Chapter 7: you have two choices

The door to the thirteenth-floor boss room didn’t look special. Dante stood in front of it, his hands tucked into the pockets.

Beside him, Yenna was staring at the lines glowing on the floor. Her ears were twitching fast, leaning forward as she listened to the silence inside the room.

"They’re definitely in there," Yenna muttered, her voice low. "Six people. They aren’t moving at all. They’re placed in a circle around the entrance. The moment we step through that door, they’re going to hit us with everything they have."

Dante didn’t even blink. "Do you recognize their mana?"

Yenna nodded, her tail curling up tightly behind her. "It’s Marcus’s private squad. The guys who handle the dirty work that the main guild doesn’t want the public to see. They call them the cleaners. They don’t leave people alive, Zero."

"Good," Dante said. "Then I don’t have to feel bad about what happens next."

He didn’t wait. He just reached out, grabbed the cold metal handle of the copper gate, and pushed it open. The door scraped against the floor with a loud, annoying screech that filled the empty corridor.

Inside the boss room, the giant stone monster that was supposed to protect the floor was already dead. It was chopped into pieces in the corner, its blue core missing.

Six men in grey cloaks were hiding behind the stone pillars. The leader, Kaelen, was holding a small black device that tracked soul signatures. He saw two dots move into the room. He didn’t say a word. He just raised his left hand and gave a sharp downward nod.

The trap snapped instantly. Two men dropped from the ceiling beams directly above Dante. They didn’t yell. They just drove long, black daggers coated in purple poison straight down toward Dante’s shoulders. At the exact same time, two archers on the wooden ledges above pulled their bowstrings back and fired heavy, steel-tipped arrows right at his chest.

Dante didn’t move. He didn’t even take his hands out of his pockets. He just stood there on the soot-covered floorboards.

The sound was like a car hitting a wall at full speed. The daggers and the arrows hit Dante at the exact same moment.

But nothing happened to him. The fabric of his cheap hoodie didn’t even rip. Instead, the light beneath his skin flashed for a second. The SSS-Rank mirror body took all that force, doubled it, and threw it right back into the attackers.

The two men who dropped from the ceiling didn’t even land on their feet. The shockwave of their own double-strength attack hit them in mid-air. Their wrists snapped, their shoulders popped out of their sockets, and the bones in their chests cracked loudly. They flew backward, crashing hard against the pillars before rolling onto the floor, completely limp and dead.

Up on the ledges, the two archers let out short yelps. Their heavy bows exploded into splinters, driving sharp pieces of wood right into their own eyes and faces. They fell off the platforms, dropping ten feet down onto the hard ground with dull thuds.

Kaelen, who was waiting behind the central pillar to finish off the survivors, froze. His jaw dropped. He had been a high-ranking assassin for five years, but he had never seen anyone kill four elite hunters by just standing still and doing absolutely nothing.

Before he could even yell at his last remaining teammate to run, a cold, heavy feeling washed over his body. The dark green token hanging from Dante’s belt gave off a dim red light.

[System Notification: Sovereign’s Tax is working.]

[You are draining 5% of all stats from enemies within 100 meters.]

[Your current strength and speed have increased temporarily.]

Kaelen felt his knees grow weak. His muscles suddenly felt like lead, and his breathing got heavy. It felt like someone had tied sandbags to his arms and legs. He looked at his last teammate, a young mage, who was already dropping his staff because his hands were shaking too much to hold it.

Dante slowly pulled his right hand out of his hoodie pocket. To Kaelen, his hand looked completely empty. But the air around Dante’s fingers was vibrating, warping the view behind it like hot air rising off a summer road. The invisible Asura blade was hummed quietly against his palm.

Dante walked forward, his sneakers making a soft scraping sound against the soot on the floorboards. He stopped five feet away from Kaelen.

"Marcus sent you to clean up the mess on the twelfth floor, right?" Dante asked. His voice was completely casual, like he was asking about the weather.

Kaelen swallowed hard, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword, though his fingers were trembling from the stat drain. "Who the hell are you? Your face... your name isn’t in the system. How did you get a skill like that?"

Dante didn’t answer the question. He turned his head slightly toward Yenna, who was standing by the door with her ears up.

"Yenna," Dante said. "The two archers on the floor are still breathing. Go finish them off. They saw too much."

Yenna didn’t hesitate. Her black tail flicked once, and her claws extended from her fingers, glowing with a dark, smoky purple light from her new skill. She glided across the room silently, completely hidden by her Domain Silence, moving toward the groaning archers like a ghost.

Dante turned back to Kaelen. The hidden blade in his hand shifted, the invisible metal cutting through the air with a soft whistle.

"You have two choices," Dante said to the assassin leader. "You can tell me exactly what kind of security traps Marcus placed on the next five floors, or I can let you hit me with your strongest attack and watch your own body explode from the feedback. Pick one."

Kaelen looked at the dead bodies of his men on the floor, then up at the dark, cold eyes of the young man in the hoodie. For the first time since the apocalypse started, the S-rank mercenary felt absolute, paralyzing terror.