"Hand me the pry bar, kid," Tiny grunted. The dwarf was standing on top of the beast's pale underbelly, sweating through his soot-stained tunic as he wrestled with a massive slab of back-plating. "These scales are wedged together tighter than a miser's purse. Three of these, and we double our payout in raw materials."
Wanhan didn't move. He stood a dozen paces away, the heavy tungsten pommel of Volatile Fenrir resting familiarly against his hip.
His newly enhanced [Agility] wasn't just making him faster; it was rewiring his instincts. The hair on his arms stood on end. The canyon suddenly felt too quiet. The wind had stopped howling, and the shadows along the jagged ridges above them seemed to deepen.
"Leave the plates, Tiny," Wanhan said. His voice was flat, his thumb silently finding the release catch on his scabbard.
"Leave them?" Tiny squawked, nearly dropping the heavy iron bar. "Are you mad? This is premium natural armor! Borin would pay—"
"Quiet, dirt-grubber," Mata hissed.
The blind elf had already melted into the shadows of the ravine wall, her bone-white bow drawn. Her covered eyes tracked the high ridge a hundred feet above them. "Winch gears. Heavy ones. Two shooters, spaced wide."
Wanhan’s blood ran cold. Someone had tracked them from the Capital.
"Tiny, cover!" Wanhan roared.
THUNK.
The sound echoed off the canyon walls like a thunderclap. High above, a heavy steel bolt the size of a spear broke the skyline, shrieking down toward the ravine floor.
Wanhan’s System-enhanced perception flared. He didn't need to calculate the drop; his body just knew the timing. He coiled his legs to dive, but a second sound froze him.
THUNK.
A second arbalest fired, deliberately staggered.
Wanhan’s combat instincts screamed. If he dodged the first bolt now and rolled to his feet, he would be standing dead still exactly when the second one landed. It was a kill box, designed to punish a panicked dodge.
He forced his burning legs to stay planted for one terrifying heartbeat.
The first bolt slammed into the red dirt four feet from him, the impact kicking up a geyser of earth that rained down like shrapnel.
Now.
[Skill Activated: Diner Dash]
Wanhan exploded forward, leaving the impact zone behind in a blur of motion. He didn't retreat; he charged straight toward the base of the cliff where the snipers were perched. Above him, the second bolt shrieked down, tracking his previous path perfectly, but Wanhan was already gone.
He drew Volatile Fenrir. The dark Mark IV steel hissed as it cleared the leather.
[Active Skill: Kinetic Discharge Activated]
The tungsten pommel flared blinding white. Wanhan swung the heavy blade directly into the rocky face of the cliff right as the second bolt slammed into the dirt behind him.
KRACK-THOOM!
The localized, superheated blast of the sword shattered the cliff face. A massive wave of pulverized rock and thermal dust blew upward, creating an impenetrable, thirty-foot-high smokescreen between the ravine floor and the high ground.
Through the dense cloud, Mata’s bowstring twanged. She didn't need to see. She just aimed for the mechanical grinding of the gears.
A muffled scream drifted down from the ridge, followed by the heavy clatter of a falling weapon.
"One down," Mata announced coldly. "The second is moving. Thirty yards to your left, human. He's setting up on the rock shelf to shoot over the smoke."
Wanhan sprinted left through the dust. He looked up, spotting the jagged silhouette of a limestone overhang jutting out over the ravine. It was a fragile-looking shelf of rock, supporting the massive weight of a sniper and a portable siege weapon.
It looked exactly like the kind of thing that was begging to be broken.
High above, the terrifying clack-clack-clack of the pneumatic winch locked into place.
[Warning: Incoming High-Velocity Projectile Detected]
Wanhan pushed off the dirt. He used the momentum of his dash to scramble up the first twenty feet of the fractured cliff face, his boots finding impossible footholds. He climbed directly underneath the limestone shelf.
The sniper fired. The massive bolt ripped downward, missing Wanhan and embedding itself into the Basilisk corpse below.
"My scales!" Tiny shrieked in despair.
The heavy recoil of the arbalest pushed the sniper backward on the ledge, straining the fragile rock.
Wanhan hung from the cliff by the fingertips of his left hand and his boots. He cocked Fenrir back, the heavy pommel locking into his hip. He aimed the flat of the blade directly at the root of the overhang—the seam where the rock met the cliff wall.
Burn.
The dark steel veins ignited. Wanhan swung upward with every ounce of his Level 100 Tree Cutter proficiency.
KRACK-THOOM!
The blast tore into the fissure. The sheer force of the explosion, combined with the heavy weight already pressing down on the ledge, was too much for the stone to bear.
With a deafening crack, the entire twenty-foot overhang sheared away from the cliff face. It collapsed like a trapdoor. The sniper, the heavy iron arbalest, and tons of jagged rock plummeted seventy feet straight down, slamming into the ravine floor with a bone-rattling crash.
