“Why do you have to be so damn smart?”

  Rob cursed as he rapidly gave chase. Soon, he caught up to the cowardly monster and finished it in no time.

  With a gloomy face, he waited for the energy card to emerge. The more Rob dealt with those threadeyes, the warier of them he became. They were too intelligent, too clever. And not just compared to the mindless corpses above—no, they were way shrewder than the average monster or animal, almost reaching human intelligence.

  That fleeing threadeye, for example… it wasn’t just cowering away. No, it had the mind to assess Rob’s strength and know that it was no match for him alone. Rob was also betting his life that it was going to bring reinforcements.

  [Congratulations, you have gained an energy card: 16 E]

  The system message pulled Rob out of his web of troubling thoughts. Focusing his eyes ahead, he just caught the last wisps of radiant mist disappearing into his subconsciously extended hand.

  “Nice!”

  Rob said, joyful for the good amount of energy received. He kind of expected that. The highest those brainless corpses ever gave him was 8 or 9 energy points. And these threaded guys were so advanced, so it was just right that they gave almost double the amount.

  He didn’t linger on that long, though. His weary mind still heavy with thoughts, he retraced his steps and went to collect the other two cards. Thirteen and seventeen—also not bad. But he would need much more if he wanted to keep his injury seal going.

  He just hoped that his body would pick up the slack and start to self-heal.

  “That should happen… right?”

  Rob wasn’t sure, and he wouldn’t know anytime soon.

  A while later, Rob also ambushed another two threadeyes and robbed them of their energy cards. After that, he dealt with another three. Then there were those two that he didn’t even ambush. Following those, he trapped and killed four more.

  As he kept hunting, Rob became more efficient and faster at getting rid of those scum. If he found a lonesome one or two, he’d just kill them. Otherwise, Rob would jump them. He stalked them from tricky corners. He dropped on their heads from the ceiling. He even once hid under a dead body and clawed the head off the first threadeye that came to check the corpse. In short, he would do all the tricks to kill the first one or two before the others even realized he’d attacked.

  However, no matter how Rob schemed, four was his limit. More than that and he risked not finishing fast enough before some other group noticed the commotion—and then they became too many for him to handle. Sadly, this came close to happening more than once.

  Worse yet, the skin-wearers were also learning his limits.

  They adapted faster than he expected. They moved in groups no less than five, knowing that Rob never attacked this many. They gathered in larger numbers near the surface exits. How in the hell they observed that Rob was thinning out the once clustered groups there, he would never know.

  As a result of such preemptive actions, Rob ventured deeper into the underground network. He had no other choice. Before overwhelming numbers, Rob’s bag of tricks ran empty.

  But luck hadn’t forsaken him yet. The threadeye community wasn’t as large as the surface corpses. Rob assumed they were no more than a few hundred, maybe a thousand in the worst case.

  So when most of them went upward to hunt and trap him, they left their home unguarded. The lower layers were vacant, making them the safest place for Rob. What’s better, he usually encountered one or two threadeyes—graciously providing him with the energy he needed to keep healing.

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. The few threadeyes who remained below were on the stronger side compared to the rest. Rob had to use every trick up his sleeve to end one or two. And when he managed to kill them, he was rewarded handsomely. They gave much more energy, the highest being twenty-nine.

  Just like that, a kind of unbalanced stalemate began.

  The abhorred monsters wouldn’t let Rob rest for long. They would come in groups of five or more to catch him. Rob, however, was too elusive to be caught by such small numbers. He had long memorized the outline of the tunnels with Frozen Light and could now navigate them with closed eyes. Plus, he’d learned his lesson and kept Magnet Sense active at all times, no matter how taxing it was on his mind. So before the bastards even neared a few tunnels away, he would know.

  This, nonetheless, didn’t make Rob any happier. He wasn’t the one benefiting from this drawn-out confrontation. Far from it. All it would take was one slip, and he’d find himself between the knives of a dozen threadeyes. If nothing changed, Rob might take years before he could leave this underground network. And he doubted he could do it at all.

  He would first have to survive the constant hunting. And he would also have to keep hunting for energy cards to heal his body. Then he would either have to wait for a gap near one of the exits… or make one himself.

