The chamber smelled of silk, wet stone, and something that had stopped being human.
Lucas stood at the mouth of it with the cigarette lowered between two fingers. A thin line of smoke left his mouth and broke against the red light of the webs. Nyx Claw waited behind him, too large for the opening, heat ticking off its hide like a furnace left to cool.
Riven faced him.
Her crimson eyes burned. The black bodysuit clung to her like a second skin, thorns and web-armor crawling over the glossy fabric. The extra limbs rose from her back in a slow, living fan — jointed, black, each tip bright with a wet point. The air around her carried silk, iron, and shed venom.
One of those limbs moved.
It blurred.
The speed should have been impossible to stop. Lucas did not raise a hand. The limb halted an inch from his pupil anyway, close enough that he could see his own reflection in the black chitin. A drop of something clear gathered at the tip and did not fall. The heat of it warmed his lashes.
Riven's whole body strained behind the strike. The limb shook. She tried to drive it forward. It would not budge.
Lucas stepped back. He shook his head once, like a man looking at a bill he had not expected to pay.
He flicked the cigarette. The ember died against the stone with a small, ugly hiss.
"I saved your life," he said. "And this is how you repay your savior. Humanity really has died these days."
Riven's mouth opened. The voice that came out was hoarse, scraped raw, two people fighting for the same throat.
"I… will kill you… bastard."
Liora stepped out from behind the pillar.
The silver-haired mage had just downed a mana potion. The empty bottle slipped from her fingers and cracked on the wet stone. Thirty minutes of holding Riven back had drained her worse than any class fight. Sweat stuck her hair to her temples. Her staff shook in both hands.
"Don't hurt her. She's just out of it. The racial change—"
Lucas walked forward.
An invisible force still locked Riven in place. The spider limb hung frozen where it had stopped, an inch from the air his eye had occupied. Her extra arms twitched and could not close. She could not even stand straight. The pose made her look caught mid-strike.
Lucas stopped in front of her. He tilted his head. The amusement was gone. What sat on his face now was absolute.
His hand moved.
Slap.
The sound cracked through the webs a half-second before the sting reached her face. Riven's head turned with it. A red print bloomed on her pale cheek. One crimson eye watered. She did not look away. The chamber smelled sharper after it — blood cutting through silk.
Liora's eyes widened. Thunder gathered along her staff, a dry crackle that lifted the hair on her arms.
"You bastard—!"
The next moment her mouth shut so hard her teeth clicked. A tremor ran through her skull, cold and clean, like a lock turning. Lucas's eyes cut toward her.
"Shut up."
The chamber went silent.
Liora stood there with her staff still raised and her voice gone. Shock went through her to the bone. She could not open her mouth. She could not even force a spark. The thunder died against her teeth.
What kind of contract did we agree to?
Lucas turned back to Riven.
The same defiance was still in her face — the same look she had worn from the beginning. The difference now was simple. She could feel it. Her fate was no longer in her hands.
He waited.
Then his hand moved again.
Slap.
Her breath punched out of her. A strand of red hair stuck to the wet print on her cheek.
Slap.
The third one split her lip. Black-red blood touched the corner of her mouth, warm and metallic. Behind her, a spider limb jerked and scraped stone, trapped by the same force that held the rest of her.
Riven's hoarse breath hitched.
"B… bas—"
Lucas caught her jaw and made her look at him. His grip was firm enough that she had to meet his eyes. Her skin was fever-hot under his fingers.
"Hey. You think this was some kind of child's play?"
He tightened his hold. Riven whimpered, the sound scraping out of a throat that still wasn't fully hers.
"Or did you expect me to be one of those fools who won't raise a hand because you're a girl?"
He released her and shoved her back.
Both restrictions dropped at once.
Riven and Liora sucked in air like they had been underwater. It took them a few seconds to stand straight. Riven's extra limbs trembled, then folded inward along her spine, shrinking, vanishing, until her back looked human again. The black bodysuit remained, glossy and tight. The red in her eyes dimmed, but it did not leave.
Lucas rolled his shoulders and freed his arms.
"Listen carefully. I am only going to say this once. I don't care what opinion you have of me. Your lives and your wills are in my hands. If you ever even think of harming me, or interfering with my path, I will kill you both without a second thought. Don't ever doubt it."
Riven's lips trembled. Her upper teeth pressed into the split in her lower lip. She looked completely like herself again — and that made it worse. Her eyes caught the shame on Liora's face.
All this because of my fucking greed.
Lucas turned toward Nyx Claw.
"Ah. What fools. They don't even understand reality. Anyone else would have had their fun and thrown you to the rest of the forest."
He stopped in front of the beast. Nyx Claw's eyes tracked him, dark and patient. Heat lifted off its hide in slow waves.
"What do you say, King? Would anyone else have been a gentleman like me and left them with a slap?"
The beast groaned. Its head tilted, almost questioning.
Lucas smiled and patted its hide. The crystal plates were hot enough to sting.
"Don't think about it. Unlike us humans, you beasts are more honest about your nature."
He walked forward. Nyx Claw followed, claws clicking on wet stone.
"Come on," Lucas said without looking back. "Let's go. If you're done with your mood swings."
Liora walked to Riven and caught her under the arm. Riven's skin was still hot through the glossy black fabric.
"Let's go. We need to survive first. Everything else comes after."
