Freddy's heart nearly stopped in the half-second Bloodshed seemed to be missing. But then he remembered something.

In the next moment, he appeared in the Netherecho, using his body as a shield against anything that might try to attack him.

There, he found Bloodshed staring at the metal barrier behind which the passage was barricaded.

“Jesus Christ almighty, Bloodshed!” Freddy shouted. “You scared the fucking shit out of me! Don’t disappear like that!”

Bloodshed turned its skull to face him, surprised at his sudden outburst. “Apologies, Master. I was merely curious to see something.” Then, the skeleton disappeared again, returning to reality.

Freddy’s little reaper projection sighed as he touched his body to return to physical reality again. There, he was welcomed by the deafening sound of metal being bent out of shape, causing him to jump back in fright.

He spotted Bloodshed pulling the metal barrier, prying it open as it revealed the pitch-black void that was the entrance to the dungeon.

“Bloodshed, you… What are you doing?”

The skeleton finally removed the barrier and stopped, staring into the black portal. The size of entrance to the dungeon was rather significant, about the size of a large double door. Like the gaping maw of the void, it loomed before them.

Freddy swallowed hard at the intimidating sight. “Bloodshed, you aren’t planning to go in, are you?”

“No, I simply had to remove the barrier to check something.” And with that, the spirit vanished into the Netherecho again.

“What the hell is it doing…?” Freddy wondered as he followed.

There, he was welcomed by a rather mesmerizing sight. Passages didn’t look much different in the Netherecho than in reality. But this dungeon was an exception. While in reality, it appeared like a black void of darkness, in the Netherecho, it looked like an entrance into a world of endless shifting runes and mystical symbols—it was a sight that took his breath away.

This was something he had never heard of. Were all instance dungeons the same? If so, what were these strange symbols?

Bloodshed was staring hard at them, and it even stepped forward to push a hand into the soup of symbols, startling Freddy. But nothing bad happened. It stood like that for a few minutes. Then it pulled its hand out and looked back at Freddy. “Master, I have confirmed that this dungeon would pose no danger to me.” It raised its head slightly. “If you wish, I can go inside and inform you of what I find.”

Freddy was stunned at the suggestion. “It won’t pose a danger to you? How do you know?”

“I simply do. I can feel no threat from the conceptual composition of the dungeon.”

“Can’t you tell what’s inside from those… runes?”

Bloodshed shook its head. “I fear I lack the power to decipher the contents.”

“I see…” Freddy contemplated it for a second. Bloodshed couldn’t lie about stuff. If it was certain, it was safe to believe its words. But he was still apprehensive. “How long would it take?”

“Around an hour,” it said.

Freddy hummed and thought about it. Frankly, even though it said it was safe, he wasn’t sure whether it genuinely knew that without a shadow of a doubt. He was scared. This wasn’t just a disposable pet, this was Bloodshed! If something happened to it, he’d be heartbroken.

But it was confident that it would be safe. And frankly, knowing the contents of the dungeon could benefit him greatly. These things were rare, and they always came with some sort of special benefit.

Some instance dungeons could only be accessed once by a person. Some, like the Tower of York, could be accessed several times, but only when the participant went up a star could they enter again. And others simply had a cooldown period, ranging from days to years.

If this one could be entered several times, he might have just found a cash cow that he could milk for fantastic profit. Of course, it could be too dangerous for him to enter. It had already killed two three-stars, after all. But nobody could know why those people had died. It could have been because they weren’t properly prepared, or simply just as an accident.

“Fine,” Freddy finally said. “But be careful! Don’t take any risks whatsoever, even if it’s to find additional information!”

No matter what this dungeon could offer, risking losing Bloodshed would never be worth it.

It nodded its head and left the Netherecho. Then, it slowly walked forward, sinking into the darkness of the portal and disappearing out of sight.

Freddy breathed out slowly, feeling his heart rate elevate.

The next hour of waiting was nerve-racking. He kept track of time down to the second, and when the time went over one hour, he nearly crushed the watch. “Fuck!” he shouted, getting up and pacing around tirelessly.

