ERROR

  That lonely word floats in my vision—red, jagged, and wrong.

  I stare at it.

  No header. No source. No notification tone. Just that one damned word, hanging there like a curse.

  I swipe it away with a sigh.

  At least it was legible this time.

  I don’t have time to bemoan my existence. It’s breakfast time, and I have a job to do.

  I crawl out of my bedroll, ignoring the twinges of pain from my body, and grab what I need from my pack—rations, a dented pot, a half-charged arcanite shard. No time to fuss. Even campfire stew has to impress when you’re the Faulted girl surrounded by local legends.

  Still, when my fingers brush against the edge of a familiar book, I pause.

  It’s old. Fragile. The cover’s half-torn, and the pages are lined with my childish scrawl. Most of the corners are dog-eared from before I learned better. The margins are crammed with just as many doodles as notes—me slaying monsters, discovering hidden temples, unlocked the System and laughing like some bad-ass goddess.

  Stupid little dreams.

  And yet… this might be my one shot at making any of them real.

  I’m on an honest-to-Gods expedition. The largest delve in a decade, here to investigate some altered space buried in the fifth layer. It should be terrifying. Hells, it is terrifying. But I still can’t hold the smile back.

  For a moment, I want to just sit and flip through these old pages, to feel like the girl who believed she could rewrite the world. But I already know every line. Every theory, guess, and half-cooked plan I scribbled within. I know it all by heart.

  So instead, I let out another sigh and hobble out of my tent.

  The camp is quiet. Dozens of tents tucked against the walls of a massive cavern, firelights casting long shadows across the stone. We’re deep—deeper than I’ve ever been. Fifth layer. The walls shimmer faintly, as if they’ve swallowed a piece of the night sky. There’s a pressure here that lives in the stone, ancient and watchful. Waiting.

  I’ve been delving for years as a Carrier. A glorified pack mule. I’ve hauled gear for teams of arrogant idiots and kind souls alike. But I’ve never been deeper than the third layer before—and even that was a one-time fluke.

  Not for lack of trying.

  But when you’re Faulted—when the System itself won’t even acknowledge your existence—people don’t see you as reliable. They see you as a liability. A crack in the wall. The opening for that one mistake that turns a routine delve into a tragedy.

  And honestly? They’re not wrong.

  The deeper the layers go, the deadlier they become, with each layer raising the ceiling another ten levels. More monsters, more mana, more magic. Delvers want Carriers who can pull their weight in a fight.

  And I can’t.

  But somehow, here I am. The broken girl with no Class, no stats, and no future. Fifth layer. Surrounded by elite Delvers, and cooking for the lead party.

  I still didn’t understand why Agora, the most powerful fighter in the whole city, pushed for me to be in the expedition. Not only in the expedition, but in her party.

  I’d thrown my application in fully expecting to get completely ignored at best, and laughed out of the guild hall at worst.

  Instead, they’d pulled me in for the strangest interview I’d ever experienced. Darius, the party leader and main front liner, gave me the reaction I was expecting by laughing the moment I stepped into the room.

  He's the type I'm most comfortable dealing with, even if only because I was used to it.

  But if I'm being honest with myself, he is actually somewhat impressive for a human. Not that I'd ever let him know that.

  Easily six feet tall, powerfully built, with short blond hair and a grizzled, scruffy face. He'd almost be handsome, if he wasn't such a dick. His plain brown eyes held a calculating intensity that do more to show his experience than anything else about him.

  It makes sense, though. He is the leader of The Strikers, and the expedition as a hole. He wouldn't be in that position if he didn't know what he was doing.

  Then Agora happened. When I first laid eyes on her, I couldn't breathe. Nearly as tall as Darius, but lithe and graceful with dark purple hair and eyes to match. Her skin was what caught my attention though.

  It was marred with scars and swirling tribalistic tattoos, her armor minimalistic as possible as if to show them all off. But she was confident and beautiful despite them, and I was instantly captivated.

  Then she spoke, and shattered my spontaneously developed crush. Even the richness of her voice does nothing to dull the explosion of words.

  No hello, no small talk—just a rapid-fire interrogation about my scars whilst completely disregarding anything of actual substance. Like my experience or capabilities.

  She was like an excited puppy, curious and eager while also being both verbally and visibly jealous of their severity.

