Glutton
“I'm pooping! I'm pooping!”
“Hey!”
“I took my pants off!”
“Ah, no!”
“Ugh……!”
“…….”
“……What, nothing’s coming out?”
The boy who had been fumbling to pull his pants back up let out a sigh.
At that, a change came over the expression of Isabella, who had been gripping a dagger and preparing an ambush.
Wriggle, wriggle.
A face that looked like she was forcing herself to hold back laughter.
But this place was Necro Valley.
A city of the dead.
Having a young boy and girl inside an underground dungeon connected to Necro Valley was not something that made sense logically.
And on top of that, the content of their conversation.
‘They mentioned a hidden camera.’
There was no way Pangaenia had hidden cameras.
Then had they been summoned from Earth?
That was strange too.
‘The last summoner was me.’
When I played Wilhelm before becoming a player, the concurrent users were 1.
Meaning every gamer except me had already been summoned as a player.
But now, a new summoner suddenly appeared?
‘Is it related to the collapse of Pangaenia?’
Collapse, erosion.
Could it be tied to the ‘First Fissure’ that opens when it reaches 10%?
“Ah! A person!”
The boy shouted when I revealed myself.
By appearance, he looked about twelve.
A cute face with just the right amount of baby fat, like he’d never suffered much.
He wore glasses, and a blue short-sleeved T-shirt embroidered with an elephant.
“See, I told you it was a hidden camera, right?”
“A person in a place like this……? But I don’t hear any crow cries.”
The girl looked even younger.
A girl with long braided hair and freckles that stood out.
But compared to the boy, she was staying remarkably calm.
“Mister. This is a hidden camera, right?”
“We’re trapped too.”
“Huh……?”
Then the boy’s big eyes began to tremble heavily.
It wasn’t a lie.
From now on we had to find a way out, and if we couldn’t, we’d be no different from lost children.
Because the underground dungeon of Necro Valley changes its paths every moment.
The boy spread both hands and shrugged.
“We’re screwed. These people are useless.”
“Still, they’re adults. Better to rely on adults than kids like us.”
“Is that so?”
“Mister, and pretty unni. I’m Jinha, and this fatty is Jinwoo. What are your names?”
“We are…….”
Just as Isabella was about to open her mouth, I raised a hand and stopped her.
“Since when have you been here?”
Jinha puckered her lips and shook her head.
“I don’t know. Every time we heard a crow cry, monsters would jump out. We lost our phones too, so we don’t know how much time has passed……”
“Were you summoned from Earth?”
“Of course we’re Earthlings. Then mister, aren’t you an Earthling? An alien?”
Earth. Judging by their names, they were Korean.
Was it a coincidence?
‘That look says she could die from cuteness.’
Isabella looked like she had already fallen for the two kids.
But did Isabella like children this much?
“Maybe mister got summoned while playing a game too?”
“Something like that.”
“Pangaenia?”
“…….”
“So it really was that game’s fault. I shouldn’t have taken it just because this fatty asked me to watch it for a bit.”
Jinha sighed.
From what I heard, it sounded like the two had been raising one character together and got summoned.
“Anyway, if we just stay here, we’re totally dead. We have to get out fast before the crow cries.”
“Crow?”
“Yes. Every time a crow cries, monsters appear.”
Like a bear taking over a den, dungeons also had owners.
And depending on the owner, a dungeon’s traits and characteristics changed.
If you kill the dungeon’s owner, you can investigate the dungeon with relatively more freedom.
“Follow quietly.”
I walked out in front.
***
Undead-type monsters.
Zombies were wandering around each sector of the dungeon.
‘Seems like they don’t attack if the crow doesn’t cry.’
They weren’t aggressive.
Even if you passed right by them, they didn’t look, only smashing their heads into the wall.
If you follow the rules, it isn’t a hard dungeon to clear. That must be why the kids were still alive.
“Ah, I’m hungry.”
“You ate all the choco bars?”
“I finished them ages ago.”
