There was a field thick with the stench of corrupted mana and ruptured earth.

Countless centipede monsters were sprouting from below, their long armored bodies tearing through stone as they screeched and lunged.

But before a single one of them could fully surface, a man in a hood descended like a falling star.

Azel struck the ground, aura flaring under his boots, and with a single sweeping arc of his Bone Blade, eight centipedes were carved apart.

Their bodies collapsed in neat, precise sections as if someone had dissected them mid-lunge.

He removed the hood from his head, silver hair spilling free as he flicked the blood from his blade with a tired exhale.

"And that's like the forty-fifth monster I killed in the last ten minutes," Azel muttered while planting one hand on his waist.

His lungs burned from sprinting across the terrain, but in a good way. "Actually feels like I'm getting my edge back."

Running between fights, cutting monsters before they could even hiss… it was better than sparring.

His muscles were waking up in ways they hadn't since the fight with Wendy.

"You're incorrect," Gwendolyn said as she floated beside him, her expression annoyingly smug. "You have handled fifty monsters, not forty-five. Don't you count your cores? That's probably more than half the monsters in this dungeon."

"Fuck, you're right!" Azel snapped upright.

He immediately crouched and gathered the cores from the latest corpse pile, tossing them efficiently into his storage ring.

Then he pulled out a peculiar item he had bought from the shop earlier while sprinting… a gold-backed compass with a bright red line in its center.

"It cost a little bit," Azel admitted, rolling it in his hand, "but I guess the price is worth it when it has these kinds of uses."

The compass needle wobbled, shimmered with mana, then locked sharply toward the north.

Just as he expected.

"Treasure, here I come." He poured aura into his legs and triggered his first point, muscles coiling like springs. 'Come to think of it… I should learn more aura points from Sebastian next time I see him. I wonder where the fucker is.'

With a sharp crack, he blasted off in a straight line, leaving a fresh crater under his feet.

…

Azel slowed to a stop several minutes later. The compass's red glow had faded completely meaning he had arrived.

The landscape around him shifted subtly: the air was colder, the stones were darker, and ahead was a tall cave entrance shaped like a crooked mouth.

Gwendolyn floated beside him with a confused face.

"I get it… the compass led you to the Hidden Room, didn't it? What kind of magic does that thing have? How did you even—"

"Even if it didn't." Azel pocketed the compass. "I'm confident in my Hidden Room skills."

And he was.

Back in the game, he had found dozens of Hidden Rooms manually with no compass but he didn't have that much time to burn now which was why he resorted to using this method.

'I didn't call myself Pathfinder for nothing.' He thought with a shake of his head.

He walked through the entrance.

Hidden Rooms were special areas that existed parallel to the dungeon structure.

A player who located one received unique treasure, items, or boss drops. They always came with a Hidden Boss… it was slightly weaker than the main Boss but usually possessing special mechanics that could kill a player instantly if they weren't careful.

The moment he stepped deeper inside, the cavern expanded into a vast chamber.

Chests.

Everywhere.

Stacked on stone platforms. Piled in glittering rows. Overflowing with gemstones, silver bars, gold coins, enchanted jewelry, crystals… every sign of wealth imaginable.

And from the ceiling, swaying slightly in sticky threads, unfurled a spider monster with an emerald-green body.

Its eyes glimmered like polished glass, and its mandibles clicked smoothly.

"Ah, welcome to my abode, kind sir…" the spider purred in a disturbingly polite voice. "We rarely have humans wander in here, especially one as majestic as yourself. Please feel free to select from my assortments of treasures. I am the Spider of Gratitude, and I give out my treasures for free."

Azel raised a brow, then looked at the monster's nametag.

[Spider of Deceit, Rank 4]

He pulled his sword while Gwendolyn hovered closer.

"This looks like a kind monst—"

"You think I haven't noticed," Azel cut in, "that everything including the ground here is covered in your webs? And if you wanted to restrict my movement, you would do it in an instant?"

The spider froze.

Then started cackling… an awful clicking sound.

"You seem to have found me out… smart human. I so enjoy tasting human mea—"

Azel sliced it in half before it finished the sentence.

The two pieces hit the ground with wet thuds. Instantly, the sticky sensation around his feet vanished, and the webs under the treasure dissolved into dust.

If he had touched anything earlier, he would've been trapped.

The monster was cunning, but not strong.

"And I know for a fact that Mynes would fall for something like this," Azel muttered.

He walked to the nearest chest and exhaled sharply.

The treasure on top… shining rubies and diamonds shifted. And beneath them were… shells.

Cheap and very glossy shells.

Every chest he opened after that revealed the same trick: layers of fake treasures held up by web illusions.

Only one chest in the entire room had real loot. He grabbed that box and stored it in his Inventory.

"She got you good, huh?" Gwendolyn snorted.

Azel kicked the spider's remaining head, crushing it against the cave wall.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he said. "The hidden exit should lead directly to the Boss room."

He scanned the walls, found a crack glowing with mana, and pushed it open. A stone panel slid aside, revealing a narrow tunnel leading upward.

He stepped in without hesitation.

…

Meanwhile, Mira and the rest of the team stood before the Boss Room door… a massive double-door carved from old wood, studded with skull motifs.

"Are you sure we shouldn't go looking for your guy?" the Gun Commander asked. "We'll need someone with that level of power for the Boss. Unless he's been stalled by monsters… we only encountered about twenty."

"He'll be here," Mira replied calmly.

She summoned a canteen from her storage ring and took a long drink. Then she pulled something else from her pocket… the folded piece of paper left by the teleportation mage.

She opened it, scanned the content, sighed, then crumpled it and tossed it aside.

"Ah? Is that disrespectful?" the Commander asked.

"No. It's a confession," Mira said flatly. "I get a lot of these."

"It doesn't mean you should be that harsh, though—"

"It's his tenth time," Mira sighed while cleaning her sword. "I'm tired."

The Commander nodded sympathetically.

Just then clunk.

A secret compartment opened in the opposite wall.

A man stepped out wearing a hood, cloak fluttering. He looked perfectly fine with not even a scratch on him.

Azel.

"Hey," he said casually as he dropped fifty monster cores onto the ground with a loud clattering noise from his storage ring. "So… how are we sorting all this loot?"

Everyone stared at him with wide eyes, completely dumbfounded.

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