The Governor didn't look at the slaves. To him, the fifty men chained together were just disposable shovels.
"The Rank-D 'Crystal Abyss' has been stabilized," the Governor announced, his voice amplified by a mana-stone. "Your job is to enter the lower sub-levels and extract the Aether-Quartz from the walls. If you meet the quota, you eat meat. If you fail, you stay in the dark."
Matheo felt the heavy iron collar around his neck. It was connected to a long chain with nine other men. Behind them stood the "Overseer Squad"—B-Rank and C-Rank hunters hired to keep the monsters away from the workers, but more importantly, to keep the slaves from running.
As they descended into the earth, the temperature spiked. This wasn't a cave; it was a living ecosystem. The walls weren't stone, but a calcified, organic material that pulsed with a faint, rhythmic heat.
The Dungeon Ecosystem
The "Crystal Abyss" was a massive underground cathedral. The ceiling was hundreds of feet high, dripping with glowing blue moss that lit the area like a haunted forest. Huge, six-legged Stone-Eaters roamed the upper ledges, ignored by the hunters because they were herbivorous—but their droppings created a toxic gas that filled the lower tunnels.
"Move!" a guard barked, cracking a whip against the stone.
Matheo's "Cold Mind" went to work immediately. He wasn't looking for quartz. He was looking at the hunters. He noticed the way they held their formations. The hunters stayed in the center, protected, while the slaves were forced to walk the "Outer Rim" where the shadows were deepest.
They're using us as bait, Matheo realized. If a predator strikes from the dark, it hits a slave first. It gives the hunters three seconds to react.
The Extraction
For twelve hours, Matheo swung a heavy pickaxe against the Aether-Quartz veins. The gravity here, deep underground, felt even heavier—nearly 1.7x Earth's. Every swing felt like his collarbone was going to snap.
But then, he saw it. One of the hunters, a C-Rank scout, was eating a piece of high-energy Monster Jerky. The scent hit Matheo like a physical blow. His stomach cramped so hard he almost vomited.
Nutrition, his mind whispered. If I get that meat, I heal. If I heal, I get stronger.
The Horror in the Dark
On the third day inside the dungeon, the "Abyss" lived up to its name.
A slave three men down the chain screamed. From a crack in the ceiling, a Shadow-Stalker—a Rank-D insectoid predator with blades for limbs—dropped silently. In one motion, it decapitated the slave and began dragging the body, and the entire chain of nine men, toward the crevice.
The hunters didn't rush to save them. They waited.
"Wait for it to expose its core!" the lead hunter shouted, his sword glowing with mana.
Matheo watched in horror as his fellow slaves were dragged toward the dark. The man directly in front of him was clawing at the stone, his fingernails tearing off. The hunter finally moved, but not to save the men—he sliced the chain, letting the Shadow-Stalker take the first three men into the hole so he could get a clean shot at the monster's head.
The monster was killed, but three lives were gone for a single Rank-D core.
The Change
That night, in the damp mining camp inside the dungeon, Matheo didn't sleep. He crawled toward the waste pile where the hunters threw the "worthless" parts of the monsters they butchered.
He found a discarded lung of a Stone-Eater. It was tough, bitter, and filled with raw, unrefined mana. To a normal human, it was poison.
Matheo didn't care. He shoved the raw, rubbery meat into his mouth and swallowed.
His stomach burned. His vision turned red. But for the first time in 20 days, the "Itch" became a Roar. The nutrition from the monster meat flooded his system. His muscles, wasted away by slavery, began to knit back together with abnormal density.
He wasn't becoming "buff"—he was becoming compact. His bones were getting heavier, his reflexes sharper.
I am a scavenger, Matheo thought, staring at his shaking hands in the dark. They think they brought me here to mine crystals. But I'm here to mine them.
He looked at the sleeping hunters, then at the dark tunnels where the monsters lived. He was no longer afraid of the dark. The dark was where the food was.