“Eighty-three percent of mining injuries occur after quota fulfillment.

  Students pursuing bonus stipends represent our highest-risk demographic.

  Recommendation: Higher premium on insurance.”

  — Traninum South Risk Management Internal Memo

  I looked down at myself, taking inventory of the damage.

  Blue ichor covered my hoodie in streaks and splatters; the yellow fabric now decorated with abstract patterns that would’ve looked artistic if they weren’t bug guts. Mrs. Adelaide, my neighbor, would probably have found it very artistic and crowned me best young artist of the central district; she already tried that once.

  I pulled out a napkin from my pocket, one of those cheap dispenser ones from the cafeteria that I’d grabbed out of habit, and wiped at the nearest streak.

  The ichor slid off.

  Not with the resistance you’d expect from liquid soaking into fabric, but smoothly, as if the combat fiber was coated in something that refused to let bug goop stick. The napkin came away blue and gross, but the hoodie underneath looked clean, the yellow fabric unmarred except for a faint dampness that was already evaporating.

  I wiped another streak. Same result. The goop just... left, peeling away from the soul-bound material like it had never belonged there in the first place.

  “Huh,” I muttered, inspecting the fabric.

  My old armor would’ve been permanently stained by now, the bug ichor working its way into every crack and seam until the whole rig smelled like death no matter how many times I cleaned it.

  Weird.

  The combat fiber shed the mess as though it had developed hydrophobic properties I’d never designed. Soul-binding had done something to the fabric’s surface, something I didn’t understand but absolutely approved of.

  My chest ached where the bug had clamped down, a dull soreness that pulsed with each breath, like after a hard workout or walking into a door frame in the dark.

  I pressed carefully against the impact foam through the hoodie’s exterior, testing for damage, checking my ribs for the grinding sensation that meant something had cracked.

  Nothing.

  Just tenderness, the promise of bruising tomorrow, but everything moved the way it should. I rotated my torso experimentally, feeling the slight pull of stressed muscle and abused tissue, but no sharp pain, no catching sensation.

  The hoodie had held.

  The gear had done exactly what I’d designed it to do, absorbing an impact that would have absolutely shattered ribs in my old armor and distributed the force across the padding until what should have been a hospital visit became tomorrow’s inconvenient bruise.

  C- tier equipment had just saved me from serious injury.

  I grinned despite the soreness, despite the ichor still decorating parts of my hoodie and pants I hadn’t wiped yet, because holy shit, my fabrication work had actually performed under real combat conditions.

  Not against practice dummies or controlled testing scenarios, but against a Warrior-class bug trying to crush my torso.

  And it had worked.

  But, and this was important, it had still hurt.

  The impact foam had absorbed the kinetic energy, sure, but “absorbed” didn’t mean “negated entirely.”

  I’d felt every bit of that pressure, felt the mandibles testing exactly how much force human ribs could withstand before something gave. The gear had won that contest, but the margin hadn’t been comfortable.

  And these bugs were only equivalent to the weakest incursion-level threats, barely shrike level.

  The realization wiped off my smile.

  If I kept running into combat with just a sword, kept letting things get close enough to bite, eventually I’d meet something strong enough that even C- tier gear wouldn’t be enough. Some random alien that hit harder and found the gaps in my protection that definitely existed no matter how good my fabrication work was.

  I needed the shield system operational, but that meant expensive mana batteries. Maybe Asti had been right, and maybe getting the combined shield had been a mistake.

  I also didn’t have a rifle.

  The arcade had taught me something important: I was good at this. The sniper rifle had felt right in a way sword work never had; satisfying and notably free of direct bug danger. Alice and Cecilia had built their entire combat doctrine around close range, but they were rich corpo heirs. They could afford any load-out they wanted.

  I couldn’t.

  Cindy walked over while I was still mentally cataloging my tactical failures, her voice falling into concern as she examined my torso. “You okay?”

  “Bruised,” I admitted, pressing against my midsection one more time to confirm nothing had changed in the last thirty seconds. “But yeah. Gear worked.”

  “Gear worked,” she repeated slowly, her eyes moving from the bug corpse at my feet to me and back again. “Dash, that thing bit you hard enough I could hear the impact from five meters away. You’re telling me that hoodie actually stopped it?”

