Josh Miller landed in a temple.

  [S-rank Dungeon: The Forsaken Fane]

  The gods were the first to abandon this place, and left only dusty silence. Now, only the trees creep in to reclaim their monument.

  Colossal pillars, built from white stone and thick as old trees, soared upwards into the ceiling. Slices of colored light filtered down from crystalline windows far above. The holy sanctuary was void of any living creatures, abandoned, with mosses and grass growing around its floor.

  He stood on a floor of shattered tile, cracked and broken like a spider’s web.

  Josh held his breath as he took a cautious step, but the tile crunched under his weight and echoed like a breaking bone.

  Brushing his wet hair away, he was about to use his [Appraisal] skill to check his surroundings, when the rest of the raid team came tumbling through the entrance in a chaotic pile.

  “Wait, Hunter Miller! I said, wait!”

  “What are you doing? I said wait outside!”

  Josh’s voice echoed in the temple. But the team members just let out tense laughs.

  “Well… I don’t see any monsters. Guess that rookie got lucky,” a C-rank archer said while nocking an arrow with shaking hands.

  There was a sarcastic edge to his voice. It couldn’t be helped, since they’d all just risked their necks to rescue a madman.

  Josh did a quick headcount.

  He saw that everyone except Whitley, the one who’d initially argued against entering, had come in. The teammates said Whitley stayed behind to guard the civilian that the rookie had brought with him. At least one of them was safe.

  “I don’t see any immediate threats,” said Josh.

  “Where’s the rookie, sir?”

  Josh shook his head. “He wasn’t here when I came.”

  The hunters’ faces soured at his words. They exchanged low whispers, but with his C-rank senses, Josh heard every word.

  “My [Detect Life]’s clean. He must have gone in deep. Or he’s... you know.”

  “Wow,” a rogue replied, twirling one of the knives in her hands. “He didn’t have to be working that hard to get himself killed.”

  It was about time someone said, “Let’s just give up and get out of here, then.”

  But none of them, having just rushed in to save their teammate, could bring themselves to say it. They just kept stealing glances at Josh. Some of them were thinking how to tell this crazy story back home.

  “…What’s this?” Josh said, his voice low.

  Pushing down the mix of annoyance and anxiety rising in their throats, the team members followed his gaze to the floor. For a second, they just thought the ground beneath Josh’s feet was the same cracked tile that was everywhere.

  Then, they looked down at their own feet and realized what they thought was debris wasn’t tile. The entire floor, as far as they could see, was strewn with... the remains of something.

  “What... is this?” A swordswoman muttered, nudging a car-sized boulder with her boot. “A broken statue?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “No.” Josh’s blood ran cold.

  He knelt, touching a piece of gravel, and the moment his finger grazed the rock, it disintegrated into a puff of dust. He stared at the gray powder on his glove.

  “This isn’t rubble. It’s a monster.”

  The archer squinted.

  “That can’t be right, sir. Or else, this thing would’ve been... huge.”

  Huge was an understatement.

  Josh’s eyes scanned the room with his [Appraisal] skill active, deducing that the monster would’ve been the size of a small apartment building when it was alive.

  “An A-rank… Giant Stone Golem?” Josh whispered.

  The name hung in the air. They all knew the monster. Every hunter in the country did.

  A few years back, the number one rookie hunter, Aiden Daniels, had been injured during an SS-rank dungeon breach. With him on the sidelines, the Hunter’s Association dumped all the work on the other active S-rank, Troy Winter, basically making him do the work of two S-ranks.

  The problem was, they later found another hidden S-rank dungeon at the site of that same breach. If it wasn’t cleared in time, it would’ve turned into another SS-rank disaster.

  Even completely exhausted, Troy cleared that second S-rank dungeon all by himself. The System recording of him fighting off waves of dozens of A-rank monsters and an S-rank boss simultaneously went viral.

  And it was an A-rank Giant Golem that crushed Troy’s right hand during that fight.

  By taking 100% of the contribution score for clearing the dungeon, the Wynn Guild cemented its position as the second best in the country.

  The monster remains they were now standing on were, without a doubt, a Giant Golem.

  Sure, there were stronger monsters out there. An S-rank like Troy had faced dozens of these things while simultaneously fighting an S-rank boss. But that’s what made this scene so impossible.

  Was it possible to kill this thing in under a minute?

  Giant Golems were terrifying because of their insane HP pool. They were pure tanks, with all their stats dumped into defense and constitution. Even with a perfect type advantage, they took time to kill. A fight against a golem was never over quickly.

  As Josh’s [Appraisal] skill zoomed in to analyze, the world bled of color, replaced by lines of residual mana. Josh’s mind raced.

  The hunter must have been attacked the moment he came in. Ambushed by the golem that had been guarding the temple like an everstanding statue.

  Judging by the damage pattern, the hunter hadn’t even moved from his spot.

  He must have waited for the golem to close in on him, for it to bring its car-sized fists down. Then, with a skill Josh had never seen before, he’d pierced its core. A core protected by a shell harder than mithril unless you whittled down its insane HP first. In less than a minute after dropping into the dungeon.

  Cold fear crawled down Josh’s spine.

  You get used to seeing flashy A-rank and S-rank hunters on the screen, but even they were clumsy in a fight before they got proper training.

  An amateur was no match for a pro.

  But this nameless hunter had perfectly identified his enemy and exploited its weak spot.

  Josh traced the path of the attack in his mind, and a dry laugh escaped his lips. Goosebumps prickled his skin.

  A perfect kill.

  Who would’ve thought? The man he’d dismissed as a suicidal rookie high on his power was actually the real deal. And…

  The hunter already moved deeper into the temple.

  “Since the gatekeeper is dead,” Josh whispered, “the dungeon boss must be awake now.”

  Bosses usually remained in boss rooms.

  But that didn’t stop them from stirring their minions, which made it much more difficult to escape the dungeon if they failed to clear it.

  As if his words were a key, a low rumble vibrated up through the shattered floor, shaking the dust from colossal pillars. A vast, ancient, and furious pressure unleashed from the depths of the temple. The air grew thick, making it hard to breathe while giving the illusion that their bodies felt heavier.

  Even as the archer snapped his bow to a steady draw at the change, he suddenly buckled to his knees, as if an invisible weight was bearing down on him.

  No one even squeaked a word.

  How could the rookie be moving this fast in this atmosphere?

  Shit, why didn’t I notice he was this powerful before?

  Josh tried to recall his brief encounter with the hunter, but all he remembered was an ordinary presence. If he’d sensed the mana of an A-rank or higher, he wouldn’t have just advised him to audition for the guild. He would have recruited him on the spot.

  What was his name? Sean? No, Shane.

  Finally, when the vibration ended, the pressure lifted, but their anxiety still boiled in their guts.

  “Um, Hunter Miller? The portal’s closed!”

  “What?”

  The glimmering tear in reality they had entered through was gone. The dungeon must have been sealed now that they filled the quota.

  They were trapped.

  His party members were starting to panic.

  “We’re trapped! In an S-rank dungeon!”

  “No, no, no! Open! Open!” The archer ran to the spot the portal had been, his hands fumbling around the stone wall.

  “Sssh!” Josh put a finger to his lips.

  Panicking would only get them killed.

  They had no choice. Their only way out was moving forward now. With Shane. Just in case he left any monsters behind.

  Josh waved for his team to follow him in.

  He also secretly wanted to see the guy fight with his own eyes.