Chapter 20: All I do is level up!!

The stone steps wound down into the dark, slick with a thick, colorless slime that smelled like stale pond water. The heat down here turned heavy, damp, and greasy, coating the skin in a film that made clothes stick to the small of the back.

Warrick led the descent, his heavy boots making a slow, dull thud against the damp granite. Behind him, Dane kept his red-hilted arming sword resting on his shoulder, his eyes darting between the narrow walls. Maren had her tower shield unslung, holding it slightly off her hip so the bottom corner didn’t scrape the stairs.

Rain walked second from the back, right in front of Toby. His left shoulder carried a dull ache from the shockwave, quieter now than it had been an hour ago. The heavy canvas bag over his shoulder clinked with every second step, filled with small, cheap cores that rattled against each other like gravel in a tin bucket.

"How much further does this go down?" Toby muttered, his bow held low across his chest. His thumb kept flicking against the wooden grip, a small, nervous habit.

"Until the floor flattens out," Nyra said from behind him. Her voice was barely a whisper, but it carried in the tight stone shaft. "Don’t look at the walls."

Rain looked anyway. The stone was covered in thick, gray fibrous strands that looked like dead insulation material pulling out of a wall. Every few yards, a cluster of thin, pale tubers jutted out from the cracks, twitching in rhythmic, three-second intervals as if breathing the heavy air.

The stairs ended abruptly, spilling the group into a sprawling, low-ceilinged network of interconnected tunnels. The ceiling was barely seven feet high in some spots, forcing Dane to keep his head tilted down so his hair didn’t drag against the hanging root clusters.

"Stay tight," Warrick said without stopping. "The main chamber from what I can see here looks hundred yards out. Everything down here is hungry."

They hadn’t taken twenty steps into the main tunnel before the dark shifted.

Out of a low, narrow crawlspace to the right, three grey, hunched figures scrambled onto the damp stone. They were roughly four feet tall, moving on all fours with impossibly long, jointed arms that ended in thick, curved fingernails. Their skin was dry, ash-colored, and stretched so tight over their ribcages that every bone looked like a snapping twig under the surface.

[Target Identified: Bonewretch]

[Rank: E-Rank (Common)]

[Type: Beast / Scavenger]

[Attributes: High Mobility, Erratic Movement, Low Defense]

[Threat Level: Very Low]

The lead Bonewretch let out a wet, chattering click from its toothless mouth and leapt straight sideways, bouncing off the left wall with a sharp thwack and scrambling up toward the ceiling.

"Watch the top!" Maren barked, bringing her tower shield up in a fast diagonal sweep.

The second Bonewretch skittered low, sliding under Maren’s shield and lunging straight for Dane’s ankle. Dane cursed, swinging his arming sword down in an awkward, chopping motion, but the creature snapped its spine backward, twisting out of the arc with a jittery, unnatural jerk.

At the same time, a thick, purple-tinged vine shot out from a dark crevice on the floor, wrapping three tight turns around Dane’s trailing calf.

"I’m caught!" Dane yelled, his balance breaking as the vine pulled taut with a dry, fibrous snap.

[Target Identified: Choke Vine]

[Rank: E-Rank (Flora-Beast)]

[Type: Plant / Trap]

[Attributes: Stationary, Constriction, High Fiber Density]

[Threat Level: Low]

The third Bonewretch, seeing Dane stumble, dropped from the low ceiling straight onto his back, its long grey fingers clawing frantically at the leather shoulder straps of his vest, its jaws snapping at the side of his neck.

"Nyra, get off my right!" Dane shoved at the creature with his elbow, but his boot was pinned to the floor by the Choke Vine, his weight completely off balance.

Nyra was already turning, but two more Bonewretches dropped out of a ceiling hole directly between her and Dane, their long arms thrashing in jittery, unpredictable circles. Toby fired an arrow at point-blank range, the shaft pinning one Bonewretch to the rock, but the second one lunged at his bow arm.

"Shit, I got to do something!" Rain said in panic.

He stepped forward, pulled his short iron trench knife from his belt, and threw his entire body weight into the gap between Dane and the wall. He had no form, no footwork. He lunged, bringing the five-inch iron blade down into the side of the Bonewretch’s neck with a wet, frantic thrust.

The knife went in two inches, hitting hard bone.

The creature shrieked, a high-pitched, metallic rasp that made Rain’s teeth ache. Its long, dry fingers whipped around, clawing violently at Rain’s left forearm, slicing three shallow red lines through his sweatshirt sleeve.

