Chapter 2: The Top Notch Action - Part 1
The silence in the muster yard stretched into a palpable, breathless tension. Every eye remained fixed on the shimmering dungeon archway, its surface now roiling with chaotic, rainbow-hued energy—a visual manifestation of the SSS difficulty's reality-bending chaos. The timer above it glowed with cruel, red numerals: 14:48... 14:47...
Elder Elara's galactic eyes narrowed, analyzing the energy signature. "The Caverns of Echoes, under Abyssal Nightmare rules. The dungeon's core identity—sound-based puzzles and stealth—remains. But the parameters are now... malignant. Every echo will carry psychic backlash. Shadows will have physical weight. Gravity will pulse irregularly. The monsters will not just be stronger; they will be conceptual."
Pro Hunter Vance crossed his arms, a grim smirk on his scarred face. "A Jobless with a museum on his back. Either the most arrogant suicide in Academy history, or we're about to witness something that'll break our grading rubrics."
Bolas, recovering from his humiliation, scoffed loudly for the crowd. "He's already dead! The first scream-trap will shatter his mind. He won't last thirty seconds!"
But the crowd's earlier mockery had faded into uneasy quiet. The sheer audacity of the choice held a perverse gravity. They watched, and they waited.
---
Inside the Caverns of Echoes (SSS Difficulty)
The transition wasn't a step but a violent translation. One moment, Rocky stood before an archway; the next, he was elsewhere. The air was thick, cold, and carried a sub-audible hum that vibrated in his teeth. The familiar E-Rank tutorial cave—a simple, glowing cavern with harmless Echo Bats—was gone. In its place was a cathedral of nightmare geology.
The walls weren't stone; they were obsidian mirrors, fractured and shifting, reflecting infinite, distorted copies of himself and his gear. The ground was a spongy, bioluminescent moss that pulsed with a slow, sickening light, like a giant's heartbeat. Stalactites and stalagmites weren't rock, but crystalline formations that chimed with a haunting, dissonant melody at the slightest vibration. The cave's "echo" mechanic was now a living, predatory thing.
Perception Check (Enhanced): His senses, honed by countless [Keen Hearing] and [Environmental Awareness] passives, immediately cataloged the threats. The hum was a psychic dampener—a [Minor Debuff] to concentration. The pulsing light was a visual strobe that could induce seizures. The chiming crystals would amplify sound into physical or mental attacks.
First Rule of The Jobless: No class bonuses meant no class weaknesses. No guided path meant every tool had to be self-taught, every synergy manually engineered. The system saw him as empty. He had to be full of everything.
A skittering sound, multiplied a thousand times by the mirrors and crystals. From the shadows between the mirrored walls, shapes emerged. Not simple Echo Bats. These were Echo Wraiths (SSS Variant). Semi-corporeal, bat-like creatures whose bodies were composed of solidified sound waves. Their mere presence caused the crystals to ring, sending piercing Sonic Shriek attacks—invisible concussive waves that could liquefy organs and shatter bone.
A swarm of twenty descended from the darkness, their shrieks coalescing into a physical wall of distortion.
Rocky didn't panic. He moved.
Action 1: Environmental Assessment & Gear Limitation Acknowledgment.
· Limitation: Load Weight and Mobility Penalty. The mountain of gear had a cost. His [Stamina Regen] was reduced by 40%. His base movement speed was halved. A normal Hunter would rely on class skills like [Flash Step] or [Wind Walk] to evade. He had no such skills. He had physics, strength, and technique.
He didn't try to outrun the sound wave. Instead, he used the Unmoving Rock Stance, bracing his legs in the spongy moss. He raised the hexagonal ballistic shield, not just as a wall, but angling it precisely.
Technique Synergy: [Deflective Parry] + [Basic Physics] + [Shield Proficiency].