  “Good fabric and impact foam,” I said, pulling the fabric away from my chest to show her the padding beneath, though with the outer shell in the way she probably couldn’t see much. “Absorbs kinetic energy, distributes the force across a wider area. Still hurts like getting punched, but nothing penetrated.”

  Veronica had drifted over during my explanation, scanning my torso. “That’s actually impressive engineering. What’s the fabric’s impact resistance rating?”

  “Ah…” I opened my mouth, but then closed it, realizing I had absolutely no idea what the official rating would be. I’d done the math for projector placement and power distribution and conductive threading routes, but somehow I’d never looked up what numbers the Series-7 combat fiber was supposed to hit on standardized testing scales, just that it was absurd.

  “High?” I offered, which sounded stupid even as I said it.

  She laughed, shaking her head. “Never mind. Rich Kallum thing, right? Probably custom-fabricated with ratings that don’t map to standard scales anyway.”

  “Something like that,” I agreed, because that was easier than explaining soul-binding and personal fabrication and that the System insisted on calling my unique custom gear ‘mass-produced’ despite it being literally one-of-a-kind.

  Rico was checking his shield, running his hand over fresh dents in the riot-grade plating that definitely hadn’t been there before we’d entered the elevator. “These bugs hit way harder than the ones on -9,” he said, his tone carrying the satisfaction of someone who’d just field-tested equipment and found it wanting. “That’s at least three normal encounters worth of damage concentrated into one fight.” He looked at the corpses scattered around us, counting silently under his breath. “Eleven bugs total, and we burned through how much ammunition?”

  “Too much,” Cindy said flatly, ejecting her rifle’s magazine to check the remaining rounds. The magazine display glowed softly in the emergency lighting, showing numbers that apparently weren’t satisfying. “At most eight fights like this. Veronica?”

  “Ninety-two percent,” Veronica reported, doing her own ammunition count with her carbine. “But that’s assuming the rest of the floor isn’t worse than this encounter, which...” She gestured vaguely at the surrounding carnage. “Seems optimistic.”

  “The rest of the floor is definitely worse than this,” Rico said cheerfully, as if that was good news. “That’s why the drop rates are better down here. Higher risk, higher reward, standard dungeon economics.”

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  I looked at the nearest corpse, the one I’d partially killed before Rico had finished it with his shotgun, and focused on it with intent, the same way I’d examined my own fabricated gear.

  A notification appeared, informative in a way that suggested the System actually wanted me to have this information.

  [Xx’tharien Warrior]

  Current location rating: B+

  I stared at the notification, my brain catching on the numbers. B+ rated bugs. And these were only Gray-1 Incursion Equivalent, the bottom rung of actual diver work. Teachers only briefly mentioned it, but there must be Gray-2. Maybe even Gray-3.

  Yeah. I definitely needed that shield system working, and I had to stop pretending melee combat was a sustainable long-term strategy.

  “So,” Veronica said, her augmented eyes still tracking over me. “Still think coming to -18 was a good idea?”

  “Ask me again after we hit quota,” I said.

  Cindy snorted. “Fair. Rico, harvest the Traninum. Veronica, watch our six. Dash...” She paused. “Try not to let any more bugs bite you. At least not until we know if that hoodie can handle a second impact in the same spot.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, which was about as much commitment as I could offer given that bugs rarely announced their intentions before attacking.

  Rico knelt beside the nearest corpse, pulling out a harvesting tool that looked like some unholy fusion of a pry bar and a combat knife. He jammed the tool into the joint where the bug’s thorax met its abdomen and twisted until something inside gave with a wet crack.

  I never used anything like that, but not everyone had a sharp sword forged during a system apocalypse to get loot.

  Blue ichor leaked out, pooling on the stone floor, and Rico reached into the opened cavity without hesitation, and his hand came back holding a Traninum cube.

  I watched him work, counting the cubes as they accumulated in his collection pouch, until finally he stood and dumped the entire haul onto a relatively clean section of floor. “Fourteen cubes,” he announced, separating them into four roughly equal piles. “Split four ways, that’s three and a half each. We’ll round up for Dash since he took the bite.”

