The Prowler shot forward with dizzying speed, its massive body creating a soft whoosh as it cut through the damp cavern air. Its three-part jaw was inches away from Tristan’s face, a gaping maw of needle-like teeth ready to snap his neck in half.
But Tristan didn’t move. He simply reached out with his mind and unleashed the violent, stolen concept he held in his grasp.
[Reave: Slice unleashed.]
There was no flash of light, no physical blade. There was only the pure, absolute intent of separation.
A sickening schlick echoed through the dark.
Mid-leap, the Prowler’s pale head simply parted. The concept sheared through thick hide, dense bone, and brain matter with zero resistance, perfectly splitting the creature’s skull and jaws into two distinct, bloody halves, held together only by the loose flaps of its neck.
It died instantly.
Unfortunately, physics didn’t care that it was dead.
The beast’s momentum carried its massive, limp body straight into Tristan. He took the full force of the two-hundred-pound corpse directly to the chest, crashing hard onto the stone floor in a tangle of limbs and hot, foul-smelling blood.
"Ugh—get off!" Tristan groaned, desperately shoving the heavy, slippery carcass off his legs.
He scrambled backward, panting heavily. His chest ached, his calf was screaming in pain, and his hands were coated in gore. He glared down at the dead monster, deeply annoyed that even in death, the creature was still a massive inconvenience.
He sat there for a moment, waiting for his heart rate to slow down. He waited for the familiar, triumphant chime of a level-up. He waited for the monster’s body to dissolve into glowing motes of light, neatly depositing an essence stone and some crafting materials directly into an invisible inventory.
Nothing happened.
The dead Prowler just lay there, bleeding over the jagged rocks and smelling like ammonia.
"Right. Real life," Tristan muttered bitterly. "Manual labor it is."
He dragged himself over to the corpse, gripping the sharp, jagged end of the shattered iron chain he had used as a flail. In the game, harvesting was a single button press. Here, it was a butcher’s job.
Gagging at the smell, he used the broken iron to crudely hack away at the creature’s chest cavity until he found it: a small, faintly glowing gem the size of a marble, lodged near where a heart should have been. A low-grade essence stone.
While he was at it, he carved off several crude, grisly chunks of the Prowler’s pale thigh meat. It was revolting work, but he had no choice.
Wiping his bloody hands on his prison rags, Tristan sat back against a stalagmite and held the dull essence stone in his palm. He focused on his sputtering core, drawing the cold, heavy energy out of the gem and into his own body.
In the Flamecrest the main way to rank up was through absorbing essence stones and training. Unfortunately it’s impossible to stockpile essence stones due to how fast they degrade, so you have to consume them asap.
The stone crumbled to dust in his hand, and a soothing warmth washed over his chest.
[Essence Absorbed. Core Capacity: 1/100]
Tristan sighed in relief as the agonizing ache in his chest subsided. But before he could even open his eyes, another prompt chimed in his mind.
[Low-Grade Artifact Acquired.]
Tristan’s eyes snapped open. He stared at the empty air in front of him, genuinely shocked.
’I guess lady luck actually does care about me’ thought Tristan with tears in his eyes.
Artifacts were incredibly rare drops. They were physical manifestations of a monster’s core, bound by the fundamental nature of the creature it came from. The stronger the core, the more powerful the artifact. While they came in countless forms, armor, weapons, charms, they almost always granted powerful active or passive effects.
Humanity had Artificers, of course. Awakeners who dedicated their lives to forging magical gear. But even a master Artificer struggled to replicate the sheer, natural potency of a dungeon-born artifact. To get one from a tutorial-tier trash mob like a Prowler? The drop rate had to be a fraction of a percent.
The dust that had been the essence stone suddenly began to swirl and coalesce in his palm, hardening into a solid object.
When the light faded, Tristan was holding a dagger. The blade was about eight inches long, bone-white, and curved violently inward—an exact replica of the jagged claw that had nearly ripped his leg off a few minutes ago. The hilt was wrapped in coarse, dark leather. It felt perfectly balanced in his grip.
He called upon his Runepage to examine it.
[Name: Tristan Verneuil]
[Core Rank: Awakened- 1/100]
[Aspect: Reave - Mastery: 27%]
A new section had materialized at the bottom of his status.
[Equipment]
[Prowler’s Claw (Low-Grade)] Description: A crude, bone-white dagger formed from the predatory instinct of a Dungeon Prowler. It carries a lingering hunger. Passive Effect: Wounds inflicted by this blade bleed 10% faster.
Tristan couldn’t help but let out a dry, exhausted laugh.
Feeling slightly better about his miserable situation, his stomach suddenly let out a violent, painful rumble.
Tristan slowly turned his head to look at the chunks of raw, pale Prowler flesh sitting on the stone beside him.
’I’d be damned if I ate any of that...’
According to the game’s item description, Prowler meat was foul, rubbery, and tasted like rotting pennies. But, crucially, it was entirely safe for human consumption, even completely raw.
He stared at the meat. The blood on it was still warm. The smell was enough to make a normal man vomit on the spot.
But Tristan was exhausted. His body was starved, his leg was bleeding, and his essence pool, despite the stone, was still dangerously low. He needed calories. He needed energy to keep moving before the smell of blood attracted more of them.
"Bon apetite" said Tristan with his tears pooling even further.
"I am going to regret this,"
Gritting his teeth, Tristan picked up a crude slab of the pale meat, closed his eyes, and took a bite.