He came at me with everything.
The creature surged forward in a burst of claws, teeth, and frustrated rage. Three arms came down at different angles, carving rifts into the ground as if the stone were clay. The echo of that impact reverberated through the tunnel's ribs, and I knew that standing still for even one second meant one second less of life.
I dove sideways, rolling into a floor crack, my body protesting in every joint. The heat from the strike still licked at me. But I didn't run.Not yet.
My eyes scanned the environment like a cornered predator still convinced it could bite the hunter's throat. And there they were — the elements. Small, broken, imperfect... but enough.
Scrap fragments.Stones with stains of ancient soot.Cracks scorched by spells cast here long before me.
Residual magic. Dead heat. Fuel for my art.
I extended my trembling hand. One finger was still tingling from the earlier mental collapse, but I managed to focus.
The system recognized it.
| MAGIC ACTIVATED: Repulse Spark |→ Source: thermal slag + residual coal→ Effect: short-range heat burst
The spark appeared between my fingers with the hesitation of someone about to be swallowed. But it came.And it was enough.
I ran toward a side wall where stones were loose and, using the tip of the pickaxe, struck a rock infused with ferrolume — the magnetic ore I'd been saving. A crack pulsed through the structure. Energy spread like veins of living silver.
The Whisperer hesitated. Maybe out of instinct. Maybe remembering that the last thing it felt inside my head was unpredictability.
"Alright, walking stove," I muttered, "let's see how you handle recycled fire."
I launched the spark straight into the base of the wall.
The energy pulsed, found the ferrolume, and burst into an improvised flame that swept across the floor and licked up the creature's legs.
It screamed again — not mentally this time, but aloud, in pain.
Fire.
Of course.
That was it.
Mental aberrations, runic spells, spiritual eyes... but the body was still flesh.And flesh burns.
I charged in, no time for hesitation. With the pickaxe in hand, I aimed where its largest arm joined the torso. As it turned to strike, I spun, pulled my shoulder back, and brought the pickaxe down with the weight of all my anger and exhaustion.
The blow cracked the bone.
It staggered. Its structure trembled.
And I breathed — not deep, but right.
But it wasn't over yet.
The creature, even wounded, trembling, half its body burning with slag embers, rose again.
Slower.More clumsy.But still alive.
The fight had turned.I'd broken its pride.Cracked its magical shell.Weakened its mind.
But now...Now it wanted to kill.
Not read.Not consume.Not understand.
Kill.
And I thought:
This is it... now I find out if I can win a duel against an ancient abomination with a pickaxe, a rock, and pure stubbornness.
I felt my body reaching its limit.
My heart beat out of rhythm. My arms weighed like they were filled with sand. My legs... they didn't even hurt anymore. They'd stopped trying to warn me. But in the center of my chest, something burned.
Not magic.Rage.
That silent, dry, ancient rage born when you refuse to accept how close the end really is — and if you're going to die, then death better come with broken teeth and open eyes.
And it was in that threshold that something activated.
Not in the system.
Inside me.
A fracture. An impulse. An internal collapse where the brain steps aside and hands over control to the rawest part of the mind — the part that doesn't calculate, only acts. The part that doesn't think... but bites.
The system realized too late.
| STATUS ALTERED: BERSERK (INSTINCTIVE FOCUS) |→ Magical control reduced→ Physical strength increased→ Pain resistance increased→ Duration: unstable→ Note: collateral damage to user expected
The pain vanished — shoved, it seemed, into some dark corner of the mind.
Everything slowed down — or maybe I just got too fast.
The Whisperer raised an arm to strike. I lunged before the movement completed, hurling myself against its warped torso like some animal made of stone, muscle, and pure refusal.
I struck with the pickaxe — once, twice, three times — until bone gave in.The fourth blow came from my elbow.The fifth, from my forehead.
It tried to counterattack, but I was already on its flank.I drove the broken blade I still carried at my waist into the space between its warped ribs.It screamed.I screamed back.
