Chapter 3: The Weight of Growth
The basement smelled of earth and old leather and something new—a faint, electric tang that Daryl had noticed ever since his return from the Goblin Warrens. It clung to his skin, his clothes, the very air around him, a residue of the dungeon core now pulsing gently in his chest alongside the warmth of [Overgrowth].
Three days had passed since that impossible night. Three days of hiding, healing, and taking stock of what he had become.
He sat cross-legged on his bed of blankets, the improved dagger across his knees, and focused inward. The system responded to his attention, feeding him information in fragments—never the full status panel he remembered from his previous life, but enough. Just enough.
[Overgrowth Integration: 8%]
The dungeon core continues to merge with your talent. Passive growth rate increased.
He didn't fully understand what that meant, but he felt it. The warmth was stronger now, more present. It no longer waited for moments of crisis to assert itself; instead, it hummed constantly in the background of his awareness, a second heartbeat that never faltered.
The dagger had stopped changing for now, its evolution complete at [F+] quality. But Daryl knew—somehow, with the certainty that came from his fused memories—that this was only the beginning. The bond strength sat at 27% now, having crept up another two percent through simple proximity. At 50%, there would be another change. At 75%, another. And at 100%...
He didn't know what happened at 100%. But he intended to find out.
---
The Fringe had its own economy, its own rules, its own ways of surviving. In the three weeks before the dungeon, Daryl had learned the basics: where to find clean water, which rubble piles yielded usable scraps, which alleyways to avoid after dark. But now, with the core's energy flowing through him and the dagger's edge sharp against his hip, he needed more.
He needed information about the God's Realm.
The memory of that hidden portal haunted him. Not the portal itself—that was just light and transition, too fast to register—but what had come after. The moment between death and reawakening. The sense of vast presences watching, judging, finding him wanting and casting him out. Or had they cast him out? The memories were fragmented, dreamlike, more impression than recollection.
But one thing was clear: he had been somewhere else. Somewhere ancient and powerful, where gods walked and champions fought and the very air hummed with potential. And then he had been returned, reborn into the same body but fundamentally changed.
The portal was still there, somewhere in the depths of the solo dungeon where he'd found it. That dungeon was still registered to the Guild, still visited by solo hunters seeking quick experience. If he wanted to return to that place—and something deep in his chest, something that might have been [Overgrowth] or might have been his own desire, whispered that he did—he would need to be ready.
---
On the fourth day after the Warrens, Daryl ventured into the Fringe's informal market.
It sprawled through a series of connected warehouse ruins near the district's center, a labyrinth of makeshift stalls and blanket vendors where anything could be bought if the price was right. The Guild turned a blind eye to its existence—better to let the dregs of society trade among themselves than to force them into the streets where they might cause trouble for proper citizens.
Daryl moved through the crowd with the practiced invisibility of someone who had spent years being ignored. Heads didn't turn. Eyes slid past him. He was just another F-Grade nobody, too insignificant to notice.
Perfect.
He found what he was looking for in a shadowed corner beneath a collapsed beam. An old man sat cross-legged on a crate, surrounded by piles of junk that might, to a discerning eye, contain treasures. Daryl had heard rumors of this vendor—called "the Collector" by those who knew of him—a man who traded in information as much as objects.
"I need to know about portals," Daryl said, keeping his voice low.
The Collector's eyes were milky with cataracts, but Daryl had the unsettling sense that they saw more than most. The old man studied him for a long moment, then cackled.
"Portal-seeker, are you? Many seek portals. Few return." He gestured at the junk around him. "Sit. Talk. The old man likes company."
Daryl sat. "A specific portal. In a solo dungeon, E-Rank. Hidden. It wasn't on any Guild map."
The Collector's cackling stopped. His milky eyes narrowed. "You speak of the God's Realm access point. Dangerous knowledge. Dangerous place."
"You know it."
"I know of it. All who trade in secrets know of it." The Collector leaned forward, and for the first time, Daryl caught a whiff of something strange about him—a faint, earthy scent, like moss after rain. "Twelve have entered in the past decade. Two have returned. Both were changed. Both spoke of champions and trials and things that should not be."
"What happened to them?"
"One threw himself from the central spire within a week. The other..." The Collector paused, his expression shifting to something almost like respect. "The other sits before you, asking questions."
Daryl's blood chilled. "You?"
