We didn't fall. We plummeted.
The air rushed past my ears like a jet engine. The light of the Bazaar—the neon pinks and toxic greens—receded rapidly, replaced by the suffocating darkness of the abyss below.
"Riya!" Kabir shouted, his voice cutting through the wind with terrifying precision. "Cushion us! Now!"
I saw a flash of green light below. Riya was clutching Javed, her face a mask of sheer terror, but her hands were glowing.
[ SKILL ACTIVATED: LIFROOT COCOON ]
Vines erupted from her staff, weaving together in mid-air to form a crude, desperate ball of vegetation around us. It wasn't a parachute. It was a hamster ball made of thorns.
Then, we hit the bottom.
SPLASH-CRACK.
It felt like hitting concrete. The impact shattered the vine cocoon instantly. I was thrown clear, skipping across a surface that wasn't water. It was thick, oily, and smelled of concentrated chemical death.
I slammed into something hard—a pile of rusted metal—and blacked out for a second.
[ CRITICAL IMPACT ]
[ HP: 15% ]
[ STATUS EFFECT: TOXICITY (Poison Damage over Time) ]
I gasped, sucking in air that tasted like battery acid. I dragged myself out of the sludge, coughing up black bile.
"Fuck!!" I rasped. "Is everyone alive?"
"Barely," Javed groaned from a few meters away. He was lying on a bank made not of sand, but of crushed bones. His shield was dented, and his arm was twisted at a wrong angle. "My arm... I think it's broken again."
"I got you," Riya whispered. She crawled over to him, her robes soaked in the toxic slime. She placed a hand on his arm. Green light flickered, weaker this time. The moss grew slowly, knitting the bone, but she looked exhausted. Her mana was bottoming out.
"Where is Vikram?" I asked, looking around.
"Here," a miserable voice came from a pile of garbage. Vikram pulled himself out of a heap of discarded monster parts. His crystal bow was flickering. "I am covered in... I don't even want to know what this is. I am going to burn these clothes. I am going to burn my skin."
Kabir was standing on a floating piece of debris, balancing perfectly despite the chaos. "This place..." he whispered, his voice echoing in the vast, dark cavern. "It is the drain. The sewer of the Bazaar."
I looked around. He was right. We were in a massive underground river, but the current was slow and thick. The "water" was a mix of industrial runoff, magical waste, and corpses. Millions of them. Failed experiments, dead slaves, broken weapons—all thrown down the hole by the city above.
[ LOCATION DISCOVERED: THE RIVER OF REJECTS (FLOOR B100) ]
[ ZONE TYPE: HAZARD / GRAVEYARD ]
BOOM.
A massive sound echoed from far above, shaking the cavern roof. Dust and debris rained down.
"What was that?" Vikram squeaked.
Kabir tilted his head back. "He followed us. The General. He just jumped. He is coming down."
"He jumped two hundred floors?" Javed asked, horrified.
"He is hunting," Kabir said. "We have... maybe ten minutes before he lands."
"We need to move," I said, struggling to stand. "Is there an exit?"
"Up," Kabir pointed. Far in the distance, a rusted maintenance ladder clung to the wall of the root-shaft. It was our only way back up, likely to a different sector of the Bazaar.
"Let's go," I said.
But the river had other ideas.
The surface of the sludge began to boil.
"Light," Kabir hissed. "They see the light."
I looked at Vikram. His [Divine Posture] passive made him glow with a faint, holy aura even in the dark. In this pitch-black sewer, he was a lighthouse.
"Turn it off!" I yelled.
"I can't!" Vikram cried, waving his hands. "I'm too radiant! It's passive! I can't stop being beautiful!"
HISS.
A head broke the surface. It looked like an eel, but it had human eyes and rows of needle-teeth. Then another. And another.
[ ENEMY: CORPSE-EEL (Level 8) ]
"Level 8?" Vikram shrieked. "Those are scavengers? They're higher level than us!"
"They eat the high-level trash," I realized. "They've been feeding on Rakshasa corpses for centuries. They are strong because they eat the strong."
The swarm surged onto the bone-bank. There were hundreds of them, a writhing carpet of wet muscle and teeth. They ignored me. They ignored Javed. They went straight for the light. Straight for Vikram.
"Defensive positions!" I yelled.
Javed raised his shield, but it was cracked. "I can't hold this many! They'll swarm over me!"
"Shoot them!" I ordered Vikram.
Vikram fired. His arrows of light hit the eels, exploding them into gore, but for every one he killed, ten more took its place. They were fast, slithering over the bones, snapping at our ankles.
"Ah!" Riya screamed as an eel latched onto her leg. Javed smashed it with his mace, but two more jumped onto his back.
We were being overwhelmed. My HP was ticking down from the poison. We had no mana. We had no exit.
I looked at the dead eels piling up.
"I need an army," I thought. "I need Ash Walkers."
I reached out with my skill.
[ RITE OF THE PYRE ACTIVATED ]
[ ERROR: FUEL SOURCE CORRUPTED ]
[ ERROR: BIOMASS TOO UNSTABLE FOR REANIMATION ]
The System rejected me. The eels were too mutated, too full of chaotic magic to be turned into soldiers. They wouldn't hold a shape.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
An eel lunged at me. I skewered it with my spear, but it thrashed up the shaft, snapping at my face. I kicked it away, panting.
"Dhruv!" Kabir shouted. "Do something! We are dying here!"
I looked at the notifications.
[ AFFINITY DETECTED: SMASHANA ]
[ ALTERNATIVE PROTOCOL AVAILABLE ]
[ IF YOU CANNOT LEAD THE DEAD... ]
[ ...CONSUME THEM. ]
A new skill flashed in my mind. It wasn't unlocked by a level up. It was unlocked by desperation. By the specific, horrific nature of this place.