  Or he could risk it all and do something drastic.

  The system, as it turned out, preferred the second possibility.

  {New mission received: Vanquisher of the Depth}

  {Mission description: Another link connected, and new heroes emerged. They came with change, and change they shall begin. Everywhere they went, they dawned a new zenith. There was one who broke unbreakable chains. Another who learned how to play the game of the gods—not yet at their level, but soon shall be. And a third who forsook what had forsaken him, grasping the first thread of a truth that, like him, would never see the light. And into the depth went a young, rebellious feather. One who refused to float. One who sank lower and farther than any of his kind dared to. And there, he shall learn to fly.}

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  {Mission requirements: Vanquish the great mother of the brain-parasite beetles.}

  {Mission rewards: 1000 Energy points}

  Rob read the mission, his face shifting through a wide range of emotions—wonder, curiosity, and outrage—but in the end, only greed remained.

  One thousand points. Now that was a number he couldn’t resist. He knew that killing whatever that great mother was would be deadly dangerous—if he actually could.

  But Rob had been tempted to do something potentially equally dangerous for less energy. So he would try the mission first, at least. If he found it unachievable or above his level, he would return to his crazy plan.

  Thinking so, he lingered no longer. Rob prepared for the coming fight the best he could, and then he followed the system’s direction to the mother’s location.

  In no time, Rob was there. The arrow in the corner of his eye pointed downward. He just had to take the final step to reach the great mother beetle. Yet he hesitated. He stood before the entrance, unsure.

  In his head, Rob went through many half-formed plans. What he was about to do was madness. Worse yet, he was going in with no plan at all—he hadn’t had time to form one. Rob had arrived so close to the mother beetle’s den without noticing that he assumed the system gave him the mission precisely because of his proximity.

  And now… now there was no time for retreat. On his way here, Rob had encountered and killed a few threadeyes. That alone shouldn’t change anything—should it?

  It wouldn’t have, if not for the blatantly obvious pattern Rob finally noticed. The threadeyes weren’t positioned randomly. Rob had dealt with them long enough to understand their behavior a bit. The ones he had slain were guards—watchers or something similar.

  And it was painfully obvious what they were protecting.

  To top it off, Rob expected more were coming soon. He just caught them off guard. He struck at their mother while they were searching for him up above. So if Rob didn’t capitalize on this unrepeatable chance, hundreds of threadeyes would welcome his next attempt.

  “Now or never.”

  Rob didn’t delay. He stepped ahead, falling through the gap in the ground.

  He chose to take his shot at the mission. If he succeeded—terrific. If not, he wouldn’t try again. He would go back to his previous crazy idea.

  As Rob fell, he didn’t let gravity do the rest. Instead, he magnet-pushed against his recent floor—now the ceiling—hurling himself toward the first of his four targets.

  Of course, before committing to anything, Rob scouted. The system had led him to a dark, small chamber. He had no light to see inside, and he needed none. He used Magnet Sense to feel for any living beings he couldn’t push or pull against—and found four. He didn’t know which one was the mother beetle, though. That was the limit of his Magnet Sense: it presented living things like shadows to his eyes. He could get their approximate shape and size, but nothing more.

  In this case, that was enough—or so Rob thought.

  He made some educated guesses about the four creatures below: that none of them were the mother beetle. Instead, he assumed they were guards for the mother. All four were too similar in form and structure to the other threadeyes. He expected them to be more troublesome than the rest, of course, but they weren’t his real target.

  Where, then, was the damn mother beetle?

  That threw him off guard.

  No matter how long he searched, Rob couldn’t sense its shape, location, or strength. He ended up guessing that it was hiding from his senses somehow.

  Strangely enough, this reassured Rob a bit.

  He reasoned that if the creature had done all of this—made its den deep underground, surrounded itself with its strongest children, and still felt the need to hide from all mystical and mundane senses—then it ought to be weak as hell.

  Well… weak compared to the other creatures in this damned world. Rob would still have to give it everything just to find its hidden body.

  But first, he had to get rid of the four bastards.