"I was young once. Strong. A-rank, if you can believe it." The old man laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I faced three champions. Three. And when I failed the fourth, they cast me out. Stripped of my rank, my power, my future. Left with just enough to survive and remember."
The warmth in Daryl's chest pulsed—not with hunger, but with something that felt almost like recognition. [Overgrowth] knew this man, or knew of him. Had tasted his failure and learned from it.
"What are the champions?" Daryl asked.
"Tests. Trials. Guardians of the path to the summit." The Collector's milky eyes fixed on Daryl with sudden intensity. "Each realm has its champion. The Molten Forge tests your body. The Endless Library tests your mind. The Verdant Maze tests your spirit. And beyond them, greater challenges await those who prove worthy."
"The summit. What's at the summit?"
The Collector was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. "Ascension. Or annihilation. The gods do not distinguish between the two."
He reached into the folds of his tattered robe and produced a small object—a shard of crystal, dark and multifaceted, that seemed to absorb the dim light around it. He pressed it into Daryl's palm.
"A fragment of the first realm. The Molten Forge. Keep it close, and when you are ready, it will guide you back to the portal. But heed my warning, portal-seeker: do not enter until you can survive the first champion. The gods do not suffer the weak."
Daryl looked at the crystal shard. It was cold against his skin, but beneath the cold, he felt a pulse of heat, as if it contained a spark of the forge it came from.
"What do you want for it?"
The Collector smiled, and for just a moment, his ruined face held a trace of the man he must have once been. "When you reach the summit—if you reach the summit—remember me. Remember that an old, broken man helped you along the path. That is payment enough."
---
Daryl returned to his basement with the crystal shard wrapped in cloth and tucked against his chest. He didn't fully trust the Collector's story—survival in the Fringe depended on skepticism—but he trusted the fragment's power. He could feel it resonating with his core, with [Overgrowth], with the dagger at his hip.
Changes were coming. He needed to be ready.
The next weeks fell into a rhythm. By day, he rested and meditated, letting [Overgrowth] work its patient magic on his body and his bonded equipment. By night, he trained.
The ruined buildings of the Fringe became his gymnasium. He practiced movements remembered from his previous life's self-defense classes, adapting them to his new body, his new capabilities. The dagger became an extension of his arm, its weight familiar, its edge singing through the air with each practice strike.
[Thorn Body] evolved slowly. At first, he could barely perceive its effect—a faint prickling sensation when he concentrated, as if his skin had grown the slightest bit rougher. But after a week of dedicated practice, focusing on the skill for hours each day, he noticed a change.
He was scavenging in a collapsed tenement when a loose stone fell from above, striking his shoulder. It should have hurt—would have hurt, before. Instead, he felt a brief sting, and the stone bounced away as if repelled. When he looked at his shoulder through his torn shirt, he saw a faint pattern on his skin, like the ghost of thorns, already fading.
[Thorn Body proficiency increased: 3% -> 5%]
[Overflow] was harder to train. Its activation condition—health below 10%—was not something he could safely practice. But he felt its presence like a coiled spring in his chest, waiting, ready. The cooldown had decreased slightly as his integration with the core progressed, from thirty days to twenty-eight.
Small changes. Incremental growth. [Overgrowth]'s way.
---
On the eighteenth night after the Warrens, Daryl returned to the solo dungeon.
It was smaller than the Goblin Warrens, a single winding tunnel that led to a small chamber occupied by a handful of low-ranking monsters—F-Rage Imp, the Guild classification called them. Small, red-skinned creatures that spat globs of burning saliva and died in one or two hits from even a novice hunter.
Perfect for practice.
Daryl entered at midnight, as before, and found the dungeon freshly reset. Three imps waited in the main chamber, their glowing eyes tracking his approach with predatory interest.
He didn't hesitate.
The first imp died before it could react, Daryl's dagger opening its throat in a single smooth motion. Black blood sprayed, and the creature crumpled. The second managed to spit—Daryl dodged left, feeling the heat of the glob pass his cheek—and then it too fell to a quick thrust. The third turned to flee, and Daryl let it go, watching as it disappeared into a side tunnel.
He looked at his dagger. The blade was clean—the imp's blood hadn't stuck, sliding off the oiled steel as if repelled. The bond strength had ticked up another percent.
[Thorn Body] had activated during the fight, just slightly. He could feel the faint residual prickling across his skin, already fading. The imp's claws had touched him twice—he hadn't even noticed in the moment—but instead of drawing blood, they had skittered across his skin like nails across stone.
