Details were hard to make out, but Luke could just barely see that the warlord wore giant pauldrons shaped like two large skulls. He wondered if this was where the system pulled the ‘three-headed’ description from. Luke abandoned this burgeoning theory when he saw two more oversized viran emerge from the command tent.

Much like the armoured rat, these two were a head taller than even the elites of the viran, but were still a little shorter than Luke himself. One wore red robes, and the third didn’t bother with clothes at all. From the sheer girth of the last one, it looked like it had eaten a dozen other ratlings.

The three leaders stood in front of the burning statue and addressed the viran army. From what Luke could tell, they were giving some kind of speech, but he had no chance of making out the words from his perch up above.

Luke had reached the limit of what he could learn without getting closer. With his attributes and armour, he was tough, but by no means invincible. He would watch for a bit longer, and then he would return to the forge to seek Rurik’s advice. The dwarf might have some insight into the ratlings, especially if he shared the dungeon with them.

Looking down, it appeared things were winding down. There was a cheer, and the gathered viran dispersed. Many went back to their tents, but most of the biggest warriors piled into the tall metal buildings. Luke imagined that their status as elites entitled them to the best sleeping quarters.

He was wrong.

The metal spires weren’t buildings; they were colossal drills. The ground of the cavern shook as, one by one, they fell to the ground. A lift mechanism at their bases tilted them up at an angle, and the teeth spun, churning the earth.

In a little under a minute, the metal drills were all gone. The remaining viran went back to their tents and unless the tents were going to turn into hot air balloons and fly away, Luke was confident they were actually going to sleep.

Luke checked the time on his phone. It was late in the afternoon, and he had been watching the ratlings for almost three hours. With the exodus of the viran elites, he took a minute to reweigh his options. The situation had changed. For all he knew, this was the best opportunity he was going to get.

He went to the edge of the rock outcropping and looked down. There were a few handholds, but getting down wasn’t going to be a trivial matter. The dungeon had materialised an elevator into the sheer rock face, but it couldn’t put a set of stairs down?

With twenty [Endurance] a fall might not kill him, but it probably wouldn’t be good for his health. Even if he could survive such a feat, jumping down would leave him trapped at the bottom with a bunch of trigger-happy marauders.

Fortunately, Luke had a solution in mind. The more the marketplace filled out, the more it filled with junk items no-one seemed to want. Many of those junk items were poor quality cultivation resources, shitty weapons, or items with little short-term value. As a result, they were listed and sold for pennies.

What Luke had in mind was something he had seen in the ‘crafting materials’ section of the market. He had been looking for rope to improve his home gym, and came across a seller going by the alias ‘Black Widow’. They were selling large volumes of [Broodmother Silk - Uncommon]. He remembered wondering if the seller was trapped in an underground dungeon like himself, except with spiders.

The description stated that clothes made from the silk would be strong enough to stop a crossbow bolt in its tracks. Luke reasoned that if he could tie it to the elevator door, then perhaps it would support his weight climbing down.

When Luke opened the market, he was pleased that the silk was still listed. It made sense that with the massive upheavals caused by the awakening, crafting was likely a low priority. Luke had a respectable credit balance from clearing out the city above.

When he realised the lower level undead gave little experience, he had changed his tithe settings. There was an option to ‘Optimise Tithe’ that converted lower-level kills into credits, and higher-level monsters into experience. He imagined it was there to prevent the aether from weak monsters going to waste. It was something that was probably covered in the tutorial.

By Luke’s estimation, the ground below was about two hundred feet down. Rather than risk undershooting his estimate, Luke purchased three hundred feet of silk. It was a lot of material, however, with the price of raw materials so low it was well within his budget.

The spider silk formed in a neatly coiled bundle at Luke’s feet. It was white, and a little translucent. Even with the system description reassuring, Luke wondered if he had made a mistake at how thin the threads were. He tested it a little to make sure. No matter how hard he pulled, he wasn’t able to break the thin thread, and he could exert a lot of force these days.

Deciding to trust in the silk, Luke walked to the edge and lowered it down. Three hundred feet of thread was plenty, and it actually reached the floor with half its length still unused. Luke made use of the excess by folding it over to double up the thread.

By the time that he was all set up, the encampment below had mostly settled. Almost all the ratlings remaining in the camp had disappeared inside their tents, and he still couldn’t see any guards posted to keep watch. He waited a while longer to make sure before he began his descent.

As he abseiled down, Luke felt the adrenaline build. In his old life, he had never understood why people jumped out of planes for fun. Now he did, and it was intoxicating. He was looking forward to a good fight, and more importantly, wanted to see if these marauders dropped anything shiny to fill out his hoard.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

After finding a rock large enough to hide behind, Luke looked out at the camp. There were still a few odd ratlings active, but only three were nearby.

There was a pair over by the wooden barricade that was rutting out in the open, and a lone warrior sat on a rock sharpening his battleaxe. Luke flexed his gauntleted hand and curled his fingers around Fenn as the war hammer formed from his storage space.

He had a plan.

Luke exhaled.

