The industrial lift cage dropped like a stone, its heavy steel cables groaning against the weight of five bodies. There was no light down the shaft except for the periodic, automated blink of amber emergency beacons mounted directly into the raw rock face.
Inside the cage, the silence was heavy.
Kieran Ziya stood near the gate, his fingers rhythmically curling into fists. Beneath his skin, the warm, golden glow of his Radiant Energy hummed, casting long shadows against the metal mesh. "The walls down here are raw basalt and obsidian," he said, his voice low, stripped of his earlier cockiness. "Magic bounces poorly off it, which means we won't hear the targets coming until they're right on our breath. I'm taking point. If we get bottlenecked, I'll flash the corridor."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Iris Nyx warned softly. She stood half a step back, her long black hair tied down tight, her icy blue eyes fixed on the darkness below. A thin, freezing vapor drifted off the silver trim of her light plate, dropping the temperature inside the cage significantly. "Blinding them is useless if we lose our footing. I'll drop a permafrost lane behind you to slow their momentum if they try to swarm."
Myles Vale leaned against the back corner, his light green eyes tracking the descent. The purple static on his knuckles was gone, replaced by a quiet, focused stillness. "If anything breaches the ice, I'll melt it. Just don't get in my line of fire."
Luke checked the balance of a small iron dagger he had materialized, his blue eyes sharp as he glanced at Zeke. "Zeke and I will clean up the flanks. You construct the front line, we keep the space clear."
Zeke didn't answer. He just stood there, his large hands loose at his sides, his eyes fixed on the bottom gate. His magic power was still a flat, dead zero, but his internal attributes were locked at maximum capacity. His heart rate was slow, steady, and mechanical.
CRUNCH.
The lift cage slammed into the trench floor, the front iron gate collapsing forward into a thick layer of coarse, crimson sand.
"Move," Kieran commanded, stepping out first.
The trenches of Sector Zero-Nine were twelve-foot-high corridors carved directly out of the reflective black stone. The red sand under their boots muffled their footsteps as they formed a tight, aggressive wedge. For ten minutes, the only sound was their own breathing and the distant, echoing booms of other cells engaging targets deep in the parallel sectors.
Iris suddenly stopped, her hand snapping up. "Hold. The air pressure just dropped."
From a sharp, blind junction twenty yards ahead, a rapid, frantic clicking noise erupted. It sounded like hundreds of heavy fingernails scraping against glass. A second later, a wave of midnight-black carapaces flooded the corridor.
Nearly twenty Common-Tier Subterranean Scavengers rushed them, their featureless heads splitting open vertically to reveal rows of spinning, jagged teeth.
"Radiant Burst!" Kieran roared.
He drove his fist forward, releasing a violent, sun-like flash of gold light. The intense heat and glare instantly fried the beasts' heat-signature tracking, causing the front line to shriek and crash blindly into the trench walls.
"Permafrost!" Iris called out immediately.
She slammed her palm onto the red sand. A jagged sheet of pale blue ice shot forward, instantly freezing the sand and locking the scavengers' limbs in place, turning the front line into a massive, solid bottleneck.
"Clear out!" Myles yelled, vaulting over a low rock. He unleashed a pressurized torrent of bright purple plasma from both hands, the sheer heat vaporizing the trapped beasts and filling the narrow tunnel with the sharp smell of ozone.
The synergy was clean. The legacy kids knew how to clear a line.
But Zeke wasn't watching the front. His Level 5 perception picked up a heavy, rhythmic scraping directly above them.
He looked up. The shadows along the twelve-foot rim of the trench were twisting. Three massive, heavily armored Adult Scavengers—Intermediate Tier Alphas twice the size of the common ones—were clinging to the upper basalt face, completely bypassing Iris's ice lane. They had waited for the plasma flash to die down before dropping straight toward Iris and Myles's exposed backs.
[TARGET DETECTED: ADULT TRENCH SCAVENGER (INTERMEDIATE TIER - ALPHA)]
[ESTIMATED THREAT LEVEL: D-RANK]
[SYSTEM DATA: HIGH-DENSITY KINETIC SHIELDING]
"Above us!" Luke shouted, his eyes flaring as he began to force raw creation mana into a barrier.
