Soulless Soul

Chapter 12: Hot Slap

The woman slowly smiled, a dangerous, predatory gleam flashing deep within her icy purple eyes.

The glass of the sleep cage was remove.

Then, without a single word of warning, she moved her hand. Her arm blurred in motion, a swift, fluid arc that cut through the air before colliding heavily with Sky’s face. The slap resonated through the small containment room like a gunshot.

Sky’s whole body was violently turned around by the sheer force of the impact. If it wasn’t for the heavy leather restraints holding his arms and torso firmly in place against the sleep cage’s mattress, he would have probably flown off the bed and crashed against the opposite wall. The blow was so devastatingly hard that his vision shattered into a kaleidoscope of bright, blinding stars. For a brief, terrifying moment, the world faded, and he could have sworn he saw his long-dead parents waving at him from the afterlife.

He shook his head, his brain rattling against his skull as he tried to blink away the darkness. "Why did you do that?!" he wheezed out, his voice a mixture of shock, pain, and indignation.

The beautiful woman didn’t flinch. She simply adjusted the uniform jacket resting on her shoulders, her expression perfectly calm. "Well, I just felt you were somehow a threat to me."

"Huh?!" Sky stared at her, utterly bewildered. A threat? He was locked inside a reinforced metal cage, strapped down with heavy-duty restraints, and practically starving. How could a scrawny street rat like him be a threat to a high-ranking military official? Then, a cold realization struck him. Wait... is this my negative curse causing this? He remembered the treacherous nature of his curse and the dark magic of the dungeon array. It wasn’t uncommon for a curse to distort how people perceived him, drawing unprovoked hostility from total strangers. But as he rubbed his throbbing jaw, a stray, absurd thought filtered through his throbbing head. But... her hands were incredibly soft.

A second later, panic suppressed his wandering mind. Oh, curses! What am I thinking? She could literally kill me right here and nobody would care! Sky quickly forced himself to look down, hiding the sudden terror in his eyes.

The woman observed his sudden shift in demeanor, her purple eyes narrowing slightly. "Looks like you are back to your senses."

"Yeah..." Sky muttered, his voice trembling slightly as he forced out a dry, cynical chuckle. "That hot slap definitely woke me up."

"Good."

A heavy, oppressive silence settled over the room. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the faint, rhythmic humming of the containment facility’s ventilation system. Sky kept his gaze firmly fixed on the metallic floor, refusing to look her in the eyes again, while the woman casually flipped open her leather-bound book, jotting down notes with a sleek silver pen.

Meanwhile, after finishing her notes, the woman cleared her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, the silver stripes on her uniform catching the dim overhead light.

"Are you good now?" she asked, her tone entirely professional, as if she hadn’t just nearly detached his jaw a few moments prior.

Sky held his numb, swelling cheek, feeling the intense heat radiating from his skin. He carefully nodded his head, making sure not to make any sudden movements that she might interpret as another "threat."

"Good," she said, her voice dropping into a stern, lecturing tone. "Let me give you a piece of advice: don’t just stare at a woman with your mouth open like that. It just makes you look like a pervert. And in my circle, perverts don’t last very long."

Sky swallowed his pride, keeping his expression neutral. "Okay."

The woman didn’t reply immediately. Instead, she stepped closer to him, giving him a thorough, calculating look from head to toe. She scrutinized his lean build, his breathing pattern, and the faint residual aura of the dungeon array clinging to his skin. After writing down a few more lines in her book, she closed it with a sharp snap and added: "Well... maybe you’ll actually amount to something. In any case, since you’re awake—welcome back to the land of the living.

Congratulations on surviving your Dungeon Run, Common Skies."

Hearing those words, a strange sensation washed over Sunny.

Common Skies.

That was what he would be called in society from now on. He was no longer Slum Skies or Orphan Skies. He was no longer just another nameless, invisible piece of trash rotting away in the dark alleys of the outskirts. By surviving the first trial, he had officially made his debut into society. He was recognized. He existed.

But that was how people would address him for now, at least in the short span of days until the upcoming Royal Rumble. The peace would be incredibly short-lived. After that brutal event, he would either return from the treacherous Dungeon Realm as an Uncommon, or he wouldn’t return at all, his body left to rot in some forgotten corner of the alternate reality.

Common Skies...

He mused over the title. In the official bureaucratic language of the government, the correct term for his new status was actually "White One Skies," a title derived from the pale, basic color of a beginner’s soul core. But humans, as they always did, had invented their own set of colloquial words for those called by the dungeon array. People who had just successfully finished their First Solo Dungeon Run were universally referred to by the public as

"common."

It was the very bottom of a massive, deadly ladder. There were still several other ranks of ascension above him. To climb, he would have to go back into the meat grinder, entering the fray this time to battle it out against other survivors. If he survived that madness, he would achieve the rank of the Uncommon.

The progression didn’t stop there. If he were to decide to enter a Second Dungeon Run and managed to survive the vastly increased difficulty, his soul core would evolve. He would become a "Blue One"—though regular people simply called them Rare humans. Rare humans were a completely different breed. They possessed immense wealth, influence, and privilege. They held so much power that they could enter and exit the Dungeon Realm entirely as they wished without fear of death like the others below that rank. Some of them even chose to never go back there at all, content to live out the rest of their lives in absolute luxury within the safe zones of the upper districts.

And then, far above the Rare, there were the Very Rare. These were the elite champions who had successfully conquered the brutal trials of the Third Dungeon Run, earning the proud right to call themselves "Purple Ones."

To the average citizen, Purple Ones were as powerful as higher cosmic beings, walking gods among mortals, and they were exceedingly rare to encounter. Their strength was so absolute that they could take on lower-ranked Dungeon runs entirely by themselves, slaughtering hordes of monsters without breaking a sweat.

Sunny stared at the ceiling, his numb cheek still throbbing. He was just a Common. A White One. But as he looked at the powerful, heavily decorated woman standing before him, a dark, quiet ambition began to take root in his chest. He had survived the slums, and he had survived the dungeon. He wasn’t planning on staying at the bottom for long.

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