“Cleared areas represent temporary low-risk harvesting opportunities.

  Spawn rates typically require 90 to 120 minutes for zone repopulation.

  Students who return to safety within 90 minutes can maximize yield with minimal additional exposure.”

  — Advanced Mining Strategies seminar notes

  We ran.

  Not the tactical withdrawal Cindy had probably drilled into her head from whatever mining safety courses covered “what to do when you encounter a swarm,” but pure flight, our feet pounding against uneven stone as we sprinted back the way we’d come with the sound of thirty bugs shrieking behind us.

  The swarm was faster.

  Of course they were faster, because why would anything about this situation be reasonable?

  Their legs were designed for this, for scrambling over rough terrain and broken stone, while we were humans wearing armor and carrying weapons and trying very hard not to trip over stalactites that jutted up from the cave floor like stone teeth.

  I glanced back over my shoulder.

  The swarm filled the tunnel behind us, a writhing mass of chitin and claws that moved like liquid, flowing around obstacles, climbing over each other in their rush to reach us. Plus, the emergency lighting cast everything in a hellish red.

  “Contact rear!” Cindy shouted, her rifle already tracking backward. “Suppressing fire!”

  She squeezed off controlled bursts without stopping, each shot placed to target the lead bugs. Two went down, their bodies creating momentary obstacles that the swarm just climbed over, and Veronica added her carbine to the defensive fire.

  It barely slowed them.

  “They’re gaining!” Veronica called out.

  The tunnel narrowed ahead, the natural cave formation giving way to the reinforced mining corridor we’d descended through earlier. The walls closed in, forcing us into a tighter formation, and I realized narrow tunnels worked both ways.

  If it limited their ability to flank, it also limited our ability to maneuver.

  Cindy took aim, and a stalactite fell from the ceiling, crashing down between us and the swarm with a sound like breaking glass amplified through industrial speakers. The impact sent rock shards flying, and several bugs scrambled over the debris without even slowing.

  “How far to the elevator?!” Rico shouted, his shield held awkwardly behind him to protect against the pursuit, his shotgun booming whenever something got close enough.

  “Three hundred meters!” Cindy yelled, checking the distance.

  The lead bug broke through the suppressing fire, moving faster than the others, low to the ground in a way that made it hard to target. It closed the distance with frightening speed, mandibles clicking, and launched itself at Veronica’s back while she was reloading her carbine.

  I moved without thinking.

  Stepping sideways, putting myself between the bug and Veronica, my sword coming up more from instinct than any actual technique. The bug hit me chest-high, its momentum driving us both sideways into the tunnel wall with an impact that sent stars across my vision.

  The mandibles closed on my shoulder.

  The combat fiber held, and the impact foam beneath distributed the crushing force across the padding. It hurt, a sharp pressure that promised bruises, but nothing broke, nothing tore, and I brought my sword around at an awkward angle that somehow still found the bug’s thorax.

  The blade went through cleanly, that perfect System-grade edge parting chitin like paper, and the bug separated into twitching halves that slid off me as I pushed away from the wall.

  “Thanks!” Veronica gasped, her carbine loaded again, already firing into the swarm.

  I didn’t have time to respond because three more bugs were coming, spreading out to flank.

  Rico caught one on his shield, the impact driving him back a step, but his shotgun flashed and the bug disintegrated. Cindy’s rifle tracked the second, bursts stitching across its carapace until something vital ruptured. The third came at me, and I met it with my sword, the blade taking its head off in a swing that felt smoother than it should have, given that I was exhausted and terrified.

  We kept running.

  The tunnel sloped upward now; the incline adding burning fatigue to my legs, and I could hear everyone’s breathing getting ragged. My chest ached where bugs had grabbed me, multiple impacts in the same general area, but the hoodie kept holding, kept doing exactly what I’d designed it to do.

  Another stalactite fell, this one close enough that I felt the wind of its passage. It crashed into the swarm, crushing at least two bugs and creating a momentary barrier that bought us precious seconds.

  “Ammo check!” Cindy called out between bursts.

  “I think thirty percent!” Veronica responded, her carbine’s rate of fire already slowing to conserve rounds.

  “Fifty shells!” Rico added, which sounded good until you divided it by the number of bugs still chasing us.

  Cindy’s rifle clicked empty.

  “I’m out,” she said flatly. “Rifle’s dry.”

  She slung the rifle across her back in one smooth motion and drew her sidearm, a compact pistol that looked almost delicate compared to the tactical rifle she’d been using. The weapon came up, tracked a bug that was pulling ahead of the pack, and fired.

  The bug exploded.

  Not in the normal way bugs did, but exploded in a spray of blue ichor and chitin fragments that painted the tunnel walls like abstract art. The detonation was loud enough to hurt my ears, bright enough to leave afterimages, and so completely disproportionate to the size of the pistol that I actually stumbled mid-stride from pure surprise.

