The basement held its breath.
Doran sat on the table's edge, the core pressed between both palms. The light wasn't pale anymore. It was deep. Gold that bled into orange, into red, into something that made Luzian's eyes water just to look at it.
Heat radiated off the B-Rank in waves. The concrete under Luzian's legs was warming up. Sweat beaded on his forehead. Beside him, Enara had her jacket off, her undershirt sticking to her ribs.
The glitch wasn't just watching. It was drinking.
[ASCENSION OBSERVATION: 1/3]
[B-RANK → A-RANK]
[ANALYSIS: 78%... 83%... 87%...]
Data streamed through Luzian's vision. Faster than before. The corruption analysis had merged with the rank analysis, the two streams intertwining, cross-referencing, building something he couldn't quite see yet.
But he could feel it.
The way Doran's core was expanding. Not physically, inside his chest, the source of his power was unfolding. Layers peeling back, revealing deeper structures, denser configurations. The System was rewriting him from the inside out, and for the first time, Luzian understood what he was looking at.
It's not giving him power. It's giving him permission. The power was always there. The rank is just the key.
Doran's jaw was clamped shut. Veins stood out on his neck. His hands were shaking, the core between them pulsing like a second heart. This wasn't like Enara's rank-up. That had been a step. This was a leap. A B-Rank becoming A meant crossing a line that most Awakened never even approached.
The core cracked.
A hairline fracture ran down its center. Light bled through, brighter, hotter. Doran grunted. His whole body went rigid.
"Almost," he gritted out. "Almost there."
Enara moved. Luzian caught her wrist before she could take a step. She looked at him, eyes wide.
"He's going to burn," she hissed.
"No." Luzian's voice was calm. The glitch was telling him things. Patterns. Rhythms. "He's going to break through. Watch."
The core shattered.
Not violently. It dissolved. The fragments turned to light, to energy, to something that wasn't quite matter anymore. Doran's hands closed on empty air, but the light didn't escape. It flowed into him. Through his palms, up his arms, into his chest.
He arched backward. A sound came out of him, not a scream, not a groan, something between. The sound of a body being remade.
Then it stopped.
Doran sat there. Hands empty. Chest heaving. The light faded from the basement, leaving only the single bulb overhead, flickering.
He opened his eyes.
They were different. The same tired eyes, but deeper. Like someone had added more resolution to the world. He looked at Luzian, and Luzian felt it, the pressure of an A-Rank's attention. Not hostile. Just present. The way a thunderstorm was present, even before the rain started.
"Well," Doran said. His voice was hoarse. "That was unpleasant."
He looked at his hands. Flexed his fingers. A flicker of shadow danced between them, the same skill he'd used in the pit, but different now. Sharper. More responsive.
The glitch pulsed.
[ASCENSION OBSERVATION: COMPLETE – B TO A]
[ANALYSIS: 94%]
[ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS REQUIRED: 2]
Ninety-four percent. One rank-up had taken him from sixty-four to ninety-four. Two more observations, and the glitch would have enough data to apply the process to him.
But not the cores. Not the resources. The process. I could rank myself up without needing anything but the glitch.
He pushed the thought aside. Doran was watching him.
"Did you get what you needed?" the A-Rank asked.
Luzian nodded slowly. "Part of it."
Doran slid off the table. His legs held. He took a step, then another, testing his balance. By the third step, he was moving like the rank-up had never happened. Like he'd always been A-Rank.
He's been waiting for this. Training for it. The cores were just the final push.
"What now?" Enara asked. Her hand had finally left her knife. She was looking at Doran with something that might have been respect, might have been wariness. Probably both.
Doran picked up the case. Two cores left. He held them out to Luzian.
"Take them."
Luzian didn't move. "Why?"
"Because I don't need them anymore." Doran's smile was thin. "And because you're going to need more than just watching to get where you're going. Those are high-purity. Eighty-one and seventy-nine percent. Enough to push a C to B, or a D to high C."
He tossed the case. Luzian caught it on instinct. The weight of the cores pressed through the metal, warm against his palm.
