Chapter 117: I Killed a Level 25 Awakened Without Using a Single Skill

The mine was operating.

Not discreetly.

They were barely pretending otherwise.

After crossing a secondary gallery, Raven and Valeria found freshly laid rails, ore carts, mana lamps, and an elevator platform descending even deeper underground.

There were workers.

Dozens of them.

Some were free.

Raven could tell by the way they spoke to the supervisors.

Others wore collars.

Not all the same kind.

One man had a simple iron ring around his neck. Another wore one covered in runes. Three women had bracelets fitted with small black plates.

Black Mithril.

Coercive contracts.

Debt.

Prison.

Slavery with different names.

Raven remained hidden behind a stack of support beams while a supervisor shouted at one of the work crews.

"The quota doesn’t change because six people are missing! If you want water before second shift, fill three more carts!"

One of the miners muttered something too quietly for Raven to hear.

The supervisor struck him with a rod.

Valeria’s jaw tightened.

Raven looked at her.

"No."

"I haven’t done anything."

"You were considering it."

"I only need one thread."

"And then thirty people look over here."

Valeria forced her attention away from the supervisor.

"I know."

Raven returned to observing the chamber.

He hadn’t come here to liberate miners.

He wasn’t going to turn North Shaft Seven into a moral crusade because one man had struck another.

But the scene still gave him information.

The workers hated the supervisors.

The supervisors were afraid of missing quotas.

The guards protected the deeper passages more heavily than the exits.

Which meant whatever was below mattered more than preventing people from escaping.

Raven pointed toward the elevator platform.

"We go there."

The elevator offered nowhere to hide.

So they used the maintenance stairs instead.

One hundred and seventeen steps.

Then another eighty.

The Black Mithril concentration increased.

The sensation inside Raven’s body worsened with every level they descended.

[Ambient Black Mithril Concentration: HIGH.]

[Mana Circulation Efficiency: 76%.]

[Burst Step Efficiency: DEGRADED.]

[Stonehide Activation Latency: MODERATE.]

[Ember Spark Output: 61%.]

[Predatory Regeneration Efficiency: REDUCED.]

[Warning: Sustained Exposure May Impair Multiple Traits.]

Raven closed the interface.

Valeria was breathing more slowly.

"My Blood Magic is responding at less than half its normal efficiency."

"Can you fight?"

She gave him an offended look.

"Yes."

"Then we continue."

"You could have asked that in a slightly less insulting way."

"I needed an answer, not your self-esteem."

"A few hours ago, you were describing my waist while we danced."

Raven looked at her.

"This doesn’t seem like the time."

"It never seems like the time with you."

"There are guards below."

Valeria sighed.

"Naturally."

There were five.

Upstairs, that would have been annoying.

Here, it was familiar.

Raven observed them through a side grate.

Five men.

Two low-level Awakened.

Two around Level Twenty.

The last was Level Twenty-Five.

All armed.

None expecting intruders from the maintenance stairs.

Raven counted angles, distances, and light sources.

One central lamp.

Two smaller ones.

A table.

A toolbox.

An empty ore cart.

Valeria whispered, "I can kill two before they react."

"No."

"Why?"

"Your magic is slower."

"It’s still faster than they are."

"We don’t know how much worse the interference becomes once we fight closer to the vein."

She understood.

Raven pointed toward the main lamp.

"Kill the light when I move."

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

Valeria stared at him.

"I expected something more elaborate."

"I have something more elaborate."

"And you’re not going to tell me?"

"I don’t need you memorizing my movements."

Her eyes narrowed.

"You’re irritating."

"Kill the light."

Raven stepped into the room without trying to hide.

The first guard spotted him almost immediately.

"Who the hell—"

The central lamp went dark before he could finish. Valeria couldn’t extinguish it completely under the Black Mithril interference, but she reduced it to a dim red glow.

That was enough.

Raven was already moving.

The first guard raised his crossbow. Raven slapped the weapon off-line with his left hand, stepped inside the firing angle, and struck the elbow hard enough to buckle the arm with a crack. He ripped the crossbow free before the man could recover and drove its stock across the second guard’s throat, shoving him backward into the table.

The third man drew his sword.

Raven dropped the crossbow and grabbed a short mining hammer from the nearby workbench. When the blade came down, he didn’t meet it directly. He redirected the wrist, stepped inside the guard’s reach, and smashed the hammer into the joint.

The sword fell.

Raven’s second strike hit the jaw.

