Taeyang woke up rich.
His cut from the Cursed Mine clear was 15 million won — not the lion's share, but more money than he'd ever held at once. The Iron Wolves guild had paid him as a full member despite his D-rank, a decision that probably had more to do with fear than fairness. Nobody wanted to cheat the guy who could make dungeons kill their own bosses.
He spent the morning upgrading his equipment. Leather armor became reinforced leather with mana-weave stitching. The goblin-bone dagger was retired in favor of a proper hunting knife with an enchanted edge. He even bought a basic mana shield amulet — an emergency defensive item that could block one lethal attack before shattering.
By noon, he looked like a real hunter instead of a homeless person cosplaying as one.
His phone buzzed with party invitations. Word had spread faster than he'd expected. Four guilds wanted to recruit him. Seven parties wanted him as a specialist. The Hunter Association's monitoring service had sent three more notifications reminding him that his activities were being watched.
Taeyang ignored all of it.
He didn't want to join parties. Parties meant sharing. Parties meant explaining. Parties meant watching people die because they couldn't adapt as fast as he could.
He wanted to go solo again.
The dungeon he chose was called the "Mirrored Depths" — a B-rank located in an underground parking structure beneath an abandoned mall. The gimmick was reflective surfaces everywhere: mirrored walls, mirrored floors, mirrored ceilings that created infinite loops of visual confusion. Monsters could attack from any angle because you couldn't tell which direction they were coming from.
Recommended party size: eight hunters with at least one [True Sight] or equivalent ability.
Taeyang had [Dungeon Break]. True sight was for people who played by the rules.
---
The dungeon entrance was a service elevator that should have led to parking level B3. Instead, when Taeyang pressed the button, the elevator dropped through reality and deposited him in a hall of infinite mirrors.
His reflection stared back at him from every surface — above, below, left, right, and angles between. The space twisted in ways that hurt to process. Walking felt wrong because his brain couldn't determine which way was actually forward.
[Dungeon Break] activated automatically.
The parameter sets were dense here. Every reflective surface had its own rule set governing light interaction, visual confusion multipliers, and positional distortion. The monsters — [Mirror Stalkers] — existed between reflection layers, striking from angles that didn't technically exist in normal three-dimensional space.
```
[B-RANK DUNGEON: Mirrored Depths]
[Environmental Modifier: Visual Confusion ×8]
[Spatial Modifier: Non-Euclidean Reflections]
[Boss: The Reflected King (Exists in 7 simultaneous positions)]
```
Seven simultaneous positions. That sounded like a headache.
Taeyang started with the visual confusion parameter. Reducing it to normal levels would make navigation trivial.
**[PARAMETER MODIFICATION DETECTED]**
**[Visual Confusion changed from 8× to 1×]**
**[System Integrity Cost: 10 points]**
**[Remaining System Integrity: 90/100]**
The hall of mirrors snapped into focus. Suddenly he could see the actual layout: a network of corridors with mirrored walls, navigable, comprehensible. His reflections still stretched infinitely, but they no longer confused his sense of direction.
Too easy.
He pressed deeper, cutting down Mirror Stalkers with casual efficiency. Each one he encountered got its attack parameters reduced before it could engage. Speed dropped to zero. Damage reduced to trivial amounts. The monsters died before they understood they were being exploited.
**[Remaining System Integrity: 75/100]**
The second layer introduced the non-Euclidean element. Corridors looped back on themselves. Doorways led to rooms that shouldn't fit in the available space. Gravity shifted depending on which reflection you were closest to.
Taeyang modified the spatial rules. Made corridors actually linear. Made rooms obey normal geometry.
**[System Integrity Cost: 15 points]**
**[Remaining: 60/100]**
What remained was a series of mirrored hallways with manageable monsters and predictable layout. A C-rank dungeon at best.
Taeyang was bored.
He started modifying things he didn't need to modify. Monster spawn rates. Loot table odds. The brightness of the ambient lighting. Each change cost only a few points, but they added up.
**[Remaining: 52/100]**
**[Remaining: 45/100]**
**[Remaining: 38/100]**
By the time he reached the boss room, his SIP had dropped to 31 — lower than he'd planned, but still workable. He'd been careless, spending resources on quality-of-life improvements instead of conserving for the final fight.
The Reflected King stood in the center of a circular chamber with mirrored walls. It was humanoid, vaguely, but its body was made of living glass that showed different versions of itself in each reflection. Seven images, all moving independently, all capable of attacking from their reflective positions.
