The third level of the Virestone Caverns wasn't supposed to have anything worse than low-tier elementals and the occasional armored crawler.
At least, that's what the maps said.
Maps, Lucas decided, were liars.
He first felt it before he saw it — a shift in the air, like the dungeon itself had taken a deep breath. Then came the sound: not footsteps, but a scraping, deliberate drag, like claws across stone.
From the shadows ahead stepped something tall, lean, and wrong.
Its body was half-mantid, half-serpent, all sinew and armor, with a split face that clicked in unsettling rhythms. Its four arms each ended in hooked claws, dripping a faint green liquid.
Virefang Stalker — a predator that normally hunted deep-dungeon apex beasts. The kind of monster no solo delver should face at Level 7.
It moved fast. Too fast.
Lucas's Veil Step got him out of the first strike's path, but the second swipe caught his arm, tearing through leather and skin. He landed hard, breath ragged.
The stalker didn't charge blindly — it circled, testing his reactions, cutting off escape angles. It was hunting him the way he sometimes hunted others — patient, precise.
Lucas tried the Shatterhorn Core, but the shockwave barely staggered it.
His blade glanced off its plated shoulders.
Molten blood tactic from before? Worthless — it bled poison now.
Every attack was calculated. Every feint drew him closer to a wall.
Twice, its claws grazed him, sending burning poison lancing through his veins. Twice, he barely survived — once by throwing himself into a shallow underground stream, another by using a collapsing stalagmite as a makeshift shield.
By the third near-death, Lucas wasn't thinking about survival anymore. He was angry.
Angry at being toyed with.
He forced himself to slow down, matching the monster's patience with his own.
The cavern had narrow choke points where stalactites hung low and the floor dipped into slick moss. The stalker avoided them — too dangerous for a creature its size.
Which meant it feared them.
Lucas let it chase him, stumbling, feigning weakness. Each retreat took him closer to the moss pit. At the last moment, when it lunged, he Veil Stepped not backward, but past it, slashing the moss-covered supports of the stalactite cluster.
They crashed down in a deafening roar, pinning the Virefang's lower body.
The fight wasn't over — it writhed, clawing furiously — but with its movement crippled, Lucas went for the only unarmored spot: the thin slit under its jaw.
One precise strike. Then another.
The monster twitched once, then went still.
From its remains, he found a single Virefang Spine Shard — black, needle-thin, and pulsing faintly with toxic energy.
A consumable weapon, lethal to almost anything if it pierced flesh, but usable only twice in a single day before the poison degraded.
Lucas stared at it for a long moment before tucking it away.
He'd just gained something that could turn the tide in a fight — but only if he was willing to pay the risk of getting close enough to use it.