Falsely Accused, I Started Plundering Monster Traits

At first, the maintenance passage matched the station map.

Gray concrete walls ran beneath exposed pipes and cable trays. Shallow water reflected the emergency lamps overhead, while numbered markings identified each junction.

Marcus followed several steps behind Lin Yan with the chipped axe in one hand and the flashlight in the other.

Lin Yan pressed the radio on his belt.

"We’re inside."

"I can see you," Jason replied. "Camera Twelve is working. The first fire door is about twelve meters ahead. Camera Thirteen should pick you up after the second."

They continued through the shallow water.

After less than a minute, Marcus spoke.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You already did."

Marcus paused.

"Then can I ask you a second question?"

"You just did."

Marcus opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Lin Yan sighed. "Stop wasting time and ask."

Marcus looked slightly embarrassed.

"What do you do for work?"

"I handle cases of acute metal poisoning."

Marcus nearly missed a step.

"You’re a doctor?"

"No."

"Then what does that mean?"

"People who end up with too much metal inside them. Knives, rebar, that sort of thing."

Marcus stared at the back of his head for several seconds.

"You pick up dead bodies."

"Night shift at a funeral home," Lin Yan said. "The pay is terrible, the hours are worse, but at least the customers never complain."

Marcus’s flashlight passed over the dried blood covering his clothes.

"So that’s why bodies don’t bother you."

"They bother me," Lin Yan said. "You just learn to keep moving. The ones at work have better manners."

The first fire door appeared ahead.

Lin Yan opened it with the manual release, checked the passage beyond and stepped through.

"First door."

"Keep going," Jason said. "The second is about twenty meters ahead."

The corridor remained unchanged. They passed two numbered pipe junctions—M-12 and M-14—before the second fire door came into view.

Lin Yan opened it and raised the radio again.

"Second door."

"Ten meters farther, then turn left," Jason said. "Camera Thirteen should see you once you pass through."

They entered.

A pipe junction marked M-17 stood beneath the next emergency lamp.

Ten meters later, there was no turn.

The corridor continued straight ahead.

Lin Yan slowed, but kept walking until another junction appeared beneath the following lamp.

M-17.

Marcus stopped.

"Didn’t we just pass that number?"

Behind them, the first M-17 remained visible beneath the previous lamp.

The two junctions were not identical. The wall around the new M-17 marking was cracked, while the one behind them was smooth.

Lin Yan raised the radio.

"Jason, how far after the second door is the turn?"

"Ten meters. Twelve at most."

"We’ve gone more than twenty."

Paper shifted near Jason’s microphone.

"That’s impossible. The straight section ends there. You should already have reached the left turn."

Lin Yan looked ahead. Another lamp glowed in the distance.

"There is no turn."

"Camera Thirteen isn’t picking you up either," Jason said. "Maybe you should come back for now."

"No need."

Lin Yan lowered the radio and continued forward.

Marcus followed, but only made it several steps before speaking again.

"You really don’t seem worried."

Lin Yan glanced back at him.

"Do you always talk this much when you’re nervous?"

Marcus closed his mouth.

"Good. Be nervous quietly."

They continued.

Moss spread beneath the cracked M-17 marking, filling the corridor with the smell of wet soil and rotting leaves. Farther ahead, black lines appeared inside the concrete and gradually widened into strips of damp stone. One metal conduit disappeared directly into the rock, as though the stone had grown around it.

Lin Yan pressed the radio.

"The walls are turning into rock."

Static swallowed most of Jason’s response.

"—can’t see—signal—"

Then the connection went dead.

Lin Yan looked back.

The second fire door had disappeared.

In its place, the corridor stretched beneath a line of distant lamps, far longer than the route they had walked.

Marcus saw it too.

This time, he kept his mouth shut.

The concrete gradually gave way to stone. Tiles sank beneath mud, pipes ended in open air, and fragments of station wall remained trapped inside the rock.

A notification appeared.

[Foreign-world territory detected.]

Lin Yan waited, but nothing else followed.

"That’s all?" he asked silently.

[Yes.]

"Very helpful."

They entered the stone passage.

The air grew colder. Water dripped somewhere ahead, echoing through a space much larger than the tunnel around them.

A pale creature suddenly darted across Marcus’s flashlight beam and vanished between two rocks. Its long, segmented body was lined with far too many legs.

Marcus jerked the light toward the crack.

"What the hell was that?"

Lin Yan stopped for half a second.

What the fuck was that? System, you motherfucker, don’t tell me that freak is something I’m supposed to kill too. I don’t have to fight that shit, do I?

[It is not a goblin.]

[It is a harmless scavenger.]

You’re sure?

[It will not attack unless provoked.]

Oh. All right. Sorry about that.

[No offense taken.]

By the time Marcus looked at him, Lin Yan’s expression was perfectly calm.

"Just a little cave bug. Ignore it."

Marcus stared at him.

"That thing had about fifty legs."

"And all fifty of them are minding their own business. Keep moving."

Marcus gave the crack one last uneasy look before following.

Fragments of the station appeared between the rocks: half a metal sign, an electrical box sealed inside stone, a strip of yellow platform tile beneath tangled roots.

Then Lin Yan saw the footprints.

Several sets of small bare footprints crossed the mud ahead. Some went deeper into the tunnel. Others came back.

He raised one hand.

Marcus stopped.

"Turn off the flashlight and put it away."

The beam vanished. Marcus shoved the flashlight into his jacket pocket.

Darkness swallowed him completely, but Lin Yan could still make out the stone, roots and footprints in muted shades of gray.

"I can’t see," Marcus whispered.

"Hand on my shoulder."

Marcus obeyed, keeping the axe ready in his other hand.

Lin Yan moved forward slowly, placing each step with care while keeping the spear raised. Before long, a faint orange glow appeared ahead.

Firelight.

Marcus released his shoulder, and the two of them crouched as they approached the opening.

The tunnel ended at a broken maintenance walkway overlooking a broad cavern.

Below them lay the remains of an abandoned platform. A faded yellow safety line vanished beneath moss and mud. Part of an old train carriage protruded from the rock, half swallowed by the cavern wall.

Crude wooden frames and animal skins formed a small camp around several fire pits.

Marcus raised his head just enough to look.

"How many?"

"Four outside."

Two goblins patrolled with stone-tipped spears. Another cut open stolen bags near the platform edge. The fourth tore metal from the shell of a ticket machine.

Four was already more than Lin Yan wanted to face at once.

Marcus leaned closer. "I could draw one into the tunnel."

"Not yet."

A heavy metallic thud came from the abandoned carriage.

Both of them froze.

One of the patrolling goblins approached the doorway and threw a slab of raw meat inside.

A thick green hand caught it.

Something rose in the darkness.

Its shoulders scraped the widened doorway as it stepped out. The creature stood taller and nearly twice as broad as the other goblins. Pieces of train door, station signs and maintenance panels had been hammered into crude armor across its chest.

A long-handled iron hammer rested on one shoulder.

It bit through the meat, crushing bone between its teeth.

Marcus slowly lowered his head.

"That one doesn’t look like something I can lure away."

Lin Yan said nothing.

When the silence stretched on, Marcus turned toward him.

Lin Yan was still watching the enormous goblin, his expression unreadable.

The moment Marcus saw his face, his own expression slowly stiffened.

Lin Yan patted him once on the shoulder.

"I have an important job for you."

The enormous goblin stepped fully into the firelight.

The system reacted.

[Trollblood Goblin Crusher detected.]

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