The Pit wasn't a hole.
It was a market. Three blocks of collapsed storefronts propped up with scavenged steel and desperation. Tarps stretched across broken windows. Fires in oil drums. The smell of cooking meat that might be rat, might be something worse, mixed with the sharp chemical tang of refined mana crystals.
Luzian had been here a hundred times. Always as a scavenger. Always with empty pockets and a list of things he couldn't afford.
Today was different.
Enara walked beside him, her limp now barely visible. The core sat in her pocket like a second heartbeat. She'd been quiet since they left the parking structure. Thinking. Calculating. The same way he was.
She's wondering if I'm going to use her. Or if she's using me. The answer is both. That's how partnerships work.
The crowd parted around them. Not because they looked dangerous, they didn't. Luzian was still in his ruined jacket, bloodstained and torn. Enara looked like she'd been dragged through a warzone. But the people of the Pit had a sixth sense for trouble. And two people walking out of the Dead Zone with empty hands and steady eyes? That was trouble.
"Eyes," Enara muttered.
Luzian followed her gaze. A group of three at a stall on the left. C-Ranks by the look of them. Matching jackets. Clean gear. Kai's colors.
He's already got people here. Watching.
They didn't look at Luzian. They were scanning the crowd. Looking for someone. Looking for him.
He kept walking. Pace even. Face neutral. The glitch was quiet in his head, a low hum at the edge of his awareness. Waiting.
"You know a place?" he asked.
Enara nodded toward a collapsed department store at the end of the block. The sign was still visible, "MER" in faded red letters. The rest had fallen away years ago. "Mercy's. Old woman runs it. She doesn't ask questions if the price is right."
"And the price?"
"Depends on what you're buying." Enara glanced at him. "What are we buying?"
Luzian patted his pocket. The original core. Warm. Solid. "A room. Privacy. And a way to use that core without half the district knowing about it."
Enara's eyebrows went up. "You're going to oversee the rank-up?"
"I'm going to watch." He pulled the core out, just for a second, just enough for the pale light to catch his fingers. "And learn."
They moved faster after that. The Kai's men were still scanning, still looking for a broken F-Rank who should be dead. They didn't see the two figures slipping through the crowd, ducking into the shadow of the dead department store.
The inside was worse than the outside.
Mercy's was a maze of scavenged partitions and hanging tarps. The air was thick with smoke, incense trying to cover the smell of rot and failing. A few figures huddled in the corners, hoods up, faces down. People who needed to not be seen.
The woman behind the counter was old. Not elderly, old in the way the Pit made you old. Worn down to bone and wire. Her eyes tracked them as they approached, missing nothing.
"Enara." Her voice was gravel. "Heard you died."
"I got better." Enara leaned on the counter. Easy. Familiar. "Need a room. Back corner. Soundproof."
Mercy's eyes shifted to Luzian. Lingered on his jacket. His face. The blood that was still drying on his collar.
"This one's not dead either," she observed. "Must be a slow week."
"Must be." Enara slid a small pouch across the counter. Luzian heard the clink of coins inside. Not many. Enough. "We need four hours. Maybe five."
Mercy picked up the pouch. Weighed it. Her face didn't change, but something in her posture relaxed. She reached under the counter, pulled out a key. Old iron. Heavy.
"Back corner. Door doesn't lock from the outside. If you break anything, I'm adding it to your tab."
"We won't break anything."
Mercy snorted. "Everyone breaks something eventually."
Enara took the key. Led Luzian through the maze. Past the huddled figures. Past a curtain that smelled of cheap antiseptic. To a door at the very back, tucked behind a collapsed shelf that looked structural but wasn't.
The room was small. A mattress on the floor. A table. A single bulb that flickered yellow when Enara hit the switch. Soundproofing foam glued to the walls, peeling at the edges.
Luzian closed the door. Listened. The hum of the Pit faded to a distant murmur.
"Four hours," Enara said. She pulled the core from her pocket. Held it up. The light filled the room, turning her face pale and strange. "You sure about this?"
"No."
"Honest." She sat on the mattress. Crossed her legs. The core rested in her palms, casting shadows up her arms. "So how does this work? I've ranked up before. D-Rank from E. That was just... eating the right core. Letting it burn through my system. This is different."
Luzian pulled up a crate. Sat across from her. Close enough to see the way her hands were shaking. Just a little.
