Jin-woo had woken up in a puddle of his own sweat. He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep for, but it felt like ages considering how stiff his limbs were. Every movement had his hinges popping and creaking loudly. Otherwise, everything was still the same. The chamber still reeked of chemicals and blood; a slight hint of decay permeated the room too now. His entire body protested with shocks of pain when he moved. Scattered debris, twisted metal from torn up cages littered the ground, blood paste from the Giant Rats, and the hulking dead form of the fallen Mutated Rat Lord.

It painted a grim battle that had happened not too long ago.

His stomach growled loudly. Hunger clawed at his insides, a reminder of how long he had gone without any sustenance, just water. But that could wait. His eyes drifted to an obvious glowing item near the portal. It hovered a few inches of the ground in a grand display. He could have waited and explored some, but his analytical mind found it more efficient to check the chest first before he searched for any scraps around the room.

Let’s see what special stuff do I get for completing an entire dungeon without a single ounce of loot! Jin-woo accepted the giddy feeling and allowed it to permeate his mind. Who wouldn’t be happy for a treasure chest.

He limped towards it, body still not fully recovered from the haymakers that the Rat Lord had thrown at him. Especially his entire left side. That was the area of the cleanest hit he received and almost lost control to ‘Crimson Madness’. A laugh escaped him as his fingers traced the intricate and lovely design of the chest. Bright blue, gold, and red as its colors made it look extremely expensive. He held his breath and creaked it open slightly, fog escaped from inside it. More fanfare and raising his expectations.

With a roar, he swung it open, the fog quickly escaped and gave him a full view of the contents of the treasure chest!

“What the hell is this…?” he said. Eyes and hands searching for hidden compartments around the contents inside. “Don’t judge. Don’t judge! Maybe they are super explosives in the form of mundane items…?” Jin-woo doubted it. The chest's contents proved disappointingly sparse: a very large roll of sturdy bandages, a small bag containing twelve silver coins, a cracked experimental vial that leaked an inert substance, and twisted research notes largely rendered illegible by time and damage. Jin-woo's eyes narrowed as he studied the meager rewards.

"This can't be right," he whispered, rifling through the items again. He even poured out the coins to make sure nothing was hidden deeper in the pouch. Nothing. Everything was exactly what it was. "All that fighting, nearly dying multiple times, for this?" His fingers brushed against something metal, a damaged restraint key, its purpose unclear but potentially valuable.

“Yes! That must be it! A clue to another more epic treasure chest!” He pocketed it and jumped to his feet. Eyes surveying the surroundings hoping anything would stand out. Nothing did. The debris didn’t suddenly slide out of the way like theater curtains, none of the cages started dancing, no fireworks or anything else.

It couldn’t end like this–

[NEW SKILL ACTIVATED: INSPECT DUNGEON TREASURE MENU]

[DUAL FUNCTIONALITY DETECTED]

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[ANALYZING DUNGEON ITEMS...]

[SCANNING ENVIRONMENT...]

The skill washed over the chamber in red code. Numbers and letters he couldn’t understand. A digital tide that revealed what his normal perception had missed or conveniently been hidden by the dungeon. Glowing beacons materialized throughout the room in areas he didn’t even notice before. They marked hidden caches and concealed treasures. Behind walls that he had to run through. Massive piles of debris that had a convenient opening to the center of it at an odd angle making it impossible to see. Nooks and crannies with coins.

Two minor healing potions gleamed hidden on shelves behind books and empty vials. Jin-woo wondered if they had any side effects. Would he suddenly turn into the Rat Lord or an abomination of equal measure if he took these suspiciously red, yellow drinks? Or maybe grow out two new arms or something just as ridiculous? His notifications immediately answered his thoughts with a long string of data and details. Most of which were technical for him to understand.

[COMBAT AID IDENTIFIED]

[DESIGNATION: Minor Healing Potion]

[COUNT: 2]

[COMBAT SPECIFICATIONS:

- Healing Output: 150 HP

- Application Time: 2.5s

- Combat Viability: C+]

[TACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS:

- Not recommended during active combat

- Best used during tactical retreats

- Effectiveness reduced against [BLEEDING] status]

[SYSTEM RECOMMENDS STRATEGIC CONSERVATION]

[ALCHEMICAL ANALYSIS COMPLETE

- Minor Healing Potion (×2)

- Purity Grade: B+

- Essence Concentration: 15%

- Recovery Rate: 25 HP/second

- Duration: 6 seconds–]

He then found a monster manual fragment and partial dungeon map, which offered precious knowledge about this deadly place, inside a collapsed desk. There were other pieces of paper, but they were too damaged for the system to identify or translate in any way shape or form. It barely managed to get a sufficient amount of information from the two fragments of books he did find in the manual.

But what truly caught his attention was the softly glowing orb embedded in the Rat Lord's massive frame. It took some nasty work, first removing the embedded short spear stuck in the Rat Lord’s cranium, and then using it to dig around the glow directly in the chest of the massive creature. His stomach rolled a hundred times, again grateful he had not eaten anything yet. Eventually he pulled out a filthy, blood and viscera covered orb. It took nearly twenty minutes of constant cleaning at a leaky pipe that he found in one of the side rooms he had to run through a wall to get to.

It was a damaged power stone. Jin-woo held it cautiously, questions flooding his mind. The stone's presence raised disturbing implications about the nature of power stones, their relationship to dungeon bosses, and the twisted experiments that had created this place. Was the damage and mutation on it due to the experimentation or was this dungeon entity involved somehow in corrupting it?

He tried to analyze it, but his system almost crashed in the ensuing cascade of warnings and notifications. The majority were unintelligible maths and language, again too advanced for him to understand, but the rest hinted at its mutation assigned it the ‘damaged’ status. Whether it was actually dangerous was another matter entirely. It also had a suspiciously high stability percentage with multiple asterisks.

Demina translated that part as ‘Form derivative limited, DNA complex required to match necessary protocols’. He had no clue what that meant and, quite frankly, didn’t care to experiment on the damaged power stone. But from the little he did understand, it was incompatible with him on a molecular level. Something about it made it specifically for a certain race. What that was, the details were beyond him.

Instead, he continued to search the entire alcove. Many of the glowing lights were hidden until he uncovered them, hence his reluctance to leave anything behind. This was the loot he should have been getting since the very beginning of the dungeon. The dopamine hits and rewards that would have made the mad struggle wading through hundreds of Giant Rats at least bearable.

He didn’t care if he had to be stuck here for another week. He was going to get every single thing worth any good amount of value. Maybe even a few not worth anything at all just to be petty.