Chapter 2: The Roots of Patience
The dawn broke over New Alexandria like a blade of light, slicing through the purple twilight and painting the crystalline spires in shades of gold and rose. From his perch on a crumbling retaining wall at the city's edge, Daryl watched the spectacle with the detached appreciation of someone who no longer belonged to the world he was observing.
Three weeks had passed since his reawakening. Three weeks since the memories of two lives had fused into something he was still learning to call "himself." In that time, he had done what any sensible seed does—he had found soil and stayed still.
The district was called the Fringe, a sprawling network of abandoned industrial structures and half-collapsed tenements that hugged the eastern wall of New Alexandria. Once, centuries ago, it had been the heart of the city's artisan quarter, where enchanters and smiths had forged the weapons that built the empire. Now it was home to the forgotten, the destitute, and those like Daryl—the ones who needed to disappear.
He had claimed a basement. It had once been a storage cellar for a now-vanished tannery, and the stench of old chemicals still clung to the stone walls like a ghost. But it was dry, it was hidden, and most importantly, it was his.
Daryl pushed himself off the wall and made his way through the winding debris-choked paths toward his sanctuary. The morning scavengers were already out—thin-faced men and women picking through rubble for anything salvageable. They ignored him, and he ignored them. In the Fringe, that was the highest form of courtesy.
His body still ached. That was the first lesson his resurrected life had taught him: pain was patient. It didn't care about reincarnation or second chances. His [F-Rank Vitality] still sat at an abysmal 12—he knew because he could feel the limit of his stamina like a glass ceiling above his head. He could run for perhaps three minutes before his lungs burned. He could lift maybe fifty kilograms before his muscles screamed for mercy. By any measure a hunter would use, he was still trash.
But something had changed.
He reached the basement entrance—a rusted iron door half-hidden behind a collapsed beam—and slipped inside. The darkness was absolute, but his feet knew the way. Twenty-three steps to the main chamber. Fourteen to the corner where he'd piled scavenged blankets into a crude bed. Seven to the stack of crates where he kept his possessions.
He lit a cheap oil lamp, the flame sputtering to life and casting long, dancing shadows across the walls. Then he sat cross-legged on the packed earth floor and began his morning ritual.
He closed his eyes and reached inward.
The first thing he always noticed was the warmth. It started in his chest, a gentle radiance like sunlight filtered through leaves, and spread outward through his limbs. This was his talent—[Overgrowth]—not as a system notification, but as a felt presence. It hummed quietly beneath his consciousness, a constant reminder that he was no longer the same man who had entered that solo dungeon three weeks ago.
He had learned things in those three weeks. The first and most important was that [Overgrowth] was not a flashy talent. It would not grant him sudden power spikes or dramatic transformations. What it offered was something far more valuable: persistence.
He opened his eyes and reached for the object lying beside his bed. It was a dagger—if it could be called that. The blade was chipped, the edge dulled from years of neglect, and the leather wrapping on the hilt was so worn it barely qualified as a grip. He had found it in the rubble three days ago, discarded like so much else in the Fringe.
[Rusted Iron Dagger]
Quality: Junk
Attack: 1-3
Durability: 2/15
Effect: None
Bond Strength: 3%
The bond strength was new. It had appeared in his perception on the second day of carrying the dagger, a faint numerical readout that only he could see. At first, he hadn't understood what it meant. But as the days passed and he kept the dagger on his person, sleeping with it beside him, holding it during his meditation, the percentage had crept upward. One percent. Two percent. Three.
He didn't know what would happen when it reached one hundred. But the anticipation was its own kind of fuel.
Daryl tucked the dagger into his belt and stood. Today was not a day for patience. Today was a day for action.
---
The entrance to the Goblin Warrens lay in the shadow of the eastern wall, a gaping maw in the earth that locals had learned to avoid. It was classified as an E-Rank dungeon, the lowest tier that still required official registration to enter legally. Daryl had no registration. He also had no intention of following the law.
He had scouted the Warrens three times in the past week, watching from a distance as parties of registered hunters entered and exited. The pattern was predictable: groups of four to six, usually D and E-Rank hunters looking for quick experience and Goblin ears—the latter being worth a handful of copper at the Guild exchange. They entered in the morning, emerged by afternoon, and never lingered near the entrance after dark.
