The descent was a nightmare of rusted iron and suffocating darkness.
I slipped down the drainage shaft, my hands scrambling for purchase against walls slick with centuries of slime and algae. The heavy iron chain binding my wrists clanked violently against the stone echoing like a death knell in the narrow space. I didn't fall straight down; the shaft was angled, acting like a grotesque slide that dumped me mercilessly into the abyss.
With a final, terrifying drop, I plunged into freezing, waist-deep water.
The impact forced the air from my lungs in a violent rush. I went under, swallowing a mouthful of something that tasted like old copper and decay. Panic, cold and sharp, seized my chest. I thrashed wildly, the heavy chains dragging me down, until my boots found the slick, uneven bottom. I burst through the surface, gasping, coughing up the foul water, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"Gods..." I choked out, the word echoing in the vast, hollow darkness.
I dragged myself out of the main current, my boots slipping on wet cobblestones, until I collapsed onto a narrow stone walkway. I lay there on my back, staring up into the impenetrable black. My chest heaved. My velvet doublet, once a symbol of noble arrogance, was now a heavy, freezing shroud of filth.
I had survived. I was alive.
But the reality of my situation crashed down on me faster than the icy water. I was trapped in a body that wasn't mine, hunted by a terrifyingly powerful Holy Knight, and stuck in the bowels of a city that clearly wanted me dead.
I needed light. I needed to see.
As if responding to my desperate thought, the pale blue interface flickered back to life, hovering in the darkness just a few inches from my face. It was the only source of light in the crushing blackness, casting an eerie, azure glow over the damp stone walls.
[System Rebooting...]
[Environment Scan Complete. Location: The Undercity (Layer 1).]
[Warning: Hostile environment. Contamination levels high. Suggestion: Seek higher ground.]
I groaned, pushing myself up into a sitting position. My muscles screamed in protest. Arthur's body was weak. He was a pampered noble who had clearly never worked a day in his life, let alone engaged in a desperate fight for survival.
"Show me my stats," I rasped, my voice barely a whisper. "System, show me what I'm working with."
The screen blinked, the text scrambling for a second like a corrupted file before reorganizing itself into a neat, glowing table.
--- HOST STATUS ---
Name: Arthur Valerius
Level: 1 (Fodder)
Class: Reality Editor (Unique)
Health: 85/100 (Minor bruising, fatigue)
Mana: 0/10 (Critically Depleted)
Strength: 4 (Below Average)
Agility: 6 (Average)
Endurance: 3 (Pathetic)
Intelligence: 15 (High)
-------------------
Pathetic. The System actually called my endurance pathetic.
I let out a bitter laugh that quickly turned into a hacking cough. "Great. I'm a glass cannon without the cannon. Just glass."
I focused on the most glaring problem: the zero next to my Mana. Back in the square, it had cost me my entire Mana pool—all ten points—just to change the material of Elara's sword from Divine Steel to Rotten Plywood. It was an overpowered ability, an absolute cheat code in a world governed by magic and steel. But an engine without fuel was just a heavy piece of metal.
Without Mana, the 'Reality Editor' class was completely useless.
"How do I get it back?" I asked the empty air, staring at the blue screen. "System, how do I regenerate Mana?"
A new prompt overlaid the status screen.
[Mana Regeneration Rate: 0.1 per hour (Passive).]
[Alternative Recovery Method: Absorb ambient Mana from defeated biological entities or crystallized energy cores.]
I did the math in my head. At 0.1 per hour, it would take me a hundred hours—over four days—just to get my ten points back. I didn't have four days. Elara's guards were probably already organizing search parties. The Holy Knight wouldn't let an anomaly like me just slip away. I had embarrassed her, shattered her legendary weapon, and defied the Light.
I needed Mana now. And according to the System, the only fast way to get it was to kill something and absorb its energy.
Defeated biological entities. That was a clinical way of saying I needed to hunt.
I forced myself to stand. My legs trembled, and the chains around my wrists clinked together. I needed a weapon, and I needed to get these chains off. The iron cuffs were thick, but the chain connecting them had a few cracked links from where I had ripped it out of the execution block.
