I Broke The Game Rules To Kill The Sister Who Broke Our Bond Chapter 05
My vision cleared, and I was home. The Dark Hall. Three years since I’d last stood here.
I flicked my hand through the air, and a massive holographic screen bloomed to life.
There they were, Gideon and Veronica, newly spawned at the dungeon’s outer edge.
The scarlet crack in the sky was bleeding red rain, and the system’s SS-Class warning kept cycling overhead, cold and relentless.
Veronica’s legs buckled. She hit the mud hard, clawing at Gideon’s leg and screaming.
“Gideon! S-class? How is it SS-Class?! You said this was a farmed-out B-class! We’re gonna die!”
Gideon had gone white. Beneath the composure he was scrambling to keep, raw panic leaked through.
He shoved her hand off and snapped.
“Shut up! You’re psyching yourself out!”
He smacked his palm against the top-tier light armor shimmering across his chest.
“It’s a glitch. It has to be! I’ve been playing for years. Dungeons don’t just jump two tiers after you’re already inside!”
He pushed his glasses up, his jaw clenched tight as he forced a sneer.
“So what if it upgraded? The framework of this place is still B-class. It hasn’t had time to spawn real threats. With my gear? I’ll bulldoze straight through.”
He summoned an Epic-tier longsword. Gold light rolled off the blade, and he swung it like its weight alone could drown out his fear. He hauled Veronica to her feet.
“Stay behind me. We push through the core, grab the payout, and we’re set for life. And when we get out, I’m going to break that little bitch downstairs apart piece by piece.”
I watched his face on the screen, that smug liar’s face, and turned the butterfly knife slowly between my fingers. Its edge caught the dim light. I smiled.
Arrogant idiot.
A few pieces of stolen gear bought with someone else’s life, and he thought he was untouchable.
He had no idea what he’d just stepped into.
Behind me, the core’s blood pool erupted.
Dark red light shot upward, carrying a force so immense it felt like the world was about to crack apart.
Blood gathered. Bone and flesh knitted themselves together. And above the throne, a body took shape,
flawless, devastatingly beautiful.
Melanie.
No more tubes. No more gray, withered skin.
She wore a red dress the color of fresh blood, and her black hair, thick, dark, impossibly alive, drifted around
her like something underwater, though there was no wind.
She slowly opened her eyes.
Her eyes used to be warm. Too warm, too soft, too ready to forgive. Now they were flat. Dead. The only thing
left in them was murder.
Three years of being lied to, bled dry, and kept alive just to suffer had burned every last shred of mercy out of
her.
“Valerie Thorne.”
Her voice could have frozen steel. The temperature in the hall dropped with it.
She stepped up beside me, eyes locked on the screen, on Gideon, still pushing forward with his borrowed
gear like it made him invincible.
Melanie lifted one finger and tapped the control panel.
Every alarm in the dungeon cut out at once. What replaced it was worse: a deep, suffocating toll, like a bell
ringing at the bottom of an endless abyss.
Clang…
On the screen, the Withered Woods in front of Gideon buckled.
The ground ripped open, a wet, living tear, bottomless and lined with raw flesh, and from the fog beyond it, countless red eyes blinked open. Hungry.
Melanie tilted her head and looked at me. The smile on her face was the cruelest thing in the room.
“They wanted to clear the dungeon so badly? Then let’s weld the gates of hell shut behind them.”