Panic took the wheel as a cold, blind surge of adrenaline locked his fingers around the knife handle. He yanked the blade out and stabbed it back into the creature’s chest. Then the ribs. Then the neck again. He drove the iron blade down four, five, six times in three seconds, his arm moving like a piston, his teeth grinding together so hard.

Plip, plip, plip.

Dark, oily blood splattered across his cheeks and the front of his gray hoodie. The Bonewretch went limp under his hand, its dry ribcage collapsing with a dull crunch, but Rain kept stabbing, his breath coming in jagged, wheezing hitches.

"Kid! Hey! Kid, stop!" Dane’s hand slammed down on Rain’s shoulder, pulling him back with a heavy yank. "It’s done! Stop punching the meat!"

Rain froze, his arm raised for another strike.

The Bonewretch lay still on the wet stone, its head twisted at an impossible angle, its grey skin shredded into a bloody pulp. Rain’s knife hand shook violently, covered in warm, slick black slime up to the knuckle.

He dropped his arm, his chest heaving, his eyes wide as he stared at the corpse.

A tiny, translucent blue box popped up in his peripheral vision, silent and unbothered by his ragged breathing.

[First Kill Confirmed: Bonewretch (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +5]

[Experience: 5 / 150]

Rain stared at the text. Something very deep in his chest, right behind his ribs where his core sat, gave a tiny, subtle thrum, like cold water dropped onto a hot iron plate.

"Nice dive," Dane muttered, kicking the severed end of the Choke Vine off his boot. He had sliced the main root with his sword while Rain was stabbing the creature. "Messy as hell, but you pulled it off me."

"I... yeah," Rain rasped, wiping his cheek with his dirty shoulder. "Is your leg okay?"

"Fine. Vine just bit through the leather." Dane turned back to the tunnel, where Maren and Nyra were already clearing two more Bonewretches that had tried to flank the line. "Keep your blade up. They don’t give you time to think."

The party didn’t stop to rest. The tunnel was crawling with them.

What followed turned into a grinding, dense crawl through a narrow stone gut choked with grey bodies and writhing purple stems.

They moved fifty feet, cleared three Bonewretches, cut two Choke Vines out of the ceiling, and took ten more steps before another pack skittered out of the side cracks.

Rain at this point had stopped overthinking what to do. He knew now that when it came to it, it was his knife standing between him and these monsters from shredding him to messy bits.

When the fifth Bonewretch lunged at his shoulder twenty minutes later, he stepped inside its long, swinging reach, let the grey arm glance off his leather vest, and drove the trench knife clean under its jaw, twisting the blade ninety degrees before pulling it out in a smooth, downward drag.

The creature collapsed instantly, its legs twitching twice before going flat.

[Target Eliminated: Bonewretch (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +5]

[Experience: 45 / 150]

Rain stepped over the body, unbuckled a small bone needle from his belt, and popped the small, cheap E-rank core out of the creature’s nape in a single, three-second motion. He dropped the tiny yellow shard into his canvas bag without looking at it, his eyes already scanning the dark walls ahead.

He was learning the rhythm.

The Bonewretches weren’t strong; they relied entirely on jittery, off-tempo lunges to make up for their lack of weight. Once he stopped watching their faces and started watching the alignment of their long, grey elbows, their attack paths became predictable, almost clumsy.

And he kept it going like that, amassing more kills.

Two tunnels down, a Choke Vine dropped from a ceiling arch, its thick purple tendrils whipping toward Toby’s neck. Rain took one long, fast stride forward, caught the main stem in his left hand, and sliced the root cluster flat against the stone face in one clean, horizontal stroke.

[Target Eliminated: Choke Vine (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +4]

[Experience: 82 / 150]

A quiet, strange feeling settled into his limbs, sharp and focused, a real satisfaction in finding out that his legs moved when he told them to move, that his hands didn’t slip on the bloody iron grip, that every strike made the next one slightly easier to calculate.

He caught a Bonewretch mid-air three minutes later, catching its grey throat with his forearm and driving his blade straight into its ribs before its clawed feet even touched the floor.

[Target Eliminated: Bonewretch (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +5]

He stepped forward, driving his boot into the neck of another grey scavenger that was trying to bite Maren’s heel from under a rock ledge. He drove the short blade down into its eye socket.

CRACK.

[Target Eliminated: Bonewretch (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +5]

Almost immediately, a warm, heavy pulse shot out from the center of his chest, radiating down his arms and legs like a splash of warm oil. The oppressive pressure of the cave’s ambient heat stepped back three inches, his lungs expanding smoothly as it felt like his core expanded.

[Level Up! You are now Level 2]

[3 Attribute Points Distributed]

[Experience: 3 / 220]

Rain pulled his knife out of the skull, standing up straight.