Progress.
He spent the next hour clearing the dungeon systematically, hunting each imp to its lair, learning their patterns, their weaknesses. By the time the last one fell, he had killed fourteen of the creatures and gained something more valuable than experience.
[Skill Gained: Dagger Mastery (Passive)]
Rank: F
Proficiency: 1%
Effect: Increases damage with daggers by a negligible amount and improves handling.
[Skill Gained: Light Footsteps (Passive)]
Rank: F
Proficiency: 1%
Effect: Reduces noise generated by movement by a negligible amount.
[Thorn Body proficiency increased: 5% -> 7%]
He sat in the empty main chamber, catching his breath, and felt the warmth of [Overgrowth] pulsing with satisfaction. This was what it wanted. Growth through action. Evolution through challenge.
The dungeon core was in the next chamber—he could feel its presence now, a beacon of energy that called to the core fragment in his chest. But he didn't go to it. He wasn't ready. The guardian here would be weaker than the Warrens' guardian, but still dangerous. Still capable of killing him if he made a mistake.
Patience. Roots were patient.
He left the dungeon as dawn approached, slipping out into the pre-dawn darkness with fourteen imp kills to his name and a growing sense of his own potential.
---
The rhythm continued.
Night after night, Daryl returned to the solo dungeon. He learned its layout, its respawn patterns, the behaviors of its inhabitants. He experimented with different approaches—stealth, aggression, hit-and-run tactics—and let [Overgrowth] record each lesson in his growing proficiencies.
After one week, his skills had grown noticeably.
[Stealth: 3%]
[Dagger Mastery: 4%]
[Light Footsteps: 2%]
[Thorn Body: 9%]
The dagger's bond strength had reached 34%, and he had begun carrying a second item—a pair of worn leather gloves he'd found in the rubble. Their bond strength was only 2%, but already he could feel them beginning to change, the leather growing slightly thicker, slightly tougher.
[Scavenged Leather Gloves]
Quality: Junk
Defense: 1
Durability: 3/5
Bond Strength: 2%
Small things. But small things added up. [Overgrowth] taught him that.
---
On the twenty-third night, everything changed.
Daryl entered the solo dungeon as usual, expecting the familiar routine of imp hunting and skill practice. But from the moment he passed through the dungeon's threshold, he knew something was different.
The air was wrong. Thicker. Heavier. Charged with an energy that made the hair on his arms stand on end. The tunnel stretched before him, but it was no longer the familiar passage he had walked dozens of times. The walls were rougher, the darkness deeper, and in the distance, he heard sounds that had never been there before.
The roar of flames. The clang of metal on metal. The screams of something that might have been human.
He should have turned back. Every instinct screamed at him to flee, to return to his basement and pretend he hadn't noticed. But the crystal shard against his chest was burning hot, and the core fragment in his chest was pulsing in rhythm with the sounds ahead, and [Overgrowth] was whispering in the depths of his mind:
Forward.
He went forward.
The tunnel opened into a chamber that shouldn't exist. The solo dungeon was small—a handful of rooms connected by narrow passages. This space was vast, a cathedral of stone and fire that stretched beyond sight. Pillars of obsidian rose toward a ceiling lost in smoke, and between them, rivers of molten rock carved glowing paths through the floor.
The Molten Forge.
The crystal shard had guided him here, just as the Collector promised. The hidden portal wasn't in the dungeon—it was the dungeon, or had become it, or had always been it, waiting for someone with the key to unlock its true nature.
Daryl stood at the edge of the forge world and felt its heat wash over him like a physical force. This was not a place for the weak. This was not a place for the unprepared. This was a place where champions were made or broken, where gods watched and judged, where—
A figure emerged from the flames.
It was humanoid, roughly, but built of living stone and molten metal. Fire danced across its surface, and in its hands, it carried a hammer large enough to crush a horse. Its eyes—if the glowing orbs in its massive head could be called eyes—fixed on Daryl with ancient, patient malice.
[Champion of the Molten Forge: Ignis the Crucible]
Rank: C
Threat Level: Catastrophic
Daryl's dagger was in his hand before he consciously drew it. [Thorn Body] flared across his skin, the thorns more visible now, more present. [Overflow] coiled in his chest like a snake preparing to strike.
He was going to die.
The thought came with perfect clarity. He was an F-Grade with a handful of low-rank skills and a dagger that had only recently stopped being junk. This creature was C-Rank—three full tiers above him—a champion of a god, a being that had likely destroyed hundreds of challengers before him.
