Floor Two smelled like wet copper and old sewage.
I stepped through the silver gate and let the lobby's noise die behind me. The transition always hit the same way—a half-second of vertigo, then the weight of real atmosphere pressing against my skin. The Tower's lower floors didn't bother with aesthetics. Stone corridors. Phosphorescent moss. The occasional distant scream that might have been a monster or might have been a Climber.
No one cared which.
The Goblin stepped through the gate behind me, silent and obedient. A few Climbers near the entrance glanced over. Saw the Goblin. Saw its black-veined eyes. Saw the way it stood at my shoulder like a bodyguard.
They looked away fast.
Good.
[System Notification]
[Location: Tower Floor Two — 'The Warrens']
[Recommended Level: 5-10]
[Common Monsters: Tunnel Ghouls, Spore Rats, Lesser Cave Stalkers]
[Boss: Brood Matron (Level 12) — Status: Dormant]
Dormant. That meant the boss was alive but inactive. Waiting for a party large enough to trigger its aggression protocols. I wasn't here for the boss. I was here for the trash mobs.
Two more vessels. That was the prescription.
I pulled up the System interface and reviewed what I knew.
[Hemorrhagic Command — Current Parameters]
· Range: Touch required for initial application.
· Duration: Permanent until vessel destruction or manual release.
· Vessel Functions: Guard, Attack, Retrieve, Scout, Self-Terminate.
· Synergies: Frost-Touched Dagger adds temperature manipulation (unexplored).
· Evolution Gate: 3 simultaneous vessels.
Touch required. That meant getting close. That meant risk.
I looked at the Goblin. The System identified it as [Vessel 1: Goblin Scout (Level 7)] . Its health bar sat at 92%. The black veins had stabilized into a faint web just beneath the skin. It wasn't decaying. It wasn't healing either. It was… paused. Suspended in the moment between life and death.
What happens when I release it?
The thought surfaced before I could stop it. If I used Self-Terminate, would the Goblin drop dead? Would it return to its previous state—hostile, furious, mid-swing with a bone dagger? Or would it be something worse? Something broken?
I didn't know. And I wasn't sure I wanted to find out yet.
"Stay close," I muttered.
The Goblin didn't respond verbally. It couldn't. But it fell into step beside me, matching my pace exactly.
---
The Warrens earned their name.
The corridors twisted and branched with no apparent logic. Side passages dead-ended in collapsed stone. Other paths looped back on themselves, dumping you exactly where you'd started. The Tower liked messing with your head. It was part of the design—psychological attrition before the monsters even showed up.
I navigated by sound.
Tunnel Ghouls made a distinctive clicking noise. Carapace plates rubbing together. The Tower archives called them "ambush predators." They clung to ceilings and dropped on unsuspecting Climbers. Low-light adapted. Resistant to basic physical damage.
Immune to poison.
But they had blood.
Everything with muscles had blood.
I found the first one ten minutes in. It was clinging to the ceiling of a junction chamber, nearly invisible against the dark stone. If I hadn't been actively listening for clicks, I would have walked right under it.
Instead, I stopped at the chamber's edge.
[System Notification]
[Enemy Detected: Tunnel Ghoul (Level 6)]
[Threat Level: Moderate]
[Known Resistances: Piercing damage, poison, fear effects]
[Vulnerabilities: Crushing damage, temperature extremes]
Temperature extremes.
I drew the frost dagger. The blade hummed in my grip, cold air misting off the edge. The Goblin tensed beside me, sensing combat proximity.
"Guard," I said quietly.
The Goblin shifted its stance, placing itself between me and the Ghoul. Not attacking. Just… ready.
The Ghoul clicked. Its head rotated toward me—too far, more than a neck should allow. Six black eyes reflected the phosphorescent moss. Its mouth split open, revealing concentric rings of teeth.
Tube worm, I thought distantly. That's not a face. That's a feeding apparatus.
It dropped.
Not at me. At the gap between me and the Goblin. Smart. It was trying to split our formation.
The Goblin intercepted.
Bone dagger met carapace with a screech that set my teeth on edge. The Ghoul was fast—faster than the Goblin—but the Goblin didn't feel pain anymore. It took a slash across the chest that should have opened its ribcage and simply kept moving. Kept pressing.
That's the advantage, I realized. Vessels don't flinch.
The Ghoul disengaged, skittering sideways on too-many legs. Its attention flicked to me—the softer target. The source. Its muscles bunched for another drop.
I was already moving.
The frost dagger wasn't a weapon. Not really. It was a scalpel. And I was about to perform surgery.
