Rana walked under grey clouds that covered hints of fading red. She didn’t know she would’ve slept for this long but it wasn’t until the crack of dawn did she awoke. She wondered if somewhere in her undead body still lingered traces of her humanly habits. Wherever they were, she wished she was able to change some of them. As a zombie, being under the sun was not a pleasant experience.

Still, daylight was the best time for hunting critters as during the time when the moon hid away so too would monsters stay in the woods. Rana hoped she would at least catch a hare. It wasn’t much but critters still had life essence and she needed the replenishment. Her health was dangerously low but thanks to her zombified state her injuries posed no physical impediment. The idea of eating them raw, however, still caused her stomach to protest in her mind.

It had been hours since Rana left the abandoned hut. The sun stood high in the sky and its light pierced the clouds but she still had no luck finding any critters. She wondered if the fall of High Tower has caused this scarcity. It was not a surprise. Living creatures instinctively feared monsters and would escape as far away as possible. It was only thanks to the power of Classes that gave humanity the courage and power to stand their ground.

Rana continued her trek towards the Dungeon. She avoided the roads and sentry towers and thankfully their locations did not seem to change from where they were in her memory. She did fear surprise encounters but due to the current situation, it seemed no one wanted to veer off the beaten path unless they had to.

Rana walked for days, and thanks to her undead nature she never tired. It seemed like simply walking did not take much effort for her mind. If she was still a human, her stamina would’ve given out long ago and she would no doubt collapse. Then again, if she were still a human she would’ve not have found herself in this situation. She would still be dead.

Rana was once tempted by a pool of stray blood during her journey. She knew it was from a human. The victim was already dragged away by monsters but the red liquid was fresh and filled with fleeting life. She knew she needed to regain health but she was too fearful of the consequences. What would happen if she took that one step over the line?

Rana pondered her situation, and before she realized she was near the Mines Without Blood. It was different than how she remembered. She did not realize the Dungeon expanded this far.

Dungeons were living gravestones. They were testaments to a fiend’s dying curse against humanity. Monsters that formed within Dungeons carried their dead master’s hatred and spread it across the lands they roamed. The process was slow but when enough time has passed the evil within those monsters seeped into the ground below and changed the landscape forever.

In front of Rana was a sea of swirling dunes, a scenery completely alien to what was broken dirt and rotting grass from earlier. It was a land void of everything but the ground that formed it into a specific and deliberate pattern. It seemed like the expansion itself was fairly new and did not have time to give rise to new types of monsters. What she saw were only a few skeletal scavengers that wandered too far away from their Dungeon. They shuffled clumsily and fell occasionally and were no threat. However, she knew that the longer they stayed on the cursed field, the more mature they became and would mutate and gained specific capabilities that made fighting them here dangerous.

Rana wanted to help humanity get rid of such potential threats but she knew she couldn’t

There were two types of monster-aggro, the idea that dictated monster hostility, and knowing them was the difference between surviving an expedition or leading a team of soldiers to their deaths. The two types were vicinity and action. Monster-aggro based on vicinity was the simplest of the two. If a human gets within their aggro range the monster attacked. The monster would continue to chase the human until they escape the leash-range, how far the monster would track a human. Monster-aggro based on action was a bit more complicated and much more common among Dungeon monsters. Monsters with an action-aggro only cared about whether or not a human has done specific actions within line-of-sight.

Skeletal scavengers had an action-based aggro and were one of the rare undead that did not actively seek out life essences. They simply wandered and picked up the belongings of the dead. This meant that killing one yielded a lot of loot. The issue, however, was that skeleton’s had a radius based detection as their vision and for the scavenger, their aggro-action was the death of another skeleton. A lone one posed little threat, but a dozen of them frenzied and rushing to kill was not something Rana could handle.

Rana avoided the twisting dunes and chose a simpler path to the mines. The twisting pattern might confuse new adventurers but she somehow knew where to go. Rather, she knew where the Dungeon was and never once was lead astray by the confusing landscape.

Before long she reached the Dungeon entrance known as the cemetery. There were no graves nor was it once a place of human burial. The entrance was called a cemetery due to the many zombies that shuffled out of the Dungeon.

Mines Without Blood was a Dungeon that received its name due to the monsters it spawned and its means of sustaining itself. Like its name, monsters in this Dungeon were usually of the undead type, those without blood in their veins. The Dungeon also required blood spilled to gain power hence why there was no issue for the kingdom if they left it alone.

That explained the expansion Rana saw earlier. Mines Without Blood was a Dungeon people rarely visited. It was out of the way and nowhere near the frontlines. However, now that High Tower had fallen, the frontline was pushed back and so did battlefields drew closer to the Dungeon.

Rana was lucky, however. She did not know whether it was her undead nature calling out to her, but she picked a Dungeon she could walk in unchallenged.

Rana walked passed shambling zombies who paid her no attention. She felt conflicted. She held in a sigh of relief when she realized her low health wasn’t at risk but to be ignored by those who devoured life was another evidence of her inhuman state. When she saw the decaying and rotting flesh that tore whenever the zombie moved, it was like a stake pierced her heart.

Unknown Blessing

— *unknown effects: description hidden

— duration expires in 8 hours

She flicked away her Status and looked at her hands. The skin was cold and cracked but still at least retained some semblance of human appearance. However, she knew that if she allowed the Decaying to begin, she would soon be just like the other zombies near her. Her skin would peel off and her limbs would tear away until she was nothing but rotting flesh.

Rana quickly entered the mines.