The silence after the roar of the collapse was almost as deafening. Dust, thick and choking, swirled in the stagnant air, raining fine particles down into the sludge. The oppressive weight of the Plague Bearer’s presence was gone, replaced by the mundane weight of tons of rock and the frantic, fading squeaks of dying rats beneath it. I stayed low, bow still half-drawn, scanning the dust-choked gloom until the mound of rubble choking the channel became dimly visible. Unmoving. Silent. Done.

  My legs gave a final, violent tremble, and I sagged against the slimy brick wall, the bow suddenly feeling impossibly heavy. Exhaustion crashed over me, a physical force. Every muscle screamed. The dozens of rat bites on my legs and arms flared, hot points of pain promising infection if I didn’t deal with them soon. I was coated head-to-toe in filth that would make a corpse retch. Gods, I needed out.

  Before I could fully process the kill, two points of light coalesced above the center of the rubble pile. One pulsed with the familiar, mundane glow of raw currency; the other had a deeper, colder luminescence that spoke of harvested mortality. They hovered for a moment, then drifted slowly towards me.

  {Foe Vanquished: The Plague Bearer}

  {Loot Generated: 1000 Gold, 1000 Death Boons}

  I reached out, my filthy fingers closing around the corpses. they all vanished as the loot appeared in my inventory.

  Then my eyes scanned the immediate area, the sludge-filled channel around me littered with the bodies of the rats I’d fought off, the ones launched by the Bearer, the ones that had exploded from the tendrils. Hundreds of them. Waste not, want not. Gritting my teeth against the stench and the crawling sensation on my skin, I activated my inventory interface. One by one, focusing through the exhaustion, I targeted the corpses. Each dissolved into faint motes of light, vanishing into storage. It was grim work, harvesting the remains of the vermin apocalypse, but resources were resources, especially down here. The sheer number was staggering, filling slot after slot.

  "Rod," Thumbs whispered, his voice small and reedy from my shoulder, watching the grim light show, "Big big big Rock it rock it!"

  "Yeah, buddy," I rasped, finally finishing the morbid cleanup, coughing dust. "Big rock stopped it."

  But it also stopped us. The main channel was completely blocked. Turning back wasn't an option. Staying here, marinating in disease and decay with dwindling supplies... also not an option.

  "Rod, look!" Thumbs shifted, pointing a small, clawed finger towards the base of the wall near the edge of the cave-in. "Hole! See? see? Small hole! Air Air Air!”

  I squinted through the settling dust. He was right. A narrow fissure, barely shoulder-width, had cracked open in the ancient brickwork, likely from the stress of the collapse. It was half-hidden by fallen debris, easy to miss. I pushed myself upright, ignoring the screaming protests from my abused body, and limped closer. Cool, damp air, blessedly free of the sewer's worst stench, breathed faintly from the opening. It smelled like deep earth and wet stone.

  It was tight. Probably led nowhere. But nowhere was better than here. "Alright, Thumbs. Hold tight." Helping him scramble securely onto my back, I took a deep breath and squeezed myself into the fissure.

  Stone scraped against my armor, rough edges catching on leather straps. It was claustrophobic, the darkness absolute after the dim light of the channel. The air tasted cleaner, though, confirming Thumbs’ assessment. The passage wasn't level; it sloped distinctly upwards, twisting slightly. I moved by feel, one hand scraping against the damp, cold stone wall, shuffling forward blindly.

  Then, a light. Not the angry pink glow of tavern signs, not the sickly green of rat eyes, not the flickering orange of a torch. Ahead, maybe twenty feet up the rough passage, a clean, steady, silvery-blue glow pulsed gently. It beckoned, promising something other than decay.

  The narrow crawlspace opened abruptly, and I stumbled out, blinking, into a small, hidden chamber. The contrast was jarring. Dry stone floor, smooth walls worked by hands long forgotten. No slime, no sludge, no stench. The silvery-blue light emanated from intricate runes carved directly into the stone of the walls and floor, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat like a resting heart. The air was cool, still, and felt… clean. Ancient, but clean.

