The air in the sealed Pillar was running out.
Kai didn't just feel the oxygen thinning; he felt the "Blight"—the toxic mana that saturates a dying dungeon—clogging his lungs. For a normal Scavenger, this was a death sentence. For the Void Reaper, it was a buffet.
[PASSIVE SKILL: VOID LUNGS ACTIVATED] [CONVERTING TOXIC BLIGHT INTO STAMINA...] [STAMINA REPLENISHED: 100%]
Kai looked at the miles of vertical darkness above him. To get out, he had to climb through the "Gut" of the Pillar, the service shafts used by the dungeons to circulate mana.
He didn't walk. He moved like a shadow. With his new [Burst Sprint], he became a violet streak, leaping from jagged debris to hanging rebar. Every movement felt like he was breaking a law of physics. He was too fast, too light.
Then, he reached the 10th floor. And he stopped.
The stench of blood here was different. It wasn't monster gore. It was human.
Spread across the floor were the remains of the other Scavengers—the ones who hadn't been fast enough to reach the doors. But they hadn't been killed by the collapse. They had been slaughtered.
Standing in the center of the carnage was a Void-Stalker, a creature made of liquid shadow and blades. It was a Rank-C "Cleaner"—the dungeon's version of an immune system, sent to wipe out any remaining life before the Pillar fully reset.
[TARGET: VOID-STALKER (RANK-C)] [WARNING: POWER LEVEL EXCEEDS CURRENT CAPACITY.] [CHANCE OF SURVIVAL: 12%]
The Stalker's head—a featureless mask of bone—tilted. It sensed Kai. More importantly, it sensed the Primal Core inside him.
"You want this?" Kai hissed, his left arm smoking with dark energy. "Come get it."
The Stalker vanished.
CLANG!
Kai spun, his shadow-arm hardening into a blade just in time to parry a strike that would have decapitated him. The force of the blow sent him flying back, his boots carving furrows into the stone.
Too fast. Too strong.
He tried to use [Burst Sprint], but the Stalker was already there, appearing behind him. A blade of shadow sliced through Kai's shoulder.
[HEALTH: 62%] [CRITICAL INJURY: LEFT DELTOID TORN]
"I'm not... dying... here!" Kai roared.
He realized he couldn't win a fair fight. But he wasn't a Hunter. He was a Scavenger. He knew how to find the one thing that shouldn't be there.
He looked at the Stalker's feet. It wasn't touching the ground. It was hovering on a thin "tether" of dark mana connected to the Pillar's walls. That was its power source.
Kai didn't attack the monster. He attacked the wall.
He activated [Extraction], but he didn't aim it at the creature. He slammed his hand into the service shaft's mana-vein.
"GIVE ME EVERYTHING!"
[FORCED EXTRACTION INITIATED] [SYSTEM WARNING: HOST CANNOT CONTAIN THIS VOLUME OF MANA] [HEART RATE: 210 BPM]
The Pillar groaned. The violet light in Kai's eyes turned a blinding white. He sucked the mana out of the walls, starving the room of energy. The Stalker's tether snapped. The creature flickered, its form becoming unstable, translucent.
In that second of weakness, Kai lunged.
He didn't use a sword. He used his bare hand, driving it straight through the Stalker's bone mask.
[RANK-C SOUL DETECTED] [EXTRACTING...] [LEVEL UP: 4 -> 12] [NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: VOID STEP (RANK-C)] [NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: SHADOW ARMAMENT]
Kai slumped to his knees as the Stalker dissolved into mist. His skin was peeling, his veins glowing a sickly purple through his shirt. His body was screaming at him, the power he'd stolen threatening to tear him apart from the inside.
A new notification flickered in the dark:
[YOU HAVE SURVIVED THE FIRST TRIAL.] [THE SEVEN SEATS HAVE SENSED A DISTURBANCE IN THE VOID.] [THEY ARE LOOKING DOWN.]
Kai looked up. Far, far above, he saw a tiny pinprick of white light. The surface.
"Keep looking," Kai whispered, his voice cracking. "I'm almost there."