Then, with one final swing, he froze.
"This isn’t a damn tree!" he shouted.
A chill ran down my arms. If it wasn’t a tree, then… what the hell was it?
"It’s some kind of... chitin plating."
A what?
I stepped closer, shining my flashlight over the mass, and my stomach twisted. He was right. This wasn’t wood. The snapping branches were the shattered remains of a massive exoskeleton stretching across the entire path.
The flashlight beam glided over the thing, its clawed branch-like tips, the cracked, dark chitin plates, and finally, the gaping cavities where something enormous had shed its old shell. The carapace was empty. Abandoned. But whatever had crawled out of it was out there now. Bigger. Stronger. And no doubt, deadlier.
"Shit," Hye-Rin muttered. She was right beside me, staring in disbelief. Almost instinctively, her hand drifted toward her gun.
"We need to move. Now," Dae-Won said, eyes locked onto the carapace.
But before we could take another step, Sin-Joo spotted something up ahead. Dangling from an elm tree, swaying ever so slightly in the still air, was a massive, white cocoon. "Think that’s… its offspring?" he murmured, his voice hollow, like he already knew the answer but wished he didn’t.
We all saw it at the same time. The cocoon wasn’t alone. Another one hung a few meters behind it. Then another, half-hidden among the branches above. Five in total.
Five?
That number sent alarm bells ringing in my head.
"These… these aren’t larvae."
"You mean spiderlings, Takuya," Sin-Joo remarked, then added, "I feel just as empty as that shell."
"Stay strong," I whispered, stepping closer to Hye-Rin as she carefullyran her fingers over one of the cocoons. She tilted her head, trying to make out the shapes beneath the silk.
Five people were required to enter a Level A dungeon.
Five cocoons hung in the trees.
My breath caught in my throat. Then, the words slipped out before I could stop them.
"They’re bodies."
"Takuya’s right," Hye-Rin confirmed.
Beneath the thin layer of webbing, human figures were visible. Their faces twisted in terror, hands frozen in their final, desperate attempts to claw themselves free.
The air felt thick, heavy, like drowning in something invisible. "We have to get out of here," I said, voice tight with fear, turning slowly.
But no one responded.
Their eyes were locked onto something. Something behind us. Something lurking in the dark.
"Don’t… move," Ryn Valen whispered. His voice barely more than a tremor.
I turned my head. Slowly.
And there she was.
A monstrous demon-spider, towering over us like a two-story building. Thick, black liquid oozed from the gaps between her armored legs, dripping onto the forest floor with a sinister hiss, burning through the soil like acid.
Seven eyes, glowing with hellish hunger, fixed on us.
A soft clicking noise filled the air as her mandibles twitched.
She didn’t move. But her presence alone crushed down on us like an anvil.
With shaking hands, I yanked out my phone. The cracked screen flickered as DungeonDex booted up. Raising it, the damaged camera struggled to focus on the monstrous silhouette ahead.
LOADING… SEARCHING DATABASE…
NO RESULTS FOUND
What? That couldn’t be right.
My pulse hammered as I manually searched for giant spider-type bosses in this zone.
Only one result popped up.
[BOSS ENTRY: EMPRESS MALPHERIA, THE NIGHTWEAVER]
Threat Level: Low
Location: Spider Den, northeast in Zootopia (last seen), Everland-Dungeon (A-rank)
HP: 350
DEF: High (chitin reinforcement)
EXP: Unknown
LOOT: Unknown
Immune to Crowd Control & Stasis
Known Behavior:
Empress Malpheria lurks deep within Duskwood Forest, stationed at the entrance of her lair. From this vantage point, she ensnares intruders in massive silk cocoons, draining them over time until only dry husks remain. Her territory is covered in...
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Yeah, yeah. I got it. We were standing right in front of it. The entry continued with attack phases, weaknesses, and recommended strategies. But none of that mattered.
Not after I saw the Live Photo.
A brave adventurer had uploaded it right before he and his team were wiped out. The image flickered to life for just a second. Still, long enough to show a dark shape skittering across a webbed cavern, its movements eerily smooth.
Then it froze.
I swallowed hard.
The thing in DungeonDex looked… small. Almost tame compared to the nightmare in front of us.
"Shit…" I whispered.
My fingers trembled as I scrolled further.
Recorded Size: 5 feet.
I glanced up at the towering mass of legs and chitin shifting between the trees, watching us.
And that’s when my stomach dropped.
The boss in front of us was not just 5 feet tall. It was at least three times that size. What the hell was happening here? Dungeons weren’t supposed to change. But Everland was different. This dungeon was alive. Changing. And its monsters? They were evolving. This was still Empress Malpheria... but a far, far stronger version of her.
I turned to my team.
"Guys… we’ve got a problem. We need to get the hell out of here. Now."
Ryn Valen stepped forward, one hand gripping the hilt of his massive sword. His gaze never left the creature, and a faint glow flickered around him. "Don’t run," he said calmly, without turning to the others, who stood frozen, weapons drawn. "We’d just be wasting our energy. She’s full. For now."
For now.
The words made my skin crawl.
Nowhere in a dungeon was ever truly safe. Especially when it was this quiet.
Ryn Valen let out a slow breath before turning his head slightly toward me. His voice was barely above a whisper, but still managed to sound like a barked order. "Takuya, start using your damn brain. Stop standing there like an idiot. Check if those bodies belong to the Elysian Wardens' squad."
I flinched at his sharp tone, cursing myself for not thinking of that sooner.
I had completely forgotten about the quest. My first quest ever.
