Chapter 166: Respite

Kael navigated the rest of the maze at a measured pace, forcing himself not to sprint just because he could.

The maintenance corridors under the metro weren’t a straight line; they were a nest of cheap shortcuts and dead ends designed by someone who hated human beings.

Cable bundles drooped like vines overhead, and broken conduits ran along the walls in crooked seams. Every few steps he checked the map again, not trusting his own memory even now that his eyes were back. One wrong turn and he’d walk into a pocket full of undead, or worse, waste minutes he didn’t have while the fire zone chewed closer from behind.

When the path finally narrowed into a dead end, he almost laughed in relief. Almost. At the far wall, bolted into the concrete like an afterthought, was a metal ladder that climbed into darkness. I

t didn’t look safe. It looked old. But old meant it led somewhere that used to matter, and used to matter meant there was a way out.

He climbed slowly, testing each rung with his weight before committing, metal palms biting cold metal, boots scraping grit off the edges. His gear clinked softly, chain, gauntlet joints, the little betrayals that told the world where he was.

At the top, his fingers found the lip of a manhole cover, and he pushed with his shoulder. It resisted at first, stuck by rust and time, then gave with a grinding screech that made his jaw tighten.

He paused, listening for any answering movement down below. Nothing came. Either the zombies were sealed off by the ring of fire now, or they were too busy clawing at each other to notice one more sound.

He nudged the cover aside and squinted up.

Looking outside, it was still bright.

The light was too clean for a dead city, the kind of daylight that made the ruins look sharper than they had any right to be.

Broken windows glittered. Dust hung in the air like it had nowhere to settle. For a heartbeat he just stood there, half out of the ground, letting the open sky exist in his peripheral vision like a luxury he hadn’t earned.

He quickly got out, covered the manhole, and rushed to the nearest building while checking his map.

He didn’t stay exposed. The habit was automatic: up, out, down, conceal. He dropped the cover back into place and shoved it flat, then jogged in a tight line to the nearest building that still had enough walls to count as cover.

His eyes flicked between the street and the minimap, calibrating threats the way he’d learned to do since day one: red meant teeth, green meant people, and people were almost always teeth with better timing.

Once he was tucked behind broken concrete and half-collapsed brick, he slowed. His chest still rose hard from the underground sprint, throat raw with the stale heat he’d been breathing near the Ifrit’s edge.

He scanned again, no green dots close, no sudden movement drifting toward his position, and only then let himself breathe like a human instead of prey.

“Thankfully, I’m out,” he thought to himself as he watched his energy bar slowly go up.

The internal energy bar wasn’t generous, but it was moving. That alone mattered. It meant he wasn’t stuck in that suffocating “one mistake and you fall over” zone anymore.

His body still felt drained in that deep, marrow way, yet the creeping refill gave him something dangerously close to confidence, dangerous because confidence was what got people killed in the Tower.

“First things first,” he muttered to himself.

He wasn’t going to admire the sunlight or daydream about what he’d do “later.”

Later didn’t exist unless he solved the next ten problems in front of him.

He pulled the Momentum rune out and steadied it in his palm, letting the system overlay lock onto it.

[Inspect]

Rune of Momentum – ᚠᚩᚱᚦᚷᚪᚾᚷ-

Preservation of Motion.

Amplification of kinetic Force.

Continuous Energy Drain while active.

***

Motion is the first rebellion against stillness.

Once something begins to move, the world itself struggles to halt it.

Momentum is the memory of motion, a force that refuses to forget the path already taken.

***

“Damn. This one sounds epic as hell, but…” he feared for a few things.

Even reading it, he could already feel the temptation: faster strikes, heavier impacts, movement that refused to die. It was the kind of rune that made you imagine yourself turning into a battering ram, no hesitation, no brakes, just violence and speed. Which was exactly why it was dangerous.

Not stopping wasn’t always a superpower. Not stopping was also how you broke your own bones, how you overshot a corner and went face-first into a wall, how you ran straight into a trap because you couldn’t decelerate in time. A punch with amplified kinetic force sounded great until the recoil didn’t care about your enthusiasm and your arm took the bill. He’d seen enough busted limbs in real life to know what “force” did to joints. He worked construction after all. And even a wrecking ball had its limits.

“No wonder no one likes runes, they sound broken, but they’ll break you if you use them wrong.” Kael sighed.

The sigh wasn’t dramatic; it was tired, practical. Every rune he’d touched so far came with a price tag written in pain. The Tower loved handing people sharp tools and watching them cut themselves open, figuring out which end was the handle.

He headed upstairs and found a room that was empty.

It wasn’t hard to find emptiness in this place. Every building was a carcass. Doors hung loose. Floors sagged. Wind pushed dust through broken windows like slow water. He picked a room that had one clean entrance, a line of sight to the corridor, and enough broken furniture to barricade if someone got curious. It wasn’t comfort, just control.

Thankfully, since this was a post-apocalyptic world, not many places had people in them, and any room can be a temporary crafting room for Kale.

He checked the doorway twice before committing. No footsteps. No voices. No green dots lingering close enough to ambush him the moment he dropped his guard.

Only then did he let his shoulders relax and sit, letting the room’s stillness settle over his nerves.

For now, Kael couldn’t try out the new runes. His energy levels were not allowing such a thing.

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