There was only one reason Ghost had accepted this suicide mission, being thrown into a Dungeon Break.

She was one of the few people capable of resolving this crisis: an S-Rank Awakened.

With the power, the miracle, the trump card—whatever you wanted to call it—granted only to S-Ranks, Ghost had cleaned up countless Dungeon Breaks. The number of Gate Lords she had cut down in her lifetime approached triple digits. 

This time would be no different.

Gangnam Station was enemy territory already being conquered by a monster from another world, so she needed a few moments to concentrate before using her Special Ability.

The time she needed was a mere ten seconds.

If she could just focus for ten seconds, she could use her S-Rank ability and punish the Gate Lord that had created this hell.

It didn’t matter how many people died in front of her. Ghost tried to remain cold and calm, to maintain her focus.

But when she saw the monster’s fingertips streaking toward the heart of her disciple—a disciple bound to her only by a contract—she moved before she even knew it.

She broke her concentration, abandoning the activation of her ability. She ran in front of Jae-hee, stood as if to shield him, and desperately swung her black sword to deflect the trajectory of the Rose Princess’s claws…

But a hasty defense is never perfect.

Deflected by the black sword, the Rose Princess’s fingertips pierced through Ghost’s chest.

“Damn… it…” she cursed, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

Whether she was cursing her own heart for failing to be ruthless or her own swordsmanship for failing to block the attack properly even after intervening, she couldn’t be sure.

The Rose Princess pulled her hand back.

SPLOOSH…!

Blood erupted like a fountain from the hole in Ghost’s chest.

She collapsed where she stood.

“Ma… Master!” Jae-hee screamed, his eyes wide with shock.

He tried to run to her side.

“No~pe.”

“?!”

SPLAT…!

A slash from the Rose Princess tore across his torso, and he collapsed in a spray of blood.

Thud. Thud.

Ghost and the Boy were down.

In an instant, the entire vanguard had been annihilated.

“Holy shit…” Jail Mojik, trembling, spoke into her comms. “Ghost is down.”

«What?»

“Boy is down, too… This is too dangerous. We’re out of our league.”

Drenched in a cold sweat, Jail Mojik’s teeth chattered. “It’s not about her Evil Eye or anything else. She’s just way stronger than a normal Gate Lord. Her stats are on a completely different level…”

Status Window picked up where she left off. “She’s a princess, but not just any princess desu…” His voice trembled as he read the Rose Princess’s status window. “Origin Blood… In other words, a True Ancestor desu…!”

Jail Mojik didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”

“It means she wasn’t turned into a vampire by being bitten. She was born one desu…”

Having had little experience with the Blood Clan, the Awakened of Korea had no idea what this implied.

But Hae-eun, on the other end of the comms, seemed to realize something, and she audibly gasped.

«You mean ‘princess’ as in… she’s actually a direct descendant of the vampire royal family?»

“The status window says she’s the biological daughter of the primordial predator, the ‘Pale Lord’ desu…!”

«The ‘Pale Lord’…? The head of the Lord Family? The supreme monster who single-handedly destroyed North America? The biological daughter of the strongest of the ‘Four Demon Lords’?»

The sound of Hae-eun slamming her fist on her desk echoed through the comms.

«Dammit, they said she was some backwater half-breed! Those fuckers at the Hunter Association, they handed us the wrong intel…!»

Just then…

“You goddamn monster…!”

Having finally managed to set up the Ritual Guillotine she’d painstakingly carried into the subway, Silken Bodhisattva leaped onto it and unleashed her curse.

“Dieee!”

FWOOSH!

The Curseblight shot from Silken Bodhisattva and surged toward the Rose Princess.

Silken Bodhisattva’s Cursewrit was powerful, but it had several restrictions. To cast it from a distance, she needed to know the target’s exact Four Pillars of Destiny. If not, she had to get close and designate the target directly, like this.

BAM!

And if she failed to kill it in one shot… and if there was no vanguard to block the enemy’s charge… then she was nothing more than a common glass cannon.

“…Heh?”

The Curseblight struck the Rose Princess, causing her to stagger, but that was all. The curse had scratched her mental barrier but failed to penetrate it.

It wasn’t a fatal blow.

And before a second curse could be prepared, the Rose Princess was already charging.

Her mouth gaped open, her joints bent at grotesque angles as she crawled along the floor, intent on punishing the curse-caster who had dared to launch a mental attack against her.

As Silken Bodhisattva gasped at the sight of the monster rushing toward her—Little Lamb tackled her from the side, pushing her out of the way.

“Lady Bodhisattvaaaa!”

And in her place, he was bitten by the Rose Princess.

CRUNCH!

The Rose Princess’s teeth, packed as tightly as a shark’s, latched onto Little Lamb’s neck.

A fountain of blood erupted everywhere.

“Ah…”

“Little Lamb!” Silken Bodhisattva screamed, watching him tremble with wide, terrified eyes.

After drinking her fill, the Rose Princess tilted her head, then pulled her mouth away from Little Lamb’s neck.

“Yummy.”

Her muttering voice was that of a child, her pronunciation slurred.

