Chapter 32: Throw in the rope to save someone

Rain guided Peter away from the main courtyard path, stepping behind the heavy stone buttress of the library archive building where the streetlamps didn’t reach.

He pulled Peter down onto a low concrete ledge beneath the high, arched windows. Rain picked up the heavy thermal bag of food he’d set on the wall, pulled out the container of glazed pork belly over rice, popped the plastic lid, and handed the container and a disposable spoon directly to the shaking boy.

Peter didn’t even say thank you. He grabbed the plastic spoon with raw, desperate speed and began shoveling huge mouthfuls of steaming rice and glazed pork into his mouth. He chewed frantically, his eyes wide and watery, grease smudging across his pale, dirty chin as he swallowed without barely chewing, making small, choked noises in the back of his throat.

Rain watched him quietly for a moment, scratching the back of his head with a long, slow sigh. He reached into the bag, pulled out one of the warm cabbage rice cakes, and set it on Peter’s knee.

"Slow down, Peter," Rain said gently, his voice low and calm in the shadow of the stone arch. "Nobody’s taking it from you. Take a breath and chew, or you’re going to choke."

Peter swallowed hard, his chest heaving as he wiped his mouth with the back of his dirty sleeve. He held the thermal container tight against his chest with both hands, as if terrified it might vanish if he let go. A tear cut a clean, pale track through the dust on his cheek.

"I haven’t... I haven’t had a real meal since Tuesday," Peter mumbled, his voice raspy and thin. "I had sixty credits left on my campus meal card, but Dax took the card on Wednesday morning."

"Alright," Rain said, sitting down beside him on the concrete ledge, resting his forearms on his knees. "Start from the beginning. Tell me what happened, every bit of it."

Peter took a slow, trembling breath, looking down at the half-eaten pork bowl in his lap. His shoulders sagged under his worn green jacket.

"It started about a month ago," Peter said softly, his voice dropping into a dry, exhausted rhythm. "Right after orientation week. I was carrying my required gear kit back from the supply depot, the basic alloy knife, the leather vest, and the survey compass we were assigned for field theory. A group of upperclassmen pushed me into the drainage ditch near the eastern grounds and dumped my bag in the runoff water. The compass was ruined, and the knife blade snapped."

Rain listened quietly, although parts of him wondered why he hadn’t gotten any gear. Then again, maybe he realized Peter might be offering different courses than he was. His posture relaxed, his eyes fixed on the dark gravel path in front of them.

"The academy supply office told me a replacement kit was four thousand credits," Peter continued, his knuckles white against the plastic food container. "I didn’t have four thousand credits. My parents are farmhands out east; they saved for two years just to pay my entry application fee. I couldn’t ask them for more money. I was terrified I’d get dropped from the practical modules before the first week even ended."

He swallowed hard, shaking his head with a bitter, pathetic grimace. "That’s when Dax approached me outside the training hall. He was smiling, real friendly, acting like he just happened to see me struggling. He said he and his buddies ran a small student assistance fund for first-years who got hit with unexpected supply costs. He offered me four thousand credits on the spot."

"And you took it," Rain said softly, without a trace of anger or judgment.

"I took it," Peter whispered, his voice cracking. "I didn’t ask to read a contract. I didn’t ask about interest rates. I was scared, and I thought he was just being nice. But three days later, Dax, Petrov, and Corwin met me behind the lower gymnasium. They told me the four thousand had a weekly compound rate of twenty-five percent because it was an ’uncollateralized risk loan.’ By the end of the second week, the debt was already over six thousand."

Peter’s voice broke completely, a small sob escaping his throat before he forced it down. "When my parents sent me my monthly five-hundred-credit allowance for food, Petrov took my phone and transferred it right out of my account. Then Corwin told me I was going to work off the rest of the debt."

Rain shifted slightly on the stone ledge, his eyes narrowing just a fraction. "What kind of work?"

"They... they don’t do their own rift quota work," Peter stammered, looking up at Rain with raw, terrified eyes. "They hold a junior probationary contract with a mid-tier guild, the Iron Vane Guild. To keep their probationary standing and get their full induction bonuses at the end of the term, they have to turn in a weekly quota of D-rank monster cores and refined mana materials to prove they’re active in the field."

