"…and that's when I realized," Lucas said, staring blankly at the ceiling, "my first ability in a whole new world was basically 'make things idiot-proof.'"
A snort came from the next cell. "Classic system joke," Jeff said. "That's how they test you. First they insult you, then they pretend it's a gift."
Lucas groaned. "Oh, believe me, it felt personal."
Jeff chuckled. "Explain it to Me Like I'm 5. You know how many people get that one?"
"Please tell me zero."
"You're definitely the first one I've heard of…"
Lucas buried his face in his hands. "Great. At least I can say I'm first at something, right?"
Jeff laughed. "I don't think this is one you should be proud of."
Lucas let his head thump gently against the stone. Cold seeped into his scalp. "Yeah, well, I didn't exactly get to pick my starter kit. Pajamas, bare feet, sarcastic pop-ups."
"Could be worse," Jeff said. "Could be no pop-ups."
"That would be better."
"No," Jeff replied, dry as dust. "No, rookie. It really wouldn't."
They sat in the damp quiet for a moment. Drips kept time. Far down the corridor, the torch crackled like it was chewing fat.
"So," Jeff said at last, "you mentioned words. Depths. Corruption. Light going out. Did the poor bastard in the cave say anything else?"
Lucas stared at the ceiling. "Not in a way my brain understood."
Jeff hummed, low and thoughtful. "People go down into the Depths for coin, relics, and stupidity. Mostly stupidity. Some say the stone gets sick down there—black veins, hungry air. And when the crystal hum fades? Things wake up that don't stay dead."
"That is, without question, the least comforting thing I've ever heard."
"It's not meant to comfort. Consider it educational."
"Like my ability," Lucas muttered.
Jeff's chain scraped the bars as he leaned forward. "That crystal on the man's chest—cracked, pulsing blue—sounds like a Core Shard. Veinborn energy. Folks use them to power lamps, tools, sometimes people." He cleared his throat. "Sometimes people don't like being powered."
"Great. I saved a battery," Lucas said.
Footsteps thudded somewhere above them—guards crossing a walkway. A key ring jingled; the torches hissed as someone poked them. Jeff went quiet until the noises receded.
"Anyway," he said, lighter again, "you're doing all right for a man whose fashion sense is a crime against senses. What happened after the growl?"
Lucas closed his eyes, let the dungeon fall away, and let the dark cave return.
The crystals were cracking. Not loudly—more like ice splitting under pressure—yet the sound felt bigger than the cavern, as if the cave itself were wincing. The explorer lay on the stone, breathing shallow, the blue in his chest flickering like a heartbeat with stage fright.
"Okay, okay," Lucas whispered, kneeling. "We are not dying in the prologue."
He flicked his inventory open with a thought and yanked the rolled blanket free. It popped into existence with a soft chime. He shoved it under the man's head and tried to slide him toward a shadowed alcove, but the armor was heavier than his willpower. His bare feet skidded. Stone scraped. Lucas hissed between his teeth.
"Inventory… store?" he whispered, on impulse.
[Error: Target exceeds personal storage parameters.]
"Right. Can't pocket a person. Good to know."
Another growl rolled through the tunnel. Not one voice—several, overlapping. Claws on stone. A metallic scrape, like bone running along an iron rail. The hairs prickled at the back of his neck.
He ducked to the alcove first, testing it. It wasn't much: a lip of darker stone and a shelf where the wall had caved in long ago, leaving a little blind pocket. If he could tuck the man just so—
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Lucas muttered, bracing his shoulder against the breastplate. He heaved.
The man's shoulder cleared the lip with a metallic scrape. Lucas repositioned, planted his heels, and promised his hamstrings a better life tomorrow. The third shove got the explorer into the shadow.
[Skill Acquired: Heavy Lifting — Lv. 1]
Strength increases slightly when moving or carrying heavy objects. Stamina cost moderately reduced.
"Finally, a skill that doesn't insult me," Lucas whispered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
The cave fell quiet in the way that means it's listening.
Lucas crouched, chest buzzing with aftershock. His pajama ducks pulsed faintly. He yanked the lantern from inventory, cupped the cracked glass with his palm to choke the glow, and let only a thread of light breathe. The alcove held darkness like a secret.
"Okay," he whispered. "We're going to be quiet now."
He peeked around the stone lip.
At first he saw nothing but the broken geometry of the cavern: ribs of black rock, blue crystal seams peering out like sleepy eyes. Then one "eye" shifted. Another answered. Shapes loosened themselves from the deeper dark, low to the ground and wrong in their angles. They moved like wolves built by someone who'd only heard wolves described second-hand—too many edges, not enough mercy. Shards spiked from their spines, and where mouths should have been, grinding plates of mineral clicked and scraped like a bone mill.
He held his breath until the ceiling swam.
[New Skill: Held Breath — Lv. 1]
Extends breath control and steadies aim while motionless.
"Not helpful right now," Lucas mouthed, not daring a sound.
