Chapter 33: Chapter Thirty Three
The banter with the boys was a familiar comfort, the adrenaline of the fight slowly ebbing away. But beneath the surface, sothing deeper was shifting. As Jude laughed at Zeke’s "over 9000" joke, a familiar electric warmth ignited in his core—the silent, coveted reward of his Level Up trait. The troll’s essence, all 260 stat points of its brutish existence, now humd inside him.
His mind replayed the fight in flawless, brutal detail—the whistle of the troll’s fist past his ear, the shockwave from its slam rattling his teeth and reverberating through his bones. His Agility had been the thin line between victory and a red sar on the dungeon floor. Strength was vital, but speed was survival.
The decision was instantaneous.
He channeled the energy in a single, silent surge.
132 to Agility
74 to Strength
Agility: C(368) → B(500)
Strength: B(401) → B(475)
The world didn’t just sharpen—it slowed. The crystalline grass swayed in a languid dance, each blade moving like it had all the ti in the world.
Zeke’s voice cut through the heightened stillness, crisp and unhurried. "It’s almost like you’re the main character."
Jude turned his head—the motion fluid, precise, automatic. He t Zeke’s knowing gaze, and a slow, sharp grin spread across his face.
"Oho, we wouldn’t want anybody stealing that from you, Zeke," Kai laughed, his voice carrying a faint echo in the resonant air.
"Did you see the way he egged on the troll?" Aaron dropped into a wide stance, doing his best Jude impression. "’Do you want to dance as well?’"
"Madara-esque," Zeke agreed, joining the pile-on.
Then he turned back to Jude—and smiled. Not the laugh-along kind. The kind that saw right through him.
Alarm bells rang. Jude had chalked the first incident up to coincidence—back during the Minotaur fight, when Zeke had moved like he already understood their abilities before any of them had demonstrated them. At the ti, Jude had reasoned it away: deduction, maybe. Or just Zeke being Zeke. It fit neatly enough with how he’d used their replicated abilities as if he’d drilled with them for years.
But that smile just now was deliberate. A quiet acknowledgnt. I know. I’ve known.
Kai and Aaron still had no idea about his trait. Level Up. Especially Kai, the Solo Leveling stan who would absolutely lose his mind about it.
Jude wasn’t surprised, exactly. Just resigned.
This was Zeke, after all—the man who’d sohow learned Makima’s na before being properly introduced to her. In a world gamified down to stat windows and skill ranks, so version of an Observe or Inspect ability was practically genre standard. It would’ve been stranger if Zeke didn’t have sothing like that.
Sigh.
The exasperated smile ca on its own. He pushed off and walked back toward the group.
It couldn’t stay hidden forever anyway. And honestly, he had no real intention of keeping it from his brothers that long.
How else was he supposed to show off?
---
Speak of the devil.
The group rounded a crystalline ridge and found them: Makima and her team from Avalon, pristine armor gleaming against the dungeon’s alien landscape. Polished, composed, every inch the image Avalon liked to project. Though Makima herself was more than image—one of the guild’s genuine talents, even if her last assignnt had her shepherding Zeldris through the dungeon.
Sohow, they always seed to end up in the sa room.
Zeke fell into step beside her as the two groups rged into a loose procession, his voice dropping to sothing more conversational, more private. "So... you missed ."
"When did I say that?" She didn’t look at him, but the smile was already there.
"Are you denying your feelings? Fate brought you to , here in this great Expanse." A beat. "Pun intended."
"Silly boy." She laughed and patted his arm lightly, the touch lingering a mont longer than it needed to.
A comfortable silence settled between them, filled only by the dungeon’s quiet, lodic ambience.
"I’d heard this place was stacked with loot," Zeke said eventually. "Treasures, rare drops, the works. And what did we get? The weakest creature in here—a B rank troll."
"Only you would call a B rank troll weak," she said, shaking her head.
"Fair point. But still—" He glanced at her sideways. "I did hear that impressive feats tend to catch the right people’s attention."
Her eyes flicked to his, amused. "My group was luckier than yours. We found F and E rank stat potions."
"No guardian?"
She’d bypassed his comnt entirely. Maybe he’d laid it on a bit thick.
{You don’t say,} Zero offered, tone perfectly dry.
"There was one," she said. "B rank. Group kill."
Zeke clicked his tongue. "Three A rank hunters, and you all piled onto a B rank monster. Slimy."
"We needed to conserve strength. And test our cohesion."
"Hmph. Tell that to Jude—he soloed a B rank. Mid diff."
"Oh, we’re bragging about teammates now."
"Low diff a B rank and I’ll reply."
The air shifted before he could finish the thought. Mana thickened ahead, dense and humming, pouring from a cave mouth set into the crystalline rock face.
Zeke went still for half a second.
BOOM.
He was already moving, a blur toward the entrance.
"Ahhhh—A rank monster, help!" He blew past the group at equal speed and ca to a stop just beside Makima, locking eyes with the trio as he did.