  “I’m fine with three,” I said, because getting extra shares for being bad at combat seemed wrong.

  “You got bit defending the formation,” Cindy corrected. “That’s worth the extra half-cube. Take it.”

  I took it, adding the four cubes to my mining pouch while trying not to think about how this represented maybe twelve credits total if we didn’t hit the bonus threshold.

  Wait.

  I pulled one of the cubes back out, focusing on it the same way I’d examined the bug corpse, wondering if my identification ability worked on loot drops the same way it worked on equipment.

  Nothing happened for a moment, and then I remembered the Palistra catalogue I’d unlocked what felt like years ago but had actually been just days.

  [Using the Palistra Free Gray Catalogue? to analyze...]

  A loading bar appeared in my vision, racing across my field of view faster than I expected. Apparently Traninum was common enough that the system didn’t need to think hard about identification.

  [Match found!]

  Catalogue Number: #18 - Traninum

  Note: Common Earth 2.0 mineral, standard mining yield

  I frowned at the “Note” section, which told me absolutely nothing useful about value or quality.

  “Need price, stupid corpo catalogue,” I muttered under my breath. That earned me a weird look from Cindy, but the system apparently heard me anyway because another notification appeared.

  [Using the Palistra Free Gray Catalogue? to analyze purity and calculate market value...]

  [Weight and purity calculated: ￠6 per cube]

  I stared at the number, my brain taking a moment to process what that meant.

  Six credits per cube. The actual price these things would sell for if we could access open trading instead of the school’s controlled system, or at least Palistra claimed.

  “Hey guys,” I said, probably louder than necessary. “How much does the school pay us for one cube?”

  Cindy cocked her head. “Stipend is about two to four credits per cube. Why?”

  Average of three credits, when the market value was six.

  The school was taking fifty percent. It sounded exploitative… until I remembered the bonus system. Work hard, meet bonus threshold, and… what? You’d get fair market value? “School might not actually pay that badly then,” I whispered, mostly to myself.

  But Rico laughed. “Not bad? Ha! If they let us access the open market we would—”

  “Contact,” Veronica cut him off, focused on something down the tunnel that the rest of us couldn’t see yet. “Six targets, incoming fast.”

  The conversation about mining economics died as we all turned toward the darkness ahead, weapons coming up. Smaller bugs than the Warriors but faster, skittering along the tunnel walls with agility. Rico adjusted his stance, shield angling to cover us. “I hate the climbers.”

  The bugs dropped from the ceiling in coordinated silence, no shrieking this time, just the scrape of claws on stone as they descended.

  Cindy’s rifle flared first, controlled bursts that caught the lead bug mid-drop and sent it tumbling into the tunnel floor with a wet crunch. Veronica’s carbine added fire, targeting joints and sensory clusters.

  Rico caught one on his shield as it tried to flank; the impact barely moved him, and his shotgun erased it at point-blank range.

  I tracked the last two, watching them split and come at us from different angles with intelligence that felt wrong for bugs. One went high, using the tunnel wall for purchase. The other stayed low, scuttling along the floor.

  The low one came at me.

  I stepped forward to meet it, bringing my sword up in what I hoped looked like proper form but was probably just enthusiastic slashing. The bug leaped, claws extended, mandibles wide.

  I swung.

  The blade caught it, meeting the bug’s thorax at an angle that let the sword’s sharpness do all the work. The cut was clean, almost effortless, the edge parting chitin and internal organs as if they were made of paper instead of an armored exoskeleton.

  The bug separated into two twitching halves that hit the ground on either side of me, blue ichor spraying in arcs that I barely avoided.

  “Nice!” Rico called out, finishing the last climber with his shotgun. “You’re getting better at that!”

  I looked at my sword, then at the bisected bug, then back at my sword. “I think the weapon’s doing most of the work,” I admitted.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Veronica said, scanning for additional threats. “Dead is dead. Clean kill counts the same either way.”

  [Mana LP progress: 7%]

  The fight had lasted maybe twenty seconds. Six bugs down, minimal ammunition expenditure, no injuries, no close calls. We were finding our rhythm; the formation working exactly the way it should, each person covering their assigned zone while trusting the others to handle theirs.

