The deeper mag-lev maintenance depot lay beneath a blanket of thick, churning purple haze.
Here, fifty feet below the central concourse, the tracks split into three wide arterial bays where hollowed-out repair gantries hung like rusted iron gallow cages over the damp stone floor. Heavy iron grease, decayed rubber, and the sharp sulfur tang of high-grade incendiary mana filled the cold air.
Squad Alpha moved along the edge of the central inspection trench. Marcus held his tower shield braced low, his shoulder muscles locked tight behind the iron-reinforced frame. Timothy walked directly behind him, his crossbow optics locked onto the towering shadows cast by the silent repair cranes ahead.
"Miasma density is forty-two percent," Timothy whispered through his filter mask, tapping the copper gauge strapped to his wrist. "My filter valve is starting to hum. If we stay down here past an hour, the rubber gaskets will dissolve."
"Maintain suppression," Sabrina commanded smoothly.
Her silver rapier rested drawn at her right hip, its blade emitting a subtle, two-inch skin of pale blue frost that hissed softly whenever the purple vapor drifted too close. Her icy blue eyes tracked a series of fresh, glowing red boot prints stamped into the calcified dust along the central tracks.
"Heavy iron boots," Sabrina noted, stopping beside a scorched concrete pillar. "Thermal enforcement gear. Victor’s escort isn't hiding their trail."
Rian walked silently at her side, his dark slate-grey coat unbuttoned and brushing against his knees.
Where the commoner cadets felt their throats constrict under the mounting atmospheric pressure, Rian breathed in deep, measured cycles. The midnight-black threads beneath the skin of his wrists and neck twitched rhythmically, pulling the ambient miasma into his core subspace without a single flicker of physical strain.
> [Environmental Saturation: Mag-Lev Maintenance Depot]
> Aether-Miasma Saturation: 42% (Tier D+ Threshold)
> Living Shadow Passive: Atmospheric Siphoning Active!
> Living Shadow EXP: 342 / 500 -> 366 / 500 (+24 EXP from ambient siphoning)
Beneath his leather soles, the Level 2 Living Shadow moved like a fluid pool of pitch-black ink, stretching its three-meter reach across the concrete floor. Its liquid surface twitched as its dark sensory threads picked up heavy, rhythmic vibrations echoing from the central maintenance pit thirty yards ahead.
...Master... The leaf-scraping whisper echoed inside Rian's mind, clear and smooth. ...Heavy metal... burning iron... three human vessels ahead...
"Hold," Rian commanded quietly.
Squad Alpha halted instantly. Marcus dropped his right knee, bracing his shield against a rusted iron rail while Timothy ducked behind his shoulder.
Thirty yards ahead, surrounded by the charred corpses of four Tier D Rail-Hounds, three figures stood inside the central repair pit.
At the center was Victor Vance, clad in his tailored, gold-etched crimson plate armor. His incendiary broadsword was unsheathed, its Tier D fire core glowing like a burning coal in the gloom.
Flanking him were two broad-shouldered men who clearly did not belong to the Ninth District Academy.
They wore scuffed, dark-grey vanadium chainmail bearing the iron cog-and-hammer insignia of the Vance Merchant Guild Security Division. The mercenary on the left held a heavy two-handed iron warhammer that dripped with viscous, green alchemical grease, while the mercenary on the right carried a heavy, repeating iron arc-thrower hooked to a brass mana battery on his back.
> [Target Identified: Guild Mercenary Captain Drake]
> Level: 12 (Tier D Vanguard — Mercenary Core)
> Equipment: Vanadium Plate / Alchemical Warhammer
> Threat Level: High (Experienced Martial Fighter)
> [Target Identified: Guild Mercenary Gunner Vane]
> Level: 10 (Tier D Ranged Support — Arc Specialist)
> Equipment: Heavy Repeating Arc-Thrower
> Threat Level: Moderate
"Harvest the cores faster, Vane," Victor was demanding, his arrogant voice echoing off the iron gantries. "My uncle paid your squad ten thousand gold chits to secure this concourse. If those academy instructors come down here before we log fifteen Tier D cores, I’ll tell my uncle to cut your contract payout in half!"
"Relax, young master," Captain Drake rasped, his scarred face twisted into a coarse grin as he pried a glowing green core from a dead Rail-Hound's skull with his dagger. "The academy cadets are still stuck clearing Skitterers in Grid 8. No first-year squad has the guts or the hazard permit to enter the concourse—"
Drake froze.
His eyes snapped toward the shadowed culvert thirty yards away, where Sabrina’s icy aura cast a soft blue light against the concrete wall.
"Who's there?" Drake barked, his right hand dropping instantly to the leather grip of his heavy warhammer.
Victor turned around, his fiery broadsword raising in surprise. When his eyes landed on Rian’s slate-grey coat and Sabrina’s silver braid, his face twisted into a mixture of utter disbelief and sudden, fiery rage.
"You?!" Victor shrieked, taking three steps forward while his crimson armor flared with volatile heat. "How... how did you four get into Grid 12?! This sector is under Vance Guild clearance!" Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping . com.
