Eric moved through the Goblin Warrens like a man possessed, because in a way, he was.

  The damp, cavernous tunnels were illuminated only by the sickly green glow of phosphorescent moss, casting long, wavering shadows across the jagged stone walls. The air was thick with the suffocating stench of sulfur and dried blood. Ahead of him, three more low-tier goblins rushed down the decline, their rusted cleavers scraping violently against the rock floor.

  Eric didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, his heavy iron greaves finding perfect purchase on the slick, uneven stone. His heart hammered in his chest, a frantic counter-rhythm to the absolute, unnatural calm of his body.

  A goblin lunged, its jaw unhinging to reveal rows of needle-like teeth.

  Eric’s right arm moved independently of his conscious thought. His iron shortsword carved a brutally efficient, ascending arc through the damp air. The heavy blade caught the monster directly under the chin, severing its vocal cords before it could even scream. Without pausing to admire the kill, his body pivoted, driving his steel-plated shoulder—and the full density of his Level 5 Body stat—directly into the chest of the second goblin. Ribs shattered with a wet crunch. The third monster hesitated, its slit-like yellow eyes widening in sudden panic, and Kira ended its life with a sleek compound arrow cleanly through the eye socket.

  "Clear," Jax called out from the rear, lowering his rune-etched staff. The faint, magical glow at its tip abruptly vanished. "Good work, Saint. You're holding the line perfectly."

  Eric stood over the corpses, his chest heaving under the heavy chainmail. He gripped his sword tightly to hide the fact that his hands were trembling.

  Not from fear, but from the sheer, intoxicating rush of power.

  His Divine Talent—Dress for the Job You Want—was a terrifying miracle. It didn't just give him the raw physical strength of a Level 5 Warrior; it had flooded his nervous system with years of grueling combat experience. He knew exactly how much force to put behind a swing. He knew exactly how to angle his body to deflect a blow off his spaulders. He was reading the goblins' movements a split-second before they acted, his mind effortlessly translating the subtle shifts in their center of gravity into actionable defense.

  He felt invincible. For the first time in his miserable, poverty-stricken life, he wasn't just surviving. He was powerful.

  "Don't get cocky," Kira warned, stepping over a puddle of dark blood to retrieve her arrow. She wiped the shaft on the dead goblin's tunic. "The Warrens always have a Chief at the bottom. Garth, how's the shield holding up?"

  "Scratched, but holding," the massive man rumbled, rotating his broad shoulders. He carried a heavy iron tower shield that looked capable of stopping an armored transport truck. "Let's push through. I want to get paid."

  Eric swallowed hard and nodded, falling into step beside Garth as they descended deeper into the cavern system.

  He forced his mind to slow down, fighting the lingering vertigo from his stat imbalance. His Body stat was towering over his Level 0 Mind stat, making the world feel like it was moving just a fraction of a second slower than his physical reactions. He had to trust the downloaded muscle memory entirely. If he tried to consciously override it, he would trip over his own feet.

  The tunnel widened abruptly, spilling out into a massive, dome-like chamber. The green moss here grew in thick, pulsing clusters, casting enough light to illuminate a crude throne carved from a massive stalagmite.

  The terrible stench of rot hit them like a physical wall.

  "Boss room," Jax muttered, stepping cleanly into a fighting stance. "Look alive."

  Seven smaller goblins detached themselves from the shadows along the perimeter, hissing as they drew their rusted blades. But the real threat sat on the throne.

  The Goblin Warrior Chief was massive—easily eight feet tall and built like a silverback gorilla. Its skin was a darker, mottled gray, scarred with old wounds. It wore crude, interlocking plates of rusted iron over its chest and shoulders, and it held a massive, two-handed warhammer forged from a solid block of blackened steel.

  The Chief stood up, throwing its head back, and released a deafening roar that shook the very dust from the cavern ceiling.

  "Kira, thin the herd! Garth, hold the center!" Jax barked, his staff flaring with blinding white light. "Saint, you're with me! Keep the Chief occupied while we burn it down!"