Focusing his mind, he sent out his aura sense towards the lone warrior. Once again, his probe went unnoticed, but this time he wasn’t trying to be subtle. Pressing harder, Luke flexed his [Empathy] to impress his soul on the world around him. This was basically how his [Brace] skill worked, but in a free-form way. Unstructured manifestations were how casters like Rurik freely expressed their domains.

With a measly copper rank in his [Fire] domain, Luke certainly wasn’t in a position to start throwing around fireballs, but he might generate at least a spark or two. Pain built in the back of his head as he pushed his soul. Focusing so much on his physical attributes meant he didn’t really have the foundations required.

Straining his soul almost gave Luke an aneurysm, however, he achieved something with all his efforts. It wasn’t very impressive, but using his [Fire] domain, he poked the skirmisher’s aura hard enough to elicit a response.

The warrior stiffened and looked around, but after a moment, went back to sharpening his weapon. It took a couple more sparks, but on the third attempt, he annoyed the guy enough for him to stand up. The fighter didn’t seem to have a sense of where the attacks were coming from and so to help him out. Luke gave a final gentle push with his aura sense.

[Level 7 Viran - An aetherling who fights as a skirmisher. Core Domains: Marauder and Axe.]

Holding his breath, Luke prepared himself to launch his attack. As the ratling came close, Luke jumped out and smacked him on the side of the head with a light tap of his hammer. The warrior dropped like a sack of potatoes, and Luke pulled him behind the rock. The quick burst of activity left Luke panting hard, not from exertion, but from his frayed nerves. When the alarm bells failed to ring, Luke quickly got himself back under control.

[You have killed a Level 7 Viran. Loot generated.]

Oh shit, Luke mentally cursed; he had been planning on interrogating the warrior. He looked down at the corpse at his feet. The hammer blow to the head had cracked open its skull. It was hard to gauge his own strength with his rapid growth. Luke shook his head as he touched the shimmering body.

[Marauder’s Axe - Uncommon (Mortal) - A Battleaxe with Marauder domain.]

The axe was a nice weapon, though he wasn’t going to replace Fenn any time soon. His war hammer grew more deadly with every soul it killed, and he could feel its domain on the verge of manifesting. Luke sent it to his storage, with plans to study the [Marauder] domain. He could sell it further down the line, but he had more pressing matters to focus on.

With the warrior dead, he had taken out a third of the ratlings and simplified his options going forward. The mating pair were still occupied and there were no more ratlings in the immediate vicinity. As his previous fishing technique had worked well enough, Luke tried to replicate it. However, the pair were further away from his hiding place, and his [Empathy] was too weak to exert the necessary pressure.

After a minute of trying and failing to get their attention, Luke took a more direct approach. He walked up to the pair with no preamble and jabbed the one on top with the butt of his hammer. A moment later, Luke slid the shaft under its throat and pulled tight.

The ratling struggled, but had no chance against the solid block of muscle and steel that Luke had become. It was smaller than he had estimated from above. Even before the system, Luke would have weighed in at least twice the scrawny little skirmisher. In different circumstances, he would have felt bad bullying a creature so much weaker than himself.

“Tell me what I want to know and I won’t kill your friend,” Luke threatened the female.

“Heathen! Defiler! Die, die, die!” She screamed.

The female warrior grabbed her weapon, a nasty looking rusty blade, and went to stab Luke. From looking at the poor quality blade, Luke didn’t feel like he was in much danger. He trusted Rurik’s armour to withstand such a weapon easily. However, there was no reason to take unnecessary risks, so he lifted the male viran and used his body as a meat shield.

The female didn’t slow her attack in the slightest, and the blade went straight through her mate. Whilst the viran were smaller, they were also faster, so Luke barely had time to register the rusty blade bounce off his armour before she had pulled it back.

The next moment she was trying to stab him right in his helmet visor. Rurik’s enchantments proved their worth, as the red energy field repulsed the blade and protected his eyes.

Anger flowed through Luke. He pushed the male onto the floor and summoned his shield. Like a buzzing gnat, the female attacked him over and over. She was clearly trying to find a weak spot in the armour. Luke smiled. Rurik knew his craft well.

There were no weak spots.

Catching a slash aimed at his throat, Luke bashed the sword aside with his shield, and the blade broke in two. The female reached for a dagger in her belt, but Luke was fed up with playing nicely. As her hand reached down to grab the hilt of the weapon, he smashed his war hammer against her forearm.

“I just want to talk,” Luke tried.

He was more than willing to kill the furious female, but his primary aim was to take out the Three-Headed-Rat. To achieve that, information was more valuable than a bit of experience and loot.

Sadly, the female was beyond reason, and with her working arm, grabbed the dagger. Before she could stab him in the joints of his armour, Luke stomped down. With a crunch like a twig snapping, the female’s chest cavity caved in, making a mess of the organs inside.

[You have killed a Level 7 Viran Skirmisher.]

Luke sighed. He looked down at the last viran remaining, which was growling in pain from the gut wound inflicted by the rusty sword.

“Do you want to cooperate, or join your friend here?” Luke asked.

In response, the male viran spat blood at Luke’s feet, and looked up at him with hate in its beady eyes.

Is that a no?