Chapter 21: Level up… Level up… Level up!!

"Get your boots under you," Warrick called out into the thick air. His voice rasped over the low, ambient hum of the glowing red crystals. "The floor is going to drop off again. Standing around lets the heat soak into your joints."

Maren pushed herself off her knees with a wet grunt, her broad hand leaving a smudged palm print on her heavy tower shield. Her face was flushed dark red, sweat dripping steadily from her jaw. Dane pulled himself up against a jagged pillar, his red-hilted sword scraping hard against the stone as he relied on the steel to balance his weight.

Toby looked at Rain while slinging his quiver back over his shoulder. "Your vest is soaked, kid. You still got breath in you?"

"Enough to keep moving," Rain said, pulling his strap higher on his collar. "Legs feel fine."

"Must be nice being so young," Dane muttered, shaking his right wrist out until the joints popped. "My ankles feel like someone filled my boots with crushed glass."

"Move," Warrick commanded, stepping past the glowing red cluster into a wider, downward-sloping trench.

The descent led straight into a dense nest of lower-tier activity. The cavern floor flattened into a broad, muddy basin where the ceiling dipped to six feet, choked with thick webs of fibrous gray growth that hung like wet curtains.

Rain moved straight into the gap before Dane could set his stance, three Bonewretches scrambling out of what looked like a drainage seam on the left, their long ash-colored arms thrashing in erratic circles. He drove his short iron trench knife through the eye socket of the first scavenger, planted his boot against its chest to wrench the blade free, and pivoted on his heel to slash across the throat of the second.

"Left side, Toby!" Rain called out, his voice sharp and loud in the tight space. "Keep the high ledge clear!"

THWIP.

An arrow buried itself into the ribs of a Bonewretch that had been prepping to jump from a hanging root. "Got it!" Toby shouted back. "Watch the pool!"

Four more Bonewretches and two Ridgeback Skitterers surged out of the muddy water in a chaotic, splashing cluster. Rain took a glancing strike to his hip from a Skitterer’s tail as he drove his blade down into its jaw joint, the impact dulling against the leather guard vest.

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

[Experience Gained: +22]

He cleared two more Bonewretches in rapid succession, using his increased Strength to throw one bodily into an approaching Skitterer before finishing both on the ground. Three more Choke Vine clusters dropped from the low ceiling arch, their purple stems thrashing blindly until Maren stepped through, her mace crushing the main root clusters against the granite face in heavy, rhythmic strokes.

Over the next twenty minutes, the party carved their way through thirty yards of infested mud, clearing five separate small swarms that tried to pinch them against the narrow walls, kills piling up faster than any of them were bothering to count anymore.

[Target Eliminated: Bonewretch (E-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +5]

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

[Experience Gained: +25]

[Experience: 142 / 400]

When the muddy basin finally cleared into a dry, stone shelf, Warrick called a ninety-second halt. The party collapsed against the dry rock wall, their chests working hard in the dense, hot air.

Warrick walked over to the edge of the shelf where Rain was crouched, popping a low-grade core out of a Skitterer’s skull. The large C-rank hunter stopped, looking down at the pile of cores Rain had already neatly stacked inside his canvas bag.

"You’re keeping your form when you hit the mud," Warrick said flatly. His small eyes were cold, assessing Rain like a tool being weighed on a scale. "I took you on to carry canvas and keep your mouth shut. Most F-ranks with an academy badge spend their first raid throwing up behind a rock or crying about their boots."

Rain looked up from his work, his fingers still sticky with dark hemolymph. He kept his posture relaxed, resting his forearm on his knee. "So far in the academy, all I’ve learnt is theory. Theory doesn’t stop something from biting your knee,"

"No, it doesn’t," Warrick agreed, his jaw shifting as he chewed on a piece of dried meat. "You’re pulling D-rank weight out here. You’ve cleared twelve kills on your own since we left the stairs. If you don’t turn into a liability when we reach the inner threshold, I’ll bump your contract share to eight percent of the total core haul instead of the flat three hundred credits."

Dane, sitting fifteen feet away, looked up sharply, his hand tightening around his water skin. Nyra didn’t move, but her eyes slid sideways toward Rain, her sharp gaze narrowing.

"Eight percent is fair," Rain said, keeping his voice even, entirely free of excitement or gratitude. "I’ll keep clearing the flanks."

Warrick gave a single, curt nod and turned back to the dark tunnel.

’I know he isn’t doing me a favor,’ Rain thought, watching the broad back of the C-rank hunter move away. ’He sees a cheap asset operating at five times its purchase cost. If he bumps my pay, it gives him an excuse to push me harder into the blind spots so his main fighters don’t take heavy hits on their armor before the boss. It’s cold but then again, It’s practical. Because if I’m being real, eight percent of a C-rank rift haul is over twelve hundred credits. I can use twelve hundred credits.’

Warrick raised his hand, halting the group at the mouth of a massive, arching tunnel carved out of dark red basalt.

"Training wheels are off," Warrick said, his tone dropping an octave, the casual indifference he’d carried since the entrance gone entirely. "We’re crossing into the core pocket now. The junk monsters are behind us. Everything in this next section is built to hunt in groups, and everything in here has enough power to tear through iron armour if you let it surround you."

He unbuckled the leather strap across his chest, letting his heavy coat hang looser over his shoulders. "Keep your eyes on the ceiling and your ears open. If you hear a shriek that sounds like a whistle, drop low instantly."

