Ezekiel stirred.
A faint, unsettling wet sensation crawled across his cheek — like several tiny worms writhing against his skin. He cringed, instincts snapping awake faster than his mind could catch up. His hand shot up and latched onto the intruder with iron precision, his body jerking to full alert.
His fingers met cold, slick scales — ridged and uneven, like stone run through wet oil. The texture was unfamiliar and repulsive, half-animal, half-nightmare.
A shrill squeal tore through the silence.
His eyes flew open just in time to see several familiar, scaly faces squirming in panic.
The hatchling.
Ezekiel immediately loosened his grip, releasing the creature before he crushed it by accident. The hatchling tumbled back with a flustered squawk, landing a few feet away. Its five tiny heads shook in agitation as it eyed him warily.
He let out a breath and dragged a hand down his saliva-slicked face.
"Great," he muttered. "Good morning to you too."
His thoughts were still muddled — coming together in sluggish pieces. The last thing he remembered was giving in to the exhaustion, collapsing after the encounter with Dhamra. His eyes darted around the chamber. No new enemies. No system alerts. Just the lingering chill of the dungeon and a baby hydra acting like he'd kicked it in the face.
With a groan, Ezekiel opened his system window to check the time.
To his relief, only three hours had passed since he'd crashed.
Definitely longer than he'd planned for a nap — but not a disaster. The Children of Darkness wouldn't respawn for at least another twenty hours. He had plenty time.
He stretched his neck, wincing at the stiffness in his spine. Sleeping upright against cold stone wasn't exactly ergonomic, but everything else checked out:
HP: 150/150
MP: 125/125
Skill creation cost mana. The more powerful a skill, the higher the expenditure. Creating three skills back-to-back had drained nearly a hundred points of mana from him. But thanks to Willpower, his MP had fully recovered while he slept. He felt whole again — focused. Sharpened.
Now that his own condition was out of the way, he turned his attention to the unexpected company.
The baby creature that had somehow tracked him to the cave.
Did it feel attached to him since he saved its life?
But how did it even make it here in one-piece without falling prey to the countless beasts outside?
Come to think of it, even when it was injured and crying at the top of its lungs, no opportunistic beast showed up to feast on it.
Ezekiel felt a mix of confusion and intrigue at the unforeseen appearance of the hatchling.
Five sets of beady eyes stared at him from a cautious distance. It looked both wary and offended — like a child rudely awakened mid-nap and trying to decide whether to cry or bite.
He chuckled, amused.
"Shouldn't I be the one reacting like that? What were you even doing, licking my face? Don't tell me… you were trying to eat me?"
The hatchling didn't answer, of course. One head tilted. Another blinked. A third yawned. The other two darted back and forth, eyes scanning the cave with curiosity. It looked utterly disinterested at his complaints and accusation.
He sighed helplessly.
"…But... why do you look bigger?"
He leaned forward slowly, reassessing the creature.
There was no doubt now. It had grown. From the size of a Leachie Gecko to that of a full-grown cat. At least five inches taller, too. Even its limbs looked stronger. Its posture more balanced. Its scales even appeared glossier.
That kind of growth didn't happen naturally for a Hydra.
Not in just six hours.
Ezekiel's eyes scanned the cavern.
Then froze.
The corpse — the one he'd dragged in earlier — was gone.
The twisted remains of a Child of Darkness, impaled with a Reger twig, had been lying just a few meters away when he'd fallen asleep. Now, it had completely vanished.
No blood. No bones. No ash.
Just a clean patch of stone.
Ezekiel blinked, his thoughts catching up in pieces.
That corpse wasn't just dead weight. It had been his strategy to deal with the real Incubus. With enough luck and the right timing, he'd intended to use it as an impromptu bomb.
Reger trees weren't just neurotoxic — they were volatile. What triggered their reaction wasn't heat or pressure, but light element. A splash of basic health potion would have been enough to set it off. He had planned to hurl the body and detonate it mid-flight.
The damage wouldn't have been fatal, but it would've been enough to create chaos — a brief opening to sever one of the cursed cores.
A desperate strategy, maybe fifty percent workable at best.
Even if he failed, he'd planned to use the Reger twigs in his inventory on himself. To die and return later with better preparations. Otherwise, he'd have just turned into a mindless slave under the control of the Incubus, unable to either die or live.
Death in ReLife was a less than desirable outcome, but not when compared to becoming a puppet to a demonkin.
But fortunately, instead of a full-powered Incubus, he got Dhamra — whose defenses weren't nearly as high. No explosion had been necessary.
Thus, the corpse had still been intact when he'd gone to sleep.
So had the Reger twig.
Slowly, Ezekiel turned back to the hatchling.
Five pairs of eyes blinked at him innocently.
