The first thing Hajime noticed upon gaining consciousness was the headache.
It felt like someone had driven a spike through the center of his skull and then decided to play the drums on it for fun.
The second thing was his ribs—every breath sent a stabbing pain through his chest, sharp enough that he had to fight the urge to stop breathing altogether.
The third was the taste of iron.
He coughed, spat something wet and metallic, and forced his eyes open.
Dim blue lines swam in his vision at first, like someone had smeared glowpaint across his retinas. It took a few blinks before he realized it wasn't his eyes—faint glowstones were embedded high in the distant walls, their light fractured by jagged rock formations. Their glow barely reached where he lay.
Far above, where the shaft should be, there was only black.
No comforting ring of glowstone.
No bridge.
No classmates.
Just darkness.
Sound filtered in next.
Water dripped somewhere nearby—steady, patient. Stone creaked in the distance as fallen debris settled. His own breathing rasped harshly in his ears, echoing off rock much closer than the cavern walls.
Hajime tried to move and discovered he was wedged between two stone spikes.
One jagged spur dug into his right side, the other into his thigh, pinning him in a narrow, slick groove carved into the rock. Cold, shallow water ran under and around him, soaking his clothes and numbing his skin. It tugged faintly at his body, like it had already tried to carry him further but lost momentum.
He remembered falling—the bridge shattering, the Behemoth roaring, Kaori screaming his name.
Then, mid-fall, a sudden sideways force. A rush of ice-cold water smashing into him, wrenching his trajectory off its straight plunge. The Behemoth's massive body had slammed into the wall above somewhere, shattering something. A pressure vein. A hidden water line.
That new torrent had caught him, smashed him through rock like a ragdoll, and spat him out here.
If he'd fallen straight down with the Behemoth?
He would've been paste on some distant floor instead of stuck in a painful but survivable wedge.
"…Lucky," he rasped, voice raw. "In a really messed-up way."
He forced his right hand up, fingers numb from the cold, and gingerly probed his body.
Left arm: tender, hot with deep bruising, but bone intact.
Ribs: several spots sent spikes of agony when pressed—cracked, definitely.
Left leg: white-hot pain the moment he shifted it; a long gash down the shin, with deeper pain screaming fracture.
Internal damage: present, but not catastrophic.
He could still breathe—even if it hurt like hell.
His fingers brushed something hard and cool against his chest.
The pendant.
Hajime closed his hand around it.
Warmth pulsed against his palm—steady, clear. The rainbow waves inside the crystal thrummed in perfect sync with the rhythm of his Soul Core.
No lag.
No distortion.
Quantum-linked.
Kaori.
She would feel that same pulse, wherever she was now—no matter how deep he'd fallen.
A knot in his chest loosened slightly.
"Still here," he murmured. "Both of us."
He shifted his weight, hissing as his leg flared in pain, and reached into his inner pocket. His fingers closed around the cracked edge of his status plate. When he brought it up, he saw spiderweb fractures across its surface, smeared with dried blood.
The numbers flickered but held.
HP: around 25%.
Several stats gray or reduced, marked with a blinking red debuff:
[Mortal Wound – Severe trauma. Physical parameters temporarily reduced.]
"Yeah," Hajime muttered. "No kidding."
He couldn't stay wedged here.
Carefully, using his right arm and good leg, he pushed against the stone spurs. Pain knifed through his ribs. The world tilted. Blackness crept in at the edges—until Resonance pulsed sharply against his chest.
Like a slap.
Like a command.
Gritting his teeth, he transmuted the stone that had made a hole in him, he popped free and slid down the shallow stream, landing in a cold, splashing heap on a lower ledge.
He lay there panting, face pressed against damp stone.
Then he shoved his right hand forward.
"Transmute."
Mana trickled out in a thin, controlled stream. The rock ahead bulged upward into a crude pillar—just enough for him to grab and haul himself into a hunched half-stand.
He leaned back against it, breathing hard.
When his head finally stopped spinning, he looked around properly.
He was at the tail end of a narrow rock channel, where a once-violent flow had slowed to a trickle before vanishing into cracks. The stone sloped upward behind him into darkness—no way he was climbing that in this condition. Ahead, the ledge widened into a sloped rubble field scattered with jagged rock and broken boulders.
Beyond that…
A cavern stretched out, vast and gloomy. Even compared to Floor 60, the mana in the air felt heavy—thick, almost oily. It pressed against his skin, hummed in his ears, pooled in the grooves of the stone.
This wasn't any upper layer.
His Soul Core pulsed uneasily, a low vibration against his ribs.
Multiple tunnels yawned in the cavern walls at various heights. Some were pitch-black. Others glowed faintly with distant light or flickered with intermittent sparks as something moved far, far away.
Monsters would come.
Curious ones.
Hungry ones.
The kind that hunted the wounded and alone.
Hajime sent a Resonance ripple across the stone like sonar. Threat pings returned from several directions—distant and diffuse. Nothing close yet.