Time kept ticking. Bit by bit, his anxiety spiraled. There was absolutely nothing he could do but wait. Eventually, a deep fear gripped his heart. Could it be that Bloodshed had died in there? It had already been an hour and fifteen minutes. If it didn’t come out soon, didn’t that mean that—

His thoughts were interrupted as the little skeleton walked out of the void.

“Oh, you’re alive!” Freddy cheered, walking over to give the skeleton a hug.

“Master, I have discovered something unusual,” it suddenly said.

“Hmm?” he hummed as he pulled out of the hug, his expression turning serious. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh?”

“It is a small space, around ten times Master’s height in length and width. Other than air, there is nothing inside the dungeon. Even the Netherecho is completely void of ether.”

Freddy froze at that. So… it was just a room-shaped empty space? “I don’t get it…” he whispered. “So you just spent an hour in an empty room?”

“No, Master,” it denied. “Not an hour.” Before Freddy could even ask, it elaborated. “The time I spent inside equals roughly one hundred years.”

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“What?” he blurted dumbly.

That was impossible.

Dungeons with time-dilation properties weren’t too rare. Hell, even Tower of York dilated the time for the people who entered. But the time-dilation was rarely more than ten times of what passed outside.

100 years in a single hour was… mind-boggling. It simply didn’t make sense.

“Are you okay?” he quickly asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well… you just spent a hundred years in there! Did that… do something to you?”

“Why would it?” it asked. “I simply waited for it to pass.”

“Damn,” Freddy thought, feeling rather impressed.

Bloodshed shrugged. “Ether constructs like myself are not affected by the passage of time. Whether a hundred years or a million, it does not matter.”

“Cool… As long you’re okay.” However, Freddy's excitement about the possibility of entering quickly faded. “So it’s basically a death trap.”

It made sense that two three-stars perished there. Hell, if the empress herself had gone in, she would die, and likely within days.

Whoever went in would have to go with a hundred years worth of food, water abilities—or at least a way to recycle water they lost, a lot of medicine in case something went wrong, a way to keep the air fresh, a way to keep the heat from killing them, and a way to keep their sanity intact.

As for the food, even if someone just ate 2,000 calories a day, which should be enough to survive, they would still have to bring a type of food that could last a hundred years. Freddy could only think of something like pure, refined sugar, and even that would most likely degrade. And at 2,000 calories, that would be over 20 tons of sugar!

Things couldn’t be taken into dungeons unless the person who entered could carry them themselves. So unless someone brought a huge box of storage rings full of sugar, bringing that much in would be really difficult. Even then, what about other nutrients?

There was the possibility of bringing a hundred years worth of food pills, which were known to last pretty much indefinitely—albeit they do reduce in quality with time, but not enough to make them inedible after a century. But such pills were incredibly pricy, costing as much as 1,000 dollars for a single one!

Water would be relatively easy for Freddy, but the air would be challenging. Numerous treasures could be used to keep the air fresh, but they relied on ambient ether to fuel themselves. According to Bloodshed, there was no ambient ether there. Thus, he’d either have to bring a tzenekite-imbued air purifier, which was such a ridiculous object that it likely didn’t even exist, or they had to bring a century's worth of air-affinity ether stones to fuel the air purifier, which would cost a shit ton of money.

Then, there was the medicine. That would be a problem even for Freddy. Even with the spark of undeath, he still had to feed it something to keep it topped off with vitality. Nutrient pills would work, but that would likely double, if not triple the amount he had to bring.

Then, there was the problem of heat.

If there was nothing there, that meant that the heat radiated by a person’s body had nowhere to go. It would just bounce off the nothingness and return right back to the sender, making it impossible for their body to cool down fast enough to survive for long. Even if they released it into the air, it would gradually accumulate until the heat became lethal. Thus, he’d have to also bring some sort of cooler and a ton of fuel to keep it running.

And finally, the isolation. Spending a hundred years in a room all by oneself would drive anyone bonkers.

But hypothetically, say he managed to offset all of these problems and bring the immense amount of resources needed to sustain himself for that long. What would he even do?

The most he could achieve in there would be to bring all his abilities to the completion of stage two. Spirits couldn’t be caged, thus he could only bring caged vestiges and remnants to upgrade his abilities.

