Dungeon Corpse Stacker: I Absorb Everything to Become Ominous Monarch
Chapter 6: The Vault of Forgotten Flesh

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: The Vault of Forgotten Flesh

The air inside the Underground City smelled of stale grease, cheap tobacco, and sulfur.

Located three hundred feet directly beneath the glowing skyscrapers of the upper metropolis, the Slums were an unpoliced lawless zone—a haven for black-market dealers, unregistered Hunters, and syndicate bosses who traded in illegal dungeon contraband.

Renan stood in the shadows of an alleyway, pulling his tattered black coat tightly around his shoulders. His crimson-purple eyes flickered under the dim neon lights of a flickering sign overhead: VIPER SYNDICATE CORPSE STORAGE.

Before him stood a massive steel door, eight inches thick, reinforced with high-tier anti-mana runes. Two heavily armored guards wearing biohazard suits stood outside, armed with rapid-fire automatic rifles loaded with mana-piercing rounds.

"Halt!" one guard barked, raising his rifle as Renan stepped out of the fog. "This is private syndicate territory! Clear out, beggar, or we’ll turn you into target practice!"

Renan didn’t stop walking.

"Private territory?" Renan muttered, his voice echoing with an unnatural, hollow vibration. "Not anymore."

"Shoot him!"

Both guards opened fire simultaneously.

RAT-AT-AT-AT-AT!

Streams of blue energy bullets chewed through the dark, tearing toward Renan’s chest.

Renan didn’t dodge. He simply raised his left hand, flicking his wrist.

[Skill Activated: Corrosive Aura]

A wall of dense, violet shadow energy expanded three feet in front of him. The mana-piercing bullets hit the dark mist and melted instantly, evaporating into harmless sparks before they could touch his skin.

Before the guards could rack their slides to reload, Renan stepped through his own aura like a ghost.

THWACK! THWACK!

Renan grabbed both guards by the throat, slamming their helmets together with a sickening metallic crunch. The glass viewports shattered, and both men slumped unconscious to the blood-slick pavement.

Renan turned toward the reinforced vault door. He didn’t bother looking for a keycard or a passcode. He placed his bare palm against the center of the heavy steel.

[Strength: 330]

Renan flexed his fingers, driving a jolt of raw, unrefined physical power straight through his palm into the door’s internal mechanisms.

BOOM!

The massive, eight-inch steel door bowed violently inward. The heavy deadbolts snapped like brittle toothpicks, and the ten-ton barrier collapsed backward into the room with a deafening crash that echoed through the underground tunnels.

Inside, a freezing cloud of liquid nitrogen vapor rolled out across the floor.

Renan stepped over the fallen steel door, his eyes scanning the vast, cavernous room. It was the size of three football fields, chilled by giant industrial refrigeration units mounted on the ceiling.

Stacked fifty feet high on metal racks were thousands of monster carcasses—Tier-C Ironbeak Vultures, Tier-B Magma Hounds, and dozens of giant Tier-A Rock-Golems—all preserved in ice.

This was the Viper Syndicate’s secret goldmine. They bought cheap, discarded carcasses from corrupt Hunter parties and extracted their hide, teeth, and mana-stones for illegal black-market trade.

To the Syndicate, it was millions of dollars in raw materials.

To Renan, it was an ocean of unspent status points.

"Intruder!" a harsh, rasping voice shouted from a raised catwalk overlooking the vault.

A tall, bald man in an expensive fur coat stepped into the light, flanked by thirty heavily armed syndicate enforcers wielding enchanted machetes and mana-bazookas. It was Boss Victor, the head of the Viper Syndicate’s underground operations.

Victor looked down at Renan, his face twisting into a furious scowl. "Do you have any idea whose house you just broke into, brat?! You’re standing in forty million credits worth of inventory!"

Renan looked up, his expression completely blank. "Forty million? I don’t care about the money, Victor."