"That's a lot of trust," Enara said.
Doran looked at her. "You're the one who followed an F-Rank into a pit fighter's basement. Don't talk to me about trust."
She didn't have an answer for that.
Luzian opened the case. Two cores. One the color of old honey, the other pale amber. The light was softer than the one Doran had used, but the purity was there. He could feel it humming against his skin.
[ASSETS IDENTIFIED: S-RANK DUNGEON CORE x2 (PURITY: 81%, 79%)]
[DUPLICATION COST: 35% MENTAL LOAD EACH]
[RECOMMENDATION: DUPLICATE BEFORE USE]
He closed the case. Pocketed it.
"One more question," he said. "Why are you helping me?"
Doran pulled the rusted mask back over his face. Settled it into place. The flat eyes stared out at Luzian, unreadable.
"Because I've been in the pit for three years. Fighting. Winning. Taking cores I couldn't use because using them would mean drawing attention. Attention means the Inner District notices. The Inner District notices means they find a reason to put you back in your place." He adjusted the straps. "I've watched a lot of people try to climb. Watched the System knock them down. Every single time."
He paused.
"You're the first thing I've seen that might hit back."
The basement was quiet. The bulb flickered once, twice, held steady.
"There's a tournament in three days," Doran said. "Syndicate runs it. Five fights. Winner gets a purified core. A-Rank purity. The kind that can push someone from A to S." He looked at Luzian. "I'm registered. I was going to use it to move up. But now..."
He let the sentence hang.
"Now you want to see what happens when I watch an A-Rank become S," Luzian finished.
Doran's mask didn't move, but something in his posture shifted. Agreement.
"That's three rank-ups," Enara said. "Enara to C. Doran to A. Doran to S. That's your three observations."
Luzian was already doing the math. An S-Rank ascension. The highest tier. The thing that separated the elites from everyone else. If the glitch could analyze that, could break down the process of becoming S-Rank...
Then I could copy it. Give it to myself. Jump from F to S in one move.
Or it could kill me. The mental load alone would probably fry my brain.
He thought about Kai. About the way the S-Rank's face had looked when Luzian stole his physique. The disbelief. The fear.
He thought about the Inner District. About Sera Vane, sent down to the pits to prove something, to remind everyone where the real power lived.
He thought about the System. The way it had stamped F on his Status and called it a day. The way it had let Kai walk away from leaving him to die in the Dead Zone.
"Three days," Luzian said. "Where's the tournament?"
Doran's eyes gleamed behind the mask. "I'll send word. Don't be dead before then."
He turned. Walked to the back of the basement. A door Luzian hadn't noticed before, hidden in the shadows. It opened. Closed. And he was gone.
The basement felt emptier without him.
Enara let out a breath she'd been holding for a long time. "That was insane."
"You've said that before."
"Because it keeps being true." She ran a hand through her hair. It was damp with sweat. The rank-up heat had gotten to her. "We just made a deal with an A-Rank pit fighter. A guy who spends his life beating people to death for money. And now we're supposed to show up at a Syndicate tournament in three days and watch him become S-Rank."
She turned to face him. Her eyes were sharp.
"What happens when he wins? When he's S-Rank and we're still... whatever we are? What's to stop him from taking the purified core and walking away?"
Luzian considered the question. Thought about Doran's eyes. The tiredness in them. The way he'd said "hit back."
"Nothing," he said. "But he didn't have to give us the cores. He didn't have to tell us about the tournament. He could have killed us in the tunnel and no one would have found the bodies."
Enara didn't argue. She was smart enough to see the logic.
"That doesn't mean he's trustworthy."
"No. It means he's interested." Luzian pulled out one of the cores. The honey-colored one. Held it up. The light caught his face, made the shadows deeper. "And interested people are predictable. They want to see what happens next."
He put the core back. Stood up. His legs were steady. The S-Rank physique was still there, still humming, still waiting. The mental load was holding at thirty-nine percent. He had room. Not much. But enough.
"We need to find a place to lay low," he said. "Somewhere Kai's people aren't looking. Somewhere we can use these cores without drawing attention."
