Chapter 138: Heart of the Core

"What?!!!"

My jaw dropped so hard I thought it was going to detach from my face.

’Why did she tear off my shirt?!’ My brain was screaming in panic. ’What is she doing?! Is she going to mark me?! Is this some kind of wild demon ritual?!’

I squeezed my eyes shut, my entire body going stiff as a board against the stone wall.

"Shh..." Viora whispered softly.

Her voice was close. Too close.

The moment that soft sound escaped her lips, my mouth snapped shut tightly. I didn’t dare make another sound. When Viora was in this weird, intense mood, disobeying her felt like jumping straight into a volcano.

Gradually, I opened one eye very slowly, peering down at her.

Viora wasn’t looking at my face anymore. She was holding the long strip of cloth she had just ripped from my shirt. Her face was completely calm, almost blank, as she folded the torn fabric in her hands.

"I am just trying to cover the bleeding with this," she said evenly, her purple eyes fixed entirely on the cut on my chest.

I blinked. Then I tilted my head to the side, looking at her in total confusion.

"Why would you cover it by tearing my own shirt?" I asked, my voice high and strained. "I told you earlier that I brought some healing potions with me!"

Viora’s hands froze instantly.

The fabric stayed suspended in mid-air right above my chest. She went completely silent. Her shoulders went stiff, and her purple hair hung down, hiding her face from my view.

’Wait...’ I thought, sweating nervously. ’Did she seriously forget I had potions?’

Without saying a single word, Viora suddenly moved her hands again. She wrapped the torn cloth tightly around my chest and pulled the ends together with a sudden tug.

"OUCH!" I yelled, wincing hard as the pressure slammed straight into my fresh cut. "Hey! Gentle!"

Viora didn’t say anything. She just tied the knot tightly, patted my shoulder once with her pale hand, and turned her back to me.

"Let’s go," she said, her voice returning to its normal, deadpan tone as if nothing strange had just happened. "You have to take care of that whatever-it-is before it does something bad."

I stared at her back in total disbelief.

’She definitely did that on purpose because she felt embarrassed,’ I thought, rubbing my sore chest. ’She tore my perfectly good shirt for no reason when I literally have healing potions sitting right in my side pouch.’

I let out a long, exhausted sigh, shaking my head. I couldn’t understand why she was acting like this so suddenly. One second she was a terrifying yandere demon who wanted to tie me to her back forever, and the next second she was acting like an embarrassed kid trying to change the subject.

’Whatever,’ I decided, shaking the thought out of my head. ’I’ll just ignore it for now. I value my life far too much to call her out on it.’

I reached down to my belt, pulled out a small glass vial containing a faint red liquid, and popped the cork with my thumb. I drank the healing potion in one quick gulp.

A warm, pleasant sensation spread from my stomach to my chest, slowly dulling the sharp, throbbing pain of the claw wound. It wasn’t a high-grade potion, so it wouldn’t heal the scar instantly, but at least the bleeding stopped completely under the crude bandage.

I picked up my fallen dagger from the ground, wiped the black monster dust off the blade, and slid it back into my sheath.

"Alright," I grunted, testing my leg.

My left leg still ached heavily from the earlier fall, but with Viora standing right beside me, I felt a lot safer.

I limped forward, stepping over the piles of black soot left behind by her massive mana explosion.

Together, we walked toward the far end of the dark chamber, where the eerie green light was pulsating rhythmically against the stone walls. And sitting directly on top of the seat was the source of all the madness in this gate.

The heart.

Up close, it was even more disturbing than it looked from a distance.

It was roughly the size of a watermelon, glowing with a deep, sickly dark-green light.

It didn’t look like a human heart, nor did it look like a regular monster core. It looked like a strange fusion of organic flesh and crystalline energy.

Thick, dark green veins extended outward from the bottom of the heart, spreading across the surface of the throne like a spiderweb and digging deep into the cracks of the floor.

Thump... Thump... Thump...

Every time the heart beat, a visible wave of green light traveled down those dark veins. And those green energy lines were moving upward along the walls, pulsing in sync with the core.