The Sonic Shriek struck the polycarbonate-alloy shield. Instead of trying to absorb the full force (which would have transmitted devastating kinetic energy through his body, despite the shield), he used the shield's angled surface and a subtle [Cyclone Parry] wrist motion to deflect the majority of the concussive energy upwards. The deflected sound wave hit a cluster of singing stalactites, which shattered in a cascade of deadly, melodic shrapnel that peppered the ceiling above the wraiths.
Action 2: Offensive Response - Weapon Selection Rationale.
· Limitation: Weapon Switching Speed and Stamina Drain. Drawing a weapon from his overloaded kit took time. He couldn't instant-summon a sword like a Warrior. Every choice had an opportunity cost.
The wraiths were agile, flying, and sonic-based. A sword was useless. A rifle required precision aiming against fast, small, numerous targets in poor, strobe-light conditions. The shotgun had spread, but limited range.
His hand went to the crystalline staff in his right hand. It pulsed with soft blue light. To the mocking crowd, it had looked like a Mage's affectation. It was not.
Technique: [Arcane Resonance Tap].
He wasn't a Mage. He had no Mana Pool in the system's sense. But he had learned a crude, incredibly inefficient workaround: using arcane-reactive materials as a focus to borrow and redirect ambient magical energy. The staff was a tuning fork, not a battery. He slammed its base onto the singing moss.
The pulse from the staff interfered with the cavern' own resonant frequency. For a split second, the haunting chime of the crystals stuttered. The Echo Wraiths, beings of solidified sound, physically convulsed, their forms blurring.
Action 3: Follow-up - Exploiting the Opening.
This was his window. But the wraiths were still twenty, and scattered. AOE (Area of Effect) was needed. He dropped the staff (letting it lean against his leg), and in one fluid motion, his left hand drew the bullwhip from his belt while his right released the shield's grip and went to the Benelli M4 shotgun mounted on his hip.
Technique Combo: [Binding Lash] + [Prepared Action].
The bullwhip cracked, not to damage, but to entangle. [Weighted Scabbard Toss] principle applied to a flexible weapon. The tip wrapped around the base of a large, chiming stalagmite. He yanked hard, using his grounded [Unmoving Rock] strength. The crystalline column snapped at its base.
Technique: [Improvised Creation] / [Environmental Weaponization].
He caught the falling, 5-foot-long sonic crystal with his now-free left hand. It was heavy and vibrated painfully in his grip, a constant [Minor Sonic Damage] ticking at his HP. He raised it like a crude, giant tuning fork.
Technique Synergy: [Arcane Resonance Tap] + [Improvised Weapon Mastery].
He touched the humming tip of the crystalline staff to the broken end of the stalagmite he held. The staff's arcane pulse traveled into the larger crystal, amplifying wildly. He then swung the giant crystal like a baseball bat, not at the wraiths, but at another large stalactite.
CRACK-BOOOOOOOOOM.
A catastrophic sympathetic resonance erupted. A cascade of sonic energy, channeled and amplified through the cavern's own nightmare geometry, exploded outwards in a visible, rippling wave of distorted air. The Echo Wraiths, attuned to sound, had no defense against this magnitude of their own element. They dissolved into puffs of silent mist, their cohesive sound-forms shattered into harmless noise.
The violent wave also shattered every mirror in a thirty-foot radius, ending the infinite reflections. The ground moss dimmed, stunned. Silence, deep and absolute, fell for a moment.
Cost Assessment:
· Stamina: 25% depleted from the shield brace, whip pull, and wielding the heavy crystal.
· HP: 5% depleted from sonic feedback and crystal vibration.
· Equipment: Bullwhip slightly frayed. Crystalline staff's pulse dimmer, needing 10 minutes to recharge ambient energy. Shotgun unused.
· Time Elapsed: 1 minute, 12 seconds.
Rocky took a deep breath, invoking [Combat Breath] to steady himself. He propped the spent stalagmite against a wall, retrieved his staff, and reshouldered his shield. The path ahead curved downward into deeper darkness. The cavern was "wounded" but not dead. It would adapt. SSS dungeons learned.