Wanhan kicked away from the crumbling wall, landing heavily in a crouch. He kept his smoking sword drawn as the red dust settled.
[Target Defeated: Syndicate Arbalest-Sniper]
[Experience Gained.]
Tiny slowly poked his head out from behind the Basilisk. The dwarf stared at the massive pile of shattered rock, his goggles wide.
"A cantilever snap!" Tiny breathed, scurrying over to the rubble. "You targeted the shear plane at the root of the overhang while the dynamic load was unstable! The explosive discharge severed the tension zone perfectly!"
"Sure," Wanhan grunted, rolling his shoulder to ease the ache of the recoil. "I just hit the rock where it looked thin."
Mata dropped lightly from her perch, stepping over a crushed piece of limestone. "The ambush is broken. But they did not come all this way for a Basilisk."
Wanhan walked over to the wreckage. Beneath a slab of rock, a heavy leather satchel was half-buried in the dirt. He yanked it free, brushing off the dust.
The crest embossed into the leather made his stomach drop. It was a heavy iron hammer. The exact same insignia worn by Commander Vane's Inquisitors.
Wanhan’s hands were fast as he unbuckled the straps. Out fell a handful of steel quarrels, some silver, and a tightly rolled parchment sealed with black wax. He cracked the seal and read the sharp, ruthless handwriting.
Target: The newly registered Silver party, 'The Broken Anvil'.
Primary Objective: Retrieve the Flawless Alchemical Ember. > Secondary Objective: Eliminate the one-armed anomaly and his companions. The containment breach must remain an 'unsolved tragedy' to justify the expansion of the upper vaults. Leave no witnesses.
"It's an Iron Forge seal," Tiny said, looking over Wanhan's arm, his face going pale. "Why are Forge snipers shooting at us?"
"Because Vane was either lying, or he's blind to the rot in his own house," Wanhan said, his voice cold. He crushed the parchment in his fist. "A faction inside the Forge planted the Dungeon Core themselves. They wanted the Goliath to wipe out the Middle Ring so they could claim the ruined real estate. We didn't just kill a monster, Tiny. We ruined a coup."
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Mata nocked an arrow, her head snapping toward the distant, smog-choked horizon of the Capital. "We hold the only proof of their treason. The Ember in your sword is a death sentence."
Tiny swallowed hard, eyeing the road leading away from the city. "So... we run? We leave the Basilisk, hit the coast, and never look back?"
Wanhan looked down at Volatile Fenrir. The blade was still radiating heat, humming with a violent, coiled power. He remembered the pitying looks in Oakhaven. The constant fear of the debt collectors. The feeling of being weak.
He was Level 9. He had a Silver Charter. And he was tired of running.
"Tiny," Wanhan said, his voice as hard as Mark IV alloy. "Get your pry bar. We are not leaving a ten-gold bounty in the dirt for scavengers."
"Kid, did you miss the part about the massive political conspiracy trying to murder us?"
"Let them try," Wanhan said, a dark, adrenaline-fueled smile touching his lips. He sheathed his sword with a sharp, metallic snick. "We have twenty gold in the bank, ten more on the way, and a weapon that hits like a siege engine. We aren't just going to survive this city. We're going to break it."
The pulverized rock hung in the air like a suffocating gray shroud.
Wanhan pressed his back hard against the base of the cliff. His chest heaved, lungs burning as they filtered the sharp, alkaline dust. In his left hand, Volatile Fenrir was practically vibrating. The dark steel was so hot it scorched the air around it, the caged Ember at the pommel screaming to be let off the leash again.
"Status!" Wanhan barked, his voice raw.
"I'm hugging a dead Basilisk and praying to the Forge!" Tiny’s voice drifted through the haze, muffled by the multi-ton carcass. "The primary scales took a hit, but I'm intact! How many left?"
"One," Mata said. The blind elf hadn't moved from her crouch. She was a ghost in the gray, her head tilted, ears twitching as she mapped the invisible battlefield. "He left his dead comrade. He is dragging the heavy winch. Thirty yards to your left, human. He is setting up on the limestone overhang to shoot over the smoke."
Wanhan looked left. Through the settling dust, he could just barely make out the jagged silhouette of the overhang. It jutted out over the ravine like a massive diving board.
To the old Wanhan, it was just a rock. But the System had sharpened his instincts, turning raw survival into a sixth sense. He didn't see a complex physics equation. He just saw a thick slab of stone supporting entirely too much weight, anchored by a single, stressed seam against the cliff wall.
It looked brittle. It looked like a branch waiting for an axe.
High above, the terrifying clack-clack-clack of the pneumatic winch locked into place. The sniper was loaded.