  “What the hell was that?!” I shouted, my sword taking down another bug more from muscle memory than conscious thought.

  Cindy fired again, and another bug detonated, the explosion catching two more in the blast radius and sending them tumbling backward into the swarm. “Exploding rounds!” she called back. “Cost two credits each!”

  My mind stuttered over that number.

  That much per bullet. Each explosion I was watching represented the same amount of money we’d make from selling more than half of a Traninum cube. And Cindy was burning through them like they were standard ammunition because apparently that’s what you did when a swarm of definitely over thirty bugs was trying to kill you.

  She fired three more times in quick succession, each detonation removing multiple bugs from the equation—

  Wait, no math, no equation.

  She was killing them.

  The swarm was thinning now, their numbers cut by the explosions, but I could see Cindy counting in her head, tracking exactly how many credits she was spending with each trigger pull. The tunnel widened ahead, opening back into the reinforced corridor that led to the elevator banks, and I caught sight of the safety lights that marked the extraction point.

  “Last strech guys!” Rico shouted, hope creeping into his voice. “Hundred meters!”

  The swarm surged forward, as if they could sense their prey escaping, and the bugs in the back climbed over the ones in front in a desperate rush that turned their formation into chaos.

  My sword found another bug’s thorax, the blade slicing clean through. Rico’s shotgun boomed, each blast timed perfectly to catch bugs mid-leap. Veronica’s carbine clicked empty, and she transitioned to her combat knife, but she was keeping her distance, clearly uncomfortable being so close.

  Cindy’s pistol flashed again.

  And again.

  Each explosion eating into her ammunition and her wallet simultaneously.

  Fifty meters.

  Rico’s shield took a hit that drove him to one knee, the riot-grade plating cracking with a sound like breaking ice.

  He pushed back up, his shotgun swinging in a wide arc that caught three bugs and sent them tumbling, but I could see the shield was done, the structural integrity compromised beyond anything that could hold another major impact.

  Twenty meters.

  My sword felt heavy in my hands from exhaustion, from the sustained adrenaline crash that came from fighting for your life over extended periods.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  My chest throbbed, shoulders ached from swinging the blade, but the hoodie kept working, kept holding, kept proving that C- tier soul-bound gear could handle punishment I’d never expected.

  Ten meters.

  Cindy’s pistol fired twice more, the explosions buying us the last few seconds we needed. We hit the elevator bank in a scrambling mess of bodies and weapons, Rico slamming his hand against the call button with enough force to chip the panel.

  The elevator doors were already opening, and we threw ourselves inside, turning instantly to face the tunnel.

  The swarm was still coming, reduced now but not broken, maybe ten bugs left out of the original who knows how much, and they charged the elevator with mindless aggression.

  Cindy’s pistol said hi one last time, the explosion catching the lead three bugs and sent them tumbling backward into the rest of the pack.

  The elevator doors closed.

  “Come on, come on,” Veronica muttered, her knife still held ready and the doors sealed with a hydraulic hiss.

  Silence.

  Not complete silence; we were all breathing hard, gasping like we’d just run a marathon while fighting for our lives, which was accurate, but the shrieking had stopped, cut off by industrial steel doors designed to handle way worse than this floor.

  [Mana LP progress: 17%]

  The elevator lurched, beginning its ascent with a mechanical groan that sounded like salvation.

  I collapsed against the back wall, sliding down until I was sitting on the mesh floor, my sword still gripped in one hand because I didn’t trust my fingers to release it yet. My chest heaved, my lungs burning from exertion, my entire body aching.

  Cindy was checking her pistol, ejecting the magazine to count the remaining rounds.

  Rico leaned against his shield, which now had a crack running from top to bottom that rendered it basically useless.

  Veronica sat down hard, her back against the elevator wall, and started laughing.

  It was just small giggles. “We—” she gasped between laughs, “—we actually killed them! Almost all of them! Did you see—the explosions—and Dash just—”

  She dissolved into laughter again, apparently unable to complete coherent sentences.

  Rico also grinned. “That was insane. Absolutely insane. Floor -18 is officially worse than advertised.”

  “Way worse,” I agreed, my own breathing finally slowing toward something approaching normal. “Those were all Tier 1 incursion equivalents. We just fought an actual incursion worth of enemies.”

  Cindy had finished counting her ammunition, and her face suggested the math wasn’t good. Math never was. She looked up from her pistol, met Veronica’s still-laughing eyes, and said something I absolutely didn’t expect.

  “We should go back.”

  The laughter cut off as if someone had flipped a switch.

  “What?” I said, certain I’d misheard because there was no way she’d just suggested returning to the tunnel where we’d almost died.

