Chapter 318:Rest.
Silver examined them carefully. He didn’t need anything exotic.
He wasn’t trying to integrate another beast tattoo right now. He needed compatible energy his existing space beast could absorb.
He chose three of the cheaper options. The total appeared.
Silver stared.
"No."
He checked another combination, still expensive. He removed one, and added another. The price barely improved.
Silver sighed.
"System, you understand I’m currently trapped underground, correct?"
No response.
"You could offer a survival discount."
Nothing.
Silver stared at the screen.
"Worth trying."
Eventually he selected three Tier Three space-type cores.
[Tier Three Space-Type Beast Core ×3 selected.]
[Compatibility with Host’s existing Space-Type Beast: High.]
[Purchase Confirmed.]
[AP Deducted: 960.]
Silver’s expression became blank, then another notification appeared.
[Warning.]
[Available AP has fallen below recommended emergency reserve.]
Silver slowly looked at his remaining balance.
[78 AP remaining]
Almost nothing.
He had effectively gone broke in less than ten minutes. Silver stared at the miserable number remaining beside his AP balance.
"I hope Ravenna appreciates what I’ve sacrificed."
The moment her name left his mouth, the little humor he’d managed to find disappeared.
Ravenna.
Silver immediately started searching himself again.
The tracker.
He had nearly forgotten. Before entering the tunnels, he’d specifically made sure they had a way to find one another if separated.
His hand moved toward the place where he’d kept his tracker but found nothing.
Silver frowned.
He checked another pocket, then another. Finally, his fingers touched something. He pulled it out.
His heart sank.
The tracker was shattered. The screen had split completely down the middle. One side had been crushed inward, and several internal components were visible through the broken casing.
Silver pressed the activation button.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
"No."
He tried once more but the device remained dead.
He stared at it, his gaze losing hope in every second.
’This is bad, very bad’
If Ravenna had escaped, she would be trying to track him. And what would she see?
Nothing.
Perhaps a disconnected signal. Perhaps the last known location before the collapse. Either way, she had no way of knowing he was alive.
Silver rubbed his face.
"She’s going to think I’m dead."
That worried him more than the queen. He knew Ravenna and could imagine exactly what she’d do; refuse to leave, try to dig through the mountain herself and fight anyone who told her to stop.
Silver silently hoped Antony had enough sense to get her away from the collapse. Then he remembered he’d specifically ordered Antony to do exactly that.
"Please tell me you listened."
Silver searched for his phone next. Finding it took longer. Eventually he discovered it beneath a piece of rubble near where he’d originally fallen.
The protective case was cracked and the screen had several new fractures. Silver pressed the power button but nothing happened.
His stomach tightened.
Then the screen flickered. The device powered on.
Silver exhaled.
"Come on."
He checked the signal, nothing, not even a weak connection. Silver raised the phone, moved it and turned toward another section of the cavern.
Still nothing.
"Of course."
He attempted an emergency connection anyway but gailed.
He tried again.
Failed.
Silver stared at the phone.
Functional but ompletely useless.
He lowered it.
Only then did another question occur to him.
Time.
He looked at the phone’s clock, but after the damage and loss of connection, he wasn’t certain whether it had remained accurate.
Silver turned toward the system.
"How long was I unconscious?"
The answer appeared immediately.
[Calculating.]
Silver frowned.
"You need to calculate that?"
Another notification appeared.
[Time elapsed since Host entered emergency unconscious state: 23 Hours, 41 Minutes.]
Silver stopped breathing for a moment. He read it again.
Nearly twenty-four hours.
"A day?"
[Confirmed.]
Silver stared into the darkness. He had lost an entire day. Ravenna had been out there for an entire day without knowing whether he was alive.
If Antony had gotten her out.
Silver corrected himself immediately.
No.
Antony had gotten her out. He had to believe that and anything else wasn’t useful. Silver slowly leaned his head back against the stone.
For the first time since waking, he allowed himself to stop moving since his body desperately needed it. He opened one of the emergency meals and began eating slowly while drinking more water.
The food wasn’t particularly good but at that moment, it tasted better than anything he’d eaten in weeks.
Silver chewed quietly.
His eyes occasionally moved toward the only obvious tunnel; the queen’s route. He wasn’t going that way,not unless every other option failed.
He looked toward the collapsed walls. Somewhere beyond all that stone was Ravenna, hopefully, probably already furious and definitely worried.
Silver swallowed another mouthful.
"Just wait." His voice disappeared into the cavern. "I’m coming back."
The system remained silent but Silver didn’t need it to answer. He looked at the three Tier Three space cores waiting inside his storage.
Silver did not immediately begin absorbing the space cores. Every instinct inside him was telling him to move.
Yhe longer he sat against the cavern wall, the easier it became to imagine what was happening outside. Ravenna refusing to leave Death Row Valley. Ravenna trying to convince the observation center to send someone inside. Ravenna staring at her own tracker while waiting for a signal that would never appear.
He knew her well enough by now to understand exactly how badly she would take his disappearance.
That knowledge made remaining still almost unbearable. Unfortunately, his body didn’t care about what he wanted.
Silver finished the first emergency meal, drank another quarter of the water bottle, and attempted to stand.
His legs immediately trembled. He remained upright for perhaps three seconds before sitting back down.
"Right." Silver leaned his head against the stone. "We’re doing this the slow way."
There was no point escaping one cavern only to collapse inside another.
His earlier attempt to use Spatial Sense had already shown him exactly how close he was to his limit.
His mental capacity had barely recovered, his spatial reserves were almost empty, and even though the system’s emergency intervention had stabilized the worst of his injuries, stabilization wasn’t the same thing as being healed.
If he encountered the queen right now, he would die. If he encountered a group of ordinary worms, he might still die.
Silver wasn’t particularly interested in either possibility. He took one of the few beast cores that had survived the fall from his pocket.
It wasn’t a space-type core.
Most of the cores they’d collected before the disaster had been distributed or stored elsewhere, and what remained on him was a random mixture of low-tier energy. Under normal circumstances, Silver might have saved them for something more useful.
These were not normal circumstances. He closed his fingers around the first core and the familiar process began.