A beat passed.
Then, with impeccable timing, the hatchling let out a low, gurgling burp.
Ezekiel didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"…You didn't."
The hatchling blinked again. One head licked its nostril. Another had its back leg scratching behind an ear. Two didn't even bother looking at him, while the last opened its mouth in a yawn again, revealing a disturbingly sharp set of teeth.
He knew.
It had eaten the corpse.
It had eaten the Reger twig.
And somehow… it had survived.
No — more than that.
It had grown.
He then noticed something subtle under its belly — a faint, shimmering glow beneath its scales. Residual energy, maybe. Or the process of digestion of the corpse it had feasted on.
"You're either suicidal," Ezekiel muttered, "or invincible."
He couldn't be mad at the creature even if he wanted to. He did lose a precious Dark Life Core, but at least, the hatchling hadn't decided to munch on him instead.
He stood, stretching his spine and limbs. His legs felt stiff, so he did a few squats to get blood flowing again.
Then he checked the hatchling's system tag.
{Hatchling — Level ???}
Still unreadable. Infant stage. But something caught his attention.
It didn't register as a Hydra.
He hadn't questioned it before — five heads, found at the Hydra Lake, all the expected traits. The assumption had come easy.
But the more he looked at it now… the more something felt off.
It wasn't just the intelligence.
Or the speed of growth.
Or the apparent immunity to one of the most toxic and unstable reagents in the game.
No, it was something deeper.
Something older.
A distant memory surfaced — a creature with the heads of a hydra, the toxicity of a basilisk, and the cunning of a serpent.
His eyes widened.
A Poison Dragon.
The deadliest ancient creature to ever exist in the history of Enia.
He gulped, glancing back at the hatchling — who, sensing he was about to leave, waddled forward and nudged his boot with two of its heads, as if asking to be carried.
"No way," he muttered. "Those things are basically extinct..."
The hatchling — a potential apocalypse incarnate — didn't give a damn for his blabbering. Instead, it curled affectionately around his ankle, all its previous grievances now forgotten.
Ezekiel sighed, then crouched and picked it up gently, placing it over his shoulder.
"Behave," he warned, flashing the Dark Nebula at it. The hatchling twitched in visible discomfort, but stayed put. "Good boy."
If his suspicions were right — if this really was a dragon hatchling…
Then Ezekiel may have just stumbled into fulfilling one of the hidden conditions for the rarest, most powerful Class in the entire world of ReLife.
He took one last look at the hatchling curled around his shoulder.
Could it be the Luck stat?
He knew Luck played a huge factor within ReLife, but he hadn't expected it to send such precious treasures his way — specifically targeting what he was in need of most.
Still, without confirming the hatchling's true identity, it was just speculation. He shelved the thought for now.
There were more pressing matters at hand.
He began a methodical sweep of the cavern, careful to avoid the massive pool of blood at its center. Dry bones cracked beneath his boots as he moved. He crouched at intervals, inspecting the charred fragments and dried sinew littering the floor.
Some of the corpses were relatively fresh — too fresh, in fact. One of them still twitched faintly as decomposition worked its way through disjointed muscle.
The hatchling made a sharp chirp and leapt off his shoulder, aiming for the closest pile of remains.
Ezekiel snatched it midair before it could start snacking.
"They're filthy," he told it firmly, holding the wriggling creature by the scruff of its neck. "I'll find you some good ones later."
It grumbled, one of its heads hissing half-heartedly in protest. But it ultimately relented and curled obediently back around his shoulder — sulking, but still.
Ezekiel resumed his search.
He found no trace of the people he'd originally come to rescue.
No personal items. No clothing scraps. No bodies small enough to belong to humans.
That meant only one thing: this wasn't the real nest.
This place was a side chamber — a playground for Dhamra's twisted fantasies. The massacre of the Children of Darkness wasn't a necessity. It was personal entertainment.
Regular Incubi didn't waste their time like this. They considered themselves too divine to get their hands dirty with lower beings. Unless they were provoked, of course.
But Dhamra had clearly been different.
A rogue Incubus. One with violent tastes. One who killed for the pleasure of it.
Ezekiel turned toward the pool of blood at the center of the chamber.
It appeared to shimmer dully under the thick blanket of darkness that covered the cave — dense and still, like syrup in a crater. It reeked of copper, rot, and something distinctly wrong.
His instincts prickled as he approached it.
It couldn't be a simple murder pit.
Whatever it was, he felt that its existence wasn't just for show.
But he had no way to confirm it yet. And frankly, just the thought of touching that blood made his stomach turn.
Then, suddenly — the hatchling shrieked.
A short, sharp trill that snapped Ezekiel out of his thoughts.
He turned quickly.