[ NEW SKILL: ENTROPY HARVEST ]
> Effect: Consume the lingering life-force of a fresh corpse to permanently increase a random Attribute by 0.1.
> Cost: Humanity.
I froze. Consume?
I looked at the dead eel at my feet. I didn't summon. I didn't command.
I pulled.
I reached out with my hand, fingers clawed. I visualized the death inside the creature, the grey entropy that remained after the life fled. And I drank it.
Grey smoke ripped out of the eel's corpse and rushed into my chest.
It felt like swallowing ice. It burned. It froze. My veins turned black under my skin. My eyes rolled back, flooding with grey light.
[ ENTROPY HARVESTED ]
[ STR +0.1 ]
[ HP RESTORED: 5% ]
The rush was intoxicating. It wasn't just power. It was pure fuel. It was better than air. Better than water.
"More," I whispered. My voice sounded hollow, distorted. "I need more."
I looked at the swarm. Hundreds of eels. Hundreds of little packets of stats.
"Dhruv?" Vikram whispered, seeing the black veins spreading up my neck. "What are you doing? You look... wrong."
I didn't answer. I smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was a hungry one.
"Javed," I said. "Drop the shield. Let them come."
"What?!"
"Let them come," I roared, stepping forward.
The swarm lunged.
I didn't block. I didn't dodge. I swung the Black Iron Spear in a wide arc.
SPLAT.
Three eels died.
I didn't wait. I reached out and drank their death instantly. I didn't just absorb it; I inhaled it. I shivered with pleasure as the cold energy flooded my system.
[ STR +0.1 ]
[ AGI +0.1 ]
[ STR +0.1 ]
The power flooded me. My muscles swelled. The fatigue vanished. I swung again, faster this time.
SPLAT. CRUNCH.
Five more dead.
[ ENTROPY HARVESTED ]
[ INT +0.1 ]
[ AGI +0.1 ]
It was an all-you-can-eat buffet. And I was starving.
I waded into the swarm. I was laughing. The eels bit me, tearing chunks of flesh from my legs, but I didn't care. I killed them and healed instantly from the harvest.
I was a perpetual motion machine of death.
"He's..." Riya whispered, horrified. "He's eating them. He's absorbing them."
"He's grinding," Kabir said, his voice low. "He found a loop."
I didn't stop. I killed until the river ran red. I killed until the bone-bank was slippery with gore. I killed until the swarm broke and tried to flee back into the water.
"Where are you going?" I shouted, chasing them into the sludge. "I'm not full yet!"
I speared a fleeing eel, dragging it back, draining it dry until it crumbled into dust.
[ LEVEL UP! ]
[ LEVEL UP! ]
[ LEVEL UP! ]
When it was over, I stood knee-deep in the toxic river, panting. The black veins on my skin were pulsing like living tattoos. My eyes were glowing with a steady, red light.
I checked my status.
[ NAME: DHRUV IYER ]
[ CLASS: ASHEN SOVEREIGN ]
[ LEVEL: 5 ]
[ STR: 18 (+5.2 Harvested) ]
[ AGI: 14 (+3.1 Harvested) ]
[ INT: 15 (+2.4 Harvested) ]
I had gained stats equivalent to ten level ups in ten minutes.
I turned back to the team. They weren't cheering. They were huddled together, looking at me like I was the Boss Monster.
"Dhruv?" Vikram squeaked. "You... you look like a nightmare. Your eyes are red. Like, completely red. No whites."
"I feel great," I said. My voice echoed strangely. "I feel strong."
"You look like a monster," Riya whispered.
"The Princess is Level 25," I said, walking out of the river. The sludge seemed to part around me, afraid to touch my aura. "If she catches us, she won't just kill us. She'll make it slow. And the General... he's hunting us right now. He's coming down that shaft."
I looked at Kabir. He was kneeling by a trash heap, holding something delicate. A shattered gemstone that pulsed with faint blue light.
"Loot?" I asked.
"Trash," Kabir corrected. "A broken mana crystal. Useless."
He held his hands over it. Violet geometric lines—his [Aether Lattice]—surrounded the gem.
"But I can see the schematic," Kabir whispered. "I can see how it was supposed to work."
He pressed his hands together. The violet light intensified, forcing the shards back together, re-fusing them not with glue, but with pure mana.
[ SKILL: RECONSTRUCTION SUCCESSFUL ]
The gem flared to life, forming a perfect ring.
[ ITEM CREATED: RING OF THE FALLEN STAR ]
[ EFFECT: RAPID MANA REGENERATION ]
"For Riya," Kabir said, handing it to her. "If he is going to fight like this... you are going to need infinite mana to keep him from losing his soul."
Riya took the ring. She put it on. She looked at me, fear warring with gratitude.
"We have a way out," I said, pointing up.
The maintenance ladder.
But blocking the path was something massive.
A Corpse-Eel Matriarch. Level 12. It was twenty feet long, with a mouth that could swallow a car. It coiled around the ladder, hissing.
"Level 12," Javed said, raising his shield. "Formation?"
"No," I said. I dropped my spear.
"Dhruv?" Vikram asked. "What are you doing?"
"Testing," I said.
I walked toward the Matriarch. It roared and lunged.
I caught its jaws with my bare hands.
My Strength was 18 + 5. I was stronger than an Ogre.
I forced the jaws open. The Matriarch thrashed, its tail whipping the air, but I didn't budge. I dug my fingers into its flesh.
"Feed me," I whispered.
I ripped the Matriarch's head in half.
[ ENTROPY HARVESTED ]
[ LEVEL UP! ]
I stood over the corpse, breathing in the grey smoke. I looked up at the ladder.
"Let's go," I said. "The General is waiting."