CHAPTER 189: [PICTURE FRAME]

The faint light spilling through the doorway sharpened the shapes inside, and Eli’s breath caught in his throat.

It wasn’t a hospital.

Not a house.

Not even a workshop.

Not really.

From the outside, the building looked like an ordinary, timeworn structure—something forgotten by history and reclaimed by nature. But inside... inside was something else entirely.

"...What the hell..." Eli whispered, his voice shaking as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

It was a lab.

Not the kind you’d see in fantasy dungeons, with glowing potions and alchemical tables. Not even the arcane research chambers Hunters sometimes discovered in old ruins.

No. This was human.

Human-made. Human-designed.

But also—wrong.

The air was thick with dust, each breath carrying the taste of metal and decay. The faint smell of ozone and oil clung to the space, stale but unmistakable.

The walls were lined with cracked tiles, and what used to be white was now mottled gray and brown with time. Thick vines snaked across the floor, crawling up over toppled counters and rusted metal frames.

Old wires hung from the ceiling like veins, swaying slightly whenever the wind breathed through the broken windows. Shards of shattered glass glimmered faintly on the floor like stars caught in the dark.

Eli’s gaze swept across the room—and his stomach turned.

There were test tubes. Dozens of them. Some cracked, others shattered, a few somehow untouched. The faint scent of chemicals lingered in the air.

Machines—real machines, not mana-infused constructs—stood silent against the walls. They were old, dented, yet oddly intact.

A centrifuge with a broken lid.

A computer terminal coated in dust and cobwebs.

Everywhere he looked, there was evidence of human hands—science, not sorcery.

But the more he looked, the more wrong it all felt.

The glass containers scattered across the counters weren’t filled with normal substances. Some held liquids that shimmered unnaturally—iridescent blues and violets that pulsed faintly, as if alive. One jar held what looked like tar, thick and black, the surface twitching every few seconds like it was breathing.

And in the center of the room...

A metal table.

Bolted to the ground.

With restraints still attached.

Eli froze, staring at it. The belts were torn, the buckles rusted, but there was no mistaking what they were for.

Something—someone—had been tied there.

He swallowed hard, his throat dry. "What... is all this?"

He took a step inside.

The moment his boot crossed the threshold, a faint buzz broke the silence.

"AAH—!" Eli stumbled back as movement exploded across the floor. Tiny, chittering shapes scattered in all directions—mutated bugs, their translucent bodies streaked with glowing blue veins.

His heart slammed against his ribs.

Then something larger scurried across the broken tiles—a rat, or something that had once been one. Its tail split into two halfway down, its whiskers sparking with faint static as it squeaked and vanished into the shadows.

"...What the actual fuck..." Eli whispered, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt, his breath shaky.

He stood there, frozen, staring at the darkness that swallowed the creatures whole. His chest rose and fell rapidly. But slowly—curiosity began to override fear.

The machines weren’t magical.

They were technological.

But not the kind of human tech found in modern Korenea.

This was... newer. More futuristic. Yet the dust made it seem like it was older than it should be.

The lab benches were metal. The shelving units were standard. Even the swivel chairs, though covered in mold, were unmistakably human in design.

"This looks like something out of a sci-fi movie..." Eli muttered under his breath, voice trembling as he moved deeper into the room.

Not the cheap kind either—the expensive kind, where every prop was crafted with precision and meaning. It was too detailed, too deliberate to be coincidence.

He stepped around a fallen cabinet, the soles of his boots crunching against broken glass. His eyes darted from one machine to the next, heart pounding harder with every realization.

It was chaotic, yes. Broken. Overgrown with vines and rot.

But not... destroyed.

Not like a ruin left to time.

More like a place abandoned in a hurry.

Eli’s pulse quickened. He looked around one last time—the shattered instruments, the half-empty vials, the restraints—and his voice came out as a whisper, fragile and trembling.

"Someone was using this..." he said softly. "And they left."

He swallowed, his gaze flicking toward the doorway.

"Suddenly."

The thought raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

He ran his fingers along the edge of one table. There was dust, dirt, vines... but no burn marks, no monster destruction, no signs of forced entry or violent escape.

Just abandonment.

Sudden abandonment.

Eli crouched down, picking up a shattered vial. The glass was thin—lab-grade. Inside, faint residue glowed with a soft iridescent tint.

He held it up to the light.

"What even were they doing here...?"

He turned slightly, eyes scanning the place again.

And the more he looked, the more his stomach twisted in confusion.

Everything here was familiar to him—not in a dungeon way, but in a human way. Something he could’ve found in a hidden Korenean research base. Or a government lab. Or—

He stopped.

"...Was this from Aerth...?" he whispered, the words barely forming as they left his lips. "Are there humans here? How could..."

His voice died in his throat.