  In the exact center of the chamber stood a simple stone pedestal, untouched by time or filth. Resting upon it, absorbing the runic light so completely they seemed cast from shadow, were a pair of sleek, dark metal greaves. They looked impossibly lightweight, aerodynamic, yet exuded an aura of profound durability. Faint, matching runes etched into their surface pulsed softly in time with the room.

  As I stepped closer, drawn by an almost magnetic pull, Aurentum’s voice manifested, echoing slightly in the pristine silence. {Relic Identified: Aether-step Greaves. Minor Artifact. Function: Stores ambient kinetic energy and latent mana. Allows user to expend stored charge for a secondary aerial trajectory alteration – commonly known as a 'double jump'. Requires conscious mana expenditure trigger.}

  "Shiny Shiny! Mine?" Thumbs breathed from my shoulder, his earlier terror momentarily forgotten, eyes wide. "Pretty lights pretty lights!"

  My own boots were encased in layers of filth, heavy, sodden, probably crawling with things I didn't want to think about. Carefully, I unlaced them, peeling them off with grim satisfaction, and tossed them into a dark corner. The Aether-step Greaves felt cool and impossibly light in my hands. I strapped them on. They molded instantly to my calves and shins, the fit perfect, comfortable. A faint, pleasant thrum traveled up my legs, a tingling sense of potential, of stored energy waiting to be unleashed. The runes on the greaves glowed a fraction brighter, syncing with my own faint mana signature.

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  Alright. Magic boots. Now, how to get out? The chamber was a dead end, no other passages visible. Except… one wall looked different. Less solid, more like a jumble of rocks from a previous collapse, leading steeply upwards. High above that collapsed section, maybe fifteen, twenty feet up, was a dark opening – a ledge? Another tunnel? Too high to jump, the rock face too smooth, too crumbly for easy climbing.

  An obvious test.

  "Okay, Aurentum," I muttered, backing up to the far wall. "Let's test this 'trajectory alteration'." I took a running start across the small chamber, focused on the dark opening above, and launched myself upwards.

  Good height, strong jump, but nowhere near enough. Gravity asserted itself, pulling me back down. Now. At the absolute apex of my jump, hanging for that split second between ascent and descent, I pushed a deliberate pulse of mana down, into the greaves, picturing the upward thrust.

  Fwoosh.

  It was less a sound, more a feeling, a silent displacement of air beneath my feet. A faint shimmer of blue energy flared for an instant. A distinct, surprising lift. It wasn’t explosive, just a smooth, controlled secondary boost, carrying me upwards another five, maybe six feet. Disorienting. Unnatural. Exhilarating. My outstretched hands slapped against the rough stone edge of the high ledge. Fingers scrabbled, found purchase on a projecting lip of rock.

  "WOAH!" Thumbs yelled, jolting against my back. "Master fly! Fly! Magic boots fwoosh Fwoosh! Do again! Do again!" Before I could even haul myself up, the diminutive goblin excitedly jumped off my back, landed on the smooth stone floor below, bent his knees, and leaped with all his might, yelling "FWOOSH!" Nothing happened, of course, and he landed face-first with a startled yelp back in the relative cleanliness of the chamber floor.

  With a grunt, ignoring Thumbs' confused sputtering below, I hauled myself the rest of the way up onto the ledge. I peered down. "Stay put, buddy. Doesn't work for you." I wasn't in a tunnel. I was back in the original chamber. The wrecked throne room where Kingsley had transformed, where the chandelier lay shattered, where the floor had given way beneath us. I looked out from my new, high vantage point across the familiar devastation below – the cracked throne on its dais, the smashed statues, the debris field where the Plague Bearer now lay buried under tons of rock far beneath the floor. And directly above, jagged against the faint light filtering from even higher up, was the hole we’d first fallen through.

  And between here and there? A treacherous, vertical obstacle course. Broken pipes jutting from the walls like skeletal fingers. Precarious, rust-eaten catwalk fragments hanging by threads. Shattered stone ledges barely wide enough to stand on. A path utterly impossible just moments ago.

