"Young man."
An aged voice cut through the air. Adrien spun toward the speaker and shouted back without hesitation.
"Village head, get back to the ceremonial hall and lock the doors! We've cleared the immediate area, but we don't know how many more are lurking out there. We're heading straight for their nest."
He took a sharp breath, his voice urgent. "No matter what you hear, do not step outside until the sun is fully up. If we aren't back by then, take everyone and evacuate to Ebonysworth. Send a runner to Ashfall, too, and warn them that Strigoi attacked the village."
He gave the old man a verbal push.
"Now go, stay inside."
Prompted by Adrien's urgency, the Village Head retreated into the safety of the hall, while Adrien turned back to face the rest of the players.
"Watch your back with these NPCs," FireStarter said with a dry chuckle. "One wrong move from them and they'll tank your quest line."
"Tell me about it," Adrien muttered, rubbing his temples in frustration. "Before Rusted Ichor, I was running a strategy sim. I lost a thirty-hour campaign because a rogue peasant decided to go for a stroll right past the castle gates during a siege."
FireStarter laughed, turning his attention back to the rest of the players as they finished setting up the woodpile, sparking a massive bonfire to keep the biting night cold at bay.
"Alright, since ThunderWarlord volunteered, he's going down first," FireStarter said, a casual smile resting on his face. "Just make sure you wrap something over your nose. It won't be funny if you breathe in that hallucinogen and turn on us, again. Unlike your buddies, we will put you down and send you straight back to the respawn point."
He looked around the circle. "Now, who's next?"
"I'll go," ThunderBolt stepped up, gripping his bow. He was the very same guy who, only a short while ago, had succumbed to the gas and spent ten minutes screaming in terror while fighting imaginary enemies.
"Me too," chimed in ThunderBulwark, the long-suffering shield user who had just been forced to tank his berserk friend's attacks.
FireStarter nodded, then turned his attention to Adrien and Vera, "You two gunslingers, we're dropping down a well and might have to swim for it. Any issues with your firearms getting wet?"
"Even if they jam, we carry melee backups," Vera replied.
"Good." FireStarter turned back to the rest of the group, his tone hardening slightly. "Listen up. We're heading into the nest. Keep in mind that we aren't all in the same group. If you hallucinate down there, I hope your friends can handle you, because the rest of us don't have the luxury or the patience to play babysitter."
His words instantly cranked up the tension, casting a chill over the party.
Sensing the mood drop, MeiMei spoke up, as she and another player had been busy over the fire, brewing a pot of herbal tea and prepping a quick meal. "Alright, enough with the grim talk. Here's some tea and food. Eat up, warm yourselves, and get your buffs active."
Adrien choked down a gag as he swallowed the herbal tea; it was incredibly bitter and tasted distinctively weird. He washed it down with a chunk of dense rye bread and low-grade sausage. As he finished eating, a system message flashed before his eyes.
————————[ Item Consumed ]————————
+30 HP
+3 HP /2 Sec
Condition: Decently Warm
Duration: 01:05:00
————————————————————————
The well was deceptively deep, and ThunderWarlord lowered himself down slowly, gripping a burning torch in one hand. Just as he approached the waterline, a jagged fissure in the stone wall caught his eye.
He leaned in closer to investigate, but a sudden gust of stale, freezing air blasted out of the gap, nearly snuffing out his torch.
"Hey!" ThunderWarlord called out, his voice echoing up the shaft. "There's a massive crack in the wall here. Looks like the entrance to the nest."
With the path found, the rest of the party wasted no time. One by one, the players rappelled down the well and squeezed through the tight fissure.
The gap opened into a damp, suffocatingly narrow corridor. After navigating a maze of sharp twists and turns, the passage finally split out into a massive cavern dominated by towering stalactites and stalagmites, when suddenly, a glowing window materialised in front of everyone.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ System Notice ] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Welcome to the 'Last Camp' Dungeon
Rules:
*Single Instance: You have only one attempt to clear this dungeon.
* No Escape: Leaving the dungeon while the instance is active is prohibited.
* Hardcore Death: Dying will trigger a standard respawn outside; re-entry is blocked.
* Time Bound: Failure to complete the objective within the time limit results in quest failure.
Objective:
Eradicate all hostile entities within the zone.
Failure Penalty:
Dungeon Break. The surviving creatures will breach the surface and massacre the surrounding settlements.
Time Limit:03:00:00
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Damn it! If I had known the stakes were this high, I would have never set foot in this hellhole!"The loud, frantic complaint echoed sharply off the damp stone walls, instantly cutting through the tense silence of the party, as the reality of the system's hardcore penalties finally sank into their chests.
No respawns.
No escape.
"Look, the fissure we crawled through is still wide open," another player cut in, pointing a trembling finger back toward the tight crack in the well wall. His voice carried a desperate, fragile hope.
"The dungeon instance just started. If we move right now, we can try to force our way back out before—"
He never got to finish his sentence, and as if his words had acted as a literal catalyst for the dungeon's malice, the cavern violently shuddered. A deafening, grinding roar tore through the chamber as the solid rock ceiling above the entrance gave way. Tons of jagged stone and heavy debris came crashing down in a brutal avalanche, completely sealing the fissure. A thick cloud of choking grey dust erupted from the collapse, blinding the party and forcing them into a collective coughing fit.
