As they emerged from the gold room, the dungeon’s false splendor suddenly narrowed. The crystal glitters gave way to a damp, soot-scented, and suffocatingly cramped tunnel. In the air, the screech of rusty metal on metal rang out, accompanied by a deep, distant groan echoing from the dark.

  "This smell..." Eren said, his steps growing heavy. His heart began to pound as if trying to tear through his ribcage. "This is the smell of rusty iron and decay from the Dwarven mines."

  "Eren, are you alright? You've gone pale as chalk," Macan said, placing a supportive hand on Eren’s shoulder.

  Eren couldn't answer. The new room opening at the end of the corridor was not a physical space, but a manifestation of remorse. Mana chains hanging from the ceiling swayed over empty cages, casting flickering purple lights. In the center of the room, weak silhouettes of children appeared, looking as if they had leapt straight out of a nightmare from ten years ago. They were all chained to the wall; their ribs looked ready to tear through their skin.

  "This must be an illusion!" Marry shouted, raising her staff in a defensive stance. "The mana levels here are incredibly unstable! The dungeon feeds on the traumas in our minds and materializes them!"

  Suddenly, Phisobia’s voice echoed from the pitch darkness of the room. The silver-haired General’s usual indifferent, soul-chilling voice: “Do not get used to the pain, my friend... But look, they are still suffering. You didn't save them, Eren; you just watched them die in silence.”

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  Eren clenched his teeth. The fact that the killer had found his deepest wound and put it on display like a "theme park" made him tremble with rage. "Wretched bastard..." he muttered. "He presents his own atrocity as a moral lesson."

  "Eren! Get a hold of yourself!" Aslan cut through a shadow with his sword, but the steel simply passed through the void. "This room isn't attacking us, Eren, it’s freezing us! If we don’t move, we will become part of this memory!"

  Eren approached the fake child figures in the center of the room. Each had a sealed collar from the Pitrosg family around their neck. The killer had blended Eren’s past failure with Lord Pitrosg’s current corrupt crimes. The message was as sharp as a blade:

  "This isn't a test!" Eren said, his voice exploding in every corner of the cave. He spat on the ground in disgust. "This is the killer’s way of playing god. He takes people’s most horrific moments and builds an ideological circus with them. He bleeds the traumas of others to quench the fire in his own soul."

  "How do we get out of here?" Macan asked, trying to shield her ears from the ear-piercing noise of the chains.

  "By not surrendering to the memory," Eren said. He closed his eyes tightly and turned his back on Phisobia’s ghost. "This dungeon is a machine, Marry! It operates not with emotions, but with a distorted mana flow. These child ghosts are just redirected energy from the river. We need to shatter the main chain mechanism at the entrance of the room! Don’t touch that fake key where the killer expects 'mercy' or 'conscience'; rip out the heart of the system directly!"

  In Eren's eyes, the killer's "wise" and "guiding" demeanor was now nothing more than pure arrogance.