The Weakest Hunter Ascends

The red light

Julie’s face was entirely drained of color, and Arthur Pendelton felt a sudden knot of dread tighten in his chest.

"What is it, Julie? Are you feeling faint?"

"Th-there… look over there."

Arthur followed her trembling finger.

She wasn't pointing at the runes on the tablet anymore.

She was pointing directly up at the gargantuan stone deity.

More specifically, she was staring at its face.

Arthur tilted his head, narrowing his eyes.

From where he stood, the impossible monument looked exactly the same as it had a minute ago.

"……?"

Julie’s breath hitched, the words catching in her throat.

"The… the eyes. The eyes of the statue just moved. They looked right at us."

"What?"

Arthur stared back up, tracking the massive stone sockets.

He checked from three different angles, but nothing seemed out of place.

The cold, gray stone remained perfectly motionless.

"Hey… I'm sure it was just a trick of the firelight," Arthur whispered, trying to soothe her.

But Julie didn't seem to hear him.

She kept her head down, burying her face against his shoulder as her fingers dug into his jacket, her entire body shaking violently.

Wait a minute.

A sudden, suffocating realization washed over Arthur, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

The cavern had gone completely, unnaturally quiet.

It was a terrifying, hollow silence.

The sound… where did the sound go?

The crackle and roar of the dozens of iron braziers lining the walls had vanished entirely.

There wasn't even the hiss of a draft.

"The First Commandment," Mr. Sterling’s voice cut through the silence, echoing unnaturally clear as he read from the tablet. "Worship the Lord. The Second Commandment: Praise the Lord. The Third Commandment: Prove your faith. Those who do not abide by these commandments shall not leave this sanctuary alive."

And then—

SLAM!!

The sudden, explosive thunderclap jolted everyone out of their paralysis.

"What the hell was that?!"

"Where did that come from?!"

Arthur was the first to realize what had happened.

Because his senses were already dialed to a frantic pitch, he instantly located the source of the noise.

"The doors! The entrance is closed!"

The moment Arthur yelled, every head snapped toward the back of the chamber.

The massive stone double-doors they had walked through just moments ago were now sealed tightly shut.

"Screw this! I’m out!"

One of the rookies who had voted against pushing forward in the first place began cursing loudly, spitting on the floor as he took wide, furious strides back toward the exit.

"You guys can stay here and risk your necks for whatever 'treasures' are in this place. I’m going home."

The rookie shot a bitter glare over his shoulder at Sterling, his face twisted with resentment, before turning back and slamming his hand onto the heavy stone iron handle.

In that exact instant, Sterling’s eyes widened to dinner plates.

"Get away from there!!"

Splat!

Everything above the rookie's neck instantly vanished.

A heavy, sickening spray of red painted the stone doors as the headless corpse collapsed powerlessly to the flagstones.

"Oh my God—screeech!!"

"Jesus! What the hell?!"

Panic erupted as the Hunters began screaming at the top of their lungs.

The smaller stone statue that had just pulverized a human skull with a massive iron mace smoothly stepped back onto its pedestal beside the door.

It stood perfectly still once more, its stone limbs drenched in fresh, steaming blood, as if nothing had happened.

"That… that thing can move?!"

"Are you kidding me?! Does that mean every single statue in this room is alive?!"

"How are we supposed to fight those things?!"

"I couldn't even see the swing! It was too fast!"

But while the rest of the group was spiraling into terror, Arthur realized something far worse.

Their nightmare was only just beginning.

Julie’s words flashed through his mind with absolute, freezing clarity.

"The eyes of the statue just moved. They looked right at us."

If she was telling the truth…

A violent chill raced down his spine.

Arthur forced his stiff, resisting neck to turn, casting his gaze back toward the center of the cathedral.

"…Oh, shit."

The gargantuan stone deity was looking directly down at them.

***

The idol's pitch-black stone irises bled into a brilliant, blinding crimson.

Was it a Hunter's intuition?

No.

It was the primal instinct of a cornered animal screaming a frantic warning at the base of his skull.

Something was coming.

Something completely beyond their ability to survive.

Arthur turned toward the scattered group and shrieked with every bit of air in his lungs,

"GET DOWN!!"

In that exact fraction of a second, twin beams of searing red light erupted from the titan’s eyes.

Arthur threw his weight into Julie, tackling her hard against the stone floor.

