Ray’s hands stayed up, fingers locked around the hilt, the blade angled across his body. The stance wasn’t pretty. He was still no expert and the weight of the sword coupled with his injuries made things worse. It was the only shape he could hold without collapsing, and he could feel every tremor in his forearms as his ruined chest fought to keep up with his breathing.

  The drip of water had stopped for three beats. The silence felt wrong. The room Ray was in was completely damp. Ray didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He let the darkness take over and listened.

  Stone scraped deeper in the corridor. Slow. Deliberate. A dragging weight followed, heavy enough to vibrate through the floor. A smell rolled out with it, stale and animal, thick with damp rot. Ray’s stomach tightened and he forced his breathing to stay shallow. He couldn’t breathe deeper, his ribs wouldn’t allow it.

  The thing stepped into the faint green spill.

  Shell first, curved and ridged, dull in the glow. Then legs, thick and jointed, moving with patient certainty. Pincers followed, one broad enough to sweep him off his feet, the other narrow and pointed, built to punch through gaps. Its eyes caught the green and threw it back at him in hard reflections.

  Ray didn’t wait for an interface to tell him what it was. There wasn’t one. He had no clean prompt, no health bar in the corner, no friendly confirmation that a skill was ready. His body was the only readout he had, and it was still screaming at him from the inside.

  He reached down without thinking, found glass by touch alone, and yanked the cork free with his teeth.

  The minor healing potion burned on the way down. Warmth spread through his gut and into his limbs, thin and stubborn. It didn’t fix the hole in his chest. It didn’t put blood back where it belonged. It gave him enough to stand his ground and enough to keep his grip from failing on first impact.

  The crab clicked its pincers once, a dry sound in the wet chamber, then rushed.

  It didn’t move fast. It moved heavy. Each step was a shove against the world, the kind that didn’t need speed to be dangerous. The broad pincer swept out to herd him into the wall. The narrow one stabbed straight for his middle.

  Ray shifted on timing and footwork alone, blade rising to catch the stab and turn it aside. The impact jarred his shoulder. His grip nearly broke. He rolled with it, stepped to the creature’s flank, and cut at the seam where plates overlapped.

  Steel skated across shell and screamed.

  No bite. No purchase.

  Ray’s jaw tightened. He tried anyway, a second cut, sharper, lower, and the shell repaid him with a juddering rebound that stung his wrists and sent a pulse of pain through his ribs. The crab turned with him, patient and relentless, pincers snapping at space and timing rather than target, forcing him to keep moving because a single mistake would mean being pinned and crushed. He backed away, boots slipping on damp stone, and felt the wall closing in behind him, the chamber shrinking around the only fight he’d been given.

  His mind reached for Speed Burst out of habit, the internal shove that used to pull power into his legs and sharpen the world. He pushed. Nothing answered.

  He pushed again, harder, and felt resistance this time, a blunt blockage that pressed back against the request and sealed it off. The skill existed somewhere in him, he could feel the familiar path it used to take, but the channel was clogged, locked, or stripped down to bare wire. Ray sucked in a breath and swallowed the pain that came with it. He didn’t have time to panic. Panic wouldn’t save him.

  He thought of Miu. The thread of their bond existed, stretched thin through distance, but it didn’t carry words. Ray felt the ache of that absence as he shifted his grip on the sword and forced his focus onto the present. He was alone. He could only rely on himself.

  The crab lunged again, broad pincer sweeping low this time, trying to catch his legs. Ray hopped back a half step on instinct, and the floor gave him a wet slip that stole the clean landing. His heel skidded. The narrow pincer shot in.

  Ray twisted his hips and took the hit on steel, blade angled hard, and the impact nearly tore the sword from his hands. He caught it, dragged the pincer aside, and used the opening to drive forward, not to cut the shell again, because that had already proven pointless, but to test the legs.

  The joint between shell and limb had a seam. It had to. Nothing moved without a hinge. Ray took a tight, precise strike at the nearest knee-like bend.

  This time the blade didn’t skate. It bit, shallow, but real, and a thick dark fluid welled out in a slow bead.

  The crab reacted instantly. It didn’t scream. It didn’t flinch. It shifted its weight and slammed its whole body sideways, a heavy shove that tried to turn Ray into paste against the wall. Ray threw himself back, shoulder clipping stone, breath exploding out of him in a wet grunt. The chest wound screamed and his vision sparked with bright dots. He forced his eyes to stay open anyway, because closing them for even a blink felt like giving the monster permission.