Riven stood. Her eyes turned back to the place where Lucas had risen from her friend's corpse. The stone there was darker than the rest, stained and already cooling.
I will avenge you, Darius.
She left with Liora. Their boots slipped once on the wet floor. Webs brushed their shoulders and clung like damp hair.
Lucas finished reading the last line of the racial window. The text hung in the dark like cold fire.
Riven's change had a name now.
Arachne Devil.
A muted hybrid Race — devil and arachne braided into one. The extra limbs were only the surface. Beneath that sat silk that could bind mana, venom that ate healing, and a nest-sense that mapped anything that moved inside her web.
A low whistle escaped him.
Damn. I'm envious.
Footsteps sounded behind him, sharp on wet stone. He turned, and the look on his face changed at once — easy, charming, as if the slaps had never happened.
"Let's farm some points."
He mounted Nyx Claw in one motion. The beast's hide burned through his coat. Heat lifted off it in waves. Claws cut the wet stone with a thick, clicking grind.
Riven and Liora looked at each other.
Liora muttered under her breath.
"What a psycho."
Lucas's ranking had already fallen.
Third place was gone. While he had been locked in that cave with Chloe, the rest of Pandemonium had kept scoring. By the time the next board refreshed, his name sat at ninth. A full day inside the dimension was already finished. Two days remained.
He did not waste the next hour on pride.
With Nyx Claw under him and two contracted helpers at his back, Lucas started killing everything that crossed their line of sight. Rank did not matter. Nature did not matter. The moment a beast entered their space, it died.
He made Liora and Riven take the front on purpose.
He wanted to see their classes with his own eyes, not through a window.
Riven had been an assassin before the change. The Arachne Devil bloodline only made the work cleaner. Her daggers found gaps in chitin and throat in the same breath. The limbs that grew from her spine when she needed them were extra hands — one to hook a beast's ankle, one to block, one to drag her body out of a swipe that should have opened her ribs. Her nest-sense was worse than unfair. Nothing closed on her without her knowing first. The forest itself felt like a web she had already claimed.
Liora was not built for that kind of knife work.
When she unleashed a skill, the air cracked. A dozen Ember Antlers went down in one sweep of silver thunder. The smell of cooked hide and ozone rolled through the trees. Earth Snakes burst from the ground and cooked before they finished rising. Her damage was wider, uglier, and far more destructive than Riven's precise cuts. Each cast left her breathing hard and her staff smoking.
Lucas watched from Nyx Claw's back and smiled.
Because they were bound to him, the experience split three ways. When the King struck, the full kill still fed Lucas first. When a massive horde signed itself in the trees, Nyx Claw slammed them into the dirt and held them there, making the work easy for the girls.
Two hours passed.
Lucas hit the F-rank cap.
Lucas Vanderbilt — Rank F, Level 100
Liora — Rank F, Level 100
That was the hard ceiling. No more levels would register until a Rank-Up Quest was cleared. After that, rank would rise to E, and the level counter would reset to 1.
Riven was already past that door. After consuming the heart, she had evolved to E-rank. She could still grow. Lucas and Liora could not.
Lucas still had corpses he had not consumed. At the cap, raw experience from them would sit unused until the quest was done.
Then the window opened before him, cold and bright.
[Rank-Up Quest Available]
Current Rank: F — Level 100 (Cap)
Target Rank: E
A fire has waited in the dark for a mouth that can hold it.
Find the Hidden Cinder Cave in the Outer Frontier.
Claim the Hellfire that recognizes no owner but its rightful one.
Condition: Defeat the demon that guards the flame.
Failure: Rank-up locked until the trial ends.
Reward: Hellfire (bound) + Rank E
Note: The flame will not accept a thief. If you are not chosen, it will burn the hand that reaches.
Lucas closed it with a thought.
"Isn't this a little too convenient?" he muttered. "I get thrown into a test, and my rank-up quest is already sitting here like someone arranged the furniture." He clicked his tongue. "A beggar can't be choosy."
Liora's face tightened. A second window faded from her eyes. She had gotten hers too.
"What is it?" Lucas asked.
She stared at him for a second, then answered.
"I have to defeat an E-rank being by myself."
Lucas looked at her, blank.
"And you're frowning over a quest that easy?"
A vein jumped at her temple.
"Oh, yeah? Then what's yours? You have to fight some ancient demon?"
Lucas chuckled and did not answer.
"We're done grinding F-rank trash. Get on the King. We don't have time."
Riven's split lip pulled.
"And if we don't?"
Lucas glanced back at her, amused.
"You're a masochist, aren't you?"
Riven's face flushed. She trembled like a cat caught mid-swipe.
"You—bastard. I will kill you."
Lucas laughed out loud. Left with no better option, Liora and Riven climbed onto Nyx Claw. Heat rolled off the beast's hide and stuck to their clothes. Riven was still fuming. That only made him poke her more.
The Imp stirred in his shadow, small and sharp against his thoughts.
Master. Hellfire is not a toy. In the outer layers, it is used to brand lesser courts. If the guardian is a true demon and not a beast, it will know what you are.
Lucas smiled without warmth.
"Good. I'm tired of things that don't."
A map opened on his system. A single point burned inland, past the Ember Antler grounds, where the trees stood like burnt ribs.
Nyx Claw moved.
The forest ahead smelled of ash that had never gone cold.
**
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