2.

Even players paid taxes. The rate was progressive, but because dungeons posed an existential threat to humanity, it was capped at 20%. Still, taxes always felt like a waste of money. To offset this, players poured their earnings into items. The state recognized equipment as a business expense, creating a system where players could either clear dungeons more safely or flip tax-deductible gear on the black market for cash.

This, naturally, drove item prices sky-high. Buja was an anomaly—a solo raider who could clear Epic Dungeons at an absurd pace, pocketing nearly seventy-seven thousand dollars every few days. For the average player, such income was a pipe dream. A typical party of five to ten would venture into a Normal or Rare dungeon, burn through potions, and be lucky to walk away with a few tens of thousands of dollars from monster drops and rare materials. After splitting the pot and paying a 30% commission to their guild or the Dungeon Store, each member was left with a pittance.

The feeling of risking your life for so little was, to put it mildly, demoralizing.

The money was not insignificant, of course. A player could run five dungeons a month and earn anywhere from four to eight thousand dollars. But that was it. The profession demanded constant reinvestment in gear, weapons, and emergency supplies. The better the equipment, the higher the potential earnings, but the costs were astronomical. It was an open secret that many top-rankers were drowning in debt, living dungeon-to-dungeon just to stay afloat.

Which made Sijun's nearly eight-million-dollar Special-grade ring an asset of immense value.

"He won't actually succeed, will he?" Sijun asked nervously on his way back from the confrontation. He was speaking to the Head of Strategic Analysis for the SJ Guild. Even as the favored son of the SJ Group, losing a 7.2-million-dollar item in a bet was no small matter. Especially since it was not technically his to lose.

"My older brother bought that as a gift for our father," he muttered. Though he was a chaebol who had lucked his way into being a player, his personal assets were only around 2.3 million dollars. Any loss exceeding that would be impossible for him to cover.

The analyst's voice was firm and reassuring.

"The probability of success is less than 3 percent."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes, sir. He may have soloed Epic Dungeons, but the gap between Epic and Unique is vast. You've experienced it yourself."

"That's true." Sijun shuddered, recalling his own Unique clear. The penalties from the sub-objective had made even regular monster encounters feel like boss fights. Every second of the six-day survival mission had been agonizingly tense. He had put on a brave face for the cameras afterward, but it had taken him two full weeks to recover from the trauma.

That was the reality of a Unique Dungeon. The fear of death was a specter that even the strongest will could not easily banish.

And Buja had gone in alone.

"And his objective is to kill the boss," Sijun reasoned, his confidence returning. "Without clearing the hidden objective first, it's impossible."

"Correct, sir. Even if he gets lucky and the hidden objective is survival, the dungeon's inherent hostility will make it exceedingly difficult."

His own experience confirmed it. That was the only reason he had had the guts to wager an item that did not even belong to him.

"Unless he's covered head-to-toe in Legendary gear, what's impossible is impossible."

It was not just Sijun. Across the player communities, everyone who heard the news shared the same sentiment.

* * *

'Swish!'

A massive pincer sliced through the air. Buja ducked under the attack with casual ease and lunged forward. To give ground to a scorpion twice his size—a creature whose claws could snap a human in half—was to invite a swift and brutal death. He closed the distance, plunging his dagger into the soft flesh visible between its armored plates.

'Thwack!'

The blade sank deep, tearing through the scorpion's innards. Its exoskeleton was a formidable shield, but it left the flesh beneath surprisingly vulnerable. As the creature thrashed, he rolled away, narrowly avoiding its venomous stinger. He vaulted onto its back, anticipating the whip-like strike of its tail. The attack came, but it met only empty air.

[You have acquired 2 gold.]

The scorpion went still. The stat bonuses from his equipment and achievements had made the hunt remarkably smooth.

"See? With the right stats, even a Unique is manageable," he said aloud with a shameless smirk. Any other player would have cursed him for his arrogance. It had looked easy, but only because he had flawlessly dodged every attack before landing a killing blow. The scorpion had been in 'Frenzy' mode, its speed and strength amplified. A single graze from its venom-laced stinger would have been fatal.

Besides, it was far too early to declare the dungeon easy.

'The hidden objective must be survival,' he thought, just as the sand began to shift. He had barely dispatched the first wave of scorpions that had wandered near his bonfire when he sensed new life approaching. 'What now?'

As Buja watched with curiosity, the newcomer revealed itself.

"Whoa."

It erupted from the sand, rocketing toward him.

"A worm," he breathed.

A giant worm. A colossal beast whose maw, lined with dozens of razor-sharp teeth, was large enough to swallow him whole. It blotted out the sun as it descended, a wave of foul breath washing over him. If he stood there admiring it for another second, he would become its next meal. Its mouth was too wide to simply roll away.