Sabrina stepped out of the shadow into the dim light of the depot, her silver rapier held at a precise low guard.
"Instructor Brandon signed our Tier D hazard permit at fourteen hundred hours," Sabrina said flatly, her voice cutting through the humid air like a sheet of ice. "Grid 12 is open military territory, Vance. Your guild contract doesn't grant you exclusive rights to the subterranean concourse."
Victor’s eyes widened, then shifted frantically to the stamped leather permit tucked into Sabrina’s belt. He grit his teeth so hard his jaw muscles bulged.
"Brandon signed a deep ruins permit for a failure and two commoner trash?" Victor spat, his face flushing crimson. He turned to Captain Drake, gesturing furiously at Squad Alpha. "Drake! Drive them out! Take their permit and break their weapons! If they report our core yields to the academy ledger, our guild score won't top the district rankings!"
Captain Drake didn't draw his hammer immediately. He evaluated Squad Alpha with the sharp, ruthless eyes of a veteran mercenary. His gaze rested briefly on Sabrina’s silver frost emblem, then drifted to Marcus’s braced shield, before finally settling on Rian, who stood silently at the rear with his hands in his pockets.
"Cadets," Drake said, his voice dropping into a harsh, threatening growl. "You're out of your depth down here. The academy doesn't send search parties into the maintenance pits if a first-year squad goes missing in a Tier D+ zone. Turn around and walk back up those stairs while you still have all your limbs."
"The maintenance depot is public academy ground," Marcus spoke up from behind his shield, his voice steady despite the sweat trickling down his neck. "You're operating unauthorized mercenary troops inside a military sector."
"Unauthorized?" Drake sneered. He unslung his heavy vanadium warhammer, resting the four-foot iron head on the concrete with a loud CLANG! "Out here in the Wastes, gold makes the authority, kid."
Gunner Vane stepped up beside Drake, racking the heavy iron bolt of his repeating arc-thrower. The brass mana battery on his back hummed with a sharp, high-pitched electrical hiss, illuminating the dark tunnel in sputtering blue sparks.
"Drake," Victor commanded, his voice tight with malicious excitement. "Shatter their life-tether crystals! I’ll pay your squad a bonus of five hundred gold chits!"
"You heard the employer," Drake rasped, his face hardening into a brutal grin. "Vane, pin the shield! I’ll take the silver girl!"
"Move!" Sabrina shouted.
Glacial Wall — Frontal Surge!
Sabrina swept her silver rapier upward. A four-foot-tall barrier of jagged, brilliant blue ice erupted from the concrete floor between the tracks, interposing itself directly between Squad Alpha and the advancing mercenaries!
KRRR-BOOM!
Vane fired his arc-thrower. A streak of crackling blue lightning detonated against Sabrina’s ice wall, blowing off a shower of frozen shards and filling the tunnel with blinding white light!
"Marcus, take the right rail!" Sabrina ordered, her body blurring into a streak of white light as she leaped over the ice barrier, her rapier thrusting straight toward Drake’s throat!
"Got it!" Marcus bellowed, charging along the right track with his wooden tower shield held high to absorb the stray arc-sparks whistling through the air.
While Sabrina engaged Drake in a furious clash of cold rapier strikes and heavy warhammer swings, and Marcus moved to draw Vane’s line of fire, Victor Vance saw his opening.
His crimson chest plate exploded with violent, orange thermal energy. With a hysterical, arrogant roar, Victor lunged along the left track, his incendiary broadsword raised overhead, aimed straight at Rian!
"Die, you failure!" Victor screamed, his blade trailing a three-foot wave of roaring fire. "Without your squad to hide behind, you're nothing!"
Rian didn't run. He didn't draw his short sword. He didn't even take his left hand out of his slate-grey coat pocket.
He stood calmly on the concrete track, his dark eyes watching Victor’s heavy, unrefined footwork.
Vector line straight, Rian analyzed with clinical detachment. Core output pushed entirely to the upper torso. Right heel dragging three inches behind.
As Victor crossed the three-meter mark from Rian’s boots, he stepped directly into the pitch-black, liquid pool of Rian’s Level 2 Living Shadow.
"My turn," Rian whispered.
SOVEREIGN’S TENDRIL — DUAL GROUND EMBRACE!
WHIP-CRACK!
Two thick, midnight-black tendrils erupted from the concrete floor right beneath Victor’s advancing boots!
The solid shadow tendrils did not strike Victor’s reinforced chest plate. Instead, the first tendril coiled around Victor’s trailing right ankle, while the second tendril wrapped tightly around his left knee, binding his legs together in mid-air with two hundred units of Level 2 physical shadow force!
"What—?!" Victor shrieked in horror as his forward momentum was instantly cut to zero!
CRACK-THUD!
Victor’s legs locked tight, causing his heavy, iron-plated body to tip forward in mid-stride. He slammed face-first into the hard concrete track with a deafening, metallic crash, his fiery broadsword flying out of his hand and skidding twenty feet into the drainage gutter!
"Gah!" Victor gasped, the wind completely knocked out of his lungs as his crimson nose slammed into the calcified dust.
