The days that followed bled into a monotonous, soul-crushing cycle of misery and degradation. Kaelan and the other fifty-odd F-Ranks were shoved into the Cathedral's undercroft, a labyrinthine network of damp, lightless tunnels and cramped, cell-like chambers that reeked of mildew, unwashed bodies, and despair. Their "beds" were thin, lice-infested straw pallets thrown haphazardly onto the cold stone floors. Their "food" was a twice-daily serving of watery, vaguely vegetable-tasting gruel, occasionally supplemented with a hunk of bread so stale it could have served as a weapon. Hunger became a constant, gnawing companion, a dull ache in the pit of his stomach that never truly subsided.
Their "service to the Crown," as Warden Grimsby so generously termed it, was, in reality, brutal, unending slave labor. Under the watchful, invariably cruel eyes of Grimsby and his contingent of thuggish overseers – men who seemed to derive a perverse pleasure from their petty tyranny – they performed the most grueling, demeaning tasks imaginable. They hauled massive, jagged stones for the seemingly endless reinforcement of Lumina's ancient walls, their hands quickly becoming raw and blistered. They scrubbed impossibly long stretches of grime-slicked corridors on their hands and knees until their backs screamed in protest. They mucked out the reeking stables of the Cathedral knights, the stench clinging to them for hours. They were the lowest of the low, human refuse to be used and abused at will.
Any perceived infraction – a moment of hesitation, a dropped stone, a whispered word of complaint, even a facial expression deemed insufficiently subservient – was met with swift, brutal punishment. The sting of a leather-tipped cane across the back, the jarring impact of a spear butt to the ribs, Grimsby's truncheon cracking against shins or skulls – these became sickeningly familiar occurrences. Kaelan saw a young woman, Sarah, who had cried out when an overseer deliberately kicked her meager food bowl into the dirt, savagely backhanded until her lip split and blood dripped onto the filthy floor. He saw an older man, who had collapsed from exhaustion while carrying a heavy beam, kicked repeatedly while he was down, then dragged away, never to be seen again. Fear was a constant currency, and pain its most common exchange.
Kaelan, however, adapted with a quiet, desperate resilience. His observant nature, once a tool for understanding literature or social dynamics, became his shield and his weapon. He learned to keep his head down, his expression carefully neutral, his movements economical and efficient. He watched. He listened. He learned. He memorized the patrol routes of the guards, the subtle shifts in their moods. He learned the layout of the bewildering maze of tunnels in the undercroft. He picked up snatches of hushed, fearful conversations from other servants, snippets about the war against the Demon Lord, about terrifying monsters that roamed the wilderness beyond Lumina's walls, about the incredible feats of the S-Rank heroes training in the sunlit courtyards high above, their laughter and shouts a distant, mocking echo in the F-Ranks' grim reality.
He heard tales of Marcus Vayne, his [Holy Sword Manifestation] already capable of conjuring a blade of pure, searing light that could cleave through solid oak training dummies as if they were butter. He heard of Elara Meadowlight's [Lifeweaver's Grace] mending grievous wounds with a touch, her gentle light a beacon of hope for the injured knights. Their world was one of dazzling power, adulation, and limitless potential. Kaelan's world was one of cold stone, oppressive darkness, grinding filth, and the constant, crushing weight of hopelessness.
His Trait, [Fleeting Steps], felt like a cruel, cosmic joke in this environment. The "minor agility boost" of twenty percent was barely perceptible when his body was screaming with exhaustion and his limbs felt like lead. Still, in the rare moments when he was unobserved, usually during the darkest hours of the night when even the overseers slept, or in some forgotten, shadowed corner, he experimented. A conscious thought, a delicate, almost instinctive tug on the faint web of ambient mana he could now consistently sense around him, and for ten precious seconds, his movements would feel a fraction lighter, his reactions a hair quicker. The cost was always the same: 5 MP. With his hard-won 120 MP, meticulously husbanded, he could, in theory, use it twenty-four times if his pool was full. But he rarely had a full pool, as mana recovered achingly slowly on their starvation diet.
He used it with miserly precision. To subtly quicken his pace when hauling a particularly heavy load, avoiding the overseer's impatient glare. To snatch an extra, slightly less moldy piece of bread from the communal bin when backs were turned. To dodge a carelessly swung pickaxe from a fellow, equally exhausted F-Rank. Each activation was a tiny, secret act of rebellion, a silent assertion of his own will in a world determined to grind him into nothing. The twenty percent boost was… functional. It made him a marginally more efficient slave, a slightly less likely target for casual brutality. But it wasn't heroic. It wasn't game-changing. It was, as the High Priests had so disdainfully assessed, unequivocally F-Rank.
