The shadows would not hide him forever.
{Stealth: 0:54... 0:53...}
Ezekiel moved.
A breath. A step.
He crept along the jagged stone, keeping to the darker edges of the cave while the Incubus screamed and thrashed. Dhamra's voice, now fully human, rang with hatred sharp enough to split bone.
"I'll gut you! I'll peel your skin and wear it, do you hear me?!"
Another step. Another breath.
Then—
He struck again.
A second health potion arced through the air, straight toward the lower body — the spider-like mass of fur and blackened limbs.
Crash—
The vial shattered. A hiss followed, violent and immediate.
The potion boiled across Dhamra's hind legs, steam rising as burnt fur and flesh blistered and sloughed off in wet chunks. The air curdled with the smell of cooked rot and magic decay.
Dhamra roared in agony — not like a beast, but like a man flayed alive.
And then came the pressure.
A wave of killing intent slammed through the cavern, and Ezekiel staggered, catching himself just before his knees buckled. The 15 points in his charm stat absorbed just enough of it so he wouldn't collapse. Even then...
It was close.
Too close.
The sheer weight of Dhamra's fury was overwhelming, like standing in front of a collapsing wall.
{Stealth: 0:50...}
Ezekiel slipped behind a fallen slab of rock, heart pounding. Dhamra's movements were erratic now — furious, blind. He clawed at shadows, slammed limbs into walls, shrieked obscenities that barely formed words.
If he calmed down — if he just focused — Ezekiel knew Stealth wouldn't save him.
He'd be found.
The level difference was just too high.
But Dhamra was spiraling, unstable. Wild with rage at the audacity of the ant that had dared to hurt his precious form.
And that was the edge Ezekiel needed.
No matter how strong an enemy was, if they let go of their presence of mind, they were no different from a tantrum throwing child. In that case, their own strength could be used against them.
Dhamra was involuntarily causing damage to himself in his frantic wave of rage, as his limbs crashed over the stone walls blindly.
The damage was minimal — barely imperceptible — but it would add up.
{Inventory}
Ezekiel's gaze flicked up for only a second. Seventeen potions left.
Of the twenty he'd bought, one was used to save the hatchling in the Hydra Lake. And he'd used up two more just now.
Not enough.
The potion worked. It burned the Incubus. But it was barely a scratch. Ezekiel's eyes glanced over the HP window above Dhamra's head.
97%
He exhaled, silent.
As I thought. The only way to kill an Incubus at my level... is with the curse in its mark.
But to activate that curse, he had to interrupt the ritual — sever a connection. Shatter a core.
That meant damaging at least one of the sixteen eyes.
Which meant he had to keep hurting it. Keep forcing openings. Keep playing with fire until the right shot appeared.
And he wasn't even sure the right shot would appear.
But he didn't have the time to dwell on the possibility of failure — and the consequences of it.
Another step.
Another throw.
The potion caught a cluster of head tendrils this time. Steam. A higher scream.
95%
Again.
Another strike — at the lower joint between the human torso and spider body.
92%
He kept moving. Kept hitting.
Dhamra spun, flailing in rage and torment. The tendrils on his scalp now protected the sixteen eyes, while his sheer bloodlust pressed down on Ezekiel as if gravity itself had been intensified within the cave.
His steps turned leaden, each movements dragged down by invisible weights. Ezekiel's heart pounded so violently it felt like it might burst through his ribs. Nausea twisted in his gut. His head throbbed under the crushing weight of Dhamra's presence — a pressure so intense it scraped against the edges of madness.
A Level 149 monster, no matter how stupid, was still no joke.
90%
88%
85%
83%
81%
...
...
70%
Ezekiel was down to his last two potions, when finally...
He saw it.
A gap.
Just for a split second, as Dhamra reared back in another fit of frenzied screaming, one of the tendrils flared wide — snapping open like a grotesque flower — exposing the pulsing gleam of an eye beneath.
One of the sixteen.
