The Awakened Great Aranid's lunge carried the weight of death as Ulrich threw himself sideways, the creature's mandibles snapping shut where his head had been moments before. Chitin scraped against bone fragments as it landed, already pivoting for another strike.

  "Get back!" Ulrich shouted at the trio, manifesting a long spear in both hands. The weapon extended to nearly twice his height, granting him reach against the creature's superior size and speed.

  Borik dragged Mason backward while Snezana moved to flank, or attempted to. But Ulrich knew their conventional tactics wouldn't work here, not to mention their current condition. This thing had intelligence, and it already demonstrated the ability to counter his shadow strikes by moving its own shadow independently.

  He needed something different.

  The Aranid charged again, eight legs carrying it across the chamber with terrifying velocity, followed that satisfying clicking sound as its feet tapped the stone floor. Ulrich met the charge head-on, using his enhanced strength to plant the spear's base against the ground. The creature tried to sidestep, but he changed position, keeping the weapon between them.

  For a moment, they were locked, the Aranid's bone-chitin armor pressing against the spear's tip. Then it swept one leg sideways, trying to knock the weapon away. Ulrich let it, dismissing the spear and immediately manifesting two shorter ones, one in each hand.

  He struck high and low simultaneously, hoping to find some gap. But its armor deflected both blows, though the impact drove it back a step. Ulrich pressed this advantage, manifesting and dismissing weapons in rapid succession, never letting the Aranid predict his next angle of attack.

  But he was burning spirituality fast. Enhanced strength, manifested weapons, and maintaining his awareness through Blessing of the Shadow, all of it drained his reserves at an accelerated rate. At this rate, he had maybe two minutes before exhaustion forced him to retreat.

  Then, an idea came.

  "Mason!" Ulrich called out, not taking his eyes off the Aranid. He reached into his rucksack with one hand while the other maintained a defensive spear. His fingers found the cold metal of the revolver he had been carrying all this time. "Catch!"

  He threw the weapon toward the mercenary in a smooth arc. And Mason caught it reflexively, staring at the strange object with wide eyes. Snezana and Borik both turned, surprise plain on their faces despite the immediate danger.

  "What is this?" Snezana breathed.

  "A gun," Ulrich said, manifesting another spear to deflect a probing strike from the Aranid. "Remember the explosive arrow, Mason? How you time the shot perfectly to make that Knight fall into the ravine?"

  Understanding dawned on Mason's face. "You need a distraction."

  "I need just one moment. When I give the signal, aim for its eyes and pull the trigger in front the handle." Ulrich demonstrated the motion with his free hand. "The noise and impact will give me an opening."

  The Aranid seemed to sense their planning, its glowing eyes tracking between Ulrich and the trio. It screeched, a sound that resonated in their bones, then launched a more aggressive assault.

  Ulrich met it with everything he had, manifesting a spear and immediately transformed it mid-thrust into three Dark Arrows that shot toward the creature's face. The Aranid's armor absorbed two, but the third struck near an eye cluster, oozing ichor.

  It retaliated with blinding speed, one leg sweeping low while another struck high. Ulrich used Shadow Step to avoid the combination, sinking into a shadow behind the creature and emerging three meters to its left. Had it been before he acquired this spell, his fate would’ve ended there.

  The Aranid adapted instantly, spinning to face him. Its shadow moved with it, staying positioned to protect the core from direct strikes after being struck by his spear.

  "Now!" Ulrich shouted.

  Mason raised the revolver with shaking hands and pulled the trigger.

  The gunshot echoed through the chamber like thunder. The bullet struck the Aranid's leftmost eye dead center, the modern weapon's velocity punching through chitin that had deflected blades. The creature shrieked, reeling backward as its eye cluster exploded in a spray of ichor and fluid.

  No doubt, Mason had better aim than him, even with an unfamiliar weapon. And the young man used that gun no differently from using a crossbow, a more powerful crossbow.

  For one critical moment, its shadow stopped moving independently.

