CHAPTER 38: CHAPTER 38: INTO THE CRIMSON VERGE (7)

Lucien braced Varga’s back, pouring light through him like rebar through concrete. "Cross, your core temp’s spiking!"

"I’ll cry later!" I shouted back.

The troll swung wild, pillar low. I jumped—but not enough. The corner clipped my thigh like a passing truck. My leg folded.

[Major Trauma: Deep Contusion / Microfractures]

[Absolute Regeneration: Delayed (12 s)]

[Mobility: -12%]

Pain intens as fire. Everything below my hip screamed in Morse code.

Elise slammed her palms down. Ash hardened midair, forming a wall. The pillar hit it and threw sparks across the ceiling instead of across me.

"Buy me one beat!" I gasped.

"One!" Varga growled.

He met the next swing head-on, shield braced. The hit shoved him back half a meter, but it gave me the opening.

[Lightning Step — Step 1/3 Active]

[Cooldown: 2 s]

I blinked inside its guard—right under that furnace chest—and jammed Fangpiercer up between the molten plates where the glow was brightest.

The steel screamed.

[Fangpiercer: Core Strike]

[Critical Confirmed — Multiplier ×2.8]

[Status: Core Pressure Critical]

The troll froze like a machine hitting overload. Every vent opened at once. Light poured out through its cracks.

"Down!" I yelled.

Varga didn’t hesitate—hooked me with his shield and threw both of us behind a spur of rock. Elise pulled Lucien down, dropped a wall of blackened ash.

The troll imploded.

Not a fireball—just everything collapsing inward. The iron pillar twisted, the ribs melted together, and the whole body sank around the glowing heart until the light went out.

Silence crawled in. Then the core rolled free and bumped my boot. Heavy. Hot. Alive.

[Drop Acquired — Ember Core (S-Rank Mana Stone)]

[Drop Acquired — Crucible Sinew (S-Grade)]

[Drop Acquired — Slag-Plate Shard (S-Grade)]

[Drop Acquired — Chainbone Fragment (A-Grade)]

[EXP Gained: +700]

[Double Rate Active → +1400]

[Level 20 Progress: 1870 / 2000 → 2000 / 2000]

[Level Up — 21]

[HP +10 | MP +0 | Strength +3 | Agility +3 | Endurance +2 | Intelligence +1 | Wisdom +1]

[Unassigned Stat Points: +10]

[Level 21 Progress: 1400 / 2100]

I sat down hard, holding the core in my lap like a newborn bomb. My pulse was still trying to find my body.

Varga’s voice cut through the ringing. "Report."

"Guardian’s done," I said. "I’ve got its heart. Ten out of ten—would not cuddle again."

Lucien slid to me, scanning. "Thigh?"

"It’ll be a nasty bruise with personality."

[Absolute Regeneration — Triggered (Localized)]

[Efficiency: 27% • Recovery Incomplete]

Elise crouched over the collapsed carcass, eyes bright in the gloom. "That vent trick—nice."

"Credit your geometry," I said. "I just poked the bit that wanted to explode."

She smirked, then sobered. "Listen."

I listened.

The hum had changed key again—deeper, slower, the sound a city makes when it decides to tighten a belt.

"They felt that," Lucien said.

"Then we keep moving," Varga said. "Before the belt closes."

We skirted the wreck and took the passage the troll had been guarding. It narrowed, it rose, it kicked us sideways into a seam that was more wound than tunnel. Every forty meters, a grate stared down—a square of black against black with a hint of red flicker. Voices drifted through the metal now and then—orders, the rattle of chain, the efficient music of work.

[Quest Progress — Reach Inner Ring: 83%]

After a long climb, the rock relented into a chamber where the heat came in pulses instead of a scream. The ceiling was a web of pipes, the floor a clean rectangle cut into the mess like someone had brought manners. At the far end, a gate of lattice iron and obsidian barred a ramp that angled up toward light.

Elise put her palm near the lattice. "This one eats heat and sound."

"Service gate," Lucien said. "It opens from the other side."

Varga tested the frame with his blade and shook his head. "We don’t cut this without waking grandparents."

"Then we do it politely," I said.

I let Smelt Sight roll through the lattice. The pattern was... elegant. Layers of iron crystal grown around obsidian rods, mana pinned in tension like a held breath. It wasn’t just locked. It was listening.

[Smelt Sight — Active]

[Pattern: Lattice-Keyed • Listening Lock]

[Options: Mimic Pulse / Crack Tension / Ignore and Suffer]

I tapped the lattice with Fangpiercer’s hilt the way the elders had tapped plates in the outer forge. Once. Then twice, slightly off. The third time I matched the note I’d felt in my ribs when we passed that plate on the altar.

The gate shivered like something remembering a name. A ring of red bled along one seam and died.

I shifted grip and tapped the second node—lower, slower. The seam on the left blinked, thought about it, and released a sliver of heat.

I tapped a final time, a hair sharp. The lattice inhaled.

Then it sighed open.

A breath of cooler air rolled down from the ramp. Not cool—less murderous.

[Quest Progress — Reach Inner Ring: 94%]

[Hidden Path — Forgewalker: Pattern Recall (Minor) Unlocked]

Elise grinned despite herself. "Okay, that was pretty cool. How are you F rank again?"

"Uhh thanks," I said. "Protein shakes and daily workout are the key."

We slipped through and hauled the lattice back into place until it clicked. The ramp climbed in long, shallow arcs, each turn giving us a sliver more of the inner ring’s voice. Metal singing. Orders called. A massive draft that smelled like rock, oil, and old storms.

Halfway up, the system gave me the number I wasn’t going to share.

[Breach Window: 04:00:00]

I swallowed it and kept my feet moving.

We reached a slit of a viewport and saw the inner ring for what it was: a bowl of black arches and molten channels, catwalks threading between foundries like nerves. Sentries moved in fours along the rails—two in chain-cloaks, one in plate, one with a bone staff that ate light. Above, the great hammer paused in its swing and hung, listening.

Varga’s voice was barely air. "We made it."

Elise leaned forward, eyes catching the glow. "We really made it."

Lucien didn’t smile. "No cheers yet."

"Right," I said. "We still have to not die in there."

We crouched on the last landing, heads together over the slit, and stole what we could: patrol cadence, posted listeners, the way the vents coughed in patterns that matched the drum’s off-beat.

[Objective Updated — Enter the Inner Ring (Next)]

[Optional: Identify Countermeasure Runes → Reward Unknown]

Elise’s fingers brushed mine—a tiny, electric point of contact. "You’re shaking," she murmured.

"Only on the inside," I said.

"Then give it here." She slipped me a new disc, thinner than the first. "Ash veil, but directional. Throw up, not out. It’ll fall like rain."

"Copy."

Varga checked the ramp again. "We move on my mark. We don’t run. We arrive."

I glanced at the view again—at the sentries, the nets of red light under the catwalks, the giant hammer waiting for the sentence.

Four hours. Plenty of time to do something stupid and call it heroism.

"Ready?" Varga asked.

"No," I said, and stood anyway.

Because the city was breathing, the drum had changed keys, and the only way through a song like that was to step on the beat and hope the floor liked your rhythm.