Infinite Awakening: 10,000x EXP Converter!

Two grueling days of Rift farming had brutally taught Alvian one thing above all else.

Equipment mattered.

The heavy iron chisel had been a fantastic investment. Solid, heavy, and extremely capable of punching right through tough beetle chitin when aimed perfectly at the eye.

But cheap iron was just iron.

It possessed no Essence reinforcement, no advanced dimensional alloying, and no magical properties whatsoever. It was literally just a piece of metal shaped into a point.

The third day started exactly like the second.

Alvian entered the dangerous Rift long before dawn, moving silently through the now-familiar lower passages with the absolute confidence of someone who had brutally killed thirty beetles in forty-eight hours.

His Level 8 body moved with incredible, fluid ease. His reflexes were razor-sharp, his senses perfectly attuned to the wet clicking sounds that always preceded a violent beetle charge.

The first two kills were incredibly clean.

"Squick!"

"Squick!"

The chisel punched through wet eye sockets, the System rapidly rolled its cosmic multipliers, and Alvian smoothly harvested the cores without even breaking stride.

A 6x roll on the first beetle. A 12x on the second. One hundred and eighty EXP total. Decent.

[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 6x! Common Roll!]

[Total EXP: 60]

[Ding! Random multiplier activated: 12x! Uncommon Roll!]

[Total EXP: 120]

However, the third beetle was noticeably larger.

It was not a terrifying Nest Guardian, just an older, veteran specimen with a heavily reinforced skull ridge that had thickened immensely from years of passively absorbing dimensional minerals.

Alvian did not notice the crucial difference until the heavy chisel was already in motion.

He swung with full force. The iron tip violently struck the reinforced ridge instead of the soft eye.

"KRAK!"

The horrifying sound was unmistakable. Thick metal snapping under pressure.

The chisel’s blade completely separated from the handle and went spinning wildly into a stagnant puddle, vanishing beneath the murky water with a soft plop.

The beetle recoiled slightly from the heavy impact, stunned for exactly half a second. Then its bulbous eye focused entirely on Alvian, and it lunged like a demon!

Razor-sharp mandibles scissored through the damp air. Alvian twisted sideways desperately, but he was simply not fast enough.

"Slash!"

The beetle’s mandible caught his ribs, violently tearing right through his cheap jacket and the soft skin beneath.

A deep, horrifying gash opened instantly from his lower rib all the way down to his hip. Hot, red blood soaked his shirt immediately.

Agonizing pain screamed through his side! His vision instantly went entirely white at the edges.

The ugly beetle reared back quickly for another deadly strike. Alvian did not have a weapon. He did not have time to think.

He aggressively grabbed the beetle’s mandible with his bare left hand, completely letting the chitinous blade powerfully slice into his palm, and drove his right thumb directly into its eye with every single ounce of his Level 8 strength!

’Let’s see if your brain is as tough as your skull!’ he thought viciously.

"Squick!"

The thumb sank sickeningly into the wet tissue. The beetle shrieked in absolute agony.

Alvian ruthlessly pushed deeper, feeling the eye literally rupture around his knuckle, until his thumb violently hit the back of the skull cavity.

The beetle thrashed frantically, its mandibles snapping wildly, but Alvian held on like a vice, grinding his thumb deeper and deeper until the creature’s movements finally slowed and completely stopped.

He released the heavy corpse and stumbled backward, desperately clutching his bleeding ribs. His right hand was slick and completely covered with disgusting beetle ichor and his own hot blood.

The System chimed brightly in his mind.

[Ding! Combat action detected.]

[Random multiplier activated: 18x!]

[Uncommon Roll!]

[Sludge Beetle Base EXP: 10]

[Multiplier: 18x]

[Total EXP: 180]

[Congratulations! Lifeform Level has broken through!]

[Mortal Tier Level 8 -> Level 9!]

One hundred and eighty EXP. An incredibly decent roll utterly wasted on a desperate, ugly, bare-handed kill. But he was alive, and he was finally Level 9.

Blood was still flowing freely in his ribs. He aggressively tore another strip from his uniform, this time from the bloody hem of his shirt, and wrapped it tightly around his torso as firmly as he could manage one-handed.

The dangerous Rift was absolutely not done with him yet.

He could hear more rapid clicking echoing from the deeper, darker passages. Three more beetles at minimum, probably significantly more.

No weapon. Severely injured. Still several hours before the respawn cycle finally depleted.

Alvian looked around desperately. The dark passage was heavily littered with debris. Collapsed pipes, heavy chunks of concrete, rusted metal scraps.

His sharp eyes landed precisely on a pre-Cataclysm traffic sign, half buried in the toxic muck.