"It's the same process," he said. "The core breaks down. Your body absorbs it. Your rank adjusts." He paused. "But I want to see it happen. From the outside."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know what my glitch sees when it looks at a rank-up." He leaned forward. "When I copied your blood cells, I had to understand them. The structure. The pattern. The glitch needs data. The more it gets, the more it can do."
Enara's eyes narrowed. "You want to copy a rank-up."
"I want to see if I can." He didn't look away. "Right now, I'm F-Rank. The System says that's all I'll ever be. But if I can watch you go from D to C, if I can see what that looks like under the code, maybe I can copy it. Maybe I can give myself a rank the System doesn't want me to have."
The silence stretched. Enara stared at him. Her expression was unreadable, but her hands had stopped shaking.
"You're not just insane," she said finally. "You're completely insane."
"Probably."
"If this works, if you can copy a rank, then what? You're not just a glitch anymore. You're a rewrite."
Luzian met her eyes. "That's the idea."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she laughed. That same sharp, surprised sound from before. She shook her head, muttered something under her breath, and settled the core more firmly in her hands.
"Fine. Watch. Learn. Do whatever the hell it is you do." She closed her eyes. "But if I wake up and you've turned me into a frog, I'm killing you."
"Fair."
She started the process.
Luzian felt it before he saw it. A pressure in the room. The same pressure he'd felt when Kai activated his skills, but smaller. More contained. The core in Enara's hands began to glow brighter. The light shifted from pale white to something deeper. Amber. Gold.
She was breathing slow. Controlled. Her whole body was focused on the stone, drawing something out of it, pulling the energy into herself.
The glitch woke up.
[ANALYZING: RANK ASCENSION – D TO C]
[TARGET: ENARA VOSS]
[OBSERVATION MODE: ACTIVE]
Luzian watched the data stream. Not words, he couldn't parse most of it. But patterns. Structures. The core was breaking apart, its energy bleeding into Enara's system. Her own mana was reaching out, grabbing that energy, pulling it into her core.
He could see it. Not with his eyes. With the glitch. The way her internal structure was shifting. Rebuilding. The System was rewriting her, line by line, upgrading her from D to C.
It's like watching code compile. Messy. Efficient. Brutal.
Sweat beaded on Enara's forehead. Her breathing was getting rougher. The core was shrinking in her hands, its light dimming as she absorbed more of it. Her body was fighting the change, Luzian could see the resistance, the way her cells tried to reject the new energy.
But she was winning. Her core, the actual core inside her chest, the source of her power, was expanding. Densifying. The D-Rank structure was being overwritten, replaced by something stronger.
And then it was done.
The light died. The core was gone, reduced to a fine grey dust that sifted through Enara's fingers. She opened her eyes.
They were different. Sharper. The amber glow lingered for a second before fading.
Enara looked at her hands. Flexed her fingers. A tiny flame sparked at her fingertip, the same ignition skill she'd used for her cigarette. But it was brighter now. Hotter. The flame danced for a full ten seconds before she closed her hand and it died.
"Well," she said. Her voice was steady, but her hands were shaking again. Adrenaline this time. "That's new."
Luzian didn't respond. He was still watching the data stream. The glitch was cataloging everything. The structure of the rank-up. The energy transfer. The way Enara's body had adapted.
And at the bottom of the stream, a new notification.
[ANALYSIS: RANK ASCENSION – 64%]
[APPLICATION: SELF – STATUS: INSUFFICIENT DATA]
[REQUIRED: 3 ADDITIONAL ASCENSION OBSERVATIONS]
Three more. He needed to see it three more times before the glitch could apply it to him.
Three rank-ups. Three chances to watch the System rewrite someone's code. Then I can rewrite my own.
He looked at Enara. She was watching him with that sharp, calculating gaze. She knew something had happened. She was waiting for him to tell her what.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Like I just ran a marathon. Through fire." She stretched her arms. Her joints popped. "But good. Strong. Like there's more room in my head than there was before."
Luzian nodded. Stood up. His legs were steady. The S-Rank physique was still there, humming in his bones, waiting.
"We need to find more cores," he said.
Enara raised an eyebrow. "We just used an eighty-four percent core to get me to C. You want to do that again? For yourself?"
