Hunger was no longer a dull ache. It was a living thing, a parasite coiled around Rat's spine, demanding tithe.
When Rat woke, the sensation was so violent it nearly doubled him over. It wasn't just the emptiness of his stomach; it was a systemic hollowness. Every cell in his body felt desiccated, as if he had been left out in the desert sun for a week.
He sat up on the moldy straw, his head spinning. His vision swam with black spots.
Status Report, he commanded his own mind.
[Alert: Vitality Levels Critical.] [Caloric Deficit: Severe.] [Mana Integration: 0.02%.] [Warning: The vessel is consuming muscle tissue to sustain Mana containment.]
Rat looked at his arm. It looked thinner than yesterday. The skin was pulled so tight over the radius and ulna that he could see the striations of the bone beneath.
The cost, Rat realized, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. Magic consumes vitality. I fed it a drop of mana, and now it is eating me to keep that drop alive.
It was a cruel irony. He had found the key to unlimited power—the Mana that the nobles hoarded—only to realize that without the fuel of food, it was just a faster way to commit suicide.
"Up! Get up, scum!"
The morning bell rang, a jarring clangor that signaled the start of another eighteen-hour shift. Around him, the Kennel stirred. Men groaned, coughing up the night's accumulation of coal dust.
Rat forced himself to stand. His legs trembled. He felt like a structure with its foundation eroded.
I need calories, he analyzed. The morning gruel provides approximately 300 calories. I need at least 2,000 to stabilize. If I do not find a source of energy today, I will collapse before the midday break.
He shuffled into the line for breakfast. When he reached the trough, the cook splashed the grey liquid into his bowl. Rat stared at it. It looked less like food and more like dirty dishwater.
He drank it in one gulp. It vanished instantly, a drop of water on a hot skillet. The parasite in his gut roared for more.
He looked around. Other slaves were eating slowly, savoring the warmth. Rat's eyes locked onto a man near the wall—Number 88. He was old, dying of lung rot, barely able to lift his spoon. His bowl sat on his lap, half-full.
Target: Number 88. Probability of resistance: 0%.
Rat took a step toward him. The predator in his mind—the part of him that was becoming something else—urged him to take it. Take the food. He will be dead by sunset anyway. You need it to live.
Rat stopped. His hand clenched into a fist.
No.
It wasn't morality that stopped him. Morality was a luxury for the surface world. It was pragmatism.
Stealing from the dying attracts attention. If Krog sees me bullying the weak, he will use it as an excuse to assert dominance. It breaks the camouflage.
He turned away, the hunger screaming, and marched toward the lift cages. He would find another way. He had the Monarch's Soul. He would calculate a solution.
Gallery 4 was sweltering. The deeper they dug, the hotter it got. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of sulfur.
Rat took his position at the wall. The rock face here was harder, a dense granite mixed with veins of iron ore.
He lifted his pickaxe. It felt heavier today.
Swing 1. The pickaxe bounced off the rock, jarring his shoulders. A spark flew.
Swing 2. A tiny chip of stone fell.
Rat panted, leaning on the handle. This was unsustainable. At this rate, he wouldn't meet the quota. Grol would whip him. The trauma would accelerate his metabolic collapse.
He closed his eyes. The noise of the mine faded. He focused inward, searching for that tiny, cold spark he had absorbed last night.
It was there. A speck of blue light in a sea of darkness.
Mana is not just energy, Rat recalled the theory. It is intent. It alters reality.
He didn't have enough mana to blast the wall. He didn't have enough to strengthen his body like a Novice of Iron. That required an ocean; he had a dewdrop.
But he had the Ice attribute. And he knew physics.
Thermal shock, Rat thought. Rapid expansion and contraction.
He placed his left hand against the rock face. He focused on a small, hairline fracture in the granite.
Move, he commanded the blue spark.
It was sluggish, resisting his will. It felt like trying to push a boulder through a straw. The drain on his stamina was immediate and terrifying. His vision grayed at the edges.
But the mana obeyed.
A tiny pulse of unnatural cold transferred from his palm into the stone. It wasn't a blast of ice; it was a vacuum of heat. For a split second, the temperature within that single crack dropped by fifty degrees.
CRACK.
The sound was sharp, like a pistol shot. The stone, stressed by the sudden thermal contraction, brittle and shocked, gave way.
Rat swung the pickaxe with his right hand.
Clang.
The granite shattered. A chunk of ore the size of a human head broke off cleanly, sliding to the floor.
It worked.
Rat stared at the stone, his chest heaving. He had used a fraction of his mana—maybe 10% of his total reserve—but the result was equivalent to twenty minutes of hard labor.
