The moment Ezekiel made his intentions known and a subtle wave of bloodlust emanated from him, the watching herd moved.
Some shrieked, some cried, some hissed — as if questioning his audacity. Their malformed bodies jerked to life in unison, and the cave thrummed under the weight of their collective motion. The ground vibrated with wet slaps and scraping claws.
Dozens of twisted forms littered the shadows — hunched, slithering, crawling, swaying — each an unholy parody of humanoid life.
Some had exposed bone gleaming wet under patches of stretched, rotting skin. Others dragged broken limbs or scuttled crab-like on backwards-bent knees.
One creature's face was a raw, lipless grin full of jagged glass-like teeth, its tongue lolling from a vertical slit where a nose should be. Another, the size of a grown man, was coated entirely in a thick, dripping black slime that smoked slightly where it touched the cave floor.
Ezekiel only watched them calmly, assessing the enemy.
Exactly forty grotesque creatures faced Ezekiel with murderous intensity, thirty eight of them Level 6s and the final two — lurking at the end of the herd — Level 7s.
Children of Darkness, he thought.
One might mistake them for monsters of different species, but the grim truth was far worse — they were all siblings, twisted offspring birthed from the same womb of darkness.
Creatures that fed on each other and had the potential to eventually evolve into demonkins. They were abhorred existences, rejected by mother nature, and nurtured by the Evil Deities.
Though they had low levels and his armor rendered these lesser creatures' attacks ineffective, he knew better than to underestimate their advantage in numbers.
He waited as the herd got closer. Just as a claw neared enough to tear him to shreds — Ezekiel vanished.
{Stealth Activated}
The chaos halted for a beat.
The monsters looked around, confused, their movements cautious but twitchy. They were used to the dark, born in it — it clung to them like second skin. But even their sharp instincts and night-honed senses couldn't pierce the absolute suppression of Ezekiel's Stealth skill.
Then the deaths began.
One creature's head tilted — it felt something brush its ribs. It froze. Then collapsed mid-motion, its limbs twitching once before going still.
Another monster lunged forward, tongue flailing, only for its chest to graze something unseen. It fell flat to the ground, eyes wide open — unblinking, unmoving.
Touch. Drop. Touch. Drop.
One after another, they collapsed like puppets with their strings severed.
Ezekiel moved like a ghost in a room full of broken clocks. The Reger twig, held in his left hand, left no marks — just stillness in its wake. It whispered death with every featherlight touch, triggering complete nervous paralysis in anything it brushed.
Monsters stiffened, their gnarled limbs locking in grotesque poses before their hearts stopped altogether.
He glided through the crowd like a shadow dressed in murder.
Ten bodies. Then fifteen. Then twenty.
Experience points blinked to life in his periphery, stacking one atop another like a rhythmically beating drum. The game's system rewarded his efficiency, the 100% EXP bonus flashing with each confirmed kill due to the single level disparity.
He didn't smile. He didn't gloat. He simply moved.
When he neared the end of the crowd, he lodged the Reger twig into the neck of the final Level 6 monster — a bloated, black-goo-coated creature with hollow eye sockets. It hit the cave floor with a loud wet smack.
{Level Up! Level 6 Reached!}
{3 Free Stat Points Available}
Ezekiel heard the distant sound of a glass shattering, and then—
{Opera's Protection Ended}
{Please proceed with caution. May the stars light your path.}
Ezekiel smiled.
Stealth's duration finally ended and he reappeared from the shadows, shoulders rising and falling gently with his breath. Sweat dotted his brow, glistening under the silver, eerie glow that emanated from his irises.
Behind him, a trail of corpses sprawled like discarded mannequins.
Only two monsters remained.
The Level 7s.
They had lingered at the back of the horde, just smart enough to be wary, to be hesitant to engage immediately.
Now they stood alone, blinking with a new and primal fear — the kind even the mindless could feel. They hadn't seen him move. Hadn't even seen him kill. But they felt the aftermath. Dozens of their siblings... gone.
Death itself had walked among them, and it wore the skin of a man.
Ezekiel exhaled slowly, rolled his neck, then cracked his knuckles.
"Now that the extras are out of the way," he said softly, a cold gleam dancing in his eyes, "us adults can talk, right?"
The larger of the two Level 7s — a towering beast with a spider-like gait and ribs protruding through its own flesh — turned and bolted down the tunnel.
Wrong move.
Ezekiel blurred into motion.
His feet barely scraped the ground as he intercepted the fleeing monster. It shrieked as Dark Nebula sang through the air, grazing its leg — not a fatal wound, but a promise.
The monster stumbled and crashed into the cave wall. The second Level 7 — smaller, with pale, peeling skin stretched tight over its body like wax — seeing no way out, lunged at Ezekiel, as if to protect its kin.
Ezekiel ducked under its swing and pivoted, driving his foot into its knee. The joint shattered with a crack, and the monster folded with a howl.