“Wait. Hey, you pig, didn’t you say you’d leave one for me?”
“Oh right.”
Kids, being kids, talked a lot.
Like they’d relaxed after seeing adults.
And Isabella was watching the two kids with a face that was smiling yet not smiling.
Come to think of it, whenever kids passed by, Isabella seemed to give them her gaze.
In the golden city Arcana, in the Garden of Knights too.
Especially the more innocent-looking the child, the longer Isabella’s eyes lingered.
Kkaaaak—!
Kkaak!
“C, crow!”
“Eek!”
In that moment, the sound of a crow crying began to echo.
Ghuuk.
Gheooor!
The zombies that had been frozen in place burst out from all directions.
The kids shrank back in fear.
Sshk!
But the zombies’ levels were only 3 at most.
Even a thousand zombies couldn’t be a match for Isabella.
In the blink of an eye, Isabella took five zombie heads and flicked her dagger.
‘Her stats went up.’
After handing the spirit over in the forest, she had received a thousand-year-old mandrake. After consuming it, Isabella’s movements had improved cleanly, without waste.
Her talent must have bloomed, boosting her stats.
Ghoooor!
After the zombies, what appeared next was a ghoul.
Level 4.
Still not a match for Isabella. She was splitting enemies twice as fast, twice as neatly as usual.
Things were going smoothly, but I couldn’t help tilting my head.
‘This dungeon cluster is strange.’
Normally, a dungeon is packed with monsters of similar level.
You wouldn’t see a single dungeon filled with multiple types of monsters with such big level gaps.
Zombie (Lv 3), then ghoul (Lv 4), then ghoul knight (Lv 6)?
Spot!
It was the moment Isabella cut off the ghoul knight’s head.
“Mm!”
Suddenly, Isabella’s body stiffened and sagged.
Did she let her guard down against a level 6 ghoul knight?
No, she hadn’t been hit by an undead.
Jinha and Jinwoo.
Before I knew it, both kids had come up behind us, their hands transformed like scorpion tails.
Isabella’s pupils shook violently.
Kkaaaak!
Kkaaaaaaak!
The two kids, having completed their mission, simultaneously let out crow cries.
From the start, the kids were bait.
Bait thrown in by the dungeon’s owner to hunt humans who entered.
My mind too began to blur.
A paralysis poison absurdly powerful was already racing through my veins.
Before I could do anything, my body slackened.
***
The owner of the Crow Graveyard.
A gigantic corpse crow cheered with a rich feast before it.
“I eat. Humans of another world. I evolve again. Knowledge and Strength overflow!”
Isabella grit her teeth at the sight of it.
A normal corpse crow can’t speak.
It’s much smaller too.
But the corpse crow before us was different.
‘My body……won’t move…….’
Poisoned by a powerful paralysis toxin, Isabella couldn’t do anything.
She’d never imagined the kids were undead.
It was absurd she hadn’t recognized them even with them right beside her.
But they were too human to tell.
Their hearts beat, and they weren’t rotting.
‘This isn’t an ordinary corpse crow.’
A corpse crow is a monster that eats corpses and controls the corpses it has eaten.
But this one had disguised corpses so perfectly that they couldn’t be distinguished from living people.
It was on a different level than a normal corpse crow.
Even so, it was a mistake. Unlike herself, she had lowered her guard.
No matter how innocent the kids seemed, she shouldn’t have relaxed her vigilance.
She’d been caught by a vile, alien method unlike anything in the desert.
“I evolve! I eat! I evolve!”
The corpse crow’s eyes were pure madness.
A huge beak big enough to swallow a person in one bite.
She had never even heard of a corpse crow the size of a building.
Her breath tightened. She couldn’t move a finger.
From the moment she met the crow’s eyes, the paralysis deepened. Not only paralysis, but a powerful curse was layered on top.
Her will weakened, her heart crumbled. Fear of death began to slowly consume her whole body.
At this point, there was nothing she could do but be eaten alive.
