"What a drag."
Marcus sighed and sat down in front of the collapsed cave with the particular energy of someone whose legs had made the decision before the rest of him caught up.
The rubble sat quiet in the evening light, white boulders piled where the entrance used to be, completely unbothered by everything that had happened inside them.
Liz dropped down beside him a second later and they both leaned back against each other without discussing it, her shoulder against his, his weight against hers, two people who had just survived something that had killed three others and needed a moment to let the ground be solid beneath them.
The clearing was still.
Birds had come back to the trees, moving through the branches above like nothing remarkable had occurred, which from their perspective it probably hadn't.
Marcus pulled up his balance mentally.
[CURRENCY: 47 COINS]
He opened the shop, found the HP potions, bought one, and it materialized in his hand with the quiet efficiency of a system that had been waiting for him to remember it existed.
He held it out to Liz without looking at her.
"Drink this."
She looked at it. Then at him. "Where did you get—"
"Don't ask. Just drink."
She took it with the expression of someone filing the question away for later and drank it in one go. A moment passed. He watched the tension in her shoulders ease slightly, the hand she'd been keeping pressed against her ribs dropping to her lap.
"Better," she said.
"Good."
The evening light came in low through the trees now, orange and long, the kind that showed up at the end of days that had been too much and made everything look more peaceful than it deserved to.
"I need to get stronger," she said. The way people said things they'd already decided rather than things they were figuring out.
"You did enough," Marcus said. "More than enough. You held two enhanced golems alone while I was blacked out in a pile of rubble."
Liz said nothing to that. Just looked at the collapsed cave with the expression of someone doing their own internal accounting.
———
Marcus was already somewhere else in his head.
Come to think of it, he thought, I used that short sword in there. Not perfectly but not badly either. Does that mean my previous skills carried over into this body?
He pulled up his stats.
[SYSTEM]
[STATS]
Name: Marcus Vael
Level: Unclassified
Class: Summoner
Subclass: Sovereign Tier — [WEAPON MASTERY]
Race: Human
STR 17 / 100 — DEX 5 / 100 — SPD 24 / 100
CON 3 / 100 — INT 10 / 100
HP 100 / 100 — MP 100 / 100
He stared at the subclass line.
Weapon Mastery. That's new. Thought it was unclassified.
He clicked the details.
[WEAPON MASTERY: Ability to conjure and proficiently wield various weapon types. Skills attached to each weapon type become accessible as stats develop.]
Marcus read it twice.
Two classes. He turned the idea over slowly.
Summoner and Weapon Mastery running simultaneously. Maybe that's what Drauven actually means. Maybe it's not just a title. Maybe it's what happens when both unlock in the same person.
He couldn't always rely on Malachar. The cave had made that brutally clear. Fifty MP per summon, Void Severance could strip him mid fight, and there would be situations where calling Malachar created more problems than it solved. Having a weapon fallback wasn't just useful. It was necessary.
Then the shop pinged.
[NEW ITEMS AVAILABLE]
Short Sword — 500 coins. Requirements: STR 30, SPD 30
Long Sword — 1000 coins. Requirements: STR 35, SPD 40, INT 20
Marcus looked at the requirements and then at his stats and then back at the requirements.
So upgrading STR and SPD wasn't just coincidence, he thought it actually turned out to be a criteria. Those two attributes were always pointing toward this. INT was the one that needed explanation.
He clicked it.
[INTELLECT: Governs precision in executing combat techniques. Higher INT reduces wasted motion, increases strike accuracy, and unlocks advanced weapon skill chains.]
So it's not just intelligence. It's combat IQ. He filed that alongside the auto allocation and made a mental note to start feeding some points toward INT once STR and SPD cleared their thresholds.
It all came down to money. The low tier creatures weren't converting enough through Void Harvest to close the gap at any meaningful speed. He needed larger targets and higher tier engagements and a structure that funneled proper paying work his way.
Then a different thought surfaced and sat there unresolved.
What does Unclassified level actually mean. And what do Liz's stats look like. Does she even have a system the same way I do.
"Marcus."
He blinked.
Liz was looking at him with the expression she used when he'd been staring at nothing for too long.
"Still there?"
"Just thinking," he said. "A lot happened in that cave and some of it I'm still processing."
"Join the club," she said quietly.
"We need to decide where we're going," Marcus said. "I need money and I need to get stronger. I can't let what happened in that cave happen again."
"Redmere," Liz said. "Nearest city from here. We can register a guild, access the bounty board properly, get eligible for coalition grants." She adjusted the broken sword across her lap. "More eyes and ears on the road too. The right members change everything."
"I'll pass on expanding the roster for now," Marcus said. "But the money and the guild access I'm in for."
Liz looked at him sideways. "Funny. You were very enthusiastic about recruiting that healer girl not long ago."
In my head: I can't keep allies that jxt hold me bag Liz is the exception and she knows exactly why.
"That was different," Marcus said. "Combat healer. Practical asset. Strictly professional interest."
"Right," Liz said.
"She was useful."
"You said interesting."
"Same thing."
Liz pressed her lips together against something and looked at the trees. "Redmere. After we rest."
"Agreed," Marcus said.
*****
The evening passed quietly and the morning came in clean and cool and they mounted their horses without haste, Dusk moving under Marcus with the steady patience he always brought to the beginning of a road, Liz's white mare already pointed east before Liz had finished adjusting her reins.
They rode out of the clearing and the collapsed cave disappeared behind the treeline and neither of them looked back.
Redmere was a day ahead.
Whatever came after that could wait until they got there.