in the path of damnation.

  Dr. Spencer squinted at the floating texts, his head pounding in rhythm with his pulse.

  He swiped the notifications away with a sigh, muting the notifications. Beneath the public feed was a string of frantic texts from his research team, all asking the same question: Where are you?

  Right. Gotta go. Gotta get up, thought Dr. Spencer.

  But his body felt glued to the bed. Gravity seemed to work double-time on him these days.

  It was hard to care about much of anything since the breach took his wife and daughter. The silence in his house was louder than any monster.

  But he couldn’t just quit.

  Not while those damn dungeons were still out there.

  He finally dragged himself to the bathroom, showered the whiskey sweat off his skin, and stepped into the hallway thirty minutes behind schedule.

  And came face-to-face with the two guards assigned to him for the conference.

  The moment he looked at him, his passive skill, [Minor Appraisal] activated automatically.

  It was a low-rank but a unique skill he carried, a useful researcher’s tool that allowed him to peel back the surface layer and see the underlying data of the creatures around him.

  Information scrolled across his vision in neat, green text at the young man with curly caramel hair.

  [Name: Henry Stone]

  [Rank: B]

  [Condition: Suboptimal]

  [Subject’s current output is significantly below estimated potential.]

  [Posture subtly shifts to protect the right side.]

  [Signs of a recent, significant energy expenditure detected.]

  [Right shoulder indicates a history of dislocation.]

  [Cellular regeneration rate is estimated to be 15% above the baseline for individuals of this rank.]

  Stolen story; please report.

  [Musculature is developed for prolonged endurance.]

  Definitely bodyguard material.

  Dr. Spencer’s own proficiency in the skill wasn’t high enough to get a clear read on him, but the feedback was still pretty positive.

  Then, he shifted his gaze to the other man. The gray-haired one that had just walked closer.

  Dr. Spencer almost lost his poker face.

  His skill, which usually provided a clean stream of data, was going haywire like it was broken.

  Static filled his peripheral vision and a sharp spike of pain stabbed behind his eyes as the System strugged to interpret what it was looking at.

  Red error messages flashed violently, blocking out all the information.

  The only coherent data points his skill could pull through the noise were four distinct signatures.

  They were identical... and terrifying.

  [CURSE: UNKNOWN (EX)]

  [CURSE: UNKNOWN (EX)]

  [CURSE: UNKNOWN (EX)]

  [CURSE: UNKNOWN (EX)]

  For a second, Dr. Spencer thought he was hallucinating from the hangover.

  Four EX-rank curses?

  Dr. Spencer couldn’t wrap his head around it.

  How was the man even still alive?

  The man’s presence was faint—almost nonexistent compared to the burning furnace of life force coming from Henry Stone. As if he was looking at a dead man or a ghost.

  Was his presence so weak because the curses were eating him alive from the inside out?

  But considering the curses currently weighing him down, what kind of power did he have originally? Well, no use in imagining that monstrosity. Dr. Spencer focused on the present.

  Can this man even do his job?

  Dr. Spencer, an E-rank Awakened, was probably stronger than this hunter. He was determined to file an official complaint when the party was over. He was doing the hunter a favor.

  It would be a miracle if the hunter didn’t become a liability should something happen.

  *

  Liability, my ass.

  The word tasted like ash in Dr. Spencer’s mouth now.

  All those thoughts shattered when the hotel ballroom was replaced by the suffocating dungeon mud he face-planted into.

  Yes, that was before Dr. Spencer was trapped in an A-rank dungeon.

  Before that hunter refused to abandon Dr. Spencer.

  Before the man had calmly found a path to escape through a deathtrap swamp.

  “That would be me.”

  ...And before this “Captain” had stepped in front of Dr. Spencer, his back straight, his suit jacket fluttering in the pressure wave radiating from a literal angel.

  Dr. Spencer stared at Shane’s back, his mind reeling.

  Shane Ashwell, this walking collection of catastrophic curses, had just declared himself the target of a Celestial executioner to save... him.

  Why?

  Dr. Spencer couldn’t understand. Hunters worked for coin and reputation. They didn’t sign up for suicide missions against S-rank entities.

  But the White Wing didn’t give Dr. Spencer time to ponder.

  The angel’s fury locked entirely onto Shane.

  Even though the killing intent wasn’t directed at Dr. Spencer, he felt a pressure that forced him to his knees. He couldn’t fight it, his head bowed and his gaze fixed on the muddy ground. His lungs burned as if the air had been sucked out of the clearing.

  From his peripheral vision, he could see even Henry buckle down to one knee at the sheer amount of pressure.

  Even though the White Wing was temporarily downgraded to an A-rank, the pressure it emitted was definitely that of its original status.

  System warnings blared in his vision, glowing an angry red.

  [WARNING: Unidentified entity White Wing has initiated a hostility protocol.]

  [You are within the entity’s Area of Effect.]

  [The overwhelming pressure can induce paralysis and mental collapse.]

  [Threat Level: Extreme.]

  [The only recommended course of action: evasion.]

  A cold sweat broke out across Dr. Spencer’s entire body.

  His hands, pressed against the muddy ground, started to tremble uncontrollably. It was a primal reaction to being in the presence of an apex predator.

  If he felt like this...

  Shane must be going through the same thing but a hundred times worse. The man was standing at the epicenter of that aura. He was probably regretting every decision that led him here.

  For a split second, Dr. Spencer’s own body shook with an involuntary regret for a life spent studying the dungeons.

  He was going to die. Here.

  “Daddy!”

  His ears rang with the familiar voice he could only hear in his head now.

  Damn it all.

  Through the sweat stinging his eyes and the grit in his teeth, Dr. Spencer forced his head up.

  It took every ounce of willpower he had left. He had to see. He had to see the end.

  But what he saw wasn’t what he was expecting at all.

  In the face of a power that only S-ranks could withstand, the hunter... simply smirked.

  “Like I need permission from a monster to do my work,” said Shane.

  Unlike before, when he had seemed bored or devoid of emotion, he now radiated something else entirely.

  Shane now had a predatory glint in his eyes, reflecting the blue light of the White Wing’s mana.

  The change was so drastic that he looked like a different person entirely.

  Shane, holding a broken sword suddenly, adjusted his grip on his weapon, the metal creaking under the force of his hand.

  “If you won’t come,” Shane said, his grin widening into something feral. “I’ll go first.”

  Goddammit, thought Shane.

  Obviously he wasn’t crazy enough to face an S-rank Celestial head-on. Well, not that crazy, at least.

  No matter how weakened it was, it was still a Celestial with the title “Wing” in its name. Even if the only skill it could currently utilize was a single curse, that didn’t mean its base stats were all gone, too.

  One direct hit, and Shane would be reduced to a fine red mist.

  He was going to have to gamble here.

  All so he could max out the doctor’s respect for Shane.

  And survive. Yes, that was important, too. Shane reminded himself, feeling his heart beat loudly in his chest.

  He shifted his weight and raised the Broken Oath. The jagged, dark metal of the weapon hummed in his grip. He angled it so that the ambient light from the swamp flared off its fractured edge, forcing the angel’s attention squarely onto him like a beacon.

  The creature stared back with blank, glowing eyes.

  The pressure of its gaze felt like it was pressing into his chest, trying to break his ribs. Though it was all probably just in his head.

  Showtime.

  “If you won’t come,” Shane called out, forcing the corners of his mouth up, faking a cocky grin as he leaned forward into a sprinter’s stance, committing to the most drastic, desperate bluff of his entire life. “I’ll go first.”