Chapter 16: The Forgotten Layers
The darkness in the Under-Crypts was unlike any darkness the Vagabond had ever experienced. It was not merely the absence of light; it was a physical, oppressive entity. It pressed against his eyeballs, suffocated his pores, and seemed to swallow even the ragged, desperate echoes of his own breathing.
He sat in the shallow, stagnant pool, the freezing water submerging him up to his waist. His entire body was a brutalized map of agonizing pain. His left shoulder throbbed with a hot, sickening heat where the rusted iron bar of the drain had gouged a deep trench through his leather armor and into his flesh. His previously fractured rib felt like a jagged knife twisting into his lung with every desperate inhalation, turning the simple biological necessity of breathing into a continuous torture session.
Worst of all was his left ear. It was completely dead to the outside world. The violent pressure differential from the Sovereign’s explosive shockwave had ruptured his eardrum. Now, instead of the ambient sounds of the cavern, his left ear was filled with a constant, high-pitched, maddening whine—a biological siren screaming about the severe trauma his body had just endured.
In this absolute, suffocating void, stripped of his sight and half his hearing, his own mind threatened to become his greatest enemy. The cold claws of genuine panic tried to find purchase in the fortress of his discipline.
But his training in the brutal mercenary camps of the Secret Alliance kicked the panic aside.
Rule one of deep survival, the Vagabond reminded himself, his internal voice a harsh, mental rasp. Do not trust your missing senses. Trust your inventory. Trust your mind.
He raised his right hand, his fingers trembling violently from a dangerous mixture of extreme physical exhaustion and early-stage hypothermia, and blindly felt for Shadow’s wet fur. The Royal Beast pup was shivering violently beside him, but it stood firm, its small nose twitching as it read the micro-currents of stagnant air in the cavern. To a wolf, absolute darkness was not the end of the world; it was simply a different hunting ground.
"You're my eyes now, Shadow," the Vagabond whispered, his voice barely carrying over the ringing in his ear.
The first nail in his coffin was the bleeding. If the deep gouge in his left shoulder continued to leak, he wouldn't just die slowly from blood loss and hypothermia; he would turn himself into a bleeding piece of bait in an unmapped, subterranean ecosystem undoubtedly filled with predators that hunted by scent.
With one trembling hand and his teeth tightly clenched, the Vagabond began the agonizing process of unbuckling his ruined upper leather armor. The metal buckles were freezing and stiff, and his shredded palms screamed in protest. After two minutes of blind, excruciating struggle, he managed to pry the torn leather chest and shoulder piece off, letting it drop into the shallow water with a dull splash.
The freezing ambient air of the cavern instantly hit his soaked inner linen shirt, sending a violent, uncontrollable spasm of shivers down his spine.
He blindly felt the wound on his shoulder. It was long, jagged, and pumping thick, warm blood down his back. He possessed no magical healing items. The single Minor Healing Vial he had looted from the human assassin had been consumed during the first phase of the boss fight. He had to rely on primitive, brutal field medicine.
He gripped the bottom hem of his soaked linen shirt, bit down on the tough fabric with his molars, and pulled violently with his right hand. The linen tore with a muffled rip. He ripped a long, wide strip of the fabric free.
He wrapped the wet cloth tightly around his left shoulder and under his right armpit, preparing to tie it off.
A muffled, guttural scream erupted in his throat, forcefully swallowed behind his closed teeth, as he pulled the crude bandage agonizingly tight directly over the open flesh. The pain was blinding, a white-hot flash in the absolute blackness, but it was absolutely necessary. He tied a brutal knot using his one good hand and his teeth, transforming the torn linen into a makeshift pressure tourniquet.
It wouldn't heal the wound, but it would compress the ruptured vessels and severely stem the catastrophic blood trail he was leaving.
Once the bleeding was addressed, he let his head fall back against the damp stone wall, closing his eyes for a few precious seconds. He needed to evaluate his offensive capabilities. He was at the absolute bottom of the food chain down here.