He could feel it already, something loosening under his skin, spreading warm through his joints. His boots felt heavier, planted firmer against the slick stone. The iron knife felt lighter in his grip, as if a quarter of its weight had simply gone missing between one swing and the next.

Seeing that indeed what he suspected was true, that he could level up from killing enough of these monsters and getting stronger, Rain went on a frenzy. He didn’t stay back like he was instructed to before they entered this rift. Now he went off and looked for trouble, chancing everyone to get to any monster that crept up on them.

In some twisted, ironic way, he was now the danger.

"Watch the left!" Nyra shouted from forty feet ahead.

The tunnel broadened into a wide, damp chamber filled with low stone ledges and stagnant pools of black water.

Two creatures dropped from a high ledge, landing on four thick, clawed feet with a heavy thud. They were knee-high, four feet long, covered in thick, bone-colored plating along their spines that flared out like jagged saw blades. Their long, narrow snouts were filled with thin, needle-like teeth, their yellow eyes fixed on the party’s legs.

[Target Identified: Ridgeback Skitterer]

[Rank: D-Rank (Common)]

[Type: Beast / Quadruped]

[Attributes: Armored Spine, Coordinated Flanking, High Pervasive Speed]

[Threat Level: Moderate]

They split instantly, one circling left toward Maren’s open side, the other cutting hard right across the black water pools to cut off Rain and Toby.

"D-ranks!" Dane yelled, stepping in to block the left one with his sword. "Don’t hit the back plates! The bone will snap your blade!"

The right Skitterer lunged at Rain, its four legs kicking up a spray of black water. It feinted left, its armored tail whipping sideways to throw off his timing, before snapping its needle-filled jaws toward Rain’s right knee.

Rain read the tail movement, stepped his left foot back two inches, and let the creature’s snout snap on thin air right beside his boot leather.

As the Skitterer passed him, its momentum carrying it forward, Rain brought his knife down hard, not on its spine, but straight into the soft, unprotected joint behind its right hind leg.

The blade bit deep. The Skitterer yelped, its back end collapsing into the wet gravel.

Before it could turn its narrow head to snap at his hand, Rain stomped his heavy right heel down onto its neck, pinning its head flat against the stone, and drove his knife through the base of its throat.

[Target Eliminated: Ridgeback Skitterer (D-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +22]

[Experience: 215 / 220]

"Get off!" Toby yelled, kicking at the second Skitterer that had managed to bypass Dane’s sword arc.

Rain turned, sprinted four paces across the shallow pool, and slammed his left shoulder directly into the second Skitterer’s ribs. The collision felt solid, like hitting a heavy leather bag. The creature skidded sideways across the wet rock, and Rain dropped on top of it, driving his knife through its ribs twice before it could reset its legs.

[Target Eliminated: Ridgeback Skitterer (D-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +22]

The warm, heavy pulse flared through his chest a second time, stronger, spreading all the way to his fingertips.

[Level Up! You are now Level 3]

[4 Attribute Points Distributed]

[Experience: 17 / 300]

The remaining small pack of Bonewretches broke, scattering back into the dark cracks of the ceiling as the last Skitterer went limp.

"Lull," Warrick called out from the front, his eye scanning the far archway. "Three minutes. Clean your blades and check your boots."

The party collapsed onto the low stone ledges, their breathing loud and ragged in the quiet chamber. Dane sat on a dry rock, pulling a small leather flask from his belt and taking a long, noisy gulp of water. Maren leaned her heavy tower shield against her knee, her shoulders sagging as she wiped sweat and grey blood off her forehead with a dirty cloth.

Rain stepped back into the shadow of a fallen stone pillar, away from the lantern light.

He wiped his iron knife against the dry skin of a dead Skitterer, tucked it into his belt, and took a slow, deep breath. The dull throbbing in his left shoulder had eased into a light, strange flexibility in his joints. He could even feel that his rib injury was mostly all nonexistent now.

Curious, he focused his mind, pulling up his full host sheet for the first time since entering the rift.

[Host Profile]

[Name: Rain]

[Level: 3]

[Experience: 17 / 300]

[Status: Awakened]

[HP: 100/100]

[Mana: 8/10]

[Strength: 13]

[Agility: 11]

[Endurance: 11]

[Intelligence: 16]

[Skill Slots: 1/1 (FUSED)]

He looked at the numbers, his eyes lingering on each row, finally seeing where those seven distributed points had actually landed.

Strength up to thirteen. Agility up to eleven. Endurance up to eleven. Mana sitting at eight out of ten.

