The skittering wasn't just a sound anymore. It was the sound. It came from all sides, a wet, clicking, multi-legged tide of hunger.
Dev's blood ran cold. He was trapped in the tree, his "soul-leg" burning with a cold fire, leaking a faint, blue mist that was an open invitation.
'No. No, no, no...' His eyes darted around. He was twenty feet up, but that meant nothing. He'd seen how fast they could climb.
The first of the new Blood-Sappers burst from the shadows. Then two. Then five. Within seconds, the base of the tree was a writhing carpet of them, their multi-faceted eyes all fixed on him, their proboscises twitching.
Then, as one, they began to climb.
It was a nightmare. A vertical, six-legged-stampede.
"Get back!" he roared, his voice a panicked crack. He kicked at the first one to get close. His foot, clumsy with his AGI: 4, connected, sending the creature tumbling...
...right onto another Sapper just below it.
In that instant, the two creatures forgot all about Dev. The one that was landed on, viewing it as an attack, immediately shrieked and sank its needle into the one that fell.
Dev froze. He'd seen this before. Fodder eats fodder.
But he had no time to process it. A third Sapper, ignoring the fight below it, lunged from his blind spot and sank its needle deep into his other leg.
[WARNING: Soul-Integrity at 70%!]
The pain was blinding, a fresh wave of spiritual agony that made him gasp. He was being eaten alive. He was going to die here, torn apart by bugs.
'Like hell.'
The coldness that had saved him in the trial cut through the pain. He looked at the two creatures fighting below him. He looked at the new one attached to his leg.
He had a new strategy. It was desperate. It was vile. And it was his only chance.
Enduring the searing pain, he reached down and grabbed the Sapper that was burrowing into his leg. Its barbed needle tore at his essence as it resisted. He screamed, a raw, hateful sound, and ripped it free.
[Soul-Integrity at 68%!]
The creature shrieked, its proboscis dripping with his own blue-misted essence. But Dev wasn't trying to kill it.
He threw it.
He hurled the wounded, shrieking Sapper down into the mass of other creatures still climbing toward him.
The effect was instantaneous.
The smell of a freshly wounded Sapper, combined with the scent of his soul-essence on its needle, drove the others into an absolute, cannibalistic frenzy. They all turned. The climbing horde forgot about Dev entirely and fell upon the "sacrifice" he'd provided.
It was a rolling, screeching ball of violence. The creatures tore each other apart, their greed far outweighing their nonexistent intelligence.
Dev clung to the trunk, panting, his entire soul-form trembling from the pain and the adrenaline.
He'd found a loophole. He wasn't a warrior. He was bait.
This set the pattern for the longest night of his life.
His mission wasn't to fight. It was to manage the feeding frenzy. For eight, grueling, terrifying hours, he was a shepherd of monsters. When a new group got too close, he would stomp on one, wounding it just enough. Then he'd kick it into the others and watch them tear it to pieces.
He took more hits. A lunge he dodged too slowly raked his arm. [Soul-Integrity at 60%!]. Another got his side. [Soul-Integrity at 52%!].
Each hit was a fresh wave of agony, but the cold part of his mind didn't care. It was a resource. Pain was a resource. His integrity was just a bar to be managed.
He stopped feeling the pain as pain. It was just... information.
He grew numb. The hours blurred. It was just him, the red moon, the smell of blood and ichor, and the constant, high-pitched shrieking of fodder killing fodder. He learned to identify the leader of a pack. He learned to wound one and drop it on the far side of the trunk to draw the others away.
He wasn't a human. He wasn't even a Dreg. He was a survivor.
Finally, after an eternity of this cold, brutal calculus, the sky in the Weeping Woods began to lighten, shifting from black to a deep, bruised purple.
[Time Remaining: 00:01:30]
He was slumped against the trunk, his soul-form a tattered, leaking mess. His Soul-Integrity bar glowed a critical, angry red
.
[Soul-Integrity at 40%]
The ground below him was a carpet of dozens of black, chitinous corpses.
[00:00:03]
[00:00:02]
[00:00:01]
[Faction Mission: COMPLETE]
A wave of exhaustion so profound he almost let go of the branch washed over him.
[Objective: Survive one 'Sleep Cycle' (8 hours) - Succeeded]
[Rewards: 100 Nexus Shards, 1x 'Lesser Soul-Essence']
[Calculating Combat Data...]
[Total Kills (Direct): 6]
[Assists (Factioned Fodder): 21]
[+27 Nexus Shards]
[+27 Lesser Soul-Essence]
He stared at the numbers. He'd "earned" 28 Soul-Essence. He had 127 Shards. And it had only cost him almost his entire existence.
A new prompt appeared, this one alarming.
[Soul-Integrity is below 50%. Host is in critical condition.]
[Emergency 'Soul-Heal' protocol is not available to Provisional Members.]
Before he could even process what that meant, the Weeping Woods dissolved.
He wasn't back in his bed.
He was in the sterile white Lobby. He fell to his knees, his tattered soul-form barely holding together.
Selina was standing there, arms crossed. Her face held a new, calculating expression.
"Not bad, Dreg," she said, her voice still cold, but with a new edge. "You didn't just survive. You farmed. You might actually be useful."
She stepped forward. In her hand, she held a small, glowing crystal. It was identical to the ones his [Lesser Soul-Essence] reward icon showed.
"Now for your real lesson," she said, tossing the crystal to him. It clattered on the white floor in front of his knees.
"Eat this."