Chapter 5 Chapter 5: Toxic Fog, Dead Weight

The wind carried the stench up from below. Julian crouched at the rock's edge, pressing the Ratfang dagger down half an inch, leaving a pale scratch across the stone.

Below him, the red grid from System Loophole burned bright as a warning flare.

"You got enough yet?"

Corbin kicked the wall hard enough to send loose gravel skittering, broadsword still slung over one shoulder.

Bleach cradled his ruined wrist, face twisted in pain.

"Mr. Teague, we can't squeeze another cent out of anybody. We gotta keep some reserve or we're gonna start losing people to natural decay."

"Reserve, my ass!"

Corbin backhanded him across the face hard enough to spin him halfway around.

"Once I land this first kill bonus and that skill book, this whole camp belongs to Skyreach. Every rando in here pays us protection money, every single day. So what's a little more?"

Bleach clutched his stinging cheek and took a half-step back.

"We need two thousand more."

"Then go take it! Half these people out here are watching the show unarmed pick off the loners! I'm digging this hole today if it kills me!"

The hundreds of bystanders who'd gathered to watch scrambled backward in a wave.

Someone in the crowd muttered low.

"Skyreach's already bullying people and they just barely class-changed."

"Whoever's trapped down there is toast. Fifty men on a dead end even a god couldn't fight out of that."

"What a waste. Those thugs are about to walk off with a free first-kill bonus."

Lying flat on the rock above, Julian caught every word of it clearly.

Corbin was exactly the same as last time a mind built entirely out of bandit logic, take and take and take. Fifty men was genuinely a problem if he'd gone in swinging; his own stamina would've given out first. Lucky for him, System Loophole had flagged that weak point not just as structurally soft, but sitting directly over a pocket of trapped gas. Using their own numbers against them now that was a worthwhile trade. A head-on brawl was for reckless idiots. A landlord only touched deals with a guaranteed margin.

The system.

He recited it silently.

"Spend 200 Life Points. Drop this rock stratum's load tolerance to its floor. Maximize brittleness."

[Life Points deducted. Rule modification applied.]

A series of dull cracks rippled through the stone below sounds that had no business coming from solid rock.

Without waiting on Duke, Julian pushed off the ledge with both legs and dropped like a dead weight.

Wind screamed past his ears.

He held the dagger reverse-grip, funneling all thirty-five points of Strength into his arms, eyes locked dead-center on the glowing red node.

Ten meters.

Five.

Bleach was still covering his face and getting chewed out when a shadow fell over his head.

He barely had time to look up before a deafening crack blew out his eardrums.

BOOM.

Not the sound of stone shattering the deeper, wronger sound of an entire section of ground flipping over.

Julian slammed into the rock with the dagger leading, driving most of the blade straight into stone.

Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the impact point in every direction, tracing all the way to Corbin's boots.

"WHO'S THERE?!"

Corbin roared and swung his broadsword up.

He didn't get another word out before the ground under his feet gave way completely.

A pit seven or eight meters across opened up beneath fifty men, and they dropped into it like dumplings into boiling water, no time to even brace.

Thick, blackish-green fog boiled up out of the ground a half-second later.

"Cough cough cough!"

"MY EYES!"

"Help my health's crashing, it's crashing too fast!"

Screaming filled the pit wall to wall.

Whatever had been building up in that gas pocket had been sealed for who knew how long, and the concentration was brutal. The moment the green mist touched exposed skin, blisters bloomed instantly, bursting open into weeping sores of yellow fluid and blood.

Bleach's health had already been low going in. Two lungfuls of the gas and a string of red damage numbers lit up over his head. His eyes rolled white, his body seized twice, and he vanished in a flash of light.

No body left behind at all.

[Survival Rule: Upon player death, all remaining Life Points are forfeited and the soul is erased.]

White flashes started popping one after another through the green haze. Fifty men, and not one of them managed to draw a weapon before the pit finished them off in batches like some kind of natural gas chamber.

Corbin, at least, had the health pool of a Level 2 Berserker behind him.

He knelt on one knee at the bottom of the pit, using his broadsword as a crutch, skin blistered and weeping where the fog had eaten through.