He tapped his finger against his thigh, his mind sliding into an analytical groove.

’Endurance is eleven now,’ he thought, looking down at his chest. ’My HP is back at a hundred out of a hundred, but the last time that Skitterer’s tail clipped my leg, it felt like getting slapped with a wet rope. It didn’t leave a deep bruise, and my HP barely flickered.’

He thought back to the Reinforced Leather Guard Vest he was wearing. When he had first picked it up, the system frame had called out an effect: [Effect: +1 Defense ].

He looked back at his profile display. The word Defense wasn’t there. No line for physical damage mitigation, no armor class rating, no separate Defense stat sitting beside Strength or Agility.

’So where does the gear defense go?’ Rain reasoned through it slowly, letting his mind wander down the logic path. ’The system doesn’t list Defense as a core attribute because Defense isn’t an intrinsic stat of a human core. Endurance is. Endurance is my body’s natural capacity, how dense my bones are, how fast my muscle fibers recover, how much physical kinetic shock my tissue can absorb before tearing.’

He nodded to himself in the dark, the logic clicking together like small iron gears.

’Gear Defense is probably an external overlay. The vest takes one point of flat damage off the top of an impact before the kinetic force even reaches my skin. Then my Endurance stat processes whatever force leaks through that leather barrier. That’s why the tail strike didn’t hurt as much. My Endurance went from nine to eleven, so my body’s baseline structural density went up, while the vest stayed at its flat plus-one.’

It was an encouraging distinction. The system wasn’t handing him free numbers out of nowhere, it was tracking the raw, physical reality of what his core was doing to his meat and bone. Gear was extra padding sitting on top of a bigger foundation.

He closed the window with a small blink.

"Hey," a voice spoke from four feet away.

Rain started slightly, looking up.

Nyra was leaning against the edge of the stone pillar, her dark daggers held loosely in her hands. She was staring at his hands, her sharp eyes narrowed in the dim yellow light of the lantern.

"You’re moving different," Nyra said, her tone quiet, devoid of its earlier dry mockery.

Rain kept his expression flat, letting his shoulders relax into an unbothered posture. "Different how?"

"That first Bonewretch back at the top of the tunnel, you stabbed it what, eight times? Ten? Dane had to peel you off it." Nyra’s eyes dropped to his hands, then tracked back up to his chest. "That Skitterer just now, you read its flank turn and put it down in two moves before Toby even pulled his string back."

She leaned forward half an inch, her dark eyes searching his face. "That’s not luck. That’s not adrenaline either. Something’s changed."

Toby, sitting ten feet away on a dry rock, looked over, wiping his bow limb with a cloth. "He’s just getting used to the dark, Nyra. First time down here makes everyone jumpy."

"That’s not jumpy," Nyra muttered, her eyes staying on Rain for two more seconds before she pulled back, flicking a drop of black blood off her left dagger. "It’s something else."

Rain gave her a simple, neutral nod. He didn’t offer an explanation, and he didn’t feel the need to invent one. None of them had a real answer for what they were watching, an F-rank baseline suddenly moving and killing like he’d been doing it for years, and that wasn’t a gap he owed anyone the effort of filling.

He’d made his leave with leaving a few people confused.

He picked his way across the chamber, working the last of the dead Skitterers and scattered Bonewretches, popping small cores loose with quick, practiced flicks of his bone needle and dropping them into the canvas sack. It was still his job. Nobody had told him to stop being the carrier just because he’d started killing things himself.

He sat back against the cold stone once the bag was full again, letting his eyes drift half-closed while the others caught their breath around him.

Everyone in this chamber had come down here for the same reason. Credits. A shot at a guild contract if they were lucky. Warrick had built the whole pitch around that one promise, and it had worked on all five of them without exception.

But none of them were leaving this rift with what Rain was leaving with.

Dane would walk out stronger in the sense that surviving something hard always made a person a little sharper, a little more seasoned. Maren would go home with a fatter bag of core shards and maybe enough credits to cover another month of her brother’s serum. Toby would have a real C-rank raid on his record to wave at the next tryout that turned him down.

Rain would walk out of here an entirely different person than the one who walked in.

’I’m the only one here who actually levels up,’ he thought, and had to press his lips together to keep the grin off his face.

He almost laughed out loud at the sheer, absurd unfairness of it, unfairness finally running in his direction for once. A C-rank rift that had nearly gutted him three hours ago was quietly turning into the best thing that had ever happened to him yet, and not one of the four hunters resting around him had any idea.

"On your feet," Warrick’s rasping voice cut through the chamber. "Time’s up."