Third sublevel, lockers bent out of shape, blue roots crawling through concrete. I shouldn't even be here, but here I was sprinting at a monster that looked like it belonged three gates deeper.
The Warden's hammer blurred. I dove inside the arc—too slow. The head clipped my shoulder like a car mirror at highway speed and the shockwave did the rest. I went airborne, hit lockers, and folded them like cheap tin.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Major trauma detected: clavicle fracture, shoulder dislocation, internal bruising. Cooldown applied.]
Six seconds, ten, a century—whatever. The number didn't matter; the part where my arm didn't work did. The Warden didn't rush. It walked, hammer dragging sparks, patient as a butcher picking a knife.
I rolled as the hammer cratered the lockers, metal screaming past my ear. My left arm dangled like a bad idea. Fine. I still had a right, a knife, and poor impulse control.
"Come on, big guy," I panted. "Let's make terrible choices together."
I feinted left. It tracked me, unblinking. I shot right, skidded on tile dust, and jammed the kitchen knife under a plate seam at its hip. The blade bit a centimeter and stopped like I'd stabbed a car door. The backhand arrived half a beat later and turned the corridor sideways.
I bounced, tasted rust, and crawled as the hammer whistled down and smashed a crater where my skull had been. Heat rushed my shoulder; something in the joint thunked back into place with a mean pop.
[Absolute Regeneration Restored]
[Injury recovered: clavicle fracture, shoulder dislocation.]
Good. I ripped a locker door off its last hinge and hurled it like a shield. Steel face met steel slab; the shock launched me backward, but the plate stalled the hammer a heartbeat.
A heartbeat was enough. I planted both hands on the knife and drove into the armpit seam. The blade went in a thumb-width, squealed, and skated out, edge now a sad wave. The Warden roared hot metal into my face and swept low for my legs.
I jumped. Clipped. Pinwheeled. Landed ugly and still moving.
The hall narrowed into a choke point: old cart-ghost on the wall, chains dangling from a ceiling anchor like forgotten jewelry. I sprinted, grabbed a loop, and yanked. The anchor groaned. Chain dropped a meter. The Warden stepped through and I whipped the slack across its shins. It didn't fall, but it stuttered—a human heartbeat of balance gone.
I threw my weight behind the locker plate. We moved the orc half a step. The hammer smashed floor beside my boot and blew my heel loose.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Major trauma detected: tibia hairline fracture, ankle ligament tear. Cooldown applied.]
"System," I wheezed, "new feature request—less cooldown, more miracle."
It answered with silence, which is about right for my life.
I ducked behind a pillar; the hammer pulverized it into dust rain. I jammed the broken mace stick into the gap where the hammer's handle met the head, desperate wedge. The Warden yanked; the stick snapped like kindling.
Heat crawled my shin; the joint uncrunched. I didn't wait for a chorus. I stepped into the next downswing—not to block (suicide), but to lie to physics. Edge to shaft, slide and shove. The hammer's arc bent a degree. Stone erupted beside me; chips carved my cheek like the dungeon trying to autograph me.
I stabbed for the throat under the chain collar. Two thumb-widths of knife and a grunt that tasted like blood. The Warden answered by slamming its forehead into mine.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Major trauma detected: nasal fracture, concussion. Cooldown applied.]
Skull fireworks. Vision doubled, then tripled when a backhand put me through a maintenance closet door. I took out a mop bucket and a sign that told me CAUTION: WET FLOOR, which felt like victim-blaming.
The closet offered a gift: two steel broom handles and a fire extinguisher. No plan? Great. Make one.
I yanked the pin and blew a blizzard into the orc's face. It roared and swung blind. I dove under, threaded a broom handle through links of its chain harness, and torqued. The chain tightened across its throat. It tore at the handle. I let go, grabbed the second, and stabbed the already-cut armpit seam. Deeper than the knife had managed. Still not enough.
The broom handle splintered in my grip, useless as a pool noodle. I ditched it and my eyes snagged on a pair of bent locker handles in the wreckage. Heavier. Meaner. Better knives than the broom would ever be.
The Warden ripped the chain like popcorn. The hammer rose for a kill shot. My head cleared; double became single.
