The Cave Crawlers resolved out of the darkness forty meters in, exactly where Fredrin's system had located them.
Six of them. The size of large dogs but assembled by something that had only heard dogs described and never actually seen one.
Six legs each, jointed at angles that made no sense until they moved and then made horrible sense. Flat pale heads with no eyes anywhere on them, just wide mouths packed with overlapping teeth that went back further than any mouth needed to go.
They moved with the low fluid certainty of things that had never needed to be afraid of anything in this corridor.
The system tagged them above each pale head.
[CAVE CRAWLER — TIER 1 DREG]
[THREAT LEVEL: LOW]
Marcus read the tags floating above each pale head and felt something in him relax slightly.
[THREAT CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM]
[TIER 1 — DREG: Weak. Dangerous only in numbers. No intelligence, pure instinct.]
[TIER 2 — BRUTE: Physically powerful. Limited intelligence. Hard to kill with standard attacks.]
[TIER 3 — SENTINEL: Intelligent. Coordinating. Dangerous to experienced fighters.]
[TIER 4 — HAYATE: Fast. Directed. Built for targeted destruction.]
[TIER 5 — ABYSSAL: Ancient in origin. Defies natural law. Requires specific knowledge to kill.]
[TIER 6 — SOVEREIGN: Ancient. Catastrophic. The source of all corruption.]
Tier one. The absolute bottom of the food chain. Marcus looked at the crawlers moving toward them and then back at the classification breakdown.
"System's actually useful," he muttered.
Now with my stats abit up these things were going to be considerably more manageable than the first time he'd faced anything resembling a threat in this world.
Back in the village he'd planted a spear into a goblin's chest and watched it bounce off. "Men hectic moments for real."
He raised the borrowed blade and moved forward.
"Lisa left, Fredrin right, pincer from both sides,"
Lisa called out, her voice dropping to the flat efficient tone of someone switching modes.
"Eudora stay center, watch for anyone taking damage. Liz right wall. New guy wherever you won't get in our way."
Marcus said, looking at Lisa with a small smile. "I'm looked less?."
He moved left before she could respond.
Lisa was already moving.
She covered the distance fast, a fireball building in her palm in the time it took most people to take two steps, orange and tight and considerably hotter than it looked. She released it at the cluster of crawlers on the left flank and three of them scattered from the impact, the stone floor blackening where it hit.
Fredrin came in from the right with his sword low, a sweeping cut that caught the nearest crawler across its multiple legs and dropped it before it processed the threat. He moved clean and efficient, no wasted motion, the technique of someone who had earned their experience the hard way.
Liz took the right wall and her blade was already singing, the silver light from the rune making the crawlers flinch from it, giving her the half second of hesitation she needed. Her first strike took two at once through the joint where the head met the body. Her second was already on the third before the first two finished falling.
Marcus came in on the left flank where two crawlers had regrouped after Lisa's fireball.
He moved faster than he expected to.
That was the thing that registered first. The speed felt different, the body responding quicker than the thought that preceded it, feet finding the right position before he consciously chose it. He caught the first crawler mid lunge with the borrowed blade, driving it into the gap at the base of the head the way Liz had done it, and felt the resistance and pushed through it and the crawler dropped.
Marcus looked at his hand for a second, turning the blade once.
"Not bad," he muttered. "This body's getting useful."
The second came from his right and he stepped inside its reach and drove the pommel into the side of its flat head and followed it to the ground.
Two down. His hands.
He stood up and looked at the blade.
Stronger, he thought. Noticeably.
[VOID HARVEST: ACTIVE]
[6 CAVE CRAWLERS DEFEATED]
[CURRENCY CONVERTED: +2 COINS]
[NOTE: LOW TIER ENEMIES YIELD MINIMAL CONVERSION]
Two coins. Marcus looked at the notification with flat amusement.
These things aren't worth much, he thought. Going to need significantly larger prey to make the passive meaningful.
"Nice," Eudora said from center, appearing at his shoulder to check him over with the quick practiced assessment of a healer looking for damage.
Up close her eyes were darker than they appeared from a distance, attentive in a way that felt less like curiosity and more like genuine care that had been practiced into instinct. "You move well for someone who said he was new."
Eudora looked at him. "You move well for someone who said you were new."
He smirked. "Getting my skills back."
She looked at him for a moment. "That's either very poetic or very literal."
"Bit of both."
Liz appeared on his other side, blade still drawn, eyes moving between Marcus and Eudora with the expression of someone conducting a quiet assessment and keeping the results to themselves.
"Everyone good?" she said.
"All good," Eudora said, stepping back to check Fredrin who had taken a shallow scratch across the forearm.
"Minor," Fredrin said.
"I'll decide that," Eudora said and began working on it with the calm authority of someone who knew exactly what minor meant and what it didn't.
Lisa was already looking at the passage ahead, torch in one hand, the other brushing stone dust off her sleeve.
"That was the welcome party," she said. "Gets heavier further in. Stay tight."
They moved deeper.
The cave walls glittered around them and the silver light from Liz's blade pushed the darkness back just far enough to see what was coming and not quite far enough to see what was waiting.
Marcus kept the blade in his hand and kept moving.
Eudora fell into step beside him naturally, the way people fell into step with someone when the corridor was narrow and the conversation had started and stopping it felt like more effort than continuing.
"Healer," Marcus said. "That's support class."
"Combat healer," she corrected. "There's a difference. Support stays back and patches people up. I stay close and keep the damage from becoming permanent while it's happening."
"Sounds more dangerous than just fighting."
"It is," she said simply. "But someone has to do it and I'm good at it."
Marcus looked at her sideways. "You ever think about switching parties."
She glanced at him. "Is that a recruitment pitch."
"Early stages," he said.
From his other side, where Liz had repositioned without commenting on it, came a sound that was not quite a response and not quite silence either.
"Hmm I see"
Marcus kept walking.
The cave went deeper and the shrieking started again, further in this time, lower pitched, and the system tags that appeared above the darkness ahead were not the same tags as before.
[STONEHIDE BRUTE — TIER 2]
[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE]
Lisa read it and her expression changed slightly.
"Tighten up," she said. "This is where it gets real."