Chapter 320

"—and the third division needs at least forty sets of armor before the end of the month, so if you start on the breastplates tonight—"

Grid wasn't listening anymore.

He was thinking.

The scroll was sitting right there in his inventory. A random destination. Somewhere nobody had chosen. Which meant it could be somewhere nobody had been. A hunting ground with no other players in it. A dungeon nobody had cleared. A first-clear reward with his name on it.

And more importantly, it would be somewhere Lauel wasn't.

Grid looked at Lauel, who was still talking. He thought about forty sets of armor that Lauel wanted.

This was an emergency.

"—and Grid, are you even— What are you doing?"

Grid had the scroll out. The red cord was already untied.

Lauel's face went white. "Grid. No. Grid, put that—"

Grid tore it in half.

[You have used the Scroll of Unbound Passage.]

[Destination: Unknown.]

The last thing he saw was Lauel lunging across the workbench with both hands out, Vanter's mouth falling open, and Khan calling out to Grid to be careful.

Then the smithy disappeared.

. . .

There was no ground.

Grid's feet kicked at nothing. His stomach shot up into his throat. The wind screamed past his ears so loudly that it took him a full second to realize the screaming was also coming from him.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

It was completely dark. Rock walls rushed past on both sides, close enough that he could feel the cold coming off them. He was falling headfirst down a hole so deep that he couldn't see the top or the bottom.

He was also still wearing the plain cloth shirt and trousers he always wore in the smithy. Beginner clothes. No armor. No sword. Nothing.

How deep is this?!

A minute passed. Then two. His throat was raw from screaming. His brain finally found enough room for one useful thought.

...Boots.

He tore open his inventory in midair, fingers fumbling, and dragged Braham's Boots out of the list.

[You have equipped 'Braham's Boots'!]

"Fly! FLY, YOU STUPID BOOTS!"

[The skill 'Fly' has been activated.]

His body jerked to a stop so hard that his teeth clacked together. He hung there in the dark, upside down, breathing hard.

Then, still floating, he started pulling things out of his inventory as fast as his hands could move.

[You have equipped 'Holy Light Armor'!]

[You have equipped 'Holy Light Gloves'!]

[You have equipped 'Holy Light Crown'!]

[The set effect has been activated.]

[You have equipped 'Failure'!]

The shark-shaped blue sword settled into his hand. Its edge gave off a faint glow in the darkness.

[Failure: Attack Power +20% in dark places.]

"...Okay," Grid muttered. "Okay. Now I'm dressed."

He drifted down slowly for another three minutes before his boots finally touched solid ground. He looked up. There was nothing to see. No light. No top. Just darkness going up forever.

He opened his guild chat.

"Lauel. I'm okay. I'm in some kind of hole. It's really deep. Come get me."

[Message failed to send. The current location cannot be identified.]

He tried a whisper.

[Whisper failed. The current location cannot be identified.]

He tried Vanter. He tried Faker. He tried Irene. Every message bounced back with the same line.

He opened his map.

It was blank. There was no name in the corner, no region, no coordinates. Just an empty gray square with a single dot in the middle that was him.

Grid looked at the blank map for a long time.

"...Ah," he said quietly.

The cavern around him was enormous. Faint red lines ran through the rock walls like veins, pulsing slowly with dull light. The air was warm and smelled of sulfur. Somewhere far away, something heavy was scraping against stone.

Grid's hand tightened on Failure.

"Noe. Randy. Come out."

Two shapes appeared beside him.

The first was a small black cat with bat-like wings and bright golden eyes, who stretched, yawned, and sniffed the air with great interest. The second was a little girl. She barely came up to Grid's waist, and she stood with her hands clasped behind her back, rocking on her heels, peering around the dark cavern with wide, delighted eyes as if he had brought her somewhere fun.

"Master!" Noe said brightly. "It smells like home here, Nyang!"

"...Home?"

"Hell smells a bit like this. Not as nice, though, Nyang."

Randy giggled and tugged on Grid's sleeve. Her eyes were fixed on the darkness, on the direction of the scraping sound.

It came again. Closer. Then a second one joined it. And a third.

Grid grinned.

"Good," he said. "I was starting to get bored."

They came out of the dark on all fours.

There were four of them, each the size of a carriage, long and low to the ground, covered in overlapping black scales that looked more like slabs of stone than skin. The same red veins pulsed along their backs and tails. Their eyes glowed a dull orange, and when they opened their mouths, the air in front of them shimmered with heat.

[Demonic Underground Lizard]

[Level: 384]

The others were 381, 387 and 389.

Grid was Level 285. These were a hundred levels above him.

He didn't wait for them. He charged.

"Blacksmith's Rage!"

[Blacksmith's Rage has been activated.]

Randy's small body blurred as she ran beside him. For a moment she was a little girl with her hair streaming behind her, and then she was Grid. A perfect copy, down to the armor and the glowing blue sword, running at his side with the same reckless grin.

Grid swung Failure at the nearest lizard's neck with everything he had.

Clang!