I squinted into the gloom. The Undercity wasn't entirely pitch black. As my eyes adjusted, I noticed faint, sickly green patches of bioluminescent moss clinging to the damp ceiling and the arches of the ancient sewage tunnels. It wasn't much, but it provided enough illumination to see the layout of my immediate surroundings.
I was standing on a raised walkway that ran parallel to a slow-moving river of toxic-looking sludge. Massive, crumbling stone pillars supported the vaulted ceiling high above. This wasn't just a sewer; it looked like the ruins of an older, forgotten city that had been built over centuries ago.
I began to walk, dragging my feet, keeping my back pressed against the cold, damp wall of the tunnel. Every sound was magnified down here. The steady drip of water sounded like a ticking clock. The distant rushing of a waterfall—or a larger sewage drain—created a low, continuous roar.
I needed to find something I could use to defend myself. A loose brick, a rusted pipe, anything.
After about ten minutes of limping through the gloom, my boot struck something hard that didn't sound like stone. I knelt down, my fingers brushing against cold, wet metal. I picked it up, holding it close to the faint blue light of my System interface.
It was a rusted, jagged piece of iron rebar, about two feet long, broken off from one of the decaying structural grates. It was heavy, poorly balanced, and covered in grime, but it had a sharp, jagged end. It was better than my bare hands.
I gripped the makeshift spear tightly, the rough rust biting into my palms.
"Okay," I muttered to myself, trying to calm my racing heart. "First step: survive. Second step: find something weak enough to kill. Third step: get Mana."
Suddenly, the System interface flashed a violent, aggressive red. The sudden change in color made me jump, my back slamming hard against the stone wall.
[ALERT: Hostile Entity Detected.]
[Distance: 20 meters and closing rapidly.]
[Threat Level: Lethal.]
The air in the tunnel seemed to drop ten degrees. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I froze, straining my ears over the ambient noise of the rushing water. At first, I heard nothing. Then, a sound cut through the darkness. It wasn't a rat. It wasn't the heavy boots of Elara's guards.
It was the clicking of sharp claws on wet stone.
Click. Clack. Click. Clack.
The rhythm was fast, unnatural, and it was coming from the tunnel directly ahead of me.
I pressed myself flat against the wall, holding my breath, my grip on the rusted rebar turning my knuckles white. The bioluminescent moss further down the tunnel cast a faint, eerie glow, illuminating the corner where the tunnel curved.
A shadow detached itself from the darkness.
It was roughly the size of a large wolf, but its shape was entirely wrong. It didn't seem to be made of flesh and bone, but rather of solidified, writhing darkness. It had no eyes, only a smooth, featureless head that swept back and forth, sniffing the air. Tendrils of black smoke drifted off its body, dissolving into the damp air.
A new blue window popped up directly over the creature's head.
--- ENTITY CODE ---
Name: Shadow Hound (Summoned Construct)
Level: 5
Status: Hunting. Target locked.
-------------------
Level 5. I was Level 1. My Strength was a pathetic 4. I had zero Mana, no real weapons, and my hands were chained together.
The Shadow Hound stopped. It didn't have eyes, but I felt its gaze lock onto me with terrifying precision. It let out a low, vibrating growl that rattled my teeth, exposing a maw filled with jagged, shadowy teeth that looked sharp enough to shear through steel.
It had found me. Elara's hunting dog had already caught my scent.
[WARNING: Entity preparing to strike. Evasion chances: 4%.]
The System's red text flashed urgently. Evasion was impossible. Fighting it head-on with a rusty pipe was suicide. I couldn't edit its stats because my Mana was utterly dry.
The Hound's muscles tensed, the shadowy smoke around it flaring violently as it prepared to lunge.
I had no magic. I had no strength.
But as I stared at the terrifying creature, my eyes darted to the environment around it. The crumbling stone ceiling above the Hound. The ancient, rusted support beams holding the heavy masonry in place.
I didn't need to be strong. I just needed to be smart.
I gripped the rebar tightly, a desperate, crazy plan forming in my mind. If I was going to die here, I wasn't going down without dragging this shadow-freak with me.