Peter took a ragged breath, rubbing his dirt-smeared nose. "Corwin, Petrov, and Dax don’t want to risk their own skins or burn their own Mana clearing D-rank gates. So they force me and two other broke first-years to do it. They send us into active D-rank rifts, or worse, they make us wait near the exit transport zones of independent guild clearings. We have to slip into the perimeter camps while the secondary teams are packing up and steal cores from the secondary storage crates."

Rain sat perfectly still, his mind processing the sheer, organized scumminess of the operation.

"They make you steal from other guilds’ contracted hauls," Rain stated, his voice flat.

"Yes!" Peter cried softly, clutching his hair with his free hand. "If we get caught, the independent teams will break our legs or hand us over to the campus enforcement officers, and Corwin’s crew will just deny they ever knew us! But if we don’t bring back at least two D-rank cores a week, Dax beats us until we can’t stand up! They hand those stolen cores in to Iron Vane under their own names to fulfill their junior guild quota!"

Peter leaned closer, his small frame trembling violently. "I’ve brought them six cores over the last three weeks, Rain! Six cores! On the open market, those are worth at least maybe...thousand credits total! But every time I ask how much of my debt is left, Corwin just laughs and says the interest went up again because I was ’late’ delivering the harvest! They won’t tell me what I owe! Right now, they claim the debt is somewhere between fourteen and sixteen thousand credits!"

He looked at Rain with a desperate, terrified intensity. "Corwin is the leader, he’s the one who plans the quota targets. Petrov is the one who tracks our schedules and checks our phones. But Dax..." Peter shuddered, his teeth clicking together. "Dax is the worst. He looks like a normal C-rank, but when he hits you, it doesn’t feel human, Rain. He hit me in the ribs last Thursday because I was ten minutes late, and it felt like being struck with a lead pipe. His arms get this weird, unnatural bulge right before he swings. It’s like he has iron under his skin."

Rain kept his face impassive, but internally, a cold, sharp click went off in his mind.

’A passive Strength Enhancement trait,’ Rain thought, remembering the exact feeling of Dax’s backhand striking his jaw in the rain-slicked alleyway weeks ago. ’I felt that exact same strike. It wasn’t just a heavy fist; it was an unnatural, muscle-augmented impact. That’s why his strikes carry three times the force they should,’

The full picture settled neatly in Rain’s mind. Corwin was the calculating face, Petrov was the administrator, and Dax was the heavy hammer enforcing their little predatory syndicate on terrified first-years who had nobody else to turn to.

Peter took a long, trembling breath, looking down at his worn, dirt-caked shoes. He looked impossibly small, sitting under the shadow of the massive granite archive wall.

Taking an informal four-thousand-credit loan from a group of notorious guild-track bullies without reading terms or asking a single question was an astoundingly stupid, reckless decision. It was the kind of mistake born of pure panic and lack of foresight, a desperate kid trying to hide a broken toy before anyone noticed.

But to Rain, standing in front of him wasn’t an idiot; it was a scared, broke kid who had been systematically hunted down and bled dry by three predators who specifically targeted people with no safety net.

Peter looked up, his green eyes wet with tears, holding out the half-empty pork bowl. "Rain... I know we’re not close. I know I told you to stay away from them before. But... do you have any money? Could you lend me anything to help pay them off? I’ll work for you! I’ll clean your room, I’ll carry your bags, I’ll pay you back every single credit once my scholarship grant clears next semester!"

Rain looked at him plainly, his voice quiet, steady, and entirely free of judgment or guilt. "Peter, I don’t have fourteen thousand credits to hand out."

Peter’s face fell, his last shred of frantic hope visibly vanishing from his eyes. He slumped against the stone wall, looking hollowed out.

"How..." Peter whispered, his voice dry and crackling. "How did you get them off your back? After they beat you in the alley that day, they came back looking for you three times. How did you get away from them?"

A short, dry, self-deprecating laugh escaped Rain’s lips. He shook his head slightly, a small smirk touching the corner of his mouth. "Peter, the last time I saw those three, I hopped on a transport bus and left the district for a week. I didn’t get them off my back. I was just somewhere else."

Peter stared at him, bewildered. "You... you just left?"

"I had things to take care of," Rain said simply.

Peter looked down at the ground, his shoulders shaking again. "Why were they after you in the first place? That night in the alley, why were they beating you?"

Rain looked out toward the quiet, lamp-lit courtyard. He thought of the two raw skill disks sitting safe in his memory, the synthesis that had created Flash Step, and the dark reality of what Corwin’s crew had been trying to beat out of him. He didn’t reveal a single word of it.

