[MINOR RIFT - LEVEL 1]
The world changed in an instant.
The air became humid, heavy, smelling of mold and something vaguely putrid. The tunnel stretched in both directions—forward into darkness, back toward the rift that now glowed as an exit.
The walls dripped with condensation. Glowing fungi provided faint light—enough to see, barely.
Splash.
Alex froze. That sound...
Something moved in the accumulated water ahead.
He activated Soul Sight, feeling the MP drain.
[Soul Sight activated]
[MP remaining: 120/180]
The world lit up in auras. And there, five meters ahead, he saw three patches of white light. Weak. Low level.
Slimes.
"Three contacts," he whispered to Grim. "Ahead. Low levels."
"I... handle. You... watch."
Grim moved with surprising grace for a skeleton. He slid forward, scythe raised.
The slimes—amorphous creatures the size of soccer balls, translucent and bubbling—detected him. They lunged forward with surprising speed.
Grim cut them down.
The scythe passed through the first slime like butter. The creature split, its halves dissolving into acidic puddles.
[Sewer Slime killed]
[+15 EXP]
[Soul harvested: 0.1/1000]
The second slime tried to wrap itself around Grim's leg. The skeleton simply kicked, sending the creature crashing against the wall. Another cut, another death.
[+15 EXP]
[Soul harvested: 0.1/1000]
The third slime was smarter—or more cowardly. It tried to flee.
Grim caught it in two strides, scythe piercing it from above.
[+15 EXP]
[Soul harvested: 0.1/1000]
Silence.
Alex stood there, his heart pounding, realizing what he'd just witnessed.
Three slimes. Dead in under ten seconds. Effortlessly.
"Okay," he said slowly. "Okay. We can do this. Just slimes. Simple. Easy."
"More... ahead," Grim said, pointing deeper into the tunnel. "I... sense. More life."
They advanced.
Alex kept Soul Sight active despite the MP drain—better safe than sorry. He spotted more slimes. Giant rats—slightly brighter auras than the slimes. Some cave bats hanging from the ceiling.
Grim hunted them methodically. Efficiently. No wasted movement.
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Each death added to the count:
[Soul progress: 3.7/1000]
[4.2/1000]
[4.9/1000]
The numbers climbed painfully slowly, but they climbed.
Thirty minutes into the dungeon, Alex began to relax. This was... manageable. Almost boring. Just Grim killing weak creatures while he watched and—
Something grabbed his ankle.
Alex screamed, looking down.
A hand—rotted, slimy, definitely dead—had emerged from the accumulated water. It pulled, trying to drag him down.
[Sewer Zombie - Level 9]
"GRIM!"
The skeleton turned, saw the threat, moved—
Too slow.
Another hand emerged. And another. And another.
Five zombies rose from the water, bodies swollen with decay, dead eyes glowing with sickly light.
These weren't level 3 creatures. These were level 9. Almost at the top of the dungeon's range.
And Alex was surrounded.
"FULL FORM!" he shouted, panic overriding strategy. "GRIM, AWAKEN NOW!"
"But... MP... you—"
"NOW!"
[Companion Transformation]
[Intermediate → Awakened]
[Cost: 100 MP]
[MP remaining: 20/180]
[WARNING: CRITICAL MP]
Grim exploded upward.
Bones cracking, expanding, the four-foot figure becoming the eight-foot tower of nightmare. The small scythe became the six-foot blade of absolute death.
And those eyes—brilliant crimson, burning with ancient hunger.
*"THREAT. DETECTED." *
The full voice was back. Resonant. Ancient.
Grim moved like a tornado of bone and fury.
The scythe spun. Once. Twice. Three times.
Five zombies disintegrated. Not cut—erased. Their bodies simply ceased to exist, becoming ash that dissolved before hitting the ground.
Five souls ripped away in two seconds.
[Soul progress: 10.4/1000]
Silence fell again.
Grim stood there, scythe dripping with something black and viscous, eyes scanning for more threats.
He found none.
Slowly, the skeleton turned toward Alex.
*"Master. You... okay?" *
Alex slumped against the tunnel wall, his heart racing wildly. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm... shit. That was..."
*"Zombies. Ambushers. They wait. In water. Hunt. Unwary." *
"Could you have mentioned that before?"
*"Intermediate form. Has... limited knowledge. Memory. Fragmented." *
Ah. Of course. The weaker form meant weaker mental processing.
Alex checked his MP: 20/180. Critically low.
"We need to get out," he said. "Now. Before I find something that can actually kill us."
*"Agreed. I will... cover. Retreat." *
They backtracked through the tunnel, Grim in full form maintaining guard. They encountered no more hostiles—apparently the zombies had been the only serious creatures on this level.
