Contrary to what Rain had expected, the rift didn’t look like a door, and it didn’t look like a tear in the sky the way it had been described in textbooks.
It looked like a sheet of dirty glass suspended six inches above the damp mud of the ravine, wavering slightly under the weak moon.
Rain stepped through behind the young archer, bracing himself for the cold void or the blinding flash he had seen illustrated in first-year rift theory lectures.
Neither came. His right boot hit solid stone, slipping half an inch on a thin skin of wet moss. The air hit him a second later.
It was an oppressive, suffocating wall of dry heat, like opening a heavy iron furnace door in the middle of winter. It didn’t smell like burning wood or oil; it tasted of iron and old dust. The heat didn’t rise from the ground or radiate from a flame. It sat in the dark, heavy and stagnant, pressing against the back of Rain’s neck like a warm leather strap.
Rain stumbled forward, his lungs burning as he pulled in a ragged breath. He raised a hand to his collar, dragging the hood of his sweatshirt back. "Is there... is something burning down here?"
Warrick didn’t turn around. He adjusted the heavy canvas straps of his supply pack, his boots crunching on the loose gravel of the cave floor. "That’s ambient density, kid. You’re inside a fragment of the Dead Domain now. The rift isn’t a cave on Earth; it’s a piece of somewhere else dragged through the wall and pinned to the rock on this side. Your core is F-rank. It’s like putting a thin plastic bottle twenty feet underwater. The pressure feels like heat because your core can’t cycle the ambient flow fast enough to equalize."
Rain slowed his pace, letting his fingers rest against the damp, stone wall beside him. The rock was slick, covered in a crawling network of pale, thread-like tendrils that pulsed with a faint, nauseating yellow light every few seconds. They weren’t roots, and they weren’t vines. They looked like stripped nerve fibers, growing in tight, organic clusters out of cracks in the dark granite. Higher up on the vaulted ceiling, strange, mineral formations hung down like calcified teeth, dripping thick, colorless moisture that hissed softly whenever it hit the floor.
’This is what a rift is like, huh?’ Rain thought.
It was a bleeding wound in the world. A pocket of alien space stitched messily into the earth.
The group moved forward in a tight, single-file formation. Warrick led the way, holding a small, covered tactical lantern that cast a narrow, directional beam of yellow light fifty feet down the winding stone corridor. The air remained thick, forcing everyone to take short, deliberate breaths to keep from coughing on the stagnant dust.
After twenty minutes of silence, broken only by the rhythmic crunch of six pairs of boots against the gravel, the pale girl with the daggers, Nyra, let out a short, breathy scoff from the middle of the line.
"Three hundred credits," she muttered, adjusting the leather buckle strap on her right thigh. "I could have made three hundred credits pulling overnight security at the processing docks. At least there I’d have a tea machine and a roof that doesn’t drop alien spit on my hair."
Dane, the tall guy with the red-hilted arming sword, let out a low chuckle without looking back. "Yeah, but at the docks you don’t get the prestige of standing in a dark hole with a C-rank. Think of the resume value, Nyra. ’Survived a C-rank environment while wearing E-rank leather.’ That’s gold on the job boards."
"Right," Nyra said dryly, dodging a low-hanging mineral spike. "Right up until the administrative board asks for my death certificate so they can process the administrative fee for my funeral."
"They charge fifty credits for the paperwork now," Maren added from behind her heavy iron mace. Her voice was flat, carrying the weary, unbothered tone of someone who had filled out those forms before. "My neighbor’s kid died in a low-grade excavation sweep last winter. The guild sent her a bill for the biohazard disposal bag before they even cleared his apartment."
Toby, the young archer walking directly ahead of Rain, turned his head slightly, his eyes wide in the faint yellow glow of the lantern. "Wait, really? They make the family pay for the bag?"
"They make you pay for the ink they use to write the receipt," Maren said, shifting her heavy iron shoulder plate with a small clatter of metal rings. "Don’t get romantic about guilds, kid. They aren’t charities. They’re corporations with bigger budgets and legal rights to carry broadswords."