"Mata," Wanhan called softly. "Can you hit him?"
"I cannot shoot through solid stone," she replied coldly. "I need a line of sight."
"Then we don't shoot him," Wanhan said. A reckless, adrenaline-fueled grin stretched across his face. "We drop the floor."
Wanhan tightened his grip on the leather hilt. His newly upgraded [Agility] sang in his veins. He didn't have a right arm to haul himself over the top, but he didn't need to reach the top. He just needed to reach the crack.
[Skill Activated: Diner Dash]
He exploded upward. Instead of a horizontal sprint, he channeled the System-assisted momentum straight up the jagged, nearly vertical incline of the cliff base. His boots found imperceptible footholds. He moved with a violent, predatory grace, scaling the first twenty feet in seconds before grabbing a handhold directly underneath the jutting limestone shelf.
Directly above him, the sniper pulled the trigger.
THUNK.
The massive arbalest bolt ripped downward through the dust cloud, missing Wanhan entirely and embedding itself into the Basilisk corpse below with a deafening, meaty crunch.
"My scales!" Tiny shrieked in despair.
The heavy recoil of the siege weapon pushed the sniper backward. The massive shift in weight made the limestone shelf groan. Dust trickled down into Wanhan's eyes from the stressed seam where the overhang met the wall.
That was the weak point.
Hanging by his boots and the sheer strength of his core, Wanhan cocked his left arm back. The heavy tungsten pommel locked perfectly against his hip.
[Active Skill: Kinetic Discharge Activated]
The Alchemical Ember roared. Blinding white heat surged up the dark steel veins of the lopsided blade. Wanhan didn't think about shear force or structural tension. He just saw a target that needed breaking.
He poured every ounce of his Level 100 Tree Cutter proficiency into a brutal upward swing.
KRACK-THOOM!
The localized concussive blast detonated point-blank against the underside of the stressed rock seam. The impact was catastrophic. The explosion tore into the fissure right as the heavy weight of the sniper pressed down on the unsupported edge.
With a sound like a thunderclap, the entire twenty-foot limestone shelf snapped off the cliff face.
It gave way instantly. The sniper didn't even have time to scream. The man, the heavy iron arbalest, and tons of jagged rock plummeted seventy feet straight down into the ravine.
The impact shook the canyon floor, kicking up a fresh, massive cloud of red dirt.
Wanhan kicked away from the crumbling wall, landing heavily in a crouch on the ravine floor. He kept his sword drawn, the blade smoking in the cool air, his eyes scanning the rubble.
A blue screen flickered to life in the dust.
[Target Defeated: Syndicate Arbalest-Sniper]
[Experience Gained.]
"Is everyone alive?" Wanhan called out, his breathing heavy.
Tiny slowly poked his soot-stained head out from behind the Basilisk’s armored tail. The dwarf looked at the massive pile of shattered limestone, then up at the sheer, flat drop of the cliff face, and finally at Wanhan.
"A cantilever snap," Tiny breathed, his dwarven engineering instincts overriding his terror as he scrambled over to the rubble. "You targeted the shear plane at the structural root! While the dynamic load was shifting from the recoil! The explosive discharge severed the tension zone perfectly—kid, that was horribly efficient."
"Sure," Wanhan grunted, rolling his left shoulder to ease the ache of the explosive recoil. "I just hit the rock where it looked thin."
Mata dropped gracefully from her perch, her boots making absolutely no sound. She stepped past the shattered pile of rock without giving it a second glance.
"The ambush is broken," the blind elf stated, smoothly slinging her bow over her shoulder. "But if there were two, there will be more. Vane was right. The Guild bounty was a convenient place to isolate us."
Wanhan walked over to the wreckage. Beneath a massive slab of fallen limestone, a heavy leather satchel was half-buried in the dirt.
"Let's see who exactly is hunting us," Wanhan said, reaching down to pull it free.
Wanhan yanked the heavy leather satchel free from the crushed limestone, ignoring the smear of blood on the buckle. He slapped the thick layer of red dust from the flap, coughing as the alkaline powder hit the back of his throat.
The crest embossed into the leather was unmistakable. Even under the dirt and grime, the heavy iron hammer insignia caught the dull light of the Rust Barrens.
Wanhan’s newly upgraded [Agility] made his hands swift and steady as he unbuckled the straps and dumped the contents onto a flat rock.
Out tumbled a handful of high-grade steel quarrels, a heavy pouch of silver coins that clinked softly, and a tightly rolled parchment sealed with black wax.
Tiny jogged over, dragging his heavy pry bar behind him. He looked at the iron hammer crest on the satchel and stopped dead in his tracks. The greed instantly vanished from the dwarf's face.
