The red gate didn't just transport him; it spat him out like a piece of unwanted filth.
Do-Hyeon stumbled as the crimson portal collapsed behind him, his boots skidding on a floor that felt... soft. Too soft. It wasn't the hard, calcified bone of the first floor. It was something sickeningly organic. He looked down and his stomach lurched. The ground was carpeted in thick, pulsating moss that looked like matted human hair, soaked in a dark, oily fluid that smelled of copper and old rot.
[You have entered: Floor -2 — The Screaming Catacombs.]
[Atmospheric Effect: 'Lament of the Lost' is active.]
[Your Sanity will drain slowly over time. Current Sanity: 94%]
The air here was a physical weight—humid, thick, and vibrating with a sound that made his teeth ache. It was a constant, low-frequency humming, like thousands of people whispering their last regrets into his ear at once.
'The Screaming Catacombs,' Do-Hyeon thought, his fingers tightening around the handle of the rusted cleaver. 'At least the name is honest.'
He took a step forward, and the hair-moss beneath his feet let out a wet, squelching crunch. Suddenly, a sound broke through the humming. A human sound.
"Who... is... there?"
The voice was thin, like dry leaves scraping against a tombstone. Do-Hyeon spun around, his obsidian claws instinctively flaring with a violent violet glow that sliced through the oppressive red haze.
In a corner, chained to a wall of weeping, black stone, sat a figure. At first, Do-Hyeon thought it was another monster, but as he approached, his breath hitched. It was a man. Or what was left of one.
His armor was shattered, but the silver and blue trim was still recognizable—the mark of the Blue Crane Guild, one of the top guilds from the surface. The man's legs were gone, replaced by the same matted moss that covered the floor, as if the Tower was slowly digesting him alive.
"A... Hunter?" Do-Hyeon whispered, his voice sounding foreign even to himself.
The man raised his head. His eyes were gone, replaced by the same emerald fire Do-Hyeon had seen in the Grave-Eaters. "Hunter? No... I was a sacrifice. Just like you."
The man let out a wheezing laugh that turned into a wet cough, spraying black bile on the floor. "Tae-Jun... is he still... the hero? Did he... reach the 50th floor yet?"
Do-Hyeon's blood turned to ice. He knelt beside the dying man, his shadow flaring with a sudden, uncontrollable intensity. "You knew Pyo Tae-Jun? Who the hell are you?"
"I was his... first porter," the man whispered, his body trembling with a decade-old terror. "Ten years ago... on the 5th floor. He told the Association I died to a Boss. But he... he pushed me. He needed a distraction to get the 'Eyes of the Phoenix'. He looked at me... and he smiled. That bastard... he always smiles when he kills."
Do-Hyeon felt a lump in his throat that tasted like pure gall. All these years, he thought he was the only one. He thought he was Tae-Jun's "best friend" who just happened to be unlucky. But Tae-Jun wasn't a hero who made a mistake; he was a serial killer who used human lives as mana potions for his own legend.
[Warning: Sanity is dropping!]
[Extreme Malice detected! The Abyss is responding to your rage!]
"I won't just kill him," Do-Hyeon said, his voice dropping to a low, guttural growl that didn't sound human. "I'll make him scream louder than this entire floor. I'll make his 'Sun' burn him alive."
The man's emerald eyes flickered one last time, a ghostly look of peace crossing his withered face before his head slumped forward.
[Target has expired.]
[Would you like to extract—]
"No," Do-Hyeon cut the System off, his voice trembling with a mix of pity and fury. "Let him rest. He's given enough to this godforsaken Tower."
But the floor didn't care about rest.
As the Hunter's life faded, the walls of the Catacombs began to ripple. The whispering grew into a deafening roar. From the matted hair-moss on the floor, shapes began to rise. They were [Lamenters]—humanoid creatures with elongated limbs and stitched-shut eyes, their mouths wide open in a permanent, silent scream of agony.
There were hundreds of them. A sea of grey, rotting flesh.
[The Feast has begun.]
[The Lamenters have detected 'Fresh Regret'.]
The first one lunged, its limbs snapping like dry wood as it moved. It didn't use weapons; it tried to wrap its long, slimy arms around Do-Hyeon's neck, its mouth opening impossibly wide to reveal rows of needle-like bone teeth.
"Get back!"
Do-Hyeon swung the Grave-Keeper's cleaver in a wide, savage arc. The heavy blade sliced through the first three Lamenters like they were made of rotten fruit. Black ichor sprayed across his face, stinging his eyes, but he didn't wipe it away. He welcomed the sting. It reminded him he was still alive.
He leapt into the crowd, a whirlwind of rusted steel and obsidian claws.
CRACK. SHREK. THUD.
He wasn't fighting like a Hunter anymore. He was fighting like a man trying to tear the world apart with his bare hands. He grabbed a Lamenter by its head and slammed it into the stone wall until the skull turned to a grey paste. He kicked another, the shadow scales on his boots shattering its ribs with a sound like a gunshot.
But they kept coming. For every one he killed, five more rose from the hair-moss. The sheer weight of their bodies was beginning to pin him down.
"Is this it?" Do-Hyeon laughed, a wild, manic sound that blended with the screams of the floor. "You think you can bury me under the weight of these dead souls? I am the one who fell! I am the one who survived!"
[Shadow Synchro: 25%]
[New Skill Unlocked: Abyssal Chain.]
Do-Hyeon slammed his left hand onto the pulsating floor. Instead of a burst, five chains of solidified, jagged shadow erupted from his palm. They flew out like vipers, piercing the chests of the nearest Lamenters and anchoring them to the floor.
"Now... BURST!"
He yanked the chains back, and the shadows exploded inside the monsters. Shrapnel of bone and black meat rained down.
[Level Up! -5 -> -8]
[Strength: +5]
[Agility: +4]
[Authority: +2]
Do-Hyeon stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving, his body covered in so much black bile that he looked like a statue carved from the void. He looked at the dead Hunter's body one last time, then at his own hands. The obsidian scales had grown further up his arms, reaching his elbows.
"I'm not just climbing for myself anymore," he whispered, his violet eyes burning with a cold, righteous fire. "I'm climbing for everyone you stepped on, Tae-Jun. I'm bringing every soul you murdered back to your doorstep."
He turned his gaze toward the dark tunnel ahead. He could hear it—the sound of something much bigger than Lamenters. Something that sounded like a heartbeat. The heartbeat of the floor itself.
He gripped his cleaver, the rusted metal now glowing with a faint, dark-violet aura.
"Next," he growled, stepping over the corpses and deeper into the screaming dark.