```
[BOSS: The Reflected King]
[HP: 300,000]
[Exists in: 7 simultaneous positions (reflections are real)]
[Damage: 1200-1800 (Physical/Reflection)]
[Special: Mirror Swap — Can switch places with any reflection instantly]
[Special: Shatter — When HP drops below 25%, all reflections attack simultaneously]
```
Seven real positions. He'd have to neutralize all seven to actually kill it.
Taeyang reached for the "simultaneous positions" parameter. This was the boss's core gimmick — removing it would reduce the fight to a standard one-on-one.
**[PARAMETER MODIFICATION ATTEMPTED]**
**[Error: Insufficient System Integrity for modification]**
**[Required: 45 points]**
**[Available: 31 points]**
His stomach dropped.
He'd wasted too much on trivial changes. Now he didn't have enough SIP to disable the boss's main mechanic.
The Reflected King had noticed him. All seven versions turned to face him simultaneously, their glass faces splitting into grins that reflected infinitely in the mirrored walls.
"Okay," Taeyang muttered. "Plan B."
He checked what he could afford. Individual reflection parameters. Environmental details. Maybe he could pick them off one at a time.
**[PARAMETER MODIFICATION DETECTED]**
**[Reflected King (Position 2): Damage changed from 1200-1800 to 0-0]**
**[System Integrity Cost: 8 points]**
**[Remaining: 23/100]**
One reflection became harmless. Six remained dangerous.
He modified another:
**[Remaining: 15/100]**
Two harmless. Five dangerous.
The Reflected King attacked. Not all at once — they moved in staggered sequences, forcing him to dodge from multiple angles. He couldn't track all of them. A glass fist caught his shoulder and spun him into a wall. His mana shield amulet flared and shattered, absorbing an attack that would have caved in his ribs.
One-time save, already used.
**[PARAMETER MODIFICATION DETECTED]**
**[Reflected King (Position 4): Damage changed to 0-0]**
**[Remaining: 7/100]**
Three harmless. Four dangerous. His SIP was almost gone.
He tried to modify a fourth reflection:
**[PARAMETER MODIFICATION FAILED]**
**[Insufficient System Integrity]**
**[Required: 8 points]**
**[Available: 7 points]**
Seven points left. Not enough to neuter another reflection. Not enough to do anything meaningful.
The four dangerous reflections circled him. Glass hands reached. Glass faces grinned.
Taeyang had one option left.
He'd been avoiding it because the warning in his ability description had been clear: if System Integrity reaches 0, the dungeon crashes and the user is trapped until restoration.
But being trapped was better than being dead.
He grabbed every parameter he could reach — environmental, monster, boss, everything — and started modifying wildly. The dungeon's code shuddered as he overwrote rules faster than he could process what he was changing.
**[System Integrity: 7 → 4 → 2 → 0]**
**[WARNING: CRITICAL SYSTEM INTEGRITY FAILURE]**
**[DUNGEON CRASH IMMINENT]**
The world flickered.
The Reflected King froze mid-attack, its glass body glitching between forms. The mirrored walls cracked with fractures that spread like lightning. The floor buckled. The ceiling developed holes that showed nothing — not darkness, not sky, just absence.
**[DUNGEON CRASH IN PROGRESS]**
**[All active entities suspended]**
**[Environmental rules: UNDEFINED]**
**[Restoration estimated time: 6 hours, 23 minutes]**
The king shattered into a thousand pieces that hung motionless in the air. The entire dungeon had frozen, caught mid-collapse, waiting for the System to rebuild it from backup.
Taeyang slumped against a cracked mirror and started laughing. Hysteria, maybe. Or relief. Or just the absurdity of having crashed an entire dungeon because he'd spent too many points making the lights brighter.
He was alive. Stuck, but alive.
---
The next six hours were the longest of his life.
The dungeon was frozen, but he wasn't. He could move through the suspended space, walking between motionless monster corpses and shattered glass that floated in fixed positions. The air was stale. The light was wrong — not bright or dark, just off.
His phone had no signal. The exit portal hadn't formed because the dungeon hadn't officially cleared. He was trapped in a broken pocket dimension with nothing to do but wait.
He tried to restart [Dungeon Break]. Nothing happened. His ability was as frozen as the rest of the System infrastructure. The SIP gauge showed 0/100 with a restoration timer counting down.
Four hours in, the hunger started. He hadn't brought food — why would he? Dungeons took hours at most, and he'd expected to be done in less than one.