Efficiency, Rat thought, a grim smile touching his lips. I trade vitality for leverage.
He continued the work. He couldn't use the magic every time—it was too costly. He developed a rhythm.
Analyze structure (Monarch's Soul). Find the keystone flaw. Apply thermal shock (Mana). Strike.
He worked silently, building his pile of ore. He was faster than usual, yet he looked like he was barely moving.
"Hey, Runt."
Rat froze. He didn't turn around. He recognized the grunt. It was one of the guards, a man named Boros.
"You're moving a lot of rock for a skeleton," Boros said, stepping onto the wooden walkway behind Rat. The guard leaned on his spear, watching with suspicious eyes. "I've been watching you. You barely swing that pick, yet the rock just falls off. You stealing from your neighbor's pile?"
Rat turned slowly. "No, sir. I am just... lucky with the veins today."
Boros narrowed his eyes. He spat a stream of tobacco juice into the water at Rat's feet. "Luck isn't real, Number 7. Only sweat is real."
Boros stepped closer, the tip of his spear hovering inches from Rat's chest. "Maybe you found a purity vein? High-grade iron? You hiding the good stuff in your rags?"
"Search me," Rat said, lifting his arms.
Boros grinned. He raised the butt of his spear, preparing to strike just for the sport of it.
Thump.
The sound came from below.
It was the same sound Rat had heard last night. But this time, it wasn't a whisper. It was a hammer blow against the soles of their feet.
The water in the drainage ditch rippled. Dust shook loose from the ceiling supports.
Boros froze. "What the hell was that?"
Thump.
Louder. Closer.
The slaves in the gallery stopped working. Silence descended, heavy and terrified. Even Grol, up on his high platform, stood up, his whip dangling from his hand.
"Seismic activity?" Grol shouted, though his voice wavered. "Keep digging! It's just the mountain settling!"
Rat dropped his pickaxe.
[Monarch's Soul Active.]
He looked down at the floor of the mine. The stone was solid to the naked eye. But to Rat, the world was a grid of stress lines.
And the grid was screaming.
A massive, red fracture line was spreading rapidly beneath them, glowing with the intensity of a warning flare. It wasn't natural. It was being pushed.
"Move," Rat whispered.
"What?" Boros looked at him.
"MOVE!" Rat roared, shoving the guard backward.
It was the first time Rat had ever raised his voice. The shock on Boros's face was comical. But it saved his life.
BOOM.
The floor of Gallery 4 exploded.
It wasn't a collapse. It was an eruption. Rock and mud blasted upward as something massive breached from the darkness below.
The wooden walkway where Boros had been standing disintegrated into splinters. Slaves screamed as the ground vanished beneath them, dropping them into the black void that had opened up.
Rat was thrown backward by the shockwave. He hit the wall hard, the air driven from his lungs. He scrambled to his feet, coughing, his eyes stinging.
Dust choked the air. Through the haze, a silhouette rose.
It was huge. Easily twenty feet long. It looked like a cross between a centipede and a tank, covered in plates of iridescent black chitin. Dozens of frantic legs churned the air. Mandibles the size of scythes clicked together, dripping a sizzling green acid.
A Deep-Earth Burrower.
These were the monsters of the legends, the things the Overseers threatened them with. They weren't supposed to be this high up.
"Demon!" a slave screamed.
The beast lunged. It didn't just bite; it thrashed. Its armored head smashed into a group of slaves huddled near the wall, turning them into a red mist.
Chaos erupted.
"Kill it! Kill it!" Grol shrieked from his platform, safely out of reach. "Guards! Attack!"
The guards were already running. Their iron spears were toothpicks against that armor.
Rat pressed himself into a crevice in the wall. His heart hammered like a trapped bird. This was death. This was the end.
No, his mind snapped. Observe.
[Target: Deep-Earth Burrower (Mature).] [Threat Level: High.] [Weakness Analysis Initiated...]
Rat watched as Boros, the guard who had almost beaten him, tried to flee. The beast was faster. It surged forward, its many legs traversing the uneven ground with terrifying speed. One of its mandibles snagged Boros by the leg.
The guard screamed as he was hoisted into the air. The beast bit down. Silence followed.
Rat felt a wave of nausea, but he forced his eyes to stay open. He needed data.
The beast was heavily armored. The guards who were foolish enough to fight were striking its back, their spears glancing off the chitin without leaving a scratch.
Think. Where is the flaw?
The beast turned, scanning for more prey. As it did, it reared up, exposing its underbelly.
Rat's eyes narrowed.
There.