The dungeon reset at midnight. Daryl had learned this from overhearing hunters in the Fringe's illegal fighting pits, where information was traded as freely as blows. Every twenty-four hours, the dungeon's internal monsters respawned, ready for the next wave of hunters. And every night, between midnight and dawn, the Warrens sat empty.
That was when Daryl would enter.
The clock tower of the central district chimed eleven thirty as he approached the dungeon's mouth. The twin moons were high overhead, their pale light doing little to penetrate the darkness that pooled around the entrance like spilled ink. He could feel the dungeon's presence before he saw it—a subtle pressure against his skin, a wrongness in the air that made the hair on his arms stand on end.
Dungeons were not natural. Everyone knew this. They were wounds in the fabric of reality, places where the laws of the world bent and broke. Monsters spawned from nothing. Space twisted in on itself. And at the heart of every dungeon waited a core—a crystalline source of power that, if destroyed, would seal the wound forever.
Not that Daryl had any intention of destroying anything. He just wanted to survive.
He checked his equipment one last time. The rusted dagger hung at his hip. On his other side, a small satchel contained three strips of dried meat, a waterskin, and a roll of cloth bandages he'd scavenged from a medical waste pile. His clothes were layers of stained, patched fabric that would offer no protection but might slow a blade just enough to matter. His shoes were held together with twine and hope.
He was, by any reasonable standard, completely unprepared for what waited below.
The clock tower chimed midnight.
Daryl stepped into the dungeon.
---
The transition was instantaneous and disorienting. One moment he was standing beneath the stars; the next, he was in a world of close stone and suffocating darkness. The air changed—thicker, damper, carrying the unmistakable stench of unwashed bodies and rotting meat.
Goblins.
He stood perfectly still, letting his eyes adjust. The tunnel stretched before him, rough-hewn and barely tall enough for a man to stand upright. Faint phosphorescent fungi clung to the walls, providing just enough light to distinguish shapes from shadows. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped with maddening regularity.
And beneath that, another sound. Breathing. Many sets of lungs, drawing air in shallow, irregular rhythms.
Daryl pressed himself against the tunnel wall and began to move. His earlier scouting had included studying the dungeon's layout through the few maps that had made their way into the Fringe's black market. The first chamber was a large cavern about fifty meters in—a natural gathering point for the dungeon's inhabitants. During the day, hunting parties would clear it out in minutes. At night, with the dungeon freshly reset, it would be full.
He needed to get past it without being noticed.
Twenty meters in, the tunnel opened into the cavern. Daryl dropped to his belly and crawled to the edge, peering over a lip of stone into the space below.
The cavern was perhaps thirty meters across, its ceiling lost in darkness. A sluggish stream cut through the center, its waters glowing faintly with the same phosphorescence that lined the walls. And everywhere—on the rocks, in the water, huddled in groups around small fires—were goblins.
He counted forty-three before he stopped. Most were the standard variety—waist-high, green-skinned, with overlarge heads and beady black eyes. They wore scraps of leather and fur and carried crude weapons: clubs studded with sharp rocks, jagged knives, the occasional rusted sword that had probably been looted from some unfortunate hunter years ago.
But among them, Daryl spotted three that were different. Larger. Their skin had a reddish tint, and they carried actual weapons—iron blades that gleamed dully in the firelight. Hobgoblins. The elite units of goblin society, stronger and smarter than their lesser kin.
His heart hammered against his ribs. This was insane. He was an F-Grade with a rusted junk dagger and no combat skills beyond what he remembered from his previous life's self-defense classes. If any one of those creatures spotted him, he was dead.
Patience, whispered a voice that might have been his own thought or might have been something deeper. Roots grow in darkness. Roots are patient.
He waited.
For twenty minutes, he watched. He noted the patterns of the sentries—two goblins posted near the tunnel's exit on the far side of the cavern. They were lazy, their attention wandering, more interested in the scraps being thrown between them than in any potential threat. The hobgoblins stayed near the center, close to the largest fire, their backs to the walls. They were the real danger.
A plan formed. It wasn't a good plan. It was, in fact, a terrible plan. But it was the only plan he had.
