Madison Wygant

April 2nd, 2034

A-Rank Wormhole, Unknown Subspace

Maddy was clearing out her own segment of the subspace when the cave started to come down. Her team had just dispatched a group of miscellaneous earth elementals when the rumbling disrupted their regrouping efforts.

"What the Hell is that?" Maddy asked the rest of them. They all shrugged noncommittally but looked wary.

Alton Brandt focused for a few seconds before declaring, "I don't think it's the boss. It should be the cave itself coming apart. The tremors of direct impact aren't occurring; it's more like an earthquake. We need to move."

Aside from Maddy and Alton, the last member of their team was a utility caster named Sera. After hearing Alton's declaration to move, she spoke up.

"Is it safe to move? Communication is all but impossible down here. If someone were to get pinned…"

"No," said Maddy. "We need to rush back to the rope as soon as possible. The closer we are to everyone else, the better."

With their minds made up, the trio rushed through the narrow cavern as quickly as they could manage. In addition to their headlamps, Sera had cast a Light spell, which allowed for excellent visibility.

However, only a short while after setting off, the tremors of collapse reached the group. The deafening roar of hundreds of thousands of rocks falling also stunned them. There was no mistaking what had happened—there had been a cave-in.

Maddy gritted her teeth and squeezed her hands painfully. "What… what am I supposed to do now?"

Alton put a hand on her shoulder. "All we can do is confirm the damage. Let's check to make sure we can't get through anywhere, or that there's not someone injured."

Standing up a bit straighter, Maddy thanked him.

She had a history of being a solo hunter, not a team leader. The responsibility of having subordinates was difficult to deal with when things went horribly wrong. Maddy should have turned down her boss when he had asked her to lead this expedition. She wasn't qualified—people could very well die due to her negligence now.

All with the fire of passion in their eyes, the group continued running for the main chute they had descended. Upon arriving roughly 15 minutes later, they discovered that it had been entirely blocked.

Maddy felt the grips of despair weigh her down. Ignoring precaution, she shouted, "Is there anybody there? Report!"

Despite her pleas, no sound emanated from the all-encompassing rock pile.

"Damn it," spat Sera. "We're screwed. Now what? Keep blindly chasing this cave until we run out of supplies? Try to blow this whole damn thing open?"

"I don't know," snapped Maddy, voice laced with vitriol. She took a deep breath of air before speaking again. "Alton, what do you think?"

"We have to follow this cave and hope it leads somewhere. If it doesn't, we're going to run out of oxygen anyway." In contrast to the others, Alton seemed relatively calm in his demeanor—stressed, but not panicked.

Maddy sighed. "Fine. That's it, then. Let's be quick; the less time we waste the more likely we can help people in trouble."

Without any more pointless discussion, the three of them made their way through the cave posthaste. They were able to reach their turn-around point quickly but had to err on the side of caution from thereon out.

Despite the desire for quick passage, rushing headfirst into unknown territory would be suicidal; they all easily agreed upon that much.

Maddy, in particular, didn't have her preferred gear. Under better, more open circumstances, she would be sporting a suit of heavy armor and a glaive. However, due to the nature of the subspace and expecting narrow passages, she had brought a short spear. On top of that, she was wearing warm, insulated, and agile clothes instead of armor.

Now returning to a more reasonable pace, Maddy took the time to inspect the cave walls as she walked. Notably, they were much smoother than the prior sections of the underground.

"Do you think this used to be an underground river?" she asked to keep her mind off of things. Of course, she still made sure to keep her voice low.

"It could also be some form of lava tube," Alton offered. "Neither rhyme nor reason really pertains to these subspaces. It could be that this section was simulated to look akin to a volcano tube arbitrarily."

"What do you mean 'simulated'?" Sera couldn't help but ask. She had just been looking irritated at the two of them for not keeping an eye out. However, Alton's words seemed to pique her interest.

Maddy followed up the question with her own: "Are you saying that this whole subspace is digital?"

"That's my own interpretation." Alton shrugged. "After all, take a look at the system. It's a digital interface, at least in appearance. Why wouldn't the other aspects of this hellscape world we've found ourselves in be the same? Then again, it's not like it matters."

As they continued speaking, Maddy found herself entering an opening in the cave. It abruptly widened to over 5 meters across and began to sharply decline into a valley of sorts. Through the Light spell, she was barely able to see the other side.

"Wait," Maddy spoke suddenly, projecting her voice. "There's something near. Prepare to fight!"

Without another word, all three of them prepared for combat and looked for the cause of the fluctuation in mana. Maddy drew her spear, Alton notched an arrow in his bow, and Sera started casting a spell.

However, nothing immediately transpired. Not daring to let their guard down, the trio slowly made their way into the ravine. They had to be careful of their footing, with many small cracks littering the ground they walked.

"Is that… a ball bearing?" Alton asked, gesturing at a shiny piece of metal stuck in between two rocks.

Before either had a chance to respond, the bearing flew away suddenly. Now with the assurance that it was their target, the group turned to where the ball had flown off.

Soon, all of them saw a metallic, humanoid figure rise from the ground, holding a combat stance. It seemed to be composed of nothing but thousands of ball bearings.