  Ulrich activated Shadow Vision. The world muted to a familiar gray and blacks before his eyes, but the Aranid's shadow became vivid, a dark pool spreading beneath its bulk. And there, at the center where the creature's essence anchored to the physical realm, rested the shadow core. The more lesser runes and powerful the creature, the bigger the shadow and core.

  He poured everything into Blessing of the Shadow. Spirituality flooded his muscles, his reflexes, his speed. The enhancement went beyond anything he had achieved before previously, pushing past safe limits into territory that would damage his body if sustained.

  With shadow step, he appeared beneath its large body.

  Ulrich manifested a spear with all his remaining spirituality, the weapon denser and sharper than any he had created during this entire battle. His enhanced strength drove it upward into the shadow core with enough force to crack steel.

  The spear punched through the immaterial barrier between shadow and substance, bypassing the creature's armor entirely. It struck the Awakened Great Aranid's true core, the condensed essence that animated its shadow and gave it form.

  The creature's shriek cut off mid-sound. Its legs spasmed once, twice, then went still. He was too familiar with the process of death that followed. The bone-chitin armor began to crack, fissures spreading across its surface as the life force faded. The Aranid collapsed, its massive bulk hitting the ground with a resonant thud.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Ulrich tried to stand, but his legs gave out. He hit the bone-covered floor hard, pain shooting through his knees. His muscles spasmed, the overload of Blessing of the Shadow leaving them torn and strained. Blood trickled from his nose, the familiar sign of spirituality overextension as well as overbearing on his senses.

  "Sir Johan!" Snezana reached him first, supporting his weight as he struggled to remain conscious.

  "Not dead," he managed through gritted teeth. "Just need a little rest."

  Borik knelt beside the Aranid's corpse, examining it with professional interest. "It's really dead. Goddess, I've never seen anything killed that fast."

  Mason approached more slowly, still holding the revolver like it might explode. "What is this thing? The noise alone nearly made me drop it."

  When Ulrich said it would be loud, he didn’t say how loud.

  "Surface world weapon," Ulrich said, accepting Snezana's help to sit upright against a bone pile. "Fires metal projectiles at high speed with gunpowder. More reliable than a bow in some situations."

  "I'll say." Mason turned the gun over carefully. "You just carry this around? Why not let me buy it?"

  "Useful, but I doubt you can find ammunition refill here." Ulrich's vision swam, but he forced himself to focus. “I rarely used it against monsters; it’s too loud. Good against people, I admit.”

  Mason immediately realized the problem and sighed, his eyes on the revolver even after Ulrich had put it away.

  "Check the corpse for a Core. Awakened creatures sometimes have them."

  Borik used his sword to crack open the Aranid's chest cavity, digging through blood, ichor, and tissues until his hand emerged holding something that glowed with pale light. "Found it. It looks a bit.. Different.."

  Ulrich examined the object from where he sat. The Soul Core was smaller than it should be, roughly thumb-sized instead of the palm-sized sphere. Incomplete, he realized. That soul core from Knight Henrik was indeed special. Still, even an incomplete core was worth tremendous value.

  "At least a hundred shards," he estimated. "Maybe more depending on buyer."

  "Then it's yours," Snezana said firmly. The other two nodded agreement.

  Ulrich looked between them. "We agreed on an even split."

  "You killed it alone while we watched," Borik countered. "And you saved our lives from that first group of Great Aranids. We're not going to argue about who deserves the valuable loot."

  "Besides," Snezana added, "without you, we'd be dead, and this thing would still be hunting the dungeon. Consider it payment for continuing our survival."

  Ulrich wanted to protest, but truthfully, his desire for the core was evident. Together with the completed Soul Core from fulfilling Knight Henrik's regret, wouldn’t he speed run to Rank 2 Completion with minimal effort?

  "Thank you," he said simply without much ceremony, tucking the core carefully into his rucksack.

  Having just finished a harrowing battle, they rested for nearly an hour.