"They were just bullies, Peter," Rain said flatly, his voice even and unreadable. "They saw someone weak walking alone and decided to take what they could."

He leaned back against the granite wall, looking at the small, shaking boy sitting beside him.

It was an awful, miserable trap Peter had landed himself in. A trap built partly on Peter’s own foolishness, yes, but overwhelmingly maintained by three privileged, arrogant kids who felt entitled to bleed everyone around them just to save themselves a little effort on their guild quotas.

Rain looked at the warm cabbage rice cake resting on Peter’s knee. He reached over, picked up his bag of food, and set the whole thing securely in Peter’s lap.

"Listen to me, Peter," Rain said, his voice dropping into a firm, calm register that made the younger boy stop sniffling and look up. "I don’t have fourteen thousand credits sitting in my pocket to give you, and even if I did, giving it to Corwin wouldn’t fix this. Guys like that don’t stop taking when you pay them; they just realize you’re a steady faucet."

Peter swallowed hard. "Then... then what do I do?"

Rain stood up from the concrete ledge, smoothing down the front of his fresh dark-grey hoodie. His posture was upright, his broad shoulders squared, his broad frame compared to Peter’s casting a long, solid shadow across the stone driveway.

"Eat the rest of that food," Rain said plainly. "Go back to your dorm, lock your door, and get a full night’s sleep."

Peter blinked up at him, bewildered. "Rain, what are you going to do?"

"I might have a way to help with this," Rain said, his voice quiet and completely devoid of empty bravado or dramatic promises. "I don’t have all the answers right this second, but I’m looking at it. Don’t worry about Corwin’s crew tonight. Meet me outside the main lecture hall tomorrow afternoon after practical classes end."

Peter stared at Rain, his jaw slightly slack. For weeks, everyone Peter had talked to had turned their heads away, walked faster, or told him he was on his own. Seeing Rain standing there, looking taller, broader, and entirely unfazed by the names that had kept Peter awake in terror for a month, stirred a strange, quiet ember of hope in the boy’s chest.

"Okay," Peter whispered, clutching the food bag tight. "Okay. Tomorrow afternoon."

"Go on," Rain said warmly, giving him a small, reassuring nod. "Get inside before the broth gets cold."

Peter stood up, wiped his face with his sleeve, gave Rain one last long, bewildered look, and scurried off into the dark toward the lower dorm blocks, his boots pattering quickly against the gravel.

Rain walked back to Dorm Block C alone, his hands tucked deep into the front pocket of his grey hoodie.

The night air was cold, but he barely felt it.

He thought about Peter.

What Peter had done was undeniably foolish. Taking an informal, unwritten loan from three predatory senior students instead of going to the academy bursar, asking his instructors for an extension, or simply admitting he couldn’t afford the gear replacement was an act of pure, panic-driven short-sightedness. It was the exact kind of bad decision that made a situation partly the victim’s own fault.

’He made a stupid choice,’ Rain thought, watching his boots hit the stone sidewalk in a smooth, rhythmic cadence. ’He was scared, he didn’t think it through, and he dug his own hole.’

He paused near the central courtyard fountain, looking up at the high, lit windows of the upper-class dorm towers where the guild-track students lived.

’But knowing better sometimes requires someone to teach you better,’ Rain reasoned internally, his voice calm and unhurried. ’Peter didn’t have anyone showing him how the world actually works. He’s out here on his own, with parents who couldn’t advise him on guild politics if their lives depended on it. Corwin, Petrov, and Dax saw a kid with no armor and no backer, and they set a snare.’

Rain wasn’t setting out to play the hero of this story. He didn’t have a grand savior complex, and he didn’t think he was the righteous moral arbiter of Crystalpeak Vanguard Academy.

He was just a guy who had spent his entire life watching stronger people crush weaker people simply because they had the leverage to do it. He himself had walked into a trap as an underpaid carrier watching guild leaders like Warrick treat human lives like disposable copper coins.

He had walked out of a C-rank rift on two legs when he was supposed to die in the mud. His stats were climbing, and he finally had a little money and a little standing for the first time in his life.

He couldn’t watch a terrified kid get bled to death by three arrogant bullies when he had the means to step between them. Not especially if these three arrogant bullies were targeting him too.

"If you see a guy drowning," Rain murmured softly to the quiet night air, a small, resolute smile touching his face, "and you’ve got a rope in your hand, you don’t stand on the bank arguing about whether he should have learned to swim first. You just throw the rope."