One evening, the misery reached a new peak. After a particularly brutal day spent clearing rubble from a collapsed section of an old sewer tunnel – work that left them caked in filth and choking on foul air – Kaelan was assigned the solitary task of scrubbing the slick, moss-covered flagstones of a long-disused cistern passage. It was deep into the night cycle, the other F-Ranks already locked away in their wretched, communal cell. Only one guard, a paunchy, perpetually bored man named Borin, whose jowls wobbled when he walked, was assigned to watch him. And Borin, Kaelan quickly noted with a flicker of desperate interest, was far more engrossed in a suspiciously bulging waterskin he'd smuggled in – one that smelled distinctly of cheap, fermented fruit wine – than in his duties.
Kaelan's arms burned with a fiery ache, his back was a solid knot of agony, and his stomach twisted with the familiar pangs of emptiness. Despair, his constant, unwelcome shadow, pressed in on him, thicker and more suffocating than usual. But tonight, mingling with the despair, a dangerous, reckless idea, a tiny, flickering ember of defiance, began to glow in the desolate landscape of his mind. Escape. The word whispered through his thoughts, a seductive, terrifying melody. He'd overheard hushed whispers among the braver F-Ranks, fragmented tales of small, independent villages nestled deep within the Whisperwood, the vast, untamed forest that began just beyond Lumina's western walls. Places, the stories claimed, where the King's reach was less absolute, where a man might, just might, be free.
It was sheer, unadulterated madness. The city walls were colossal, patrolled by keen-eyed sentries. The Cathedral itself was a fortress within a fortress. If caught, the punishment would be unimaginably severe – torture, public execution, a slow death in the deepest dungeons. But what was the alternative? To slowly wither and die here, a nameless, forgotten slave, his potential, however meager, extinguished by neglect and cruelty? The thought of spending one more day, one more week, one more month in this living hell was becoming unbearable.
Borin, bless his slothful, alcoholic heart, let out a loud, gurgling snore. His head, cushioned by his multiple chins, lolled against the damp stone wall, his grip on the waterskin loosening until it slipped from his fingers and clattered softly onto the flagstones, spilling a small puddle of its pungent contents.Now. Kaelan's mind screamed. It has to be now. There won't be another chance like this.
His heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his ribcage. His breath hitched. He cast a wild glance down the long, oppressively dark passage. From his forced labor explorations, he knew this particular tunnel, long abandoned, eventually led towards a minor, rarely used service gate in the Cathedral's outer perimeter – a gate that was usually locked and barred, but far less heavily guarded than the main thoroughfares.
He needed to be fast. He needed to be silent. He activated [Fleeting Steps].A familiar whisper of power. [Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 115/120.]The world around him sharpened by that now-familiar twenty percent. He moved, not running, not yet, but walking with a swift, purposeful silence down the passage, his worn, ill-fitting boots making almost no sound on the slick, moss-covered stones.
The passage twisted, then opened slightly. He froze. Voices. Two of them, low and guttural, punctuated by a coarse laugh. Guards. He couldn't fight them; he was unarmed, untrained, and half-starved. He needed to get past them unseen, or create a convincing distraction.
He was about seven seconds into his first [Fleeting Steps] activation. The end of the passage, and his potential view of the guards, was still a short distance away. He needed more time, more speed to capitalize on any distraction he could create. Without conscious thought, driven by pure, animal panic and a desperate, primal need to move faster, he focused his intent again, pouring his will into his Trait. Faster! I need to be faster!
[Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 110/120.]
The world didn't just sharpen. It lurched. Violently.It was utterly unlike the familiar, subtle twenty percent boost. This was different. His perception seemed to stretch, to dilate. The flickering torchlight far down the corridor, previously just a dim orange smudge, suddenly resolved into individual, elongated tongues of flame, each dancing in agonizing slow motion. The distant, lazy voices of the guards became a drawn-out, distorted drone, their words incomprehensible syllables stretched over an eternity. His own body felt… hyper-real, yet strangely disconnected. He took an instinctive step, intending it to be quick and cautious, and nearly catapulted himself face-first into the slimy stone wall. His limbs felt impossibly light, imbued with a shocking, unfamiliar power, his movements grotesquely exaggerated.