  "Copy," Eric said. His voice was steady, betraying none of the absolute terror attempting to claw its way up his throat.

  His borrowed instincts took over. He charged.

  The cavern erupted into chaos. Kira's bowstring snapped continuously, sending arrows biting deep into the smaller goblins while Garth roared his own challenge, slamming his tower shield down to intercept three monsters at once.

  Eric closed the distance to the Chief in seconds, his greaves eating up the rough terrain. The monster swung its massive warhammer in a wide, horizontal clearing arc. Eric’s body reacted before his brain could process the horrific speed of the weapon. He dropped into a slide, the heavy metal of the hammer passing mere inches over his head, the wind of its passing ruffling his hair.

  He sprang upward off his back leg, driving his iron shortsword directly into the gap between the Chief's rusted chest plates.

  The iron bit deep. The Chief shrieked, stumbling backward, dark blood pouring down its torso.

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  Jax capitalized instantly. A searing bolt of pure thermal energy shot from his staff, striking the Chief squarely in the chest and boiling the blood right out of its wound. The smell of searing flesh filled the cavern.

  "Now, Saint! Finish it!" Jax yelled over the din of battle.

  Eric stepped in, raising his sword for an executioner's strike. His muscles hummed with kinetic energy, ready to deliver a fatal blow.

  In its dying throes, the Chief didn't retreat. It threw itself forward in a feral frenzy, abandoning all defense. It swung the massive iron warhammer in a desperate, wild, underhanded arc.

  Eric's borrowed instincts fired. He raised his right arm, perfectly angling his leather and steel gauntlet to deflect the weapon away from his torso. It was a flawless, textbook parry.

  But his gauntlet was second-hand salvage. Scavenger gear. Cheap.

  The massive iron hammer smashed into Eric's forearm. The rusted steel threading of the gauntlet groaned under the immense kinetic pressure, then shattered completely. The leather tore open, the metal plates snapping off and scattering across the cavern floor.

  A sharp, digital notification pinged violently in Eric's mind.

  [Divine Talent Deactivated: Armor Set Broken]

  The world stopped.

  The sheer, god-like power in Eric's veins vanished in a microsecond. The immense, localized density in his muscles evaporated. The razor-sharp clarity of the borrowed muscle memory simply ceased to exist.

  He was Level 0 again. Weak.

  Gravity hit him like a falling building. The heavy chainmail, the steel spaulders, the iron greaves—gear that had felt as light as a cotton t-shirt a second ago—suddenly slammed their true weight down onto his fragile spine. He weighed nearly a hundred pounds more than his body could handle.

  Eric collapsed instantly, his knees buckling under the brutal, crushing weight of his own armor. His iron shortsword slipped from his suddenly weak, uncoordinated fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone.

  His lungs burned. He couldn't breathe. The sheer exhaustion of moving under the weight of the Level 5 gear without the stats to support it shredded his stamina.

  The Chief, bleeding heavily but still alive, loomed over him. It raised the warhammer high, its yellow eyes locked onto Eric's exposed, unprotected face.

  Eric couldn't move. His body refused to issue the command. The muscle memory was gone, and his brain, freed from the stat imbalance, was screaming in absolute panic. He was going to die. He was going to die right here, a fraud, crushed under the weight of his own lie.

  Move! he screamed at himself. Breathe and move!

  Desperation, raw and unpolished, finally took the wheel. He couldn't dodge. He couldn't block. He couldn't even lift his sword. He only had his wits.

  He threw himself backward, using the sheer, crushing weight of the chainmail to pull himself violently toward the ground. He landed hard on his back, the impact driving the wind from his lungs as the heavy armor slammed into the stone.

  The Chief's warhammer crushed the rock exactly where his head had been a fraction of a second prior, sending deadly shards of stone exploding outward.

  "Kira!" Jax screamed.

  An arrow took the Chief directly through the temple before it hit the floor.

  Silence fell over the cavern, broken only by the ragged, painful heaving of Eric's chest. He lay flat on the cold stone, unable to sit up under the forty pounds of chainmail pressing down on him.

