The cavern shook with the death-throes of a beast — primal and broken. The curse inside Dhamra raged without mercy, unraveling the monstrous form from the inside out.
And in its midst, Dhamra screamed.
But not in pain this time.
In fury.
"I was so close!"
The voice had twisted again — somewhere between a man's anguish and a monster's wail. It was barely holding itself together, just like the body that produced it.
"It was him, wasn't it? Lance! He sent you — just like always! He couldn't stand to see me rise! He ruined everything again!"
A bloodcurdling scream.
"I'll kill him. I'll tear his fucking soul to pieces!"
There was no act in his voice. No pretense. The hatred was raw, cracked open like an infected wound. Dhamra truly believed this. That his brother, Lance — a man who had spent ten years of his life searching for a way to rescue him — had been the one to orchestrate this downfall. That this had all been personal.
Ezekiel said nothing.
He felt no need to defend Lance. Whatever history Dhamra had twisted into grievance, whatever betrayal he believed could justify his heinous acts… it didn't matter.
He'd chosen this path.
He'd attempted to sacrifice over a dozen innocent lives, when he had the choice to put a stop to it.
If he had intended to break free from the mark, all he had to do was sever the sixteen cores from the souls that powered them.
If he had, he would have been recognized as a separate being from that of an Incubus, and he could have walked out of this unscathed.
Instead, he had absorbed the mark and kept it for himself, to elevate his status from a mortal to a demonkin.
And now, the same mark he'd stolen had turned on him.
The Incubus's limbs spasmed violently, splitting down the middle like paper soaked in acid. Blackened veins swelled and burst. The human torso shriveled, fingers clawing the empty air as ash peeled off bone.
Then, silence.
Dhamra's form collapsed in on itself — one last convulsion, a shudder, and nothing remained but dust.
A faint sulfuric scent lingered in the air — acrid and final — as if the world itself exhaled with him.
Ezekiel waited for the system notification to deliver its judgment.
He half expected a line declaring {Epic Quest Failed}.
He'd been tasked with rescuing sixteen souls from the dungeon. And he had just killed one.
In fact, there was no way he could have passed this Quest without killing Dhamra. And even though he knew that the game wouldn't give him an Epic Quest with a 100% failure rate, he couldn't be completely sure. The game had been too unpredictable so far.
But no such notification popped up before him. Instead—
{Congratulations! You have killed a Level 149 Incubus!}
{Level Difference of 143 Detected!}
{EXP gained increased by 14,300%!}
{Assistance of a foreign entity discovered in the kill...}
{EXP gained lost by 85%!}
{You have gained 339,541 EXP!}
Then:
{Level Up! You have reached Level 7!}
{Level Up! You have reached Level 8!}
...
...
{Level Up! You have reached Level 14!}
He watched the numbers flash past without flinching.
The EXP loss made sense. He hadn't landed the killing blow — the curse had. And unless he could party up with malicious divine retribution for equal EXP distribution, 75% loss was justified.
But the system notifications had yet to stop:
{Congratulations! You Are The First Player to Kill A Demonkin!}
{Title Earned: "Demon Slayer"}
{Demon Slayer: +200 Reputation with all natives of Enia. Attack and Defense against all demonkins increased by 100%. Resistance to Dark Element increased by 50}
{Congratulations! You Are The First Player to Kill An Enemy With A Level Difference of 100+!}
{Title Earned: "The One Who Beats the Odds"}
{The One Who Beats The Odds: Stat Bonuses: +10 Charm; +10 Luck; +10 Vitality}
Ezekiel barely spared them a glance. His mind was still waiting — still searching — for the Epic Quest update.
But it didn't come.
Instead, all that came was the ache in his body.
His HP bar hovered at 12/150. A debuff icon blinked at the corner of his vision:
Bleeding: -5% HP every 5 seconds (Duration: 60 Seconds)
Just being near the curse's range had brought him this close to death. It was no surprise even a Level 149 entity stood no chance.
He sighed and pulled out his last Basic Health Potion, downing it in one go.
He could feel it immediately — the bleeding stopped, the dull throbbing in his gut easing. The worst of the internal damage was neutralized.
He exhaled slowly and opened the interface. A new tab pulsed gold at the edge of his vision.
