Dylan came to on his knees, throat full of bile and neon.
The sewer's ceiling spun overhead, bricks dripping like they'd just stepped out of a nightmare. A blue window hovered in front of his nose, polite as a debt collector.
[Level 2 reached!]
[HP +20 | Mana +10]
[Skill embryo detected — Arc-Siphon (Unranked)]
He retched until his ribs creaked, then wiped green strings from his lips. Something warm bumped his boot — a corpse in an Academy cloak, bronze seal pinned to the collar like a medal for bad timing. Dylan ripped it free. The metal pulsed once, curious.
Hidden quest updated: Borrowed Authority
Tip: Return the seal… or keep it and choose your own major.
"Usurp it is," he muttered, stuffing the disk into the only pocket that wasn't soaked.
A translucent grid unfolded — sixteen neat squares, four already full. Cracked copper badge, shiny new seal, one health potion, three moldy cores his stomach had vetoed. Everything else — boots, dignity, second sock — had been claimed by sewer tax.
He needed steel. Or at least a pointy stick. His gaze landed on a broken ladder rung half-submerged in muck. Iron. Conductive. Already cracked by the lightning that had fried the hatch. He yanked it free — a foot of rusted bar, thumb-thick, flakes drifting like dead skin. He gave it an experimental twirl. Sparks snapped at the air, curious.
[Improvised conductor acquired!]
[Arc-Siphon efficiency +12 %]
[Durability: 3/10]
Three good shots, then red dust. He flashed a crooked grin. "Three's enough to write my own syllabus."
The after-ring in his skull tugged him deeper, past bricks glazed black centuries ago by dragon breath nobody bothered putting in textbooks. Steam curled ahead, carrying the scent of hot copper and old parchment. Out of the fog loomed a bronze vending machine wedged into a stone arch, coin-slot shaped like an open mouth.
RESONANCE RATIONS
We accept: cores, memories, first names.
No refunds — management already knows what you'll do.
Dylan dropped a moldy core into the mouth. It chewed, satisfied.
Clunk.
Silver foil strip: Spark Gum — chew to reset mana channels, minor amnesia (3 min).
"Perfect for forgetting you just ate rat."
Second core.
Clunk.
Blueprint: Tesla Spool — 1× iron, 1× copper wire, 1× core = triple range.
He tucked the parchment behind his belt.
Third core.
Clunk.
Title Coupon — cosmetic rename, flavour text only.
He slid the golden scrap into inventory. Names are currency; he'd spend it when the market crashed.
The after-ring sharpened — middle-C stretched into a predator's snarl. Water reversed direction, flowing uphill toward a junction that smelled of blood and pennies. He stepped through the arch and found a throne.
Not metaphor. Bones — human, rat, something bigger — welded together by green torch-fire. On it sat the alpha, shoulders brushing both walls, left eye a lighthouse of corrupted mana. Between its paws: a rib-cage xylophone still dripping marrow. Every exhale birthed another tide of normals.
[Sewer Rat Alpha — Lv 7]
[Title: King of What's Left]
[HP: 420/420]
[Quirk: Swarm unlimited while sovereign]
Dylan's pulse steadied. Numbers he could game. He popped the Spark Gum, felt three minutes of memory dissolve like sugar on tongue, and stepped into the arena.
Lightning answered first — wide, wild, blue-white fan that crisped a dozen rats mid-screech. Cores rained like hailstones. The alpha roared, tail slamming stone. Normals locked shields of driftwood and rusted bottle-glass, advancing in formation.
Dylan slammed the iron rod into ankle-deep water. Current spider-webbed, found every shard of metal, shattered the wall of trash in a single crackling heartbeat. The rod groaned; fracture lines raced up its length. He flipped the broken stub — six inches left — and drove it into the green torch-eye.
Critical hit.
The eye imploded — emerald sparks writing agony across the air. The king reared, HP bar shedding thirty percent in a blink, and called more reinforcements than the sewer had bricks.
Dylan back-pedalled beneath the automat arch, grabbed the bronze maw with both hands, and shoved the rat's snout into the coin-slot. Gears woke hungry. Vacuum howled. Three hundred health vanished in one wet schlorp; bones collapsed like punctured wineskins. Loot burst across the stones in a fountain of blue light.
[Rat King Core — Rare]
[Title acquired: Swarm-Bane (+10 % vs pack enemies)]
[Inventory expansion +4 slots]
[Token: One free answer from any machine]
The surviving normals scattered, squealing, vanishing into cracks no wider than guilt.
Dylan slid to the floor, chest heaving, while the System tallied the jump from level two to four and flashed four class seeds in front of him — rogue, savant, reaver, or an unmarked deferral with a skull for fine print. He swiped them away. "Still collecting variables." The seed folded into a locked cube and disappeared.
He wrapped the rat-king fang — still humming middle-C — in copper stripped from the automat, slung the makeshift battery over his shoulder, and walked past the deflated pelt into the tunnel beyond. The bricks grew older, the after-ring louder, and somewhere far above the academy bells began to stutter.
One shot left in the stub. Thirty-five mana in the tank. A new title that made the dark step aside.
He smiled into the black. "Next tutorial's mine."