  "Saint? You hit?" Garth's deep voice echoed as the large man walked over, kicking a dead goblin out of his path.

  "Just... winded," Eric gasped, forcing the words through his burning throat. He rolled over onto his stomach, gritting his teeth as the armor fought him every inch of the way. He grabbed a jagged rock and used it as leverage to push himself up onto one knee. His arms shook violently. "Hammer caught my arm. Stunned me."

  Jax walked over, eyeing the shattered remains of Eric's gauntlet. "Sloppy block, Saint. You're lucky it didn't shatter anything else." The mage tapped his staff on the stone. "But you held the aggro. Kept the Chief off Kira. Good enough. Let's harvest the cores and get out of this hellhole."

  The extraction was pure torture. Every step back to the portal felt like wading through wet cement. Eric had to carefully orchestrate every single movement, constantly adjusting his posture to stop the dead weight of the armor from dragging him to the floor. By the time they stepped back through the violent violet tear into Sector 4, his muscles were screaming, his skin slick with a cold, sickly sweat.

  He stood under the searing arc-lights of the Hub, trying desperately not to lean against the concrete barricades.

  Jax finalized the party contract on his datapad. "Fifty credits each for the baseline clear, plus an equal split on the core bounties. Comes out to a hundred and twenty credits per head post tax."

  Eric’s datapad vibrated in his pocket. A payout. A real, actual Awakened payout. More money than he made in two weeks at the rail yard, earned in a couple of hours.

  "Good hunting," Kira said, slinging her bow over her shoulder before walking toward the transit line.

  Eric tried to turn and leave, to find a dark alley where he could strip the agonizingly heavy armor off, but a heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

  A massive, armored Hub official holding a military-grade tablet blocked his path. "Credentials, please. Exit screening."

  Eric slowly reached into his pocket with a violently trembling hand and passed over the device. The official plugged a cable into it, tapped the screen a few times to log his exit and deduct the standard Hub tax, and handed it back.

  "Clear," the man grunted. "Keep your nose clean, Saint."

  Eric stumbled away from the checkpoint, finally finding a quiet alcove near a rusted vending machine. He pulled up his profile on the datapad.

  Name: Eric Saint

  Status: Registered Awakened (Sector 4)

  Tier: Unknown/Unclassified (Pending Verification)

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the cold brick wall. There was no going back to the rail yard now. He had crossed the line.

  He looked down at his exposed right hand. His knuckles were bruised, the skin scraped raw where the gauntlet had shattered. The talent was completely offline. To the system, he wasn't wearing a full set anymore. He was just a guy wearing heavy clothes.

  He pulled up his banking app.

  Current Balance: 120 Credits.

  He had survived his first run. He had made money. He should be ecstatic. But the cold, harsh reality of his situation settled heavily in his stomach.

  He needed the talent to work. He couldn't fight without it. He couldn't even wear this gear without it. To get the talent back online, he needed a full, unbroken set of Level 5 gear.

  He pushed himself off the wall, his spine popping in protest under the weight of the chainmail. He began the long, agonizingly slow walk back toward the poorer market district. Back to the graveyard store.

  Twenty minutes later, the rusted bells of Iron & Ash Warrior Surplus jingled.

  The burly shopkeeper looked up from his register, raising his robotic eyebrow as Eric dragged himself into the store, looking like a man who had gone ten rounds with a freight train.

  "Need a replacement gauntlet," Eric wheezed, practically collapsing against the front counter. "Level 5 Warrior. Leather and steel core."

  The shopkeeper tapped a few keys on his register. "Got one in the back. Slightly singed. Costs one hundred and twenty credits."

  Eric just stared at him. The man wasn't joking.

  He realized then that this wasn't going to be an easy path to glory. It wasn't a game to easily exploit. It was a terrifying, fragile balancing act. A single broken strap, a shattered plate, or a lost boot, and he would instantly lose all his power mid-fight. He was living on borrowed time and borrowed stats, paying for his survival one piece of scrap metal at a time.

  Eric swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and tapped his datapad against the scanner.

  "Sold," he whispered.