Enara nodded slowly. "I know a place. But it's not cheap."
Luzian reached into his jacket. The second core, the one he'd duplicated from Kai's, was still there. The original was in the case with the others. He pulled it out. Held it up.
"We've got four cores now. Two of them are duplicates. The Syndicate won't know the difference. We sell one. Use the rest."
Enara stared at the core. Then at him. "You're going to sell a duplicated S-Rank core? In the Pit? With Kai's people watching?"
"I'm going to have you sell it." He handed it to her. "You're C-Rank now. You walk into the Pit, sell a core, walk out. No one asks questions. No one follows. Because you're not the F-Rank who should be dead."
She took the core. Her fingers closed around it tight.
"And what are you going to do?"
Luzian pulled up his hood. The coat settled around him, heavy and dark.
"I'm going to find out what happens when I copy a skill that isn't physical. Something I can use without breaking my own bones."
He headed for the door. Enara followed, her footsteps echoing behind him.
They stepped out into the tunnels. The Pit was somewhere above them, the sounds of the crowd still drifting down through the cracks. But down here, it was just them and the dark.
Luzian's mind was already working. The glitch had analyzed rank-ups. Corruption. Physiques. But there was one thing it hadn't looked at yet. Something he'd felt when the Warden fought Sera Vane. The way the System translated intent into action.
Skills.
If I can copy a skill the same way I copied a core... if I can take the lightning affinity from someone like Sera and make it mine...
He stopped. Turned to Enara.
"Where do fighters go to train? Not the pit. Somewhere private. Somewhere they can use their skills without the Syndicate watching."
Enara thought about it. Her eyes narrowed.
"There's a place in the old industrial sector. Abandoned warehouses. Some of the smaller crews use it for practice. No Syndicate presence. No System monitoring." She looked at him. "Why?"
"Because I need to see a skill being used. Close up. Repeatedly. The same way I needed to see rank-ups."
"You want to watch someone train?"
"I want to watch a skill enough times that the glitch can copy it." He started walking again. "You know any fighters who owe you favors?"
Enara was quiet for a moment. Then she laughed. That sharp, surprised laugh that was starting to become familiar.
"I know a few." She caught up to him. "But you're not going to like them."
"Why?"
"Because they're not nice people. And they're not going to let some F-Rank watch them train for free." She pulled her own hood up. "They're going to want something in return."
Luzian patted his jacket. The case with the cores pressed against his chest.
"We've got something to trade."
Enara shook her head. "They're not going to want cores. They're going to want a fight. A real one. With stakes."
Luzian stopped. Looked at her.
"I can't fight. I've got borrowed muscles and a glitch that might kill me if I push it too hard. I'm not a combat spec."
"No," Enara agreed. "You're not." She met his eyes. "But you're something they've never seen before. Something that doesn't follow the rules. And people like that? Fighters who've been stuck in the same rank for years, watching the System hold them back?"
She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"They want to see what happens when someone punches above their weight class. Even if they're the one getting punched."
Luzian thought about it. The mental load. The S-Rank physique that was already straining his frame. The glitch that was still learning, still hungry.
One fight. One chance to see skills in action. To let the glitch analyze something that isn't just static data.
And maybe to find out what happens when an F-Rank with an S-Rank's muscles and a broken System in his head steps into the ring with someone who's been fighting their whole life.
He nodded.
"Set it up."
Enara's smile widened. She turned, leading him through the tunnels, toward the industrial sector.
Behind them, the Pit faded into silence. Ahead, the city waited. Dark. Hungry. Full of things that wanted to kill him.
Luzian smiled too.
[GLITCH STATUS: ACTIVE]
[OBJECTIVE: SKILL ACQUISITION – COMBAT APPLICATION]
[ANALYSIS: CORRUPTION TOXIN – 58%]
[ANALYSIS: RANK ASCENSION – 94%]
[NEW TARGETS DETECTED: 0]
[RECOMMENDATION: AGGRESSIVE DATA ACQUISITION]
Finally.
He followed Enara into the dark.