F-Rank Awakening: My System Turns Trash Skills To SSS-RANK

Chapter 25: Final Score

Rain dragged his body across the cracked basalt floor with his elbows.

The heat radiating off the rock burned his palms, but he didn’t feel it. Every inch of movement sent a blinding, white-hot spike straight up his right hip from the shattered bone in his lower leg. The broken shank dragged behind him like a sack of wet sand, twisting unnaturally whenever his boot caught on a loose stone or a thick patch of sticky hemolymph.

Dust rained down from the ceiling in heavy, blinding sheets. A chunk of rock the size of an iron washbasin crashed to the floor five feet on his left, spraying sharp shrapnel that cut across his jaw.

Across the chamber, the Bone Widow wasn’t dead.

The massive spider-like creature was alive, crouched in the dark twenty yards away, thrashing its six heavy limbs in wild, unpredictable bursts of blind rage. Dane’s red-hilted sword was gone from its underside, leaving a gaping, dripping tear near its leg joint. It couldn’t see, its pale bone mask shattered and its main eye-clusters ruined by arrows and steel, but its razor-thin scythe arms were sweeping through the air in violent, whistling arcs, smashing through basalt pillars and showering the gallery in stone.

Rain reached the shadow of a fallen stone block where Nyra lay.

She was on her side, her face spattered with grey dust and dark blood, her breath coming in rapid, shallow hitches. Rain grabbed the collar of her leather vest with his right hand, his fingers bleeding from torn nails, and yanked her body deeper into an alcove beneath the rock.

"Nyra," Rain grunted, his voice cracking on the name. He slapped his left hand against her cheek, hard enough to leave a red mark through the dust. "Nyra, wake up. Wake up!"

Nyra groaned, her eyelids fluttering open. Her eyes were unfocused, glassy, and swimming in pain as she stared up at the dark, shaking ceiling.

"Rain?" she wheezed, her hand reaching out to grab his bloody wrist. "What... what happened? Where’s Warrick?"

"The rift is collapsing," Rain said, his breathing ragged and thin. "And Warrick left us. That bastard took the mana core and left us here to die."

Nyra blinked slowly, her mind fighting through a heavy concussion. "What... what collapsing?"

"The ceiling is coming down, Nyra!" Rain shouted over the deep, grinding rumble of the stone. "The portal anchor is breaking! Warrick ran!"

Nyra pushed herself up onto one elbow, her whole frame shaking violently as she looked toward the empty archway. "He... he left? But the boss..."

"The boss isn’t dead," Rain said, pointing his shaking finger toward the darkness where the giant spider’s scythe arms were repeatedly smashing a rock pillar into powder. "It’s still out there. It’s mad and it’s swinging at everything."

Nyra’s eyes widened, the fog of her head injury vanishing under a sudden surge of raw panic. "We have to get out of here now! Come on, help me up! Help me up!"

She grabbed his shoulder, trying to pull herself to her feet, waiting for him to plant his legs and take her weight.

Rain didn’t move. He sat in the dust, his face pale, his lips blue, and gave a quick, bitter glance down at his right leg. The trousers were shredded, the blood-soaked fabric clinging to a jagged white ridge of bone that pushed up against the skin above his boot.

Nyra followed his gaze. Her hands froze on his vest.

"Oh shit," Nyra whispered, her voice shrinking into a high, terrified squeak. "Oh shit... oh shit... that’s bad."

"Yeah," Rain said.

Nyra backed her head against the stone block, her chest heaving as she clutched her wounded arm. "We can’t... Rain, we can’t do this. My ribs are cracked. You can’t even stand up! If we try to crawl past that thing, it’s going to hear us and chop us to pieces!"

"If we try to crawl past it and run right now, we both know it might not be enough," Rain said, his voice flat, steady, and terrifyingly cold despite the sweat dripping off his jaw. "Either the ceiling drops on our heads or that creature catches us in the narrow tunnel. But if we don’t kill this thing right here, right now, then Maren died for nothing. Dane died for nothing. Toby is pinned to a wall twenty feet away because we didn’t finish it."

He clamped his hand around the rough shaft of the bone spur resting in his lap.

"I am not walking out of this rift empty-handed," Rain snarled, his teeth bared in a bloody smile. "I spent my whole life being a no name and let people treat me like dirt. Dane and everyone died for this haul. I refuse to let that count for nothing. I refuse to let Warrick win!"

"You’re out of your fucking mind!" Nyra yelled, tears cutting clean streaks through the dust on her cheeks. "Look at you! You leg is broken! How the hell are we supposed to kill a C-rank boss like this?!"

"Because it can’t see!" Rain snapped back, leaning forward until his face was inches from hers. "It’s blind, Nyra! It’s swinging at sounds! You have two working legs. You can move. I have a weapon and I know where its soft skin is! Do you have a better idea? Do you want to lie here and wait for the roof to cave in?!"

Nyra stared at him, her mouth open, her chest rising and falling in fast, panicked hitches. She looked at the dark tunnel exit, then back at the massive black shape of the Bone Widow thrashing in the center of the room.

"Fuck!" Nyra sobbed, slamming her fist against the rock. "Fuck my life! What do we do?!"

"Get me upright," Rain said looking around.

