Day seven. 3 AM.
Tobias Finch stood outside his scrap hut. His dark eye was fixed on Alvian with an expression caught between respect and genuine worry.
"You got the map?"
Alvian confidently patted his pocket.
"Read it carefully," Tobias warned, his voice grim. "The Warrens aren’t like the Rift. Down there everything is permanent. You die, you don’t respawn at the entrance. You just die."
"I know."
"You don’t know." Tobias’s voice was completely flat. "Nobody knows until they’re down there with a broken weapon and something chewing through their leg. But you’re going anyway, so my advice is totally wasted." He turned back to his workbench, then paused. "Watch the deep tunnels. And stay away from the red circle."
Alvian nodded and disappeared into the maintenance tunnel entrance.
The descent took forty long minutes. The thirteenth level’s recycled air gave way to something far rawer as he climbed down through successive layers of pre-Cataclysm infrastructure. Maintenance tunnels became subway corridors. Subway corridors became sewer junctions. The walls changed from concrete to brick, and then into wet, creepy cave rock.
The air changed first. It thickened, coating his throat. The dimensional energy here was not filtered through a safety Rift portal. Glowing purple and green fluid leaked from the walls, lighting up the dark tunnel.
Faded graffiti and old advertisements still marked the subway walls from before the Cataclysm. A ghostly "Coca-Cola" poster hung on the tile. It felt like normal human history was buried and forgotten right beneath a scary, magical nightmare.
Alvian checked Tobias’s map. The subway tunnel stretched ahead, then it split into three paths. The left path was a dead end. The middle path belonged to rats. The deepest path on the right was marked with a scary red circle and a wavy line.
He went center.
The first Ironjaw Rat found him before he even found it!
"Scratch! Scratch!"
A scratching sound came from the ceiling. A scary, dog-sized monster with dirty gray-brown fur dropped from the shadows. Its jaws were the real problem. The teeth were metallic, polished iron instead of bone. Dimensional iron deposits in the bedrock had heavily mutated the species over generations, turning their teeth into natural steel.
It lunged fiercely!
Alvian threw himself sideways, but the rat was unbelievably fast. It was faster than a Sludge Beetle by a massive margin. Its jaws snapped shut exactly where his thigh had been a fraction of a second ago.
"CLANG!"
The clang of metal teeth hitting a rusted pipe echoed loudly. The thick pipe sheared clean through!
’Shit. Those teeth would have taken my leg clean off,’ Alvian cursed internally. The rat wanted a piece of his leg. He decided it could have his knife instead.
He rolled gracefully, came up with the trench knife, and slashed aggressively at the creature’s side.
"Clink!"
The knife slid right off the thick skin without leaving a mark. He quickly struck again with his Clearwater Palm skill. This softened a patch of skin so his knife could finally stab in, but the rat spun away before he could hit it again.
He intelligently led the rat into a tight pipe where the tunnel shrank to just a meter wide. The angry rat tried to squeeze in right behind him, but its large size got in its way. It couldn’t turn around, couldn’t attack from the side, and could only push straight ahead with its jaws snapping uselessly.
Alvian stabbed upward directly through its exposed throat!
"Sququelch!"
The reinforced blade successfully punched through the softer tissue under the jaw, and hot ichor violently splashed his arm. The rat thrashed madly, metallic teeth clicking uselessly against the pipe walls, and then finally went completely still.
[Ding! Combat action detected.]
[Random multiplier activated: 4x!]
[Common Roll!]
[Ironjaw Rat Base EXP: 25]
[Multiplier: 4x]
[Total EXP: 100]
[Ding! Roll below 5x detected.]
[Karma Points +1. Current KP: 15]
[Oof. The cosmos shrugs at your mediocrity.]
One hundred EXP. A total garbage roll on a dangerous creature worth two and a half times a beetle. But a Karma Point was a Karma Point.
He brutally killed two more rats in quick succession as he moved deeper. Both fights were ugly, desperate close-quarters struggles against creatures faster and tougher than absolutely anything the upper Rift had thrown at him. Clearwater Palm definitely helped, softening their hides for the killing blow, but the corrosion effect barely dented their metallic teeth and took precious seconds to work.
[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 2x! Karma Points +1. Current KP: 16]
[Wow. Just... wow. KP +1.]
[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 3x! Karma Points +1. Current KP: 17]
[The System is starting to feel bad for you. That’s rare.]
Two more garbage rolls! Two more Karma Points!