"I need to watch it happen. Three more times." He paced the small room. The soundproof foam absorbed his footsteps, made the space feel smaller. "Doesn't have to be you. Anyone ranking up. E to D. D to C. Doesn't matter. I just need to see the process."
Enara was quiet for a moment. Then she stood. Her movements were smoother now. The C-Rank upgrade was settling in, her body adjusting to the new power.
"There's a fight pit in the lower district," she said. "Underground. Gambling. Ranking matches. People go there to prove themselves, move up the ladder. The System recognizes sanctioned fights. Winners get cores. Losers get nothing."
Luzian turned. "How many rank-ups happen there?"
"A few a week. Maybe more if there's a tournament." She met his eyes. "But it's run by the Syndicate. And the Syndicate answers to the Inner District. If you show up there with that glitch, you better be damn sure no one sees it."
He considered that. The Syndicate was the shadow government of the outer districts. They handled the things the official System administration didn't want to touch. Gambling. Black market cores. People who needed to disappear.
They were also, according to rumor, the people who'd put Kai in charge of the Dead Zone operations.
They'd know about the core. They'd know about me. If I go there, I'm walking into the lion's den.
But he needed the data. Three rank-ups. That was the difference between being F-Rank forever and being something the System had never seen before.
"When's the next fight?" he asked.
Enara smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Tonight. Big one. A B-Rank from the Inner District is coming down to prove something. There's going to be a crowd. Gambling. High rollers. The whole show."
"A B-Rank." Luzian's pulse quickened. "That's a rank-up."
"If they win, yeah. The pot is three high-purity cores. Enough to push a high C to low B." She grabbed her jacket from the floor. Pulled it on. "You want to see a rank-up? That's the one to watch."
Luzian looked at the door. At the soundproof foam. At the small, flickering bulb that was the only light in the room.
Outside, Kai's men were looking for him. The Syndicate was running their games. The System was ticking along, unchanged, unchallenged.
And he was an F-Rank with a glitch that was slowly learning to break the world.
"One problem," he said.
Enara paused. "What?"
"I need to get in. See the fight. Watch the rank-up." He pulled his jacket tighter. The tears in the fabric gaped open. "I look like a corpse that's been left out too long. I'm not getting past the door."
Enara looked him up and down. Her expression was clinical. Assessing.
"Yeah," she said. "You look like shit."
"Thanks."
She reached into her jacket. Pulled out a folded bundle. Dark fabric. Threw it at him.
He caught it. A coat. Heavy. Long. The kind of thing a mercenary would wear. There was a hood. Deep enough to hide a face.
"Found it on one of Kai's men," Enara said. "After I caught up to him. He wasn't using it anymore."
Luzian pulled it on. The coat was too big. Hung off his shoulders. But it covered the ruined jacket. Covered the blood. The hood came down over his eyes, casting his face in shadow.
He looked like a scavenger who'd had a good week. Nothing more. Nothing less.
"It'll work," Enara said. "You'll pass. Just keep your head down and let me do the talking."
"And when we get inside?"
She pulled her own hood up. The shadows ate her face, left only her mouth visible. Smiling.
"Then we watch. We learn. And if things go sideways..." She patted her pocket. The one where the core dust was still settling. "I'm C-Rank now. That counts for something."
Luzian nodded. Pulled the hood lower. The glitch hummed in his head, quiet and hungry.
[OBJECTIVE: RANK ASCENSION OBSERVATION x3]
[LOCATION: LOWER DISTRICT – FIGHT PIT]
[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE – ESCALATION LIKELY]
[RECOMMENDATION: PROCEED WITH CAUTION]
He ignored the last part.
"Let's go," he said.
They stepped out of the room. Through the maze of tarps and partitions. Past Mercy's knowing eyes. Out into the Pit, where the fires were burning lower and the crowds were thinning.
The fight pit was three blocks away. Luzian could feel it. The weight of people. The pressure of power. The System's attention, focused on a single point in the lower district.
They're going to fight. Someone's going to win. Someone's going to rank up.
And I'm going to watch.
He followed Enara into the dark. The glitch followed with him.
[GLITCH STATUS: ACTIVE]
[ANALYSIS: CORRUPTION TOXIN – 58%]
[ANALYSIS: RANK ASCENSION – 64%]
[NEW TARGETS DETECTED: 14]
[OPTIMAL COURSE: OBSERVATION – ACQUISITION – ESCALATION]
The night was waiting.