"I saw something..." He half muttered to himself. He reached into the debris near his hip, his fingers scrambling over the rubble until they locked onto a broken wooden shaft from one of Toby’s discarded arrows, a solid, four-foot piece of ash wood that hadn’t splintered entirely.

"Take your belt off," Rain ordered, unbuckling his own heavy leather strap with shaking fingers. "We’re tying this to my shin. We force the bone straight so it doesn’t fold when I put weight on it."

Nyra pulled her leather belt free, her hands trembling so hard she could barely thread the tongue through the buckle. "This is going to hurt like hell, Rain."

"Just do it!" Rain barked.

Nyra lined the ash shaft up along the outside of his broken right shank. She pulled his boot straight with a sharp, heavy yank.

"AAAGH!" Rain shrieked, his head snapping back against the stone, his eyes rolling up into his skull as a wave of sheer, unadulterated agony ripped through his body. His back arched off the floor, his fingernails digging straight into the dirt until they bled.

"HOLD STILL!" Nyra yelled, tears spilling over her eyes as she wrapped the leather strap around his knee and the wooden shaft, pulling it as tight as her bruised arms could manage. "HOLD STILL OR IT WON’T HOLD!"

She took his own belt and bound the lower half near his ankle, cinching the iron buckle until the strap bit deep into his torn trousers, pinning the broken bone rigid against the ash wood.

Rain lay panting in the dust, his vision swimming in bright red dots, his mouth tasting heavily of iron where he had bitten through his inner lip. He tested the leg, dragging it under his body. It didn’t fold. The bone burned like a hot poker, but the ash shaft kept the joint from collapsing sideways.

"Help me up," Rain gasped.

Nyra grabbed his left arm, wedging her shoulder under his armpit. Together, using the stone block for leverage, they hauled his body upright. Rain planted his good left foot, took a breath, and let a fraction of his weight shift onto the braced right leg.

A white-hot shock of pain slammed into his brain, but the crude splint held. He didn’t fall.

"You got it?" Nyra panted, her face inches from his, her body trembling under his weight.

"I got it," Rain grunted, tightening his grip on the bone spur. "Where is it?"

They peered around the edge of the pillar.

The Bone Widow was twenty feet away, crouched in a wide pool of its own black blood. Its broad, six-limbed body was twitching erratically, its head raised toward the ceiling as if listening for the sound of falling rock. Its left foreclaw was damaged, hanging uselessly at its side, but its right scythe arm was raised high, ready to strike at the slightest vibration.

"Listen to me," Rain whispered, his voice low and tight. "It’s listening for footsteps. You take three loose rocks. Throw one at the far pillar on the left. When it turns to strike the sound, throw the second one at its back leg. I’m going in from the right blind spot."

"Rain, if it turns on you, you can’t dodge," Nyra whispered, panic creeping back into her tone.

"Then don’t let it turn!" Rain yelled in a low, fierce whisper. "NOW!"

Nyra grabbed a fist-sized chunk of basalt and hurled it across the gallery.

CLACK.

The rock struck a pillar thirty feet to the left.

The Bone Widow reacted instantly. Its right scythe arm whipped through the air with a deafening SWISH, smashing into the distant pillar and blowing a cloud of stone dust into the air.

"NOW!" Nyra screamed.

Rain hobbled forward out of the shadow. Every step on his braced right leg felt like an iron spike being driven into his hipbone, but he pushed through the agony, his left leg driving him forward in a staggering, asymmetrical sprint.

Nyra threw the second rock, hitting the Widow’s rear chitin shell with a hard THUD.

The giant spider hissed, its body pivoting violently toward the rear.

Rain reached the creature’s right flank just as it turned. He didn’t have the speed to leap. He didn’t have Mana for Flash Step. He simply threw his entire body weight forward, slamming his shoulder into the creature’s side to anchor himself, and drove the bone spur straight into the soft, unarmored joint behind its front right leg.

STAB.

The bone point bit deep, sinking six inches into the wet, pulsing tissue.

The Widow let out a high-pitched, vibrating shriek that shook the dust from Rain’s hair. Its massive body bucked upward, throwing Rain sideways. His braced leg caught on the uneven floor, and he crashed hard onto his side, the crude splint snapping two of the leather bindings with a sharp POP.

"RAIN!" Nyra screamed.

The Widow’s heavy rear leg swept out blind, the thick chitinous tip catching Rain across his left shoulder.

THWACK!

[HP: 23/100]

[Damage Taken: 18]

Rain tumbled through the dirt, his vision flaring dark red as the breath exploded from his lungs. He rolled onto his back, gasping wildly for air, only to see the massive, dark underbelly of the spider rising right above him, its undamaged scythe arm raising to drive straight down into his throat.

"HEY! OVER HERE, YOU UGLY BITCH!" Nyra screamed from ten feet away.

She didn’t use a rock. She ran straight up to the creature’s trailing rear leg and drove her short dagger directly into its open wound, yanking the steel sideways with all her strength.

The Widow whipped its entire upper body around toward Nyra, its scythe arm missing Rain’s chest by two inches as it crashed into the basalt floor.

Rain didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about his broken leg. He dragged himself up onto his knees, grabbed the shaft of the bone spur still protruding from the creature’s leg joint, and pulled himself up onto the spider’s lower back.

"DIE!" Rain roared, his voice splitting the air in a raw, unhinged scream. "DIE! DIE! DIE!"