  Feeling he had gained full momentum from his fall-push, Rob switched his power. He pulled on the wall directly behind the threadeye closest to his landing point.

  Rob didn’t summon his talons—not yet. They would glow, alerting the bastards too early. Instead, he gripped a sharp, long knife he’d taken from the corpse of a dead threadeye. The bastard had tried to stab him with it—and now Rob was returning the favor. He was about to plunge it into the eye socket of its older brother.

  He missed.

  The devilish creature somehow noticed him at the last moment and tilted its dead head—either that, or its reaction was simply fast enough to avoid the attack.

  Rob didn’t care. Either reason was bad.

  Cursing, he quickly changed his stabbing motion into a downward slash, aiming to cripple one of the monster’s arms—hopefully cut it off entirely.

  Ding.

  A loud metallic sound rang out as the knife’s edge struck where the left shoulder of the threadeye should have been.

  Immediately, Rob felt all his bones vibrate. The tremendous force of his own blow rebounded into his body, traveling through the knife that struck something far harder than its sharp edge could cut. Rob stumbled back. The shock to his mind was even greater than the shock to his body. These damn dead-moving corpses were never that hard. They used to take damage easily from sharp weapons. So why? Why didn’t the knife even scratch the vile beast?

  Rob racked his brain for an answer—but found none, and panic rose.

  The monster didn’t give him time. Rob sensed it lifting a heavy object in its right hand, preparing to crush him. He leaped back, the air trembling where he had just been.

  “So strong!”

  Panic kicked in fully. It shouldn’t be this powerful. Something was terribly wrong—and he noticed it too late.

  Rob found himself halfway into the air. He gave up on attacking and was about to escape—but in a blessed moment of clarity, he changed his mind. Fighting against his fleeing instinct and mounting dread, Rob altered his trajectory.

  He pulled himself sideways. A second later, something swished past—right where he would have been if he kept rising.

  “Fuck.”

  Whatever that was, it was meant to go clean through his back.

  Reaching the far wall, Rob pushed again. He didn’t want to get cornered. The four threadeyes, however, wouldn’t let him run. One came from the side, swinging a crushing blow to intercept him. Rob pulled upward, sailing over its head.

  Landing behind it, Rob whipped his hand backward. Before it even reached the creature’s back, phantom white claws emerged from his fingers, ready to rip.

  Except… they didn’t.

  His attack was blocked. Again. Even his magic-enhanced talons couldn’t pierce whatever was protecting these cursed things.

  A moment later, the four threadeyes attacked him together. They drowned him in a wave of furious blows. Sharp, slender objects jabbed at his vitals, and a massive weapon swung to shatter his skull. As if that wasn’t enough, small projectiles shot at him randomly.

  Like a bird with a broken wing, Rob darted in every direction. The dark chamber constricted around him, suffocating his movements. Meanwhile, he used Magnet Sense again, hoping for a clue as to why his attacks were ineffective. But his mind refused to focus; fear and terror clouded his thoughts. In the end, he got nothing from it.

  Dodging another bullet-like projectile, Rob forced himself to calm down. The first thing he needed to do was painfully simple:

  He had to brighten this lightless space.

  Thankfully, he had the perfect method. He only needed one second.

  One second without being stabbed, slashed, sliced, smashed, crushed, or encircled.

  One second to concentrate calmly without his mind drowning in panic.

  But Rob couldn’t shake off the dread and fear that had gripped him the moment his first attack failed. He even started to get angry at his own cowardice—until he realized it wasn’t his cowardice.

  “You calm the hell down, or we’re both dying today!”

  Rob shouted at the fearful, terrified bird in his chest.

  Well… actually, he wasn’t sure if the bird would die if he did. But he didn’t give a damn. It better help or stay silent. Otherwise, Rob swore that if he survived today, the first thing he’d do was find a way to remove it from his body.

  Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.

  The moment the bird felt his anger and intent, it recoiled. Then all the fear vanished—cut off like water from a closed tap.

  Rob felt the change instantly. A burden he hadn’t realized he was carrying suddenly lifted from his shoulders. The psychological pressure evaporated, leaving him with a sharp, clear mind.