The all-knowing Player (Solo Leveling)

The Demon Castle (3)

Time stretches out as we climb higher into the Tower, seconds widening to minutes, and minutes dragging on to hours. Demon corpses accumulate under our feet, their purple blood flowing into rivers to extinguish the fallen embers of destroyed homes. At each new slash of our daggers, the system rewards us with a low dinging, acknowledging the monsters' deaths. The low shuffling of demons scouting through the streets in search of something to bite into gradually fades under our dancing blades, until only the crackling of the fire follows our footsteps—the mourning melody of a city fallen to ravenous flames. And as a shimmering parchment materializes into our hands, allowing us into the next floor, arrives the time of our dares.

Set up our tents for the night, climb the Lotte World Tower in record time, or sometimes just answer a question—all challenges to be overcome or truths to be told. We talk, sunken into endless discussions that drive us to the edge of the night until his eyelids fall, heavy with the fatigue accumulated during the day. I watch him disappear into his tent and wait to hear his breathing slow down, before rising to my feet and exploring the blazing buildings. The houses never look alike. There, the ghosts haunting my nights fade into the heat of the flames licking my fingertips. They lead me to hidden corners of this world, terraces and undergrounds bathed in the orange hues flickering like reflections of melted gold.

Sometimes, I lose myself in the labyrinth of a large building and wake with the red sun shining down on me through the opening of a shattered window—drenched in sweat, heart pounding in terror and regret, yet the glow of the glass shards under the crimson light and the relief of a new dawn wash my nightmares away. I find my way back to Jin-Woo waiting at our campsite, and the soft smile he greets me with awakens a warmth in my chest I would never dare to speak of. We start a new day, stepping into the magic sigil dug into the ground to climb higher into the Demon Tower. The ascent resumes.

But we don't talk about our fight against Vulcan.

I released him from the dungeon after the giant demon's defeat and gave him his share of rewards. In his eyes lay pride and awe, but it was hiding something else—something deeply buried I am too scared to uncover. So I had him promise not to intervene in such a way again, and we brushed the incident off. He never brought it up again. I won't, either. The pain, the terror, the distress of that day—we soundlessly agreed on keeping silent about all of it. All I did was give him his next dare. And that was enough.

"Are you sure about letting me deal with this alone?" he asks, yet in his voice lies no uncertainty—only the assurance of a winner.

I cross my arms, answering the thrilled spark in his eyes with a knowing grin. "That's your dare, remember?"

"It's hardly a dare. If anything, I'd qualify that—" His gaze rises to observe the enemy towering over us, plunging us into its long shadow. "—as a gift."

[Guide of souls, Metus]

Glowing red irises pierce through the darkness of the lich's skull, the rest of its body wrapped in long robes hovering around its limbs as if they had a mind of their own. Black horns sprout from its head to cut through the red sky. A bodiless spine sprawled around its neck like a macabre necklace clatters in the wind, an echo of the bony armor peeking from underneath the tattered fabric. It lounges in its massive throne of ragged stone, staring back at us across the graveyard it chose as its home.

With one lazy flick of its finger, Metus calls forth an army of undead. They claw their way to the surface in a low rumbling that shakes the ground, and what used to be a cemetery plunged in mourning stillness soon turns into a field of overturned earth filled with shrieks. Clumps of soil fly through the nightly mist to reveal a decaying head rising with a horrendous grin.