They stepped into the red basalt tunnel.

The shift in atmosphere was immediate. The air grew so dense that every breath tasted like hot iron filings, and the faint bioluminescence of the upper caves vanished completely, replaced by deep, pulsing veins of dark red crystal that seemed to beat in time with a slow, subterranean pulse.

From seventy yards down the vaulted corridor, three figures detached themselves from the dark walls almost immediately like the group had triggered a silent alarm of some sort.

They stood upright on two long, reverse-jointed legs, standing nearly six feet tall. Their bodies were lean, covered in smooth, slate-gray skin that absorbed the red light of the crystals. Where their faces should have been, a solid, seamless mask of thick white bone covered the skull, smooth except for three narrow, vertical slits that glowed with a faint, pale yellow light.

[Target Identified: Hollowfang Stalker]

[Rank: C-Rank (Low)]

[Type: Beast / Predator]

[Attributes: Extreme Physical Output, Sound-Based Disorientation, Coordinated Flanking]

[Threat Level: High]

"Three of them!" Dane barked, stepping forward, his sword coming down into a high guard. "Hold the line!"

The middle Stalker tilted its bone-masked head back and let out a sound that hit the air like a physical slap, a high, vibrating whistle that buzzed directly inside the ear canals of everyone in the corridor.

Rain’s head throbbed instantly. A wave of sharp nausea surged through his stomach, his depth perception warping for a split second as the stone floor seemed to tilt twenty degrees to the right.

"Agh!" Toby dropped his bow to one knee, clutching his ears as blood trickled from his left nostril.

The two flanking Stalkers moved with a terrifying, silent speed, their slate-gray bodies turning into blurred streaks across the basalt walls.

CLANG!

Maren’s tower shield rang like a church bell as the first Stalker slammed its long, bone-tipped forearm into the steel face. The force of the impact drove her back three feet, her heavy iron boots leaving black rubber skid marks in the dirt.

"They’re too fast!" Maren screamed, her face pale as she swung her mace blind to force the creature back.

The second Stalker appeared directly on Dane’s right flank. Its long arm whipped out, three curved bone talons slicing straight through the leather seam at his shoulder.

SLASH.

Dane yelled out in pain, stumbling sideways as blood sprayed across the dark rock.

Rain lunged forward, stepping into the Stalker’s blind spot as it drew its arm back for a second, finishing strike on Dane. He drove his short iron trench knife straight into the soft, grey skin under the creature’s armpit with all sixteen points of his Strength behind it.

SNAP!

The cheap iron blade hit a ridge of dense, internal bone plate inside the Stalker’s torso. The five-inch blade shattered at the hilt with a sharp metallic crack, sending a violent shockwave running up Rain’s forearm.

The Stalker whipped its bone-masked head around, its glowing yellow eye-slits locking onto Rain from six inches away. Its long, clawed hand backhanded Rain across the chest before he could pull back.

THWACK!

[HP: 88/100]

[Damage Taken: 12 ]

The blow felt like getting struck by a swinging oak beam. Rain was launched sideways, crashing hard against the jagged basalt wall, the breath exploding from his lungs in a ragged gasp.

The Stalker stepped over Dane, its four-jointed leg raising to drive its bone-tipped heel straight down into Rain’s chest.

"Get off!" Rain snarled viciously with a rasp.

He drove his feet against the rock face behind him, lunged straight under the falling heel, and slammed his left forearm into the Stalker’s knee joint, bending it backward against its natural hinge. As the creature stumbled forward with a wet click of its joint, Rain grabbed the shattered stub of his trench knife, just two inches of jagged iron sticking out of the hilt, and drove it directly into the open, yellow eye-slit on the bone mask.

CRUNCH.

The jagged iron stub bit deep into the soft tissue behind the bone plate. The Stalker let out a strangled, bubbling shriek, its long arms flailing wildly.

And then Rain pulled the Knife out and did it all over again. Stabbing the same eye until he felt the knife crack the soft tissue there.

Rain held his grip, grabbing the top ridge of the bone mask with his bare left hand, his fingers digging into the rough texture of the skull, yanking the creature’s head down while driving his right thumb straight into the second eye-slit, gouging and tearing with pure, unfiltered leverage.

Dark, thick yellow fluid squirted across his wrists, soaking his sleeves in a hot, foul-smelling grease. The creature’s thrashing grew frantic, its talons clawing bloody gashes into Rain’s forearms, but Rain held his grip, his teeth bared, driving his weight down until he felt the internal bone structure of the creature’s eye socket collapse under his thumb.

[HP: 79/100]

[Damage Taken: 9]

The Stalker went limp, crashing face-first into the dark mud.

[Target Eliminated: Hollowfang Stalker (C-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +65]

[Experience: 217 / 400]

Rain pulled his hand back, his thumb dripping with yellow slime and dark blood. He sat on the ground, his chest heaving, his left arm shaking violently from the impact.

Five feet away, Dane lay on his back, staring at Rain with wide, terrified eyes. His shoulder was bleeding heavily, but his gaze was locked on the young carrier sitting in the mud, covered in monster brain fluid, holding a broken knife handle.

"You... you just gouged its head out," Dane stammered, his voice trembling. "With your thumb."

Rain looked down at his yellow-stained hand, then at the dead C-rank creature. "The knife broke."