[Chapter 140. Ill-Equipped]

The word spread through the city’s hollowed-out arteries with the speed of a structural fire—more food had arrived. Within the hour, the hotel square teemed with a restless sea of humanity. The crowd surged forward, their desperation held in check only by a line of makeshift tables that had been hastily arranged to serve as a makeshift barricade.

Under Samantha’s direction, six volunteers worked with grim focus. The process had grown noticeably more efficient; the chaos of the previous day had been replaced by a nascent bureaucracy. Each person in the line was issued a citizen number—a simple scrap of paper—before receiving their allocated portion. These numbers served a triple purpose: they tracked the rapidly dwindling rations, prevented the inevitable attempts at hoarding, and maintained a fragile sense of order in a world that had forgotten what order felt like.

Searanox stood back, his shades reflecting the flickering light of the rising sun. He directed the cargo drones with minute gestures of his gauntleted hand, commanding them to drop their heavy loads behind the safety of the tables. The meat hit the cleared ground with heavy, wet thuds. He had made sure the area was scrubbed of the worst debris; they wanted to keep contamination to a minimum, though 'sanitary' was a relative term in a ruin.

As the last cargo drone discharged its hold and flickered out of sight, two men approached Searanox. They were weathered by age and hard labor, their skin like cured parchment. These two must be the oldest people he had seen since the system had descended.

`Now that I think about it, I haven't seen any old people to begin with.` He thought before the rough voice of one of them ripped him out of his thoughts.

"We heard you're looking for someone who knows their way around a hide," the first man said. His voice was rough, sounding like gravel being ground in a mortar.

"That I do," Searanox replied, turning to face them. His gauntlets gleamed with a dull, metallic luster in the light of the morning sun.

"I'm Wolfgang," the man said, nodding toward his companion. "This is Jürgen. We hunted together for thirty years before the world went to hell. We know our way around leather, from the first cut to the final stitch."

"Take a room in the hotel. Tell Rayan what you need for a workshop," Searanox commanded. Even as he spoke, a small utility drone slipped into the building he had claimed earlier. It returned moments later carrying the Tanning Kit, dropping the reinforced wooden crate at the men’s feet with a dull clunk.

"Will this suffice?" Searanox asked, his boot catching the latch and kicking the lid open.

Wolfgang and Jürgen knelt, their calloused fingers sorting through the specialized knives, the curved scrapers, and the bottles of pungent chemicals. They exchanged a silent, professional look before nodding in approval.

"It’s more than enough to start," Wolfgang said. "Better tools than I’ve seen in a decade."

"Good. Begin today. Time is a luxury we don't have," Searanox said, gesturing toward the hotel’s side entrance. "Take two or three of the young ones with you. They need to learn the trade. We can’t have skills dying out with your generation."

The utility drone repositioned itself, depositing two metric tons of raw animal hides in the foyer. The pile grew rapidly, a mountain of fur and hides spilling across the tiled floor as the drone emptied its dimensional storage.

"Just leave them there," Wolfgang said, already reaching for a heavy-duty scraper. "We’ll get them moved and salted before the rot sets in."

"I'll check on your progress tomorrow," Searanox said, already turning his attention back to the square. "No need to wait up."

The crowd in the square thinned as people departed with their meager rations, vanishing back into the shadows of the surrounding ruins. However, a small group of five remained, standing apart from the others. They wore a assortment of gear—pieces clearly purchased from the System shop—but they held themselves with the rigid posture of the old city guards. The only thing betraying them was the flickering, unmistakable fear in their eyes.

Searanox approached them, his heavy boots scraping against the grit and shattered glass. "You’re the Level 5s Rayan sent?"

The woman at the front of the group squared her shoulders, her hand resting nervously on the hilt of a standard-issue shortsword. "We are. I'm Alina." Her chin lifted with a touch of brittle bravado as she indicated her companions. "This is Ben, Mara, Liam, and Chloe."

Searanox’s gaze flickered over their armaments. He didn't see a single heavy shield or a specialized staff. "No tank. No healer. Five physical damage dealers is a death sentence the first time something knocks one of you down or a status effect takes hold."

"I'm a Guardian," Alina countered, her hands moving to her hips. "Chloe's our Priest. Mara's our Mage."

Chloe, a young woman with matted hair and dark circles under her eyes, looked down at her weapon. "The supplies you have given were out of staves when we got there. We got swords instead. A blade is a blade, right?"

"There where only two shields," Alina added, her tone growing defensive. "So... I don't have one yet. I’m focusing on evasion."

"It’s worse than I thought." Searanox’s gauntlet dragged across his faceplate, a hiss of frustration escaping his suit. "The core group always takes the best gear. That’s basic survival. You’ve sent yourselves out as a collection of glass cannons without the 'cannon' part."

"Don't worry about us," Ben said, his voice forced and over-confident. "We’ve seen the monsters. We can handle a few swamp-crawlers."

"We’ll see about that." Searanox turned on his heel, walking toward the shimmering dungeon portal without looking back. "Follow. And try to stay in one piece."