He was going to die.
But as Ignis raised its hammer and began to advance, Daryl felt something else rising in his chest alongside the fear. Something that might have been [Overgrowth] or might have been the core fragment or might have been simply himself, finally, after two lifetimes of being nothing.
Defiance.
He had been mocked. Cast out. Told he was trash. He had died once and been reborn into the same body, the same world, the same scorn. He had spent months hiding in a basement, training in darkness, growing in secret while the city above went about its business unaware.
And now, in this moment, facing certain death, he realized something.
He didn't care.
Let the gods watch. Let them judge. Let them send their champions and their trials and their impossible challenges. He was Daryl Ramsay, F-Grade trash, bearer of [Overgrowth], and he would not go quietly into whatever afterlife awaited him.
The hammer descended.
Daryl moved.
---
[End of Chapter 3]
---
Status Update: Daryl Ramsay (End of Chapter 3)
Personal Information:
· Name: Daryl Ramsay
· Rank: F (Officially) / Unknown (Actually)
· Location: The Fringe, New Alexandria / The Molten Forge (God's Realm)
Talent:
· [SSS-Rank: Overgrowth] - Passively enhances all skills and equipment over time. Current Integration: 8% (increased by dungeon core absorption). Effects:
· Thorned Patience: Skills evolve with use and time.
· Living Arsenal: Equipped items bond and evolve.
Core Integration:
· Absorbed E-Rank dungeon core from Goblin Warrens.
· Core fragment from first life (The Collector's gift) actively resonating.
· Current state: Merging with [Overgrowth], providing passive growth rate increase.
Skills:
Active Offensive:
· [Dagger Mastery (F-Rank)] - Proficiency: 4%
· Increases damage with daggers and improves handling.
· Currently provides approximately +2% damage and slightly smoother handling.
Active Defensive:
· [Thorn Body (F-Rank)] - Proficiency: 9%
· Magical thorns cover skin when threatened.
· Reflects 2-3% of physical damage back at attackers.
· Provides minor damage reduction (estimated 1-2 points).
· Thorns become visible when actively defending.
Active Utility:
· [Stealth (F-Rank)] - Proficiency: 3%
· Reduces detection range by approximately 5% when remaining still and in shadow.
· More effective in natural darkness than magical darkness.
· [Light Footsteps (F-Rank)] - Proficiency: 2%
· Reduces movement noise by approximately 3%.
· Most effective on natural surfaces (stone, earth).
Passive Survival:
· [Overflow (F-Rank)] - Cooldown: 28 days (reduced from 30)
· When health drops below 10%, automatically activates to survive one lethal blow.
· Draws on [Overgrowth]'s energy reserve.
· Cannot be voluntarily activated.
Equipment:
Primary Weapon:
· [Thorned Iron Dagger] - Quality: F+
· Attack: 5-8
· Durability: 20/20
· Effects:
· Minor Bleed: 5% chance for +2 damage over 5 seconds.
· Bonded (34%): +1 attack per 25% bond strength (currently +1 total).
· Evolution History: Rusted Iron Dagger (Junk) → Thorned Iron Dagger (F+)
Secondary Equipment:
· [Scavenged Leather Gloves] - Quality: Junk
· Defense: 1
· Durability: 3/5
· Bond Strength: 2%
· No effects yet. Beginning to thicken slightly.
· [The Collector's Crystal Shard] - Quality: ???
· A fragment of the Molten Forge realm.
· Currently resonating with the God's Realm portal.
· Acts as a key/guide to the hidden dungeon entrance.
· Bond Strength: N/A (not equipment)
Equipment Bonding Progress:
· Thorned Iron Dagger: 34% (Next evolution at 50%)
· Scavenged Leather Gloves: 2% (Next evolution at 25%)
Dungeon Clearing Record:
· Goblin Warrens (E-Rank) - Partial clear, core absorbed, dungeon collapsed
· Solo Imp Dungeon (F-Rank) - 8 full clears, 142 total imp kills
· Molten Forge (C-Rank) - Currently attempting first champion
Notable Achievements:
· Survived E-Rank dungeon as F-Grade
· Absorbed first dungeon core
· Evolved first piece of equipment
· Gained first four skills
· Located God's Realm hidden portal
· Survived first encounter with C-Rank champion (ongoing)
Current Objectives:
· Survive Champion Ignis the Crucible
· Complete firs