He snapped his head up, glaring through the thick green haze at the young man in flip-flops standing at the pit's edge.

"It's you... Undertow!"

Corbin spat blood and foam, teeth gritted.

He knew he was finished if he stuck around. If his freshly leveled character died here, it was gone for real he'd sunk millions of real-world dollars into this life, and he wasn't about to lose it in some collapsing rathole in a starter zone.

He yanked a yellowed scroll from his inventory and crushed it in his fist.

A column of golden light dropped from above, forcing the surrounding poison fog back and wrapping around him.

"UNDERTOW! You wait! Skyreach isn't done with you not even close!"

The golden light shot skyward, and Corbin vanished, teleported out on a return scroll.

Julian stood at the edge of the pit and waved a hand to fan away the drifting green wisps.

"Fast on his feet. Guess that's what big spenders can afford top-shelf survival items."

He had no intention of chasing the man down.

Killing Corbin outright, this early, wasn't realistic the guy clearly had plenty of cards left to play. Wiping out fifty of his core members and torching his auction bid in the same move was already about as much value as this whole detour was going to pay out.

The screaming from the pit had gone completely quiet.

The green mist thinned and dispersed.

The ground below was scattered with glowing orbs of light leftover Life Points and low-tier gear dropped by everyone who'd just died.

"Come collect."

Julian snapped his fingers.

Four purple-eyed Bloodfang Rats darted out of the shadows behind him, scrambling nimbly down the pit walls. They swallowed the light orbs one at a time, scurried back up to Julian's feet, and spit them back out.

[Life Points gained: 12]

[Life Points gained: 8]

[Obtained: Low-Quality Iron Sword]

Fifty men, pooled together, and they still hadn't scraped up two hundred Life Points between them.

Julian's mouth pressed thin.

"Even the dead can't pay their debts these days. World's really changed."

The bystanders in the distance stood frozen, completely dumbfounded.

Fifty armed men had blocked the only exit, an overwhelming force by any measure and they'd been wiped out before landing a single hit. Fifty living people, gone, turned into orbs of light on the ground in the space of a breath.

Poison gas? You can just trigger the terrain like that? Detonate the environment to kill people?

Nobody dared make a sound. A few even held their breath on purpose.

They stared at the young man in flip-flops and floral board shorts like he was something that had crawled up out of the ground itself. The same loudmouth who'd been swearing and shoving people minutes earlier now stood trembling, legs shaking, both hands clamped over his own mouth, terrified the slightest noise might get him killed too.

Duke slid down the vines along the rock face and joined him at the pit's edge.

He looked down into the carnage and swallowed hard.

"Sweet Lord, Boss... you just dropped a bomb on 'em. Wiped clean off the map."

"Quit gawking. Grab anything useful. We're moving."

Julian scooped up the handful of decent black-iron weapons scattered around and stuffed them into his inventory.

"Back to camp?"

"Obviously. That skill book's still sitting on the auction floor. I've got a payday to collect."

Julian dusted off his hands and turned to walk.

The crowd of onlookers parted like the Red Sea, clearing a wide path without a word, nobody willing to so much as brush shoulders with him.

The two of them retraced their steps, pushed back through the still-crowded outer camp, and crossed back into the safe zone of Origin Camp #10086.

The second Julian stepped past the blue energy dome, something felt off.

Too quiet.

This place had been a shouting match of a marketplace an hour ago screaming, begging, chaos on every side.

Now the whole basin, still packed shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of thousands of people, had gone dead silent under something that felt a lot like dread.

Dozens of people lay sprawled on the ground, not dead, but breathing hard, faces bloodless, eyes locked on the countdown hourglass overhead.

A man in a business suit suddenly clutched his own chest and let out a strangled shout.

"My Life Points where did ten of my Life Points just GO?!"

The crowd erupted at the sound of it.

"Mine's down too!"

"What the

hell who did this?!"

Julian went still.

He looked up. Beside the red hourglass, a line of small scarlet text had bloomed into view out of nowhere.

[A regional penalty event has been triggered.]