  Cindy gestured toward the elevator controls, completely serious. “Those rounds cost me over forty credits. That’s like fifteen cubes without bonus just to break even on ammunition costs, and we harvested nothing from that swarm.” She paused, doing more mental math. “There were at least thirty bugs we killed in that fighting retreat. Even conservative estimates, that’s forty cubes minimum, probably fifty if we’re thorough. Split four ways after I recoup my ammo costs, that’s still eight to ten cubes each beyond what we already hit for quota.”

  Veronica started nodding alongside Cindy. “The swarm’s definitely dead,” she said. “We killed most, or close enough that anything left wouldn’t be an organized threat. Just... go back down, harvest quickly, get out before new spawns fill the area.”

  Rico looked at his cracked shield, then at his remaining shotgun shells, then at Cindy and Veronica like they’d both lost their minds. “You two are actually serious about this.”

  “I need to recoup those ammo costs,” Cindy said flatly. “Those rounds are made by a System user, and they cost two credits each because of some licensing bullshit. I can’t just eat twenty-eight credits because we ran instead of harvesting. My pistol is our get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  I stared at her, then at Veronica, who was nodding agreement, then at Rico, who looked like he was actually considering it despite the crack in his shield.

  “We almost died,” I pointed out, which seemed relevant.

  “But we didn’t,” Veronica countered. “There may be others in the mines, so they rob us. Besides, now we know the floor’s clear. Five minutes down, ten minutes harvesting, five minutes back up. Quick in and out, minimal risk, maximum profit.”

  The elevator continued rising.

  “Five minutes down,” I said finally. “Ten minutes harvesting, and we stick together the entire time. Veronica scouts ahead with her eyes, Rico guards even with his cracked shield, Cindy covers with that terrifying pistol. We see anything that looks like a new spawn, we extract immediately. No pushing our luck, no exploring, just grab the Traninum and get out.”

  Cindy nodded and glanced into my eyes with something that looked like... respect? “Agreed.”

  Rico sighed, adjusting his shield strap. “You people are going to get me killed one of these days. But yeah, fine. Let’s go collect our bonus before I remember this is a terrible idea.” Veronica was grinning again.

  Cindy reached over and pressed the button for -18.

  The elevator stopped, hung motionless for a moment as if the machinery itself was questioning our sanity, then began descending again with a mechanical groan that sounded distinctly judgmental.

  “We’re insane,” I muttered.

  “Yep,” Rico agreed cheerfully. “But we’re insane with a profit motive, which is basically the foundation ethos of Sol Aliance.”

  The harvesting run was almost disappointing in how uneventful it turned out to be.

  We descended back to -18, weapons ready and nerves high, expecting new spawns or survivors from the swarm or literally anything that would justify the tension in my chest. Instead, we found exactly what we’d left behind: corpses, already fading ichor, and Traninum cubes glinting in the emergency lighting.

  Ten minutes of harvesting later, we’d collected sixty-three cubes total.

  After we insisted we shouldn’t calculate a stipend bonus, Cindy took fourteen to cover her ammunition costs, leaving forty-nine to split between the four of us. Twelve cubes each, with one extra that went to Rico for taking the most hits on his now-useless shield.

  Then we got out, riding the elevator back up to school level with the satisfied exhaustion of people who’d just made questionable decisions that had somehow worked out anyway.

  The locker rooms were exactly as crowded as I’d expected for end-of-day mining operations, students stripping out of gear and armor. The air was thick with steam and the smell of industrial soap; voices were loud as groups compared their hauls and traded stories about close calls.

  Rico headed straight for the showers, already pulling off his armor plating with visible relief. His shield went into a disposal bin marked “Damaged Equipment - Recycling,” the cracked riot-grade plating joining other casualties.

  I followed him toward the communal showers, but instead of stripping down, I just kicked off my boots and socks, leaving my tactical pants and tactical hoodie on.

  Time to experiment.

  Several students gave me weird looks as I walked past fully clothed except for footwear, heading toward the shower stalls as if this was completely normal behavior. Rico noticed me, pausing mid-removal of his undershirt. “Uh, Dash? You know you’re supposed to take the clothes off first, right?”

  “They need cleaning too,” I said, stepping under one showerhead and reaching for the temperature controls.

  “Don’t we have the sanitization room with steam?” Rico asked, gesturing vaguely toward the exit. “For, like, exactly this purpose?”

  I shrugged, turning the water on. “Want to try this way.”

  He stared at me for a moment longer, clearly deciding whether this was worth pursuing, then shook his head. “Alright, man, Kallum rich thing I guess. You do you.”

  The water hit me in a warm cascade that would’ve been pleasant if I wasn’t wearing clothes. I grabbed the industrial soap dispenser and started working the lather into the hoodie’s fabric, watching blue ichor dissolve and wash away down the drain.