BOOM!!

The crimson lasers cut through the air, scorching the exact space where Arthur’s head had been a millisecond prior.

A tenth of a second.

No, a hundredth of a second.

If he had hesitated for even a heartbeat, he would have been vaporized.

Unfortunately, not everyone possessed Arthur's hyper-alert reflexes.

"Aaaaaagh!"

"Help—!"

The individual screams were cut violently short.

The Hunters caught in the path of the red light didn't even have time to bleed; they dissolved into ash where they stood, leaving nothing but scorched silhouettes on the flagstones.

The remaining screams didn't come from the victims, but from the survivors who watched their comrades get erased from existence in a heartbeat.

"What kind of magic is that?!"

"Oh God, oh God…"

"This isn't a D-Rank… this is impossible…"

The survivors were entirely beside themselves.

Out of the seventeen Hunters who had entered the chamber, only eleven were left breathing.

Not a single person in the room had ever witnessed an attack of that caliber.

I only survived because that kid yelled…

If it wasn't for Arthur…

The remaining vanguard looked toward Arthur, nervously swallowing.

The lowest-rated Hunter in the city had just become their unlikely savior.

Without his timely warning, half the room would be piles of ash.

“……”

Still pressed flat against the cold stone, Arthur kept his eyes glued to the giant idol.

The crimson glow remained in its eyes, but it didn't fire a secondary blast.

Is it on a cooldown? Or did it stop because we stopped?

Arthur looked down.

Julie was hyperventilating in his arms, her eyes blank with terror.

This paralyzing trauma was exactly why she chose to work cheap Association gigs rather than signing a six-figure contract with a major corporate Guild; she simply couldn't handle the psychological horror of a real high-tier meat grinder.

Her breathing was growing shallower by the second.

If she went into shock, they were done for.

Arthur began to push himself up, desperate to help her, but a heavy, calloused hand suddenly slammed into his shoulder, pinning him flat against the floor.

"Don't move a muscle, kid."

It was Mr. Sterling.

The veteran had crawled across the flagstones, appearing beside Arthur without making a sound.

Arthur froze, obeying the command instantly.

Sterling raised his voice, throwing it across the cavern.

"Nobody move! Stay exactly where you are!"

Once the echoes died down, Sterling looked back at Arthur.

"Only the people who were standing or running got targeted. The ones who listened to you and hit the deck survived."

"It looks that way," Arthur breathed.

Sterling tilted his head slightly, a sharp glint in his eyes.

"I thought you yelled because you figured out the mechanic?"

"No… I just felt a massive spike of killer intent, so I reacted."

A look of profound respect and pity flashed across Sterling’s weathered face.

His sensory instincts are unbelievable. He’s really just an E-Rank? If his magic capacity was even a fraction higher, he’d be a monster…

As Sterling stared down at him, Arthur finally had the mental leeway to look the veteran over.

The moment he did, his eyes went wide with horror.

"Mr. Sterling… your—your arm?!"

"It's fine. Don't worry about it."

"But it's completely—"

Arthur swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat.

Sterling’s left arm—the one not currently holding Arthur down—was entirely missing from the elbow down, leaving a ragged, smoking wound.

“……”

Sterling looked at Julie for a second, ensuring she was coherent, before using his teeth and his remaining hand to rip his tactical undershirt into strips.

Without letting out so much as a groan of pain, he tightly bound the stump of his limb.

"Help me tie off the knot, will you? It's a bit tricky with one hand."

Arthur nodded frantically, his fingers trembling as he pulled the fabric taut and secured the makeshift tourniquet.

The bleeding slowed to a dull drip.

Instead of screaming, Sterling simply let out a long, heavy sigh—a breath backed by ten years of surviving the worst anomalies the world had to throw at him.

"Whew…"

With the field dressing secure, Sterling’s gaze sharpened as he evaluated the room.

The deity had ceased firing, but their tactical situation hadn't improved at all.

They were pinned down in the open.

Minutes ticked by like hours.

"Please… I want to go home…"

"Why is this happening to us…?"

A few of the younger rookies were openly weeping now, their faces pressed against the dirt.

"We can't just lie here until our timers run out!" Bill shouted from across the room, his patience completely snapping.

Arthur couldn't blame him.

He's right. We can't stay pinned like this forever.

But what options did they have?