He moved forward, not with the light, graceful steps of a Rogue, but with the deliberate, heavy, yet perfectly balanced tread of a one-man army. The [Calm Center Stance] was his default movement now, his center of gravity constantly micro-adjusted for the uneven, pulsing terrain and his unbalanced load.
The cavern responded. The shattered mirrors began to weep a viscous, mercury-like fluid that pooled and formed into shapes—Mirror Slimes (SSS Variant), reflective oozes that could perfectly mimic the physical properties of anything they touched. Touch one, and your sword arm might become as heavy as lead, or your boot might become slippery as ice.
Rocky saw the first one oozing toward his discarded stalagmite shard. It touched it, and its surface instantly hardened into crystalline spikes.
Weapon Selection: Fire was effective against oozes. But environmental hazard: unknown air composition. A [Fireball] could consume oxygen or ignite volatile spores. He had no fire magic. He had incendiary 12-gauge rounds in his shotgun.
Limitation: Ammunition and Logistics. He carried a finite supply. Every shell, every bullet, every magazine was weight and space. He couldn't conjure ammo. Using the shotgun now meant less for a potential bigger threat later. It was a constant calculus.
He made the call. The Benelli M4 came up smoothly to his shoulder. [Quick Reload Mastery] had him instinctively aware the tube was full (7+1). No time for fancy aiming. The Mirror Slime was 15 feet away, mimicking sharp crystal.
Technique: [Combat Shotgunry - Pattern Control]. He didn't aim for center mass. He aimed at the ground in front of the slime. The spread of buckshot kicked up chunks of the bioluminescent moss and shattered small crystal fragments on the cave floor. The debris sprayed over the slime's surface.
The slime, reacting to the multiple stimuli, tried to mimic everything at once—soft moss, hard crystal, metallic buckshot. Its cohesion failed. It quivered, confused, its mimetic ability overloaded by chaotic input.
Rocky advanced, not firing again. He swapped the shotgun to his left hand (hooked under the sling) and drew the European longsword with his right. Not for slashing. He reversed his grip, holding it like a giant ice pick.
Technique: [Pommel Strike Sudden] + [Earth Shaker Step].
He stomped down hard [Earth Shaker Step] next to the confused slime, the impact further disrupting it. Then he drove the sword's heavy pommel down onto its core with the [Falling Mountain] commitment. The solid steel crushed the unstable core. The slime dissipated into inert mercury droplets.
Efficiency. One (potentially) expensive shotgun shell to set up, one free sword strike to finish. Stamina cost: moderate. Ammunition preserved.
He repeated variations of this tactical puzzle-solving for the next eight minutes. He used throwing knives to strike specific, load-bearing crystals and cause cave-ins on clusters of Stone Puppets (animated rock formations). He used the grapple hook from his mobility kit to swing over a chasm filled with Acid-Echo Pools, his weight and gear making the swing perilously slow, requiring perfect [Momentum Transfer] timing. He used the KAC SR-25 rifle not to kill, but for [Precision Shooting] to trigger distant, unstable crystal formations to collapse and block pursuing swarms of Sonic Scarabs.
Every action was a testament to a brutal, self-imposed doctrine:
1. Adaptability Over Specialization: Use whatever tool disrupts the enemy's strength or exploits the environment.
2. Resource Consciousness: Ammo, stamina, and gear durability were non-renewable mid-dungeon. Every use had to count.
3. System Defiance: His techniques were not [Skills] granted by the world. They were [Learned Behaviors], [Muscle Memory], and [Applied Knowledge]. The system tracked his HP and Stamina, but it didn't understand his martial flow, his ballistic calculations, or his arcane interference tricks. He operated in the blind spots of its logic.