The metal post was incredibly sturdy, the sign itself a heavy, flat rectangle of corroded steel.

He violently pried it free from the mud. The sign was heavy, incredibly awkward, and heavily rusted along the edges, but it had a jagged, pointed end exactly where the metal had violently snapped from its original mounting.

’Nothing says "Stop" quite like a rusty pole to the brain,’ he mused darkly. It would have to do.

The next three hours were incredibly ugly. Every single kill was an absolute struggle for survival.

"Clang!"

"Squick!"

The traffic sign’s pointed end could violently crack beetle chitin if Alvian threw his entire body weight completely behind it, but it required terrifying close-range strikes that left him completely exposed to rapid mandible counters.

His HP dropped to incredibly dangerous lows twice. A glancing, brutal strike from a beetle’s mandible opened a nasty cut on his thigh. Another caught his shoulder squarely, bruising the muscle so deeply that his entire left arm went completely numb for thirty terrifying seconds.

He fought relentlessly through it. Not because he was particularly brave, but because every single beetle he killed was exactly five credits and ten base EXP.

Credits meant medicine. EXP meant survival. The brutal equation had not changed.

By the time the Rift’s volatile energy destabilized and the green glow finally faded to a dim murk, Alvian had brutally killed fourteen beetles.

Fourteen cores. His body was an absolute mess of deep cuts, nasty bruises, and dried blood.

The heavy traffic sign was permanently bent at a forty-five-degree angle, its pointed end completely blunted to uselessness.

He limped painfully out of the Rift and headed straight for Hendricks.

***

"Seventy," Hendricks said dismissively, sorting the fourteen cores.

"They are significantly bigger than yesterday’s batch. Much healthier spawns."

"Bigger absolutely does not mean better, kid. The internal crystal structure is exactly what matters, and these are heavily fractured from the dimensional destabilization."

"Whir. Click."

Hendricks held up a core directly to his cybernetic eye. "See? Stress fractures throughout. Noticeably lower purity."

"Then why exactly did your fake eye light up when you scanned them?"

Hendricks paused instantly. His cybernetic eye had indeed brightened significantly during the scan, a telltale, undeniable sign that the appraisal algorithm had aggressively flagged something highly valuable.

"Eighty," he countered smoothly.

"Eighty-two. And you throw in something to entirely replace my broken chisel."

Hendricks stared coldly at him. Alvian stared right back without flinching.

His ribs were visibly bleeding through the makeshift bandage, his face was heavily caked with dried blood, and his expression said very clearly that he was absolutely not in the mood for haggling.

"Eighty-two," Hendricks finally relented.

He counted out the dirty credits, then reached deep beneath his counter and produced a vicious-looking knife.

It was a heavy trench knife, genuine military surplus from long before the Cataclysm. The dark blade was six inches, slightly curved, with a heavily reinforced tang and a grip tightly wrapped in worn leather. The edge had definitely seen better days, but the pre-war steel was perfectly intact.

"This pig sticker has definitely seen better days," Hendricks said. "But it will easily punch through tough chitin if you put your full weight behind it."

Alvian eagerly took the knife, tested the heavy balance, and nodded. Eighty-two credits minus fifteen heavily reserved for Martha’s medicine left exactly sixty-seven. Not great. Not terrible.

***

Tobias Finch’s sat perched on his workbench, the mechanical arm extended far in front of him, its sparking capacitors completely exposed while he tinkered delicately with the wiring.

Alvian placed the heavy trench knife on the bench. "Can you reinforce this?"

Tobias picked it up carefully with his flesh hand, running his cold mechanical thumb along the dull edge. The thumb made a loud grinding sound as the tiny servos adjusted perfectly to the delicate movement.

"Barely adequate," Tobias declared flatly. "The solid tang is sound, but the edge is completely uneven. I can tightly wrap it with salvaged steel wire to deeply reinforce the joint. Fifteen credits."

"Do it."

"BZZZT!"

Tobias worked in absolute silence for ten minutes. His mechanical arm moved with surprising, terrifying delicacy despite the occasional shower of sparks, wrapping thick steel wire aggressively around the knife’s tang in incredibly tight, even loops. The reinforcement was crude but incredibly functional.

"Where exactly did you get this?" Tobias asked while working. "Genuine pre-Cataclysm military surplus. Mass-produced heavily during the resource wars."

"Hendricks generously threw it in."

"Hendricks throws absolutely nothing in unless he is getting the significantly better end of the deal." Tobias set the heavily reinforced knife down on the bench. "There. It will hold."

Alvian picked it up immediately. The wire reinforcement gave the grip a solid, completely locked feel. The sharp blade sat firmly in the tang with absolutely no wobble. He pocketed it safely and turned to leave.

