My lungs still hadn't caught up.
Blood roared in my ears. Not fear. Not fatigue.
Processing.
Every frame of the last ten minutes — every scream, swing, flame, angle — was etched into my skull. And already, the patterns were forming.
The wyvern didn't kill for food. It didn't eat the corpses.
It killed to maintain a threshold.
The slave population was being controlled.
By someone.
Or something.
Trial World Virellia.
Phase 1: Drudge Culling.
Phase 2: ?
I needed shelter. Data. Supplies. And ideally, something I could stab with.
The slope I'd climbed led to a narrow trail, half-concealed by overgrowth and collapsed rock. To my left, I saw it — jutting from the cliffs like a broken tooth:
A ruined temple.
Stone pillars snapped like ribs. A shattered dome. Stained glass that used to be beautiful, now painted with soot and blood. The whole thing leaned into the mountain like it wanted to fall and bury itself.
A bad place.
Exactly my kind of place.
I slipped inside, quiet as shadow.
The air smelled like rot and old smoke. No guards. No fire. Just echoes.
Good.
I moved through the wreckage, careful not to disturb anything.
Until I stepped on a jawbone.
Snap.
I froze.
A whisper behind me:
"Move, and I gut you like a pig."
Cool metal kissed the back of my neck. A blade.
Slowly, I raised my hands.
Variables increased: +1 unknown hostile.
Weapon detected. Proximity: lethal.
Response time: 1.4 seconds.
Then I heard the voice again — this time, less murderous.
"…You're not with the Wardens."
I stayed still. "No."
"…Not a Herald?"
"Not unless they promote Drudges."
Silence. Then the blade withdrew.
I turned. And saw her.
She couldn't have been older than me — maybe sixteen — but her eyes were war veteran grey. Skin like ash, streaked with temple soot. Hair cropped short. Wielding a jagged short sword with no balance and no mercy.
She looked like someone who'd had hope once. And stabbed it herself.
"…Who are you?" she asked.
"Itsuki."
"What class?"
"Drudge. Level one."
She laughed. Once. It sounded broken.
"Figures. They only send trash to this shard."
Shard?
Before I could ask, she was already walking away, slipping through a half-collapsed archway deeper into the ruins.
"Come on. You'll freeze to death out there. And if the Ash Dogs find you first, you'll wish you had."
I followed.
Partly because I needed warmth.
Mostly because Ash Dogs sounded like something I'd rather not meet alone.
Deeper inside the temple, we found a semi-enclosed crypt. The ceiling had caved in enough to let a sliver of moonlight bleed through, casting jagged shadows across the old stone. It was dry. Defensible. The bones had mostly been cleared.
A campfire flickered weakly in a corner. Beside it: dried roots, three rusty knives, and a small stash of charred meat.
A rat nest.
But a well-organized one.
The girl sat cross-legged and gestured for me to join.
"You can call me Kael."
"Kael. Got it."
"You're not like the others. Most Drudges don't think. They just die."
"Lucky me."
She stared at me across the fire for a long moment.
Then she said:
"Show me your Trait."
I hesitated. "Why?"
"Because if you're lying, I'll kill you."
Fair enough.
I focused, and the system blinked to life.
🧾 Itsuki Amagi
Class: Drudge (?)
Level: 1Trait: [Hyper Cognition]
Bonus Trait: [Creative Threat]
She stared at it. Her eyes widened — for just a moment. Then narrowed.
"…You're the anomaly."
"What?"
"I heard the system whisper earlier. 'Uncatalogued behavior detected.' That was you, wasn't it?"
I didn't answer.
She leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.
"…Hah. You really are cursed."
She wasn't wrong.
Kael tossed me a strip of meat.
"I'm a Cinder Echo. Fire-born. Level three. I got stuck here two Trials ago and couldn't climb out."
"And you've survived this long alone?"
"No. Not alone."
"…Where are the others?"
She didn't answer. Just stared into the fire.
Then:
"They're down in the pit. Feeding the core. Virellia doesn't let anyone leave. Not unless you beat it. Or burn it."
My stomach turned.
"Trial Worlds aren't dungeons," she said. "They're filters. Designed to kill ninety-nine percent. The rest go on."
"To what?"
"To harder filters."
…So it's a system of compression.Trimming the weak.Preserving only outliers.Endless difficulty scaling.
A meat grinder with infinite levels.
I exhaled slowly.
Then the ground trembled.
A low growl echoed through the ruin.
Kael tensed.
"…Shit."
"What is it?"
She looked at me, jaw clenched.
"They found us."
A beat.
Then her blade was in her hand again.
"I hope your genius brain works fast, Itsuki. Because the Ash Dogs don't wait."