Not in words.In impulse.In fury.
I ripped a piece of the wall itself and slammed it against one of its lateral skulls — the one that looked like a tumor sprouting eyes. The impact cracked both stone and bone.The creature staggered back, eyes blinking out of sync, as if its brain were trying to reboot.
But it didn't fall.Not yet.
It steadied itself on two limbs, leaking dark magic, burned flesh hanging in strips, limbs shaking like branches about to snap.
And still…It stood.
I paused — lungs gasping like they were hungry.Hands trembling.The cracked pickaxe dangled from my grip like an extension of the arm.Its breath mingled with mine.The heat in the room was unbearable.The stench of burnt magical flesh, blood, and split stone filled everything.
There was no strategy left.No control.
Just two beings on their feet, each denying the other the right to fall first.
The creature was only upright by sheer stubbornness. There was no grace in its movement now — just noise. Each step was a clumsy collision of mass, effort, and leftover pride. Its body trembled not from fear, but from failure. What had once been a threatening presence now looked like a heap of meat and shattered enchantment trying not to collapse in front of the one who had already broken it from the inside.
And I — even as my own body hung limp on both sides — took two steps forward.
Just two.
It was enough for her to react.
The creature threw one last strike — a wide, unbalanced swing, two arms flailing like unhinged scythes. I rolled aside with the reflex of someone who's already accepted he'll break something if he fails but will try anyway.
In the fall, my left hand hit the ground and felt heat.
There were still embers there — leftovers from the earlier explosion — silvarite residue, small sparks buried under the debris.
It was automatic.
The magic surged like a spasm — unstable, unfocused, but ready.
I didn't cast with beauty.
I cast with rage.
I cast with the kind of precision only a man who refuses to die can muster.
| MAGIC ACTIVATED: Directed Heat Pulse |→ Source: burning slag + bodily catalyst→ Effect: focused incandescent burst→ Targeting: exposed vital point→ Result: direct thermal impact
The energy gathered in my palm burst forth in a dense line of heat—a raw beam of fire that cut through the air and struck the fractured spot on the Whisperer's chest. The same spot I had opened earlier with my pickaxe. The same place where its warped mental core had pulsed.
The creature stopped.
Completely.
As if the entire world had frozen for a second.
Then... it collapsed inward.
Like a body being sucked into its own center.
Bones retracted. Eyes went dark. Flesh vanished in waves.
And what remained on the ground wasn't a corpse.
It was just the trace.
Ash, fragments... and a lingering sense in the air that something ancient—very ancient—had finally accepted it was long overdue to disappear.
| LOOT COLLECTED |
| Fragment of Psychic Core |→ An organic crystal that vibrates with residual memory.→ Can be used to forge mental spells, decipher runic secrets, or enhance mental resistance.→ Extremely rare.
| Adaptive Bone Membrane |→ A mutable material harvested from the exoskeleton.→ When applied to armor, adapts to the most frequently received damage type.→ Potential for protection runes.
| Cracked Ancestral Voice |→ Residual essence of the creature.→ Contains scattered, ownerless memories.→ Can be fused, sold, or heard—by those with courage (and a strong stomach).
| XP GAINED: +460 |→ Runic Affinity increased: +5% (current total: 15%)
And there I was. Gasping. Filthy. Burned inside and out. But still standing.
I sat on the ground with the grace of a rock tumbling down a staircase, and only then did I realize I was still clutching the pickaxe so tightly that my fingers refused to let go. I released it slowly, like returning a borrowed limb.
In front of me, the creature's fragments still glowed faintly. I picked up what I could with my bare hands. There was no pretending I hadn't won. Not this time. And honestly? I didn't want to pretend.
I smiled.Crooked.But real.
Because, in the end, it's not every day you defeat a mental, emotional, and physical monster all at once.
Now that things had finally calmed down…how the hell was I supposed to get out of that hole?