When the dust finally settled, the route was completely gone. Cut off and buried under meters of solid stone.
The player who had suggested fleeing shrank back into the crowd, instinctively trying to make himself invisible as twenty-one pairs of furious eyes glared daggers at him. The illusion of safety had been utterly shattered.
With their retreat permanently severed and absolutely no other options on the table, a grim, unspoken consensus washed over the fragmented squads. They had to move forward, and thus they began to push deeper into the cavern, their boots squelching against the damp, uneven floor. The environment was eerily, unnaturally quiet. The only sound breaking the silence was the occasional, maddening dripping of water falling from the ceiling into stagnant pools below. It was a slow, rhythmic torture that steadily chipped away at everyone's frayed nerves.
As they advanced, the darkness gave way to a sickening, otherworldly glow. The cavern walls were blanketed in clusters of bizarre, bioluminescent mushrooms. They released a pale, swirling blue mist that hung heavily in the freezing air. Rather than providing comfort, the illumination only made the atmosphere infinitely more terrifying. The erratic, cold light stretched the shadows of the stalagmites into grotesque, elongated shapes that seemed to twist and crawl along the stone. More than once, players spun around wildly, weapon grips slick with sweat, swearing they felt a cold, predatory gaze staring at them from the dark. But every time they checked, there was nothing. Only the oppressive silence and the constant, mocking dripping of water.
Curiosity and fear eventually drove one of the braver vanguard players to approach a particularly large cluster of the fungi. Holding her weapon tightly in one hand, she leaned in. The moment her gaze locked onto the glowing caps, the system interface forced its way into her field of vision, flashing a stark warning.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ ITEM IDENTIFIED ] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Cavern Neon-Cap
Type: Alchemical Flora (Highly Hazardous)
Rarity: Uncommon
Attributes:
* Luminescence: Faint (Emits steady, low-intensity blue light).
* Nutritional Value: Extreme (A single bite fills the stomach).
* Palatability: High (Exceedingly rich, savoury flavour profile).
--
WARNING:
HIGHLY ADDICTIVE, and Prolonged visual or physical proximity induces an overwhelming urge to ingest.
Effects:
Temporarily boosts maximum vitality, immediately followed by a rapid onset of severe paranoia, uncontained aggression, and violent visual hallucinations.
Destroys rational logic.
Inflicts the 'Phantom Famine' status, causing an insatiable, agonising psychological hunger despite a physically full stomach.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The player let out a sharp, horrified gasp, stumbling backwards away from the cluster as if she had just stepped on a landmine.
"Back away! Everyone, get back right now!" she screamed, her voice cracking with urgency as she turned to warn the others.
"Don't look at them and don't touch them! These things are psychological traps. They lure you in and force an irresistible urge to eat them. If you take even a single bite, they turn you into a paranoid, aggressive monster. They destroy your sanity and make you starve to death while your stomach is full!"
The terrifying revelation sent a collective shiver through the leaderless crowd. The players instantly scrambled away from the walls, crowding toward the centre of the path to keep a wide, safe distance from the deceptive blue glow. They moved with hyper-vigilance now, every eye scanning the shifting shadows, desperately waiting for the inevitable ambush.As the disorganised mass of twenty-two players reached the widest section of the central cavern, the temperature plummeted. The air grew so cold their breath froze into instant white clouds.
Suddenly, out in the dim periphery where the blue mist met the absolute blackness of the cave, Adrien caught a glimpse of something tall, skeletal, and horrifyingly wrong moving between the stalagmites. Multiple shadows were shifting, closing the distance with predatory grace.
They were being hunted, and they were completely exposed.
Upon realising the impending disaster, Adrien didn't hesitate, as he stepped forward, his voice booming across the cavern with absolute authority. "We're surrounded! Look alive! Tanks, get to the perimeter and lock down a circle wall right now! Melee DPS, shadow them and cover the gaps! Ranged attackers, get into the dead centre of the ring and snipe anything that moves! Move, move, move!"
For a split second, the sheer urgency in his voice worked. The instinct for survival kicked in, and several players from different small groups automatically moved to follow his tactical suggestion, shifting their weight and raising their shields to form a defensive ring, but the party was a fractured mess of independent squads, and without an established, system-recognised leader, ego and mistrust quickly reared their ugly heads. A few defiant players halted in their tracks, actively breaking the half-formed line.
One of them, a heavily armoured melee warrior from a rival group, stepped out of the queue. He looked at Adrien, a mocking, arrogant sneer plastered across his face as he openly challenged him in front of everyone.
"Oh, look at you barking orders," the warrior jeered, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah? And who died and made you our leader? You think just because you have a loud mouth, we're going to sit here and take commands from a—"
Adrien didn't waste a single breath arguing. He didn't try to convince him, and he didn't wait for the man to finish his sentence.
To the absolute shock and horror of the rest, Adrien simply levelled his heavy rifle towards the man and violently pulled the trigger.
~BANG~