Without another word, Alton loosed his arrow into the construct. It smashed a few bearings loose out of its back but otherwise did minimal damage.

Maddy lunged out before it could retaliate, taking a wide slash with her spear. It cleaved through its neck, knocking its head clean off.

Regardless of any damage it may have sustained, the golem swung at Maddy, smashing its weight into her torso. She grunted in pain as she braced for its next attack, this one doing minimal damage.

Sera shouted for Maddy to jump back and unleashed her spell. Immediately, the ground beneath the golem started to liquefy, causing it to sink.

Alton continued to fire arrows into the construct as fast as he could, albeit still doing suboptimal damage.

Meanwhile, the bearing golem cut its losses and jumped out of the quagmire, losing the bearings below its calves to the mud. It violently exploded into thousands of high-speed metal balls, pelting all three of them.

Without much in the way of a target, Maddy and Alton tried to catch their breath for the moment.

Sera was starting to cast a low-tier healing spell on them all when suddenly she was punched in the back by the now-reformed golem.

Maddy burst forward and stabbed at it, covering Sera's weakness as her spell fizzled into wild mana.

The golem managed to evade Maddy's lunge, but not the arrow sent flying by Alton. Maddy followed up with another slash that the golem attempted to block with its arm. However, the force put behind Maddy's spear blew that arm off, despite its attempts.

Now being pushed back, the golem once again burst into its components and disappeared into the cracks.

Maddy, suffering the brunt of the blast, was riddled with small welts and lacerations.

"I was able to Inspect it," Sera gasped. "It's level 74."

Maddy frowned. It was a strong opponent, but not disastrous. She was annoyed that it was giving her this hard of a time.

Sera started to cast more healing magic, this time with Maddy and Alton fiercely covering her. Once again, just before Sera was able to cast the magic, the golem sprang back into existence and attacked.

However, it now appeared over 10 meters away. It fired a burst of bearings at Sera before retreating back a few meters.

Maddy groaned before starting to accumulate a large amount of mana in her spear. The outside of the spearhead became coated in spiraling crimson energy before being launched by Maddy at the golem.

The attack closed the distance nearly immediately, smashing into the construct. The crimson energy was dispersed from the spearhead into the bearings equally, exploding the golem all over the cavern.

+2675 XP

Maddy scoffed at the amount of XP that popped up for her. It was hardly worth such an annoying and painful fight.

"God damn." Alton laughed. "Should have opened with that one. Nice attack."

"I really didn't want to," Maddy lamented. "I should have, though. I'm sorry. It's just that all of my class abilities cost my own lifeforce, so it's agonizing to use."

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear." Alton looked at her with appreciation more so than pity.

Before he had a chance to continue, Sera was finally able to cast her healing magic and rejuvenated the party.

"Thanks." The other two gave her synchronized thumbs-up.

After catching their breath for a few minutes, the group made their way down and up the small valley. On the other side of the cavern, it narrowed up again into a passage.

"Was this just a miniboss room?" Maddy muttered, perturbed by the design. Maybe Alton was right—that this was all arbitrarily made up by some sort of AI.

Just like that, the party departed. They continued their journey down into the abyss for many hours. They fought dozens of various creatures—lava golems, more earth golems, undead, and even a particularly lethal type of slime. During the descent, they did manage to get a couple of hours of rest in, too.

…

About 24 hours after the cave-in, Maddy, Alton, and Sera stumbled into the largest cavern they'd seen yet, wounded, sore, and exhausted.

Maddy wearily looked around, expecting another attack. However, all she saw were the dozens of smaller passages littering the cavern's walls. Aside from them was an exceptionally large door taking up an entire side of the room to itself. It was an ornate stone door carved with intricate, breathtaking patterns whose meaning was lost on Maddy.

She slowly walked up to the door, taking in each deliberate detail chiseled into it. It towered over her, being at least 10 meters tall.

"I think we found the end," Alton said with no joy in his voice.

"Let's wait for the others," said Maddy, hopeful. "We blitzed down that corridor, and perhaps it was one of the shorter ones."

"We still have plenty of food and water," agreed Sera. "It'd be good to get a healthy amount of rest before confronting whatever may be behind that door, too."

With that settled, the trio set up camp in the middle of the cavern. Every few minutes, Maddy looked around at the other openings, expecting to see people streaming through any second.

When the rudimentary camp was established, Maddy laid down in her sleeping bag, thinking of the future. Before closing her eyes for a few minutes, she checked her status to see how close she was to a level-up.

—Status—

Name: Madison Wygant

HP: 724/803

Mana: 160/160

Level: 72

XP: 872,834

XP Required: 5,591

Class: Blood Knight

Age: 23

Race: Human

—Stats—

Divinity: 2.8x

Might: 137.2

Agility: 72.8

Vitality: 100.8

Concentration: 28

Soul: 28

All that, and yet she still had over 5,000 XP to go. Groaning in annoyance, Maddy soon found her eyelids too heavy to keep open any longer. After a long, stressful day of trekking through the deep dark, she fell into a deep slumber, praying for everyone's safety.