"Kid."

Alvian stopped in his tracks.

Tobias was not looking at him. He was staring intensely at the back wall of his scrap hut, where a hand-drawn, complex map was pinned.

The map perfectly depicted the thirteenth level’s vast tunnel network, with the Rift entrance marked in green and a terrifying series of deeper passages marked in blood red.

"You have been diligently clearing the upper Rift for three days now," Tobias said softly. "At some point very soon, the weak beetles are not going to be nearly enough. You will inevitably start thinking about going much deeper."

"The Lower Warrens," Alvian said firmly.

He had heard the dangerous name whispered fearfully among scavengers. The vast network of pre-Cataclysm subway tunnels and completely collapsed infrastructure below the thirteenth level, exactly where Rank 2 monsters nested permanently.

"Ironjaw Rats. Terrifying Sludge Crawlers. Occasionally something much, much worse." Tobias’s raspy voice was entirely flat. "The Warrens absolutely do not forgive mistakes, boy. Down there, a broken weapon does not mean a painfully bruised rib. It means you do not come back."

"BZZZT!"

His mechanical arm sparked violently. He smacked it hard with his palm and the bright sparking stopped instantly.

"I lost my arm down there. Fifteen years ago. I was a fully Guild-licensed delver with a strong four-man team. We went incredibly deep, far past the rat territories, straight into the caverns. Something horrible found us."

He held up the crude mechanical arm. "This is exactly what I got instead of a real arm."

Alvian looked closely at the old man. At the faded, horrifying scars visible just above the mechanical arm’s mounting point.

At the detailed map on the wall, with its blood-red marked passages and a single, terrifying symbol he did not recognize. A dark circle completely bisected by a wavy line, located deep in the Warrens.

"The Academy officially owns the Warrens," Tobias continued grimly. "But they absolutely do not patrol them. Far too expensive, far too dangerous, and absolutely no return on investment. No Guild oversight. No rescue teams. No rules."

"Good," Alvian said coldly.

Tobias looked directly at him. Really looked.

His dark eye was incredibly sharp, searching, actively reading something dark in Alvian’s face that the old man recognized painfully from his own reflection decades ago.

"You are going to go regardless of what I say."

Alvian did not even try to deny it.

Tobias reached deep beneath his workbench and pulled out a heavily folded piece of paper. He slapped it loudly on the bench.

"My map. Hand-drawn. Not a proper, legal survey, but it clearly marks the deadly dead ends, the nest locations, and the one crucial chokepoint where a solo delver can actually fight safely."

He tapped the paper urgently with a calloused finger. "The red circle near the deep Warrens. Do not go there. I absolutely do not care how strong you currently think you are. Do not go there."

Alvian respectfully took the map, folded it securely, and pocketed it right beside the knife.

"Do not thank me," Tobias said firmly. "If you die horribly down there, I absolutely do not want it on my conscience."

***

The tiny apartment was completely dark when Alvian finally returned.

Leo was fast asleep, curled tightly around his charcoal stub.

Martha’s breathing was incredibly shallow but perfectly steady, the medicine obviously still doing its work.

However, her thin fingers, resting quietly on the blanket, caught the dim light strangely. Sickening grey patches had suddenly appeared on her fingertips, glassy and faint. It looked exactly like human skin turning rapidly to crystal.

Alvian sat heavily on his mattress and immediately pulled up his status panel.

[Level: 9 (Mortal Tier)]

[STR: 12 | AGI: 11 | VIT: 22 | INT: 6 | Essence: 7]

[Karma Points: 9]

[EXP Bank: ~6,200 / ∞]

Suddenly, a brief, glowing notification flickered at the very bottom of the interface, almost too fast to catch.

[EXP Bank capacity: ∞. Current holdings: 6,200 EXP.]

[Recommendation: Allocate surplus directly to VIT to expand Flesh Limit threshold.]

The System was actively advising him!

It was not just displaying static data, but actively recommending a highly optimized allocation strategy. It actually had opinions.

Without hesitation, he allocated 2,000 EXP straight to VIT.

The warmth spread instantly through his exhausted body, heavily reinforcing his entire cellular structure, rapidly expanding the absolute capacity of his physical form.

His VIT ticked rapidly from 22 to 24. The agonizing gash on his ribs throbbed noticeably less. The nasty cut on his thigh sealed significantly further.

[Recommendation acknowledged. Flesh Limit threshold successfully expanded.]

[Safe EXP absorption capacity increased.]

He lay completely back on the thin mattress.

Martha coughed weakly in her sleep.

The sickening grey patches on her fingertips had absolutely not been there yesterday.

The expensive medicine was barely holding. But the disease was aggressively spreading.

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