Chapter 46: Growing confidence

Rain watched them for three seconds, his mind rapidly assessing the terrain.

The passage behind the concrete slabs was narrow, barely four feet wide. The three crawlers were clustered together around the broken crate, their pale shells knocking against each other as they scavenged through the old wood.

’No special ability that I can see,’ Rain noted. ’Just shells and mandibles.’

A strange, unfamiliar feeling washed over him as he stared at the monsters. It wasn’t the cold terror he’d felt when the Bramble Hound lunged at Peter in the greenhouse. It wasn’t even the sharp, desperate adrenaline from the Sump Leech pool.

It was an intense, razor-sharp focus, a sudden, fierce confidence that made his blood run hot through his limbs.

He didn’t wait for them to spot him. He didn’t look for a way to sneak past.

Rain stepped out from behind the iron box and picked up a heavy, fist-sized chunk of concrete from the floor. He wound up his arm and threw it.

The concrete stone flew through the narrow gap with terrifying speed, striking the lead Pallid Crawler directly on its smooth, white head dome. The pale shell cracked like an eggshell under the impact, white fluid spurting from the fracture as the beast was knocked sideways into the rubble.

The remaining two crawlers instantly froze, their mandibles snapping open wide. They swiveled their featureless heads toward the gap, their six jointed legs clicking frantically against the stone as they charged.

They moved in short, jagged bursts, covering five feet in a second, their white shells scraping against the narrow concrete walls.

Rain didn’t retreat. He stepped right into the mouth of the narrow gap.

The narrow space meant only one crawler could reach him at a time.

The first crawler lunged through the gap, its lower mandibles snapping open to take a bite out of Rain’s thigh.

Rain saw the bite coming before the creature even left the ground. To his heightened senses, the monster’s movements felt predictable, heavy, and clumsy. He didn’t even need to use a skill to dodge it.

He simply stepped his left foot back three inches, letting the snapping mandibles close on empty air half an inch from his knee.

Before the crawler could plant its jointed legs back on the stone, Rain reached down, drove his fingers under the edge of its white shell casing, and lifted the forty-pound beast clean off the ground with one arm. He slammed the monster upside down onto the sharp edge of a fallen concrete slab.

The soft, unarmored belly of the crawler burst open against the jagged stone edge. The creature thrashed violently, its six legs kicking out in blind, useless spasms, before going completely limp as a pool of white fluid spread across the floorboards.

[Target Eliminated: Pallid Crawler (F-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +15]

[Experience: 83 / 900]

The second crawler didn’t stop. It scrambled straight over the dead body of its pack mate, its mandibles clicking furiously as it aimed for Rain’s exposed left arm.

Rain grinned, a short, sharp, wolfish smile that felt completely wild on his face.

"Next," Rain muttered.

He didn’t try to lift this one. As the crawler leaped toward his chest, Rain brought his right elbow down like a descending hammer straight into the center of its segmented back shell.

The concussive force of the strike drove the crawler straight into the concrete floor. The white bone-shell on its back shattered in a starburst of fractures, the creature’s entire body flattened against the stone under the weight of the blow. It let out a wet, raspy hiss, its legs curling inward as it died instantly.

[Target Eliminated: Pallid Crawler (F-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +15]

[Experience: 98 / 900]

The third crawler, the one Rain had struck with the thrown stone at the start, scrambled back to its feet, white fluid running down its damaged head dome. It let out a high-pitched, clicking screech, turning around to flee deeper into the passage.

"Oh no you don’t," Rain said.

He surged forward through the narrow gap, covering eight feet in two wide, explosive strides. He caught up to the wounded beast in half a second, grabbed its rear legs with both hands, and whipped it backward, slamming its head straight into the solid iron support beam framing the wall.

The white shell dome disintegrated completely against the iron. The beast went still.

[Target Eliminated: Pallid Crawler (F-Rank)]

[Experience Gained: +15]

[Experience: 113 / 900]

A sudden, warm pulse rolled out from the center of Rain’s chest, spreading through his shoulders and down into his arms. It didn’t touch the ache in his leg or the sting across his calves, those stayed exactly where they were, but something underneath all of it tightened and settled, like a key turning somewhere deep in his bones.

[Level Up! You are now Level 9]

[2 Attribute Points Distributed]

Rain stood in the narrow passage, surrounded by the shattered white shells of the three crawlers, his chest rising and falling in deep, uneven breaths, his shoulder and leg still throbbing right where they’d been throbbing a minute ago.

He raised his hands, looking at his raw knuckles. Still raw. Still scraped.

"System," Rain said out loud, his voice low but sharp in the quiet hall. "Status."

A blue window flared open in front of his face.

[STAT PANEL]

Name: Rain

Level: 9

Class: None

HP: 91 / 130

Mana: 11 / 14

Strength: 23

Agility: 16

Endurance: 22

Intelligence: 21

Bound Skills:

* [Flash Step: Zero Drag (Rank SSS)] - Slot 1

* [Empty] - Slot 2

Synthesis Credits: 0

Rain stared at the numbers. His eyes lingered on the Strength line.

’Twenty-three,’ he thought.

He had no guild sheet to measure that against, no instructor who’d ever bothered telling an F-rank where he actually stood next to anyone else. But he thought about Nyra, moving through that first C-rank rift with her daggers, fast and precise in a way that had looked untouchable to him back then. He thought about Dane’s swordwork, Maren’s shield work, the way they’d all carried themselves like people who could actually survive down here.

’I don’t feel that far off from them anymore,’ Rain thought. ’Maybe not tonight. But close. Closer than I should be.’

He turned the thought over slowly, working through it the way he worked through everything, piece by piece.

’F-rank isn’t really a rank at all,’ he thought. ’It’s the baseline. It’s what you get for having a Core and a bound skill, even a garbage one, and nothing else. One step up from an ordinary person who never got a disk at all. That’s what I was, a few weeks ago. Barely a step above nothing.’

He flexed his hand, watching his own knuckles move.

’But regular people can’t do what I just did in that gap back there. And a few weeks ago, neither could I.’

He let out a slow breath, closing the panel with a flick of his wrist.

’So by any actual logic,’ he thought, ’I’m not sitting at the bottom anymore. I don’t know exactly where I land. But it isn’t F, and it probably isn’t the bottom of D either. Somewhere in the middle of that, maybe. Maybe higher.’

It wasn’t a comfortable thought. It didn’t feel like victory so much as it felt like standing at the edge of something he didn’t have a map for yet. But he didn’t shy away from it either.

He walked deeper into the sublevel, his footsteps light, fast, and entirely unhurried, his leg still aching with every other step.

The narrow maintenance tunnel opened into a massive, low-ceilinged reservoir chamber. The floor was covered in six inches of standing water, but unlike the stagnant leech pool, this water was crystal clear, fed by three wide iron pipes protruding from the high concrete walls.

In the center of the flooded reservoir, growing directly out of the shallow water, was a dense, towering patch of pale yellow flora.

They looked like hollow bamboo reeds, ten feet tall, their thin stems crowned with bulbous, feathery seed pods that swayed softly in the cold draft blowing through the room. There were at least thirty reeds clustered together, blocking the primary archway that led to the eastern exit stairs.

Rain stopped five paces from the edge of the water, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the patch.

[Target Identified: Choke Reed]

[Rank: E-Rank]

[Type: Flora / Environmental Hazard]

[Attributes: Stationary, Spore Release, Muscle Impairment]

[Threat Level: Low (Avoidable)]