He reached over his good shoulder and felt the leather quiver. It was designed to be somewhat water-resistant, but the violent plunge through the abyssal drain had fully submerged it. He ran a bleeding finger over the fletching of his arrows. The wood was soaked, but it hadn't warped. The heavy iron tips were still securely fastened.
Twenty-three arrows remaining. His ammunition was intact.
He felt for the Whisperer's Recurve. The dark ash-wood was a masterpiece of Alliance craftsmanship, designed to survive the harshest environments, but the bowstring was completely saturated with ancient, freezing brine. The moisture would severely compromise the tension. It would negatively affect both the range and the kinetic impact of his shots. In the tight, suffocating confines of a dark cave, a compromised longbow was a liability.
He finally reached down to his hip and felt for his steel sword. His hand grasped only empty leather. The empty scabbard served as a grim reminder: he possessed no melee weapon. He had traded his knife to the merchant Elias, and he had no sword to draw. In this oppressive darkness, where threats would likely materialize at point-blank range, he was effectively stripped of all reliable close-quarters defense.
"Time to move," the Vagabond said, forcing his body to obey his will.
He pushed himself up from the shallow pool. His legs violently trembled, feeling like they were made of hollow, fragile glass. His [Stamina] was completely bottomed out. Every single step required a monumental effort of mental command to force his exhausted, freezing muscles to contract.
He focused his entire cognitive presence on the Silver Ring of the Weeping Willow on his right index finger.
The passive [Perception +3] trait did not magically conjure light from the void. Instead, it forcefully dilated his pupils and drastically increased the visual cortex's sensitivity, forcing his brain to capture and amplify the absolute weakest, most scattered photons available in the environment.
He stared intensely into the absolute blackness for a long minute.
Slowly, agonizingly, his vision began to adjust. The world did not become bright, but it shifted from a suffocating wall of pure black into varying, murky shades of deep, charcoal gray. He began to make out the rough, jagged outlines of his surroundings.
This place was not constructed like the upper catacombs. There were no carefully carved pillars, no smooth stone floors, and no vaulted ceilings. This was a massive, natural subterranean cave system. The walls were uneven and jagged, scarred by thick veins of black, volcanic rock.
The only source of light—which his enhanced perception barely managed to pick up—was microscopic patches of bioluminescent mold. They grew deep within the dampest crevices of the stone, glowing with a sickly, faint green radiation. It was a light so incredibly dim that a normal human eye would never have registered it, but to the Vagabond, it provided just enough contrast to outline the fatal drops and the jagged stalagmites in his path.
He began to walk.
Every step was a calculated risk. His heavy leather boot swept the slippery, mud-coated stone floor before he committed his weight. He held his bow horizontally in a tight, defensive guard, utilizing the ash-wood as a rudimentary parrying stick if something lunged from the dark. Shadow was two paces ahead of him, the pup’s nose practically glued to the ground, its dark tail held low and stiff.
The silence in the Under-Crypts was profoundly different from the silence of the upper graveyard. Above, the silence held a sense of waiting, a dormant threat. Here, the silence was prehistoric. It felt as though no living, breathing creature had walked these jagged tunnels in millennia. He could clearly hear the rhythmic, maddening drip-drip-drip of condensation falling from the ceiling into hidden pools. And in his left ear, the incessant, high-pitched ringing continued to ruin his spatial audio, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact direction of the echoes.
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They walked for what felt like hours, though it was likely only thirty minutes, navigating a labyrinth of twisting, claustrophobic tunnels. Sometimes the jagged walls narrowed so severely that the Vagabond had to turn sideways, scraping his bleeding back against the cold stone to squeeze through. Other times, the tunnels opened into massive, terrifying limestone caverns where colossal, spear-like stalactites hung from the ceiling like the teeth of a dead god.
Suddenly, Shadow stopped dead in its tracks.
The Royal Beast pup’s entire body went rigid. The pitch-black fur along its spine stood straight up, and its ears pinned flat against its skull. It didn't bark. It didn't even growl. It simply emitted a silent, vibrating hum deep within its chest—a specific, instinctual hunting signal the Vagabond had learned to recognize perfectly.