  Cindy checked her ammo count, nodded with satisfaction, then gestured for us to continue forward. “Good work. Keep moving.”

  We collected the Traninum quickly, nine cubes this time, and pushed deeper into the tunnel.

  The next encounter came five minutes later, announced by Veronica’s warning. “Contact, seven targets, standard pattern.”

  Seven warriors, moving in loose formation down the tunnel toward us with that distinctive scuttling gait. They shrieked when they spotted us and charged with straightforward aggression that lacked any tactical finesse.

  Rico planted his shield, creating a choke point.

  Cindy and Veronica opened fire, their weapons creating a crossfire that caught the bugs in overlapping fields. I held position in the middle, sword ready, watching for anything that broke through.

  Nothing broke through.

  The Warriors ran straight into concentrated fire from two directions, their armored carapaces cracking under repeated impacts. Rico’s shotgun boomed whenever something got close enough to his shield, each blast removing bugs from the equation.

  No, not an equation. Math won’t creep into my mind! I mentally corrected myself with the irritation that came from spending too many hours wrestling with alien rune mathematics.

  Rico’s shotgun boomed whenever something got close enough to his shield, each blast removing bugs from existence with the finality that required no mathematical proofs or variable substitution.

  I almost felt bad for them. Almost.

  One warrior made it past, wounded but functional, trailing blue ichor as it scrambled toward me with single-minded determination. I stepped to meet it, my sword coming up in an arc that felt smoother than my previous attempts.

  The blade took its head off cleanly.

  The body continued forward for two more steps, legs still churning on autopilot, before collapsing in a heap of twitching limbs.

  “Okay, now you’re just showing off,” Veronica said, grinning as she checked her carbine’s heat levels.

  “The sword really is doing all the work,” I protested, but I was grinning too, because that had felt good in a way I hadn’t expected. Not the killing specifically, but the competence, the growing sense that maybe I wasn’t completely useless in close combat as long as I had System-grade equipment compensating for my lack of actual skill.

  [Mana LP progress: 9%]

  Rico was laughing. “Floor -18 isn’t so bad! We’re carving through these things!”

  Cindy checked her notes. “We just hit quota. Today’s fourteen cubes each. Plus...” She paused, doing mental math. “We can try a bonus stipend if we want to push it.”

  “Push it,” Veronica said. “We’ve got ammo, we’ve got momentum, and the drops down here are way better than -9. Might as well maximize the run while we’re already committed.”

  Rico nodded, adjusting his shield strap where it had chafed. “I’m good for at least five more encounters. Shield’s holding up fine, and I’ve still got half my shells.”

  They both looked at me, clearly expecting input since I was technically the reason they’d decided to risk -18 in the first place.

  “One more haul,” I said. “Then we call it and get out while we’re ahead, even if we don’t have a bonus.”

  Even as I said it, I knew this was exactly how mining accidents happened. Someone pushing just a little further, one more haul, one more bonus, right until the moment things went wrong and extraction teams were pulling bodies instead of miners.

  But with meeting the threshold, the cubes were worth double, and we were doing fine.

  Cindy studied me for a moment and nodded with a smile. “One more. But we stay smart, stay together, and the second things look wrong, we extract promptly. No heroics, no pushing our luck beyond this.”

  “Deal,” I agreed.

  The tunnel opened up ahead, widening into what looked like a natural cave formation. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, their surfaces gleaming with moisture. The floor became uneven, forcing us to watch our footing without dropping our guard.

  Veronica stopped, her hand coming up in the signal for halt. “Contact,” she whispered, her voice carrying a note I hadn’t heard before. Uncertainty, maybe.

  “How many?” Cindy asked, already checking her ammunition count.

  Veronica’s eyes flickered again. “Twenty,” she said. Then her eyes widened slightly, the augmented irises contracting in ways that looked physically wrong. “No. More. They’re... they’re swarming. Thirty?”

  The tunnel ahead of us erupted with movement.

  Twenty bugs became thirty, the tunnel ahead filling with bodies that scrambled over each other in their rush to reach us. Their collective shrieking built into a sound that made my teeth ache and my chest vibrate.

  Cindy’s voice cut through the shrieking.

  “RUN!”

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Veronica

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