The flesh was worse than disgusting. It was rubbery, metallic, and coated his tongue in a vile, cold slime. He gagged violently on the first bite, his stomach heaving in immediate protest.
’Chewing is a mistake’, he realized, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
Using the Prowler’s Claw, he quickly sliced the pale meat into smaller, bite-sized chunks and simply swallowed them whole like oversized pills. It felt like forcing down cold, wet stones, but they stayed down. Almost immediately, a faint, sluggish warmth began to radiate from his stomach to his shivering limbs.
He didn’t linger. The overwhelming stench of blood from the butchered Prowler was a dinner bell for every other monster on Level One.
Tristan forced himself up, limping further into the sprawling cavern. The environment began to change slightly as he walked. Faint, sputtering torches in iron sconces appeared every few dozen paces, marking the main routes previous hunters and prison guards used to navigate the upper layer. But torches or not, the rift was still overflowing with monsters. Tristan stuck strictly to the absolute edge of the light, his golden eyes darting warily toward every shifting shadow.
Eventually, he spotted a narrow, shallow fissure in the rock wall, a small natural cave just big enough for one person. He thoroughly scoped it out with his bone dagger drawn. Empty.
’Thank god’
Crawling inside, he sat heavily against the cold stone and got to work. He used the dagger to slice off long strips from the hem of his ragged prison shirt, tightly binding the deep gash on his calf. The bleeding had already slowed, a testament to his newly Awakened physiology. The shallow scratch on his back was itching as it closed up, but the leg wound was too deep. It was really messing up his mobility.
He needed to do something, and fast.
He couldn’t just walk out of the dungeon. Even if he somehow bypassed the monsters, the Verneuil guards stationed at the surface entrance would simply throw him into a deeper cell.
Tristan closed his eyes, mapping out his assets: his encyclopedic knowledge of Flamecrest Legacy, an insanely sharp memory, and a fundamentally broken Awakened skill. He was also objectively very handsome, but considering the local wildlife wanted to eat his face, that wasn’t doing him much good right now.
He needed to maximize his survival odds. He needed to limit-test his cheat skill.
Taking a deep breath, Tristan turned to face the solid stone wall of his little cave. He balled his fist, pulled his arm back, and punched the rock.
"Smack"
Pain flared across his knuckles. He gritted his teeth and punched it again. And again.
To any outside spectator, he looked completely insane, a starved prisoner sitting in the dark, violently battering his bare hands against solid granite. But Tristan had a bit of a plan, he was focusing as much as he could to understand the stubbornness of the stone scraping away his skin.
He needed a protective skill. He needed to understand the essence of defense as much as possible.
Quite honestly, Tristan could probably use reach on the stone as it was but wanted to increase his chance as much as possible.
His core was dangerously low. Between the fight and his overall ill-conditioned body, he estimated he had exactly enough essence left to grasp two more concepts, and maybe unleash them before he passed out from essence depletion. He had to get this right on the first try.
He struck the wall one last time, his knuckles bleeding freely, and reached out with his mind, sinking his intent into the bruised stone.
[Concept Reaved: Hardness]
[Uses: 1]
Tristan exhaled a shaky breath, slumping back. He felt the heavy, dense weight of the concept settle into his mind, sitting right next to the volatile memory of the Prowler’s Slice.
"Alright," he whispered to himself. He reached down, scooping up a handful of the sharp, crushed rocks he had knocked loose from the wall, and shoved them deep into his pockets.
"Phase one complete."
Now came the hard part. The borderline suicidal part.
His plan is a simple distraction.
He couldn’t fight a squad of heavily armed patrolmen. He couldn’t sneak past them on a bad leg. So, he had to make them run away. He had to cause a distraction so massive, so terrifying, that the guards wouldn’t even notice a battered prisoner slipping out the front door.
And what better to use than a terrifying monster. More specifically, a Fallen-class beast.
As he hugged the jagged wall, his mind drifted to the brutal, unyielding hierarchy of violence that governed this world. In Flamecrest Legacy, power wasn’t just a vague concept; it was a rigidly classified science of survival.
Both humanity and the monsters of the rifts were divided into seven distinct ranks.
For the monsters, it started at the absolute bottom with Strays. Mindless, feral, and weak. The Prowler he had just killed was a Stray. It corresponded to an Unranked or newly Awakened human, like Tristan currently was. Even then, a monster’s natural physical superiority meant a Stray usually required a fully armed human of the same rank to put it down at the very least.
And a Stray had nearly torn his leg off.
’Slightly embarrassing,’ he thought dryly.
Above Strays were the Fallen. These were true nightmares for ordinary people, beasts capable of slaughtering a dozen heavily armed Awakened soldiers without breaking a sweat. To kill a Fallen, humanity had to send a seasoned Tempered rank at the bare minimum.
And that was exactly what Tristan was looking for.
A single Fallen bursting onto the surface would instantly decimate the ordinary garrison of prison guards currently blocking his exit. It would take a coordinated squad of elite Verneuil knights to even slow it down.
’Exactly what I need right now.’
And that was just the second step on the ladder. Above the Fallen were Ruins, corresponding to the Third-Tier of human power, elites who had saturated their cores and evolved their abilities. Above Ruins were Terrors, capable of wiping out entire towns. Then came Abominations, which required armies of high-ranking Awakeners to suppress. Beyond that were Calamities, walking natural disasters that reshaped continents. And finally, at the absolute apex, were the Apocalypses. World-enders.
Tristan shook his head, clearing the thought. He didn’t need to worry about the end of the world right now. He just needed to worry about the Fallen.
All he had to do was find a tunnel leading down to the lower levels, locate a Fallen, something that belonged in the nightmares of veteran hunters, and somehow terrorize it into chasing him all the way back to the surface without dying in the process.
’What could possibly go wrong.’