Dungeon Corpse Stacker: I Absorb Everything to Become Ominous Monarch
Chapter 1: Meat Shield

Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Meat Shield

The blade didn’t cut clean. It tore through Renan’s hamstrings with a sickening wet crunch, snapping the tendons like overworked rubber bands.

Renan collapsed hard onto the jagged obsidian floor. The sheer shock arrived before the burning pain, freezing the air in his lungs. Blood—hot and metallic—gushed instantly, soaking through his worn leather boots and pooling over the cold stone.

"Sorry, kid," Leon’s voice floated from above, completely devoid of heat. "The contract said we share the loot equally. It never said we all walked out alive."

Renan clawed at the sharp gravel, trying to drag his useless legs forward. "Leon... you bastard... the Guild Master paid you to guide me..."

"And I guided you straight to the bottom of an S-Rank Gate," Leon sneered, wiping Renan’s blood from his broadsword onto a silk handkerchief. He didn’t even bother looking Renan in the eye. "Look around you. A Class-S Abyssal Arachnid isn’t something a trash Tier-F porter like you gets to witness twice. Be useful for once. Buy us three minutes."

Behind Leon, the other three members of the Apex Guild party—a high-tier elemental mage and two heavy-armored vanguards—were already retreating toward the narrow stone corridor leading out. The mage held a glowing purple crystal, the Abyssal Core, worth millions on the black market. They had stripped the dungeon bare, and now they needed a distraction to slip past the guardian.

Kikikiki—

A sound like grinding rusty iron rattled the walls of the cavern.

From the ceiling of dark stalactites, eight compound eyes flared open—glowing like freshly stoked embers in the pitch black. The Abyssal Arachnid dropped. Tons of chitin, razor-sharp pedipalps, and dripping corrosive venom slammed onto the cavern floor just twenty paces behind Renan. The shockwave rattled his teeth, kicking up a cloud of ash and pulverized bone.

"Let’s move!" Leon barked, his boots clicking rapidly against the stone as the party sprinted down the exit tunnel.

The heavy iron portcullis slammed down behind them with a deafening bang. They locked it from the outside.

Renan was trapped.

He flipped onto his back, his breath coming in ragged, bloody hitches. Pain radiated from his severed hamstrings up into his spine, hot as liquid lead. The air smelled of sulfur, damp rot, and his own iron-rich blood.

The monster loomed over him. Its massive shadow blotted out the dim luminescent moss on the cavern roof. A drop of green saliva hissed as it struck Renan’s leather chest piece, burning straight through the tough hide and charring his skin down to the raw meat.

Renan gritted his teeth so hard he felt his molars crack. He refused to scream. He wouldn’t give Leon the satisfaction of hearing him beg, even if the bastard was already gone.

Is this where it ends?

Five years of dragging heavy supply crates through suffocating dungeons. Five years of being spit on by S-Rank Hunters, surviving on moldy rations just to pay off his sister’s medical bills. And now, his body was just a piece of raw bait left to soften the jaws of an abomination.

No.

Anger—pure, unadulterated venom—flooded his veins, temporarily drowning out the agony in his legs.

I won’t die as their meat shield.

The Abyssal Arachnid reared back, its front two scythe-like legs lifted high, aiming straight for Renan’s sternum to pin him down.

Renan didn’t close his eyes. He reached out blindly with his left hand, his fingers sinking into the cold, decaying flesh of a dead monster next to him—a Tier-A Ironhide Crawler that Leon’s party had slaughtered an hour earlier and left behind as trash.

The moment his bare palm touched the festering carcass, something deep within the marrow of his bones snapped open.

DING.

A sound echoed—not in his ears, but inside the dark hollows of his mind. It sounded like an iron bell striking in an empty cathedral.

A crimson window, sharp and jagged, burst into his line of sight.

[Conditions for Forbidden Extraction Met.] [Target: Ironhide Crawler (Tier-A) Corpse Detected.] [Initiating Absolute Extraction...]

Before Renan could process the words, a violent suction force ripped through his palm.

The massive, six-meter-long carcass of the Ironhide Crawler withered in an instant. Its tough gray hide shriveled into gray ash; its thick muscles liquefied and were pulled directly into Renan’s hand in streams of dark purple light.

AAARGH!

Renan gagged as an overwhelming surge of raw power slammed into his bloodstream. It felt like swallowing molten glass. His veins bulged against his skin, turning a deep, unnatural violet.

[Attributes Extracted!] [Strength +45] [Agility +30] [Physical Defense +80] [Skill Acquired: Passive - Hardened Carapace (Rank-A)]

CRACK-CRACK!

The bones in Renan’s shattered legs violently reset themselves. Muscle fibers knitted together at a terrifying speed, weaving with new, dense black threads of energy. The open wounds closed, leaving behind a faint, metallic sheen over his skin.

The Arachnid’s scythe leg came crashing down.

THWACK!

The strike didn’t pierce his chest. Renan caught the razor-sharp tip of the monster’s leg with his bare right hand.

The impact cracked the stone beneath his back, but his arm didn’t bend an inch. The monster’s venom hissed against his skin, but the newly acquired Hardened Carapace neutralized the acid instantly, puffing into harmless white steam.

The giant spider blinked its eight glowing eyes, its simple brain failing to comprehend how a dying human had just stopped a Tier-S strike with one hand.

Renan stared up at the monstrosity. His vision, once blurred by blood and tears, was now sharp enough to count the microscopic hairs on the beast’s mandibles. The world seemed to move in slow motion.

He slowly pushed the massive scythe leg away, rising to his feet without taking his eyes off the beast.

[Host’s Life Force Restored.] [System Notice: The Corpse Stacking Limit is currently [Unlimited].] [Absorb more to ascend.]

A cold, dark smile spread across Renan’s face. He cracked his neck, feeling the iron-hard density of his new muscles.

"Leon thought you were going to eat me," Renan whispered, his voice low and raspy, reverberating through the quiet cavern.

He stepped forward, his boots crushing the bone dust beneath him, and raised both hands toward the giant beast.

"Turns out, you’re just my next meal."

CLIFFHANGER BARIS TERAKHIR:

The Abyssal Arachnid screeched in sudden panic, taking a step backward as a towering shadow—far larger than the monster itself—began to rise from behind Renan’s back.