Three days later, the real test began.
"Welcome to the mouth of hell, maggots!" Instructor Horgen bellowed.
We stood before a massive iron gate embedded in the side of the mountain base. This was the entrance to Sector 1, the shallowest layer of the Academy Dungeon.
The air here was damp and smelled of ozone and rot. Unlike the Holo-Deck, this was real. If you died here, you didn't respawn. You just became fertilizer for the moss.
"Today is a harvest mission," Horgen explained, pacing before the class. "Your objective is to collect Mana Crystals from Deep-Earth Beetles. Five crystals is a passing grade. Ten is excellent. Anything else you kill, you keep."
He glared at us. "Do not go below Level 5. Down there, the mana density changes. Monsters evolve. If you trigger a Dungeon Break, I will not save you."
The gates creaked open, revealing a dark, bioluminescent tunnel.
"Stay close," I muttered to Elara.
She nodded. We had spent the last three days calibrating her chair. She couldn't do full mental driving yet, but I had rigged a mana-relay that allowed her to steer with minor finger twitches, freeing up her palms for casting.
"And you," I looked at Tobias, who was trembling so hard his armor rattled. "Just don't trip."
"I-I'm good," Tobias squeaked. "I have my shield spell ready."
We descended.
The dungeon was beautiful in a haunting way. The walls were jagged obsidian, glowing with patches of blue moss. Water dripped from stalactites, echoing in the silence.
"Contact," Elara whispered.
Ten meters ahead, three Deep-Earth Beetles scurried out of a fissure. They were the size of large dogs, with mandibles that could snap steel.
"I'll take the lead," I said, drawing my standard-issue steel sword.
"Wait," Jax Thorne's voice rang out from behind us.
Jax and his entourage pushed past us. "Out of the way, F-Rank. Easy points are for the elite."
Jax raised his hand. "Fireball!"
A massive sphere of flame erupted from his palm. It hit the lead beetle and exploded.
BOOM!
The beetle died instantly... but so did the loot. The explosion vaporized the mana crystal inside the insect.
"Idiot," I muttered.
Jax turned, smirking. "Jealous? That's how you clear a room."
"You destroyed the harvest," Elara noted dryly. "The assignment is to collect crystals, not ash."
Jax's face turned red. "Whatever. There's plenty more deeper in. Come on, boys." They marched off, making enough noise to wake the dead.
"Let them go," I said. "We work smart."
We took a side tunnel. It was narrower, forcing us into a line.
"Tobias, light," I ordered.
Tobias conjured a floating orb of light. Immediately, the shadows shifted. A beetle lunged from the ceiling.
"Elara, twelve o'clock high. Pierce shot. Minimum output."
Thwip.
A needle-thin beam of violet mana shot past my ear. It struck the beetle directly in the eye, piercing the brain but leaving the carapace—and the crystal—intact. The bug fell dead at my feet.
"Clean kill," I said, slicing the carapace open to retrieve a glowing blue gem. "That's one."
For the next hour, we were a machine. I acted as the bait, drawing aggro. Tobias provided shields. Elara acted as the surgeon, delivering single, lethal strikes.
We had twenty crystals in the bag. We were rich.
"This is too easy," Tobias laughed, his confidence returning. "We're going to be top of the class!"
I stopped.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
"Quiet," I hissed.
"What?"
"The moss," I pointed to the walls. The glowing blue moss was dimming. It was turning... grey.
Elara checked her chair's sensors. Her eyes went wide. "Kaelen. Mana density just spiked by 400%. Something is draining the ambient mana."
A deep, grinding sound echoed from the depths of the tunnel. It sounded like two mountains rubbing together.
CRASH.
The wall to our left exploded inward.
Dust and debris filled the air. Tobias screamed as he was thrown backward.
I rolled, coming up in a crouch, sword raised.
From the dust, a massive shape emerged. It wasn't a beetle. It stood eight feet tall, made of shifting, jagged black rocks held together by a core of burning red magma.
[Warning: Dungeon Anomaly Detected] [Species: Obsidian Golem - Variant] [Rank: C+]
"A Golem?" Elara gasped, backing her chair up. "That shouldn't be on Level 1!"
"It's a stray," I gritted my teeth. "It must have fallen through a fissure from the lower levels."
The Golem roared—a sound like grinding stone—and locked its glowing eyes on Elara. It sensed her high mana pool. It wanted to eat her.
"Run!" Tobias yelled, scrambling back.
"No time," I shouted. "Elara, can you penetrate that armor?"
"Not with standard shots," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "I need to charge a Rail-Cannon spell. It takes ten seconds."
"Ten seconds," I repeated. The Golem charged, the ground shaking with every step.
"I'll buy you ten," I said, gripping my sword.
"Kaelen, you can't!" she screamed. "You're Rank F! One hit and you're paste!"
"Just charge the damn spell!"
I sprinted forward. Not away from the monster. Toward it.
The Golem swung a fist the size of a boulder.
In my old life, I would have shattered this thing with a thought. Now, I had to rely on physics.
I slid on my knees, passing under the swing. The wind pressure alone nearly knocked me out. I slashed at its ankle joint.
CLANG.
My steel sword chipped. It didn't even scratch the obsidian hide.
Harder than I thought.
The Golem raised its foot to stomp me flat.
Think. Think.
Obsidian is hard, but brittle. It has a cleavage point.
I rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding being crushed. The impact shook the floor, causing stalactites to rain down.
"Five seconds!" Elara shouted, her chair glowing with a blinding violet light as she gathered mana.
The Golem pivoted. It ignored me. It knew the real threat was the girl charging the nuke. It rushed her.
"Hey! Ugly!" I sheathed my sword. I grabbed a loose chunk of rock from the ground.
I didn't throw it at the Golem. I threw it at a cluster of luminous crystals hanging on the ceiling directly above the beast.
Strike.
The crystals shattered, raining down sparkling dust.
"Tobias! Flashbang! Now!" I roared.
Tobias, bless his cowardly heart, panicked and cast Flare.
The light hit the falling crystal dust. The refraction was blinding. A wall of pure white light erupted in the tunnel.
The Golem, a creature of the deep dark, recoiled, covering its eyes. It stumbled.
"Elara!" I screamed, diving out of the line of fire. "NOW!"
"Arcane Art: Rail-Cannon!"
The sound was deafening. It wasn't a beam; it was a physical lance of mana moving at mach speed.
It tore through the air, creating a vacuum tunnel. It hit the Golem in the center of its chest.
There was no explosion. Just a clean, perfect hole punched straight through the obsidian armor and out the other side.
The Golem froze. The magma in its core sputtered and died.
It crumbled into a pile of harmless rocks.
Silence returned to the tunnel, broken only by the heavy breathing of three terrified students.
[System: High-Level Threat Neutralized] [XP Allocation: Massive]
I sat up, dusting off my uniform. My sword was ruined. My knees were bleeding.
Elara lowered her hand. Her glove was smoking, the leather charred. She looked at the pile of rocks, then at me.
"You're insane," she whispered.
I grinned, wiping blood from my cheek. "But we're alive. And I think that core is worth at least 2,000 AP."
I stood up and walked over to the rubble. I dug through the rocks until I found it—a pulsating, fist-sized red core.
"Split fifty-fifty?" I asked, tossing it in the air.
Elara stared at me, and for the first time, a genuine, small smile touched her lips.
"Deal."