The corpse crow would enjoy its banquet, gouging out eyes and tearing into organs.
The corpse crow opened its beak. Inside were saw-like teeth, and the screams of countless corpses begging to be saved reverberated within.
“Stupid humans!”
“Shut up, damn crow.”
……That was the moment.
The Star Bearer, who had been lying there as if unconscious, sprang up, stretching like he wasn’t affected at all.
A poison so vicious even Isabella couldn’t move.
And fused with a curse, impossible to escape.
Yet the Star Bearer leisurely pulled out two swords.
Chwa-rak!
The corpse crow spread its wings.
A crushing wind pressure surged from the vast wings, and countless eyes appeared.
All of them were eyes of those eaten by the corpse crow. Hundreds of eyes had the effect of amplifying curses.
It was confidence that no one could remain fine beneath its curse.
Even if the poison somehow didn’t work, avoiding this curse was impossible.
An illusion-dream curse amplified again and again. The human would sleep forever, not even knowing he was being eaten.
Pusuk!
With a thick chunk being sliced clean, a massive lump dropped to the floor.
What fell was the corpse crow’s head.
—What in the world is this situation?
The corpse crow couldn’t understand.
A human immune to poison and illusion curses!
More than that, it didn’t even know when its head had been cut off. As if it were the one cursed, it couldn’t perceive the human’s movements.
—A mere human!
The impossible happened.
It was an absolute predator.
How could it endure the humiliation of dying to prey!
Hoo-woong! Hoo-woong!
The corpse crow gathered every lingering thought it had devoured and focused the curse to a single point.
The curse spread through the entire dungeon converged to kill one human.
—……It doesn’t work?
But even that didn’t work.
As if he were immune to the curse itself.
That……that isn’t human. He can’t be human.
A lifeform completely different from its ordinary understanding.
—……!
When its eyes met the human’s, the corpse crow shuddered.
It didn’t know why.
An unknown curse, beyond its comprehension, was contained within those eyes.
If it stayed like this, it felt like that curse would devour it instead.
A true apex predator at the top of the pyramid. The corpse crow realized the prey had been itself from the start.
But there was nothing it could do.
Kuuuu-woong!
The corpse crow’s body collapsed, meeting complete death at last.
***
It had been strange from the beginning.
Why the kids were in the dungeon.
Why they were wandering it wearing modern clothes.
‘Because it ate their memories, and recreated them from those memories.’
Those two kids must have been summoned players.
But when you’re summoned as a player, you naturally get a body of this world.
There was no way they could have brought the clothes they’d been wearing.
To those kids, this place was probably Main Quest 1, a field of survival.
But cruelly, the kids who failed to survive became food for the corpse crow.
‘A level 4 monster grew to level 8.’
That kind of jump. Rather than growth, it was evolution.
After devouring players, the corpse crow grew stronger. Its body enlarged, its intelligence rose. After that, it kept luring and killing players.
As the corpse crow became stronger, the dungeon must have deepened too.
Now the reason for the dungeon being packed with monsters of varying levels finally made sense.
Still, it was a nasty one to find.
It hid its true body and used disguised human children, children that players couldn’t help reacting to, pretending they were alive.
No villainy like it, and plenty must have gotten caught.
It made players drop their guard, paralyzed them with poison, then ate them alive.
‘If I didn’t have Observation, I’d have been fooled too.’
It was absurdly meticulous, but I had the talent of Observation.
Even without it being a hidden trait, Observation maxed out could catch even the tiniest off-beat tremor in a heartbeat.
With other clues added, I was convinced.
Still, if I’d shown that I noticed, the true body would have hidden, so I only played along.
‘Without any countermeasure, even level 10 would be in danger against that poison.’
A Mana poison condensed purely for paralysis, enough to stiffen Isabella.
As the corpse crow evolved, the poison’s nature had become even stronger.
That was why it had confidently revealed itself once it thought both of us were paralyzed.
But the corpse crow couldn’t have imagined it.