Her lips curled into a wide smile.

“This is yummy!”

She buried her face in the fallen Little Lamb’s neck again and began to suck, gulping down his blood greedily.

“…Stop.” Silken Bodhisattva’s voice trembled.

Little Lamb endlessly repeated the cycle of death and resurrection as his blood was drained. A silent scream escaped his gaping mouth.

Silken Bodhisattva let out a desperate roar. “Stop drinking, you crazy bitch!”

She gripped her kitchen knife and charged.

BAM!

But a careless backhand from the Rose Princess caught her square on the jaw, and Silken Bodhisattva lost consciousness, tumbling to the floor.

That was the last of them.

No one else challenged the monster.

Silence fell over the area.

Jail Mojik’s trembling eyes scanned the horrific scene.

Pathfinder, dead.

Shield Bearer, dead.

Firestarter, in pieces.

Hangman, unconscious.

Ghost, chest pierced.

The boy, chest slashed.

Little Lamb, being continuously drained of blood.

Silken Bodhisattva, unconscious.

The only ones left standing were the two with virtually no combat ability: Jail Mojik and Status Window.

Swallowing hard, Jail Mojik whispered to Status Window. “Let’s run.”

“Wha—?!”

Status Window, who had been frozen in terror, snapped out of it a second later, horrified. “But Boy-kun!”

“What can we do? We have to fall back and regroup!”

She was right. There was nothing the two of them could do.

Jail Mojik and Status Window scrambled backward, beginning to sneak away. At the foot of the stairs, they ran into the Doctor and Rabid Dog, who were just now making their way down.

“Doctor! Rabid Dog!” Jail Mojik whispered urgently, gesturing upward. “It’s over! We have to run!”

“What?”

“Go up, go up! This isn’t the place! This is hell…!”

The Doctor and Rabid Dog exchanged a look, then joined Jail Mojik and Status Window, and the four of them began to retreat.

“Let’s run, run, run…”

They scrambled up the stairs until they reached the temporary wall and the steel door again. The four survivors quietly opened the door, slipped out, closed it again, and crept up the stairs.

“Just a little… further… to the surface…”

The hope on Jail Mojik’s face slowly crumbled.

“The sur…face…?”

No matter how many stairs they climbed, the bright exit to the surface never appeared.

Instead, at the top of the stairs, where the bloody handprints on the walls grew denser, the same steel door and temporary wall they had just passed was blocking their path again.

They all froze in confusion. A cold drop of sweat trickled down their spines.

“This… this can’t be right… We definitely climbed all the way up…”

Just then… Rabid Dog’s fur stood on end. She turned and let out a vicious growl.

“Grrrrrr…!”

The startled convicts looked in that direction—down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.

The faint sound of bare feet on concrete echoed up to them.

Tap…

Tap…

Tap…

Gritting their teeth to stifle their screams, the convicts frantically tried to open the steel door.

But for some reason, the door that had been unlocked just moments ago was now firmly shut.

“Open, open up, open, you piece of shit…”

As Jail Mojik rattled the handle with her sweat-slicked hands, she realized the world had gone quiet.

The panicked breathing of the Doctor and Status Window beside her had stopped.

So had the low growl of Rabid Dog, who had been guarding their rear.

Like a wooden doll, Jail Mojik slowly, stiffly turned around.

And there she was—the Rose Princess.

At the Gate Lord’s bare feet, countless bloodstains bloomed like roses on the steps she had climbed. And somehow—the Doctor, Status Window, and Rabid Dog were all unconscious, strewn across the stairs.

“Ah, ahh, waaah…”

Trembling, Jail Mojik tried to back away.

Thump!

But there was nowhere left to go. The unyielding steel door was right behind her.

The monster’s golden eyes flashed with mischief. The Blind Lens glasses Jail Mojik was wearing couldn’t withstand it; cracks spread across them until they shattered, tinkling to the floor.

“Hmm?”

Standing right in front of Jail Mojik, the Rose Princess tilted her head in puzzlement.

“Where you goin’?”

The Rose Princess grinned, her pronunciation slurred and indistinct.

“Play wif me!”

And then, opening a mouth full of sharp teeth… she took one final step toward the convict.

“N…”

Her back pressed against the locked door, Jail Mojik let out a final scream.

“Aaaaargh—!”

CRUNCH.

A moment later, the sound of tearing flesh was followed by silence as her futile scream was swallowed by the darkness.

***

Click.

The last active comm link went dead.

“Jail Mojik?” Hae-eun called out, a cold sweat beading on her forehead. “Doctor? Status Window?”

«…»

“Ghost. Hey, Ghost! Respond!”

Even Ghost, the Black Parade’s ultimate insurance policy, was silent.

“Somebody, answer me.”

Hae-eun roared into the silent comms. “Answer meee!”

“Commander.”

Grease Gal, who had been trying to boost the comm signal, slowly lowered her hands and looked at Hae-eun.

“We have no response from any of the twelve agents who entered. This is…”

Grease Gal’s face was ashen.

Just like the face of the woman looking back at her.

“…It seems like… they’ve been wiped out.”

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