Three more rats fell over the next two intense hours. Each fight severely drained his HP to dangerous levels. His trench knife’s edge was noticeably duller from constantly glancing off metallic hides. One rat viciously caught his calf in its jaws and he actually felt the metal teeth scrape bone before he ruthlessly drove his knife straight through its eye. Another nearly flanked him in an open junction before he cleverly coated the floor with Clearwater residue, creating a slick hazard that sent the creature skidding violently into a support pillar.
Using Clearwater Palm over and over had successfully made its corrosive effect last longer. The window grew from eight seconds to eleven, and the pits on the rats’ tough skin got slightly deeper. These were small improvements, but they added up fast. Each fight got a little easier as he got better at using his Skill.
The rolls were much better this time around.
[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 6x! Total EXP: 150]
[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 11x! Total EXP: 275]
[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 8x! Total EXP: 200]
He earned about 800 EXP from all eight kills, which easily pushed him up to Level 13! His stats had also steadily grown: repeatedly using Clearwater Palm raised his Essence from 9 to 10, while the brutal, nonstop combat sharpened his Intelligence from 8 to 9.
┌──────[ Profile]──────┐
│ [Host]: Alvian Vance
│ [Level]: 13 (Mortal Tier)
│ [Talent]: Clearwater [E-Rank]
│ [Skills]: Clearwater Palm [E-Rank]
│ [STR]: 15 | [AGI]: 14 | [VIT]: 28
│ [INT]: 9 | [Essence]: 10
│ [Karma Points]: 17
│ [EXP Bank]: ~7,400 / ∞
└────────────────┘
Then, he finally found the nest.
An old, rusted subway car sat ominously where three tunnels met. Its windows were shattered and its doors hung loosely from broken hinges. Inside, the glowing wall fluid lit up a hollow space filled with shredded material and bones... small animal bones, and others that were definitely not from animals.
Six Ironjaw Rats were inside, along with one much larger one.
The Nest Guardian was as big as a huge wolf! Its fur was much darker, and its metal teeth were thicker and much sharper. It lay at the back of the car with its head up, watching the entrance. Its smart, terrifying eyes tracked Alvian’s every move with scary accuracy.
Seven enemies in an enclosed space. Absolute suicide for a normal E-Rank delver.
Alvian quietly crouched behind a broken concrete wall and carefully studied the scene. His mind quickly did the math: seven normal rats at 25 EXP each equaled 175, and the Guardian was probably worth 50, bringing the total to 225 base experience points.
With individual rolls, he might get anything from 225 EXP if every roll hit 1x, to an impossible 2,250,000 EXP if every roll somehow magically hit 10,000x. The range of outcomes was massive. It gave him seven chances at a huge multiplier, but also seven chances at getting completely worthless rewards.
But there was another secret option.
The System’s third mechanic. The one he had read about in the peripheral documentation but never actually tested.
Gambler’s Delay. Hold Spin.
Pool the base EXP of all seven kills. Roll the multiplier once, at the very end.
The math was incredibly straightforward. Individual rolls gave him seven chances at a high multiplier, with an expected value of roughly 262.5x total across all seven, yielding about 4,594 EXP. Decent. Safe. Boring.
But the Gambler’s Delay pooled all 225 base EXP into one massive roll. If he hit a Rare roll between 101x and 1,000x, that was 22,725 to 225,000 EXP! If he hit an Epic between 1,001x and 5,000x, that was 225,225 to 1,125,000 EXP! And if he somehow managed to hit the God Roll, 10,000x on 225 base EXP was a staggering 2,250,000 EXP. Instant ascension territory!
The downside was brutally severe. A 1x roll on 225 pooled EXP gave him exactly 225 EXP total. Less than a single beetle kill. The risk-reward ratio was astronomical.
Alvian chose to gamble.
Not because he was reckless. Because the math vastly favored it. The expected value of a single roll on pooled EXP was higher than the sum of individual rolls, because the multiplier directly applied to a much larger base number. The variance was the only cost. He gladly accepted the variance.
He immediately activated Hold Spin.
[Ding! Gambler’s Delay activated!]
[Pooling base EXP from subsequent kills.]
[Multiplier roll will execute upon pool release.]
[Current pool: 0 EXP.]
[Release command: "Spin."]
The cosmic roulette wheel instantly materialized in his peripheral vision, its three reels completely dark and waiting. Not spinning. Just hovering. Patient.
Alvian gripped his trench knife tightly. His palms were wet with nervous sweat.
He looked at the dark subway car. Seven rats. One Guardian. One roll.
He stepped inside.