Free Web NovelChapter 49: Chapter 49: The Core
Lucian drew the Sword of Aikis from his shadow storage. The starsteel blade caught the faint orange light of the canyon, gleaming with a cold, predatory edge. Beside him, Ryan slipped on a pair of D-Rank gauntlets — compact, mana-infused steel frames that extended into short, curved claws over each knuckle. He’d bought them with Academy Points two weeks ago.
"Remember," Ryan whispered, flexing his fingers inside the gauntlets. "Scorpions have hard shells. Ice won’t crack the exoskeleton easily. We need to find gaps."
"I know."
"Just making sure you don’t do something stupid." freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
"I never do something stupid."
"You literally walked into a zombie horde alone."
"That was strategic."
Ryan opened his mouth to argue, but a sound stopped him.
The scorpion emerged from the shadows of the canyon.
It was massive. The body alone was the size of a sedan car — wide, flat, and covered in a thick, chitinous shell the color of rusted iron. Eight legs carried it forward with unsettling precision, each one tipped with a pointed claw that dug into the rock floor. Its pincers were the size of truck doors, snapping open and shut with a sound like a bear trap closing.
But the tail was the real nightmare. Segmented, curving high over its back, ending in a massive stinger that glistened with wet venom. A drop fell. Hit the rock.
SSSSSS.
The stone hissed and bubbled.
"Move!" Lucian shouted.
The scorpion lunged.
PAM!
Its pincer slammed into the canyon wall where Lucian had been standing a millisecond before. Rock exploded. Shards flew. Lucian rolled behind a boulder, his Phantom Walk carrying him with supernatural fluidity.
Ryan attacked from the left. He drove his clawed gauntlets into the scorpion’s leg joint — the soft spot where the exoskeleton thinned.
CLANG!
The gauntlets scraped against the shell but barely left a mark. The leg swept outward, catching Ryan in the ribs and sending him skidding across the canyon floor.
"Fuck!" Ryan gasped, clutching his side. Nothing broken. Probably.
The tail struck.
WHOOOSH.
The stinger came down like a meteor, aiming for Ryan’s skull. Lucian was already there. He grabbed Ryan’s collar and yanked him sideways. The stinger buried itself six inches into solid rock.
SHHK.
The scorpion shrieked — a horrible, grating sound like metal grinding against metal — and wrenched its tail free.
"Attack its underbelly!" Ryan shouted, scrambling to his feet. "The shell is too thick everywhere else!"
Lucian didn’t need to be told twice. But the underbelly was the most protected part — the scorpion kept it low to the ground, shielded by its own body weight and legs. Getting underneath meant getting within range of those pincers.
The scorpion charged again. Its pincers snapped wildly — left, right, left — each one fast enough to crush bone. Lucian weaved between them using Phantom Walk with Light steps, his body flickering between positions like a strobe light.
SLASH.
He drove the Sword of Aikis across the joint of the scorpion’s left pincer. The starsteel blade bit through the thinner membrane. Purple ichor sprayed. The scorpion screeched and pulled the pincer back.
But the tail was already swinging.
Lucian sensed it — with Blood Sense. The massive blood flow in the tail shifted. He dove forward, rolling under the stinger as it crashed into the ground behind him. Rock shards peppered his back.
"Ryan! Distract it!"
Ryan raised both hands. A barrage of ice spears materialized and fired — not at the shell, but at the scorpion’s eyes. The spears shattered against its armored head, but the impact made it flinch. Its pincers rose instinctively to shield its face.
Lucian was already moving.
He sprinted along the canyon wall, then kicked off the stone surface — launching himself into the air above the scorpion. For a split second, he hung above its back. He could see the tail rearing up, the stinger aiming for him mid-air.
No time for a sword strike.
He formed a Blood Spear in his free hand — a three-foot javelin of hardened, crystalline blood — and hurled it straight down.
The Blood Spear punched through the gap between the scorpion’s body and the ground, embedding itself in the soft, pale flesh of its underbelly.
SHLCK.
The scorpion convulsed. A wet, gurgling shriek tore from its mouth. Purple blood gushed from the wound, pooling on the canyon floor. Its legs spasmed. The pincers snapped open and shut reflexively. The tail whipped once, twice — and then went still.
The massive body collapsed with a thunderous crash that shook the canyon walls.
Lucian landed beside it, breathing hard. Purple scorpion blood dripped from his blade.
Ryan walked over, staring at the corpse. "That was... something."
"You’re welcome."
"I didn’t say thank you."
"You were going to."
Ryan crouched beside the scorpion’s head, examining the venom sac — a translucent, fist-sized organ at the base of the stinger. He pulled out a thermal container from his field kit, carefully extracted the sac with a scalpel, and sealed it inside.
"Venom sac from an E-Rank desert scorpion," Ryan said, holding up the container. "Worth at least 200 Academy Points at the exchange. Maybe more if the alchemy department wants it."
He slipped the container into his storage ring and stood up.
"Let’s keep moving."
They exited the canyon into a wider clearing. And there it was.
The dungeon core.
A pulsating, crystalline structure embedded in the side of a massive rock wall. It was about the size of a car engine — orange, translucent, and radiating mana in visible waves that distorted the air around it. Beautiful. Alien. The heart of the dungeon.
But between them and the core stood a sea of beasts.
Shadow hounds. Mutated rats. Giant centipedes. Desert lizards with scales like sandpaper. At least fifty of them, clustered around the core in a defensive formation, their eyes glowing in the dim light.
And they had already been spotted.
The nearest beasts turned. Yellow eyes, black fur with their bared teeth. A low, unified growl rose from the horde.
Then they charged.
All of them. At once. A wave of fur, teeth, and claws pouring toward the two students like a living tsunami.
Ryan planted his feet. Ice exploded from the ground — a wall of frozen spikes, three feet tall, stretching across the canyon mouth. The first wave of shadow hounds impaled themselves on the spikes. But more climbed over the bodies. The wall cracked.
"Peak F-Rank!" Ryan shouted, smashing an ice spear through a hound’s skull. "This dungeon is abnormal! There are too many peak F-Rank beasts!"
He was right. Lucian’s Blood Sense confirmed it. At least fifteen of the fifty beasts were at peak F-Rank — larger, faster, and far more aggressive than the others. Their blood flowed with a density that the lower-ranked ones didn’t possess.
The ice wall shattered. Beasts poured through.