[Absolute Regeneration Restored]
[Injury recovered: nasal fracture, concussion.]
I lunged inside the swing, took the handle across my back, and shoved the knife up into the jaw hinge with a scream that was eighty percent terror and twenty percent "I hate you personally." The Warden howled, jaw pried half-open by steel. It grabbed my chest and lifted me off the floor like I was a sign it didn't like.
Then it ran me into the wall.
Something in my side went crunch; breath got repossessed. The knife wrenched free. We staggered apart on a floor that looked like a geological argument.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Major trauma detected: rib fractures (3), liver laceration. Cooldown applied.]
Seven seconds, five, pick a number; they all hurt. The hammer slammed down. I threw myself aside, late; the edge of the head clipped my hip and swapped all my opinions for static.
I crawled through tile teeth and rebar splinters. The Warden's shadow swallowed my hands. I rolled, planted my boot on the hammer shaft as it fell, and kicked. The head buried itself in the cracked floor and stuck—just for a breath, but I've learned to live inside those.
I lurched to my feet and beat the extinguisher into the orc's face until the bell dented and the world went powder-white. The Warden let go of the hammer to grab me.
Bad move. I grabbed the shaft too, hauled with everything Level Two had, and used the stuck head as a pivot to lever the shaft up. Balance is an equal-opportunity bully. The Warden tilted wrong. I kicked chain under its boot. It slipped. We went down together in a heap of iron and swearing.
I groped for my knife and got nothing. Floor. Blood. A bent locker handle. Fine. New knife.
Heat pulsed through my ribs; breath returned like a loan the bank regretted calling in.
[Absolute Regeneration Restored][Injury recovered: rib fractures, liver laceration, hip contusion.]
I jammed the locker handle under the Warden's chin and heaved, exposing the throat seam a hand's width. Then I took the handle's twin and went for the eye.
The metal punched into the socket with a wet tock. The Warden screamed and pitched me into a pipe. The pipe buckled; cold water sheeted over everything, turning dust to paste and us into sad, wet statues. For half a stupid second I thought about showers, about Mara's lamp light and the way she'd said good boy, and then the hammer ripped free of the floor.
The howl of effort vibrated my teeth. Water ran off steel in curtains. One eye ruined, chain collar split, the Warden still raised the weapon like gravity was a rumor.
"Okay," I told myself, "we can trade. We can trade damage for openings."
I sprinted straight at the downswing.
The head came. I didn't try to dodge. I ducked through and let the grazing kiss across my back steal skin while the broken broom handle in my hand speared the gash under its arm. I didn't stop; I drove shoulder and whole body behind it until wood split muscle and grated bone.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Major trauma detected: scapular fracture, deep lacerations (back). Cooldown applied.]
The Warden tried to crush me in a bear hug. I wedged the locker plate across its chest as a spacer and headbutted the chain links until my forehead buzzed. My legs slid on the wet floor; my hands slipped; my brain screamed I was an idiot, which was true and not helpful.
I let the plate fall, dove under the arm, and grabbed the chain still hanging from the ceiling anchor. I wrapped it twice around the Warden's throat and then around my forearm.
"Come on," I snarled, and jumped backward with everything my legs had left.
We toppled. The chain cinched. The Warden's roar clipped into a choking rasp. It scrabbled one-handed for purchase and found the hammer instead. It raised it even while strangling, because of course it did.
I hauled the chain tighter. Links bit skin and I tasted copper that was either blood or rage.
The hammer fell.
I got the locker plate up like a lid. Steel hit steel. The plate punched my face; my nose turned into lightning and bad decisions.
[Additional trauma: nasal fracture.]
Heat buzzed under my skin; pain dumped out the back of my skull like I'd tipped the bucket. I climbed the chain hand over hand, dragged it tighter, leaned my entire future away from the orc's throat. Its boots kicked tile into gravel.
It found my throat with a free hand and squeezed. Black narrowed the edges of the world. My feet scrabbled and found no floor.
"Be—" I choked, "—boring—sexy."
No more jokes. No more options. The chain was taking its time. The hand on my windpipe wasn't.
