Chapter 47: Next up -Me!

Rain didn’t rush in. He stood on the dry concrete edge, studying the plant cluster with calm, methodical precision.

The air around the reeds looked slightly different. A faint, shimmering haze hovered over the water surrounding the stems, carrying a subtle, sweet-sour scent that smelled vaguely like overripe fruit and wet copper.

As Rain watched, a tiny, harmless cave cricket hopped off a rusted iron pipe, landing on one of the outer reed stems.

The moment the stem vibrated, the bulbous seed pod at the top popped open with a soft sound. A small, dense cloud of fine, yellow dust puffed out into the air, floating down onto the surface of the water.

The cricket instantly froze. Its tiny legs locked up into stiff, rigid angles, its antennae drooping as if paralyzed, before it slipped off the stem and sank silently into the clear water.

Rain raised an eyebrow, his mind instantly analyzing the reaction.

’A spore hazard,’ Rain thought, stepping back half a pace to avoid the draft blowing toward him. ’Not direct physical damage. Something that locks your muscles up and slows your reactions. If I step in there and breathe that dust, my limbs will lock up before I make it halfway across the room.’

He looked around the wide reservoir chamber, searching for another path.

To his left, the wall was smooth concrete, offering no handholds. To his right, a row of massive, rusted iron water pipes ran along the ceiling twelve feet above the flooded floor, bridging the entire span of the room from the entrance ledge all the way to the far archway over the reed cluster.

Rain looked up at the pipes. Old, patched with dark rust, but thick, at least four inches of solid metal.

’Don’t fight the hazard,’ Rain told himself, a quiet, satisfied smile touching his lips. ’Bypass it.’

He walked over to the nearest wall bracket, jumped into the air, and caught the lower edge of the twelve-foot iron pipe with both hands. His fingers locked onto the rusty metal ridge, his grip strong enough to hold his own weight without strain.

He pulled himself up, swinging his legs over the top of the pipe, and sat astride the iron cylinder.

Below him, the Choke Reed cluster swayed gently in the shallow water, completely unaware of his presence above the spore zone.

Rain began crawling along the top of the thick pipe, moving hand over hand with smooth, deliberate efficiency. The rusted iron creaked softly beneath his weight, but the support brackets held firm. He crossed the thirty-foot reservoir in less than twenty seconds, passing directly over the sweet-sour haze without breathing in a single speck of the yellow spore dust.

He reached the far wall, dropped down onto the dry concrete ledge behind the reed cluster, and landed hard on his boots, his bad leg buckling for a half second before he caught himself.

He turned around, looking back at the yellow reeds standing silent in the water.

’Awareness beats brute force,’ Rain thought, wiping his hands on his trousers as he turned back toward the exit corridor. ’Most of the time, anyway.’

The corridor beyond the reservoir was different from the rest of the sublevel. Narrow, barely five feet wide, the walls lined with heavy, reinforced steel plates that had buckled under the pressure of the surrounding earth. The ceiling was low, forcing Rain to duck his head slightly as he moved forward.

He had taken twenty paces down the steel corridor when he heard it.

Heavy footsteps.

The sound was not the light clicking of a crawler or the wet sliding of a leech. It was a heavy, metallic thud that shook the buckled steel plates along the wall.

Rain stopped dead in his tracks.

At the far end of the narrow hallway, twenty yards away, a massive four-legged shadow stepped out from a broken side alcove.

The beast was six feet long, its low, muscular body covered in dark, reddish-brown hide that looked like pitted leather. Its four thick legs ended in heavy, blunt claws designed for digging through concrete. But its most terrifying feature was its head. The monster’s lower jaw was not made of bone or cartilage. It was a massive, fused plate of dense, dark metal that protruded six inches past its upper snout, a natural, biomechanical shovel lined with blunt, iron-like ridges that could grind through stone and steel.

The creature lowered its metallic head, its small, blood-red eyes locking directly onto Rain in the narrow space.

A deep, vibrating growl rumbled through its chest, shaking the loose rust flaking off the ceiling.

Rain felt a cold spike of electricity shoot up his spine.

[Target Identified: Rustjaw]

[Rank: D-Rank]

[Type: Beast / Territorial Apex]

[Attributes: Heavy Bite Force, Reinforced Jaw, Aggressive]

[Threat Level: High]

’Narrow space,’ Rain thought, his eyes rapidly assessing the corridor. ’No room to flank. No room to dodge sideways. I have to take this head-on, and I’m not walking in fresh.’

He thought of the number sitting in his status panel, ninety-one out of a hundred and thirty. Not broken. Not fresh either.

The Rustjaw didn’t hesitate. It raised its heavy metallic snout, let out a deafening, metallic roar that hurt Rain’s ears, and charged.

The beast covered the distance with terrifying speed, its four heavy legs driving into the floorboards like pile drivers. The narrow steel corridor amplified the sound into a crushing wall of noise as six hundred pounds of muscle and metal came hurtling straight toward Rain.

Rain planted his back boot against a buckled steel plate in the floor, setting his stance, his muscles tightening.

He didn’t run. He didn’t use Flash Step. Eleven Mana wasn’t enough to waste on something he might still need to get out of here.

When the Rustjaw reached three feet from his chest, its massive iron lower jaw swung upward in a violent, gut-ripping arc aimed directly for Rain’s stomach.

Rain leaped sideways, slamming his back against the left steel wall, forcing himself into the tight three-inch gap between two buckled plates.

The Rustjaw’s metallic lower jaw slammed directly into the steel wall where Rain’s ribs had been a fraction of a second before. The impact sheared three iron rivets clean off the frame, sparks exploding into the narrow hallway like fireworks as the monster’s momentum buried its snout deep into the metal wall.

"My turn!" Rain yelled.