“Holy shit,” he whispered.

[SCAN+]

Monster: PLAYER (Frostbitten)

Recommended Level: 12

Health: 100%

Attributes: FROSTBITE

Weaknesses: FIRE, HOLY, SIN

The words came fast, but not fast enough.

“Hostile!!” he cried out.

The stranger swung wide and Willow barely stumbled out of the way. Instead of hitting Willow in the body, the player’s hand went crashing into the concrete wall with a sickening crack as bone and flesh crumbled in the impact.

“Hold it, right there!”

Hana stepped forward with her sword and shield as Willow scrambled back to regain her footing. The stranger took several steps forward until the party could make out the details of his gear. By the look of it, he was a close-range fighter of some sort. Maybe even a knight judging by the heavy plate armor. Judging by his face, he wasn’t much older than Jinyoung and certainly younger than Hana. But, his face wore no expression and his pupils were nearly white themselves with an unearthly glow, giving him a lifeless almost haunting countenance.

He either didn’t hear Hana’s order or he didn’t care, but either way he stepped closer.

“Jinyoung?” Hana called back.

“He’s definitely a monster. Low-level by the look of it, but it says he’s ‘Frostbitten.’”

Hana looked at Willow who shook her head. Neither one had heard of that either.

“Hey! Get any closer and I’ll cut your goddamn head off!” Hana warned.

Still the man didn’t stop.

Damn it, she thought.

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The [shield bash] sent the stranger sailing through the air before he landed in a crumpled heap six feet away. The crashing sound of his armor scraping and skidding across the floor echoed in the narrow halls.

The thing that looked like it was a man let out a screeching scream that nothing human was capable of. It echoed through the corridor even after the clatter of metal against concrete had stopped.

It kept echoing and echoing. Until they realized what it was. There were more of them.

“Head’s up,” Hana whispered.

Back the direction the stranger had walked in from, there could hear the ambling scraping sounds of feet being dragged along the floor. Hana strained her eyes and peered into the shadow, trying to see past the floating dust. Until she realized it wasn’t dust she was seeing, it was the faint glow of eyes just like those of the man she’d just hit.

“Willow, stay behind us and use your spells whenever you have a clear shot. Hana and I will push forward and-”

“Retreat,” Hana interrupted.

“What?” The look on Jinyoung’s face was incredulous. “We can handle them!”

His sister grit her teeth and gave him a grim look that gave him pause.

“Retreat,” she growled through her teeth.

Jinyoung ears pricked when he heard it. It wasn’t the shuffling of feet anymore, but a clamoring of bodies moving through the tunnels behind them. Whatever the hell these things were, there were a lot of them.

“Move!”

This time Jinyoung immediately turned and started running .The party moved quickly through the corridor. There were bends and turns, but no branching halls which made navigating easy. The floors were clean, almost well kept except the ruined state of the structure overall. But unlike dungeons, there was no sign of detritus. In fact, it didn’t feel like a dungeon at all.

After a few minutes, they could hear the familiar chill of the outside air on their faces.

Something’s wrong here, Hana said. This place is too clean. It’s…

It’s not a dungeon, Jinyoung finished.

The two of them had the same thought. Whatever these things were, they had entered from the outside. That meant these monsters had wandered far and wide from whatever dungeon gate had spawned them.

“We must not be far from the exit,” Willow called out. From behind, they could still hear the scraping and dragging of their pursuers.

Finally, the bends and turns were punctuated by steps. A ten meter straightaway followed by a handful of steps followed by a slight bend and a repeat in the pattern. The temperature dropped 5 degrees, then another 10 and then more until they were back outside in the freezing cold.

Unlike the frozen wasteland earlier, this end of the tunnel deposited the party in the midst of a rocky terrain between mountains. There was a path leading up into the rocky peaks and another leading down across precarious paths into the darkened gorge below.

“Which way?” Willow huffed out. “We’ve only got two options.”

Jinyoung [scanned] their surroundings before answering. “No. We don’t.”

He pointed up at the rocking bluffs above them where shadow shapes stood to greet them. Each of them sporting a pair of lightly glowing eyes.