Two hundred fifty Ash minimum walking away from this. More depending on quality. I owed two thousand to the Armorer and I had nothing in my pockets except a compass and a dried skewer stick from last night.
The smart choice was obvious.
I activated Plunder.
The boar dissolved. Not slowly. It went from four hundred pounds of dead creature to nothing in under two seconds, and the nothing left behind was darker than absence, a void-shaped outline of the boar that pulsed once and then condensed into a shape I recognized.
" PLUNDER ACTIVATED "
" Thornhide Boar — Beast II "
" STR acquired: +14 "
" AGI acquired: +7 "
" END acquired: +18 "
" DEX acquired: +3 "
" Skill acquisition: 8% chance "
" Result: Failed "
Forty-two points.
I sat back on my heels and let the number land.
Forty-two points from one creature. Normal grinders spent a week to see that return. I'd been on Floor One for less than two hours and I was sitting at sixty-seven total stats across my board, which was still pathetic in absolute terms but the trajectory was wrong in a very good way.
Then the burn started.
It hit my forearms first. Up through my biceps, into my shoulders, spreading across my chest like someone pressed a hot iron flat against my skin from the inside. My vision went bright at the edges. My ears rang. I put one hand on the ground to keep from tipping sideways.
The shadow boar took shape beside me. Same wrongness as the wolf. No reflected light. No sound. Edges too sharp. Eyes absent. Just presence.
It was larger than the wolf had been. Heavier looking, even in silhouette. It stood without the wolf's low-to-the-ground scout posture. It just stood, like it was waiting for something to become worth moving for.
The burn in my arms faded to a deep ache. Uncomfortable but manageable.
"Nox."
Cassia stood very still. Her eyes moved between me and the shadow boar in the particular way of someone recalculating something they thought they understood.
"Still not screaming," I noted.
"Give me a minute." She took a breath. "That's a Beast Two shadow."
"Yes."
"You just turned a Beast Two into a shadow."
"Also yes."
"How much did you get from it."
"Enough."
She looked at me with an expression I was learning to read. It was the one she used when she was deciding whether to push and whether the push was worth what it might cost her.
"Your arms are shaking," she said.
"They're fine."
"They're shaking."
I looked down. She wasn't wrong. Small tremors running up from my wrists. The stat absorption. My body adjusting to having forty-two points forced into it over four seconds.
The boar shadow moved to my left side. The wolf shadow had taken my left heel. The boar settled further left and back, a wider orbit, more bulk requiring more space.
"The wolf," Cassia said slowly. "It went to your left. Now the boar's on the left too."
"Observation noted."
"They're sorting themselves."
I looked at both shadows. She wasn't wrong. The wolf had taken point position automatically, same as it had when I'd had it manifested before. The boar settled into a flank position without instruction.
"It hunted alone," I said. "The boar. Scout behavior doesn't work for a solitary creature. But flank position does."
Cassia stared at me.
"They kept their tendencies," I said. "From whatever they were before."
"That's not how summons work."
"No."
"Nox." She crossed her arms. The armor compressed in a way I noted professionally and filed away. "What are you."
"I told you. Shadow beast tamer."
"That answer gets worse every time I look at your shadows."
I stood up. My legs held fine. The trembling in my arms was fading, twenty seconds out from the absorption. My chest still felt warm but the sharp edge of the burn was gone.
My stat line now read:
STR: F-22 | AGI: F-18 | END: F-24 | DEX: F-9 | ICH: F-0
The Ichor was concerning. Zero output still meant the shadow beasts were costing me out of a pool that wasn't being replenished fast enough. I could feel it as a low-grade pressure behind my eyes, like a headache that hadn't fully committed yet.
"How many can you hold," Cassia asked.
"Right now? Two, maybe. If we find something else soon I'll need to dismiss one of these."
"So you have a limit."
"Everyone has a limit."
She looked at the space where the boar had been. "We needed that Core."
"I know."
"We're down two thousand and now we've got nothing to show for two kills."
"We've got sixty-seven stat points."
"That doesn't pay the Armorer."
She wasn't wrong. The math was obvious and bad. Two kills, two Plunders, two shadows, zero Ash. I owed two thousand to the Armorer plus whatever Cassia had spent on the platform. The only things paying today's debt were sitting in the dark beside me making no sound.
"We find something I can harvest normally," I said. "Something small enough that the stats aren't worth taking."
"Floor One doesn't have a lot of small."
"Then we find the smallest thing on Floor One."
She thought about it. Uncrossed her arms. Looked at the two shadows with an expression that was settling into something more analytical than alarmed.
"Canopy Stalkers drop Beast Two Cores," she said. "I've got a Web Trap route mapped that hits three nesting zones. I usually skip them because solo takedowns are risky and I don't split well with randos."
"I'm not a rando."
"You've known me for sixteen hours."
"Is that a no?"
She pulled a small notebook from somewhere in her armor, flipped to a page covered in her own handwriting, and traced a route with one finger without showing me the map.
"I want something," she said.
"Name it."
"When we find whatever you are, and we will find it eventually because you cannot keep doing," she gestured at both shadows, "that, without someone noticing, I want first footage."
"Define first."
"Before anyone else. Before guilds, before Veilguard, before the Research Institute comes knocking. I want the clip that breaks my channel into Silver tier and I want it to be you."
I looked at her. She looked back. Her purple eyes were sharp and completely serious under all the pink and the performance and the lip gloss.
She'd deleted the VOD. She'd gone dark on stream without confirmation of why. She'd helped me kill a Beast II and kept quiet about the shadows.
The math on Cassia was starting to develop a new column.
"Deal," I said.
She snapped the notebook shut. "Good. Don't die before then." She turned and started moving north, picking through the roots with practiced ease. "Your wolf does that point thing again it's probably smelling something. Pay attention to it."
I looked at the wolf shadow. It had already shifted its weight forward, attention angled northeast.
"Northeast," I said.
Cassia adjusted left without breaking stride.
The boar shadow fell into flank position three steps back.
I followed the wolf.
===
A/N:
Welcome to the end of the chapter, Chat. You want to see Nox rob the Tower blind and build his shadow army?
Then feed the algorithm.
Add this to your library, drop those Power Stones and Golden Tickets like Beast Cores, and flood the comments.
Every comment tells me to keep pushing the pace, and every Stone keeps the chapters flowing.
Don't be a lurker, let me know you're climbing with us!