CHAPTER 51: DRIFT (1)

The sidewalk beneath his feet vibrated once, it was subtle, like a speaker humming with no sound.

Lucen turned his head.

An alley between two buildings shimmered. Like air folding inward. Like someone was breathing through the seams of the world.

’That’s definitely not good.’

Another ping.

[Ingress Request Timeout Imminent – 7 seconds]

The system didn’t ask twice.

Lucen didn’t hesitate.

’Fuck it what could go wrong.’

He tapped the prompt.

[Y]

The world folded.

Not violently. Not with force. Just... absence.

Light bent. Sound vanished. The mana in the air dropped to zero like it got yanked out of existence.

And then came the pull.

Straight down, like gravity flipped sideways.

Lucen didn’t fall.

He just... transitioned and vanished like a ghost.

—

The world around him slammed back in all at once.

He stood ankle-deep in cracked black tile, skyless ceiling overhead, and air that smelled like old bones and hot iron. The space wasn’t wide. Narrow hall. Jagged edges on every surface, like the walls had been broken with hammers then rebuilt by a blind god.

His breath caught.

The system loaded mid-drop.

[DRIFT ENTERED: DESIGNATION – NULL CRYPT]

[Classification: Wild / Unmapped]

[Reward Schema: Adaptive EXP / Unknown Drop Table]

[Current Objective: SURVIVE / CLEAR CORE]

’Survive..? Doesn’t sound too promising at all.’

Lucen lifted his hand.

Threads visible again. Mana density higher than normal, it was almost sticky.

He felt it crawling up his spine.

Footsteps echoed down the hall ahead. Not his.

Metal on stone. Slow. Deliberate.

Lucen blinked and reached for spell slot one.

The noise stopped.

Then came a voice.

Ragged. Low. Not entirely human.

"Another one."

Lucen smiled faintly.

"Not just another."

Behind him, the entrance snapped shut with a sound like glass breaking underwater.

No turning back now.

—

Lucen didn’t move.

Not at first.

The mana here wasn’t normal. It didn’t hum like it usually did, or thrum against his skin with that low-grade fizz he’d gotten used to. This stuff clung. Heavy. Damp. Almost warm.

Like walking through breath.

He kept his right hand low at his side and flexed his fingers once. Slow. Silent.

Nothing reacted.

The footsteps had stopped. Whoever or whatever spoke wasn’t in a hurry.

Lucen exhaled softly and started moving.

His boots made almost no sound on the cracked tile. Whoever had built this place must have hated symmetry.

The hallway veered slightly every few meters, with no consistent pattern. Just jagged angles. Wrong ones. None of the lines met at clean ninety degrees.

The walls were rough stone and black, matte, and somehow wet-looking despite being dry to the touch.

He dragged two fingers across one surface as he passed. It left a faint shimmer in the mana stream.

’This place isn’t just old. It’s more like undone, like an unfinished piece of fiction.’

He flicked open the system window, opacity low.

[Mana: 83/112]

[Spells Available: 7/7]

[Slot 1: Ignition Burst]

[Slot 2: Shockweave Bolt]

[Slot 3: Frost Spire]

[Slot 4: Soundlash]

[Slot 5: Piercing Flare]

[Slot 6: Crater Bloom]

[Slot 7: Cataclysm Vector]

[Current Objective: Survive / Locate Core Anchor]

No timer. No map. Just vibes and something waiting in the dark.

He tapped the spell menu and hovered over [Frost Spire], but didn’t activate.

Ahead, the corridor sloped slightly downward. No lights. No torches. Just ambient glow from the mana haze in the air, it was thin, barely enough to read outlines.

As he moved farther in, the temperature dropped.

Not just a little. Sharp. The kind of cold that made your teeth feel loose. He rubbed the side of his neck and passed under an arch that hadn’t been there a second ago.

Lucen slowed.

The archway wasn’t carved. It was grown.

From bone.

Dozens of interlocked white ridges fused into an overhead arc, bound with thin cords of something organic. Some bones were still red at the edges. Fresh.

He didn’t comment.

Just kept walking.

A low sound started behind the walls, it was like breathing. But distant. Slow.

He passed a row of what looked like empty alcoves. Then one wasn’t empty.

A figure stood inside. Silent.

Humanoid shape. Wrapped in something between bandages and armor. No face. No weapon.

It didn’t move.

Lucen didn’t stop walking, but he did watch it from the corner of his eye.

Three steps.

The figure turned its head. Just barely.

Lucen murmured, "Yeah. That tracks."

Another ping.

[Anomaly Proximity – 15m]

[Core Signatures Increasing]

He tilted his head slightly. ’So the thing ahead is big enough to register.’

The hallway finally opened.

A chamber. Wide. Circular. Cracked floor tiles in radial pattern. Center plinth. Stone dais. Faint symbols etched into the ceiling.

Lucen didn’t step in.

He stayed in the shadow just before the threshold and watched.

Inside, faint lights flickered in irregular pulse, like something breathing light in and out through old lungs.

More bandaged figures stood in the circle. Four. Maybe five. All motionless.

One turned.

Just the head.

No signal. No sound.

Lucen pressed one hand against the wall beside him and whispered to himself, "Not dumb. We don’t fight five things with bandage armor in a room labeled ominous circle floor."

The system pulsed again.

[Aura Resonance Detected]

[Drift Core: Within 40m]

[Obstruction Class: Mid-Tier Undead Sentinel]

[Suggested Action: Caution / Isolate and engage]

[Optional Bonus Objective: Remain unseen]

Lucen leaned back slightly, lips curling.

’Optional stealth in a room full of mummies. Sure. Love that for me.’

He scanned the room again. Saw it now.

One of the bandaged figures didn’t move like the others.

It was breathing.

Small. Barely-there heaves of the chest. Not animated like the rest. Alive. Or something close to it.

It wasn’t facing him. It sat cross-legged in the back of the room, cloaked in pale robes that looked like stitched linen and frostbite.

Lucen narrowed his eyes.

Its hands were bare.

One of them was drawing.

Not with ink. With mana.

A slow spiral, drifting in the air in front of it, it was thick white glyphs that twisted too fast to follow. As Lucen watched, the spiral cracked at the edges, then healed, then cracked again.

Loop spell.

Constant rebuild.

’That’s the core binder, I guess.’ Lucen thought. ’Or the bait to get me killed.’

The bandaged guards still hadn’t moved.

Lucen stepped back.

Quiet.

He crouched behind the outer pillar and pulled a slip of chalk from his jacket sleeve. The tip was burnt. Perfect.

He started sketching a sigil into the stone floor.

Not a full spell.

Just prep.

If this thing was really a live-cast glyph weaver, he’d need speed. Hard casts wouldn’t be fast enough. He’d need snap effects.

Something loud. Something blinding. Maybe fire-ice opening? Soundlash combo with the wall fracture?

Another ping.

[Proximity Threat: Approaching From Behind]

Lucen froze.

Very slowly, he turned his head.

The bandaged figure from the alcove?

Gone.