Sparks flew. The blade skidded off the black scales and left a shallow white line.

[You have dealt 14,320 damage.]

The lizard's health bar barely moved. It whipped its head around and its jaws slammed into his shoulder.

[You have received 9,870 damage.]

[You have resisted the abnormal condition 'Demonic Corrosion'.]

A dark, smoking stain spread across his pauldron where the teeth had hit, then faded without biting through. Grid barely noticed. He was a Legend. He was immune to most abnormal status conditions.

"Hard, huh?" he laughed. "Then I'll just hit you more! Linked Kill!"

[Linked Kill has been activated.]

Failure moved on its own. One strike, two, three, four, five, all landing on the same spot at the base of the lizard's neck. The scales cracked. Bright red light spilled out from underneath.

[You have dealt 61,400 damage.]

[You have dealt 63,100 damage.]

[You have dealt 59,800 damage.]

[You have dealt 62,700 damage.]

[You have dealt 60,900 damage.]

"It's soft under there!" Grid shouted. "Randy! Hit the cracks!"

Randy tried. But she was half a step behind him, still learning how he moved, and the other three lizards hit them from the sides before she could land her strike. Grid threw himself sideways and a cone of shimmering heat washed over the spot where he'd stood, turning the stone a dull, glowing orange. Randy took the edge of it and staggered back, armor smoking.

Grid didn't slow down. He never did.

He went straight back in, swinging, trading hits instead of dodging them. His health bar dropped. He drank a potion without looking and kept swinging. A tail caught him across the ribs.

[You have received 12,450 damage.]

[You have resisted the abnormal condition 'Demonic Corrosion'.]

"Pinnacle Kill!"

[Pinnacle Kill has been activated.]

The blade drove into the crack in the first lizard's neck and changed direction in the middle of the strike, curving deeper.

[Critical!]

[You have dealt 248,900 damage.]

The lizard screamed. Its health bar fell below a quarter.

Above them, Noe swooped down out of the dark. The little cat opened his mouth wide and went through the motion of swallowing the wounded lizard whole, but its body never went in. Only a thread of pale light came away from it and slid down his throat. Its soul.

[The memphis has taken part of the target’s soul.]

[There will be a 50% decline in the target’s main stats for 3 seconds.]

[The stats taken from the target will be transferred to the master.]

[Strength has increased by 2,603.]

"Good boy, Noe!"

"Their souls are really tasty, Nyang," Noe said happily, and dove for the next one.

It went on like that. Ten minutes. Fifteen. The lizards were too tough to kill quickly and too smart to be fooled the same way twice. Every few seconds, one of them would bite or claw or breathe heat, and the familiar line would flash past. And every thirty seconds, Noe would swallow another soul and transfer some of its stats to him for three seconds.

[You have resisted the abnormal condition 'Demonic Corrosion'.]

Grid lost count of how many potions he drank. He lost count of how many dances he threw. Wave to slow them. Revolve to throw their bites back into their faces. Flower Revolve to mark the pack so that every attack aimed at him came back on them which he failed more times than he succeeded. And every time Linked Kill or Pinnacle Kill came off cooldown, he used it again.

Slowly, Randy started to keep up. The first few times, she struck a heartbeat after him. Then half a heartbeat. Then, somewhere around the twentieth minute, Grid shouted "Now!" and they both hit the same cracked seam at the same instant, two identical blue swords sinking in side by side.

[Critical!]

[You have dealt 187,300 damage.]

The first lizard collapsed. Its body shuddered, then broke apart into a cloud of tiny blue pixels that drifted up into the dark and vanished.

Something dropped onto the stone where it had been.

[You have killed a Demonic Underground Lizard!]

[You have gained 8,640,000 experience!]

[Level up!]

Grid stared at the number.

Eight million.

The desert worms outside his city only gave around 2 million and the worms didn't spawn all the time. But here, a single lizard had just given him eight million.

He bent down and picked up the drop.

[Demonic Underground Lizard's Scale]

[Rating: Epic]

[A scale from a lizard that has lived for centuries in a land soaked with demonic energy. It is as hard as steel and highly resistant to heat. When worked into armor, it can partly absorb demonic energy.

- Production material.]

Grid's eyes lit up. A blacksmith's material. A good one.

Then the other three lizards roared, and he threw the scale into his inventory and spun around.

The fight took another twenty minutes. By the end, Grid's arms were shaking, Randy was back to being a little girl sitting on a rock and swinging her legs, and Noe was licking his paws with great satisfaction. Four piles of blue light had come and gone. Two of the lizards had dropped a pair of scales each, one had dropped a single scale, and the last had left behind a slab of lizard meat instead. Six scales and a slab of meat sat in Grid's inventory.

And a lot of potions were gone.

Grid looked at the glowing number on his experience bar. He looked at the dark tunnels that led away in every direction, where more scraping sounds were already starting up.

A slow, wide grin spread across his face.

"Noe. Randy."

They both looked at him.

"We're staying right here," Grid said, "until I hit three hundred."