The conversation drifted slowly, unspooling in the dark as they navigated a long, sloping turn that led deeper into the subterranean network. The initial edge of tension began to dull, replaced by the quiet, pragmatic camaraderie of people who knew they were all sitting in the same leaky boat.
It became clear as they talked that none of them were total rookies. This was the fourth or fifth clearing run for Dane, Maren, and Nyra. They had worked together on smaller, low-stakes clearance contracts around the outer city perimeter, clearing wild vermin out of abandoned subway tunnels, hauling salvage from collapsed basement rifts, guarding survey teams. But none of them had ever stepped inside a genuine C-rank gate or rift as it was both referred to before tonight. Warrick’s pitch had caught them all at their absolute lowest point of financial exhaustion.
"My brother tested three years ago," Maren said after Toby asked why she didn’t just stay at the iron foundry where the pay was steady. She didn’t look at anyone while she spoke, her eyes fixed on the dark corridor ahead. "Resonance Ceremony at the central hall. Big day. My mother bought him a real wool suit for it." She let out a short, dry breath through her nose. "Zero affinity. Not a low core density, not an E-rank baseline. Absolute zero. His core didn’t even register a ripple when they brought him out of the diagnostic chamber."
Toby winced. "Zero? Man..."
"It means he’s unbound," Maren said, her voice dropping into a flat, worn rhythm. "If he sits in a room with a high-grade rift crystal for ten minutes, his lungs start filling with fluid from ambient mana poisoning. He can’t work standard construction because the machinery uses core-driven engines. He can’t live near the inner ring. He needs three doses of stabilizing serum a month just to keep his nervous system from twitching out." She paused, wiping a bead of sweat off her upper lip with the back of her leather gauntlet. "The serum is four hundred credits a box. Manufactured by a subsidiary of the Sun-Forge Guild. I worked sixteen-hour shifts at their protein paste processing plant in Sector 7 for two years. You know what they paid?"
"Ninety credits a week," Dane volunteered quietly.
"Eighty-five," Maren corrected. "Because they deducted three credits a day for the hairnets and the apron rental."
A collective grumble of curses rippled through the small group.
"I worked the vats at the Sector 4 plant for three months," Dane said, his grip tightening on the pommel of his arming sword. "The smell never comes out of your skin. It’s processed yeast and ground-up bottom-tier core hulls. You eat it for breakfast, and then you go to work to scoop it into plastic tubs for eight hours."
"Spent six months trying to get onto the Sun-Forge varsity reserve team," Dane continued, his tone turning sharp with an old, sour resentment. "Passed every physical benchmark. Broke the record for lateral shuttle runs at the regional combine. You know who got the slot? The nephew of the district logistics manager. Kid couldn’t even hold an iron broadsword without his wrists shaking, but his family owned three supply shops in the lower ring. They put him on the reserve list, gave him a standard monthly stipend, and told me to apply for the warehouse loading crew."
Toby let out a quiet sigh, his fingers plucking absently at the string of his hunting bow. "My dad took out a second mortgage on our house to pay for private archery coaching when I was fourteen. Said if I could hit C-rank precision before I turned eighteen, the local regional guilds would offer a full scholarship. I hit eighty percent accuracy on moving targets at sixty yards." He pulled his mouth into a tight line. "Then the academy changed the entrance criteria. Added a mandatory core density threshold. If your core isn’t D-rank baseline, your accuracy stats don’t even get put into the computer. The private coach didn’t refund the money."
Nyra didn’t offer a story about her family. She just walked with her head down, her dark eyes scanning the glowing fungus on the walls, her daggers clicking softly against her leather harnesses with every step.
"What about you, student?" Dane asked, turning his head back slightly toward Rain. "You’ve been quiet back there. What’s an academy kid doing taking a carrier slot on a Friday night? Didn’t your dorm counselor give you a meal card?"
Rain looked up, surprised to be pulled into the conversation. He didn’t tighten up, and he didn’t pull his hood down to hide his face. He just gave them a simple, honest shrug.
