Through the distortion, a figure emerged.
He walked as if the ground was a suggestion rather than a requirement. Each step made no sound . His robes were white, pristine in a way that seemed obscene in the dungeon's filth. His eyes were color of liquid mercury. Not silver, too alive for that. Looking into them was like looking into the event horizon of a black hole where all the laws you'd relied on simply stopped applying.
"Lord... Lord WuJi." Captain Dui bowed smirking slightly. There was something almost hysterical in the smirk that twitched at her lips. "We did not expect a Warden to grace the first floor with his presence."
Shen Yue, observing through Kaelen's eyes from her passenger seat in his mind, felt a cold thread of unease spiral through her borrowed nervous system.
What the actual heck is this guy?
WuJi didn't respond. He didn't even acknowledge Dui's existence. His mercury eyes were fixed on Kaelen, no, fixed through Kaelen, as if his physical body was just an inconvenient layer of meat obscuring something more interesting underneath. The weight of that gaze was physical.
The pressure hit. It was different from fear. Shen Yue had felt fear before; the cold sweat of a hostile battleground, the spike of adrenaline when a deal went wrong. This was something else entirely almost like gravity. The inescapable certainty that if you tried to run, tried to fight, tried to exist in opposition to this force, you would simply... stop.
Then WuJi moved past them. His pristine white robes whispered against stone that suddenly looked cleaner where he stepped, as if reality itself was embarrassed to be dirty in his presence. He suddenly stopped after making three steps. The air went perfectly still.
"Huh." WuJi tilted his head, a gesture so casual and human it was obscene coming from someone who bent space around himself. His voice was almost friendly like a charming professor or a favorite uncle. "Well that's weird. I haven't felt that particular sensation in... mm, what, three hundred years? Four? Five?"
He turned and for the first time, those mercury eyes focused on Kaelen with actual attention rather than just passing observation. The smile that spread across WuJi's face was genuine. It made him look younger, less like a force of nature and more like a person who'd just found an unexpected gift.
"Captain Dui." He didn't look away from Kaelen, studying him the way a jeweler might study a stone with an interesting inclusion. "Who's the kid?"
Dui's face had gone a sickly gray-green, like old meat. "That's" She swallowed, "One of the SaoYu from the borderland raids. He's new"
"Just. I love that word. So delightfully wrong so much of the time." Wuji smile widened.
He took a step closer to Kaelen. He was five feet away then somehow right in front of Kaelen without appearing to have crossed the distance. This close, Kaelen could smell him.
"Your Qi is so little even the little girl over there overpowers you, such a pity" He said tapping at Kaelen's shoulder.
Phew. Shen Yue was relieved he could not see through the veil.
Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch.
A sound came from deep the tunnel where Lord WuJi had emerged. Something massive with too many legs was dragging itself toward them.
Then came the shrieking howls that grew louder and louder. They were unlike any animal sounds Shen Yue had ever heard.
WuJi's smile didn't fade. If anything, it grew wider.
"Oh, there we go. I was wondering when they'd notice." He stretched making joints pop with sounds like breaking ice and flicked his wrist in a gesture of bored elegance. The motion was so smooth it looked like something from a dance. "Well, Captain Dui, this is awkward."
His voice remained cheerful like he was discussing weather.
"The Thalrion just broke through the third seal. The one I spent, oh, what was it? Six months calibrating? Complete pain in the ass, really, all those binding glyphs. And now it's just..." He made a crumbling gesture with his fingers. "Oopsie."
The howling grew louder that Kaelen could hear individual voices now. Dozens of them or even hundreds, each one screaming with a hunger that transcended mere appetite and became something metaphysical.
"My lord..." Dui's voice was barely a whisper.
"So here's the thing." WuJi turned away from them and suddenly his shadow stretched across the floor. It was writhing like it was alive and angry about it. "You all came way too early. Like, hilariously early. I wasn't expecting anyone for another three days at least."
The howling was deafening now. Kaelen could see movement in the darkness of too many legs, too many joints bending in too many directions. Eyes that reflected light at angles that defied optics. Shapes that his brain kept trying to organize into something recognizable and failing, sliding off into visual nonsense.
"MOVE!" Captain Dui suddenly said. "RETREAT! BACK TO THE PORTAL ENTRANCE! NOW!"
The SaoYu scrambled to their feet, tripping over each other in pure panic that had transformed them from predators into prey. The corridor narrowed as they ran, ceiling lowering, walls closing in with a claustrophobic inevitability. Footing turned treacherous, slick with something that looked like water but felt wrong, too viscous, smelling of rust and rot and something organic breaking down. Kaelen's lungs burned.
Chan'er ran beside him, her small hand locked around his wrist like a steel manacle. Her doll was clutched to her chest with her other arm, its button eyes staring at nothing. She wasn't crying. Just running with the mechanical efficiency of someone who'd learned early that survival meant silence.
Shen Yue! Kaelen's mental voice cracked, fourteen years old and terrified and so far out of his depth he couldn't even see the surface anymore. Shen Yue, look at the UI!
She'd already seen it. In the corner of their shared vision, red glowing text had appeared.
[NECROMANCY LEVEL UP AVAILABLE]
Requirement: 10,000 Qi to level up.
Bonus: +15% Neural Sync
HIDDEN EFFECT: PERMANENT DOMINANCE
WARNING: This change is irreversible. The primary consciousness will be transferred to auxiliary status. All motor control, sensory input, and decision-making authority will permanently shift to the secondary consciousness.
Shen Yue, currently a ghost haunting the edges of a teenager's nervous system, felt something cold and terrible settle in the hollow where her stomach used to be. What does that even mean? How could she attain that Qi required for levelling up?
She had no idea of the concepts behind magic in this world despite her fast analytical mind. However, she had gained mass knowledge from the little boy's memories.
Kaelen. Her mental voice was careful. The voice of someone delivering bad news to a patient. If I accept this, if I take this power... I'm not just helping you anymore. I'm taking over. Permanently. You'll still be in here, but you won't be...
I know.
The response was immediate. Absolute.
Do it.
Just from the wall in front of them, a stone ruptured pulsing fungal masses that slapped against the walls. From that ruptured wound in reality, a hound-looking creature exploded into existence, an affront to anatomy with a spine stretched like taffy and translucent skin one breath away from splitting. Bulbous tumors erupted from its back splitting to spill shimmering, toxic spores that distorted the air like a poisonous heat haze.
The creature's head swung toward them. It lunged with horrifying speed, closing the distance in a blur of broken limbs until its jaws snapped shut inches from Kaelen's heels. The wind of the bite hit him like a physical blow, carrying a smell so thick it coated his tongue with ammonia and the cloying sweetness of meat rotting from the inside out. As his stomach lurched from the stench, the beast's maw began to widen again, ready for a second strike.
Kaelen, you don't understand.
I UNDERSTAND! His mental scream was raw, stripped of everything but pure survival instinct. I understand that thing is going to kill me! That ALL of those things are going to kill me! I understand that I'm fourteen years old and I've never fought anything in my entire life and I'm about to die screaming in this fucking dungeon!
They stumbled. Kaelen's foot caught on something, a body, and he went down hard, palms scraping stone. Chan'er yanked at his wrist trying to pull him up, her eyes white-rimmed with terror.
Behind them, the howling was getting louder and closer.
I don't have to do this...It's your f**king body!