Impossible.

It had to be impossible.

There was no universe, no logic, no cracked-dungeon-mana anomaly that could explain this—a human research facility from Aerth sitting in the middle of a dungeon in Korenea.

Right?

Right?

Eli’s pulse hammered as he shook his head sharply, trying to fling the thought away before it rooted deeper.

"This is crazy," he muttered, voice unsteady. "I’m just—freaking myself out. It just looks similar. That’s all. That’s all."

But the words sounded wrong even to him.

Too thin.

Too forced.

The silence pressed against his skull, thick and suffocating, like the air itself didn’t believe him.

Slowly, as if compelled, Eli turned his head back toward the doorway.

Toward the massive shadow waiting outside.

The serpent hadn’t moved.Not an inch.

Its enormous head remained lowered, watching him through the cracked entrance, eyes dim and heavy with something that was almost—

Mournful.

Not hungry.

Not hostile.

Just... sad.

Eli’s breath hitched.

’Why did it bring me here? Why show me this?’

Was it from here?

He took another step inside, his boots crunching on broken glass and brittle paper. The sound echoed too loudly in the hollow room, each crackling step sending ripples through his nerves.

The deeper he walked, the stranger it became.

Scattered lab samples, some long dried and crusted inside their vials.

Shattered monitors, screens blackened and burned.

Glass cabinets with stains—faded rust-red and deep violet—that smeared the inside like old blood or chemical spills.

Papers, so crumpled and decayed they barely resembled pages, littered the floor like wilted petals.

Eli crouched, hesitantly picking up a scrap of paper between two fingers.

The ink was faded, the letters warped by time, but he could still make out lines. Numbers. Symbols. Charts.

Scientific notation.

Human notation.

"...This is in Korenean," he whispered, throat tightening. "I...can understand it."

He let the page slip from his fingers, watched it flutter back to the dusty floor.

A strange, terrifying awe coiled in his chest.

Curiosity twisted painfully with dread.

His mind raced, questions crashing into each other so fast he couldn’t contain them.

’Who built this?’

’What were they researching?’

’Where did they go?’

’Why does this look exactly—exactly—like labs from Aerth...?’

And the one question that felt like ice water down his spine—

’Why does the serpent want me to see it?’

He swallowed hard, feeling his pulse throb in his throat.

Eli’s heart stuttered against his ribs, a sharp pulse that almost knocked the air from his lungs.

He forced himself to keep walking.

One step.

Then another.

Each movement felt like pushing through invisible weight—as if the room itself were holding its breath with him. The crunch of broken glass under his boots echoed through the hollow space, ricocheting off metal counters and rusted machines like whispers chasing him.

He dragged his gaze across everything—rows of shattered vials, overturned metal stools, thick vines gripping onto cabinets, liquids glowing with unnatural light.

None of it made sense.

None of it belonged in any dungeon he had ever seen or studied.

But he kept walking.

Because something in this place—something in that serpent—was connected to him.

Then—

A glint.

Soft. Tiny. Easily lost in the layers of dust and tangled vines.

But it snagged his attention like a hook.

"...What is that?" Eli breathed.

His feet moved on instinct, crunching over debris as he approached the faint shimmer. As he got closer, the object began to take shape beneath the mess—half-buried under crumpled papers and a fallen stack of binders.

A corner of metal.

A pane of cracked glass.

A frame.

A picture frame.

Eli froze.

His breath trembled in his throat as he crouched down, fingertips brushing away bits of debris. The frame was rectangular, edges metal, its glass fractured in a web of delicate cracks. Dust coated most of it so thickly it almost looked gray.

But he could see them—shapes beneath the glass.

Silhouettes.

Humanoid?

His pulse spiked.

Gently—like it might shatter if he touched it wrong—he lifted the frame into his hands. It was colder than he expected. Heavy. Real.

Not dungeon-made.

Human-made.

Eli’s chest tightened, his throat closing around a sudden lump.

’This has to be it... The owner. The researchers. The ones who built this place...’

His hands shook so badly the frame rattled.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to see—a monster in disguise, an alien, or the face of a human who had somehow crossed dimensions.

Or worst of all—

Something connected to Orion.

His palms were slick with sweat. He swallowed hard, exhaling shakily as he lifted his thumb toward the dusty glass.

"Just... show me," he whispered, though he wasn’t sure if he was talking to the frame or himself.

His thumb hovered.

Then pressed.

Smeared.

The dust parted, revealing—

BOOM.

The entire building shook violently.

Glass rattled on the counters. Metal groaned in its bolts. Dust rained from the ceiling in thick clouds. Eli stumbled, barely managing to keep the frame from slipping out of his grip.

His heart lurched into his throat.

That wasn’t thunder.

It wasn’t a quake.

That was—

an impact.