The final chamber opened before him—a vast geodesic dome. In the center, on a pedestal of silent obsidian, pulsed the Dungeon Core (Echo Heart), now corrupted into a Cacophony Core by the SSS difficulty. It wasn't a monster; it was an environmental condition generator. It pulsed, and the very air thickened into water-like resistance. It pulsed again, and gravity inverted locally, sending shattered crystal shards floating upward. It pulsed a third time, and a devastating Dirge of Annihilation—a visible, spiraling wave of sonic disintegration—began to form around it, expanding slowly to fill the entire dome.
The core was protected by a rotating barrier of Resonant Phantom Knights, four spectral warriors whose armor vibrated at frequencies that could shatter weapons on contact. Physical attacks were nearly useless. Magical attacks were absorbed and reflected as sonic energy.
Timer: 04:17 remaining.
Rocky stood at the entrance, assessing. Direct assault was suicide. The phantom knights would negate melee. The dirge would erase him in 30 seconds. The shifting gravity and resistant air negated mobility and projectile accuracy.
This was the SSS difficulty's ultimate check: a puzzle that required either overwhelming, specialized power (an A-rank Mage's area nullification, an S-rank Warrior's reality-sundering strike) or perfect, multi-disciplinary teamwork.
He was one man. A Jobless. With an arsenal of seemingly mismatched tools.
A slow smile touched his lips. This was the test. Not of his power, but of his understanding.
Phase 1: Neutralize the Phantom Knights.
Their weakness was not force, but harmonic cancellation. They were beings of pure, structured sound. He needed to introduce an equal and opposite waveform.
He set down his duffel bag with a heavy thud. Opened it. Inside, amidst carefully packed ammo, rations, and tools, was a piece of non-combat gear: a portable, high-wattage sonic emitter—technology, not magic, designed for seismic surveying and bedrock analysis. He powered it on, its display humming. He calibrated it, not to attack the knights, but to analyze the resonant frequency of the chamber they were generating.
Technique: [Techno-Arcane Synchronization]. He placed the crystalline staff against the emitter's output node. The staff began to glow erratically, absorbing the technological sonic data and converting it into an arcane resonance pattern. It was a hack, a bridging of two non-compatible systems.
He aimed the staff at the nearest Phantom Knight and activated the emitter. A visible, twisting wave of anti-sound—a cancellation waveform—lashed out. It didn't damage. It erased. Where it touched the knight, the spectral armor simply unwound into silence. One knight vanished. Then a second. The process was slow, draining the staff's borrowed energy rapidly and chewing through the emitter's battery.
Stamina: Holding the staff steady against the feedback cost 10%.
Gear: Sonic emitter battery at 40%. Staff at near-depletion.
Two knights remained. Not enough time or power for the same trick. The Dirge was halfway across the dome.
Phase 2: Create an Attack Vector.
He needed to reach the core, but the resistant air was like wading through syrup, and gravity might flip at any moment. He needed to move in a straight, unimpeded line.
He looked at his collapsible tactical spear. Then at the grapple hook. An idea coalesced.
He extended the spear to its full 8-foot length. Using a band of ultra-strong synthetic cord from his kit, he tied one end to the spear's haft, just behind the head, and the other to his grapple hook. He wasn't making a spear. He was making a ballistic harpoon.
Technique: [Improvised Creation] / [Ballistic Artillery].
He planted the butt of the spear into a crack in the floor, aiming it roughly at the Cacophony Core. He then took the Barrett M107A1 .50 cal sniper rifle from his back. This was its purpose: not precision, but catastrophic kinetic delivery. He loaded a single Raufoss Mk 211 multipurpose round—an armor-piercing, explosive, incendiary round.
He placed the rifle's muzzle against the tied-on grapple hook, which was now pressed against the spear's launch point. This was insanely dangerous. The rifle wasn't a harpoon gun. The backblast and shockwave could shatter the spear or kill him.
He invoked [Iron Will] and [Pain Tolerance]. He took a [Combat Breath], exhaled half, and held it.
He pulled the trigger.
BOOM.