He retreated back down the tunnel until he was certain his voice wouldn't carry, then found a loose stone the size of his fist. He waited for a moment when the goblins' grunting conversations rose to a peak, then hurled the stone as hard as he could against the tunnel wall.
The clatter echoed through the passage, bouncing and multiplying until it sounded like a small rockslide.
Instantly, the cavern went silent. Then came the shouts—high-pitched, guttural cries in a language Daryl couldn't understand but whose meaning was perfectly clear. Investigate. Find. Kill.
He pressed himself into a crevice in the tunnel wall, holding his breath as heavy footsteps pounded past. Three goblins, then four, then a hobgoblin bringing up the rear, snarling orders at its underlings. They disappeared down the tunnel toward the surface, searching for an intruder who was already behind them.
Daryl waited a full minute after the last sounds faded, then crept back to the cavern's edge.
The space was transformed. In their panic, the remaining goblins had clustered near the center, their attention fixed on the tunnel where their scouts had disappeared. The far exit—the one Daryl needed—was unguarded.
He moved.
Speed was everything. He couldn't afford stealth now, only swiftness. He slid down the short slope into the cavern, his worn shoes making almost no sound on the damp stone. He darted between rock formations, keeping low, using every shadow as cover. A goblin turned in his direction, and he froze, pressing himself against a boulder so tightly he could feel his heartbeat through the stone. The creature's gaze swept past him, unseeing.
He reached the far tunnel and slipped into its darkness without looking back.
For a long time—minutes or hours, he couldn't tell—he simply ran. The tunnel twisted and turned, branching occasionally into side passages that he ignored, always following the main path deeper into the dungeon. His lungs burned. His legs screamed. But he didn't stop until the sounds of the goblin cavern had faded to nothing.
When he finally collapsed against a wall, gasping for air, he realized he was smiling.
He had done it. He had passed the first chamber. He was alive.
And deep in his chest, the warmth of [Overgrowth] pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
---
[Skill Gained: Stealth (Passive)]
Rank: F
Proficiency: 1%
Effect: Reduces detection range by a negligible amount when remaining still and in shadow.
The notification appeared unbidden in his mind, and Daryl's smile widened. A skill. He had actually gained a skill.
In his previous life, skill acquisition had been a formal process—visiting the Guild, undergoing assessment, paying fees to have potential unlocked. He had never been able to afford it. But here, alone in the depths of an unregistered dungeon, the system had simply… given him one.
No. Not given. He had earned it. Twenty minutes of perfect stillness, watching and waiting, had planted the seed. Now it had sprouted.
He checked his dagger. Bond strength had increased to 4%.
Everything was growing.
---
The second chamber was smaller than the first, a circular space perhaps fifteen meters across with a single exit on the opposite side. It was also occupied—but not by goblins.
The creature in the center of the room was unlike anything Daryl had seen in his previous life's dungeons. It looked like a plant, if plants had been designed by something with a cruel sense of humor. A central stalk rose from a mass of writhing roots, its surface covered in thorns the length of Daryl's fingers. At its summit, a flower bloomed—if "flower" was the right word for something with too many petals, all of them the color of fresh blood, and a central mouth lined with needle-sharp teeth.
[Venom Tangler]
Rank: F+
Threat Level: Moderate
The assessment appeared unbidden, and Daryl filed away the information. The system could identify monsters. Good to know.
The Tangler hadn't noticed him yet. It was focused on something else—a pile of bones in the corner that might have once been a goblin, or might have been something larger. Its roots undulated slowly across the chamber floor, searching for purchase, for warmth, for prey.
Daryl studied the room with the same patience he'd applied to the cavern. The Tangler's roots covered perhaps two-thirds of the floor space, but they moved in a pattern. A slow, rhythmic expansion and contraction, like breathing. When they expanded, they reached the walls on the left and center. When they contracted, they left a narrow path along the right wall clear.
He would have to time it perfectly.
He waited through three cycles, memorizing the rhythm. Expand. Contract. Expand. Contract. The gap lasted perhaps four seconds—just enough time for a sprint, if he was fast.
On the fourth contraction, he moved.
His feet pounded against the stone, each step a thunderclap in the silent chamber. The Tangler reacted instantly, its roots snapping toward him like striking snakes, but he was already past the danger zone, already reaching for the tunnel on the far side—
A root caught his ankle.