Five hours in, he started talking to himself. Random things. Old game design arguments. Code optimization debates. Anything to fill the silence.
"The problem with MMO balance," he told a frozen Mirror Stalker, "is that developers can't predict player creativity. They build systems for the 90% case and get surprised when the 10% breaks everything."
The stalker didn't respond. Its reflection hung in a cracked mirror, frozen mid-lunge.
"But this System is different. It's not built by developers. It's built by... something else. Something that adapts. Something that learns." Taeyang traced a finger along a fracture line in the nearest wall. "And I just crashed one of its dungeons. That's going to have consequences, isn't it?"
The stalker offered no opinion.
"The gravity thing in Water Temple was already pushing it. The Cursed Mine definitely got flagged. And now this..." He looked at the suspended chaos around him. "I'm not just exploiting bugs anymore. I'm breaking the System so hard it needs six hours to reboot."
**[SYSTEM RESTORATION: 1 hour, 15 minutes remaining]**
Taeyang sat down, his back against a frozen piece of the Reflected King, and closed his eyes.
He'd gotten cocky. Two successful dungeon breaks had convinced him the System was easy. That his ability made him untouchable. That the rules didn't apply because he could rewrite them.
But the rules did apply. The 100 SIP cap wasn't a suggestion — it was a hard limit. Running out mid-dungeon wasn't a minor inconvenience — it was a crash that left him stranded for hours with no guarantee of survival.
If the boss had killed him before the crash completed, he'd be dead. Just dead.
"Slow down," he told himself. "Plan better. Stop wasting points on stupid stuff."
The lesson was clear. The question was whether he'd remember it the next time he felt invincible.
---
The dungeon rebuilt itself in stages.
First the walls, cracking fractures sealing like wounds healing in reverse. Then the floor, buckling pieces snapping back into place. The frozen glass shards of the Reflected King flowed together, reforming into the boss's original shape.
Then — crucially — the boss reset too.
**[DUNGEON RESTORATION COMPLETE]**
**[All entities reset to initial state]**
**[System Integrity: 0/100 → 100/100]**
**[Note: Due to dungeon crash, all progress has been reset. Loot acquisition requires re-clear.]**
The Reflected King stood in the center of its chamber, fully restored, HP at maximum. All the reflections Taeyang had neutralized were back. Every parameter he'd modified had reverted to default.
Six hours of waiting, and he was back at the boss fight with nothing to show for it.
The king turned to face him. Its glass mouth split into the same grin it had worn before the crash.
Taeyang's SIP was full again. 100 points. Enough to do this properly if he was careful.
He activated [Dungeon Break] and began the fight again.
This time, no wasted modifications. No quality-of-life improvements. Every point went toward the fight. He stripped reflections of their damage output one by one, systematically rather than desperately. When his SIP hit 40, he stopped modifying and finished the remaining threats with [King's Authority] and his enchanted knife.
The Reflected King shattered for the final time two hours after the dungeon restored.
**[BOSS DEFEATED]**
**[DUNGEON CLEARED: Mirrored Depths]**
**[Clear Time: 8 hours, 47 minutes]**
**[Note: Clear time includes restoration period. This clear will be flagged for review.]**
The loot materialized. B-rank stuff — decent, but not exceptional. A mirror shard weapon that would fetch good money. Some rare crafting materials.
But the real loot he'd hoped for was gone. The items he'd picked up before reaching the boss had vanished in the crash. The dungeon had taken back everything he'd acquired before the reset.
Six hours trapped. Zero net loot gain. A flagged clear that would bring more Association attention.
Taeyang stepped through the exit portal and emerged in the abandoned mall's parking garage. His legs were shaking. His stomach was a hollow pit. His mind was still processing the experience of being trapped in a frozen dimension for half a day.
He sat on the concrete floor and didn't move for a long time.
Eventually, his phone buzzed. Three missed calls from the Iron Wolves guild. A text from Cho Minhyuk asking if he was available for another run.
He ignored them and called a delivery service instead.
Food first. Then sleep. Then figuring out how to never make that mistake again.
The System notification appeared as he was eating jjajangmyeon on his apartment floor:
**[ANTI-BREAK PROTOCOL: Status Update]**
**[Observed event: Self-induced dungeon crash]**
**[Analysis: Target overextends when overconfident]**
**[Countermeasure development: Progressing]**
**[New protocol type: Integrity Drain (deployment pending)]**
Somewhere in the System's architecture, something had learned a valuable lesson about Park Taeyang.
He had limits. And those limits could be exploited.