  “Just testing man,” I said with a grin, to which he shook head.

  The cleaning part worked exactly as expected. The ichor came off easily, just like it had with the napkin earlier, the soul-bound fabric refusing to let the bug guts actually stick. But the water itself...

  I paused, watching the way the spray hit the combat fiber.

  The fabric was getting wet; I could see the darkening where water touched it, could feel the weight of moisture against my skin, but it wasn’t getting soaked.

  Not the way normal fabric absorbed water, pulling it deep into the weave until everything was saturated and heavy.

  Instead, the water sat below the surface, as if the fabric was present but not quite there, existing in a state that let water acknowledge its presence without fully committing to the relationship.

  I ran my hand over the hoodie’s sleeve, feeling dampness but not the soppy, waterlogged texture I’d expected. The water was there, touching the fabric, making it wet in the technical sense, but somehow not interacting the way physics said it should.

  It was the same as yesterday.

  Walking back from the arcade in the rain, I noticed my clothes getting damp but never truly soaked; the precipitation getting me wet, but not really, in ways that had seemed convenient at the time. I’d attributed it to good fabric quality, to the Series-7 combat fiber’s protective properties, but this...

  This was something else.

  Soul-binding had changed the fabric at a fundamental level I definitely hadn’t designed and couldn’t explain. Something about binding the gear to my soul had introduced properties that normal physics didn’t account for.

  Hydrophobic wasn’t quite right. The water touched the fabric, but it didn’t stick, didn’t soak in, didn’t behave the way water normally did when encountering woven material.

  “So weird,” I muttered, continuing to wash the ichor away while I tried to catalog exactly what I was observing.

  The shower next to me turned on, and Rico stepped under the spray with a groan of relief. “What’s weird?” he called over the sound of running water.

  “Nothing,” I blurted, because explaining soul-binding and unexpected material properties felt like a conversation that required more energy than I currently had. “Just thinking about the fight.”

  “That swarm was insane,” Rico agreed, soaping up. “Thought we were actually dead for a minute there when they kept coming.”

  I nodded, still watching water bead off my hoodie in patterns that shouldn’t exist. The ichor was completely gone now, washed away down the drain in blue-tinted streams, leaving behind fabric that looked clean despite still being damp.

  I turned off the water, stepping out of the spray.

  My clothes clung to me with the uncomfortable sensation of wet fabric against skin, but when I looked down, they weren’t dripping the way they should’ve been. No puddles forming at my feet, no steady stream of water running off the combat fiber.

  Just... damp. Present but not persistent.

  Other students were still showering around us; nobody was paying attention to the weird kid who’d showered fully clothed, or if they were, they’d decided it wasn’t worth commenting on.

  I grabbed a towel from the dispenser, those industrial things that felt like sandpaper and absorbed approximately nothing, and started patting down my tactical hoodie and pants.

  “Not calling it tactical,” I muttered, still not over what Veronica had said about the hoodie.

  The fabric shed water easily, moisture coming away on the towel without the usual stubborn soaking that required aggressive wringing. Within maybe thirty seconds, my clothes had gone from wet to merely damp, and that dampness was already fading.

  By the time I’d pulled my boots back on, lacing them with fingers that still ached from gripping my sword too hard for too long, the hoodie and pants felt almost dry.

  Not completely, there was still a faint coolness against my skin, but way closer to dry than physics said they should’ve been after literal shower exposure.

  And I had absolutely no idea how or why.

  Rico emerged from his shower, a towel wrapped around his waist, his skin still flushed from hot water. He glanced at me, then at my nearly dry clothes, then back at me.

  “Your gear dry already?” he asked.

  “Good fabric,” I said, which was technically true but completely missed the actual explanation. “Moisture-wicking properties.”

  “Huh.” He grabbed his own clothes from his locker. “Must be nice having custom equipment. My stuff takes forever to dry if I wash it.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, because what else was I supposed to say? “Pretty convenient.”

  Cindy and Veronica were waiting near the elevator banks, both already cleaned up and looking significantly less exhausted than they had during our fighting retreat.

  “Good run,” Cindy said as we approached and smiled at me. “Best haul I’ve had all semester.”

  “Best haul I’ve had period,” Veronica added, grinning. “Floor -18 lives up to the hype. Assuming we don’t make a habit of attracting thirty-bug swarms.”

  Rico laughed, adjusting his bag where he’d stashed his damaged armor. “Speak for yourself. I need a new shield before I even think about going back down there.”

  They looked at me, clearly expecting some kind of response or agreement about future runs.

  “Same time next week?” I said.

  Cindy’s smile was answer enough.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Scary bugs

  Join me on or

  On Patreon you can read 2 months ahead (~200 pages)