[Chapter 85. No Escape]

Searanox moved toward the hollow tree, the oppressive purple light of the portal casting an unnatural, flickering glow on the twisted roots and the damp forest floor. His mind, sharpened by the recent increases in his Intelligence stats, rapidly calculated the risk: his gut screamed caution, but the dungeon's proximity to his tower made it a tactical asset he simply couldn't abandon. If this dungeon was changing, he needed to know how and why before it became a threat he couldn't contain. The rewards for this specific run had always been modest, but he remembered one of his old guild mates had always lectured him: even the small stuff piles up over time. Every scrap of experience, every silver coin, and every bit of data was a brick in the wall. And that old gamer never been wrong.

He advanced step by deliberate step, the weight of his Magitech Rifle a familiar comfort in his grip. The air near the portal shimmered and warped, thick with an oily energy that made the fine hairs on his arms stand on end and sent a metallic tang to the back of his throat. When he finally reached the threshold of the swirling purple vortex, he hesitated for only a fraction of a second before stepping through. The transition was unexpectedly seamless—it was the familiar, nauseating lurch of dimensional displacement without any of the added disorientation he might have expected from such a visible anomaly. One moment, he stood in the quiet, moonlit forest; the next, he was inside the oppressive atmosphere of the Burrowing Depths.

His boot sank into the soft, earthy floor of the dungeon, the familiar scent of damp soil and ancient decay immediately filling his nostrils. The air here was heavy and stagnant, thick enough to taste, just as he remembered from his countless prior runs through these tunnels. But something was fundamentally wrong. Behind him, where the portal's glow should have cast a faint, reassuring blue light across the tunnel entrance, there was only a wall of absolute, impenetrable darkness.

He turned around, his eyes narrowing as he confirmed what his tactical instincts already suspected. The portal was gone. There was no shimmering gateway, no ethereal light, and no way back. Behind him sat only solid, packed earth and jagged stone, as if a doorway had never existed there at all.

"So much for a quick peek," he muttered. The thought was cold and sharp, a survivalist's acceptance of a bad hand. With a quick mental command, he summoned six basic air drones and one reconnaissance drone. The summoning cost hit him instantly, the draw of Tech-points immediately draining his active Tech-point regeneration to zero as they flowed into the maintenance of the mechanical swarm.

The drones materialized in a series of sequential flashes of flickering blue light, a low-pitched hum echoed off the tunnel walls. They swarmed down the passage without hesitation, their sensors sweeping the darkness for heat signatures. Searanox followed at a measured, cautious pace, his boots making soft, rhythmic sounds in the dirt as the first bend of the narrow tunnel system swallowed his mechanical advance.

Moments later, a series of bright, crimson flashes illuminated the passage ahead, bathing the dark earth in a pulsating red glow that felt like a warning. Searanox slowed his pace, then stopped completely, pressing his back against the cool dirt wall. The rhythm of the light was wrong—this wasn't the brief, staccato flashes of drone combat he was used to, but a constant, rhythmic pulsing, like a heartbeat made of light.

His recon drone's mental report flashed into his mind like a vivid memory: hostiles detected. Multiple targets. The data stream showed shapes moving in the shadows ahead that were significantly larger than their normal dungeon variants. Their carapaces didn't look like natural chitin; they gleamed with rigid, armor plates that shouldn't exist on low-level vermin.

His drones were already engaging, their crimson beams striking the creatures and bouncing off the reinforced shells with little to no effect. The sound of beams ricocheting off chitin filled the tunnel.

Searanox brought his Magitech Rifle to bear, his finger hovering over the trigger, while simultaneously summoning a defensive drone. A shimmering, hexagonal barrier materialized in front of him, stretching across the entire width of the tunnel. He peered around the bend.

A Carapace Crawler, nearly as tall as Searanox himself, occupied most of the tunnel's vertical space. Its segmented body was pulsing with an unnatural purple light that perfectly matched the hue of the portal he had just stepped through.

`That's not right. They should be smaller. Much smaller,` he thought. As the realization formed, another Crawler burst through the soft earth of the wall to his left, its semi-translucent carapace oozing a thick, purple energy that hissed as it touched the air. Now, they were flanking his position, turning the narrow tunnel into a kill box.