I stopped a few feet away from the throne, leaning slightly on one of my leg as I stared at the pulsing object.

’This isn’t a normal Dungeon Core,’ I thought, my eyes narrowing as I analyzed everything I was looking at.

A normal Dungeon Core was usually a smooth, solid crystal—blue, red, or yellow, and black, depending on the rank of the gate. When you defeated the dungeon boss, the core would simply sit there quietly, waiting for hunters to absorb its mana or harvest it for crafting gear.

It didn’t pulse like a living organ. It didn’t have veins. And it certainly didn’t try to pump its own mana into the surrounding environment.

’Ah... Why do I always get stuck with Gates like these?’

"This is an anomaly," I whispered out loud, my forehead creasing into deep lines. "A mutated core."

"It smells strange," Viora noted, stepping up right next to me. She grabbed my hand, looking down at the green heart with mild disgust. "It smells like rotting plants and dead mana."

"That’s because it’s corrupting the gate," I explained, pointing my finger toward the veins on the floor. "Regular gates draw mana from the atmosphere to sustain the monsters inside. But this thing... it’s doing the exact opposite. It’s collecting the ambient mana from the shadow monsters we killed, refining it into that dark green energy, and pumping it upward."

"Upward?" Viora tilted her head slightly. "To where?"

"To the surface," I said, cold sweat running down the back of my neck. "If this green energy reaches the gate portal at the top. It will cause a Dungeon Break. And worse, the monsters, the Elves, the dragons, and the Vampires, would find a way to our world."

I leaned in a little closer, being fully careful not to touch the green veins with my boots.

I began examining every single detail of the heart, running through every piece of knowledge I had stored in my head.

First, the shell.

The outer layer of the heart wasn’t soft flesh. It was covered in a thin, translucent layer of hardened green crystal. That meant a simple dagger strike wouldn’t be enough to shatter it.

If I jabbed my small blade into it blindly, the blade would probably shatter, or worse, the sudden release of trapped, volatile mana would cause a massive explosion right in our faces.

Second, the pulse rate.

Thump... Thump... Thump...

I timed it in my head. The heart beat once every two seconds. But every four beats, the glow intensified dramatically, and the green veins expanded slightly.

’It’s charging up,’ I realized, my heart skipping a beat. ’It’s accumulating mana in cycles. If we attack it during its high-charge state, the feedback loop will detonate the whole place, probably.’

Third, the connection to the throne.

The thickest vein was rooted directly into the center of the throne. That throne wasn’t just decorative furniture placed here. The heart was using the throne as a amplifier to broadcast its corrupted signal throughout the entire kingdom.

’If we want to destroy this thing safely, we can’t just smash it,’ I analyzed rapidly, my mind racing through different strategies. ’We need to sever its connection to the throne first. Cut off its power supply. Once the veins stop feeding it mana, the crystal shell should weaken. Then, we strike the core during its low-charge interval—right after a beat, when the energy level drops to its lowest point.’

I turned my head to look at Viora.

She was standing there quietly, watching me with her usual calm expression.

"Viora," I spoke with serious tone. "I need your help with this. But you have to follow my exact instructions. If we mess this up, this whole place goes boom."

Viora looked at me, her eyes lingering on my chest for a brief second before returning to my face.

"I will do whatever you say, Woo Jin," she replied quietly. "Just tell me what to break."

"Okay," I nodded, taking a deep breath to steady my nerves. "Can you sense those three thick veins at the base of the throne? The ones digging into the stone seat?"

"Yes."

"I need you to cut them," I said, pointing my finger precisely at the three main energy trunks. "But you can’t use a massive mana blast like you did with those shadow creatures. If you hit it with that much force, you’ll trigger the core’s defense mechanism. You need to use a precise, concentrated physical strike wrapped in just a tiny bit of your purple mana. Can you do that?"

Viora raised her hand, flexing her fingers slightly as a thin, dark purple glow, no thicker than a blade of grass, wrapped tightly around the tips of her fingers.

"Like this?" she asked.

I stared at her in awe for a second. The control she had over her mana was absurd. Going from an apocalyptic explosion that wiped out an entire room to a whisper-thin blade of energy in a fraction of a second was high-tier master control.