Bending his knees, he coiled his muscles and launched himself straight up.

'CRASH!'

The grating shriek of sand and stone tore through the air as the massive worm swallowed the ground where Buja had stood, tunneling through the desert as if it were an ocean. 'So this is a Unique Dungeon,' he thought grimly.

"Tough one."

His enhanced stats had allowed him to execute a leap an ordinary person could only dream of. Had he hesitated for even a second, he would have shared the scorpion's fate—dissolved into a meal in the creature's gut.

The thought had barely crossed his mind when he landed, a sudden sense of wrongness pricking at him. He turned, his eyes scanning the sand. Where was the scorpion's corpse?

All that remained was a gaping hole where the sandworm had breached the surface. The scorpion's body, which should have been right there, was gone.

"That son of a bitch…"

Before entering, he'd received a guild briefing on the desert's monsters, and the price of a single scorpion carcass was burned into his memory: twenty thousand dollars. A note specifying they only appeared in Unique-grade dungeons or higher still flickered in his mind's eye. It was why he'd been so meticulous, carefully piercing its flesh between the armored plates, terrified of leaving so much as a scratch on the valuable shell. And now that corpse—that twenty-thousand-dollar prize—had vanished, devoured by a passing sandworm.

A tremor of pure rage ran through Buja's hands. He could stomach almost anything, but he drew the line at someone stealing his payday.

"You're so dead."

Potions tumbled from his backpack. He pulled out a handful of combat stimulants, vials of temporary power. He'd blown the two hundred thousand dollars remaining from his necklace purchase on these alone. He'd bought them for the long haul, but there was no time like the present. He downed them one by one.

[Strength will increase by 1 for 6 hours.]

[Stamina will increase by 1 for 6 hours.]

.

.

The common wisdom among Users was that stimulants were a crutch, a supplement to combat, not a part of one's true strength. Buja agreed. Their true value lay in creating unexpected variables in a fight. He only burned cash on them when he needed to guarantee a game-changing advantage.

"I'm killing every last one of them."

His body now impossibly light, he launched himself into the gaping chasm the worm had left in the sand.

* * *

One day passed, then two. Seora waited anxiously, but there was no word of Buja's return. Clearing a Unique Dungeon in two days was impossible, so she forced herself to be patient. By day five, a knot of anxiety had tightened in her stomach, though she knew it was still too soon to panic. No matter how fast he'd cleared an Epic Dungeon, a Unique one was a different beast entirely. After a full week, she returned to the site.

"Still nothing?" she asked the staff member on duty.

"No, ma'am."

Staff guarded the dungeon entrance in two shifts, working in teams of three. They never took their eyes off it, making it impossible for him to have slipped out unnoticed. Worrying her lower lip, Seora paced before the shimmering gate. She believed he would clear it. What truly unsettled her was that there was simply no data on him. His track record was a blank slate.

"This has never happened before," she murmured to herself. Whether solo or in a party, the goal was always to clear the dungeon before the second penalty—the monster frenzy—kicked in. While not strictly impossible to continue after that, attempting a clear under the full weight of the penalties was tantamount to challenging a dungeon an entire rank higher.

"Looks like someone's in need of a rescue."

The grating voice cut through her thoughts. The situation felt sickeningly familiar, though at least this time he wasn't standing right beside her. At the edge of the restricted area, Sijun waved, a vile smirk plastered on his face. Instead of his usual luxury brands, he was clad in gleaming, obviously expensive armor, looking ready to enter the dungeon at a moment's notice.

"I believe we set the time limit at one month," Seora stated, her voice cold.

"You, of all people, should know the odds of survival plummet after a week," Sijun scoffed. "Are you really going to be this stubborn? If he hasn't cleared it by now, it's over."

She wanted to deny it, but a cold part of her knew he was right. Still, she'd agreed to a month because Buja himself had set the terms.

—"If I'm not out after a month, I'm dead, so just assume that."

She had voiced the same concerns to him. He had simply replied:

—"I heard you get more experience when they go into a frenzy. If it's manageable, I might as well hunt more efficiently. Of course, I could die doing that, so if a month passes, you can consider me dead. Two weeks should be enough, but you never know what might happen."

And so, she had chosen to trust him.

"That won't happen."

Her faith was rewarded.

'Fwoosh!'

The dungeon gate flared to life as if on cue.

"Huh? What's all this? Why are you here?" Covered in viscous slime, Kim Buja waved cheerfully.

Sijun's triumphant expression twisted into an ugly scowl.

* * *

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