The sound in the resonant chamber was cataclysmic. The muzzle blast scorched the ground and his armor. The shockwave battered him, costing another 5% HP. But the .50 cal round, its velocity partially transferred to the grapple hook assembly, launched the tactical spear like a hypersonic javelin.
The spear, trailing its cord, tore through the resistant air, unaffected by the local gravity. It crossed the dome in a blur and struck the Cacophony Core not with its point, but with its side. The Raufoss round, impacting just behind, detonated.
The explosion was muffled by the core's own energy field, but the kinetic and concussive force was immense. The core cracked, its pulsing rhythm stuttering violently. The expanding Dirge wavered. The remaining Phantom Knights flickered.
Phase 3: The Final Stroke.
The spear was now embedded near the core, its cord stretching back to Rocky. The gravity chose that moment to invert. Rocky's feet left the ground. He was now "falling" toward the ceiling.
He didn't fight it. He used it. As he floated upward, he reeled himself along the cord, hand over hand [Rope Climb II], pulling himself down relative to the floor, but toward the core. He was a pendulum swing in zero-g.
He passed through the fading Dirge wave. It scoured his armor, dealing 15% HP damage, leaving glowing cracks in the polycarbonate shield still on his arm.
He reached the core. The two remaining Phantom Knights materialized beside him, their vibrating swords raising for a killing strike.
He had one hand on the cord. The other was free.
He didn't draw a weapon. He used the shield. Not to block. To resonate.
Technique: [Resonant Edge] principle applied to a shield.
He slammed the edge of his ballistic shield into the cracked Cacophony Core. The core, already vibrating at its catastrophic failure frequency, met the rigid, foreign object. The shield, designed to absorb and disperse energy, couldn't handle this specific, magical frequency.
It shattered. But in shattering, it created a final, chaotic interference pattern.
The Cacophony Core exploded.
Not with fire, but with a Silent Bloom.
A sphere of absolute, perfect silence expanded, erasing the phantom knights, smoothing the chaotic air, neutralizing the gravity field. Rocky was thrown back by the release of energy, hitting the now-normal ground and rolling with [Agile Roll] to disperse the impact.
He lay there for a moment, breathing heavily in the sudden, profound quiet. The nightmare geometry of the cavern reverted. The walls became simple, damp stone. The glowing moss became ordinary lichen. The silence was just... silence.
A soft chime echoed in the chamber, and a system message, visible only to him, appeared in the air:
[Dungeon Cleared: The Caverns of Echoes (SSS Difficulty)]
[Time: 14 minutes, 59 seconds]
[Rating: Flawless]
[Rewards: Suppressed due to Jobless Class. Title Available: "Reality's Gambit"]
He slowly got to his feet. His body ached. His gear was a mess: shield destroyed, staff inert, shotgun and rifle expended of one round each, bullwhip frayed, sonic emitter dead, armor cracked. His HP sat at 35%, Stamina at 15%.
But he had cleared it. Alone. Jobless. Against an Abyssal Nightmare.
He collected his spear, the cord now fused to it by the explosion. He shouldered his depleted duffel bag. He looked at the destroyed shield, then left it. A tool, spent in its purpose.
He walked back toward the entrance archway, his steps heavy but even. The timer above it, visible from inside, hit 00:01... and then 00:00.
---
Outside, in the Muster Yard.
The silence had become agonizing. The red timer glowed: 00:00.
Bolas let out a loud, forced laugh. "See! Timed out! Or more likely, disintegrated! I told you! Not even dust left!"
Elder Elara's face was unreadable. Pro Hunter Vance had uncrossed his arms, his body tense.
Rika chewed her lip, her earlier fluster replaced by genuine anxiety.
Then, the archway shimmered. Not the violent chaos of entry, but a calm, golden light.
A figure stepped through.
Rocky emerged. He was battered, scorched, his armor damaged, one shield missing, his gear visibly depleted and worn. But he stood. He walked. His gray eyes were calm, though rimmed with fatigue. He carried the fused spear-harpoon like a standard, the scarred crystalline staff in his belt, the massive sniper rifle still across his back.