While this would no doubt still take him a long time to achieve, he could probably finish this in less than two decades if he kept at it without distractions. What would he do with the rest of the time? Develop a shit ton of niche abilities just for the hell of it? Should he maybe bring a century’s worth of reading material?

Or maybe he should just bring ten times as many food pills and exercise for the rest of that time!

Yeah, right.

The sheer cost of everything he’d need to make this happen was unfathomable. Even then, he’d have to bring contingencies just in case something didn’t work; it didn’t take much to die in a situation like that.

And even then, how would he manage his sanity? Supreme-quality healing could help prevent his brain from completely breaking, but the human mind wasn’t so simple that such a tactic would be flawless.

Sighing, he shook his head. “Come back to my soul, Bloodshed.”

The spirit obeyed.

Freddy haphazardly put the barrier back over the passage. Then he turned around. However, he couldn’t make himself walk forward. His heart rate was elevated and he felt his mouth dry up.

A hundred fucking years.

That was a long time.

Even if he could “just” bring his abilities to the peak of stage 2, that would allow him to immediately upgrade them to stage 3 as soon as he was out. A two-star with all his abilities at stage 3 was a terrifying existence. And hell, if he got his abilities that far, he’d probably qualify to reach the third star.

Meaning, if he could somehow gather everything he needed…

Within just an hour and fifteen minutes…

He could become completely invincible within the Northern Belt.

He chuckled and shook his head. What was he thinking? Such a thing would cost an absurd amount of money. And what if he went insane? What would be the point of all that power if he’d go nuts trying to earn it?

He started walking back. But his steps were heavy. His heart was pounding in his chest.

His thoughts wandered as he walked back. He liked Lucas. He liked Sophia. He had even liked Mark.

But if there’s any one thing he’d learned with making friends was that nobody came without some amount of trouble. People had problems—to be a friend—nay, to even just be an acquaintance—meant sharing in those problems to some degree.

But he didn’t want to stop making friends. He was tired of being alone and lonely all the time. Such a life wasn’t worth living.

The idea of getting all that loneliness—a century of solitude—out of the way in advance, only to after have the power to protect those he cared about, never having to worry about the enemies that came attached to the friends he made… That thought was too tempting to deny.

But idle fantasies rarely played ball with reality. And the reality was that this plan was simply too unrealistic.

He made his way back up the caverns, slowly pushing through the gray haze until he reached the surface. As for the monsters, he picked up a few of the bigger specimens that had suffered the least damage. Once he returned to the market surrounding the passage, he walked over to the first shop that dealt in herbs and offered his wares.

The bastards tried scamming him, clearly downplaying the quality of his goods even after testing it. His response to that was to make a thinly veiled threat that he’d hang the sellers by their balls unless they offered him a fair price, spiced up with a touch of that peak two-star aura nobody dared to play with.

Just that much work had netted him quite the profit—over 30,000 dollars. The herbs he picked were pretty high quality, and coupled with his experienced touch with harvesting valuable materials, the value was about as high as it could get for goods like that.

As for the monsters, the profit was absolutely abysmal. He got 170 dollars. He seriously thought the seller was trying to scam him, but it really turned out that these things truly weren’t worth much.

The thing with places like the Santorio Hub was that all the monsters that were hunted there had been researched thoroughly, and pretty much every part of their body was used for one thing or another. With open passages like this, even rather valuable monsters could end up selling for pennies just based on the fact that nobody knew what to do with them. Without demand, the supply was worthless.

Storing them wasn’t a viable option—even though it was possible to suspend rot and decay, the storage facilities that could support such functions cost a lot of money to sustain.

Thus, 170 dollars was all the nasty monsters were worth. He’d have to do more research on the monsters that were high in demand and hunt those for money. But for the time being, foraging seemed to be a decent way to beef up his income.

Before he realized it, he caught himself mentally calculating how long it would take him to earn the money to cover the cost of entering that dungeon. Even if he optimized his earnings and minimized his spending, it would undoubtedly take him years of work.

As he headed home, an image kept flashing in his mind. He kept thinking back to Jason’s dead body. More specifically—the ring he left on the man’s finger. He wondered how many resources he would have collected had he taken that ring.

And he wondered how many such rings he’d have to collect to fulfill his quota.