Two of its heads were staring intently at the blood pool. The other three were looking at him — waiting.
"…You want to go in there?"
The hatchling chirped again — high-pitched, eager.
"But it's dirty," he said flatly.
The hatchling paused. Then, with what could only be described as exasperation, it rolled all five sets of eyes.
An infant creature.
In a game.
Rolled its eyes at him.
Ezekiel stared at it, caught somewhere between awe and offense.
"…Fine," he sighed. "Go search. See if anything's hiding underneath."
The hatchling didn't wait for a second invitation. It jumped off his shoulder, landed lightly on the stone floor, and then — with a sound that could only be called a gleeful screech — dived headfirst into the pool of blood.
As if any delay might give Ezekiel time to change his mind.
The pool was deeper than he had expected.
It rippled in concentric waves as the hatchling vanished beneath the surface, leaving behind nothing but blood-stained silence.
Ezekiel waited.
Two minutes passed. Then five.
Just as he began to wonder whether the hatchling had drowned or, worse, decided to live out the rest of its days as a blood-drenched bottom-feeder, the pool stirred again.
From its crimson depths, three familiar heads emerged — panting slightly. The remaining two were still submerged, visibly straining, dragging something behind them with gritted, serpentine teeth.
Ezekiel crouched at the edge of the pool, curiosity sharpening in his chest.
The hatchling swam toward him with powerful strokes, and just as it neared, Ezekiel reached into the blood and grabbed hold of the thick chain trailing behind.
It took some effort — whatever the creature had found was heavy. But after a few tugs, the object finally broke the surface.
A chest.
It was unlike anything that one would find even in high-level hunting grounds.
Where lesser chests were crafted from wood, bone, or metal, this one gleamed with smooth, radiant gemstones — white like moonlight, its shine could not be dulled even by the complete darkness within the dungeon, as if it was embedded with a light source of its own.
A system prompt appeared instantly—
{Epic-tier Chest (Locked) Discovered!}
Ezekiel's breath hitched.
Epic-tier.
Chests of this caliber were almost mythical — and not just because of their rarity. Unlike Common, Bronze, or even Pseudo-Epic variants, Epic and higher chests were born only in places steeped in divinity.
Whether that divinity was holy or unholy didn't matter.
The location simply had to be consecrated — warped by belief, ritual, or power.
And considering this dungeon had once been home to an Incubus — a future consort of a greater demon — it certainly qualified.
But Ezekiel's shock wasn't from the chest's presence.
It was from its absence — or rather, its absence from his memories.
This chest… had never existed in the version of the hidden dungeon he remembered.
In fact, the entire room — the blood pool, the massacred remains, all of it — did not actually exist.
Ezekiel allowed a slow, almost reverent grin to spread across his face.
Another jackpot.
A squelching sound pulled his attention aside. He turned and grimaced.
The hatchling had climbed out of the pool and was now vigorously licking the blood from its own body — each of its five heads working in tandem like a grotesque car wash.
Disgusted, Ezekiel promptly looked away.
His focus returned to the prize.
The fact that the chest was locked didn't worry him. Not at this tier.
He already knew how to open Epic-tier chests.
All it took… was a sacrifice.
Specifically, a sacrifice of something at least two tiers lower in value.
Ezekiel opened his inventory.
He didn't hesitate.
From within, he retrieved Dhamra's Locket — a Platinum-tier artifact that would've made most players cry tears of blood just to touch, let alone give up.
But to Ezekiel, the value of an Epic-tier reward far outweighed the locket's minor stat bonuses. Its mildly useful ability to send dreams laced with charm magic also wasn't enough to justify holding on.
Its stats may be locked in the system, but he already knew all about it, after all.
He pressed the locket against the chest.
The system responded immediately.
{Platinum-tier item detected nearby! Would you like to use it as a key to open the Epic-tier chest?}
"Yes," Ezekiel said without pause.
The moment he confirmed, the locket dissolved into light.
Then the entire chamber exploded in radiance.
A blinding burst of white surged outward, illuminating the cave like someone had torn a hole in the heavens. Ezekiel threw a hand over his eyes, blinking furiously as his pupils reeled from the assault after being so accustomed to the absence of light.
Even the hatchling squealed — a series of startled honks echoing through the chamber as it scrambled behind a rock, visibly shaken.
It took almost a full minute for the brilliance to fade — much longer than what a Bronze-tier chest had emitted back at the wolf den.
Finally, the glow receded.
And the chest creaked open.
Inside — lying atop silk-lined gemstone panels — were items so valuable, so absurdly rare, that Ezekiel couldn't stop himself.
He laughed.
Pure, sharp joy tore from his chest.
A sound of disbelief and greed and triumph all tangled into one.