Chapter 298: Accursed Floor
Kael crushed it against the wall with his gauntlet before its teeth could reach the blue flame. Another came from above, claws scraping along the ceiling, and dropped with its jaws open toward his wrist. Kael twisted, caught it by the neck, and drove it into the ground hard enough to crack the stone beneath it.
[You have slain: Corrupted MegaRat.]
[You have slain: Corrupted MegaRat.]
[You have obtained: Lesser Vanity Essence x2.]
He dismissed the notifications and kept walking.
More came.
Not in careful ambushes. Not in the measured attacks of predators using terrain. They threw themselves at him in frantic bursts, their metallic claws skidding on stone, their steel teeth snapping for the torch even when his body was the easier target. One ignored a clean opening at his thigh and instead leapt over his arm to bite at the flame. Kael smashed it out of the air with the back of his hand and watched it hit the wall with a wet crunch.
"That’s new," he muttered.
A Ratman appeared farther down the passage, smaller than the boss but still larger than the MegaRats, hunched under a ceiling that forced its spine into an even uglier bend. It carried a jagged metal hook in one hand and had mismatched steel teeth jutting from its mouth. The moment it saw the torch, it screamed.
Kael stepped aside as it charged.
The hook scraped sparks from the wall. Kael drove a fist into its ribs, felt something collapse, then caught its head with his other hand and slammed it into the stone until the body stopped kicking.
[You have slain: Corrupted Ratman.]
[You have obtained: Lesser Vanity Essence x10.]
The next two Ratmen came together.
Both went for the torch.
Kael had to retreat three steps, not because they were individually dangerous, but because they attacked the flame with suicidal focus. One took a punch that shattered half its jaw and still clawed forward with its remaining arm stretched toward the blue light. The other threw itself under his guard, teeth snapping at the hand holding the torch, forcing Kael to kick it hard enough to send it rolling across the sewer floor.
It was absurd.
They were not just attracted to the torch.
They needed it.
Or something in Vanitas needed them to take it from him.
Kael’s face darkened as he finished them.
[You have slain: Corrupted Ratman.]
[You have slain: Corrupted Ratman.]
[You have obtained: Lesser Vanity Essence x20.]
The passage continued for a long while, narrowing, widening, dipping beneath old stone arches, and climbing over broken sections where black water had eaten through the floor. Every few minutes, something attacked. MegaRats, Ratmen, one malformed thing with too many tails and a mouth full of nails. Kael killed them all while protecting the torch as if it were his own heart. In this place, it might as well have been.
Eventually, the sewer ended at a vertical shaft.
A metal ladder climbed upward along the wall, old but intact, each rung cold and wet beneath the blue light. Kael looked up. Far above, a circular manhole blocked the exit, faint traces of dead air leaking around its edges. He listened for a moment. Nothing obvious. No scratching. No breathing. No movement.
The minimap was little help.
The upper area remained dark.
He climbed.
The ladder groaned under his weight, but held. The torch made the climb awkward, forcing him to hook it carefully and keep the flame away from the wall whenever the darkness leaned too close. Several times, the shadows beyond the shaft seemed to thicken and press inward, but the blue flame denied them. Kael climbed faster.
At the top, he braced one shoulder against the manhole cover and pushed.
It resisted.
He pushed harder.
Stone scraped against metal, then shifted aside with a low grinding sound. Kael lifted himself through the opening and emerged into the city.
He froze.
Not from fear this time.
From scale.
The city of Vanitas stretched around him in impossible dark grandeur. Black buildings rose in layered silhouettes, some narrow and leaning, others wide and cathedral-like, their rooftops sharp enough to cut the sky. Far behind him, the massive mountain-long wall loomed over everything, its broken breach distant but visible even through the darkness. Streets twisted between tall structures, paved in dark stone that reflected the blue of scattered lanterns placed far apart throughout the city.
Those lanterns mattered.
Each one burned with a blue flame similar to his Torch of Vanitas, holding back the darkness in small islands of safety. The nearest was mounted on a post at a crossroads ahead, its light forming a circular ward over the intersecting streets. Beyond that circle, the city returned to black. Not ordinary night. Vanitas black. Thick, patient, hungry.
Kael looked at the minimap.
His blood ran colder.
The map of the city was almost entirely covered in darkness, as if a fog of war had been poured over it. Nearby buildings appeared in rough structure, enough for him to see the street layout around him, but anything farther away disappeared into pitch black. The legendary minimap, the tool that had ruined the werewolf floor, that had shown enemies and hidden threats before they could strike, was being choked again.
And the small section he could see was full of red dots.
Kael’s grip tightened around the torch.
Then he noticed something else.
Green dots.
Not many. A few scattered in different directions, dim against the sea of red. But they were there.
Other climbers.
Alive, for now.
Kael moved toward the nearest lanternpost.
He kept the torch high as he crossed the street, eyes shifting between the physical world and the minimap. A shape moved on a rooftop to his left. Red dot. Another skittered through an alley and vanished beyond the map’s edge. Red dot. Something larger dragged itself along a side street but stopped short of the lantern’s blue radius. Red dot.
The closer Kael got to the lanternpost, the less the darkness pressed against his skin.
He stepped into the warded circle.
A notification appeared.
[You have reached a checkpoint.]
[You can freely teleport between checkpoints.]
[Checkpoint: Sector 1-1.]
Kael stared at the window for a moment.
Checkpoint.
That changed things.
Not enough to make him feel safe, but enough to make the city’s structure clearer. Vanitas did not expect him to simply wander until he died. It wanted progress measured in blue circles. Checkpoints. Sectors. Warded lanterns. Maybe safe routes, maybe traps. Probably both.
He looked down at his torch.
Then at the blue lantern above him.
So far, he had one torch and no guarantee he would ever get another. If Vanitas swallowed Floor Ten, this torch would not save him twice. The only way to survive that possibility was to obtain another Torch of Vanitas before this floor ended.
His eyes moved to the green dots.
Other climbers.
Other torches.
The thought came quietly, and he did not like it.
Exchange, if possible.
Force, if necessary.
Kael hated that the calculation was so simple. He did not know who those climbers were. Maybe they were decent people. Maybe they were idiots. Maybe they were already dead men walking. But his mother’s life was waiting beyond Floor Ten, and Vanitas had just made kindness expensive in a currency he could not afford.
He stood beneath the blue lantern and considered the nearest green dot.
It was surrounded by red.
A lot of red.
Kael exhaled and adjusted his grip on the torch.
"Of course it is."
Then he stepped out of the checkpoint’s circle and moved toward it.