While they passed the time with idle small talk, waiting for the stew to boil, a bloodcurdling roar unlike anything they’d ever heard ripped through the forest.

“This is...” Do-Jin muttered, whipping his head toward the sound.

The ground shuddered as the forest itself began to quake. The roar grew louder and sharper, like whatever it was had locked onto them and was rapidly closing the distance.

“Could it be... that even Lord Tegran has been completely devoured by the forest’s curse?” the Watcher said, her voice trembling with dread.

Maybe the Watcher still held onto a desperate hope that Tegran had some shred of reason left, something she herself had lacked when the two had first met. However, Do-Jin knew better. He had come here fully aware that Tegran Begrif was this dungeon’s boss monster. From the moment they crossed paths, a fight was unavoidable.

He focused on the approaching sound and activated his Magic Circuits. In response, the Rune Gauntlet coiled tightly around his arm.

“Are you planning to fight him?” the Watcher asked, her eyes twitching as she looked at him.

“There’s no way in hell he’s in any state to sit down and chat politely. First, we subdue him,” Do-Jin said flatly.

Even he wasn’t sure whether “subdue” meant capturing or outright killing, much less the Watcher. She hesitated for a brief moment, then bit down hard on her lip and gripped her sword, deciding that she was going to fight alongside him.

Just then, the brush ahead exploded outward, and something round and massive burst through the trees. It was a grotesque monster, a twisted fusion of bone, flesh, and tree roots. Tegran Begrif looked like a warped parody of a man, crawling on all fours.

“Flash Lance!” Do-Jin shouted.

He had already primed the spell in his Magic Circuits. The Rune Gauntlet flared, releasing three blinding bolts of light that tore through the air and slammed into Tegran’s torso. This was no ordinary beast, however. Even at maximum output, the spell barely scratched the dungeon’s boss monster.

Shit... I expected him to be tough, but this is way beyond what I imagined! Do-Jin thought as he gritted his teeth.

The moment he fired his skill, Do-Jin threw himself sideways, narrowly dodging Tegran’s charging strike. The impact followed instantly. The ground where he’d been standing a split second ago was ripped apart, the stew sent flying everywhere. His chest went cold with the thought of what would’ve happened if he’d been even a moment slower.

“Rrrrghhhh...!”

Tegran slammed his grotesquely elongated, root-like arms against the ground and pivoted sharply. His bloodshot eyes burned with nothing but killing intent as they locked onto Do-Jin.

Suddenly, Tegran’s head snapped to the side, his massive body lifting off the ground and crashing into a tree like a fired cannonball. The Watcher had thrown a punch.

She desperately shouted, “Lord Tegran, snap out of it!”

Tegran tried to get up quickly, but he stumbled as if his skull had been rattled and collapsed back onto the ground. Do-Jin just stared, not even sure what the hell he was supposed to say at the sight of this so-called boss monster looking so pathetic.

I figured she was ridiculously fast when I first saw her, but holy shit... she’s stupid strong too.

While Do-Jin was briefly distracted by that thought, Tegran drove his tree roots into the ground and absorbed the surrounding energy. In an instant, he’d shaken off the damage and leaped into the air, spewing roots outward.

Yeah, I know this pattern.

Do-Jin calmly dodged the incoming roots and cast Rock Shield to carve out a safe zone for himself. Acting on pure instinct at this point, he cast two Fire Arrows in Tegran’s direction. After predicting the spot where the boss would land, he laid down a Flame Pillar on it and followed up with a Fireball.

He had already calculated Tegran’s casting speed, airtime, and the arc of his descent, lining up all the subsequent attacks perfectly. The way Tegran howled was proof enough. Bit by bit, Do-Jin was chipping away at his health.

Just then, the Watcher shouted, “Snap out of it! He isn’t our enemy. He’s the only one who can help us atone for what we’ve done!”

All those elaborate combos and attack patterns meant nothing when the Watcher’s fist came crashing down. One strike from her made everything else seem trivial. Tegran tried to fight back, slamming roots into the ground and unleashing a few special moves. The roots surged upward like writhing tendrils, lashing toward the Watcher, but she cut them all down with a single swing of her sword. More than just a normal sword slash, however, it carried a force like a storm ripping through the trees. It felt like some monstrous claw had torn straight through space.

“Lord Tegran. We have a duty to set right the sins we’ve committed. You can’t just lose your mind and wander the forest like this.” Her eyes locked onto Do-Jin as she spoke.

Her gaze faltered for a moment, but now it burned with steady resolve. We have to make this right. Fix what we broke.

If that meant letting go of something precious, so be it. Shoving aside the weakness clawing at her, the Watcher attacked Tegran again. The brutal thuds echoed through the forest like a war drum.

Do-Jin just stared at the scene stone-faced. Well shit, it looks like there’s nothing for me to do here, then.

As Tegran was being beaten into the dirt, Do-Jin casually pulled out the egg from his inventory just in case there was any sort of reaction. Sure enough, a quest window popped up, its details updating right in front of him.