What… what in the gods' names was THAT?!
He stumbled, flailing, catching himself against the wall with a jarring impact that sent a shockwave up his arm. The first 10-second timer for [Fleeting Steps] hadn't expired. He was certain of it. He had felt that initial, subtle quickening, and then, when he'd poured his will into it again, he'd felt a second surge, far more potent, a distinct and overwhelming wave of acceleration that had washed over him.His mind, even in its panicked, disoriented state, latched onto the new, electrifying sensation with the tenacity of a drowning man seizing a lifeline. He was moving faster. Not just twenty percent faster. This felt… exponentially faster.
He could hear the guards more clearly now, their words still agonizingly slow and drawn out to his heightened perception, but distinguishable. They were complaining about the cold, about their meager pay, about the S-Rank heroes getting all the glory.He needed that distraction. Now. A loose pile of rubble, remnants of some ancient collapse, lay in a shadowed alcove just ahead.
With his world still moving in surreal slow motion, he focused, a wild, desperate gamble forming in his hyper-accelerated thoughts. He activated [Fleeting Steps] a third time, even as the timer for that first, initial activation was surely about to wink out of existence.[Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 105/120.]
Another jolt, less disorienting this time as he braced for it, but no less powerful. The world slowed further, until the drip of water from the ceiling seemed to hang suspended in mid-air. His own thoughts seemed to race at impossible speeds, processing information, forming plans, discarding them, all in the space of a heartbeat that, to the outside world, hadn't even fully occurred. He felt an almost giddy, terrifying disconnect between his racing mind and his body's newfound, explosive potential. This was far, far beyond a mere twenty percent boost. This was… multiplicative? Could it be? Each activation, a 1.2x multiplier, applied not to his base state, but to his currently accelerated state?
1.2x… then (1.2x base) * 1.2 = 1.44x base… then (1.44x base) * 1.2 = 1.7x base? Something like that? The implications were staggering.
He scooped up a jagged piece of stone from the rubble pile. His hand, to his own perception, moved in a controlled arc, but he knew, instinctively, that to an outside observer it would have been an invisible blur. With a surge of desperate strength born of adrenaline and this newfound, intoxicating power, he hurled the rock with all his might down a narrow side passage, far away from his intended escape route. The rock seemed to hang in the air for an impossible eternity before finally arcing downwards and crashing with a satisfyingly loud clatter and echo in the distant darkness.
"Wha—the—hells—was—thaaaat?" one guard grunted, his voice like the slow grinding of tectonic plates to Kaelan's ears."Prob-ly—jus'—raaaats… Biiig—ones—in—these—old—tunn-els…" the other replied, but Kaelan could detect the subtle tremor of unease in his drawn-out syllables. "Still… go—check—it—ouuut…"
One of them, grumbling an eternity of complaints, began to move with agonizing slowness towards the source of the sound. This was his chance. The window of opportunity was impossibly small, yet to Kaelan's accelerated senses, it stretched before him like a vast plain.He didn't hesitate. He poured his will into his Trait again. And again.[Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 100/120.][Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 95/120.]
Five stacks. He could feel the power thrumming through him, a wild, intoxicating energy that made his very cells vibrate. If his frantic mental arithmetic was even remotely accurate, he was moving at roughly two and a half times his normal speed (1.2^5 ≈ 2.5). But it wasn't just his physical speed. His thoughts, his reactions, his perception of time itself – everything was accelerated, existing in a pocket of hyper-reality.
He exploded from the alcove.
To his own accelerated senses, he was moving with a desperate, controlled urgency. To an outside observer, if they could have even pierced the oppressive gloom of the passage, he would have been little more than a fleeting shadow, a momentary distortion in the air. He shot past the remaining guard, who was just beginning to turn his head, his expression one of bovine incomprehension. The man's eyes, moving with agonizing slowness, widened in shock as Kaelan became a blur in his peripheral vision, but by then Kaelan was already past him, a whisper of displaced air and the faint scent of fear the only evidence of his passage.
The service gate was ahead, a dark rectangle of heavy iron bars set into the unyielding stone. He could see the crude, rusty locking mechanism. And beyond it, through the gaps in the bars, he saw it – the pale, ethereal glow of Aethel's twin moons. Freedom.