"No family," Rain said, his voice calm and warm in the warm gloom of the cave. "Orphan. Grew up in the lower district care homes until I turned sixteen. Got accepted into the baseline track at the academy this year, but the entry grant barely covers basic hygiene needs and basic textbook access. I maxed out my credit balance buying a towel and this hoodie a couple of days ago,"
He paused, catching himself as he realized how heavy it sounded laid out in a single sentence.
"I mean... it’s fine," Rain added quickly, offering a small, slightly sheepish smile. "I’m not trying to say it’s worse than what you guys went through. You’re dealing with family medical bills and real guild corruption. I’m just trying to keep my account from going negative before next week’s lectures start."
The small group went quiet for a beat.
Nyra stopped walking, turning her head to look at Rain over her shoulder. Her dark eyes swept over his gray hoodie, his scuffed canvas shoes, and the thin, pale wrists sticking out of his sleeves.
"You’re a real idiot, you know that?" Nyra said, her voice dry and sharp as a razor.
Rain blinked, taken aback. "Huh?"
"You’re sitting at the absolute bottom of the food chain, kid," Nyra said, turning back around and resuming her stride behind Warrick. "You’ve got an F ranked core, no family, no gear, and an academy that’s going to throw you out into the street the second you fail your first practical exam. And you’re out here apologizing because you think your problems aren’t sad enough to complain out loud?" She let out a short, cold laugh. "They’ve got you trained real well down at that school. Teaching you to be grateful for the privilege of starving in a nicer hoodie."
The air went a little awkward, the shared warmth of the conversation stalling out against Nyra’s blunt jab.
"Take it easy, Nyra," Dane muttered, though his voice lacked any real conviction. "He’s just a first-year."
"I’m just saying," Nyra replied, her voice unyielding. "Don’t apologize for being broke, kid. It’s not a virtue."
Rain didn’t argue. He kept his eyes on the damp ground ahead, letting the words settle in his mind without letting them bite.
He understood why she said it.
To someone like Nyra, who had spent her whole life fighting for every inch of survival in the lower districts, humility looked like weakness, and gratitude looked like submission. But Rain didn’t view his situation through the lens of anger. Being left at a care home door as an infant was an absolute, cold fact of his existence; it had no feeling attached to it anymore. He didn’t have a mother to buy him a wool suit for a ceremony, and he didn’t have a father to take out a mortgage for private bow coaching. He was starting from absolute zero, isolated and unmoored.
Most people in his position would probably be consumed by a burning, bitter rage at the whole system. But Rain knew that rage was an expensive emotion. It took energy, focus, and time, three things he couldn’t afford to waste while his core density was sitting at F-rank. He didn’t care about proving the world wrong or getting revenge on a system that ignored him. He just wanted to build something real out of the thin air he’d been handed, step by step, credit by credit, until nobody could reach into his life and push him around again.
"Quiet," Warrick’s voice rasped from the front of the line.
The entire group halted instantly.
Warrick dropped to one knee near a low ledge of jagged black rock, raising his left hand to signal a full stop. He closed his fingers around the tactical lantern, shuttering the light down to a faint, razor-thin slit.
Fifty yards ahead, where the narrow stone corridor opened up into a massive, cavernous chamber, the darkness was moving.
A wet, sickening clicking sound echoed off the high vaulted ceiling. Hundreds of tiny, hard legs were scraping against the dry stone, accompanied by a low, collective hiss that sounded like pressurized steam venting from a broken pipe.
Rain peered over Toby’s shoulder, leaning low against the wall.
Out in the main chamber, dozens of dark, reddish-brown shapes were crawling over a massive mound of rotting bone and calcified earth. They were squat, six-legged insectoid creatures, each the size of a large hunting dog. Their thick chitinous shells looked like dried blood, covered in jagged, bone-like ridges. A pair of thick, curved mandibles snapped rhythmically at the front of their flat heads, dripping thick strands of pale yellow saliva onto the stone.
