Chapter 94: Surrounded

Kael frowned as he looked at the map.

The names meant almost nothing on their own. Excise. Cut out. Remove. Separate. It sounded surgical, violent in a quiet way. Momentum. Movement. Force. Speed. Something that would either save his life or snap his spine if used wrong.

Without having the rune in his hand, he can’t [Inspect] their function. So all he could do was guess.

Since one of the Runes seemed to be not that far away from him, in fact… it was in the labyrinth he was in right now. It was the Momentum rune. He zoomed in closely on the map and took a loud gulp.

“No wonder the system didn’t choose this one for easiest before, even if I was here once.”

It was actually inside a sleeping Zombie.

The icon sat there like a trap with a gift in the middle. The worst kind. The Tower loved those.

“I can’t get that,” he sighed, and the words tasted like defeat even though he knew it was the smarter call. He wished if he could, but that would break the contract he had with Dragon. He couldn’t go on hunting and killing zombies as it’ll wake them up too. He’ll have many enemies to go through first since the underground was packed full of them.

And the contract wasn’t just a promise. It was a leash with teeth. If the Tower was watching, and it always was, then breaking it could mean losing the only genuine lifeline he’d been offered since he arrived: the Elixir, and the frozen time it implied. He couldn’t afford to risk that, not when his mother’s life was on the line. Not after struggling through all this pain and this ordeal, it was too greedy to even think of doing such an atrocity.

The second rune seemed to be the easiest to obtain out of the two.

Excise.

Though from the name alone, he has yet to fully understand what it’s capable of. Maybe it was even a useless rune. But it was a tool he could still use. It was inside a building, half broken one, not too far from where he was either.

A rune in a building. No sleeping zombie. No contract violation. No immediate apocalypse switch. That alone made it attractive. Made it easier, but at the same time made it suspicious. After all, this should have definitely been the ’easier’ rune to obtain instead of the [Fire] Rune since that one literally woke a sleeping Armageddon. But why would this be considered higher in terms of risk than the Fire Rune? Kael could only hypothesies and never confirm without him being physically there.

“I guess I’ll grab that one first,” Kael said as he headed out.

He first thought of going out not from the tunnel, but instead back from the same manhole he first came from. Remembering the toppled trash can, with his current strength, he’s more than capable of pushing it aside.

It would be faster. Cleaner. More direct. His body wanted daylight, open air, distance from scales and crawling dread.

But the problem was, he needed to get to Baltak first and exchange his stuff.

Simply because he needed information, stability, supplies, and perhaps a chance to convert a pile of valuable materials into cores without advertising himself to every hungry climber on the street. He needed to stockpile.

With the map in hand and the [Presence] rune, he should be able to do it. Hopefully without much risk. If he went through the underground train stations, the basilisk might hunt him down. But with the map always ready, he’ll be able to spot it long before that nightmare becomes reality.

He didn’t love the idea of walking through the same veins where the basilisk prowled, but he trusted the minimap more than his own senses. His senses lied. His senses panicked. His senses missed details. The map didn’t care about fear.

Thus, Kael moved back to the powerline tunnels and toward the same train station maintenance door from which he first came.

It took him some time to get there, and he made sure to always have his eyes on the map. He moved with measured speed, careful not to scrape metal against stone, careful not to make his footsteps echo. The tunnels had a way of magnifying sound into something that felt like an announcement.

No green nor red dots showed up so far; it was safe.

That small mercy made him breathe a little easier, even if he didn’t fully trust it. Safety here was always temporary, always conditional.

He opened the door and began moving toward the upper station away from the basilisk’s den.

The air changed subtly as he climbed, less damp, less metallic, more stale. His breath sounded too loud in his own ears. He could feel the weight of the gauntlet on his arm like a reminder: you’re armed, but you’re also marked.

He didn’t walk, he jogged, not too fast not to draw attention or create sound, but not too slow in case the basilisk decided that it didn’t want to sleep during the day.

Each step was a compromise. His legs wanted to sprint, his brain wanted to freeze, and he forced them into an ugly middle ground that kept him moving without screaming “fresh meat.”

Soon enough, Kael made it to the exit of the station.

And just then, a few green dots showed up on the map.

At first it was a couple, then double that, then even more and more. They were all heading to the station where Kael was trying to leave.

Kael’s stomach tightened.

Green dots meant people. People meant questions, greed, suspicion, violence, or all of the above. And the way those dots clustered… it wasn’t a lone wanderer. It wasn’t a scared newbie hiding in rubble. It was a group moving with purpose.

He slowed instinctively, the jog becoming a controlled glide. His fingers tightened inside the gauntlet, not because he was ready to fight, but because he needed something physical to anchor himself. The tunnel felt suddenly narrower, the ceiling lower, like the station was closing in on him.

Whatever waited up there wasn’t random.

And whatever it was, it was walking straight toward him.

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