The day finally bled into evening, and with the fading light, I felt the [Summon Mana Monster] skill finally click into the confines of my Inner Spirit. The sensation was unsettling. It didn't feel like a surge of power; instead, it felt hollow. It was a cavernous, expectant emptiness that mirrored the void of my own [Imprint] talent, a dark shelf waiting for a trophy to be placed upon it.

  The Manager watched me, his porcelain mask catching the last amber rays of the sun.

  “It has settled, then. Good,” he noted, his voice as cool as the rising mist. “Now, regarding your integration: the surgery for the TR-31 [AI] installation is scheduled. Unfortunately, due to the bio-sync requirements, it will have to be after your first delve. We cannot risk a neural rejection while you are inside a rift.”

  I felt a flicker of anxiety. Going into a rift without the promised "predator vision" felt like stepping onto a tightrope without a net.

  “Luckily, as stated, it is a training rift,” the Manager continued, ignoring my silent apprehension. “[Julian’s Jesters] have sent the full data packet. I’ve had it uploaded to your pad. You are to study it tonight. Every detail. Every variable.”

  He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing mine.

  “Your next execution is set for two weeks after the [AI] is installed and your recovery period is complete. For now, your entire world must be that delve. Read the packet. Identify the weaknesses you can exploit in the Kobold physiology. Study the tactics they employ in packs, the humidity of the rift environment, and the layout of the anchored floors. I want you to know that cave better than the creatures born in it. Will you do that for me, Sir Wren?”

  “Good. Information is the first strike; the blade is merely the second,” he said, then gestured back toward the dusty expanse of the training grounds. “Until then, I feel like there’s still time to get a few more laps in. Ten, to be precise. And this time, I want you to maintain a perfectly consistent pace throughout. No sprinting at the start, no flagging at the finish. Control is everything.”

  A low, involuntary whine escaped my throat—my muscles were already screaming for the silk robe and the dark room—but I nodded anyway. The tyrant wouldn't relent, and the gutter had taught me that the only way out of a hard place was straight through the middle of it.

  ***

  After the relentless chastising of the tyrant, I finally retreated to the sanctuary of my room. My legs felt like lead, but my mind was still grinding through the day's lessons on spinal "gates" and nerve clusters. I pulled the data pad from its dock, the cool glass glowing against my palms as I opened the packet provided by [Julian’s Jesters].

  Scanning the document, the first tactical variable jumped off the screen. These Kobolds weren't the standard lean-and-mean variety; they possessed trace amounts of Earth and Metal mana aspects. This meant that compared to your average Tier One pack, these creatures were significantly more durable, their hides likely reinforced by a biological weave of sediment and ore. To counteract this evolutionary trade-off, they were slower, their claws lacked a razor's edge, and they were far less flexible than their common kin. Like most Tier One variants, they lacked the cognitive capacity for tools, weapons, or forged armor, relying entirely on their reinforced bodies to weather a blow.

  However, the "boss" of the rift was the most unconventional detail in the packet. Instead of a typical Kobold Chieftain or Shaman, the rift’s anchor was a Two-Headed Bull. The data noted that the Kobolds didn't just share the rift with the beast; they seemed to worship it as a living idol. It was a strange bit of lore for a training rift, but practically, it meant a different kind of fight.

  The tactical summary was straightforward: the Kobolds would provide a slow, grinding front line of meat and stone, while the Bull possessed the average tenacity and crushing power typical of a Tier One rift boss.

  Wanting to be thorough, I bypassed the packet and linked into the PlanetNet to pull broader behavioral archives on the species. Kobold tactics at my current Tier were documented as being relatively low. They engaged in basic swarm tactics, but they weren't capable of forming any complex strategy other than "pile on the target and bite until it stops moving."

  As I scrolled, the entries for higher Tiers became far more daunting. At higher levels, Kobolds and Goblins apparently undergo a massive shift in intelligence, gaining tactics akin to a professional military, with specialized units and varying capabilities per squad. At the highest Tiers, they even formed multiple "tribes" and "castes" within the same rift ecosystem.

  I stared at the screen, visualizing the slow, metallic Kobolds I would soon face. I had to learn to move through them to get to their "god." I shut off the pad, the darkness of the room feeling a little heavier. I had one week to become the hunter. I closed my eyes, and tried to sleep.

  The cooling sweat on my skin felt like lye. I turned. I turned again, the high-thread-count linens—once a luxury—now felt like a shroud of coarse sandpaper, flaying the first layer of my sanity. The room was too quiet, yet my ears were ringing with the wet thud of a knife meeting a spinal column.

  Something was wrong. The darkness of the room didn’t just sit in the corners; it breathed.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I looked down at my hands in the gloom. They weren't pink or scrubbed raw anymore. They were dripping. A thick, rhythmic pulse of crimson seeped from beneath my fingernails, pooling in the creases of my palms. I wiped them on the sheets, but the white fabric only turned into a gory smear.

  "I am the final arbiter," I whispered, my voice cracking like dry glass. "I am not the killer. I am the law."

  "You are a useless dog of the state!"

  The voice didn't come from the hallway. It exploded from the foot of my bed. There he was: 418211-B. His face wasn't the pale, resigned mask I’d seen in the execution chamber. It was a ruin of jagged bone and necrotic meat, his eyes bulging with a manic, yellowish light. He leaned over me, his breath smelling of copper and the void.