The moment Rain’s eyes locked onto the lead creature, a cold blue window snapped into focus in the upper left corner of his vision.
[Target Identified: Grave Tick]
[Rank: E-Rank (Common)]
[Type: Beast / Insectoid]
[Attributes: High Armor (Chitin), Low Speed, Acidic Bite]
[Threat Level: Low (Individual) / Moderate (Swarm)]
’That’s a monster?! And an E rank at that?!!’
Rain kept his mouth shut. He didn’t blurt out the name, and he didn’t point at the screen. He kept his hands low, watching silently as the system fed him exact tactical parameters that nobody else in the party had access to.
"Grave Ticks," Warrick muttered, his voice calm, completely devoid of surprise. "Swarm type. E-rank base chitin, but their mandibles carry a mild hemotoxin. Don’t let them pin your ankles."
He didn’t draw a weapon. He simply stepped back against the rock face, unbuckling his heavy supply pack and dropping it onto the gravel.
"Dane, Maren, take the front choke point," Warrick ordered, pointing toward a narrow two-meter gap in the stone where the corridor met the larger chamber. "Toby, set up on that ledge to the left. Nyra, flank any that leak past the shield line. Carrier, stay ten paces behind Toby and keep the core bags open."
"Got it," Dane said. He drew his red-hilted arming sword with a crisp metal shriek, his posture instantly shifting from lazy mercenary to focused martial combatant.
Maren stepped up beside him, unslinging her heavy iron mace with her right hand and pulling a broad, rectangular steel tower shield off her back with her left. She slammed the bottom edge of the shield into the dirt gap, blocking three-quarters of the narrow opening.
"Come on, you ugly little roaches!" Maren roared, slamming the head of her mace against the steel face of her shield with a deafening CLANG.
The sound echoed through the chamber like a cannon shot.
The entire horde of Grave Ticks froze. Hundreds of tiny, pitch-black compound eyes turned toward the narrow gap in the stone. A second later, a wave of clicking mandibles erupted into a furious, collective screech, and the reddish-brown swarm surged forward across the cavern floor, a sea of snapping legs and chitin.
"Hold the line!" Dane yelled, stepping shoulder-to-shoulder with Maren, his sword drawing back over his shoulder.
The first three Grave Ticks slammed into Maren’s tower shield with the sound of cracking timber.
Maren didn’t yield an inch. Her thick boots dug deep into the gravel, her teeth bared as she leaned her full bodily weight into the steel shield. "NOW!"
Dane swung his arming sword in a violent, horizontal arc. A dull gray light surged down the length of the steel blade, a basic D-rank physical augmentation skill. The heavy edge cut clean through the flat head of the lead tick, spraying dark green hemolymph across the cavern wall.
CRACK!
Maren brought her iron mace down with terrifying force, smashing the second tick’s chitinous back plate into a wet, pulp-like mess.
Behind them, Toby was already working. He stood on a flat rock ledge five feet above the ground, his body moving with smooth, practiced repetition. He pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked it, drew the heavy bowstring back to his ear, and released, all in less than two seconds.
THWIP!
The black-feathered arrow whistled through the air, driving clean through the eye cluster of an E-rank tick that was attempting to scramble up the stone wall above Maren’s head. The creature shuddered violently, lost its grip, and tumbled backward onto the rocks below.
Nyra moved like a shadow along the right wall. She didn’t engage the front line. She waited for the ticks that tried to squeeze through the small gaps under Maren’s shield. The moment an insectoid head poked through, Nyra stepped in, her long iron daggers flashing in a tight, double-reverse grip. She drove both blades straight into the soft joints where the head met the torso, twisted once, and stepped back before the acidic blood could splatter her boots.
It was a clean, efficient slaughter.
They weren’t a high-grade guild squad, but they were experienced killers who knew how to turn a narrow corridor into a choke point kill box.