The absolute, deafening silence returned, deeper than before.
He looked at the stunned faces, at Bolas whose mouth hung open, at Elder Elara whose galactic eyes were wide with disbelief, at Vance who was now grinning like a wolf.
Rocky stopped in the center of the yard. He didn't speak. He simply reached into a pouch and withdrew a small, smooth, dark stone—the E-Rank Dungeon Core, now purified and inert, its SSS corruption cleansed. He held it up so it caught the sun.
Proof.
The silence broke.
Not with cheers, but with a collective, shuddering intake of breath from five hundred aspirants.
Elder Elara found her voice first, amplified by magic, trembling with an emotion no one could place—awe, fear, excitement. "Aspirant Rocky. Jobless Class. Has cleared... an E-Rank dungeon... on SSS Abyssal Nightmare difficulty. Time: within limit. Condition: victorious."
She paused, the weight of the statement crushing all previous mockery. "The preliminary examination... is passed."
Then, the yard erupted. Not in mockery, but in pure, unadulterated shock. The whispers were no longer dismissive; they were frantic, terrified, reverent.
"He... he actually..."
"SSS... with that gear... how?"
"Jobless? JOBLESS?!"
"He's not a porter... he's a monster."
Bolas's face had turned from purple to ashen. His script was in tatters. The "pretty pack mule" had just accomplished something no aspirant in Academy history had ever dared attempt, let alone achieved.
Pro Hunter Vance jumped down from the balcony, landing with a thud that echoed in the sudden quiet. He strode up to Rocky, looking him up and down, noting every scorch mark, every bit of damaged gear, the shattered shield's absence.
"Kid," Vance said, his voice low but carrying. "That gear. It's not just for show, is it? It's all functional. You used it. All of it."
Rocky met his gaze, exhaustion clear but focus undimmed. "A tool for every problem, sir. Even if you have to make the tool on the spot."
Vance's grin widened. "And the cost? You're running on fumes. Your shield's gone. Your fancy stick's dead. Ammo spent."
"Resources are limited," Rocky acknowledged, his voice steady. "The first lesson of being Jobless. You have no infinite mana pool, no bottomless stamina from class perks. You have what you carry. And your wits."
Vance laughed, a sharp, barking sound. He turned to the stunned crowd, his voice booming. "YOU SEE THIS? This is what real hunting looks like! It's not about flashing skills and pretty magic! It's about problem-solving! It's about using every damn thing at your disposal to survive and win! He didn't overpower that dungeon! He out-thought it! He jury-rigged solutions from garbage and guts!"
He clapped a heavy hand on Rocky's shoulder. "You're through to the next round, kid. Get patched up. We're not done with you yet."
As Rocky nodded and began to walk toward the infirmary tent, followed by the hushed, staring eyes of the entire Academy, the balance of his path was laid bare for all to see:
The Price of Being The Arsenal:
· Weight & Mobility: He was slow. Agile opponents could outmaneuver him.
· Resource Intense: Every fight cost ammunition, gear durability, and physical stamina he couldn't rapidly regenerate.
· Setup Time: His most powerful combos required preparation. He was vulnerable in transition.
· System Neglect: He received no bonus rewards, no class-granted healing, no automatic skill upgrades. Every scrap of power was earned the hardest way possible.
· Constant Calculus: Every engagement was a logistics puzzle: Is this threat worth a bullet? Can I solve this without breaking my gear? Do I have the stamina to carry this plan out?
He had passed the first test not through overwhelming power, but through relentless adaptability and brutal, pragmatic efficiency. He wasn't a hero of the system. He was a loophole. A glitch in the class-based reality. And he had just announced his presence with a silence more deafening than any dungeon's cacophony.
The Hunter Academy, and the world it served, would never look at a "Jobless" the same way again. The legend of the one-man army had taken its first, irrevocable step.