  Ulrich's body gradually recovered from the overextension, though his muscles remained sore and his spirituality reserves sat dangerously low. The trio checked their equipment, binding wounds and counting remaining supplies.

  Finally, Snezana broke the comfortable silence. "What's your plan from here, Sir Johan?"

  Ulrich performed a quick divination, letting the silver coin dangle as he focused on the question of descending deeper. The coin swung in erratic patterns, dangerous but not immediately fatal, at least not to him.

  "I'm going deeper," he said, watching their reactions.

  The trio exchanged glances. Borik spoke first. "We've pushed our luck far enough. The outer chambers were one thing, but anything deeper than this..." He shook his head. "We're just normal folk after all. Whatever's down there, we can't handle it."

  "I understand." Ulrich had expected this response, even respected it. They knew their limits and chose survival over greed. "We should split the materials then."

  They emptied their packs and sorted through the collected items. Chitin plates from numerous Aranids, venom sacs, crystallized venomous cores, intact skeletal fragments, and various alchemical components. The pile represented hours of tedious work.

  Ulrich estimated the total worth at roughly three hundred shards, maybe slightly more depending on how the trader assessed quality. He separated the collection into two portions, one containing materials worth approximately one hundred fifty shards, the other identical in value.

  "This is yours," he said, gesturing to the trio's pile. "Split it three ways however you want."

  Snezana studied him with an unreadable expression. "You're really going deeper alone? After what we just faced?"

  "I need about two hundred more shards worth. The outer chambers are picked clean, and I don't have time to wait for them to repopulate." Ulrich tested his legs with a wide stretch, finding them stable enough to stand.

  “I have things to do.”

  Ulrich didn't elaborate further.

  "Fair enough." The big man sighed, perhaps noticing that this mysterious partner of theirs was unwilling to speak further.

  "If you make it back, give us a visit in the Residential Quarters. Unit 23."

  Snezana stepped forward next, but stopped herself. Ulrich didn’t comment on her strange behavior and nodded.

  "I'll do my best."

  They gathered their materials and headed toward the same passage they came from, which was already cleared. Ulrich watched them go, three ordinary people who had survived extraordinary circumstances through teamwork and knowing their limits. Part of him wondered why he was trying so hard, and why they are trying so hard with their lives.

  When their footsteps faded completely, Ulrich turned toward the deeper passages. His danger sense pulsed stronger in that direction, a constant warning that intensified with every meter descended. The Soul Core in his pack seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat.

  He performed one more divination with the coin, though the result was still the same. Either way, having learned from his past mistakes, Ulrich didn’t rely too much on his divination in this place.

  He pocketed the coin and activated Blessing of the Shadow despite his low reserves. The enhancement settled over him like a familiar coat, sharpening his senses and mapping the darkness ahead. His Seer intuition painted a picture of what waited in the depths, not specifics, but overall outlines. Baleful things, hungry things, and ugly things. These things possess an archaic feeling to them, like that sensation when examining the ruins in the wilderness of the shadow realm.

  Two hundred shards. That was all he needed to reach over three hundred, to exchange for the complete Rank 2 Rune of Shadow. It should take maybe a dozen more good kills, assuming he found creatures of appropriate value.

  The passage descended with steep angles, and the engraved stone walls parted to a natural cave formation. Bone fragments became more prevalent, forming layers thick enough to muffle his footsteps. The air grew colder, heavy with the scent of decay that had aged beyond simple rot into something else entirely.

  Ulrich's enhanced hearing caught movement ahead. Multiple sources with coordinated patterns, which suggested pack behavior. He slowed his approach and manifested a spear, keeping the weapon ready but not committed to any particular form.

  The passage opened into a larger chamber, and his danger sense spiked hard.

  The smart move would be to retreat. To gather his strength, perhaps to recover fully and be prepared. And he did. Ulrich immediately threw the spear into the darkness past his vision and bolted where he came from. Talk about fighting on death’s door, he wasn’t Hercules!