Rain stood ten paces back, his back pressed against the cold rock, watching every single detail with intense, absorbing focus. He wasn’t scared which surprised even himself; he was studying. He watched how Dane used small, tight footwork to preserve his stamina, how Maren angled her shield to deflect the kinetic impact of the charges rather than taking the full force head-on, how Toby prioritized targets that were attempting to climb out of the choke point.
[Status Check]
[HP: 68/100]
[Mana: 2/10]
Rain began to calculate his internal clock. He had entered the van with two points of Mana. The long drive and the slow walk through the cave had taken nearly an hour. He could feel a faint, warm prickle at the base of his spine, his core was slowly pulling ambient energy and refining it at a crawl.
’Almost at three,’ Rain calculated internally, his mind running through the math. ’Another ten or fifteen minutes and I’ll have three points. That gives me one single Flash Step activation.’
He knew he couldn’t afford to waste it. If he used it now on an E-rank tick, he’d be running on absolute zero if something larger came out of the deep dark. He had to stay patient, play the role of the quiet carrier, and let the D-ranks do the heavy work.
The fight at the choke point lasted less than ten minutes.
Over forty Grave Ticks lay motionless in the narrow gap, their dark reddish shells cracked open, their pale hemolymph pooling in the hollows of the stone floor. The sharp, bitter smell of sulfur and acid filled the air, mixing with the heavy ambient heat.
"Clear," Dane grunted, wiping his bloody blade against the side of his leather pants. His chest was heaving slightly, a sheen of heavy sweat covering his forehead.
"All clear," Toby called down from his ledge, lowering his bow and wiping his dripping nose with his sleeve.
Warrick stepped forward, pulling a short, hooked bone-knife from his belt. "Carrier. Get up here. Start harvesting the cores. Small core nodules only. Leave the chitin plates; they’re too heavy for the payout."
"On it," Rain said immediately.
He stepped past Maren, pulling a heavy canvas salvage sack off his belt. He dropped to his knees beside the pile of dead insects, his fingers moving fast. He used his short iron trench knife to lever open the soft seam under the chest plates, reaching inside to pull out small, thumb-sized crystal nodules that glowed with a dull, sickly yellow light.
[Item Harvested: Low-Grade E-Rank Beast Core (Grave Tick)]
[Estimated Value: 8 Credits]
’Eight credits a piece,’ Rain thought, doing the math against the sheer number of carcasses scattered across the choke point. Forty-some ticks, most of them barely worth harvesting individually, but the pile added up. Common swarm-type cores like this sat at the very bottom of the market. Low mana density, no rare secondary properties, nothing a refinery could do with them except grind them down into cheap industrial filler. The real money was never in the swarm. It was in the exceptional kills, the elites, the things that took real skill or real risk to put down.
Warrick had known the Grave Ticks on sight, hadn’t even blinked before naming their hemotoxin trait. That wasn’t a lucky guess. That was someone who’d harvested this exact species before, who already knew the math on what a room full of common cores versus a single high-grade one actually paid out.
"Also explains why Warrick didn’t bother fighting them,’
It was a strange thing to hold in his hand, knowing what it actually was. This exact chunk of raw, unrefined core material, the same category of thing that had cost him twenty-five thousand credits at the ceremony, once someone ran it through an ether-bath and etched a construct onto its surface. Eight credits raw. Tens of thousands once it came out the other side of a guild refinery with a serial number stamped into it.
That was the whole business, right there in his palm. Nobody was getting rich harvesting cores out of a rift at night. The money was in controlling what happened to them after.
He dropped the crystal into the canvas bag with a small clink, then reached for the next one.
He was halfway through the pile, his hands covered in sticky green fluid, when a low, heavy vibration rattled through the stone under his knees.
THUMP.
Rain froze, his iron knife buried three inches inside a cracked shell.
The air in the cavern didn’t just feel warm; it suddenly went violently hot. A thick, suffocating wave of pressure rolled out from the far side of the main chamber, making the small yellow flame in Warrick’s tactical lantern flicker violently.
THUMP.
"Get back!" Nyra screamed, her voice cracking as she lunged backward, her daggers raised in a defensive guard.