[The Spirit Dragon’s Legacy]

Grade: Hidden

Tegran Begrif appears to have completely lost his sanity. Destroy the body corrupted by the forest’s curse that is binding his soul.

Do-Jin froze for a moment, caught off guard by the quest update. What the hell? It’s not telling me to cleanse him or purify him, but to just straight-up kill him?

It sounded like a dumb, brute-force solution, but if the thread of fate insisted, then there was no point in arguing. With the plan set, Do-Jin walked over to the Watcher. She was still pounding Tegran into the dirt like she’d lost every screw in her head. He reached out and grabbed her shoulder to stop her. The moment his hand made contact, she froze like a statue.

“Lord Tegran isn’t coming back. What am I supposed to do?” she asked, her voice hollow and broken.

Do-Jin looked at her with annoyance. “I tried pulling out the egg, thinking maybe that weird aura could purify him or something, but it looks like that’s a bust too.”

He knew he couldn’t just blurt out, “The quest says kill him, so let’s go kill him.” That would sound ridiculous. A proper quest always required some half-baked reasoning to keep it moving smoothly.

“If we can’t even talk to him anymore, then there’s no choice. It’s better to put him down than leave him stuck in this miserable state,” Do-Jin said as he began preparing his skill.

“Are you really going to kill him?” the Watcher asked, sounding shocked.

Do-Jin gave her a sharp look. “What else do you expect me to do? Do you see a cure anywhere? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

“Still...” she whispered, her hand tightening around his sleeve.

Her eyes stayed fixed on Tegran, whose body was no longer even human. What little shape remained of him looked like a grotesque mockery of the man he once was. She knew Do-Jin was right. Tegran wouldn’t have wanted to exist like that. It wasn’t even living anymore. It was just a miserable excuse of a body hanging on.

Finally, the Watcher’s grip loosened. She stepped back slowly, lowered her head, and pressed her fist to her forehead in the Hoxeth salute.

Do-Jin didn’t say a word and unleashed his skill. Mana poured through his circuits until they felt like they were burning. Then he fired, blasting Tegran with a merciless barrage. Tegran, who had already been beaten within an inch of his life by the Watcher, couldn’t withstand it. Within moments, he collapsed completely and met his end.

The kill notification burned across the air, shimmering against the rising heat of the Flame Pillar. At that exact moment, the egg flickered with faint, pulsing light. As if answering the glow, Tegran’s shattered remains began to glimmer. Light rose out of the ruins, gathering piece by piece until it shaped itself into the form of a human being.

[The Spirit Dragon’s Legacy]

Grade: Hidden

The liberated soul of Tegran Begrif has appeared. Though half-consumed by the curse and stripped of its true self, the memories carved into it remain intact. Through conversation, draw out the fragments of memory sealed within this soul, uncover the truth you seek, and expose the secrets of the forest.

The quest window spelled everything out for him, and honestly, Do-Jin liked it that way. Having the system dictate the next step was a hell of a lot easier than guessing in the dark.

He glanced at the figure floating in front of him. It was pale, vacant, and drifting. It almost seemed more like a ghost than a man. In fact, it looked completely like a ghost at this point. Tegran’s spirit just stared blankly into the void, not even blinking. His gaze slid toward the Watcher, who was standing wide-eyed as if she had no idea what to do now.

For a moment, Do-Jin thought about where to start. He then pointed to the Watcher and asked Tegran’s spirit, “Do you know her name?”

“Her... name...” The ghostly Tegran looked at the Watcher with dull and lifeless eyes.

His movement was stiff and mechanical, and he spoke more like a busted machine spitting out data rather than a person trying to recall a memory.

“Official designation. Parallel-Type Spirit Restraint Unit 782.”

Do-Jin felt a chill sink into his chest at the answer. Something about that answer screamed bad news.

“I asked for her name, not some serial number bullshit,” he said almost without thinking, as if he was trying to force out a different answer.

“Unit 782, member of the Divine Deer Nua Expedition. Raised as an experimental subject for the Spirit Restraint Project, designed for complete domination of spirits. One of the survivors of the trial with less than 30% survival rate. Exhibited unmatched affinity with spirits even among the surviving subjects—”

“Enough,” Do-Jin said, trying to cut him off.

However, Tegran’s spirit didn’t stop. The broken shell kept spewing information like a jammed vending machine dumping its contents.

“The Spirit Restraint Units are networks of multiple humans linked in parallel circuits, distributing the strain caused by binding high-class spirits. Unit 782 was recognized as the most exceptional and assigned the role of central core in the binding formula. Alongside high-level combat training, the subject underwent absolute conditioning to instill unwavering loyalty to the royal family—”

“Ignore this shit,” Do-Jin said as he shoved the Watcher aside. “Let me deal with this. Just wait somewhere it won’t reach your ears.”

However, she didn’t move an inch. Do-Jin shoved harder, but it was like trying to move a boulder. She simply didn’t budge.

Her eyes stayed locked on the hazy, broken spirit of Tegran as she quietly spoke. “It’s fine.”

At her feet, the stew she had spilled earlier had already gone cold, soaking uselessly into the dirt.