The air was worse than Marie had expected.
Even filtered through her breath and the damp cloth she'd tied around her mouth and nose, it reeked of mold, filth, and something older—metallic and rotten, like wet blood left too long in the sun. She stood just inside the dungeon's starting zone, a raised stone platform above a sluggish stream of dark water, lit only by the faint green of her glowstick and the scattered flickers of fungal growth along the walls.
She took a slow breath. Then another.
This was it.
Her first real dungeon. Alone.
She tightened her grip on the utility knife and scanned the immediate area. The corridor before her stretched twenty meters ahead before veering off into a murky side-tunnel. Stone bricks lined the walls, some worn and sunken, with slimes clinging lazily to damp surfaces like overripe fruit.
The silence was deceptive. Sloppy footsteps would echo here, and worse: they'd attract attention.
She crouched slightly, shifting her weight forward, testing her balance. Then she moved.
The first slime was barely moving.
It sat in the corner of a half-submerged grate, wobbling faintly with the current of the water around it. Its body glistened translucent blue-green, a fat blob of jello-like substance that looked comically harmless. Marie didn't buy it.
She approached cautiously, keeping her stance low. The glowstick flickered with each motion, throwing shifting shadows across the narrow tunnel walls.
One clean stab. That was the plan.
She lunged.
The knife sank in with almost no resistance—and then stopped. Her hand jerked as the slime's body tried to suck the blade deeper, viscous acid hissing as it started to eat into the metal.
"Shit!"
She yanked the blade out and stumbled back, slime stretching like gum before it finally snapped. The creature shivered once, twitched—and then collapsed, losing cohesion like a popped bubble.
The puddle it left behind steamed.
She stared at her knife. The edge was already discolored.
Note to self: Do not let them touch you.
The next few slimes were more active.
Some pulsed when she drew near. Others launched slow, arcing globs of acid that hissed against the stone. One nearly tagged her leg, and only a desperate roll saved her boots from a soaking.
Her uniform, however, was less lucky. The lower hem now had a ragged hole the size of her fist.
Disgusting.
Still, she got through them. One by one. No severe injuries. Just grime, stress, and a growing sense of how poorly equipped she was for this.
Twenty-seven slimes.
No drops. No system message.
Just one partially-melted knife, a shredded sleeve, and the knowledge that she could survive if she kept her distance and didn't panic.
The tunnels shifted after that.
The slimes thinned out, and the water levels rose. Marie moved through knee-deep runoff, her legs aching with each sluggish step. Her glowstick reflected eerily off the water's surface.
Then came the rats.
The first pack hit her from behind.
She'd turned to inspect a collapsed tunnel junction when she heard the faintest splash—followed by a shriek and sharp pain as something sank its teeth into her calf.
She screamed, instinctively spinning around and kicking. Her boot caught the rat midair, flinging it into a wall with a sickening crunch. Two more came from the side, eyes glowing red in the gloom.
Marie stabbed one clean through the chest and slammed her boot down on the second.
Bite. Scratch. Bite. Scratch.
She panted hard. Blood ran from her leg, though the wound looked shallow.
She counted the bodies.
Three down.
Dozens to go.
The next few hours were a blur of filth and fury.
Marie moved through the tunnels like a shadow, slipping around corners, ambushing isolated vermin, and scrambling away from clusters too big to handle. Her blade grew dull. Her uniform ripped in three places. Acid burns lined her sleeves, and rat bites dotted her ankles and arms.
She learned to use the terrain.
She triggered cave-ins on unstable grates.
She lured rats into deeper water where they couldn't swim.
She kept count.
Thirty-nine… fifty-eight… seventy-four.
Every time she thought she'd cleared the area, more came. Packs emerged from ceiling cracks. Slimes dropped from above. One especially bloated specimen split into two smaller slimes when killed, both equally acidic.
Her left hand blistered from blocking one with a broken pipe.
She kept fighting.
At one point, she nearly gave up.
She was pinned against a wall, five rats gnawing at her legs. Her knife broke on one's spine. Blood trickled into her socks.
She screamed and smashed her glowstick into the wall, shattering it—and bathing the corridor in a final burst of sickly light. Then she grabbed the largest rat and slammed it repeatedly into the ground.
When the others fled, she collapsed in the muck.
She didn't move for minutes.
Just lay there.
Breathing.
Alive.
Somehow.
She used the last of her clean water to rinse the worst of the slime from her arms. It stung where it touched her burned skin.
And still—no reward. No Shard. No skill.
She was filthy, exhausted, and trembling. Her stats might have been higher than average, but she didn't feel powerful. She felt like meat that hadn't been eaten yet.
Then it happened.
Slime number two-hundred-ninety-eight.
It lunged with unexpected speed, slapping her chest with a wave of caustic gel. Marie screamed as the cloth disintegrated and the skin beneath sizzled. She drove her knife into its core—if there even was one—and twisted until the creature burst apart.
She fell to her knees.
And that's when the shimmer appeared.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📬 SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎉 You have obtained a Skillshard!
🔹 Source: Sewer Slime [E]
🔹 Skill: Analyse [F]
🔹 Type: Passive
She blinked at the glowing shard floating in the air before her, pulsing softly with an eerie light. A deep chill ran through her spine—not fear, but the strange, heavy sensation of possibility.
She reached out and took it.
It dissolved into her palm like mist.
A new message appeared.
Skill Acquired: Analyse [F]
No explanation.
Just the name.
She sat in silence for a long time, watching the darkness ripple at the edges of her vision.
After a moment, she opened her system interface with a sluggish gesture, half-expecting it to crash from the grime covering her fingers. The familiar shimmer formed in the air before her.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📊 STATUSFENSTER – MARIE WILLIAMS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏷️ NAME: Marie Williams
🎂 ALTER: 16
📍 RANG: E (1.835 Punkte)
💰 CREDITS: 0 c
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📈 ATTRIBUTE:
STR: 460 (+20 % from Enhanced STR [D] = 552) DEX: 471 CON: 136 END: 121 INT: 230 WIS: 0 PER: 114 CHA: 160 PSI: 0 VIT: 120
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📘 AKTIVE SKILLS:
Keine
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✨ PASSIVE SKILLS:
Echo's Luck [F] Enhanced STR [D] Analyse [F]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔮 BUFFS / DEBUFFS:
Keine aktiven Effekte
300 monsters. Dozens of tiny cuts and bruises. Her boots reeked, her knife was bent, and her uniform was hanging on by threads. But she'd made it through.
At her feet, she'd gathered a rough pile of loot—small mana stones, each glimmering faintly in the glow of her replacement lightstick. She counted quickly, breath still coming in soft gasps.
Just over a hundred [E]-rank mana stones.
Her first real haul.
Not bad for garbage gear and a single, half-broken knife.
"Not bad," she muttered. "Not bad at all."
And with that, she turned back toward the exit path—sore, soaked, but standing tall.