Bang!
The gunshot echoed violently through the cavern for a moment before dying into a heavy silence.
A thin wisp of white smoke curled from the barrel, drifting upward before vanishing into the gloom. In that same moment, the boy—who had squeezed his eyes shut amidst a torrent of tears—realized his hand had been caught and redirected... just slightly.
Eugene was confused for a heartbeat, realizing he was still alive, before looking at the person beside him.
"Giving up already?" Rosaline asked. Her hand gently disarmed him, prying the weapon from his grip. Her deep blue eyes bore into the young man, whose face was a mask of agony and despair.
"Grey Hood," Eugene whispered breathlessly. "Ellia... Ellia is dead. I..."
Amalin, standing behind them, opened her mouth to speak, but Rosaline signaled her with a sharp hand gesture to remain silent.
"Get a grip and look closely," the Hunter girl commanded.
Eugene shut his eyes in pain, shaking his head. He refused to look, terrified of seeing the mangled corpse of the girl he loved a second time. "No... I don't want to see her like that."
"Eugene... there is no one there," Rosaline said, her voice steady and immovable. "You are the only one standing here."
Forced by the weight of her words, the boy opened his eyes. He found nothing in front of him but the cold, empty floor.
"N-No! She was right there! She was severed in half..." Eugene stammered, his mind fracturing. He clutched his head with both hands. "A hallucination?"
"This... is the 'Dungeon,'" Rosaline said simply, patting his shoulder a few times. The veteran Hunter let the weight of those words sink deep into the heart of her listener.
The meaning was simple, yet heavy enough to be unbearable.
…
…
After questioning Eugene about what had happened, Rosaline and Amalin wasted no time searching for the two missing low-rank Hunters.
They found them soon after, but their condition was no hallucination. They were alive, but barely—covered in horrific, jagged wounds. This brutal reality only reinforced Rosaline's warning: there was something in the dark.
Using a basic appraisal skill, Rosaline examined the injuries. They were bite marks from small teeth of two distinct sizes. It appeared the creature possessed two sets of teeth—an outer and an inner row.
But the most alarming discovery was the blood. The fluid seeping from these fresh wounds was blue, identical to Malloch's, though slightly paler.
"This is..."
"Why is their blood this color?" Amalin asked, while Eugene stared in bewilderment.
"Is it possible it's their saliva?" the boy hypothesized. "What is this? Poison?"
'Poison? Possible... but something isn't sitting right,' Rosaline thought. She reached out and beckoned Eugene toward her. "...Eugene, give me your hand."
"What are you going to do?"
"I just want to check your blood," she replied. "It'll be faster if I do it. Just a finger prick, it won't hurt."
"What?! Why?!" Eugene blurted out. Everything felt insane, but after nearly blowing his own brains out, he realized there was enough logic left in the world to justify a proof.
Charlwind's dagger pricked Eugene's extended fingertip. The boy winced slightly as the sharp edge parted his skin.
Under the flashlight's beam, the blood welling from the tiny wound was blue.
Rosaline's brow furrowed. Eugene's face went ghostly pale, his jaw dropping as he stared at the blue blood leaking from his own finger, speechless.
"H-How?" Eugene's voice trembled. "I haven't even been injured since we got here..."
Amalin, sensing the dread, didn't wait for an explanation. She summoned her own knife and pricked her finger.
"...How did we not notice?" Amalin whispered, watching the blue drop form at her fingertip. Fear flashed clearly in her dark eyes, no longer able to be hidden.
"...Anything can happen here," Rosaline said calmly. "In a dungeon, things occurring exactly as they seem—or far beyond that—isn't strange. In a distorted place like this, no one knows what might happen in the next second, or the split second after that. By the time you realize it, it has already happened."
Amalin and Eugene were now tasting the true cruelty of the dungeon—a merciless machine that culled the weak and tested the strong without a shred of pity.
"What about you?" Amalin asked. "Don't tell me your blood is also..."
Rosaline went silent before letting out a sigh. "I think we should focus on finding the others."
That single sentence made both of them widen their eyes in realization.
"I... I'll find Professor Charlwind for us," Eugene said, activating his skill once more. In his heart, though he still feared for Ellia, he knew that if he didn't survive, he could never help her.
Given the emergency, Rosaline had no choice but to pull something vital from her inventory. She decided to summon Edgar.
"What is that...?" Amalin pointed at the clay doll in Rosaline's hand.
"This is an artifact," Rosaline finally admitted, before whispering to the doll, "Help me out here..."
After imbuing it with a portion of her life force and placing it on the ground, Edgar's form expanded, transforming into a familiar figure.
'Of all the people... you chose to transform into him?!' Rosaline's eyebrows twitched as she saw the young man standing before her—a man with a very unique hair and eye color.
Red eyes slowly opened, accompanied by familiar white hair. He was dressed in a neatly ironed shirt and slacks.
"Rosa—mmpf!" Edgar, in Adrian's form, raised a hand to wave with a smile, only to have his mouth promptly covered by Rosaline as she hooked his neck and dragged him away.
"What were you thinking, turning into Adrian?! Choose someone else!" the Hunter girl hissed into Edgar's ear.
"Then who?" Edgar asked with innocent eyes. "If we're carrying two men, a male body is better than a female one, right?"
"Professor Charlwind, or the Boss..." Rosaline offered.
"...Not the Professor. You know he's acting weird," Edgar shivered. "And the Boss... he has metal plates in his leg from surgery; I don't think it would fit. Everyone else is a Hunter... or do you want me to be Leslie?"
While Edgar could transform into anyone, there were two harsh conditions beyond his child-like intellect. First, the person had to be someone Rosaline or Edgar himself was closely acquainted with for the physical copy to be flawless.
Second, Edgar mirrored the target's physical state. If the target was ill or injured, Edgar copied those defects too—which usually caused more harm than good.
In this group, Charlwind was the only viable candidate Edgar knew, but Rosaline knew that forcing him to copy someone currently mentally unstable was too risky. However, revealing part of her secret wasn't much better.
"Well... Adrian has always taken good care of me, and his body is very strong. He can lift heavy things easily," Edgar said, lifting his shirt to show off a set of six-pack abs. "Look, look! Besides muscles, he has a six-pack too! A body like this can definitely carry those two!"
Rosaline caught herself staring at the abs before looking at Edgar's face, which was now beaming with a mischievous yet innocent grin. She sighed and flicked Edgar's forehead.
"Ouch!"
"I just felt an urge to hit that face. Just bear with it," the Hunter girl said flatly. "And don't you dare act like the real Adrian."
"...He's a nice person, though," Edgar grumbled, rubbing his forehead in Adrian's body.
"A nice person who can't be trusted," Rosaline countered. "How well could you have possibly known him during that half-month I was gone?"
"You're so biased. You aren't like this with Zenis at all, hmph!" Edgar puffed his cheeks out, then flinched when he saw Rosaline staring at him with the cold, blood-red moon eyes of her Aeternum skill. "F-Fine! I won't trust him either!"
"Good. Let's go," Rosaline said. "We don't have much time left."