Before Victor could push himself up, Rian stepped forward.
His dark leather boot came down hard onto the center of Victor’s gold-etched backplate, pinning the screaming merchant heir flat against the concrete rails!
"Get off me! Get off me, you trash!" Victor screamed, thrashing wildly under Rian's boot, his hands clawing uselessly at the iron tracks. "Drake! Vane! Kill him!"
"Your mercenaries are busy," Rian said smoothly.
Ten yards away, Captain Drake was backing up in shock. Sabrina’s relentless, glacial rapier strikes had already carved deep, freezing cuts through his vanadium shoulder guards, while Timothy had landed an armor-piercing crossbow bolt straight through Gunner Vane’s brass arc-battery, causing the weapon to short-circuit in a cloud of blue sparks!
Drake looked at his shorted-out gunner, then at Sabrina’s icy blade hovering inches from his collarbone, and finally at Rian, who was holding Victor pinned to the ground like a fallen dog. New chapters come out on novelping(.)com first.
"Fall back!" Drake barked in sudden, terrifying realization, grabbing the wounded Vane by his collar. "The contract is off!"
"Drake! You coward! Don't leave me!" Victor shrieked as his hired guards scrambled up the maintenance ladder, fleeing into the upper concourse tunnels as fast as their boots could carry them.
Silence returned to the subterranean depot, broken only by the hiss of Timothy’s filter mask and Victor’s panicked, heavy gasping under Rian's boot.
Rian looked down at Victor’s gold-etched crimson chest plate.
Living Shadow... siphon every drop.
> [CRITICAL EVENT: Direct Siphoning of High-Density Thermal Core!]
> Absorbing Corrupted Guild Core Energy...
> Living Shadow EXP: 366 / 500 -> 500 / 500 (+134 EXP Overload!)
> [EXP THRESHOLD SURPASSED!]
> [Living Shadow Initiating ASCENSION TO LEVEL 3...]
THUMP.
A bone-deep, quiet shock wave of dark energy detonated from Rian’s chest!
The orange heat leaking from Victor’s crimson plate was instantly extinguished, turned pitch-black as Rian’s entity drank the entire thermal charge straight through Victor's armor! Underneath Rian's skin, the midnight-black threads expanded once more, growing thicker, denser, and weaving deeper into his forearms and chest.
> [Living Shadow Has Attained Level 3!]
> [Host Base Level: Locked at 1]
> [Entity Stat Upgrades]
> Shadow Physical Density: Tier E+ -> Tier D- (Solidified Plate)
> Shadow Reach: 3.0 Meters -> 6.0 Meters
> Living Shadow Mana Pool: 150 / 150 -> 300 / 300
> [New Ability Unlocked: Sovereign’s Mantle (Level 1)]
> Description: Host can manifest a dense layer of liquid shadow armor over their coat and forearms, absorbing up to 40% of incoming kinetic and elemental physical damage for 30 seconds.
Rian took a slow, deep breath, feeling the 300 units of dark shadow mana pulsing effortlessly through his core subspace.
Beneath his boots, his shadow expanded from three meters into a vast, six-meter pool of liquid dark ink that stretched across both train tracks, its surface pulsing with four distinct, intelligent violet eye-slits that scanned the maintenance hall.
Victor felt the terrifying, cold drop in atmospheric pressure beneath him. He looked up sideways from the floor, his eyes wide with absolute, primal horror as he saw Rian’s dark eyes glowing with a faint, violet-gold fire.
"You... what are you...?" Victor whimpered, his voice trembling so violently his teeth chattered.
Rian slowly lifted his boot off Victor’s backplate, stepping back into the shadow.
"Pick up your sword, Victor," Rian said, his voice quiet, flat, and carrying the double-layered resonance of an ascending entity. "Take your yield and crawl back to the surface before the deep rift opens."
Victor didn't wait to be told twice. He scrambled up from the concrete like a terrified rat, grabbing his discarded broadsword from the gutter without even wiping the grease off the hilt, and ran up the maintenance gantry as fast as his legs could carry him, screaming into the dark.
Sabrina sheathed her rapier with a crisp metallic click, walking over to stand beside Rian on the train tracks.
She looked down at the six-meter pool of liquid shadow spreading beneath his boots, then looked up at his face, her pale blue eyes filled with quiet, razor-sharp intrigue.
"Level 3," Sabrina whispered softly, a faint, almost invisible smile touching her lips. "Your reach just doubled again."
"The maintenance depot is clear," Rian replied, looking down the dark mag-lev tunnel stretching further south into the subterranean abyss. "The core vault is just ahead."
Marcus and Timothy walked up, holding three canvas sacks filled with the harvested Tier D cores left behind by the fleeing mercenaries.
"We have twelve Tier D cores," Marcus said, his voice full of awe as he looked at Rian. "That's enough to secure Squad Alpha's spot at the top of the academy ledger for the next month."
Rian adjusted his slate-grey coat, pulling his collar up against the cold wind rising from the deep tunnels.
"Keep five cores for the academy ledger," Rian commanded calmly. "We assimilate the rest."