Chapter 202: Boss Brought Cameras into the Dungeon

Chapter 202: Chapter 202: Boss Brought Cameras into the Dungeon

’Don’t bluff. Just because you’re inside me doesn’t mean I’m going to believe everything you say.’

[...]

[I don’t do bluffs, Revien.]

’You know my name too?’

[I was inside you. Wow. I really picked an idiot.]

’You sh—’

"What are you thinking?"

Giselle’s voice cut cleanly through the internal argument.

She stepped closer, one gloved hand already on my elbow, pulling my attention back to the basalt platform and the cavern’s open air.

Her mask lenses reflected the amber light of the core below.

"Uh... just scared?"

She tilted her head.

The motion was small, sceptical.

Before she could press, Draven’s voice reached us from a few paces ahead.

"Don’t space out now. One of the first rules of dungeon work: never take the place at face value. The walls listen. The cores remember. And the things that look dead are sometimes only waiting for a better angle."

He was already moving down the wide stone ramp that led toward the cavern floor.

Giselle held on to my arm a second longer, then let go and followed.

I fell in step beside her.

The voice in my head stayed quiet, but I could feel her attention like a second set of eyes watching through mine.

"You been inside a dungeon before?" I asked Giselle.

"A few times."

The deeper we walked, the more the dungeon showed its recent violence.

Blue-black blood had pooled in uneven lakes across the stone.

Pieces of monsters lay scattered where the raid team had cut them down and moved on: a severed limb still twitching with residual nerve firings, a cluster of crystalline spines, the massive horned head of something wolf-like whose teeth were longer than my forearm.

The air grew thicker. Every breath tasted of metal and spent mana.

Then we reached the body.

A man in the same guild colours as the supports outside lay half-torn across a low ridge of stone.

From the chest down, he was almost unrecognisable.

One arm was missing.

The tether lines that had once connected him to his Vanguards were burned black and fused to what remained of his armour.

His face, somehow, was still intact.

Eyes open.

Expression locked somewhere between shock and focus.

Draven stopped directly in front of the corpse.

"Chris..."

The name came out soft.

Almost gentle.

He sank to one knee, head bowed, one hand hovering over the ruined chest as if he could still feel a heartbeat.

[He’s acting.]

’I know.’

I glanced over my shoulder.

Two camera operators in lightweight protective gear had followed us through the gate and were now framing the scene with professional care.

One lens was locked on Draven’s profile.

The other swept across the body and then toward Giselle and me, the unexpected guests.

This entire walk was content.

From the gold-line execution outside to the quiet mourning inside, it was all being packaged for later broadcast.

The apex predator performing humanity for the sectors that watched him.

I leaned slightly toward Giselle.

"He’s so bad at acting."

She elbowed me in the stomach, not hard enough to damage, just hard enough to shut me up.

The message was clear.

Not with the cameras rolling.

Draven stayed kneeling for another three seconds, long enough for the operators to get the shot they needed.

Then he stood, wiped his eyes with the back of one glove even though I had seen no tears, and turned toward the nearest camera with a smile that managed to look both grieving and resolute.

"We will give Chris the highest respect there is. He was one of our best. The guild will remember."

The camera operators nodded.

One of them murmured something about a clean take.

Draven’s performance ended as smoothly as it had begun.

He turned away from the body and continued toward the core without looking back.

We followed.

The dungeon didn’t resemble the urban simulation of the academy exam.

There were no ruined towers, no transit plazas, no recognisable city layout.

It felt like a fragment of another land that had never finished forming: vast open stone, distant walls that vanished into darkness, a ceiling of living rock veined with slow red light.

Visibility dropped after a few hundred metres.

Either the space completed itself only after a full clear, or lower-ranked perception simply could not map it.

The effect was the same: the world ended in haze and shadow no matter which direction I looked.

We stopped at the containment ring around the core.

The crystal floated a metre above a circular platform of black stone, held in place by a lattice of pale barrier light.

It was roughly the size of a man’s torso, faceted, and pulsed with steady white radiance.

Up close, the light was almost painful.

The air around it vibrated.

Draven gestured toward it with an open hand.

"This is an S-rank core. Freshly stabilised. Still singing."

He stepped closer and laid his palm against the outer barrier.

The top facet of the crystal flushed a deep, warning red. The pulse accelerated once, then settled again when he withdrew his hand.

"It can sense power. Rank, density, intent. If a hunter with the proper clearance were to consume this under controlled conditions, the resulting level jump would be significant. Career-defining, for some."

I studied the crystal.

The voice behind my thoughts stirred with hunger.

"There’s only one," I said.

"Correct. The main core belongs to the team leader who organised the clear. Everything else: the smaller cores you’ll find in the monster remains — is distributed according to contribution and guild contract. Which brings us to the important part."

Draven turned fully toward me.

"Supports are not permitted to claim core material unless the team leader and the sponsoring guild explicitly authorise it. Even if the support landed the killing blow. Even if the support kept everyone else alive. Break it without permission, and you will not like the consequences."

I nodded once.

The hierarchy was consistent, at least.

Useful until it was no longer convenient for the people at the top.

Draven’s smile returned, sharper now.

"Come on. Keep your hand on it. Just the barrier. I want to see what an unmarked Acolyte registers as when the core is still warm."

[Do it.]