The guard’s head snapped sideways and his legs folded beneath him.

Movement flashed from Raven’s left.

The fourth guard crossed the distance far faster than the others, his body reinforced by mana. Raven turned too late to avoid the punch completely.

The fist slammed into his ribs.

Pain spread through his side, sharp but clean.

No fracture.

The guard smiled when Raven gave ground.

Raven spat a trace of blood onto the floor.

"Better."

The word made the man hesitate.

Raven used the hesitation.

Mercenaries in Veyr fought around Skills. They watched for mana surges, activation windows, sudden bursts of speed, and reinforced strikes.

Raven gave him none of that.

He crashed shoulder-first into the guard’s chest, drew a knife, and drove it into the outer thigh. Not deep enough to kill. Only deep enough to destroy the man’s base.

The guard dropped to one knee.

Raven caught him by the hair and drove his knee into the man’s face.

Bone gave.

Blood and teeth struck the stone.

The guard collapsed.

The Level Twenty-Five fighter had already activated his own enhancement. Blue lines burned along both arms as he shifted his stance.

No sword.

A boxer.

Interesting.

He stepped in with a straight punch.

Raven slipped just outside the line, and the fist struck the wall hard enough to crack stone.

Far beyond normal human strength.

Raven’s mouth curved slightly.

That changed the consequences of being hit.

It didn’t change how a punch worked.

The second strike came from below. Raven retreated just enough to avoid it.

The third started the same way.

Then changed.

A feint.

There it was.

The man actually knew how to fight.

Raven gave him distance and let him believe he had forced it.

Then he kicked the toolbox between them.

Nails, metal scraps, and tools scattered across the floor.

The guard’s eyes flicked downward for half a second.

That was enough.

Raven threw the hammer at his hand.

The guard blocked instinctively.

By the time he realized the hammer had never been the attack, Raven was already inside his reach.

Raven drove his thumb toward the man’s eye.

He didn’t need to blind him.

Only force the eye shut.

As the guard recoiled, Raven buried an elbow in his throat.

The man still managed to grab him.

His reinforced grip was brutal.

Instead of fighting the pull, Raven let himself be dragged closer.

Then he drew the guard’s own knife from his belt.

The blade slid beneath the armpit where armor coverage weakened.

Once.

Twice.

The guard tried to crush Raven against the wall.

The third thrust found the artery.

Hot blood flooded Raven’s forearm.

He twisted the blade.

The strength in the guard’s hands vanished.

Behind him, the last conscious man tried to move toward the alarm.

A blood thread snapped around his throat.

Even weakened by the Black Mithril, Valeria still had enough control for that.

She pulled sharply.

The guard hit the floor before he reached the wall.

Silence returned to the chamber.

Only breathing remained, along with the slow patter of blood striking stone.

Raven withdrew the knife from the Level Twenty-Five guard and let the corpse fall onto its side.

Valeria looked at the body, then at Raven.

Blood marked his cheek, forearm, and the front of his coat.

"You could have used Stonehide."

"Too slow."

"Burst Step."

"Too expensive for a room this small."

"Kinetic Acceleration."

"Didn’t need it."

Valeria looked over the aftermath.

Two dead.

Three unconscious or incapable of continuing.

The entire fight had lasted less than twenty seconds.

"That was you before Predation."

Raven wiped the blade clean.

"Part of me."

"No."

She stepped closer.

"That explains much more than I’d like to admit."

Raven sheathed the knife.

"Which part?"

"When you arrived in this world, you were Level One."

"Yes."

"And you still killed creatures and people above your Level."

"Also yes."

"I thought it was military experience combined with Predator’s Instinct."

"Predator’s Instinct helps. But without what I already knew, I wouldn’t have survived the first day."

Valeria looked toward the dead Level Twenty-Five guard.

"But you didn’t need it for this."

Raven examined the door ahead.

"No."

"How many people were in Black Hound?"

"In my immediate cell? Six."

"And they betrayed you together."

"Yes."

"All trained like you?"

Raven stopped.

"Trained by the same program."

"Then I still don’t understand how you survived."

Raven looked at the blood coating his hand.

Rain.

A corridor.

Mason trying to close off his angle.

Ramirez expecting Raven to retreat toward cover.

Park waiting for the reload pattern Raven had used for years.

Cole realizing too late that a teammate knew every protocol precisely because he had helped build them.

"Because they came to kill a teammate," Raven said.

His gaze remained on the blood.

"I came to survive six assassins."