  Loudly so.

  I might have reacted a bit… harshly. It's a sensitive topic for me, and I don't like talking about it. Even now, days later, the memory of my reaction makes me flush with embarrassment at my lack of control.

  But instead of them sending me away immediately, she apologized to me and demanded that Darius take me on as their Carrier.

  He objected, obviously, but she outright threatened to leave the party if he didn’t.

  I still haven’t managed to come to terms with that. It didn’t, and still doesn’t, make any sense to me. I can’t fathom why she’d go that far for me, and I would be a fool to not hold at least a little suspicion towards her for it.

  It doesn’t help that she keeps finding excuses to hover—sitting beside me at meals, offering to carry my gear, asking probing questions with an infuriatingly respectful tone. It’s actually gotten a bit frustrating. Mainly because I can’t figure her out, but also because she’s been too polite for me to be anything but cordial.

  Regardless of my suspicions, I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity of my lifetime. If there was a way for me to gain access to the System, or at the very least a way to heal my broken body, an unexplored altered space was hands down the best shot I had.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have time to let my excitement build too much as the camps were starting to wake all around me. The moment Darius stepped out of his tent, a massive thing compared to my own, I scooped a heaping serving of stew into a bowl and held it out to him from my perch near the fire.

  I could have gotten up to give it to him, or even looked at him while waiting for him to grab his share of the food, but… well, I don’t like him. And he doesn’t like me. So I serve the food like I’m invisible, because to most of them I am. Being Faulted means no System. No place in their perfect, tiered little world.

  I’m just a girl with scars and a ticking clock.

  And that’s all people like him will ever see.

  He grabs his bowl with a grunt and walks off without a word, as if even eating near me might somehow taint his meal.

  Fine by me. I’d rather choke on arcanite than share a table with him anyway.

  Next out of the tents is Derek, the party scout. I could never get a good look at his face since he was the sneaky sort, obviously backed by System skills and stats I couldn't even fathom. Even his gear was mostly indiscernible, other than the fact that it was black and he had a hood.

  So when he lets me catch a glimpse of him just to let me know he's ready for his food, it's more of a kindness than most would bother to spare me, and I appreciate it.

  Otherwise, he and I maintained a very professional demeanor. He was quiet and kept to himself, only making himself known when necessary, and I didn’t butt into his business.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  It worked out great. I was very much a fan of that type of Delver.

  The moment he had his bowl in hand, he faded into the gloom of the cave. I couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy at the sight of him doing that, but I batted it aside as always.

  Then Agora steps out, and I became about as wary as a street cat being offered scritches from a stranger.

  The moment she spots me, she grins and opens her mouth to speak, and it takes everything I had not to cringe away in anticipation.

  “Good morning, Emilia!” she says loudly, but not quite loud enough to disturb the rest of the expedition.

  Hopefully.

  “Good morning, Agora,” I say, working hard to keep my exasperation from leaking into my voice.

  Before I even finish spooning a bowl for her, she plops onto the ground right next to me, almost perfectly distanced to be respectful of my personal space while still pushing up against the boundaries.

  I almost let out a groan.

  It was a close thing.

  The moment she grabs her bowl, it begins.

  “Thank you, Emilia,” she says, bowing her head towards me.

  My eye twitches at the movement. I’ve never much given the idea of ‘killing you with kindness’ much credence, but if anyone could figure out how to do it, I’d put my money on her.

  “Mm,” I mumble, purposefully shoving a bit of my own breakfast into my mouth just to avoid actually speaking.

  I’d learned that one word answers or monosyllabic sounds would get her to leave me alone quicker. I was not averse to being treated kindly, but she took it to an all new extreme, and seemingly only when it involved me.

  I would have thought she was pitying me, which by its own rights is infuriating to deal with, but there was something else to it. All the respectful bows and… what, reverence? It was weird. Maybe I’m just grumpy and rude, but I genuinely don’t know how to deal with her, so I try to limit our interaction as much as possible.

  It was only unfortunate that she seemed to always want the opposite.

  Thankfully, she didn’t speak again until everyone was up and about and the tents were packed away. Darius stood in the center of the campsites, holding his arms up to gather everyones attention.