He weaved between them with ease. Years of real-world training coursed through his limbs. Boxing, taekwondo, Muay Thai — styles drilled into him since childhood now danced across his muscle memory.
He dodged, parried, and struck with clinical precision. The monsters flailed wildly, rage overtaking their fear. But to Ezekiel, it felt like sparring with blindfolded children. No technique, no rhythm — just brute desperation.
But it didn't matter how strong they were — missed strikes were just wasted energy.
Dark Nebula traced cuts along their skin — not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to bleed. Deep enough to suffer.
Ezekiel wanted to get used to this. The rhythm of real combat. The weight of bodies in motion. The pressure of evasion and attack. He wouldn't rush the kill.
The two monsters had lunged with brutal vigor at first, but their strength waned quickly.
One dragged its mangled limbs, the other rasped through a crushed windpipe, each breath a wheeze torn from collapsing lungs. Their grotesque forms sagged with every blow Ezekiel landed—flesh split open, bones cracked under the weight of his blade.
And yet, they pressed on. Not from instinct. Not from survival. But from a festering hatred—for him. The intruder. The flaw in their wretched world. The enemy their cursed existence demanded be erased.
When their movements turned sluggish to the point of stillness, Ezekiel took a quiet breath.
"Fun's over."
A whisper later, both monsters stood still — then their heads fell from their shoulders in perfect unison. The Dark Nebula had flashed through them like a guillotine in the night.
{You have killed a Level 7 Child of Darkness!}
{Level difference of 1 Detected!}
{EXP gained increased by 100%!}
{You have gained 700 EXP!}
{You have killed a Level 7 Child of Darkness!}
...
...
Ezekiel stood behind them, his dagger dripping with thick, tar-like blood. He gave the blade a single flick, dislodging most of the muck, then crouched beside the corpses.
One by one, the system-assisted butchery began.
{Dark Life Core x39}
He smiled faintly.
"Not bad."
The Dark Life Core was the true treasure here — the heart of these children of darkness.
A rare alchemical material, each core was worth up to five silvers on the market. In a world with toxic flora and fauna found in abundance — just like the Reger tree — its utility in anti-neurotoxin potions made it indispensable.
For the natives of Enia, it worked like a vaccine — taken once a year to renew its effects. For the players, a single dose would remain effective until their next in-game death.
He was fortunate that it was a Level 5 dungeon, and his encounter was with creatures that had yet to evolve and meld with the characteristics of their own core.
A mature Childof Darkness was the stuff of nightmares: immune to all toxins and impervious to any elemental attack except light. They were among the most troublesome foes one could face.
But these... these were still infants.
In the world of ReLife, monsters would level up by consuming other monsters, sometimes their own kin. They then underwent evolution at Level 10 — much like a class change for players and NPCs.
However, for monsters, the process wasn't guaranteed. Failure could mean stagnation or death.
If a Level 10 Child of Darkness successfully evolved into maturity, it would be summoned by the Evil Deities to serve among their ranks as one of their personal soldiers. In exchange, the dungeon would be replenished with newborn spawn, continuing the cycle.
Judging by what he'd encountered, Ezekiel had likely arrived soon after such a promotion.
He stored the cores — 4 stacks of 9 cores and 1 stack of the extra — in his inventory. He had left one corpse untouched — the one that still had the Reger twig lodged into its neck.
Finished, Ezekiel leaned back against a nearby cave wall, closing his eyes briefly. He hadn't taken damage, but exhaustion tugged at his limbs — more from concentration and stamina drain than any physical pain. His HP had ticked down slightly, and his MP had taken a noticeable hit.
He waited.
Ten minutes passed, during which he opened his stat screen. He put all his 3 free stat points from the level up into Stamina.
The change was immediate. His breath came easier, his heart steadied.
Fully restored, he stepped away from the wall and grabbed the leg of the still intact monster, dragging it behind him as he ventured deeper into the cave.
The darkness ahead felt different now — more alive.
He wasn't alone. Something was constantly watching him. And this one didn't try to hide its gaze.
Ezekiel could feel it — a pressure, a heat, a presence — lurking at the very core of the dungeon. Whatever it was, it didn't belong here.
Its level clearly exceeded the bounds of this dungeon. There wasn't supposed to be a boss here — nor were there meant to be so few Children of Darkness.
This was a Level 5 hidden dungeon nestled within a Level 15 hunting zone. Its challenge wasn't meant to come from strength, but from overwhelming numbers — hundreds of low-level monsters swarming unprepared players.
Yet now, the cave was eerily empty. Aside from that singular, looming presence ahead, he couldn't sense a single other creature.
Had they been consumed? Devoured to feed the thing that now watched him from the shadows?
It seemed plausible. Perhaps the dungeon's structure had diverged the moment the quest shifted to Epic rank.
Or, perhaps he had triggered the quest before the dungeon had completed its transformation into the version he knew.
Ezekiel's smile returned.
Either way, it meant he was exactly where he needed to be.