The shard-thing in the lead raised its head. Its crystal-rimmed jaws clicked open, shut, open. Scenting. The others spread out with insect precision, claws skittering, or maybe those were tiny slivers raining off their hides.
He eased a hand down, fingers searching the floor until he found a thumb-sized stone. His breath stuttered. He rolled his shoulder, weighed the throw. The system tickled, like a hand at his elbow.
[Improvised Throw — Lv. 1 → Lv. 2]
Range and accuracy slightly improved.
"Thanks," he breathed.
He lobbed the stone blind down a side tunnel—light, true. The rock struck a metal frame in the dark with a perfect, ringing ting-ting-ting.
Four heads snapped toward the sound. The lead thing hissed like poured acid and skittered toward the echo, the rest clicking after it in glassy chorus.
Lucas didn't move. Didn't blink. Only counted.
One. Two. Three. Four—
Another shape lingered at the rear, larger than the others, a crown of fractured quartz sprouting from its skull like a broken halo. Its eyes were more light than eyes, pale and cruel. It didn't follow. It listened.
His lungs burned. Held Breath ticked in the background like a slow drum.
The crowned one prowled the clearing, sniffed near the old camp ash, nosed the scattered bowls he'd looted. It paused by the trail he and the explorer had dragged, crystal teeth tapping stone. Then it lifted its head, and for a moment Lucas felt it looking directly through the alcove and into his chest.
He thought about his glowing ducks. He thought about his heart. He thought about not thinking.
The creature's jaw clicked once. Twice.
A pebble—a real one this time—fell by the side tunnel as one of the others jostled a splintered rail. The crowned head turned and followed, every motion disgustingly silent.
Lucas let the breath go by centimeters. His vision sparkled, dark at the edges. The alcove air smelled like wet copper.
He waited until he couldn't hear them anymore, then another ten slow counts. Only then did he let his shoulders settle. His hands shook as if remembering they were hands.
He checked the explorer. The blue glow held steady, pulse sure. The man's eyes fluttered once behind the helmet's slit and stilled.
Lucas swallowed. "Okay," he whispered, voice gone papery. "New plan. We don't fight the rock-wolves with the blender faces."
He peeked out again, just to be certain. The cavern lay wounded but quiet. Fragments of blue lay dusted across the floor like crushed fireflies. A scrap of leather peeked from beneath the explorer's collarbone—Lucas gently tugged it free. A tag, half-eaten by time, stamped with a sigil: a circle split by a vertical line, tiny runes ringing the edge like teeth.
He didn't know what it meant, but it felt like a page in a book he was going to have to read later.
He stowed the tag. The lantern's flame had dwindled to a stubborn coal, and his pajama ducks felt shy about glowing now that they'd actually saved his life. His legs trembled as he stood.
"Can't stay here," he murmured. "Can't carry you. Can't store you. Things for you are not looking good, my blue glowing buddy."
The system, with timing that suggested it enjoyed comedy, pinged.
[Quest Updated: The Fallen Explorer]
Secondary Objective Unlocked: Identify a safe zone or signal assistance.
"Signal who?" Lucas whispered. "The Cave Association?"
A thin chime followed, like crystal struck with a nail. One of the wall seams—blue a minute ago—shifted to pale white, a line ghosting away down a side passage.
[Hint: Vein Guide Active]
Follow the inert vein markers to an exit or beacon point.
(Ability "Explain it to Me Like I'm 5" has expanded this tooltip because you looked confused again.)
Lucas scowled at the air. "I did not look confused. I looked pensive."
Correction logged. You looked confused and pensive.
He bit back a laugh that wanted to leak as tears. He wasn't sure whether he was shaking from adrenaline or because his body had finally sent a memo labeled What are you doing. He eased the explorer deeper into the shadow, wedged the blanket to hide the armor's glow, and rubbed his aching shoulder.
"Don't die," he told the man, because that was the only instruction he had. "I'm going to find… something. Or die. But ideally the first one."
He slid from the alcove and kept to the wall, following the thin white vein line that had brightened to a definite thread. The path it traced hugged the cavern edge, led past the dead campfire and through a low stone arch carved by miners or slow patience. He stooped, squeezed through, and emerged into a narrow corridor where the crystals were mostly dust and the walls remembered rails that no longer existed.
Each step felt like trespass.
Somewhere behind, something breathed again. Closer this time.
Lucas quickened, bare feet silent on the cold. The white vein brightened as he moved, as if pleased by obedience, and his resentment toward it threatened to become gratitude. He clung to the feeling until the corridor widened into a pocket chamber—and a simple post of wood appeared, half-rotten but still upright, with a metal disk nailed atop it.
A bell. Or what used to be one.
He touched it; it didn't ring. The clapper was gone, rust maggots chewing the rim, but the system chimed anyway.
[Beacon Reached]
Signal strength: minimal. Assistance ETA: —
Error: External network unstable. Maintain position or return to last safe alcove.
