The wind was a freezing blade against Ren’s face as he descended.
The friction of the flannel shirt against the heavy industrial wiring screamed—a high-pitched, metallic wail that echoed off the glass faces of the skyscrapers. To anyone else, the sound would have been a death bell, a siren for every predator in a four-block radius. But Ren didn't care. He was a projectile now, a dying ember falling into a vault of gold and rot.
As the ground rushed up to meet him, his mind did something it hadn't allowed itself to do since the "Integration" began. It wandered.
He thought of his sister. Somewhere to the East, beyond the jagged skyline and the rising tide of monsters, she was out there. Had she made it to a Monolith? Had she pulled a "Legendary" skill that made her a god among survivors, or was she staring at a screen of [Common] gray text, wondering how she would survive the next hour? He pictured her grinding, her face set in that stubborn grimace they both shared, swinging a sword or casting a spell to keep the darkness at bay.
“Did you get a good pull, El?” he whispered into the wind.
If she hadn't—if she was stuck with something broken like his [SIPHON]—was she going through this same hell? Was she huddled in a corner, watching her HP tick down while the world screamed outside? The thought was a sharper pain than the smoke in his lungs.
Then, the memories shifted. He saw the porch of their house. He could almost smell the way the wood smelled after a summer rain, the slight creak of the third step, and the way the shadows of the oak tree danced across the siding. He thought of his room—messy, filled with half-finished sketches and the mundane clutter of a life that no longer existed. He missed the simple, quiet boredom of a Sunday afternoon. He missed the porch. He missed the feeling of being safe without needing a gold line to tell him so.
“Chloe’s going to kill me,” he realized, a grim twitch of his lips the only sign of a smile.
He could see her face when she woke up. The confusion, the slow realization, and then the white-hot fury. She’d call him an idiot. She’d cry. She’d probably try to run through the city after him. He hoped Mel was as good as she claimed to be. He hoped Mel could hold her back. Chloe deserved to live, even if she had to live while hating him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The shadow of the bank’s collapsed roof swallowed him.
Ren let go.
The transition from the screaming wire to the dead silence of the bank was instantaneous. He hit the mound of treasure and debris with the force of a falling stone. The impact was sickening—a symphony of snapping wood, clattering gold bars, and the heavy thud of flesh hitting unforgiving steel.
[HP: 2/13]
[Status: CRITICAL BLEEDING / IMPALED]
Ren lay still, staring up at the amber-tinted sky through the hole in the ceiling. Because of his [Pain Nullification], there was no scream. There was no white-hot flash of agony. There was only a cold, clinical detachment. He looked down and saw it: a jagged, splintered leg of a mahogany table had driven itself clean through the left side of his stomach, pinning him to the mound like a butterfly to a board.
His brain protested. He knew, logically, that his entrails were pierced. He knew he was dying. His throat tightened, and a low, guttural groan escaped his lips—not because he felt the sting, but because his mind was playing back the idea of pain. It was a ghost-reaction, a phantom echo of a human nervous system that the System had tried to silence.
Then, the world began to move.
The mound beneath him groaned. The [Gilded Vault-Wraith] didn't just wake up; it ignited. The massive creature heaved itself upward, its crab-like legs driving into the marble floor with enough force to crack the foundation. It let out a subsonic vibration that rattled the coins around Ren’s head.
The monster was confused. It felt the impact on its back—a foreign weight in its sanctuary. It spun in a dizzying, heavy circle, its massive pincers snapping at empty air. It tilted its titanic body from side to side, trying to shake off whatever had landed on it. It lunged at the nearby walls, raking its claws through the teller windows and the plaster, searching for an intruder that wasn't there.
Ren gripped a fused safe handle to keep him from sliding off as the monster bucked. He watched the creature’s limbs. His eyes, glowing with that predatory indigo light, tracked the range of motion of those massive, serrated pincers.
He grinned, the dark blood staining his teeth.
His hypothesis was a fact. The creature was a fortress, but it was a fortress with a blind spot. Its armor was so thick, its back so encrusted with the "loot" of four days of slaughter, that it couldn't reach its own spine. It was too wide, too heavy, and its joints were designed for crushing what was in front of it, not scratching what was on top. To the Wraith, Ren was nothing more than a new piece of debris added to its collection.
“My turn,” Ren thought.
The blood was draining out of him now, soaking into the stacks of old-world currency and the discarded armor of fallen players. The sky above was turning a deep, bruised amber—the final warning of the sun. He had minutes, maybe less, before his health bar hit zero or the light turned him into a literal statue.
Ren reached out and began to dig.
He didn't care about the gold bars or the weapons tangled in the mess. He pushed aside bundles of useless cash and shattered ceramic plates, carving a shallow burrow into the very shell of the monster. He pushed his body deeper into the mound, using the debris to cover his legs, his torso, and the wooden stake still protruding from his gut.
He wasn't just hiding. He was becoming part of the hoard. He wanted to get to it's center.
As he pulled a heavy, velvet-lined jewelry case over his head to shield himself, he looked at his hands covered in blood. his heart pulsed as it slowly synced with the monster's slow, ten-second heartbeat.
“You’re a bank, aren't you?” Ren thought, his vision beginning to blur as he felt the [SYPHON] prompt flicker weakly in the corner of his eye. “I want to check if a dying man’s account still has any balance.”
Outside, the first ray of the sun hit the top of the skyscraper.
