The world had crowned me one of its top hunters, a hero, a legend. My name was whispered across cities, towns, and villages Darius, the Hunter King. I led expeditions into the deepest dungeons, slayed ancient monsters, and claimed treasures beyond imagination. I had it all: wealth, power, respect. But the more I climbed, the more I realized the world of hunters was rotten. Jealousy festered among my peers, and in their greed, they plotted my downfall.

I never saw it coming.

The betrayal began as a simple quest: a high-stakes hunt for a Void Dragon, a mythical creature thought to be extinct. It was the perfect target. I gathered the most powerful hunters from every nation warriors I considered allies, comrades. We descended into the Void Abyss together, hunting the beast.

But the real target wasn’t the Void Dragon. It was me.

I fought alongside them, completely unaware of the daggers poised behind my back. The moment the dragon’s corpse hit the ground, their faces changed. I didn’t get the chance to ask why before they struck. I barely had time to react as blades plunged into my body from all sides.

“We can’t let you have everything,” one of them sneered. “You’ve become too powerful, Darius. You’re a threat to us all.”

They left me bleeding out in that cursed dungeon, surrounded by monsters, the stench of death in the air. My vision darkened as I lay there, wondering how I had misjudged them so badly. My heart slowed, and then everything went black.

But death wasn’t the end.

I felt it before I saw anything: an overwhelming sensation of pain, my body being torn apart and reassembled in ways that defied logic. The darkness around me seemed alive, pulsing with energy, reshaping me. And then, I woke up not as the Hunter King but as something else.

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I was reborn into a cave, surrounded by damp stone walls and a musty smell of decay. But the real shock came when I tried to move. My body felt… wrong. I looked down or tried to but all I could see was black, spindly legs, long and covered in bristling hairs. Panic set in, my limbs twitching in ways that felt alien.

A sudden wave of memories flooded back, though they were not my own. Thoughts of hunting in the darkness, weaving webs, preying on weaker creatures filled my mind. I was a spider a monster.

My heart or whatever was beating inside me now pounded. How? Why? Has the dungeon itself done this? Was this some sort of sick joke, punishment for trusting those who betrayed me?

I skittered across the floor on legs I couldn’t control, my senses heightened far beyond what they had been as a human. Every vibration, every tremor in the ground beneath me told a story. I could sense life, feel it moving around me in the cave.

This wasn’t just any spider’s body. I could feel the power coursing through my veins or whatever equivalent spiders had. I was a low-level monster, but there was potential here, potential to grow, to evolve.

Instinct took over, and my body moved on its own. I spun webs, lured smaller creatures into my domain, and devoured them. Each one made me stronger. It wasn’t long before I realized the dungeon wasn’t the only thing that had changed. My mind had shifted too. I could hear voices no, whispers from the dungeon walls. Dark, ancient magic was alive here, and it whispered promises of power.

“Embrace it,” a voice in the shadows urged. “Grow stronger, evolve, and take revenge.”

Revenge. That word sparked a fire within me, something primal and furious. The hunters who had betrayed me, the ones who had thought they could kill me, were still out there. They thought they had won. But I wasn’t dead. I had been reborn, and this time, I would become more powerful than ever.

I needed to evolve. I needed to hunt. I would grow, and when I emerged from this dungeon, they would know true terror.

But first, I had to survive as a low-level monster a creature trapped at the bottom of the food chain. My journey was just beginning.