Chapter 1
The cracked vinyl seat groaned under Kazuo Tanaka’s weight as the bus lurched around a corner. Rain streaked the grimy windows, blurring the neon signs of the city into watery smears of pink and green. He clutched a crumpled plastic bag tighter, knuckles white. Inside, a single rented DVD case dug into his palm. “Just need to get home,” he muttered, avoiding eye contact with the woman across the aisle. Her perfume was too sweet, cloying. He stared at the floor instead, tracing a faded gum stain with his toe.
A sudden, violent jerk slammed him sideways. Metal shrieked. Glass exploded inward like frozen breath. Kazuo’s head cracked against the window frame. Darkness swallowed him whole, thick and silent. No pain. Just the fading echo of screams, then nothing.
Cold stone pressed against his cheek. The air tasted of damp earth, blood, and something older, metallic and sharp. He gasped, pushing himself up on trembling arms. Flickering torchlight cast long, dancing shadows on rough-hewn walls. Chains hung from rusted iron rings. This wasn’t the street. This wasn’t home. Panic clawed at his throat. He scrambled back, his hand landing in a sticky puddle that smelled faintly of copper. *Where am I?* The question screamed silently in his skull.
His vision swam, then snapped into unnatural focus. Jagged green letters burned against the damp wall beside him: **** He flinched. The words vanished. He blinked, heart hammering against his ribs. Staring hard at the stone floor, another overlay flared: **** What the hell was happening? Was he hallucinating? Concussed? The bus crash… the shattering glass… had he died? The thought sent a fresh wave of icy terror through him.
Stumbling forward on unsteady legs, Kazuo moved deeper into the oppressive gloom. The torchlight faded, replaced by the eerie, shifting glow of the moss clinging to the walls. The silence was absolute, broken only by the frantic rasp of his own breathing and the drip-drip of unseen water. Then, a new sound. A dry, skittering rustle. Multiple sources. Close. He froze, pressing himself against the cold stone. Shadows detached themselves from the deeper darkness near the wall – three dog-sized shapes, armored in iridescent black chitin, scuttling towards him on too many jointed legs. Jagged mandibles clicked hungrily. Instinctively, he focused on the nearest one. **** The words burned green in his vision. Monsters. Real monsters.
Pure, animal terror seized him. He wasn’t a fighter. He was the guy who avoided eye contact on the bus. A strangled cry escaped his lips as he scrambled backwards, his foot catching on a loose chunk of dungeon basalt. He stumbled, fell hard, the impact jarring his bones. The scarabs surged forward, their clicking mandibles snapping inches from his face. He smelled the damp earth on their shells, saw the pinpricks of reflected light in their compound eyes. Desperation overrode panic. His fingers scrabbled in the grit, closing around the rock he’d tripped over – rough, heavy, about the size of his fist.
He swung blindly. The rock connected with a sickening *crack* against the leading scarab’s head. Greenish ichor splattered his hand, cold and sticky. The creature reeled, its legs spasming. The other two hesitated for a split second, their skittering rhythm disrupted. Kazuo didn’t think, didn’t plan. He heaved the rock again, bringing it down with all his weight onto the stunned scarab’s back. The chitin buckled with a wet crunch. It stopped moving. A faint chime echoed in his skull, almost lost beneath the frantic pounding of his own heart. **** flashed briefly in his vision.
The remaining scarabs clicked furiously, circling. He scrambled back, clutching the blood-slicked rock. The corridor branched ahead. He chose the narrower passage, stumbling over uneven stones. The oppressive silence returned, heavier now, punctuated only by the frantic echo of his own footsteps and the distant, chilling screech of *something* much larger echoing through the stone labyrinth. The air grew colder, smelling of ancient dust and despair. He felt utterly, terrifyingly alone – a loneliness that gnawed deeper than the isolation of his cramped apartment ever had. At least there, he’d had the illusion of connection flickering on a screen. Here, there was only stone, darkness, and the promise of unseen teeth.
Rounding a jagged outcrop, a flicker of dull metal caught his eye. Tucked into a shallow alcove lay a small, battered wooden chest, bound with rusted iron straps. It seemed absurdly out of place. Hope, sharp and sudden, pierced his terror. *Treasure? A weapon?* His mind raced – gold to buy passage, a sword to defend himself. Greed, a feeling he barely recognized, surged hot and blinding. He lunged for it, fingers fumbling with the crude latch. The lid creaked open a fraction. A faint *click* sounded beneath his feet. The stone floor vanished. He plummeted into suffocating darkness with a choked gasp, landing with a sickening thud on a pile of damp, foul-smelling refuse.
Dazed, pain radiating from his shoulder, he pushed himself up. Torchlight flared, revealing a low-ceilinged cavern thick with the stench of unwashed bodies, rancid meat, and smoke. Dozens of small, hunched figures froze mid-scuffle. Greenish skin, pointed ears, beady eyes wide with surprise, then predatory glee. **** The notification flashed uselessly. *Too many*. A guttural shout echoed, and the pack surged forward like a wave of feral rats. Clubs, sharpened bones, and filthy hands grabbed at him. He swung the rock wildly, cracking one skull, but others swarmed his legs, his arms. A crude club slammed into his temple. Stars exploded. His world narrowed to the stink of goblin breath and the crushing weight of bodies pinning him down. Consciousness faded in and out to the sound of shrill, victorious chittering.