  “Alright everyone, this is it. Once we break the wards, we’ll be in the altered space. Form up, stick with your parties and we’ll be ready for whatever comes at us from the other side. Remember, keep Ydra’s Nontet safe. Our success or failure depends on them being able to create a portal back in case we bite off more than we can chew in this space. I hope it doesn’t come down to it, but if we get to the point where we have to choose between ourselves or them, choose them. Understood?” he says, all but shouting so he can be heard by all of the parties.

  A small roar of “Aye’s” and “Understood’s” erupt from all around the campsite as people shuffle into position, and Darius makes his way back to us. Agora and Derek stand to each of my sides, far enough that they can move without bumping into me, but close enough to reach me if they need a healing potion or something.

  I watch as Ydra’s Nontets, a party of nine pure mages, move to the center of the forming circle of Delver parties. Darius takes his position in front of me, slightly farther away than Derek or Agora are from my sides. Not because he doesn’t want to be near me—though I give even odds of that weighing as “equally important” in his mind—but because as a front-liner, he needs room to step back if he takes a particularly nasty hit.

  Ydra herself, leader of the Nontet, speaks then, surrounded by her mages and standing within a ritual circle they’d etched into the stone the night before.

  “Anyone not ready yet, call out,” she says.

  After ten seconds of near dead silence, she speaks again.

  “Alright, wards falling in five… four… three…”

  I focus on Darius’ back, waiting for any changes.

  “Two…”

  I catch Agora glancing at me from my periphery, her gaze resolute, but also somehow reassuring.

  “One…”

  Derek vanishes into the shadows again, prepared to move and scout the instant we appear in the new space.

  “Now!” Ydra says.

  In an instant, it happens. The dim lighting we cast about the tunnel was snuffed out, replaced with an inky darkness that seemed to press into us, as if it were trying to erase what little light we had left.

  For a moment, it feels as though I had lost the hearing in my one good ear, causing a momentary spike of panic before it suddenly pops, and sound returns.

  So, we’re really deep down or really high up.

  Looking around, it appeared that everyone was still where they were supposed to be, minus the scouts, as expected. After ensuring we weren’t separated or scrambled about, I pull out the shard of half-charged arcanite I used for the fire and press it to the lantern hanging from my pack, letting it expend the rest of the mana to brighten.

  The darkness recedes slightly, then more as the other parties do similar, empowering their lanterns or casting light spells. It quickly became obvious that no matter how much light we put off, we weren’t going to see the entirety of this space.

  Given how the darkness was acting, it was probably magical in nature, and the space was clearly large enough to make matters even more difficult.

  Not ideal, but not bad either.

  Just as I have the thought, the floor beneath us begins to light up with a dim blue glow. The floor itself lights up, spreading out from where we stand as it highlights countless runes etched into its surface.

  Their intricacy captures my attention for a moment, each pattern swirling from one to the next, and each individual rune containing hundreds more within itself, and those containing hundreds more, and so on until it becomes impossible to discern.

  For a moment, I’m too stunned to do anything but gape at the glowing masterpiece.

  Then Derek reappears before us, surrounded by his shadows and speaking quietly to Darius.

  “All clear, but the place is massive. There’s huge statues all over, some that even reach into the darkness. Nothing living yet, but we seem to have activated something,” he says.

  At his mention of the statues, I start to pick them out among the gloom—faint silhouettes scattered across the vast space. I can’t make out details, but the differences in scale alone are… jarring.

  Some barely reach my height, while others are nothing but towering legs that vanish into the darkness above.

  It fascinates me. Someone built those. Someone with skills far beyond anything I’ve ever seen.

  Darius signals a confirmation to Ydra and her party to get started, pulling me from my thoughts.

  As loathe as I am to credit Darius with anything given his general attitude towards me, even I had to admit he knew what he was doing. He’d come up with the flares, the formations, the strategies upon entry, enforced that each party had a Carrier to maximize efficiency, and so much more.

  The amount of things he’d planned for was honestly absurd.

  It makes it all the more frustrating when he regularly ruins my grudging respect towards him by speaking.

  “Derek, keep scouting around us, but stay nearby to help at a moments notice. Agora, you ready?” he whispered, ignoring me entirely.

  “I am,” she says, and with System enhanced speed, he turns back the way we faced and starts walking. When Agora speaks again, though, he seems to freeze in place, his body rigid.

  “Emilia? Are we ready?” she asks.