"That’s an Iron Forge seal," Tiny breathed, his soot-stained face going deathly pale beneath his goggles. "Vane said the Forge was the target of the assassination attempt. Why are Forge snipers shooting at us?"
"Because Vane didn't know the whole truth," Mata said smoothly. The blind elf stood over the crushed remains of the sniper, her covered eyes aimed downward as if studying a dead insect. "Or, he lied. The rot is coming from inside their own walls."
Wanhan cracked the black wax seal with his thumb and unrolled the stiff parchment.
The handwriting was sharp, elegant, and entirely ruthless. Wanhan’s eyes scanned the brief, damning orders, the words burning themselves into his mind.
Target: The newly registered Silver party, 'The Broken Anvil'.
Primary Objective: Retrieve the Flawless Alchemical Ember. > Secondary Objective: Eliminate the one-armed anomaly and his companions. The containment breach must remain an 'unsolved tragedy' to justify the expansion of the upper vaults. Leave no witnesses. Do not let them return to the Guild.
Wanhan slowly let the parchment curl back up. The knot in his stomach tightened into something cold, heavy, and hard.
"It was an inside job," Wanhan said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. He looked up at his party. "A faction within the Iron Forge leadership planted the Dungeon Core in their own containment sector. They wanted the Goliath to breach the Middle Ring."
"Why?" Tiny asked, his voice trembling with genuine horror. "Why destroy their own city?"
"To justify an expansion," Wanhan quoted from the letter. His System-enhanced mind pieced the politics together with the same brutal efficiency he used to dismantle the sniper's rock shelf. "If the Middle Ring gets wiped out by a 'rogue monster', the Forge steps in. They claim the ruined real estate and expand their industrial sectors under the guise of emergency reconstruction. We didn't just kill a boss monster, Tiny. We derailed a multi-million-gold coup."
Mata nocked an arrow, her head snapping toward the distant, smog-choked horizon of the Iron Capital. "They will not stop with two snipers. We are holding the only piece of evidence that proves the Goliath was artificially created. The Ember in your sword is a death sentence."
Tiny swallowed hard, looking back toward the massive, dead Basilisk, and then out toward the open, desolate road leading away from the city.
"So... we run," the dwarf said softly, the fight completely draining out of him. "We leave the bounty, we bypass the Capital, and we head for the coast. I know a smuggler in Saltport. We can disappear."
Wanhan didn't answer right away. He looked down at Volatile Fenrir. He felt the heat radiating through the scabbard, warming his left thigh like a living thing.
He thought about the five years he had spent cowering in Oakhaven. Washing floors. Hiding his pinned-up sleeve from the pitying eyes of the villagers. Letting the world tell him he was broken, useless, and destined to die in a gutter.
He was Level 9 now. He had a Silver Charter. He had twenty gold in the bank, and he carried a masterwork weapon that could shatter a mountain.
"Tiny," Wanhan said. His voice was as hard and dense as Mark IV alloy. "Get your pry bar. Get the plates."
Tiny blinked, completely thrown off guard. "Kid, did you not just hear the part about the massive political conspiracy trying to murder us?"
"I heard it," Wanhan said. He stepped past the dwarf, his boots crunching on the gravel as he walked toward the dead Basilisk. "But a ten-gold bounty is a ten-gold bounty. We earned it. We are not leaving it in the dirt for the scavengers."
Wanhan drew Fenrir, the dark steel hissing into the cool air. He didn't activate the explosive charge. He just used his Level 100 Tree Cutter proficiency and his massive [Strength] to expertly slide the heavy blade beneath the thickest iron-hide plates on the beast's back, wedging it deep into the muscle.
"Leverage it," Wanhan grunted over his shoulder.
Tiny hesitated for exactly one second before his dwarven greed roared back to life, drowning out his terror. He scrambled up the carcass and jammed the pry bar into the gap Wanhan created. Together, they violently wrenched the massive scales free with a sickening, wet tearing sound.
[Loot Secured: Pristine Iron-Hide Plates x3]
[Bounty Objective Complete: Proof of Kill Acquired]
"Pack them up," Wanhan ordered, sheathing his sword. He turned his back on the wilderness, his eyes locking onto the towering, black smoke stacks of the Iron Forge in the distance.
"We are walking back into a trap," Mata stated. There was no fear in her voice, only a hint of vicious, lethal approval.
"Let them spring it," Wanhan said, a dark, adrenaline-fueled smile touching his lips. "We have twenty gold in the bank, ten more on the way, and a sword that hits lik
The Plot Thickens: The hit squad wasn't from the Syndicate; they were Iron Forge enforcers. A corrupt faction is trying to destroy the Middle Ring for real estate, and our trio is holding the only evidence.
Next Update: Chapter 13 drops in a few hours! We’re heading back to the Guildhall to cash in, but as you can guess... the welcoming committee is already waiting.