They emerged through the rift back into the abandoned factory. The cold night air felt incredible after the stifling humidity of the dungeon.
Alex collapsed against a wall, breathing heavily.
[MP regenerating: 25/180... 30/180... 35/180...]
Regeneration was slow—about 5 MP per minute out of combat. It would take half an hour before he was anywhere near full again.
"Latent form," he told Grim. "Conserve energy."
*"As. You wish." *
Grim shrank back to the small form. The eight-foot tower compressed into the tiny skeleton with the toy scythe.
Immediately, the drain on Alex's MP stopped.
They sat there for fifteen minutes, Alex catching his breath and MP, Grim watching him silently.
"I almost died," Alex said finally. "On my first real dungeon run. I almost died to a basic ambush."
Grim tilted his skull. No words in this form, but the gesture communicated... agreement? Concern?
"I need to train," Alex continued. "I need to be smarter. More careful. I can't just blindly charge in and expect you to save me every time."
He checked his total progress:
[Souls harvested: 10.4/1000]
[Level achieved: 6]
[New stat points available: 3]
Ten souls. In thirty minutes of work.
At this rate, it would take...
He did the mental math. Approximately fifty hours of dungeon grinding to reach one thousand souls. Assuming he didn't die. Assuming he could find enough dungeons. Assuming that—
A sound.
Alex froze.
Footsteps. Outside the factory. Approaching.
He activated Soul Sight quickly.
[MP: 65/180]
Through the walls, he saw auras. Three of them. Bright blue—level 20 or higher. Much stronger than him.
And they were heading directly for the dungeon rift.
"Shit," Alex whispered. "Someone else knows about this place."
Voices became audible:
"—said they saw someone go in an hour ago."
"Alone? What idiot goes into a dungeon alone?"
"Someone with a death wish. Or someone desperate."
Three figures emerged into the factory space. Even in the darkness, Alex could see they carried standard summoner gear—light armor, communication crystals, guild insignias on their chests.
The leader, a man in his thirties with a scar on his cheek, spotted Alex immediately.
"Well, well. What do we have here?"
Alex stood slowly, staying between the summoners and Grim. "Just... exploring."
"Exploring?" The woman of the group—red hair, tattoos snaking up her arms—laughed. "In an active dungeon rift? No gear, no equipment, no..." her eyes fell on Grim. "What the hell is that?"
The third summoner, a younger guy maybe twenty-five, squinted. "Wait. I recognize that companion. You're... you're Alex Carter, aren't you? The F-rank failure from Celestial Academy."
Alex's stomach sank.
"This just got interesting," the leader said, smiling. "Guys, I think we just found our human interest story of the month. The academy reject trying to prove something by hunting dungeons alone."
"Pathetic," the woman said. "Hey kid, word of advice: F-rank doesn't belong in dungeons. You're gonna get yourself killed. And frankly, that'd be a waste of rescue resources."
They were walking away, dismissing him as irrelevant.
Alex should have felt relief.
Instead, he felt something darker. That same familiar helplessness, being discarded, being considered worthless.
But this time—this time he had something that made him matter.
*"Master," * a voice whispered in his mind—not aloud, just through the bond. *"Say the word. And they. Will not speak. Of you. Ever again." *
Grim had shifted slightly. Just a few inches taller. The red lights flickering in those sockets.
Ready to transform. To kill. To silence witnesses.
All Alex had to do was give the order.
His hand clenched into a fist.
So. Easy.
Three souls. Three humans who had looked down on him, who would probably go laugh about him at their guilds, spreading more stories about pathetic Alex Carter...
No.
"Let them go," he muttered quietly. "They're not a threat. And we're not murderers."
*"...As. You wish." *
The disappointment in the voice was tangible.
The three summoners disappeared into the night, their laughter still audible until distance silenced it.
Alex waited until their auras completely vanished from Soul Sight before moving.
"We need to go," he said. "And we need to find dungeons where no one else hunts. More dangerous places, maybe, but private."
Grim tilted his skull.
As they walked back through Lowtown, Alex's phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number:
"We saw what you did in the alley three nights ago. We know what you are. If you want answers about your true nature, come to Warehouse 13 in the port district tomorrow at midnight. Come alone. Or don't come at all. - The Forsaken Circle"
Alex stared at the message for a long moment.
The Forsaken Circle. The organization Raven had mentioned. Outcast summoners.
People like him.
"What do you think?" he asked Grim. "Trap?"
Grim, of course, didn't respond in small form.
But the red lights in his sockets flickered. Once.
Could have been Alex's imagination.
Or could have been a message: Only one way to find out.
He deleted the message, but memorized the location.
Warehouse 13. Midnight. Tomorrow.
What could be the biggest mistake of his life.
Or the beginning of something that would change everything.