"External network? Are we on dial-up?" he whispered.
From the corridor, a shard clicked against stone. Another answered. The crowned thing's weirdly patient steps were back, measured, deliberate.
"Maintain position," Lucas repeated softly. He eyed the dead bell. "Yeah. No."
He turned to slip back toward the explorer—and stopped. A smear of fresh dust marred the floor in a curve like a dragging tail. It led not toward him but past the pocket chamber and into a second corridor he'd missed, low and narrow and sloping up.
A way out. Or a different way to die.
He gripped the pick's haft and made the kind of decision people either brag about later or never talk about at all. He went back the way he'd come—quiet as he could, breath on a slow metronome—and reached the alcove again without collapsing from relief.
The explorer was where he'd left him. The blue light held. Lucas leaned in so close his nose almost tapped the helmet.
"Change of plan," he whispered. "There's a vein marker pointing to a bell that doesn't bell and a tunnel that goes up. I'm going to… I don't know. Something between drag and roll you to that tunnel."
He slid his hands under the cuirass edge. The system pinged like it had been waiting.
[Temporary Buff Granted: Crisis Adrenaline]
Lifting strength increased. Duration: short. Side effects: inevitable.
"Oh good," Lucas muttered. "Side effects."
He heaved. The explorer moved, easier this time, armor rasping across stone. Lucas paused whenever claw clicks echoed, then dragged again. The tunnel entrance yawned like a relieved mouth. He got the man's shoulders through, then the hips, then the armored legs that refused to cooperate like sleepy cats.
The crowned crystal-wolf chose that moment to round the far bend of the cavern mouth and stop, head lifting, halo of fractures catching the tiniest breath of light.
Lucas didn't breathe at all.
The thing stared at the alcove's empty shadow. It sniffed. Slowly, so slow he almost missed it, it tilted its head toward the new corridor Lucas had chosen.
He couldn't remember deciding to move. His body just went, hauling, scraping, inching an unconscious knight by the armpits while his lungs auditioned for underwater work. The crowned head began to turn. A line cracked in one of the wall crystals like a smile formed in glass.
Lucas got the last of the armor through the low passage and pressed himself flat against the stone as the crowned thing stepped into the chamber he'd just vacated.
For a heartbeat the world was only quiet, and two sets of not-breathing.
Then, from somewhere far up the new corridor, a pebble tumbled. A whisper of air licked Lucas's face like a cool hand.
The crowned head swung away and flowed toward the sound, its body articulating in elegant wrongness.
Lucas let himself inhale. Air had never tasted so much like victory and dust.
[Enduring Stride — Lv. 1 → Lv. 2]
Distance traveled under stress recorded. Stamina drain decreased.
He closed his eyes and swallowed a laugh. "Yeah," he breathed, voice a dry thread. "Enduring. That's me."
Behind him, the explorer's crystal pulsed once—steady, grateful—or maybe Lucas just needed it to. He shifted his grip, angled the man up the incline one more foot, then another.
"I take back everything I said about the system being useless," Jeff said, when Lucas stopped. "It has a taste for drama."
"I noticed," Lucas replied. He flexed his sore hands, feeling phantom stone in each joint. "Also a taste for sarcasm."
"Then you two deserve each other," Jeff said cheerfully. The cheer didn't reach his next words. "And those shard-wolves? Crowned? You don't see those until deep veins. Something or someone lured them up."
"Comforting."
"Not meant to be."
Keys clanked again. Two guards turned the corner in armor that looked less mystical and more laundry-averse. One was barrel-shaped and pink-faced; the other walked like his spine owed him money.
Barrel Face slowed at Lucas's bars and peered in. "The singer shut up?"
Jeff hummed a delicate high note in answer that made Barrel Face wince.
"Keep it down," the other guard snapped. "Captain wants the boy at first bell."
"The boy has a name," Lucas said.
"Not to us he doesn't."
They moved on. The torch spit and settled.
"First bell," Jeff said softly. "Interrogation."
"Is that what we're calling it?"
"It's what they call it," Jeff said. "You—tell your story fast, rookie. If there's more you did in that cave, I want to hear it before someone decides to move you."
Lucas looked at the ceiling again, felt the cave dust in his palate, the ache in his hands. He thought of the crowned thing turning toward the sound that wasn't him, of the dead bell that chimed anyway, of the white vein guiding him like a thread on a needle through someone else's fabric.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay. After I dragged glowy-battery guy into the tunnel that slanted up… that's when things got interesting."
"More interesting?" Jeff asked, delighted. "Bless the system."
Lucas snorted. "Don't. It can hear you."
"Good," Jeff said. "Maybe it'll feel guilty and give you pants."
Lucas smiled despite himself and shut his eyes, letting the stone chill pull him back to the slope, the scraping armor, and the promise of a very narrow escape.
And somewhere beyond the dungeon ceiling, morning crept toward first bell.