  It charged again, more aggressive now, pincers snapping faster, the rush tighter, trying to trap him in the corner where its weight would finish the job.

  Ray stopped retreating.

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  He stepped into the timing instead, blade up, and let the broad pincer sweep past his ribs close enough that he felt wind from it. The narrow pincer stabbed, and Ray met it with a hard parry that sent the point into the floor with a crack of stone. He was in range for a heartbeat. He used it.

  He chopped at the same leg joint again, a sharper angle this time, and felt the blade sink deeper, scrape something hard, then cut through a softer band beneath. The crab’s leg buckled a fraction. Its whole shell dipped on that side, weight shifting wrong.

  The shift was small, barely a tilt, but Ray saw it the way he saw a bad step on a mountain path. Weight had a language. The crab’s shell rode too high on one side, and the damaged leg was doing more work than it could afford. Ray moved without thinking, because thinking wasted seconds, and seconds were the only thing the dungeon charged interest on. He cut again into the hinge, felt the blade catch, then bite, and the creature’s whole frame jerked in response. The crab snapped a pincer at his head, a sweeping strike meant to crush, and Ray ducked under it so low the edge of the shell scraped air over his scalp. He came up on the other side of the swing and drove his shoulder forward to steal space, then hacked down into the next joint with everything his ribs would allow. The sword didn’t like that angle and his wrists complained, but the cut landed. Dark fluid spilled and the leg trembled.

  The crab responded by changing tactics. It stopped trying to herd him into the wall and started trying to pin him with its own bulk, shoving forward in short, ugly surges. It didn’t need clean strikes. It only needed one moment where Ray’s feet failed. The broad pincer slammed down and Ray had to jump sideways, boots skidding on wet stone, and the narrow pincer followed straight into the space his body had considered safe. He caught it on steel again and the impact drove pain up his arm into his shoulder and across his chest wound in a sharp line that made his vision flash. Ray kept the blade between them anyway, forced his elbows to hold, forced his stance to settle, and then he twisted the pincer off-line and chopped at the hinge again. He wasn’t trying to win quickly. He was trying to make the monster worse with every exchange, to leave it with less mobility each time it dared to close the distance.

  Ray didn’t let it recover. He circled left, staying near the injured side, forcing the crab to rotate its bulk to follow him, and each rotation made the damaged joint grind. The creature tried to rush again, tried to pin him with a body slam, but its balance had changed. It still moved heavy, still moved dangerous, and Ray still had to time his steps with care, but the rush came wider, sloppier. Ray used that. He baited it toward the rougher part of the chamber where the floor rose in uneven stone and the green grooves made shallow ridges.

  The crab hit the ridge mid-rush and its injured side dipped. Ray saw the opening and took it, a precise cut into the second leg joint, then another strike into the third, each one quick and controlled, refusing to waste strength on shell that didn’t care. He worked like a butcher, not a swordsman, carving mobility away one hinge at a time.

  The chamber fought him as much as the crab did. The green grooves made ridges that caught his boots at the wrong time, and the damp turned every step into a risk. Ray’s lungs burned harder now, each breath scraping at his throat, and the warmth from the potion started to thin into a dull ache that spread through his limbs. His grip on the hilt wasn’t steady anymore. It kept tightening too much, then loosening without permission, his hands trying to cramp around the only thing keeping him alive. The crab surged again, shell driving forward, and Ray barely avoided being slammed flat. Stone bit into his shoulder as he clipped the wall, and the world narrowed for a heartbeat, sound turning hollow. He forced his eyes back open and saw the narrow pincer coming straight for his chest, for the wound, for the soft point that would end this. He threw the blade up late, too late, and the pincer scraped along the steel and still caught his shirt, dragging him a half step closer before he wrenched free.

  The crab tried to capitalise. It snapped the broad pincer across his knees, a sweeping motion that would have taken his legs out, and Ray jumped with a jolt of pain that made his ribs scream. He landed badly, heel sliding, and his balance broke for a fraction. That was enough. The creature rushed, slow and unstoppable, and Ray felt the pressure of its mass before it even hit him. He slammed his shoulder into the wall to stop himself from falling backward, braced his feet, and shoved his blade into the gap between the pincers to keep them from closing cleanly on his torso. Metal described a harsh, ugly line as it scraped on chitin and stone. Ray’s arms shook. His chest wound throbbed in time with the monster’s push. He could feel his strength draining into the floor with every second he held that line. He couldn’t outmuscle it. He could only steal a beat. He twisted hard, dragged the narrow pincer down, and stepped in close where the broad pincer couldn’t swing properly. He used that cramped space to drive his sword down into the pincer base again, deeper this time, and the crunch that followed told him he’d cut something that mattered.

