My SSS-Rank Dungeon: Reborn In A Reverse World

The room was filled with dark miasma in just a few seconds, and that was all it took for the students to feel the corruption within them, shaking their minds in both fear and excitement.

It was like a starved animal had finally found food after many days. The problem was that the animal was imprisoned inside a fragile cage named human.

Now that the animal had seen food named the Miasma, it became restless and began to attack the cage, desperate to get out and devour that food.

The food danced around the cage, tempting the animal even more, which made it restless to the point of madness, and the attacks became fiercer and more relentless.

In the end, it depended on how much the cage could endure before it broke apart and the beast escaped.

This was what the female students were experiencing. They were fighting off the animal named Corruption inside them, restraining it with all their willpower, and making sure the food-like miasma couldn't tempt it any further.

As for the men, they had a much lower resistance toward Corruption than the women, but their task was different. They only needed to focus on the external enemy, making sure it couldn't penetrate the fortress-like walls of their bodies.

Leon had higher resistance than the average man, but he knew the miasma could still affect him, so he was taking this seriously.

He closed his eyes and felt the strange miasma curling around his flesh like a living parasite. It awakened a repulsive sensation inside him, making him scrunch his nose in disgust. He found the presence of the miasma loathsome, and if it weren't for his goals, he would have kept himself far away from this disgusting abomination.

It wasn't even something he wanted to feel or had ever felt before. No, it was something his entire being screamed against. His instincts told him that this wasn't just a virus, it was filth that did not belong in existence.

He had been amidst the miasma before, but that time he had been in a hurry, using skills to shield himself. He hadn't lived through it properly, hadn't truly experienced it.

Only now was he experiencing this sensation directly, and he had to admit, he hated every single moment of it.

'As far as I know, others don't feel it to this degree. Then why am I the only one?' Leon wondered as he resisted the feeling.

He had read records on this too. The Academy's library had countless resources, including theories, experiments, and content left behind by previous students and professors.

From those studies, he knew what everyone felt when exposed to Corruption. Certainly, men felt worse than women due to their low resistance, but it wasn't supposed to be this extreme.

No, it would be wrong to say that Leon was struggling against Corruption. On the contrary, he was easily holding his fort strong against it.

He was a Mutant, so it wasn't a problem for him to survive in a Corrupted environment unless the concentration and density of Corruption were absurdly high.

So survival wasn't the problem. The problem was the sensation. He found the touch of Corruption so utterly disgusting that he wanted to vomit.

It was repulsion at the deepest level.

'This doesn't make sense. No man has ever felt this way. Then what? Is it again because of the damned Dungeon?' Leon cursed mentally, clenching his fists. 'Or is it because of my Mutant race? No… that doesn't make sense at all. If anything, my racial ability should make me more familiar with it, not repulsed by it.'

Leon couldn't understand it. His thoughts automatically went to the Dungeon, since it was the only thing that separated him from everyone else.

'The Dungeon has monsters which aren't corrupted. They give pure Essence that has no trace of Corruption at all,' Leon thought. 'And I'm connected to it. So perhaps this feeling isn't entirely mine, it's coming from the Dungeon. The Dungeon is pure, and something entirely opposite of the Corruption.'

He felt he was moving in the right direction. It could explain why he hated Corruption so much. He already despised it for the pain and suffering it brought to humans, but now the hatred had transformed into something far more primal.

'It feels as if I'm a superior being, and a lowly worm has dared to lick my feet. So disgusting,' Leon groaned before mentally slapping himself. 'The hell are you thinking? Superior being? Bro, this shit can kill you in seconds. You're the worm here.'

He then ignored the useless thoughts churning in his head and concentrated on defending against the miasma. His mind became calm, but the feeling of disgust lingered, gnawing at him.

'The reason doesn't matter. If I have to enter the Primordial Expanse, then I need to get used to this. I can't allow myself to be distracted by disgust in a fight against those abominations. I need to master it, not let it master me.'

That was how his goal for this training changed. It was different from the others. While they were trying to fight off Corruption, he was forcing himself to get used to the vile disgust welling up inside him.

His stomach retched, bile rising in his throat, but he held his ground and stayed still.

Every single second felt like an eternity. He tried to think of other things, of his friends, of his goals, but his mind always circled back to the crawling sensation of Corruption.

He didn't know what was happening around him. All he knew was that if this continued, he might go mad.

'Mad? A little madness is a low price to enter the Primordial Expanse,' Leon grinned inwardly. 'You damned Dungeon. You already killed me so many times, and now you even want to stop me from stepping into the Primordial Expanse? Dream on! I will get used to this.'

If he was being honest, Leon didn't really want to enter the Primordial Expanse. He didn't like it one bit. But he knew he had to if he wanted to keep everyone safe.

If he wanted Earth to win against Corruption, then entering the Primordial Expanse was a necessity.

'Silver is there. You think a Dungeon like you can stop me from meeting her? Never!' Leon took a deep breath, which meant he also inhaled some of the miasma.

Every fiber of his being rejected the intrusion, and his body became a battleground. Every single cell within him began to fight off the miasma without his command.

It was as if his very flesh believed it was a matter of life and death.

It wrecked his body from the inside out, but Leon didn't shy away. He welcomed the torment, forcing himself to endure it to overcome this obstacle.

But soon, he discovered something that shocked him to the core.

The battlefield inside him raged violently. Some of his internal organs suffered in the outburst, but the results stunned him.

The miasma that had entered his body was actually defeated, and the warriors of his body had transformed it into a dark gas.

What surprised him even more was that he didn't feel any hatred toward the gas. No repulsion. No disgust. Nothing. It was just an external byproduct that had entered his body, and now that same body demanded the exile of this foreign gas.

Leon exhaled slowly, and the black mist leaked out of his mouth like a dying flame.

'My body can actually neutralize the Corruption? What the fuck?'

It was something extremely difficult even for women to achieve. That was why they always suppressed the Corruption within themselves instead of neutralizing it.

Rarely the women could manage it, but even then, it was supposed to be a long, gradual process. How in all seven hells did his body neutralize the Corruption so quickly?

'No, wait! The women don't actually neutralize the Corruption. They separate the Essence from the mana and excrete the remaining filth of Corruption into the atmosphere.'

Only then did he remember some details he had read in a book. It wasn't something deeply written in the game lore, it was a scattered note, easily overlooked.

What women absorbed was mana, and mana was a mixture of Essence and Corruption. That was why Soul Shards contained more purified Essence, since death itself cleansed much of the Corruption away.

The mana resided inside the women's Soul Core, which meant they held both Essence and Corruption together. While it was true that Corruption sometimes settled directly inside their soul, most of the time it was the mana that carried Corruption into their cores.

What women did was slowly separate the Essence from the mana, and the leftover Corruption would then be excreted into the atmosphere.

But what his body had just done was something completely different and miraculous. It didn't separate the two. It actually neutralized the Corruption itself instead of casting it away.

'No wonder there was such a fierce battle inside me. Fuck! Just how many secrets does this Dungeon hold?'