If Sterling’s hypothesis was correct, the moment anyone stood up, they’d be targeted by the lasers.

And even if someone managed to outrun the beam and reach the exit, the two doorkeeper statues were waiting to paint the walls with their blood.

The doorkeepers moved faster than the human eye could track.

Escaping manually seemed completely impossible.

At this rate, total annihilation was just a matter of time.

Wait… a matter of time?

A profound sense of wrongness bloomed in Arthur’s mind.

Dungeons were dangerous, but they were bound by the logic of the Rift.

This felt different.

We're missing something. There's a piece of the puzzle right in front of us.

The key to their survival had to be hidden inside this room.

Right then, Bill shifted his weight.

"Don't move, Bill!" Sterling barked.

"Shut up, old man! Who cares what you say?! We're just sitting ducks here! You want me to wait around until that thing decides to turn us into charcoal?!"

Bill was a frontline brawler class.

His physical parameters were vastly superior to an ordinary human's, and he had recently been scouted by a mid-tier corporate Guild for his explosive speed.

"I'm not dying in a ditch today!"

Channeling every ounce of mana into his thighs, Bill braced himself against the flagstones.

His target was the exit.

The muscles in his legs visibly swelled under his gear.

"Damn it…" Sterling muttered.

With a loud crack of breaking stone, Bill launched himself forward like a sprinter out of the blocks.

Arthur’s gaze immediately snapped back to the giant deity.

True to his fears, the titan’s colossal stone eyes tracked Bill's trajectory across the room.

The crimson glow flared.

BOOM!!

A massive lance of red light slammed directly into Bill’s back.

"Ahhhhh!!"

One of the female rookies shrieked, a puddle of fluid forming beneath her as she completely lost control of her bladder.

The remaining Hunters froze, their expressions turning into masks of pure horror.

There was nothing left of Bill.

Where the beam had struck, only a pair of empty tactical boots remained on the scorched stone.

One of the rookies turned his head and violently emptied his stomach onto the floor.

Arthur’s jaw clenched.

The titan could wipe them out in a second if it wanted to.

It would be as easy as crushing ants.

But if it's that powerful… why hasn't it killed all of us already?

Monsters in standard Rifts attacked on sight, relentlessly pursuing human prey until either they or the Hunters were dead.

This titan was playing by an entirely different set of rules.

The statues only reacted under specific conditions:

The doorkeepers only struck if someone touched the exit.

The deity only fired if someone moved across the floor at a certain height.

It wasn't a slaughterhouse.

It was a game with a strict, unyielding system of regulations.

The Commandments of the Cartenon Temple…

The realization hit Arthur like a freight train.

The key to escaping this nightmare was hidden entirely within the verses Sterling had been reading from the tablet.

"The First Commandment: Worship the Lord."

"…Worship," Arthur muttered under his breath.

"What? Did you say something, kid?" Sterling asked, glancing over.

Instead of answering, Arthur placed an index finger to his lips, signaling the veteran to give him a second to think.

If my theory is correct…

Slowly, deliberately, Arthur began to lift his torso off the ground.

Sterling reached out to slam him back down, but Arthur caught the veteran's hand, meeting his gaze with an expression of absolute, unwavering certainty.

He hasn't lost his mind, Sterling realized, slowly releasing his grip.

He's testing something.

Arthur kept his eyes locked onto the giant stone deity as he rose onto his knees.

The moment his chest cleared a certain height, the titan’s eyes flared crimson.

BOOM!!

Arthur threw his head back down instantly.

The laser sheared through the air, singing the top of his hair and leaving the smell of burnt ozone in its wake.

Pressed flat against the flagstones once more, Arthur gasped for air, his heart thumping violently against his ribs.

"Haaah… haaah… haaah…"

He had almost died.

The raw, suffocating pressure of the titan's gaze had nearly paralyzed him with fear.

His legs were shaking so badly he couldn't have stood up if he wanted to.

But the gamble had paid off.

He had his answer.

It doesn't target you just for moving.

As long as you remained low to the earth, the titan's eyes merely tracked you without firing.

The moment you rose above a certain threshold, the defense mechanism triggered.

The First Commandment… it's literal.

We have to bow.

Arthur steeled himself, his voice ringing out across the terrified silence of the cathedral.

"Everyone, listen to me! Get on your knees and bow to the statue! Prostrate yourselves right now!"