The Vagabond froze instantly, holding his breath.
He tightened his grip on his bow, his eyes scanning the murky, grayscale darkness ahead of him. He saw nothing but jagged rock and faint green mold.
But he smelled it.
It was a pungent, nauseating odor that cut through the smell of the brine. It smelled like rotting, diseased meat mixed with the sharp tang of ammonia and sour musk.
Then, he heard it.
A dry, scratching sound. It wasn't the heavy, rhythmic thud of human boots. It was the frantic, clicking scuttle of multiple, hard appendages scraping against wet stone. The sound was coming from ahead, but because of his deafened left ear, his brain miscalculated the distance.
He realized a microsecond too late that the sound wasn't coming from the tunnel ahead. It was coming from directly above him.
From the low, jagged ceiling of the cave, a massive, pale entity detached itself and plummeted directly toward the Vagabond’s head.
Driven purely by the explosive reflexes granted by his [DEX: 18] attribute, and completely ignoring the screaming exhaustion of his body, the Vagabond threw himself backward, rolling violently into the slick mud.
The entity smashed into the stone floor with a sickening, meaty thud, landing exactly where the Vagabond had been standing a heartbeat prior.
In the incredibly dim, pale green light, the Vagabond finally saw the nightmare that hunted in the forgotten depths.
It was roughly the size of a fully grown panther, but it possessed none of a feline's natural grace. It was a completely blind atrocity. Its head was a smooth, pale, fleshy dome completely devoid of eyes or a nose. The lower half of its face was dominated by a massive, circular maw, lined with concentric rows of translucent, needle-like teeth. Its body resembled a flayed, hairless human corpse, stretched and mutated, moving on four elongated, multi-jointed limbs that ended in hooked, bone-white talons designed for clinging to the cavern ceilings.
There was no time to open the Magic Book. There was no time to strategize. The blind creature was driven by the overwhelming scent of fresh, hot blood leaking from the Vagabond’s bandaged shoulder.
The pale atrocity let out a piercing, metallic shriek—a sound like tearing sheet metal—and lunged on all fours directly at the Vagabond, who was still struggling to rise from the mud.
The Vagabond had no leverage to swing his bow as a weapon. He didn't have the space to dodge.
He brought the ash-wood riser of the bow up horizontally with both hands, using it as a desperate physical barricade, completely ignoring the agonizing flare of pain in his torn left shoulder.
The creature collided with the ash-wood. The kinetic force was staggering for something so emaciated. The circular, tooth-filled maw snapped wildly against the bow, trying to slide past the wood to rip the Vagabond’s face off. Thick, acidic saliva sprayed from the creature's mouth, sizzling audibly as it hit the Vagabond’s leather glove, burning his skin. The creature's heavy, unnatural weight pressed the Vagabond down into the mud, threatening to crush his already fractured rib.
"Shadow!" the Vagabond gritted out through his teeth.
The Royal Beast pup didn't need a second invitation. Shadow launched itself like a dark cannonball from the periphery. The pup didn't aim for the heavily muscled neck; it aimed for the weak points. Shadow sank its powerful, serrated jaws directly into the thin, multi-jointed knee of the creature's back right leg, biting down with bone-crushing force.
The blind ghoul shrieked in sudden agony, its body violently thrashing sideways as it instinctively turned its eyeless head to address the new, agonizing pain, pulling a fraction of its heavy weight off the Vagabond.
That fraction was all the Mercenary needed.
Ignoring the searing pain in his chest that threatened to black him out, the Vagabond planted his boots in the mud and bridged his hips upward, throwing the creature slightly off balance. He gripped the bow riser firmly with his right hand.
With a guttural roar of pure survival instinct, he drove the pointed limb of the bow upward with brutal, unrefined [STR: 14] force, plunging the sharp wooden edge directly into the creature's soft, pale underbelly.
The wood pierced the rotting flesh with sickening ease. A geyser of pitch-black, rancid fluid erupted from the wound, coating the Vagabond’s hand and the ash-wood of his bow in hot, foul-smelling gore.