He was too slow. Zeke was already gone.
Moving with the explosive agility of his upgraded physical container, Zeke blurred across the sand. As he closed the distance, the black ledger of the Beast Archive opened at the edge of his vision.
[INSIGHT ACTIVE: CHITIN DENSITY DISSOLUTION]
[EFFECT: BYPASSES 5% OF NATURAL BEAST ARMOR]
The first Adult Alpha dropped, its massive jaw unhinging right above Iris's shoulder.
Zeke intercepted it mid-air. No magic. No shield. He drove his compressed Qi into his left arm, creating a dense, heavy layer of force right beneath his skin, and caught the thrashing monster by its upper jaw. The sheer physical impact forced his boots an inch into the red sand, but he halted the creature's multi-ton downward momentum instantly.
Iris caught the rush of air against her neck and spun, her icy blue eyes widening as she saw Zeke holding the massive D-Rank Alpha off the ground with a single, bare hand.
With his right fist, Zeke delivered a short, brutal punch directly into the center of the beast's reinforced chest plate.
His mind didn't see solid armor—the Archive showed him the exact structural stress lines in the chitin. He hit the precise flaw where the kinetic resistance failed.
CRACK-BOOM.
The shockwave of compressed Qi detonated inside the creature's torso. The 5% armor-piercing modifier tore through its internal structure, caving its chest cavity completely inward. The Alpha dropped dead into the sand, its sternum splitting open to reveal a glowing, fist-sized Intermediate Tier Beast Crystal.
[TARGET NEUTRALIZED: ADULT TRENCH SCAVENGER]
[EXP ACQUIRED: +800]
The remaining two Alphas hissed, their primitive instincts identifying Zeke as an immediate threat. They pivoted instantly, launching a fast pincer attack at his flanks.
"Zeke, take it!" Luke shouted, materializing a heavy, unpolished iron gladius sword and hurling it through the air.
Zeke caught the hilt mid-stride, pivoted on his heel, and ran his Qi straight through the metal blade. As the two adult beasts lunged, he delivered a single, heavy horizontal slash.
SLICE.
The iron blade, amplified by his Level 5 strength and the Archive's insight, sheared through the reinforced carapaces like wet clay. Both Alphas were cleanly cut in half at the torso, their heavy bodies crashing into the sand on either side of him. Two more flawless Intermediate crystals cracked open from their chests.
[TOTAL EXP ACQUIRED: +1600]
[CURRENT ACCUMULATION: 2800 / 3000 EXP]
Zeke lowered the sword, his breathing entirely under control. The red sand was soaked, but his uniform was clean.
The corridor went dead silent. The common swarm had been entirely dealt with, but Kieran and Myles weren't looking down the path anymore. They were staring at the two bisected D-Rank corpses.
Kieran's golden light flickered and died. He looked at Zeke's dead-zero mana reading, then at the iron sword. "Three Alphas. No magic. What kind of freak physical container do you have?"
Myles let out a short, rough breath, a tight grin returning to his face as he shook his head. "I told you, Kieran. The guy's a menace. He just broke a D-Rank shell with muscle velocity."
Iris stood completely still. She didn't look at the crystals or the dead beasts; she looked at Zeke's hands, noting they weren't even shaking from the weapon vibration. She walked over, stopping just inside his space, her icy eyes fixed on his hollow gaze.
"A total zero," Iris murmured, her voice carrying a quiet, sharp amusement. She reached out, her cool fingers lightly touching the edge of his tactical shoulder strap, testing his boundaries but keeping her posture controlled. "You didn't just hit them hard, Zeke. You knew exactly where the shell was going to split before the blade even touched them. You're a lot more complicated than you look."
Zeke looked down at her, his face completely expressionless as he leaned his weight against the hilt of the sword. "I just hit what's in front of me."
"Sure you did," Iris smiled, her eyes narrowing intelligently as she stepped back. "We'll keep it between us for now. But you owe me a real conversation when we get back to the surface."
Zeke didn't answer. He just checked the dark gold counter in his mind. Two hundred experience points left until Level 6. The meat grinder was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.