What did return clearly, insistently, was something else.
A directional tug.
His Soul Core nudged him toward a specific vector in the cavern. Not the nearest tunnel. Not the safest. Just… there.
A pull like a compass needle refusing to point anywhere else.
Hajime frowned.
"…What is it?" he muttered. "Treasure? Boss room? Instant death?"
The tug didn't fade.
"Fine," he sighed. "You've been right more often than not."
He began moving, leaning heavily on his makeshift brace. Each step was an exercise in precise misery. He used Transmute to shape handholds or flatten dangerously angled stone.
He didn't see the Behemoth at first.
He heard it.
Or rather, he heard the lack of sound around it—the cavern's ambient noise thinning in reverence.
When he finally crested a ridge of rubble, the corpse came into view.
Even broken, it was enormous. The Behemoth lay mangled at the base of a jagged wall, one foreleg bent at an angle nature would never allow. Its hide was split open in several places, stone spikes jutting through muscle and bone. Horns snapped. Neck twisted grotesquely.
A demolished war machine.
Hajime limped closer, eyes scanning the tunnels.
The air around the corpse was warmer, tinged with metallic mana. Resonance pinged it, and the echo made his fingers tingle.
Most people would see a terrifying monster corpse.
Hajime saw materials.
"Sorry, big guy," he muttered. "I need to borrow some parts."
He knelt with a groan near the chest. His left leg screamed; his ribs protested; his body insisted he stop. He ignored all of it and placed his hands on the cracked armor plates.
"Transmute."
The stone-like hide softened, seams glowing faintly as he traced paths through them. Fissures spread, plates peeling back like the opening of a vault. Beneath, ribs and pulped organs gleamed wetly.
He swallowed bile.
Keep going.
Don't think about the meat. Think about the materials.
He carved through the mess toward the focus Resonance highlighted.
The core.
It sat in a cradle of bone—a faceted orb the size of his fist, glowing dimly from within. Even buried, it radiated a suffocating presence, like a miniature sun someone had tried to smother.
He reached in and grabbed it.
Electricity shot up his arm.
For an instant, it felt like he had seized a live transformer with bare skin. Mana surged up his nerves, into his chest, slamming against his Soul Core until his vision went white.
His Soul Devourer trait twitched—hungry.
All it needed was a mental "yes."
Not yet.
His Soul Core pulsed sharply—commanding.
Hajime jerked his hand away, gasping, the orb thudding back into its cradle.
"…Okay," he panted. "Point taken."
Even that brief contact had told him enough.
It was a huge battery in crystal form.
Useful. Later.
He carefully Transmuted a clean channel around the core, extracted it, wrapped it in a thick strip of hide, and fashioned a crude satchel. He slung it over his back.
He noted the best sections of hide and bone for future gear—straight, dense, ideal for weapons or reinforcement.
But not now.
Weight was the enemy.
He straightened and turned back toward that persistent pull.
The Soul Core's tug was stronger now—more insistent, but calmer. Less like a warning, more like a beckoning.
"This way, huh?" he muttered. "Alright. Lead on, mysterious inner voice."
He followed it along the cavern wall, weaving between debris. No monsters yet—lucky. The Behemoth carcass would attract them soon.
The tug led him to an unremarkable stone surface—no markings, no doors. Just rock.
But when he pushed Resonance into it, the feedback changed.
Normal stone felt like static.
This thrummed.
Layered mana currents flowed behind it—organized, structured. His Soul Core pulsed in harmony.
"Of course," he sighed. "Hidden backend access. Figures."
He pressed his hand to the surface.
"Transmute."
The rock yielded easily. He carved a shallow alcove first—enough room to stand. Then sit. Then lie down if needed. He widened it slowly, careful not to disrupt the mana lines too much.
As he dug deeper, the resonance grew sharper—like approaching a generator room.
Five minutes later, his fingertips brushed something impossibly cold.
He cleared the stone around it—and stared.
Embedded in the rock was a massive crystal sphere, nearly the size of a basketball. Perfectly clear, yet filled with swirling inner light.
A Divinity Stone.
It wasn't displayed like loot. It was fused into the bedrock, fed by dozens of thin mana channels flowing into and out of it like veins feeding a heart. Each pulse steady. Stable.
At its base, a tiny outlet had formed. From it, a thin string of liquid dripped into a shallow depression on the floor.
Hajime stared.
"And there's the reactor," he murmured. "And the… plumbing."
He reshaped the floor with a thought.
"Transmute."
The depression widened into a smooth basin. The Divinity Stone's drip fed it steadily.
Within moments, the basin filled with crystal-clear liquid that shimmered faintly in the glowstone light.
...
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Author: "Please... some stones?"
Reader: "No stones, but you get the Skibidi Sigma toilet treatment 🗿🚽."
Author: goofy ahh crying in autotune 😭🎶
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