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The creatures moved with unnatural, disjointed motions, their limbs twitching as if controlled by invisible wires. Their attacks were clumsy and slow, but the sheer mass behind them made them incredibly dangerous. His air drones darted between their strikes, moving too swiftly to be hit directly, but Searanox noted several near-misses where the Crawlers massive pincers nearly clipped the drones.

From behind the safety of his shimmering barrier, Searanox raised his rifle, sighting on one of the Crawler's beady, multifaceted eyes rather than its heavily armored body. A violet beam erupted from the barrel of his weapon, temporarily blinding him with its sheer intensity in the cramped space. The shot struck its target with a disgusting, wet crack, but to his horror, the creature didn't fall. It merely screeched, a high-pitched sound that grated against his eardrums.

The first Crawler shifted, its segmented body scraping loudly against the packed earth of the tunnel as its gaze fixed solely on him. Two more beams from his rifle slammed into the creature's head in rapid succession. Finally, the beast slumped, its numerous limbs twitching uselessly against the dirt floor. The second Crawler, currently blocking the tunnel entrance further ahead, looked battered and scorched, but it remained standing, its purple glow intensifying.

In those few seconds of focused fire, two of his basic air drones vanished, crushed under the creatures clumsy but powerful frontal attacks. Searanox didn't immediately waste the Tech-points to replace them; his focus was narrowed entirely on the immediate threat to his life.

Suddenly, his defensive drone's barrier was shifted sideways as a massive force, plastering itself against the left wall of the tunnel. Searanox's body moved with the impact, a fluid, practiced reaction honed by countless hours of simulated and real-world battles. A spray of dirt and sharp rock pellets peppered the shimmering shield as a third Crawler burst through the wall right next to him.

His rifle fired on pure instinct. The violet beam speared through one of the creature's front joints just as it attempted to shield its head with a massive, armored limb.

The injured beast, now missing a leg, rammed its entire body into his barrier. The hexagonal energy field groaned and cracked, spiderwebs of white light fracturing across its surface before it dissolved completely into nothingness. Searanox fired again, a clean, desperate shot that finally found its mark as the creature lunged forward. The beam burned through the creature's primary eye and erupted out the back of its skull in a spray of purple ichor.

The tunnel fell into a sudden, heavy quiet, save for the sound of settling dirt and the hum of the remaining drones. His gaze flickered to his tactical display. Only three of the six air drones he had summoned still floated in the air, their hulls scorched.

Something felt wrong—a nagging, persistent itch at the edge of his perception that went beyond the immediate danger. Irritated and on edge, he walked forward down the tunnel, stepping over the steaming carcasses and summoning fresh drones as he moved. He dismissed the three basic air drones that had survived the skirmish, replacing them with two assault drones and two offensive drones for better piercing power.

A quick glance at his TP counter made him click his tongue in annoyance. "Already used a hundred Tech-points just to clear a hallway." Beside the counter, a small system window showed his active drone count.

[System Notification]

[6/10 Active Drones]

[-4 TP/min]

His eyes remained fixed on that system window for a moment longer than usual. Something about the interface felt off—the font was flickering, and the colors seemed slightly desaturated.

Then it clicked. Everything clicked into place at once, sending a chill down his spine.

With a sharp turn of his head, he looked down at one of the dead Crawlers at his feet. He focused his gaze, willing the familiar system window to appear so he could check its name and level.

Nothing. There was no window. No name tag. No level information. The creature was a blank space in the System's logic.

`What the...` was all he could think before a completely different window appeared—one he hadn't requested, and one he had never seen before. It was a jagged, glitching box that sat in the center of his vision, the text on it was illegible.

The same cold, mechanical voice from his first encounter with the System—the one that had greeted him when the world ended—echoed directly in his mind, devoid of any warmth.

The text warped and swayed before he could make out what it said.

[System Announcement]

System Irregularity detected...

Corruption detected.

Searanox stared at the system window, his eyes wide with genuine shock. His knuckles were white as he gripped his rifle so hard the metal groaned. He felt a sudden, violent tug on his physical form, as if the world were trying to pull him upward.

The voice in his mind repeated the command in its eerie, monotone cadence, but the tugging sensation vanished, replaced by a feeling of immense, crushing pressure.

Searanox watched as the text on the window began to liquefy and run like ink.

After that final, chilling sentence, there was only silence. The HUD windows flickered once and then vanished, leaving him alone in the dark, purple-tinged tunnel with no exit, no System support, and no way home.

Systembound: Rise of the Dronemancer Chapter 85