  But now… now I had magic boots.

  I took a deep, steadying breath, tracing the path upwards with my eyes. First leap: from this ledge across a ten-foot gap to a thick, diagonal pipe crusted with age. Easy enough. I landed lightly, the pipe groaning slightly but holding my weight.

  The next platform was a narrow, crumbling lip of stone, higher up and further out. A much tougher jump. I backed up along the pipe, took a running start, and leaped into the void. Gravity grabbed me. Now. I triggered the Aether-step. That silent fwoosh, the blue shimmer, the upward surge. I sailed across the gap, landing squarely on the narrow ledge. Dust and loose pebbles skittered off the edge, falling into the darkness below. My heart hammered. This was going to be tense.

  The climb became a rhythm of calculated risks. Jump to a swaying catwalk fragment that groaned like a dying man. It held. Leap from the end of it, Aether-step mid-air over a yawning gap where the next section had rusted away entirely, landing hard on another projecting pipe. Scramble up a short vertical section of cracked wall, using fissures for handholds, then double jump diagonally to a wider, stabler-looking statue base sheared off halfway up the wall.

  The greaves felt more natural with each use. I learned the faint energy cost, the precise timing needed, the slight forward drift imparted by the second jump. My movements grew smoother, more confident, driven by the burning need to escape the darkness below. Exhaustion was a dull ache now, overridden by focus.

  I paused on the statue base, glancing down. Thumbs was a small figure looking up from the relic chamber far below. Getting him up here would be tricky later. For now, I had to secure the path.

  Higher now. The air felt marginally cleaner. The platforms grew smaller, the gaps wider. One jump required me to launch from the very end of a slick pipe, double jump at maximum extension, and land fingertips-first onto the knife-edge remnant of a decorative stone archway. My feet scrabbled for purchase, threatening to slip. A handhold crumbled slightly as I shifted my weight, showering debris into the abyss. Adrenaline surged. Instinct took over. Immediate Aether-step straight up, finding a higher, more solid handhold just as the lower one gave way completely. The hole in the ceiling loomed, agonizingly close, yet still so far.

  Finally, the last few platforms. A narrow beam directly beneath the jagged opening back to the throne room proper. The final jump was awkward, needing height and a strong pull-up. No room for error.

  I gathered myself, every muscle burning, the sting of the rat bites a constant, fiery reminder of what lay below. I leaped. Triggered the Aether-step, pushing for maximum height. My fingers hooked onto the broken edge of the throne room floor. Sharp stone bit deep into my skin. I ignored it. Gritted my teeth, put every ounce of remaining strength into my arms and back, and hauled myself up.

  I collapsed onto solid, blessedly familiar stone, chest heaving, lungs burning. Dust motes danced in the faint, ambient light filtering down from unseen sources high above. The air was stale, filled with the scent of old stone and decay, but it wasn't the sewer. Gods, it wasn't the sewer.

  I lay there for a long moment, just breathing, every nerve jangling, every muscle screaming in protest. The Aether-step Greaves pulsed with a gentle warmth against my skin, a silent testament to the impossible climb. I pushed myself into a sitting position. Looked back down the dizzying drop towards the faint blue glow of the relic chamber where Thumbs was still waiting. Getting him up would be the next problem.

  But I surveyed the wreckage of the throne room around me. Kingsley's monstrous second form was gone, fallen into the pit. The Plague Bearer was entombed beneath tons of rock. We were out of the deathtrap.

  The weight of the Memory Core's truth remained. The rat bites throbbed insistently. The path forward, out of this chamber and towards whatever goal still existed, was unknown. I glanced down at the sleek, dark greaves. A powerful tool. Gained at a hellish price. Survival always extracted its due.

  But for now, for this moment, we were out of the crushing dark, out of the suffocating filth. I allowed myself a single, deep, ragged breath – the first breath that felt remotely close to relief in what felt like an eternity. I had cleared the floor and now an extra secret boss, it was time to figure out what came next.