<By ‘Giant’s Magic Resistance,’ ‘Mana Poison (Lv 8)’ is completely decomposed.>
<By ‘Heart of the Iron-Blooded Monarch,’ ‘Illusory Dream Curse (Lv 9)’ is negated.>
<‘Moonlight Butterfly’ drives away the surrounding foreign energy.>
That I was its natural enemy.
‘I don’t need to prepare countermeasures anyway.’
Killing me with ordinary curses or poison is impossible.
Hidden traits stand in absolute superiority to normal traits.
And I have thirteen of them.
Meaning most situations handle themselves.
And a corpse crow is originally a boss monster that hides in a dungeon and commands undead.
Its true body itself was pitifully weak in attack and defense.
So from the moment I found the hidden true body, the fight was already decided.
《You have cleared the ‘Crow Graveyard Underground Dungeon.’》
《With the dungeon’s owner ‘Corpse Crow’ dead, the dungeon returns to its original form.》
The dungeon cleared more easily than expected.
Once the owner died, all undead vanished, and the geography that had been changing by the second became fixed.
Now exploring the dungeon would be far easier.
But not everything was over yet.
《The ‘Constellation of Adventure’ praises your adventurous spirit that risked your life, saying it believed in you. The reward is upgraded a step further.》
《The ‘Constellation of Luck’ lets out a sigh of relief and wishes you luck. The reward is upgraded a step further.》
《You possess ‘Lucky Dice.’》
《You obtain a reward list three stages higher in total.》
《You may choose two out of four lists.》
The time for rewards that should rightly be given!
‘Oh.’
I let out a short gasp.
……The constellations of the Pantheon had returned.
The Pantheon constellations, who hadn’t welcomed the Goddess’s appearance, had refused to upgrade rewards even after Main Quest 4, frowning the whole time.
Seems they hadn’t completely turned their backs.
Having even two appear was fortunate.
I looked at the reward list that floated up.
<Fragment of the Broken Golden Rule 9h(6+3)>, <Evolved Corpse Crow Core>, <Feather of the Eye Collector>, <Amplification Grimoire>
Four choices.
The greatest treasures this dungeon could yield!
Among them, one stood out.
‘Fragment of the Broken Golden Rule?’
Was it because the corpse crow had eaten players?
To think a fragment of the Golden Rule could be a dungeon reward.
There was no need to worry.
‘The fragment of the Golden Rule and the Amplification Grimoire, those two are best.’
Explaining the importance of the Golden Rule would make your mouth hurt.
And the Amplification Grimoire was a tool that amplified skill effects. Having one would be useful.
Brrr!
But then suddenly one list floated up and turned purple.
‘……What?’
The one that changed was the ‘Evolved Corpse Crow Core.’
But thanks to the Heart of the Iron-Blooded Monarch, my shock vanished in an instant.
Instead, I quickly guessed what was causing it.
‘It’s related to a trait I have.’
Only a hidden trait could cause that kind of change.
I changed my mind and revised my selections.
《You have selected ‘Fragment of the Broken Golden Rule 9h(6+3).’》
《You have selected ‘Evolved Corpse Crow Core.’》
Then, slowly, a black core rose from the crow’s corpse.
But……
Gulp.
“Mm!”
……I’m hungry.
The moment I saw the Evolved Corpse Crow Core, a mad hunger surged up.
Thunder rumbled in my belly, saliva exploded from my glands.
A hunger not controlled even by the Heart of the Iron-Blooded Monarch. Not my mind, my body was craving it fiercely.
I couldn’t endure this hunger.
At the same time.
《‘Glutton’ manifests.》
The message that the hidden trait ‘Glutton’ had manifested.
A trait that had never once activated until now was reacting to this ‘Evolved Corpse Crow Core.’
‘It’s telling me to eat it.’
A human eating a monster’s core.
I gripped the core.
And.
Crunch!
Crack, crack! Crack, crack!
I devoured the core.
In that instant.
《Predation complete.》
《‘Trait Evolution’ begins.》