The creature spasmed violently, its multi-jointed limbs thrashing in panic as it tried to scramble backward away from the killing blow. But in the filthy, desperate fights of the Under-Crypts, there was no honor, only the absolute certainty of the kill.
The Vagabond didn't let it retreat. He twisted the bow riser savagely and ripped it sideways, carving a massive, horizontal trench through the creature's intestines, before kicking it solidly in the chest with his heavy boot to throw it off him.
The monster collapsed onto its back, thrashing weakly in the mud, black blood pooling rapidly around it. The Vagabond forced himself to his feet, swaying slightly. He reached for an iron-tipped arrow, raised it high, and brought it down with both hands, driving the sharp tip straight through the center of the creature's blind, fleshy head, pinning it to the stone floor.
The ghoul twitched once, then went perfectly still.
The Vagabond stumbled backward, leaning heavily against the cave wall. He was panting frantically, his chest heaving as if he had just sprinted for a mile. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, and the muscles in his arms were burning with lactic acid. The fight had lasted less than twelve seconds, but it had drained whatever minuscule reserves of energy he had miraculously scrounged up.
Shadow stood over the corpse, licking the black blood from its jaws, letting out a low, victorious rumble.
Before the Vagabond could even catch his breath, he felt a familiar, warm vibration against his hip.
The Magic Book began to pulse with a pale blue light, illuminating the immediate, bloody surroundings of the dark cave. The Vagabond unhooked it with a trembling hand. The damp, petrified pages turned on their own, the glowing blue ink rapidly forming new text.
══════════════════════ ENTITY ANALYSIS ══════════════════════
Entity: Blind Ghoul (Abyssal Scavenger).
Threat Level: Low (Pack Hunter).
Traits:
- Blind.
- Echolocation.
- Extreme Blood-Scent.
As soon as he read the analysis, a second screen materialized. The corpse of the blind ghoul at his feet began to glow with a faint, ethereal blue aura. Thin, wispy strands of stolen spiritual energy rose from the dead flesh, drawn magnetically into the pages of the open book.
══════════════════════ SOUL ABSORPTION ══════════════════════
Entity Eliminated: Blind Ghoul.
Spiritual Points Absorbed: +4
Current Progress: 16 / 20
(Approaching First Ascension).
The Vagabond let out a long, shaky sigh, closing the heavy leather cover. The pale blue light vanished, plunging the world back into the suffocating, grayscale gloom, illuminated only by the faint green mold.
"Sixteen out of twenty," he rasped to himself, staring at the dead creature. "Four more souls. Four more points, and we finally see what this Ascension is."
But the brief flicker of grim satisfaction instantly evaporated as his brain fully processed the chilling implications of the first system screen.
His eyes slowly widened in the dark.
Threat Level: Low.Type: Pack Hunter.
If this horrifying, hyper-lethal atrocity was considered a "Low" threat, it was only because it was never meant to hunt alone. The scent of blood—the hot, red blood leaking from the Vagabond’s shoulder, and the pungent, black gore spilling from the dead ghoul—was currently wafting through the stale air of the closed cavern system like a dinner bell, calling to every blind nightmare residing in the Forgotten Layers.
And from the deep, pitch-black tunnels ahead of him, and from the unseen, jagged ceilings high above, the Vagabond began to hear it.
It wasn't just a single clicking, scratching sound anymore.
It was dozens of them.
The horrifying chorus of clicking talons, scraping bone, and high-pitched, metallic shrieks began to echo and multiply in the depths of the darkness. The pack had smelled the blood. And they were coming for dinner.
"Damn it," the Vagabond spat, wiping a mixture of sweat and black blood from his eyes.
He didn't run. Running blindly in the Under-Crypts was suicide. He tightened his bleeding grip on the ash-wood bow and pressed his back firmly against the cold, damp stone wall.
There was no door to seal. There was no deep water to hide in. Here, in the lightless abyss of the Forgotten Layers, the only way forward was to carve a path through the flesh of the swarm, and reach his First Ascension before the dark tore him to pieces.