The transition into the Rotting Swamp was instantaneous and jarring. The air grew thick and heavy, saturated with the overwhelming stench of stagnant water and ancient decay. It felt as if they had walked into a long-sealed tomb that had been flooded with sewage. An oppressive, knee-high fog swirled around them, obscuring the murky water and the twisted, skeletal trees that clawed at the dim, sickly green light filtering from above.

The five survivors huddled together instinctively, their bravado from the square evaporating like mist. Their eyes darted frantically into the fog, trying to penetrate the gloom that seemed to press in on them from all sides.

"Since you are so capable and eager," Searanox said, his voice steady and without any warmth, "you can go ahead. I will provide backup from the rear." He waved a hand, and four basic Defensive Drones materialized, their hexagonal shields humming with low-frequency energy.

The group looked at him, then back toward the yawning tunnel opening that led deeper into the swamp. They exchanged uncertain, wide-eyed glances, their earlier confidence now a distant, bitter memory.

"Fine," Alina said after a tense pause. She pushed forward, her sword held in a white-knuckled grip that made her hands shake. "Stay together. Watch the water."

The tunnel was narrow, the stone walls slick with a foul-smelling, bioluminescent slime. The only sound in the oppressive quiet was the rhythmic squelching of their boots in the mud and the sound of their own ragged, panicked breathing.

Then, from the impenetrable fog ahead, a wet, guttural croak echoed through the cavern, followed by the heavy, ominous splash of something large hitting the water. They froze mid-step, weapons raised, hearts hammering against their ribs. A massive, bloated shape emerged from the murk—a Toxic Spitter. Its mottled green skin glistened with a sickly sheen in the faint light, its eyes bulging and vacant.

Liam, a young man with a reckless, desperate glint in his eye, lunged forward with a piercing yell. He swung his sword in a wide arc, aiming for the creature's soft flank. The blade connected, but it glanced off the creature's rubbery hide with a dull, ineffective thud, barely leaving a scratch. The beast didn't even flinch. Instead, its distended throat sac began to glow with a pulsing, sickly green light.

A Defensive Drone shifted instantly, sliding between Liam and the beast just as the creature spat a concentrated veil of caustic acid. The substance hissed as it hit the drone's hexagonal barrier, smoking and bubbling.

Searanox floated nearby, seated comfortably on the chassis of his travel drone, his arms crossed over his chest. "You would be dead right now," he remarked, his voice devoid of emotion. "Well, perhaps not instantly. But you would be screaming as your skin melted off your bones."

The hexagonal barrier held strong, the energy flickering as the Toxic Spitter let out another frustrated croak.

Ben and Mara joined the fray, their movements clumsy and uncoordinated. Their blades managed a few shallow cuts, but the creature's high health pool and thick hide rendered their efforts almost meaningless. Another glob of acid flew from deeper within the fog, only to be intercepted by a second drone. Alina, Liam, and Ben were now shin-deep in the stagnant swamp water, their movements growing sluggish as the muck pulled at their boots.

A barrier shimmered into existence next to Alina, intercepting a diving Plague Carrion that had flown beak-first toward her throat. "And there's another one dead," Searanox noted with clinical boredom.

Mara, their self-proclaimed Mage, finally committed to the fight. Instead of a spell, she thrust her sword at the Spitter’s head. The blade scraped uselessly against the slick, bloated hide, leaving nothing but a shallow wound that didn't even bleed. The beast responded with a wet gurgle, its throat sac swelling to twice its size as it prepared another volley.

Alina glanced back at Searanox, her face a mask of sweating frustration and dawning, cold terror. Her confident swagger from the square was gone, replaced by the crushing weight of reality. Her team was floundering against a single level thirteen mob. Their attacks were a pathetic mockery of combat, more likely to tire them out than kill the enemy.

"Do you see the problem yet?" Searanox’s voice carried across the stagnant water, as flat and cold as the swamp itself. "Your gear is trash. Your skills are non-existent. And yet, you had the arrogance to think you could handle this environment on your own."

He gestured lazily toward the struggling Spitter.

"This is a lesson. One you'd better learn quickly if you intend to survive the week. A Guardian without a shield is just a target. A Priest with a blade is a wasted slot. It's a comedy of errors that ends in a graveyard." He paused, letting the silence of the swamp amplify the weight of his words. "After we finish this, get yourselves geared properly. I gave the city enough equipment to outfit ten people. Two balanced teams. Not one group and a collection of corpses-to-be."

Four Intermediate Assault Drones materialized in a sudden, blinding flash of blue light. Their sleek, lethal forms stood in stark contrast to the murky gloom of the dungeon. Crimson beams of concentrated energy cut through the fog like scalpels, vaporizing the Toxic Spitter before it could even finish its croak.

The Level thirteen beasts deeper in the mist didn't even have time to inflate their throat sacs. One moment they were bloated and menacing silhouettes; the next, they were nothing more than steaming patches of water and dissolved organic matter.

The swamp fell into a sudden, ringing silence, save for the hiss of dissipating steam and the frantic, sobbing breathing of the five survivors.

"The clear is finished," Searanox said, his drone turning toward the exit. "Move. We're burning daylight."