The Ghoul launched itself. I stepped into its arc instead of away. Stupid. Suicidal. But it got me inside its reach, past the teeth, palm flat against its thorax where the carapace plates met soft tissue.
[Skill Activated: Hemorrhagic Command]
[Target: Tunnel Ghoul (Level 6)]
[Effect: Vascular Control]
The cold spread through my palm. Not just the dagger's frost. Something deeper. I felt the Ghoul's circulatory system like a map of rivers. The primary dorsal vessel. The branching arteries. The sluggish hemolymph that passed for blood in its alien biology.
Slower than mammalian circulation. Different pressure. But still a closed system. Still controllable.
The Ghoul screamed.
It was the first time I'd heard one make that sound. High and keening, like metal fatigue. The black veins spread through its translucent carapace, crawling up from my palm like ink through water.
[Warning: Non-standard circulatory architecture detected.]
[Hemorrhagic Command efficiency reduced by 20%.]
[Adaptation in progress…]
[Adaptation complete. Control established at 80% efficiency.]
The Ghoul went still.
I stepped back, breathing hard. My hand was shaking. I looked down and saw frost patterns spreading up my forearm, faint blue lines tracing my veins. The dagger's enchantment was leaking into the skill. Temperature manipulation plus vascular control.
[Synergy Discovered: Cryo-Vascular Binding]
[Effect: Vessels subjugated with frost enhancement gain +15% durability. Immune to heat-based counter-effects.]
[New Vessel: Tunnel Ghoul (Level 6)]
[Vessel Count: 2/3]
The Ghoul sat motionless on the stone floor. Its six black eyes had turned the same deep, veined black as the Goblin's. The frost had crystallized along its joints, giving it a faint blue-white shimmer.
I now had two.
The dagger felt colder in my grip. Or maybe my hand was just going numb.
"One more," I said.
The Goblin and the Ghoul both turned to look at me.
I really needed to stop talking to myself.
---
The third vessel found me.
I was two corridors deeper, navigating by the Ghoul's improved dark vision—the System had helpfully added [Vessel Perception Feed] as a passive overlay—when I heard the footsteps.
Human footsteps. Multiple. Moving fast.
I pressed myself against the corridor wall. The Goblin and Ghoul flanked me without being told. The System was learning my tactical preferences, or I was learning to think through the vessels instinctively. Either way, it worked.
Three Climbers burst around the corner.
They were in rough shape. The leader—a woman in chainmail with a cracked tower shield—was bleeding from a gash above her eye. Behind her, a young man in mage robes clutched his arm at an angle that suggested a break. The third was a Scout type, dual-wielding short blades, limping badly.
They saw me and froze.
"Healer?" The woman's eyes went to my hands, looking for a staff or a med-kit. Standard Healer gear. I had neither.
"Pharmacist," I said.
She didn't know what that meant. No one did.
"Whatever. Can you heal? We've got broken bones and toxin exposure. Our Healer's dead. We'll pay."
The offer was automatic. Tower Climbers treated healing as a transaction. You paid for HP, you paid for debuff removal, you paid to not die. I'd seen it a hundred times in my three days with Valorous Dawn.
But I wasn't a Healer.
"What toxin?" I asked.
The Scout answered, voice tight with pain. "Cave Stalker venom. The boss variant. It's in my leg. Slowing me down. The mage's arm is—"
"I can't fix bones," I said. "I can maybe do something about the toxin."
It wasn't a lie. I didn't have bone-knitting skills. But toxins moved through blood. And blood was my jurisdiction now.
I approached the Scout. He flinched when the Goblin and Ghoul stepped into the dim light behind me.
"What the hell are those?"
"My patients," I said. "Hold still."
I knelt beside his leg. The wound was ugly—a puncture above the knee, edges blackening, veins around it standing out dark and inflamed. The toxin was spreading. I could see it. Not visually, but through the System overlay that had flared to life the moment I focused on the injury.
[Toxin Detected: Cave Stalker Hemotoxin (Modified)]
[Effect: Progressive muscular paralysis. Lethal threshold in approximately 14 minutes.]
[Treatment Options:]
1. [Standard Antivenin] — Not available.
2. [Vascular Extraction] — Requires Pharmacological Extraction skill.]
3. [Hemorrhagic Containment] — Halt toxin spread indefinitely. Target becomes vessel-eligible.]
I stared at the third option.
Vessel-eligible.
The System was offering me a shortcut. Use Hemorrhagic Command on the Scout. Halt the toxin's spread. Save his life. Add him to my collection.
Could I do that to a human?