"Jumping ti!"
They were already moving—weapons materializing mid-stride, formation snapping into place without a word exchanged.
Zeke watched them go, then turned back to Makima with a satisfied smirk, the cave’s entrance pulsing with dangerous energy behind him. "It seems my team is going to one-up yours again."
---
The air at the threshold thickened into sothing palpable—ozone and ancient stone pressing against the skin. The trio’s forward dash t the creature’s lunge exactly at the mouth of the cave, a violent collision ordained by Zeke’s provocation.
It erged from the fading darkness on six powerful legs, each step sending visible cracks spidering through the ground. Two points of crimson light burned from deep within its skull, cold and furious as dying stars, fixing directly on the advancing hunters. A colossal limb—obsidian-dark, gleaming with sickly purple bioluminescence—swept horizontally in a greeting of claws and fury. Each claw ran the length of a greatsword. They caught the dungeon’s ambient light for only a mont before eting Jude’s newly-ford flaming shield in a shower of sparks and a deafening shriek of tal on scale. The force shuddered up his arms. His Endurance held.
---
"It’s fast!" Jude grunted, ducking as a second limb ca from his blind spot. His new agility bought him a half-second—enough. The claw tore through his jacket instead of his ribs.
The Void-Threader was a nightmare of coordinated motion. All six limbs moved in terrifying harmony, striking from multiple angles simultaneously. Jude’s flaming axe dissolved into twin daggers—better for quick parries in the close-quarters chaos.
"Aaron, its legs! Kai, the eyes!"
Shadows erupted from the ground, coiling around two of the creature’s rear legs. For a precious second, it was pinned.
A golden lance the size of a felled tree scread down from above—but the Threader was already contorting, its body bending with impossible flexibility. The lance grazed its carapace, carving a deep furrow without finding anything vital.
"Tch." Kai was already summoning another.
Jude pressed the advantage, flas roaring. He beca a whirlwind of fire and steel, his new speed letting him match the creature’s frantic pace—where before he would have been overwheld, now he moved with lethal grace, each dodge sharper, each counter faster.
Zeke’s voice cut through the chaos from the sidelines, perfectly calm. "Third leg, left side. The joint’s weaker. Jude, stop dancing and hit it. Aaron, stop trying to hold it—trip it instead."
The trio moved as one. Aaron’s shadows shifted from binding to snaring, catching the creature’s foot at the precise mont Jude struck. The flaming axe bit deep into the chitinous joint.
Sothing cracked.
The Threader shrieked—a sound that grated against the mind rather than just the ears. It redoubled its efforts, becoming a blur of obsidian and rage.
But the trio had found their rhythm. Jude was the unbreakable core, a flaming storm that t the creature head-on. Aaron was the strategist, his shadows a shifting battlefield that hindered and controlled. Kai was the finisher, his holy light striking at the exact openings Jude carved out. They were no longer three hunters fighting a monster. They were a single weapon.
Enraged and wounded, the Void-Threader abandoned all strategy. Its six limbs beca a whirlwind of razor-sharp death—no cunning, just overwhelming, obliterating violence.
Clang—clang—SCREECH.
The sound of burning tal on chitin beca a relentless staccato. A claw caught Jude’s shoulder, tearing through muscle. He didn’t stop moving.
"Kai, now!" Aaron roared.
He’d been waiting—his shadows not attacking, but pooling. As the Threader committed to a devastating lunge at Jude, Aaron sprung the trap. The ground beneath its two primary legs beca a pit of grasping darkness. The beast lurched, its balance broken for one critical second.
It was the opening Kai needed.
He summoned six golden lances, they fell not as a volley but in a precise, staggered sequence—the first two smashing into the Threader’s carapace to stagger it, to force its head up; the next two slamming into its shoulders to crack its guard open. The final two descended like divine judgnt.
SHHH—CRACK.
The first pierced clean through the creature’s gaping maw and erupted out the back of its skull in a spray of black ichor. The second, a fraction of a second later, drove through its core.
The Void-Threader spasd—limbs flailing once, twice—then went still.
Silence returned. The trio stood in it, breathing hard. Jude’s shoulders heaved, his clothes torn and bloody, his flas guttering out to nothing. Aaron leaned forward with his hands on his knees, sweat dripping from his jaw. Kai lowered his hands slowly, the golden light fading from his eyes.
From the sidelines, Zeke pushed himself off the crystal he’d been leaning against. He didn’t clap. Didn’t smirk. He gave a single, slow, approving nod.
That was—if he wasn’t Zeke.
"Hehe." The grin surfaced. "Your team needs to work harder now."
He turned toward the cave. "To the loot."
The trio fell in behind him without a word.
Back at the cave mouth, one of Makima’s teammates shifted uncertainly.
"Are we going in?"
Makima glanced at him. "Did you kill the monster?"
A sheepish pause. "...No."
"Then wait for them to co out."
She turned and walked back to the crystal she and Zeke had been leaning against, settled against it, and waited.
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