He didn't slow, didn't dare to. His mana was draining at an alarming rate, a frantic countdown in the back of his mind, but pure, undiluted adrenaline and the intoxicating, liberating rush of this impossible, stolen speed fueled him. He reached the gate, his mind working at a speed that felt almost precognitive. He saw the simple, heavy latch, the thick, rust-encrusted bolt that secured it. His hands, guided by his hyper-accelerated perception and his newly enhanced Dexterity, moved with a speed and precision he could never have dreamed of possessing just minutes before. The bolt screeched in protest as he wrenched it back, the sound like a tortured scream in the sudden silence of his accelerated world. The latch clicked open with a satisfying thunk.
He threw his shoulder, his entire weight, against the heavy iron gate. It groaned, resisted for a heart-stopping moment, then swung inwards with a reluctant screech, just enough for him to squeeze his thin frame through.
He burst out into the cool, blessedly fresh night air, into a narrow, refuse-strewn alleyway pressed close against the colossal, unscalable outer wall of Lumina. The oppressive sounds of the Cathedral – the distant clang of armor, the hushed prayers, the endless, soul-crushing drudgery – were muted here, replaced by the chirping of unseen insects and the sigh of the night wind. He could hear shouts from behind him, distant but drawing nearer – Borin must have finally awoken, the alarm belatedly being raised.
No time. No time to think, no time to rest. He needed distance. He needed to vanish. He reactivated [Fleeting Steps] again, and again, and again, pushing his rapidly dwindling mana pool, pushing his protesting body to its absolute, screaming limits. Six stacks. Seven. Eight.[Fleeting Steps Activated. Cost: 5 MP. Remaining MP: 75/120.] (Assuming a few more to reach 8 stacks total from the earlier point, and continuous activation as old ones expire to maintain the current level)
The world outside the Cathedral walls became a surreal, disjointed slideshow. Buildings were blurry streaks of grey and brown. The cobblestones of the alley flew beneath his feet, each one distinct yet part of a continuous, rushing stream. He was a phantom, a whisper in the pre-dawn gloom, a fleeting shadow that danced between deeper shadows. He ran, guided by nothing but a desperate, animal instinct to flee, to put as much distance as possible between himself and the gilded cage of Lumina, the hellish undercroft, Warden Grimsby's cruel face, the crushing despair of the F-Rank slave pens.
He ran until his lungs burned as if filled with molten lead, until his leg muscles screamed in agony despite the magical enhancement, until his vision began to tunnel and grey out from exertion and mana deprivation. He burst from the oppressive shadow of Lumina's towering walls, out from the labyrinthine city streets, and into the dim, silvery light of Aethel's twin moons that filtered through the dense canopy ahead. He plunged headlong into the welcoming, concealing darkness of the trees at the edge of the vast, ominous Whisperwood.
Only then, when the sounds of the city were a faint murmur far behind him, did he finally allow himself to collapse. He fell, boneless and gasping, at the gnarled roots of a large, ancient-looking tree whose branches blotted out the moons, his body trembling uncontrollably from a combination of profound exertion, adrenaline crash, and the sheer, mind-altering shock of what he had just done, what he had just discovered. His HP, thankfully, was still relatively high, the exertion mostly affecting his stamina and mana.
A quick mental check of the System interface that now felt almost like a part of him.[MP: 10/120]
Dangerously low. Almost completely drained.But he was out. He was free. At least for now. Hidden. Alone.
He lay there, panting, the cool, damp earth a welcome relief against his burning skin. And as his ragged breathing began to slow, as the immediate terror began to recede, a wild, exhilarating, almost hysterical thought began to bubble up through the exhaustion.His F-Rank Trait. [Fleeting Steps]. "Minor agility boost." "Twenty percent."The priests were wrong. The System, in its assessment, was critically, wonderfully, gloriously wrong. Or, perhaps, it wasn't wrong about the base ability, but it had utterly failed to account for… this. This unintentional, exploitable, multiplicative stacking.
A shaky, breathless laugh escaped Kaelan's lips, quickly stifled lest it carry on the night air. His F-Rank Trait wasn't what it seemed. It wasn't minor. It wasn't just twenty percent. It was… so much more. He had no idea what the limits were, how many stacks he could achieve, what the ultimate cost would be. But in that moment, huddled in the terrifying darkness of an alien forest, a hunted fugitive with nothing but the ragged clothes on his back and a nearly depleted mana pool, Kaelan felt something he hadn't felt since before the summoning.
Hope. A tiny, fragile, yet fiercely burning ember of it.He needed to understand this. He needed to survive.