He went down hard, the impact driving the breath from his lungs. Pain lanced through his leg as thorns dug into his flesh, and he felt something—venom, probably—inject into his bloodstream. The root tightened, began to drag him back toward the central stalk and that waiting mouth of teeth.
Daryl didn't think. He acted.
His hand found the rusted dagger at his belt, and he swung. The blade bit into the root, and for a terrible moment, nothing happened. The junk weapon, with its pathetic attack power, simply bounced off the fibrous surface.
But then something else happened.
The warmth in his chest exploded outward, flooding his arm, his hand, the dagger. For a single heartbeat, the rusted blade gleamed with green light—and then it cut.
The root parted like wet paper.
Daryl scrambled to his feet, ignoring the fire in his ankle, and dove into the tunnel as the Tangler's remaining roots lashed at empty air. He didn't stop running until the chamber was long behind him and his leg had gone completely numb.
---
He found a side passage, barely wide enough to squeeze into, and collapsed at its end. His ankle was a mess—swollen, oozing green-tinged blood, and completely without feeling. He fumbled for his bandages, wrapped the wound as tightly as he could manage, and tried to slow his racing heart.
The venom wasn't fatal. He knew this because he was still alive, still thinking, still breathing. But it was going to be a problem.
He checked his dagger.
[Rusted Iron Dagger]
Quality: Junk
Attack: 1-3
Durability: 1/15
Effect: None
Bond Strength: 12%
The bond strength had jumped eight percent in a single moment. More importantly, the durability had dropped to one. One more use and the blade would shatter.
But it had cut through a monster's root when it shouldn't have been able to. The warmth, the green light—that had been [Overgrowth]. His talent had intervened, had pushed power into the weapon at the moment of crisis, had made it more than it was.
He stared at the dagger in his hand, at the rust that seemed slightly less prominent than before, at the edge that appeared just marginally sharper.
Living Arsenal, the system had called it.
He was beginning to understand.
---
Hours passed. Daryl couldn't track time in the unchanging darkness, but he felt it in the growing hunger in his stomach and the gradual return of feeling to his leg. The venom's effects faded slowly, leaving behind a deep ache and a purple bruise that spread from ankle to knee.
He ate one of his strips of dried meat, drank half his water, and forced himself to rest. Patience. Roots were patient.
When he finally emerged from the side passage, his leg was functional if not comfortable. The tunnel continued downward, the slope becoming steeper, the air growing warmer. He could hear sounds ahead—not the chattering of goblins, but something deeper. A rhythmic pounding, like a massive heart.
The core chamber.
He should turn back. He had already pushed his luck further than any sane person would. He had gained a skill, survived two encounters, and learned more about his talent in one night than in three weeks of meditation. Retreat was the smart choice.
But the warmth in his chest pulsed again, and Daryl found himself moving forward.
The tunnel opened suddenly into a space that stole his breath. The core chamber was enormous—a cathedral of stone carved by some ancient force, its ceiling lost in darkness, its walls glittering with veins of raw crystal. At its center, floating three meters above a pool of still, black water, was the core.
It was beautiful. A sphere of pure white light, shot through with threads of gold that pulsed in rhythm with the pounding sound he'd heard. Power radiated from it in visible waves, washing over Daryl like a physical force.
And beneath it, in the water, something moved.
The guardian rose slowly, as if surfacing from a great depth. It was humanoid—roughly—but wrong in every particular. Too tall, too thin, with limbs that bent in extra places and a head that was all sharp angles and too many eyes. Its skin was the color of old bone, and in its hands, it carried a sword that seemed to drink the light around it.
[Corrupted Core Guardian]
Rank: E
Threat Level: Extreme
Daryl didn't move. Didn't breathe. The guardian's many eyes swept the chamber, searching, and for one terrible moment, they paused on his hiding spot behind a crystalline formation.
Then they moved on.
The guardian began a slow circuit of the pool, its too-long legs carrying it with an eerie, gliding motion. It was patrolling. Waiting. Protecting its charge.
Daryl watched it for what felt like hours, cataloging its movements, its patterns. It took exactly forty-seven seconds to complete a circuit. During that circuit, its attention was focused out