Chapter 288: Too Easy
Kael stepped toward the torn sewer gate with the Torch of Vanitas held high.
The blue flame pushed against the dark ahead, but the space beyond the broken bars resisted more than the tunnels behind him had. The darkness did not flee cleanly here. It peeled back in thick layers, reluctant and slow, as if whatever waited past the gate had soaked the area in enough corruption that even the torch needed a moment to carve out a path. The iron bars were split wide, their broken ends bent outward in different directions. Some had been snapped cleanly. Others had been twisted until the metal had stretched thin before tearing.
Kael stopped just before the threshold and looked at the claw marks along the stone.
They were deep.
Too deep for the rats he had killed on the way here. The Corrupted MegaRats had metallic claws, yes, but their bodies lacked the weight needed to score the wall like this. These marks had been dug in by something larger, something that had dragged steel through stone with force rather than sharpness alone. Each groove was wide enough to fit two fingers and long enough that the creature responsible must have had a reach comparable to a grown man, maybe more.
The red dot on his minimap pulsed beyond the gate.
The blue dot remained beside it.
Kael shifted his grip on the torch and moved through the opening.
The chamber beyond the gate widened into an old overflow reservoir. A circular pit occupied the center, dry now, its bottom hidden beneath a layer of black sludge that reflected nothing. Pillars held the ceiling in place, though several were cracked and reinforced with ugly metal bands that looked far newer than the surrounding stone. Bones littered the edges of the chamber. Most belonged to rats. Some looked human. Others were too malformed to belong to anything Kael wanted to identify. At the far end, half-seated on a pile of torn metal, broken masonry, and gnawed bone, was the thing guarding the chamber.
It was not a rat.
It was a ratman.
The creature was tall enough that even crouched, it looked wrong for the space around it. Its spine hunched forward, making its shoulders rise unevenly beneath patches of matted black fur and exposed gray flesh. One arm was longer and larger than the other, swollen with muscle and metal growth until the knuckles nearly dragged along the ground. That oversized arm looked less like a limb and more like a crude weapon grown from the body. Plates of dull metal protruded from its forearm and wrist, natural in the same disturbing way the MegaRats’ claws had been. The other arm was thinner, more human in proportion, though its fingers ended in steel claws.
One eye was gone, sealed shut by a scar that cut from brow to cheek. The remaining eye held a red iris, bright and wet in the torchlight. Its ears were torn down to ragged strips. Its mouth opened slightly, revealing steel teeth arranged in jagged rows, some grown too long to fit properly behind its lips.
And in its smaller hand, it held a cleaver.
Calling it a cleaver felt almost insulting. The weapon was nearly the size of a man, thick-backed and ugly, its edge shaped with jagged saw teeth meant less for cutting cleanly and more for ripping through whatever it struck. The hilt was steel, with another length of metal wrapped around the grip to extend its reach, making the weapon clumsy to look at but dangerous in the hands of something with more strength than sense.
Kael glanced at the claw marks on the wall.
Then at the ratman’s metal hand.
No.
The size was wrong. The depth was wrong too. The marks on the wall had come from something far worse. This creature could have made scratches like them, maybe imitated the shape in weaker stone, but it had not torn the sewer gate and walls in the same way the outer marks suggested. Compared to whatever had punched holes through the mountain-sized walls outside, this thing was much less frightening.
Which was not comforting.
It only meant the Floor of Vanitas had bigger problems elsewhere.
Kael was just thinking about using Inspect when the ratman moved.
For something so malformed, it launched itself with surprising speed. Its bent legs cracked against the floor, and the cleaver rose over its shoulder in a wide, brutal arc. The red iris locked onto the torch first, then to Kael, then back to the torch. The hunger was there again. Not for flesh. For the blue flame. For the thing that denied the dark and kept the floor’s atmosphere from eating him alive.
The cleaver came down.
Kael stepped aside.
The weapon felt slow.
Not normal slow. Absurd slow. The kind of slow that made Kael wonder if something had gone wrong with his sense of time before he remembered the last year of his life had been spent being beaten, drowned, chased, starved, made to punch stone underwater, and forced to move against a man who considered ordinary reaction speed a polite suggestion. The ratman’s attack had weight. It had intent. To a normal climber, especially one terrified of the floor, it was probably deadly.
To Kael, the cleaver telegraphed itself like a falling signboard.
The jagged blade slammed into the floor where he had been standing, teeth biting into stone with a shriek of metal and sparks. Before the ratman could pull the weapon back, Kael moved in. His right hand chopped down in a short, compact strike, not a full punch, not even a rune-assisted blow, just trained force placed precisely where the wrist extended under strain.
Bone and metal cracked together.
The ratman screeched.
Its smaller wrist folded under the impact, breaking at an ugly angle. The cleaver dropped from its grip and struck the floor with a heavy clang. The creature staggered back, clutching the mangled wrist with its larger metal arm, red eye widening with pain and rage.
Then it swung that larger arm.