  The crab spasmed, the limb jerking, and Ray ripped the sword free and stumbled back before the broad pincer could crush him in blind retaliation. The creature tried to turn, tried to chase, but two of its legs were compromised and one limb was half severed. Its rush turned into a clumsy shove.

  Ray’s lungs burned. His chest wound throbbed in time with his heartbeat. His hands shook. He swallowed and kept his blade up, because the crab still moved. It still wanted him.

  He finished it the only way he knew how in a place like this.

  He took its legs.

  One by one, he cut the hinges again, deeper each time, using the same method, the same patience, refusing to waste effort on shell, refusing to let desperation turn him sloppy. The crab grew slower. Its turns became smaller. Its rushes became stutters. When the third leg finally failed fully, the creature tilted, shell grinding against stone, and Ray stepped in and drove the blade into the exposed band beneath the body where the armour plates didn’t quite meet.

  The crab shuddered once, a heavy tremor through the floor, then went still.

  Ray didn’t trust stillness. He waited with his blade raised, breath coming in thin pulls, eyes fixed on the corpse for any twitch or delayed lunge. His arms were shaking so badly the sword tip wandered, and he had to clamp down with sheer stubbornness to keep it from dipping. The dungeon stayed silent except for the drip returning somewhere deeper, and that sound irritated him in a way he couldn’t explain. It felt too normal for a place that had just tried to crush him. He took a step back, then another, giving himself space and keeping the corridor in view, and only then did he let his shoulders sag a fraction. The pain in his chest didn’t ease. It settled deeper, heavy and steady, and he realised how close he’d been to losing control of his body completely. He swallowed, tasted blood again, and spat it to the side without ceremony. No window appeared. No reward announced itself. The dungeon didn’t care that he’d survived. It only cared that he was still capable of moving, and that meant it could keep taking pieces from him.

  The drip of water resumed somewhere deeper in the dungeon, steady and uncaring.

  Ray stood there for a moment with his sword hanging low, staring at the corpse, waiting for a window that didn’t exist to tell him he’d won. Nothing appeared. No chime. No reward prompt. No number in the corner rising. The silence was almost worse than the fight.

  His legs finally started to shake properly. He braced a hand against the wall, smearing damp grime across his palm, and forced himself to breathe through the pain. He didn’t know what his health was. He didn’t need a number to tell him he was running on scraps. The potion had taken the edge off death. It hadn’t given him safety.

  He crouched beside the crab and examined the joints he’d cut, forcing himself to learn the shape of it. Shell plates overlapped in a way that protected the core. The hinges had a different texture, more fibrous, less armoured. The pincer base had a small gap where movement demanded space. He traced those weak points with his eyes and locked them away, because he doubted this was the only one.

  A faint glint caught in the green spill near the corpse’s underside, something that didn’t match wet stone or chitin. Ray reached in carefully, half expecting the creature to jerk, and pulled free a shard of hard material the size of his palm. It looked like a piece of carapace, darker and denser than the rest, edges naturally shaped into a curve that could be fitted to a forearm or shin. It felt heavier than it should.

  Ray turned it over. No prompt. No identify. No helpful label.

  He stared at it, then let out a rough breath that was halfway between a laugh and a cough. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

  His chest tightened again, warning him not to waste oxygen. He pushed himself back to his feet and looked toward the corridor the crab had crawled out of. The darkness beyond was deeper than the chamber, the green grooves thinning as they ran into the gap, the light refusing to follow.

  The drip of water stopped again.

  Ray froze instantly, sword coming up without thought, body doing the work before his mind could argue.

  A new scrape answered from the corridor, followed by another, then a faint clicking rhythm, multiple pincers tapping stone in slow, patient coordination.

  Ray’s grip tightened until his knuckles went pale. He adjusted his stance, feet finding a better angle on the damp floor, blade aligned with the corridor’s mouth, and he forced his breathing back into control.

  “Alright,” he muttered, voice raw in the dark. “Round two.”

  The clicking grew closer.