  For all the world, though, I can’t see anything but respect in her gaze.

  For a brief moment I consider stalling for time on some trumped up excuse, like needing to reorganize my pack, just to annoy Darius. I quickly toss the idea, vindicating as it may be, because they’d all seen me do just that after we ate.

  Instead, I just nod.

  I still glare at Darius though. For just an instant, my annoyance at his behavior boils over and before I can think better of it, my mouth is moving.

  “It’s not very smart to leave anyone behind, much less the person carrying most, if not all, of our gear,” I say, my whisper practically dripping condescension.

  Being lost in the tunnels with no food, water, or medicines and potions was a terrible idea, and given his forethought regarding the expedition, I knew that he knew that too. He just disregarded it to snub me—wisdom be damned. It was infuriating.

  Still, I regretted my words the instant they left my mouth.

  If he lost control of his temper and so much as flicked me in the forehead too hard, my brains would be splattered on the ground behind me.

  Yet here I was, acting as if he couldn’t kill me with an errant twitch.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  As expected, he whips around and storms towards me, his expression a mask of quiet rage, and I instinctively take a step back in fear. For a breath, I’m worried he might actually hurt me, but then my view of him is suddenly obscured by Agora’s strong back.

  “Calm yourself, Darius. You know as well as I that she speaks the truth,” she says, her voice still quiet but holding a hint of warning.

  To my surprise it actually works. Darius stops in place, glaring at me over her shoulder. Then, he lets out a weary sigh before turning back around to march forward. Agora and I stick right behind him, back in formation, and then he speaks again.

  “Yes, she was right. I also know that she will get you killed if you keep trying to protect her like this instead of doing your job properly. Your behavior worries me, Agora. It’s irrational, irresponsible, and endangers the rest of us. You are our strongest fighter. If you stay in the back line to keep her from getting a scraped knee, we’re all weaker for it. It needs to stop,” he says.

  For a moment, I’m stunned. While he still speaks of me with derision, he makes some very good points. In the back of my mind, I was thinking along the same lines, though I wasn’t in a position to state it outright.

  “I’m tired of trying to convince you to let her go. Gods above, I’ve tried. I’d rather have no Carrier than one I can’t rely on—” he says, causing Agora to stiffen, “—but you need to start taking this seriously or we could all end up dead. Including her,” he finishes, pointing at me.

  This time, she winces. She looks back at me, her concern warring with the truth in his words. She seems too conflicted to make a decision, so I interject myself to get this over with.

  “You know he’s right, Agora. Besides, I can take care of myself so long as I’m not actively prevented from doing my duties. And you have been a bit… overbearing, at times,” I say.

  At my comment, she looks as if I’d slapped her. I quickly continue, “But I’ve appreciated your help thus far! Really. It’s just a bit much sometimes, is all,” I finish meekly.

  Thankfully, her stricken look is alleviated somewhat, and she nods, letting out a disappointed sigh.

  “Very well, Darius. Have it your way. Know that if she comes to harm, I will blame you,” she says, almost growling at the end.

  And it’s too much for me to politely ignore anymore.

  How she’s treated me these past few days has put me on edge, made me prickly. And as much as I’ve held myself back from snapping at her to just leave me alone, this time I’m genuinely annoyed. I have tried to be nice in this little debate, at last as much as I can be, but I was so sick of being treated as if I were too fragile to exist.

  As if I hadn't gone on nearly a hundred delves, hadn't killed monsters and people alike just to survive down here, hadn't trained for the past eight years for an opportunity just like this.

  It was too much.

  “I don’t need your pity or protection, Agora,” I snap, my voice barely maintaining our low volume.

  She looks at me, confused and… what is that? Hurt?

  “What? That is not what—” she starts, before a bright red star erupts in the darkness, cutting her off.

  My breath catches at the sight.

  All around us, flares light the dark, temporarily dispelling large swaths of the darkness and revealing the parties below.

  It takes me only a moment to realize that every party has lit their flares in a matter of seconds, except for us and Ydra’s Nontet.

  Why all at once?

  Then, as if to answer me, sound erupted all around us.

  It was like the darkness held it back, and now that there wasn’t enough, the noise was set loose.

  Screeches like tortured stone, high and grinding. Cries of alarm.

  The statues are moving.