The swipe came from Kael’s left, claws tearing through the air with enough force to make the torchlight flicker. This one was faster. Stronger too. The oversized limb carried real danger, and if it connected cleanly, it would probably tear through leather, flesh, and maybe even the gauntlet if the angle was bad enough.
Kael did not meet it.
He bent low, slipped under the swipe, and grabbed the fallen cleaver.
The weapon was heavier than it looked, which was impressive because it already looked heavy. The extended steel handle scraped against the ground as Kael lifted it, and the balance was terrible. Whoever made it had not cared about elegance. It was a slab of metal attached to reach, meant for a creature with enough brute strength to ignore every complaint the weapon made.
Kael had enough strength, too.
The ratman realized a heartbeat too late that losing the cleaver had changed the fight.
It turned toward him, jaws open, steel teeth gleaming, a screech building in its throat.
Kael swung down.
The saw teeth bit into the ratman’s skull.
The cleaver did not cut cleanly. It ripped. The jagged edge tore through fur, skin, skull, and brain in one ugly descent, splitting the head open and driving the creature to the stone floor. Its oversized metal arm spasmed once, claws scraping lines across the ground. The red eye rolled, twitched, and went still.
The chamber became quiet again.
Kael held the cleaver in both hands for a moment, then let out a slow breath.
"What a disappointment..."
His voice echoed faintly through the reservoir.
He had expected more. That was the problem. The floor of Vanitas had been spoken of like a death sentence. Climbers bought special torches for it. People panicked at the idea of being thrown into one without preparation. The darkness outside had certainly justified some of that fear. The atmosphere itself wanted to dissolve him. The blackness had teeth. The torch was not a luxury but a lifeline.
But the monsters so far?
Rats.
Bigger rats.
Then a ratman with a cleaver.
Kael looked down at the corpse and frowned.
No. That was not fair.
He could not use himself as the measuring stick for other climbers anymore, no matter how natural the mistake felt. The MegaRats were fast, coordinated, and smart enough to target the torch. Their bodies had adapted to Vanitas. Their claws could climb stone. Their teeth could probably bite through common armor. This ratman had speed, strength, a weapon, and the advantage of ambush in a hostile floor where one mistake could cost a climber their only protection. For a group of ordinary low-floor climbers, especially frightened ones, this chamber could easily become a grave.
Kael had just been trained by an absolute lunatic.
That changed the meaning of difficulty.
His master’s training had been more arduous than most people’s trials. His body had been crushed, rebuilt, pushed, weighted, and forced to learn movement under pressure that made normal danger feel late. He had no business comparing a sewer boss to the Fist King and then calling the boss weak because it failed to measure up.
Still, disappointment was disappointment.
The notifications appeared.
[You have slain: Corrupted GigaRat.]
[You have obtained: Rusty Old Saw Cleaver.]
[You have obtained: Lesser Vanity Essence x50.]
Kael stared at the reward list.
Then he looked at the minimap.
The red dot was gone.
So was the blue one.
His frown returned.
"Where did the blue dot go?"
He lifted the torch and turned slowly, sweeping his gaze across the chamber. The blue flame exposed the reservoir in broad strokes, pushing the darkness into corners and cracks. Bone pile. Broken masonry. Dry sludge pit. Torn gate. Dead ratman. Nothing else. No chest. No glowing item. No hidden compartment obvious enough for the minimap to have marked. He walked around the chamber once, keeping his back away from the deeper dark and his torch guarded. Still nothing.
The blue dot had disappeared the moment the boss died.
Kael looked back at the system reward.
[Rusty Old Saw Cleaver.]
"Is it this old thing?"
He pulled the cleaver properly into his hands and studied it.
At first, it looked exactly as advertised. Rusted metal. Jagged saw teeth. A long, awkward handle wrapped in strips of steel. Dried blood and black residue clung between the teeth. It was large enough to be useful as a brutal weapon, but too poorly balanced for his preference. The cleaver’s body did not look magical. It did not hum with power. It did not radiate some obvious aura. If anything, it looked like the kind of thing a desperate butcher would throw away after realizing it had become more tetanus than tool.
Then his thumb brushed something beneath the steel wrapping on the hilt.
Kael paused.
He shifted the torch closer and used one gauntleted finger to pry at the layered metal wrapped around the grip. It resisted at first, then bent loose with a low creak. Underneath the wrapping was not simple leather or wood. A thin strip of dark material had been wound around the true hilt, hidden beneath the crude reinforcement. On it, faint runic marks glowed in the torchlight, old and almost drowned beneath grime.
The system window appeared.
[ᛖᚳᛋᚪᚾᚷᚹᛁᚾᚪᛏ - Exsanguinate - Rare Rune]
Kael went still.
The sewer, the corpse, the torn gate, and the waiting darkness all faded from his attention for a moment.
A rune.
Not a fragment. Not essence. Not a temporary buff from the boss corpse.
A real rune.
He stared at the word.
Exsanguinate.
Slowly, despite the Vanitas dark pressing close beyond the torch’s edge, Kael smiled.
"Now that," he said, "is worth grabbing."
Comments