Chapter 13-The Slum King

Chapter 13: 13-The Slum King

Sol ripped his sword free, violently kicking the corpse back to dislodge the twin blades from his own arm.

He plunged his burning right hand into the dissolving silver mist of the corpse, retrieved the heavy Mid-Stage lunar crystal, and then he sprinted towards Valera, leaving the two low-level guards paralyzed by the sudden, brutal execution of their commanding officer.

"I think I almost overheated again"Sol taunted Valera, hinting the desire to stay close to her.

"Don’t joke around like that, Sol, you know now your core doesn’t heat that fast with the tehnique I teached you" Valera laughed, not minding the now provocative words of Sol.

Deep down, even she felt like she started to have some feelings for Sol, maybe friendship, or maybe..she didn’t wanna think about it "It’s just a transaction, these feelings are not reap" Valera pouted in her head.

They descended for hours, climbing down rusted maintenance shafts and navigating collapsed sinkholes, moving far beneath the reach of the Vane patrols.

They finally stopped in a forgotten subterranean pumphouse. It was dry, perfectly insulated by thick concrete walls, and utterly silent.

They locked the heavy iron door behind them and collapsed.

Sol’s left arm was severely hurt, the frostbite and deep lacerations radiating a dull, sickening ache.

For the next seven days, this house became their sanctuary.

They had a massive haul: the Mid-Stage crystal from the Enforcer, the low-level shards from the surface guards, and the tainted shard from the mutated rat.

They couldn’t eat them raw, Sol needed his core to focus on healing his torn arm. They had to cultivate properly.

They fell into a grueling, symbiotic routine. They sat back-to-back on the concrete floor. Sol absorbed fragments of the crystals, his core incinerating the taint and converting it into blistering fuel.

As his body temperature spiked, pushing violent, healing heat into his damaged arm, Valera tapped into her Permafrost core, absorbing his excess heat while drawing on the purified lunar mist he generated.

It was agonizing. In the absolute dark, they shared stories of the surface, learning the rhythm of each other’s breathinf.

Valera taught him the academic theories that past scientists had about the Moon, and Sol told her about his past experiences as a lonely survivor.

On the seventh day, the final shard dissolved into ash in Sol’s palm. His left arm was completely healed, the scars dense and packed with unyielding Level 1 vitality.

A sharp, distinct chime echoed in his mind, followed by the familiar panel.

STATUS: Level 1 (Flesh and Bone) - 76% Progression (Low-Stage).

GIFT: Sun’s Believer

Sol opened his eyes. The increased thermic density allowed him to hold a low-level continuous heat in his optic nerves. The room glowed in a steady, calm wash of thermal blues and faint oranges.

Valera stood up, stretching her arms. Her aura was a stable, brilliant white-blue.

"We’re out of shards," she said quietly, picking up her rusted iron pipe.

"Then we go back up," Sol replied, sliding his wrapped silver sword over his shoulder. "And we start bleeding the nobles, starting with Vane."

They emerged into the lower levels of the slum’s Black Market, a lawless sector known as the Purgatory.

They didn’t hide. They went hunting.

Over the next forty-eight hours, the "Ash Butcher" and the "Frost Witch" became a verified nightmare for the local Overseers. They operated with terrifying synergy.

They ambushed a Vane extortion squad collecting protection money from the slum merchants.

Valera flash-froze the ground, locking their boots to the cobblestone, and Sol moved through the ice like a ghost, his glowing blade executing them with precise, superheated thrusts.

They hit three patrols in two days, leaving behind frozen armor and cauterized ash.

On the third night, as they were stripping the crystals from a dead Vane Enforcer in a narrow alleyway, a heavy, rhythmic clapping echoed from the shadows.

Sol instantly stepped in front of Valera, dropping into a combat stance, his blade humming with contained heat.

Walking out of the darkness was a massive thermal signature.

It wasn’t an Enforcer. The energy was sprawling, jagged, and wild, probably a Level 1 Late or Peak Cultivator, heavily scarred by lunar taint but deeply powerful.

"Impressive," a gravelly, booming voice chuckled.

The man stepped into the dim light. He was huge, draped in heavy patchwork furs and rusted iron plates.

Half of his face was covered in a thick, metallic scar tissue, the mark of someone who had survived a severe lunar mutation and lived to control it.

"Three patrols in two days," the massive man said, stopping a respectful distance away. He rested a massive, double-headed warhammer on his shoulder.

"The House of Vane is panicking. They’re pulling guards from the Harvest Houses just to lock down the merchant sectors. You two are costing them a fortune."

"Who are you?" Valera demanded, her voice dripping with aristocratic authority, unbothered by the man’s size.

The giant grinned, showing a row of metal-capped teeth.

"They call me Voss," he said, tapping his chest. "I run this side of the Purgatory. You might call me a Slum King. The Vanes call me a parasite."

Voss looked at Sol’s glowing blade, then at Valera’s frosting boots. "I like your guts. The slums have needed a spark like this for a decade. The Vanes are getting fat, and I want to take their main Harvest House in this sector."

Voss planted his heavy hammer on the ground.

"You want to keep picking off grunts in the alleys, be my guest," the Slum King offered, a dangerous glint in his eye.

"But if you want to actually hurt the nobility... I have the men to breach their walls, and I have the maps to their unregistered vaults. Help me, and we’ll burn the House of Vane to the ground."