{New Skills Created}
{Focus (Active)}
• Slows user's perception of time by 50% for 36 seconds.
• Enhances ranged attack accuracy by 100%.
• Reaction speed increased by 200%.
• Enhances the effects of one chosen active skill by 100%.
• Cooldown: 5 minutes
[Skill Evolution Condition— Wisdom: 50;Dexterity: 40]
Ezekiel's eyes widened at the implication. Focus wasn't just a utility — it was a catalyst that could single-handedly determine the outcome of a deadly fight.
And it wasn't the only skill he created—
{Willpower (Passive)}
• Negates all negative status effects up to 300% of user's Charm.
• +50% resistance to all mental attacks.
• HP Regeneration: +1% per 12 seconds.
• MP Regeneration: +1% per 10 seconds.
[Skill Evolution Condition— Charm: 50; Vitality: 50]
{Vulnerability Scan (Active)}
• Highlights critical weak points on a target for 5 seconds.
• Attack & Crit Damage +200% on marked locations.
• Insta Kill is executed if all critical points are struck without resistance within the skill duration.
• Cooldown: 2 minutes
[Skill Evolution Condition— Intelligence: 50; Luck: 40]
Ezekiel took a deep breath as he finally found a sliver of satisfaction within the fading embers of his earlier dread.
Vulnerability Scan.
A skill like that didn't even exist within the massive archives of ReLife. But it had been created — born under extreme pressure, through instinct sharpened by necessity.
Just like Focus and Willpower, it was proof of a fundamental truth — created skills were a different breed altogether.
Where learned skills could be leveled up through repeated use, they were ultimately capped — finite.
Stealth, for example, capped at Level 5. Parry had an even lower ceiling — it couldn't go beyond Level 3.
But created skills didn't level up, they evolved.
As long as a player met the required stat thresholds, these skills would morph, adapt, and grow. Theoretically, endlessly.
In a world where power often came from following rigid system paths, this was Ezekiel's divergence — his own carved route forward.
Of course, he wouldn't be the only player with a created skill. Given enough hidden variables aligned just right, skill creation was inevitable.
And the more variables there were, the more unpredictable the outcomes would be.
Which meant his prior knowledge of ReLife would only become less useful over time — and that was fine.
Ezekiel had come to prefer the thrill of discovery over the comfort of certainty. While his knowledge gave him a head start, the real rewards came from the moments he figured things out on his own.
He stared at the fading skill window, letting the information burn itself into memory. Then he exhaled and waited.
Thirty seconds passed.
A full minute.
Still, no update on the Epic Quest.
He didn't know what he'd expected — maybe the dreaded declaration of penalty from the Quest failure. But the system remained silent.
Which meant something else was at play.
He didn't have all the answers. That much was clear.
Perhaps Dhamra had stopped being one of the sixteen the moment he absorbed the Incubus. Then that meant there was one more missing person that wasn't taken into account in Lance's story.
So, even NPCs can't be fully relied on for information.
Just like real people.
Ezekiel sighed.
In any case, whether there was an additional victim or not, he wouldn't find the answers without looking for them himself.
And he'd find out. Eventually.
But not now.
His body still felt like it had been run over by a freight train. Muscles burned. Breaths came shallow. His HP bar was slowly ticking back up thanks to Willpower, and the potion's healing had dulled the worst of it.
But the physical and mental exhaustion felt like a separate debuff altogether — invisible, yet no less crippling in its effects.
There were still victims to find and rescue. He also had yet to get a dungeon clear notification.
But all that had to wait.
His eyelids, heavy from both exhaustion and system fatigue, began to close without permission.
For players with over 90% sync rate, sleeping inside the game world was just as effective as sleeping in reality. They'd wake up refreshed, with no ill effects — assuming, of course, nothing disturbed them.
Having cleared all the living Children of Darkness from within the dungeon less than an hour ago, he didn't have to worry about new spawns for another 23 hours. So Ezekiel let himself relax for once.
He leaned against the cold stone wall, one hand resting loosely on his dagger. His guard stayed up... for maybe ten more seconds.
Just a quick nap.
The darkness took him quietly.
And for the first time in a while — he slept soundly — without being haunted by memories of cold bodies in murky lakes.
Just silence.