The Warden shifted the hammer for the finishing stroke. I had one hand still free, slick with water and blood. I fumbled at the ground, found the bent locker handle by touch, and brought it up toward that stubborn little gap between collarbone and neck.
The Warden squeezed. The world went tunnel-small. The system finally got nervous with me.
[Absolute Regeneration Activated]
[Critical condition detected: asphyxia, hemorrhage.]
[Temporary cooldown: 5s.]
5…
4…
The hammer rose. My fingers shook.
3…
Black ate the walls.
2…
I pulled the chain and drove the handle together in the same instant, praying to every god I didn't believe in.
1…
[Absolute Regeneration Restored]
[Injury recovered: asphyxia trauma, nasal fracture, scapular fracture, lacerations.]
Air detonated into my lungs; the world snapped back into color. My arm found power it hadn't possessed a breath ago and the locker handle punched home beneath the Warden's collarbone into whatever passed for its throttle.
The Warden spasmed. The hammer thudded from its hand. The chain sang. The huge body shuddered, slowed, sagged.
I didn't trust it. I held the chain for one breath, then two, then three, until my arms shook like bad wiring.
Then I let go and fell on my ass.
[EXP Gained: 520]
[Level Up → Level 3]
Stat Points +5
[Level Progress: 320 / 300]
[Level Up → Level 4]
Stat Points +5
[Level Progress: 20 / 400]
"Holy—" I coughed. "Okay." My voice sounded like gravel practicing to be a throat.
The screen waited, patient as a clerk. Water hissed from the broken pipe. The hammer lay where it had dropped, jack-post head dented, the floor around it a bowl.
"Assign points," I rasped.
[Distribute 10 points.]
— Strength
— Agility
— Endurance
— Intelligence
— Wisdom
— Luck
"Six in Strength, four in Agility." I paused. "Unless you've added Sexiness."
[Invalid. No stat: Sexiness.]
"Cowards," I muttered.
[Points assigned.]
[Updated Status]
Level: 4
Strength: 20
Agility: 16
Endurance: 9
Intelligence: 6
Wisdom: 5
Luck: ???
[Level Progress: 20 / 400]
I stood slowly. The Warden lay where I'd left it, chain crooked under its jaw like a bad tie. My knife looked like confetti. My jacket looked like thrift-store armor someone had worn to prom and regretted.
I bent to haul the hammer and didn't. Too heavy. Not mine. I kicked it once on principle and left it.
"Inventory," I said. The bent locker handle, a length of chain, and the dented locker plate ghosted into icons. I left the extinguisher; some future idiot could use it.
That was when the dungeon exhaled.
The floor trembled. A hairline crack chased itself down the corridor wall like a zipper. Blue light flared in the roots. The break room doorway buckled and slid aside into the wall.
Behind it, a deeper passage yawned—wider, darker, wronger. Air pushed out, heavy with mana and that high-altitude headache feeling.
"Ah," I told the empty room. "So that wasn't the boss."
Behind me, the way I'd come shivered. Tiles sloughed from the ceiling. Roots braided themselves across the stairwell and knitted a blue curtain that hardened to glass.
Gate sealed. Back closed.
The system chimed, polite as a hotel bell you ring before complaining.
[New Objective: Proceed to core.]
[Warning: Threat level exceeds registered level by multiple tiers.]
Advice: Retreat recommended.
"Sure," I told it, staring at the sealed exit. "Put it on my list."
I wiped water and blood off my face with the back of my hand and watched it come away cleaner than it should have. My bones had snapped back together. My skin kept pretending trauma was a typo. If I actually walked out of here… the city wouldn't throw me a parade. It would throw me questions.
Hunters don't level. Hunters don't gain stats, titles, new skills like they're farming a game. One ability. One rank. Stamped and done.
If the guilds think I hid a power, they'll call me a liar. If the government thinks it's an artifact, they'll try to take it. If anyone learns I can grind?
I stop being Ethan Cross and start being property.
"Be boring," Mara had texted. I was trying. The dungeon had other plans.
I touched the chain looped twice at my wrist like a cheap bracelet, thought about pancakes and warm lamp light and a woman who'd called me good boy, and turned toward the deeper dark.