  "A parasite! A worthless mongrel!" he spat, flecks of black blood hitting my cheek. "You think you’re happy now that you’re out of that well? You didn't escape, boy. You just climbed into a gilded cage. You threw me into the dark, you useless ingrate! You think Mr. Braum is your savior? Hah! He didn't save you—he sold you. He appraised you like a piece of livestock and traded your soul to the Empire so you could become their spike. Their silent, little needle."

  The room warped, the stone walls melting into the damp, crumbling brick of the slums. The smell of eucalyptus was replaced by the stench of stale vomit and cheap, chemical "Dust."

  Then I saw her.

  My mother sat in the corner of my vision, slumped against a pile of refuse. Her eyes were rolled back, blissed out of her sanity by the powder and the rot-gut alcohol. She looked at me, her face a terrifying caricature of a smile, her skin translucent and bruised.

  "How much did you get today, kid?" she rasped, her voice a wet rattle. She reached out, her fingers ending in the same long, straight knives the Manager had given me. "Give it here. That’s right. Mommy needs her medicine. Mommy loves you."

  I tried to pull away, but the bed felt like quicksand, sucking me down into the "well" I thought I’d escaped.

  "You don't want to give Mommy money?" Her voice sharpened, becoming a shriek that tore at my eardrums. "You want some more marks? You want to remember why you’re mine?" She lunged, her knife-fingers tracing the old scars on my ribs with a lover’s touch. "That’s right, dear. Mommy. Loves. You."

  I screamed, but no sound came out—only a swarm of songbirds, their throats cut, spilling out of my mouth in a silent, feathered heap.

  The sky wasn't a sky at all; it was a narrow, jagged ribbon of grey trapped between towering monoliths of iron and steam. And then came the feet.

  They were giants. A tide of them. The citizens of the Empire, the "countless" souls the Manager had thanked me for protecting, were suddenly towering monstrosities of meat and fabric. Their boots were the size of houses, caked in the filth of the city, descending with the rhythmic finality of falling hammers.

  I tried to scramble toward a doorway, my fingers clawing at the slick, oily cobbles, but the crowd was an ocean of indifference. A massive, polished leather sole—the boot of a nobleman, perhaps—came crashing down inches from my head, the impact vibrating through my very marrow. I looked up, screaming for help, but I didn't see faces. I saw masks. Porcelain masks, iron visors, and hoods that trailed shadows.

  “Please!” I shrieked, my voice a pathetic chirp beneath the roar of the city. “I’m here! I’m Sir Wren! I’m the executioner!”

  A woman in a gown of shimmering, razor-edged silk stepped over me. She didn't even look down. The hem of her dress caught my shoulder, slicing the skin like a hot wire. I rolled into the gutter, the black, brackish water filled with the discarded needles of "Dust" addicts and the floating corpses of songbirds.

  Faces began to flicker in the crowd, appearing for a heartbeat before being swallowed by the grey. I saw the children—the forty children the man in the chair had stolen. They weren't whole. They were stitched together, their eyes replaced by glowing Mana Shards, their mouths sewn shut with silver thread. They marched in the wake of the giants, their small feet making no sound, their hands reaching out to me not for rescue, but to pull me down into the muck with them.

  “One of us,” they whispered, a collective hiss that bypassed my ears and spoke directly to my Inner Spirit. “The monster took us, but the Empire took you. There is no difference in the dark.”

  I looked ahead and saw a figure standing still amidst the trampling giants. It was Mr. Braum. He looked noble, his armor shining with a light that didn't belong in this hellscape. I crawled toward him, my chest burning, my red hands leaving bloody streaks on the street.

  “Mr. Braum! Save me! Please, I did what they asked!”

  As I reached for the hem of his cloak, he turned. But it wasn't Braum. The face shifted, melting like hot wax into the visage of the Two-Headed Bull from the rift packet. Four eyes, swirling with the Metal and Earth aspects, stared down at me with divine hatred.

  “A sacrifice,” the Bull bellowed, its voice the sound of grinding tectonic plates. “The Law demands a sacrifice, and you are the only thing left to burn.”

  A giant’s foot descended directly over me. I saw the tread—a complex pattern of Imperial eagles and gears—blocking out the sliver of sky. The weight was immense, the air being squeezed out of my lungs before the boot even touched me. I felt my ribs begin to creak, the "gates" of my spine under terrifying pressure, ready to snap and leave me a prisoner in my own shattered frame.

  The shadows of the giants became solid, heavy as lead, pressing into my eyes and mouth. My mother’s face reappeared in the leather of the boot, her crazed, drug-fueled smile stretching across the entire horizon.

  “Give it here, Wrenny,” she crooned, her voice the sound of a knife on a whetstone. “Give Mommy the power. Give Mommy the blood.”

  The boot touched my chest. The world went black, a crushing, absolute void that smelled of copper and damp stone.

  “NO!”

  I bolted upright, the scream tearing out of my throat with such force it left the metallic tang of blood in the back of my mouth. I was heaving, my lungs burning as if I’d actually been trampled, my hands clutching the charcoal-grey silk of my robe.

  The room was silent. The essence-lamps were dim. My hands were pale, shaking, and—blessedly—dry. But the phantom weight of the boot lingered on my chest, and as I stared into the dark, I realized the nightmare hadn't ended. I had just woken up into the part where I had to pretend it wasn't happening.