I looked at the Scout's face. He was young. Nineteen, maybe. Sweating through the pain, eyes wide and trusting because I'd said I might be able to help.
I looked at the System prompt.
Then I looked at the Ghoul and the Goblin. Empty-eyed. Silent. Suspended in a moment they'd never escape.
"I can stop the toxin," I said. "But it's going to feel strange. You might pass out."
"Do it."
I placed my hand on his leg, above the wound. And I did something the System didn't suggest.
Instead of activating full Hemorrhagic Command, I pulled.
Just the toxin. Just the black hemolytic compound spreading through his femoral vein. I pulled it toward my palm, through the vessel walls, through tissue layers I could feel but not name. It burned. The frost from the dagger helped—numbing my hand, giving me a temperature gradient to work with—but it still burned.
[Skill Evolution in Progress: Pharmacological Extraction]
[Extraction Target: Cave Stalker Hemotoxin (Modified)]
[Purity: 72%]
[Quantity Extracted: 4 milliliters]
The black fluid pooled in my cupped palm. Viscous. Warm. Alive-feeling in a way that made my stomach turn.
The Scout gasped. The dark veins around his wound were already fading, returning to normal color. His heart rate was stabilizing. The toxin was gone.
[Pharmacological Extraction — Level 1 Unlocked]
[Effect: Extract target compounds from a creature's vascular system. Requires touch. Extraction efficiency scales with skill level.]
I had it. The unknown evolution. Not from subjugating a human—from treating one.
"The toxin's out," I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. "He needs rest and a real medic for the wound itself. But he'll live."
The woman with the tower shield let out a breath. "Thank you. We don't have much coin, but—"
"Keep it." I stood up, cradling the extracted toxin in my palm. The fluid was already cooling, crystallizing slightly at the edges from the dagger's residual frost. "I got what I needed."
They left. Limping, supporting each other, throwing nervous glances at my silent vessels. I didn't watch them go.
I was staring at the black fluid in my hand.
[Extracted Compound: Cave Stalker Hemotoxin (Modified)]
[Properties: Paralytic. Hemolytic. Concentrated.]
[Potential Applications:]
· Weapon coating (single-use).
· Alchemical base (requires processing).
· Injection agent (vessel enhancement).
Injection agent.
The System wanted me to dose my vessels. Give them paralytic venom. Turn them into delivery mechanisms.
I looked at the Goblin. What was left of it—the creature it had been before I'd pressed my palm to its chest and rewired its biology.
"This is getting complicated," I said.
Neither vessel responded.
I found the third monster twenty minutes later.
A Spore Rat, Level 5. Barely a threat. It scurried out of a wall crevice, drawn by the scent of the toxin still pooled in my palm. I touched it before it could bite. The control was easier now. Faster. Like the System was streamlining the process with each use.
[Vessel Count: 3/3]
[Evolution Gate Reached.]
The System blazed gold.
[Quest Complete: First Prescription]
[Reward: Class Evolution Unlocked, 500 Experience, ???]
[Level Up: 3 → 4]
[New Skill Unlocked: Dosage Control (Passive)]
[Dosage Control: Adjust the intensity of Hemorrhagic Command effects. Partial control possible. Full subjugation no longer mandatory.]
Partial control. I could affect things without claiming them permanently.
I should have felt relieved. Instead, I felt the weight of new options pressing down on me. Every encounter was becoming a choice. Treat or control. Heal or harvest. The System wasn't evil. But it also wasn't good. It was clinical. And clinical meant calculating every interaction as a cost-benefit analysis.
The Gate pulsed in my vision.
[Class Evolution Available. Evolve Now?]
[Current Class: Pharmacy Lich (Unique) — Tier 1]
[Evolved Class: ??? (Tier 2)]
[Evolution will permanently alter skill interactions. Vessel capacity will increase. New trees will unlock.]
[WARNING: Evolution is irreversible.]
I hesitated.
The frost dagger hummed at my belt. The three vessels—Goblin, Ghoul, Spore Rat—stood arrayed behind me like a small, silent army.
In the distance, somewhere in the Warrens' deeper tunnels, I heard footsteps. Heavy. Rhythmic. Not a Climber. Something bigger. The Brood Matron, maybe, stirring in its dormant state.
And beneath that, something else. A chime. A System message not my own. Faint. Barely audible.
[Administration Guild Inquiry: Anomalous F-Rank Detected. Source Floor Two. Investigation pending.]
Kael's connections were moving.
I had about an hour before someone from the Guild found me.
"Evolve," I said.
The world went white.
[Class Evolution Initiated.]
[Stand by.]