Rough hands dragged him across gritty stone. His head throbbed, vision swimming. They hauled him into a smaller, damp alcove barred by thick, rusted iron. The goblins shoved him violently inside. He landed hard on cold, filthy straw. The heavy iron gate slammed shut with a final, echoing clang. Outside, the pack pressed against the bars, yellowed teeth bared in grotesque grins, clawed fingers poking through. Their excited jabbering filled the cell. He scrambled back until his spine hit the unyielding wall. Escape was impossible. The bars were thick, the lock crude but solid. The goblins’ eyes held no mercy, only a hungry anticipation that made his stomach churn.
Time became a blur of throbbing pain and gnawing terror. He drifted in and out of consciousness. The goblins outside eventually grew bored, leaving only a single, bored guard who occasionally rattled the bars just to see him flinch. Hunger and thirst clawed at him. He tried to focus, to use **Appraisal** on the lock, the bars, the guard. **** **** Useless information. He had no key, no strength. The guard just leered. He slumped against the wall, despair a cold stone in his chest. This was his end: a meal for monsters in a forgotten hole. The isolation was absolute, crushing. He closed his eyes, wishing for the flickering, false intimacy of his screen. Anything but this.
A sharp, wet *thwack* jolted him awake. The guard slumped silently against the bars, a crude arrow jutting from its temple. Before Kazuo could move, new figures slipped from the darkness—female goblins, taller, too quiet, their eyes gleaming like wet stone. The leader unlocked the cell. They dragged him upright, binding his wrists above his head.
He didn’t see the first blow coming. It wasn’t claws or teeth—it was *something worse*: the methodical way they stripped away his defenses, the deliberate cruelty in their touchless study of him. The Huntress stepped close, inspecting him like a craftsman examining raw material. A guttural word passed among them, followed by pain that lit every nerve like fire. The world blurred into flashes of sound and movement—the ring biting his wrists, the stench of iron and moss, his mind fracturing under humiliation and terror.
When it ended, he was trembling, half-conscious, his body a map of bruises and raw skin. A green screen pulsed before his eyes: ****
The absurdity of it almost broke him. That the world could turn his degradation into a *mechanic* felt like a divine joke.
Time lost meaning. The goblins took turns using him for their own ritual—each one leaving him weaker, colder. The system messages stacked endlessly in his vision, mocking him with level-ups he hadn’t earned. By the end, he couldn’t lift his head. His wrists bled freely.
When silence finally fell, a final notification seared across his vision: ****
Suddenly their guttural noises became words. They spoke about him, not to him—clinical, detached, already discussing how to carve up the remains.
Kazuo realized, with perfect clarity, that whatever humanity this place still recognized was gone.
.
The knowledge of **Bow Proficiency - Level 10** burned like cold fire through his veins. Every shape and distance snapped into cruel, geometric clarity. The Huntress’s bow glimmered in his vision, her throat pulsing in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat.
He moved. The ring above him cracked free with a shriek of metal, dust cascading as he lunged. His hands found the bow, an arrow—motion smooth, unnatural, borrowed. He turned and drew, string to cheek, sight locked on the Huntress.
The air itself held still. The sound of his own breath filled his skull, measured and inhuman. The goblin’s eyes widened, her command dying on her tongue. It wasn’t the arrow that silenced her—it was the way he stood. Balanced. Exact. Predator. The same stance their kind used when taking life.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then the others shrank back, instincts faltering before this inverted prey.
Kazuo’s arms trembled—not from effort, but from something deeper, colder. The knowledge that this perfect shot was born from degradation made his stomach twist. The bowstring hummed softly, like a held scream.
“*Mercy!*” the Huntress rasped, the Goblin Tongue twisting the word into a harsh plea. “Spare this one, Seed-Taker!” Her luminous eyes darted from the arrow point to Kazuo’s face, wide with genuine terror. “We did not know! We saw only weakness, not the hidden fang!” The other goblins echoed her plea in guttural whispers, shrinking back against the damp stone walls, their earlier lust replaced by raw fear. The crude feast-knives they had been preparing clattered to the floor. Kazuo flinched at the grating sound of their voices, the meaning crashing into his mind through the newly acquired skill. Understanding their vile plans only fueled the cold fire burning in his veins.
He kept the bow drawn, the string biting into his fingers, his entire body trembling with exhaustion and adrenaline. The phantom knowledge of **Bow Proficiency - Level 10** screamed at him to loose the arrow, to punch it through her skull and scatter the rest. But escape was impossible alone in this labyrinth. His voice, when it came, was a raw scrape. “My life... for passage,” he demanded in Japanese, the words feeling alien and useless. Then, forcing the guttural clicks and hisses of the Goblin Tongue through his own lips, the stolen language feeling like poison: “*Your lives... for the path out. Show me the surface gate. Now.*”
The Huntress flinched as if struck by the crude command spoken in her own tongue. Her eyes darted to her cowering sisters, then back to the unwavering arrow tip. “*The only path...*” she hissed, her voice tight with fear, “*...lies through the heart-nest. The main den. Where we first... took you.*” She gestured vaguely towards the tunnel entrance where the male goblins had swarmed him. “*It is thick with warriors. Many eyes. You will be torn apart.*” A flicker of desperate hope crossed her face. She was bargaining, trying to steer him towards death.
Kazuo’s grip tightened on the bow. The phantom knowledge of Level 10 mastery mapped the route instantly – the narrow tunnels, the choke points, the chaotic sprawl of the den. A grim, unfamiliar resolve settled over him, colder than the dungeon stones. “*Good,*” he rasped in Goblin Tongue, the word sharp and alien. “*They will make fine practice for this bow.*” He tilted the arrowhead slightly, letting it catch the flickering torchlight inches from her eye. “*You lead. You watch.*” The implication hung heavy: witness the carnage, or become its first victim.