It throbbed like a living gem — blood-red, veined with black, encased in mucus-thin membrane.
Unblinking.
Vulnerable.
{Stealth: 0:06... 0:05}
This is it.
Ezekiel didn't breathe. He didn't think.
He moved.
One smooth draw. One fluid throw.
The second-to-last health potion left his hand like a blade.
Thwack—
It didn't shatter.
It sank.
The fragile vial pierced the membrane like wet paper — and then burst inside the eye.
But how could it be so simple?
The core, while a glaring weakness of an Incubus, was also the toughest organ of its body.
Ezekiel dropped low and sprang forward, like an arrow released from a bow drawn to its limit. The Dark Nebula pulsed in his hand — alive, hungry, and ready to strike.
{Ambush Activated}
The dagger pierced straight through the boiling socket, burying itself in corrupted flesh and liquefied nerve.
It all happened in an instant — a time too short for the shocked and deranged Incubus to react and protect himself.
Dhamra's screams battered his eardrums, sharp enough to split bone, but Ezekiel held his ground — steady, unwavering — drawing strength from a place deeper than fear, deeper than pain — from somewhere buried far beneath instincts.
{Congratulations! Active Skill "Focus" Created!}
{Congratulations! Passive Skill "Willpower" Created!}
{Congratulations! Active Skill "Vulnerability Scan" Created!}
The moment the strike landed, Ezekiel launched himself backward with a sharp kick to the Incubus's chest.
{Stealth: 0:03}
The moment his feet touched solid ground, he took several steps back, creating some distance from the Incubus. He had gambled everything on this. If there was even one more irregularity in the dungeon — one more misstep in his calculations — there would be no coming back.
In that case, death would only be the kindest outcome.
But then—
A flash of amber light lit up the cave.
What followed was a roar — a guttural sound forged from pure, burning wrath.
Like an ancient guardian awakened from endless slumber, repulsed by the desecration of what it once vowed to protect.
Its purpose had twisted: from guardian to executioner, tasked now with tearing apart the stain in its true master's honor.
The scream that left Dhamra's throat this time wasn't human anymore. It wasn't demonic, either. It was void. Like the sound of something eternal being unwritten.
He convulsed — his limbs jerking in unnatural patterns as if his body no longer understood how to hold itself together. The corrupted spider-form twisted, legs bending in wrong directions, slamming against the ground. His human torso clawed at his face, as black veins exploded across his skin like lightning strikes.
The eye — the one that had been struck — bulged, cracked, and burst.
A shockwave of dark energy surged through the cave.
{Stealth: 0:00}
Ezekiel became visible again.
And Dhamra saw him.
But it was too late.
The mark had been compromised.
One of the sixteen souls was no longer tethered.
The ritual — hadfailed.
Dark ichor began pouring from Dhamra's mouth and eyes. His body trembled, flickering between forms. Human. Monster. Nothing. Then back again.
And then came the smell.
Burning sulfur. Ash. Smoke.
Not from the potions.
From within.
It was rancid — thick and foul, beyond anything the acid burns had released. The stench hit like a physical blow.
Ezekiel couldn't hold it back any longer. His body betrayed him, buckling despite his will, and bile surged violently up his throat, spilling out in harsh, ragged heaves.
His head throbbed with relentless pain. His eyes burned and welled with tears. His ears filled with a high, static drone. Something warm and wet trickled down his neck — blood, sweat, or worse — and he couldn't tell which.
The curse of the mark had awakened. It had sensed the breach. And now, it would complete the task its bearer had tried to cheat.
To erase the unworthy.
To kill the imposter.
Ezekiel barely steadied himself. His legs refused to hold him, and he was forced to crawl backward, each breath ragged and desperate.
But even as his body trembled on the edge of surrender, he couldn't look away.
His eyes burned into the devastation he had unleashed — watching the slow, brutal unraveling of a creature — a failure — that had dared to believe it was worthy of the acknowledgement of a higher being.