Victor pulled two glowing silver revolvers from his coat, pointing them down at Renan’s forehead. "Then why the hell are you here?!"

Renan opened his arms wide, his cold purple eyes reflecting the pale blue light of the frozen carcasses around him.

"I’m here to eat."

DING!

A blinding cascade of crimson system panels flared around Renan’s head, illuminating the entire frozen vault in a blood-red hue.

[Sensory Scan Complete.] [Area: Underground Corpse Vault.] [Detected: 3,420 Unclaimed Monster Carcasses (Tier-D to Tier-A).] [Warning: Mass Extraction will place immense strain on host’s spiritual vessel.] [Do you wish to proceed?]

"Proceed," Renan whispered.

"Kill him! Blow him to pieces!" Victor screamed from the catwalk.

Thirty syndicate guards opened fire. Bazooka shells, elemental fireballs, and enchanted blades rained down toward the center of the vault in a deadly storm.

Renan didn’t move an inch. He slammed both palms down onto the metal floor grating.

[ABSORB EVERYTHING.]

RUMBLE!

A terrifying dark vortex erupted from Renan’s body, exploding outward in a hundred-foot radius. The pitch-black mana didn’t just touch the ground—it spread like a living plague, climbing up the thirty-foot racks, wrapping around every frozen carcass in the room.

Thousands of dead monsters began to shake violently inside their ice blocks.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The ice shattered. The flesh, bone, and residual mana of 3,420 monster carcasses dissolved simultaneously into streams of glowing crimson, green, and purple light particles. The light spiraled into the air, forming a massive, roaring hurricane of pure energy centered directly over Renan’s head.

The incoming rockets and fireballs were instantly swallowed by the swirling energy vortex, detonating harmlessly in mid-air.

"W-What is that?!" Victor stumbled backward on the catwalk, dropping his silver revolvers in absolute terror as the temperature in the vault spiked from below freezing to a scorching inferno. "He’s... he’s absorbing the entire vault!"

Inside the eye of the hurricane, Renan threw his head back, his veins bulging as thousands of attribute points poured into his body all at once.

DING! DING! DING! DING!

[Mass Extraction in Progress...] [Strength +450!] [Agility +380!] [Vitality +520!] [Mana +600!]

[Physical Muscle Density Increased by 300%!] [Bone Structure Enriched with Mithril-Grade Hardness!]

[Passive Skill Acquired: Regeneration (Rank-S)] [Active Skill Acquired: Mass Extraction (Rank-A)] [Title Upgraded: Ominous Monarch (Initiate)]

BOOM!

The energy hurricane collapsed inward, violently snapping into Renan’s chest.

The three thousand carcasses on the racks instantly shriveled into fine gray powder, blowing away like dust in the wind. The vast vault—once packed to the ceiling with valuable monster remains—was now completely empty.

Renan stood in the center of the dust cloud.

His dark coat fluttered without wind. The air around him distorted, bending under the immense physical weight of his new stat density. He slowly raised his head, his glowing purple eyes locking directly onto Boss Victor shivering on the catwalk above.

Victor fell to his knees, his hands trembling as he stared at the empty racks. Forty million credits of inventory—gone in thirty seconds.

"You... what are you...?" Victor whispered, his voice cracking with pure horror.

Renan took a single step forward. He didn’t use a skill. He simply jumped.

BOOM!

The concrete floor beneath his feet cratered as Renan shot upward like a missile, instantly appearing right in front of Victor on the high catwalk.

Renan reached out, grabbing Victor by his fur collar and lifting the heavy syndicate boss off his feet with one finger.

"This vault belongs to me now, Victor," Renan said, his voice quiet, calm, and terrifyingly absolute. "And so does every Hunter working under your command."

Victor gasped for air, his eyes wide as he saw a floating crimson system window suddenly appear in front of his face:

[System Notice: Faction Subjugation Initiated. Choose: Complete Obedience or Immediate Extraction.]