The big one was complaining loudly.

  “I’m fine, goddammit! I don’t need your- yee-ouch!”

  The cry of pain and surprise echoed through the tunnels. Grim could hear the echo grow quieter as it bounced off the walls until it faded away. But he didn’t hear what he was waiting for: a reaction. Under normal circumstances, he would’ve insisted that the group change locations, but the situation had a different read. Large monsters like lycans tended to scare off smaller prey while avoiding anything that could prey on them. Not to mention, if he could hear the sounds of battle, then it was likely anything else in the area could as well. If no monsters were coming up on them now, it wasn’t likely they would in the near future.

  The brute’s wounds were deep and it was taking a while to staunch the bleeding, enough that the ground was littered with bandages that had been bled through. Fed up with wasting the party’s supplies, Halmae used a miniature torch to heat the face of one of Grim’s hand axes and was in the process of painfully cauterizing the wounds.

  “I’ll be fine! My wounds will close on their own with time and- Blazes, woman! Watch the edges!”

  Halmae was facing away, but Grim could see she was enjoying this. They’d pieced together that it was the barbarian’s idea to explore the second level of the basement and engage the two steel-clawed lycans in battle.The least the fool could do was deal with the pain of his injuries.

  A mousy voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “Thank you, sir. You arrived just in time.”

  Grim turned to face the speaker. She was young enough to be his granddaughter, a tiny little thing who’d they’d first met a day earlier when she offered them the job. She was a ranger of some sort, but Grim suspected she spent most of her time filling out paper at the Player Society rather than in the field.

  Part of him wanted to yell at her and make sure she understood the danger they were all in. Hongdae Station had some of the deepest underground man-made tunnels in all of the city. Some of the things down there arrived during the World Break and had never left. As far as anyone was concerned, this was their territory.

  But the girl was a manager of some sort with the Player Society and Halmae explained in painstaking detail that she was to be treated with kid-gloves.

  So instead of telling her off, as he wanted to do, he gave a simple grunt in agreement.

  “Your name?” he asked gruffly.

  “Heekyeom,” she squeaked.

  Grim nodded. He’d never seen her at the offices of the Player Society, but she seemed the type. “First job” he asked.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Something unintelligible flashed in her eyes, but it faded into a dull stare before the girl answered uncertainly, “N-no, not really.”

  His hand raised and pointed at the rogue. “And you?”

  The man flinched at the sudden attention. He wore a dark cloak, but he moved with purpose and carried a well-used blade that had been oiled recently. There was no doubt about it, this one was experienced..

  “Nobu.”

  The two stared at one another. Grim had gleaned enough to know that the man wasn’t simply a rogue, more likely he was an outrider or a shade. Probably with skills and a fighting style more accustomed to striking from the shadows rather than engaging foes in the open.

  The man’s eyes were hard, but Grim was nearly sixty years old. He’d seen more than enough battles and dealt with his share of incompetence. Of the three, this man was obviously the oldest and most experienced. Leader or not, he was responsible for the party.

  When neither man broke, Grim stepped forward and straightened his back rising up to his full height.

  Standing at well over six feet tall, Grim’s imposing size and stature towered over the comparably squat rogue.

  “A-apologies… sir. I should’ve known better,” Nobu muttered.

  Halmae appeared behind Grim with the barbarian in tow and handed Grim back his axe.

  “Yes, you should have,” she scolded. “But we don’t have time for that now.”

  The five adventurers assessed their current surroundings.

  The lower levels of the subway station were still under construction when the World Break occurred. It looked like the structure had been completed, but any construction on shops, vending machines and turnstiles had yet to begin. Compared to most parts of the old world, it was almost clean. Except for the bloodied mess of two lycans, that is.

  On the opposite end that Grim and Halmae entered from, there were two long corridors heading down into the lower floors of the station. Based on their reports, these would lead to the platforms below which remained unfinished.

  Grim had spilled more blood in his lifetime to fill entire oceans, but he could still feel fear. And every cell in his body told him that a thousand deaths were waiting for him in the deep dark.

  “Looks like this is it,” Halmae announced.

  Their objective was absurdly simple: an item retrieval.

  But peering down the darkened corridor, Grim was reminded of the mysterious circumstances behind the quest.

  It was posted on the Player Society’s quest board like hundreds of others. But in this specific case, there was no poster. And the payment, absurdly large at 20,000 Gold, was held in escrow by the Society itself which was completely unheard of. Not only because it was impossible to post a quest on the board without including your identity, but because the escrow meant the Society was complicit in the deception.

  The barbarian’s voice piped up and forced confidence. “We should get going.”

  Four pairs of eyes turned to glare at him.

  “You will stay up here,” Halmae declared. “We only need one of you to come with us, the other two can stay up here.”

  The brute moved to complain, but Heekyum cut him off.

  “We understand, ma’am.”

  Something in her voice made it clear there was no room for discussion in the matter. Nobu nodded in agreement and a hard look resulted in Garou’s own acceptance of the matter.

  Grim grunted his approval.

  Better late than never, he thought.