"Perfect," I said, clearing my throat. "Exactly like that."

I knelt down on my right knee, keeping my weight off my injured left leg, and positioned myself directly in front of the heart with my dagger raised.

"Listen closely," I instructed, watching the rhythm of the green glow. "On my mark, you slice those three veins at the exact same time. The moment you cut them, the green light on the heart will flicker and dim for about two seconds. That’s my window. I’ll drive my dagger into the central core seam right here."

"Got it?" I asked, looking up at her.

Viora stepped up beside the throne, her posture turning relaxed yet deadly. "I am ready."

I turned my attention back to the heart, watching the rhythmic pulsing.

Thump...

Thump...

Thump...

THUMP!

The green light flared brightly, illuminating our faces in emerald glow, then quickly dimmed down as the energy dispersed through the veins.

This was it. The low-charge window.

"Now, Viora! Cut them!" I shouted.

SWISH!

Viora’s hand moved faster than my eyes could track. Her fingers sliced through the air like three razor-sharp swords.

CRUNCH!

The three thick green veins connected to the base of the throne were severed cleanly in a single, fluid motion. Dark, foul-smelling green fluid spurted out from the severed ends, sizzling as it hit the stone floor.

Instantly, the heart let out a high-pitched, screeching sound, like a dying animal!

SCREEECH!

The bright green glow inside the core flickered violently, darkening into a dull, muddy brown. The veins along the walls immediately lost their light, turning into lifeless black tendrils.

"It worked!" I thought.

Without wasting a single moment, I thrust my body forward, driving my steel dagger straight into the hairline crack at the top of the heart with every ounce of strength remaining in my body!

CLANG!

PFFFT!

The tip of my dagger broke through the weakened crystal shell, sinking deep into the squishy, unstable center of the heart.

GUSH!

A wave of mana exploded outward from the puncture wound, creating a sharp gust of wind that blew my hair back. The green heart violently convulsed under my blade, cracking in dozens of places at once.

"Viora, back up!" I yelled, pulling my dagger out and scrambling backward on my hands and knees.

But, even after my warning, Viora didn’t back up. Instead, she instantly stepped in front of me, placing her body between me and the cracking core like a human shield.

BOOM!

The mutated heart shattered into a thousand glowing green shards!

A shockwave of mana swept through the tunnel, washing over Viora’s back and vanishing into thin air. The dark green veins on the walls withered away completely, turning into gray ash that rained down onto the floor.

Silence returned to the underground chamber. The eerie green light was gone, replaced once again by the faint, peaceful ambient light of the tunnel.

Ding!

[Dungeon Core Destroyed!]

[Gate Stability: 100% Restored.]

[Boss Cleared!]

[Clear Rewards will be distributed upon exiting the gate.]

I sat back on the floor, letting out a massive breath I felt like I had been holding for an hour. My muscles completely unlocked, and all the exhaustion from earlier swept over me at once.

"We... we actually did it," I panted, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve, which actually was now my own skin. "The gate is clear."

Viora slowly turned around to face me. The dark, dangerous aura was completely gone from her eyes. She turned her head down at me sitting on the floor, then at the shattered remains of the throne.

"Is it over?" she asked softly.

"Yeah," I smiled weakly, pointing toward the far side of the room where a swirling blue portal was slowly materializing in mid-air. "It’s over. That portal will take us straight back to the surface."

Viora didn’t look at the portal. She walked over to me, stopped right in front of where I was sitting, and bent down.

Before I could ask what she was doing, she effortlessly slid her arms under my back and knees, lifting me up into the air as if I weighed nothing more than a feather.

"Whoa! Hey!" I gasped, grabbing onto her shoulder to balance myself. "What are you doing?!"

"You broke your leg, and your chest is injured," Viora said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, holding me securely against her chest. "So I am giving you a princess carry."

I opened my mouth to protest, but looking at the firm, stubborn resolve in her eyes, I decided it was a battle I was definitely not going to win.

"Fine..." I mumbled, my face burning slightly as I looked away. "Just... don’t drop me. Also, get our masks from the ground too."