’I am hungry.’ Rohan groaned inwardly as he rubbed his stomach. ’Why do I suddenly feel hungry?’

He hissed and ignored his rumbling stomach.

They had been in the cave for a while now, which must have triggered the hunger. No one had said a word since the outburst between Priscilla and Eric. However, the silence gave Rohan enough time to ponder Eric’s previous accusation against Priscilla.

Although he had initially thought she simply possessed an Evolved Class, so he hadn’t dwelt much on it, it now seemed to be something much more than that.

Classes were divided into Evolved, Evolving, and Pre-evolving. Evolved Hunters gained all their skills right after awakening, and their only evolution came from making those skills stronger every time they leveled up—which was what he had assumed Priscilla’s class was. Evolving Hunters gained a stronger skill with every level. Pre-evolving Hunters stood between the two and were the most common type among Hunters, capable of gaining varying numbers of skills at any level. For example, a Hunter could gain four skills after awakening and then gain two more on the next level.

Although an Evolved Class granted all skills upfront, it still had its limits. Since there was currently no way for him to confront Priscilla, he let it slide. At least her hidden strength was keeping them alive.

Rohan’s mind drifted away from Priscilla’s anomalies and toward the true terror looming over the region: Zul’Kharath.

He had never truly fought the creature before... perhaps only crossing paths with it briefly in his previous life as Xuirong. Back then, the First Jianghu had belonged to his brother. After his brother’s passing, the government had handed control of the territory over to Rohan following his own awakening. Once Rohan met his own supposed end, the authorities had seized it once more.

The entire Region was a graveyard of history, its various horrors deeply rooted in a ruined, medieval Eastern culture. Through his past research, Rohan had discovered that this realm was once home to the foundational civilization that pioneered martial arts and weapon smithing, earning it the title of the First Jianghu.

As Xuirong, he had painstakingly studied the fragments of clues that survived the ancient cataclysm that wiped out the realm—shattered maps, faded scrolls, and forgotten texts. In fact, those very archives were currently hidden somewhere within this very pavilion. That was exactly what he had been searching for before his plans were derailed by his unexpected meeting with the Crimson Mage, which had forced him to announce his return to his snitch of a friend.

The ancient lore indicated that the First Jianghu’s downfall was ultimately triggered by a violent internal division and a devastating war between the realm’s ruling factions. It was during this cataclysmic era of betrayal that the human entities of the realm fell to the unknown corruption, birthing monsters like Zul’Kharath.

So, in a sense, the First Jianghu had been destroyed not by an outside cataclysm, but by the very humans who dwelt within it. After that, the corruption turned most of the population into the undead, who existed outside the Frontier System as pure anomalies.

That explanation was widely known among Hunters, which was why the government had decided to turn it into a zone for the newly awakened after Xuiyang and Xuirong cleared the undead during their respective eras. Well, they hadn’t cleared every last one of them.

Zul’Kharath was an undead who possessed the ability to trigger his own resurrection by forcing his memories into the mind of a host, and he had used Rohan back then to bring himself back, making him truly undying.

Rohan had caught glimpses of other undead rising as they fell, leaving him confused as to how Zul’Kharath was able to control the dead. How many Traits did the bastard even have?

To possess absolute spatial locking, a high-tier memory-infection resurrection, and now the authority to command a regional army of the dead completely shattered the established logic of a Superior Dangerous Beast.

If Zul’Kharath was a survivor of the original human faction wars that ruined the First Jianghu, his power didn’t stem from a system-assigned class template. It was derived from the ancient, unadulterated martial essence of the civilization that birthed the realm, corrupted and magnified a thousandfold by the anomaly.

The fact that the government had classified this pavilion as a safe zone for newly awakened hunters now felt like a sick joke. Xuiyang and Xuirong had spent their entire lives bleeding to clear the surface-level anomalies, yet the true core of the corruption had simply been slumbering deep within the spatial folds, waiting for a catalyst to wake it up.

Aside from the fact that the creature had forced its memories into Rohan’s mind, he was still certain his brother had mentioned it to him before he died. Maybe it was one of the creatures Xuiyang couldn’t defeat. Even Rohan, in his past life, had searched for it and never found it, only to run into it out of pure bad luck today.

Now, Rohan knew his plans for the First Jianghu had just gotten much bigger.

When he first came here, his plan was simple: get his hands on the maps and scrolls, kill the Crimson Mage, steal the identity of a Common Class hunter—either Dominion or Barry—and begin his journey back to the House of Arkhani.

But it seemed fate wanted to play a joke on him.

The House of Arkhani was where everything had begun, and it was where his ultimate reckoning awaited. But looking at the cards he was currently holding, the deck was completely stacked against him. The meticulous, calculated path he had laid out had completely disintegrated the moment Barry pressed his palm against that corrupted orb.

Now that Barry and Dominion were dead, the identity-theft plan was completely useless. Worse, Rohan was trapped inside a sealed spatial fault line with an active, unkillable parasite that had already rooted itself inside his cognitive fabric once before.

’If Xuiyang couldn’t finish it, and I couldn’t find it during my peak as Xuirong, how can I do it now? At this point, I need to stop acting. But doing so risks them finding out what I am, and I’ll become a target once again. I need to figure out a plan.’

As he was lost in thought, Eric suddenly groaned.

"Argh, I’m hungry!"

Rohan frowned. "Stay calm, Eric."

Eric’s breathing turned heavy and ragged as he gripped his stomach. "No, you don’t understand. It’s not just regular hunger. It burns!"

With a sudden burst of desperation, Eric spun around and marched straight toward the heavy wall of collapsed stones that blocked the path ahead. His face was twisted with a strange, frantic energy. He raised his fists, and the dull glow of his Strength Rune flared to life around his knuckles.

*Boom!*

He slammed his fists into the granite. The rock wall groaned under the heavy impact, spitting out dust and small chips of stone. He didn’t stop. He struck the barrier again and again, his muscles straining as he desperately tried to force a way through.

Rohan frowned and quickly walked up behind him, gripping Eric’s shoulder. "Calm down. It’s just hunger. We are Hunters, after all."

Eric violently shoved him away. His eyes were entirely bloodshot, wild, and filled with a terrifying, primal craze that completely broke his composure. "I said! I’m hungry!"

To Rohan’s surprise, Priscilla didn’t try to restore order. Instead, she rushed forward as well, her detached demeanor completely shattered. She began frantically banging against the heavy stones with her bare hands and her blade, her eyes burning with the exact same ravenous lust for sustenance.

Rohan’s expression darkened as he watched the two of them completely lose their minds to the sudden frenzy. With a final, explosive shatter, their combined madness finally broke the heavy stones apart, sending a loud, chaotic echo bouncing through the cavern.

But when the dust cleared and the final rocks tumbled away, there was no exit.