Between the third and fourth segments of its thorax, underneath the heavy plating, there was a soft membrane. A pulsing, pale sac.
The heat vent, Rat realized. It lives in the deep earth. It needs to expel internal heat.
It was a target. But it was impossible to reach. It was ten feet in the air, on a moving monster that killed anything within reach.
Rat looked around. The gallery was a slaughterhouse. But amidst the debris, he saw something.
The explosion had ruptured the supply crate near the lift. Sticks of "Blasting Powder"—crude explosives used for hard rock—were scattered on the ground.
Rat's mind raced.
Variable 1: The Blasting Powder. Unstable.Variable 2: The Fire Torches on the wall.Variable 3: The Beast's pathing.
The Burrower was finishing its meal. It turned its massive head toward the lift cage—the only exit. It was blocking the way out.
"We're trapped!" a slave wailed.
Rat looked at the blasting powder. It was five meters away. The beast was ten meters away.
If I do nothing, I die. If I run, I die.
Rat sprinted.
He didn't run away. He ran toward the explosion site.
"Idiot!" Grol shouted from above. "Number 7 has gone mad!"
Rat slid across the wet stone, grabbing a handful of the red blasting sticks. He didn't know how to use a fuse. He didn't have time.
The Burrower saw the movement. It hissed, a sound like steam escaping a boiler, and swiveled toward him.
Rat scrambled up a pile of rubble, putting himself higher. He was eye-level with the monster now.
The beast lunged.
Rat didn't dodge. He waited.
Three seconds.
The mandibles opened. The stench of rot and acid washed over him.
Two seconds.
[Monarch's Soul: Fear Suppression Active.]
One second.
Rat threw the blasting sticks. Not at the beast's face. Not at its legs.
He threw them under the beast, sliding them across the smooth floor like skipping stones. They skittered directly beneath the rearing thorax.
Rat dove backward, behind a heavy mine cart.
"Ignite!" he screamed, not with his voice, but with his will.
He extended his hand. He didn't have fire magic. He had Ice.
But he understood structure.
The torch bracket on the wall above the beast was loose. Rat had seen it vibrate earlier.
He pushed his mana into the bracket's mounting. Thermal Shock. The metal bolt snapped.
The torch fell. It tumbled through the air, end over end, burning bright orange.
It landed directly on the pile of blasting sticks beneath the monster.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. In the confined space of the mine, the pressure wave was like a physical blow.
The blast didn't penetrate the beast's back armor. But it didn't have to. The force went upward, into the soft underbelly, into the heat vents.
The Burrower shrieked—a sound so high-pitched it shattered the glass of the glow-stones. Green blood sprayed across the cavern like a geyser.
The massive creature thrashed, convulsing. Its internal organs had been liquefied. It slammed into the walls, bringing down tons of rock, before collapsing into a twitching heap.
Silence returned to Gallery 4, broken only by the settling dust and the groans of the wounded.
Rat lay behind the mine cart, covered in dust. His ears were ringing. His mana was at 0%. His body felt like lead.
He stood up slowly.
The beast was dead. The impossible monster, the apex predator, lay still.
Slaves and guards alike stared at the carcass in disbelief.
"It... it's dead," someone whispered.
"Who did that?" Boros's surviving partner asked, looking around wildly. "Who threw the powder?"
Rat stood in the shadows. He could step forward. He could claim the kill. He could demand a reward.
No.
His eyes shifted to the beast's shattered underbelly. Amidst the gore and green slime, something glowed.
A crystal. Roughly the size of a walnut. It pulsed with a deep, earthy light.
A Beast Core.Concentrated mana.
While the guards were distracted, arguing and pointing fingers, Rat moved. He was a grey blur, a ghost in the chaos.
He slid through the muck, reached into the steaming entrails of the beast, and snatched the crystal. It was hot to the touch, vibrating with power.
He shoved it instantly into his rags, pressing it against his skin.
"Number 7!" Grol's voice cut through the air.
Rat froze. Had he been seen?
Grol was pointing at him from the platform. "You! You're alive! Grab a shovel and start clearing this mess! The quota doesn't stop for monsters!"
Rat lowered his head. "Yes, Overseer."
He turned away, hiding the savage grin that threatened to split his face.
They didn't see. They saw a slave who got lucky. They didn't see the architect of the kill.
Rat felt the warmth of the Beast Core against his chest. It was energy. It was food. It was power.
I didn't just survive, Rat thought, gripping his shovel as the hunger in his gut was replaced by a new, burning ambition. I profited.
He looked at the dead monster, then at the trembling guards.
The hierarchy just shifted.