Before I could make an even bigger fool of myself, Sin-Joo and the others jumped into action. I pulled out my knife, pressing the blade against the dense silk at the base of a cocoon. With a careful but firm slice, I cut through the thick, tightly woven threads.
The bodies dropped to the forest floor like dead weight.
As they hit the ground, we all immediately realized: something was very, very wrong with them. I swallowed hard, forcing down the nausea rising in my throat. The corpse looked like a mummy from some alternate timeline. Because for the ancient Egyptians, this one was a bit too well-equipped. Its skin was grayish-black, waxy. The face had collapsed in on itself like a skull, twisted into a grotesque mask of death, its round, bulging eyes frozen wide in eternal horror. That eight-legged monstrosity lurking behind us had drained every last drop of blood and bodily fluids from them. What remained were weightless husks, dry as paper cutouts.
Around the dead man’s neck hung a chain with a guild emblem: a golden laurel wreath that morphed into angelic wings, crafted from both gold and real feathers. Legend said the feathers had once belonged to celestial beings, discovered by paladins in realms beyond our own. Personally? Sounded like total bullshit.
One by one, we took the fallen hunters' guild badges. Each of us tucked one into our loot bags. Mine wasn’t even a proper bag, it was a busted, stitched-up backpack, a cheap promotional giveaway that was barely holding together.
I pulled out my old but well-maintained smartphone. Like every phone I’d ever owned, it had met the same tragic fate during the last fights... the screen was cracked. But it still worked, which was all that mattered. I opened the app and checked our quest status.
The objectives had updated.
-
Find the missing Elysian Warden squad:
- Investigate the fate of the missing members
- Collect their guild badges (4/5)
-
Defeat Nihilith the Puppeteer (0/1)
-
Stabilize the dimensional rift using the Gorex? Stabilizer 3000X (0/1)
I hesitated.
Why wasn’t the first objective complete yet? Were we missing a badge? Hadn't we uncovered their fate?
I glanced at Hye-Rin, half-suspecting she might have kept one for herself instead of tossing it into the loot bag. Maybe this place had already started to mess with her. Maybe that weird joke she made earlier wasn’t a joke at all. But then she was the one who said what I’d been thinking:
"There are only four."
The holographic screen flickered in front of her face, casting a faint glow. Her expression was serious. She closed her Nexus Link.
"Ugh, of course I have bad luck again," Sin-Joo groaned. He was kneeling beside another opened cocoon, frustration written all over his face. "This one’s not from the squad. We’re never gonna find the last one in this giant-ass forest. I’m so done."
I stood up, ignoring his pessimism. My gaze flickered to the spider queen in the distance. Her eyes were still on us. But she remained motionless in her web-ridden lair.
"We need to find the last member if we want to complete the quest," I said.
But what if Empress Malpheria had already devoured them? What if their body was somewhere inside her nest?
While the others debated, an idea hit me. A dumb, reckless, last-ditch idea. Maybe it was the fear of failing the quest. Of leaving empty-handed. Of surviving all this, only to walk away with nothing. So, without a second thought, I synced the dead hunter’s Nexus Link to my smartphone via Bluetooth.
A second later, his stats popped up on my screen.
Kaelan Deymar
Role: Tank.
- Equipment: Meh.
- Rank: Low-tier in the guild system.
Not exactly impressive.
But then I saw his balance.
1,500 K-Coins.
Nice.
And no, K-Coins had nothing to do with K-Pop, K-Dramas, or K-Music. The "K" didn’t stand for Korean.
It stands for Kermit.
Yep. You read that right.
Kermit Coins.
Who would’ve thought a meme coin would outlive fiat currency and become the dominant crypto of the world? But no joke... by 2030, Kermit Coins were the official currency of the new world.
And Kermit himself?
Well, he’d become the spirit animal of humanity.
In a fragile world, slowly crumbling under the weight of demonic chaos, it wasn’t a god, a hero, or a king that gave people hope. It was a tiny green frog from Sesame Street. But the dead didn’t need hope anymore, I thought. They were beyond saving. And they sure as hell didn’t need money.
Without thinking twice about what I was doing, I transferred the rest of his Coins to my wallet.
"We’re moving on," Ryn Valen suddenly ordered. "Completing the quest isn’t a priority. Securing the Abyss and cleansing the amusement park of its hellish presence is. At least now, we know what happened to my squad."
Easy for him to say.
Quest rewards meant nothing to Ryn Valen. He had more money than he could ever spend. His gear was top-tier. But the rest of us? We had nothing. Still, no one argued. If anything, the decision was met with relief.
"Finally. Let’s march straight into oblivion already," Sin-Joo muttered, his voice carrying that same deadpan monotone he’d adopted ever since the otherwordly mark started following him.
I clenched my jaw. "If we leave now, we probably won’t be able to finish the quest at all."
The moment I said it, I knew what was coming.
The paladin’s mocking laughter.
"Then stay behind and take on Empress Malpheria by yourself. Maybe she’ll drop the guild badge for you. But more likely, she’ll tear you apart."
I didn’t reply. I just wondered, deep down, what the hell was wrong with Ryn Valen. He was such an asshole.
The spider queen didn’t move, but her hungry gaze followed us as we carefully picked a path around her. One wrong step. One loud noise. And I knew she’d wipe out everyone except the Paladin. The moment we were out of her line of sight, I finally felt like I could breathe again.
But the thought of that thing still lurking back there, watching us, never really left my mind.
And neither did something else.
Had I really just stolen money from a dead man?
At that moment, I realized something.
The dungeon wasn’t just changing Sin-Joo.
Or Ryn Valen.
It was bringing out the darkness in all of us.