Maybe I was a pretty big lizard, but it had been a long time since I’d fought in caves. The troglodyte let out some kind of screeching roar and thrust his spear.

  My resilience did its job, but he still managed to nick my side. My other head lunged forward, bit him, roared, and spat venom at him — with no effect. The ground was shaking, and I was starting to feel sick from constantly spinning around just to keep him in sight.

  His body looked bluish-green in my eyes — an effect of my dark vision, which painted the whole world in cold, dead colors. In reality, he could’ve been any color, but down here it didn’t matter.

  On top of that, the bastard was great at manipulating aura — so good it was hard to even track him.

  When he attacked, his aura flared up. When he pulled back and ran, it dropped so low it almost vanished.

  Damn bastard! Of course I had to run into him — confused, hungry, in this shitty place. Good thing this wasn’t my first fight in this life.

  The troglodyte didn’t wait for me to gather my thoughts. He lunged again, low and fast, the spear whistling past my neck. I stepped back, claws scraping against stone. Too tight. Too slippery. Too many sharp edges you could kill yourself on without anyone’s help.

  My second head roared first, and I went with it. A sidestep, a full-body lunge, and finally my fangs hit. I bit into his arm — felt tough skin under my teeth and something crunch in a very unpleasant way. The venom flowed on instinct.

  Bloodlust kicked in.

  The world narrowed down to a single target.

  My heart started hammering like crazy, muscles tensed to their limits, and hunger… hunger stopped being just a feeling. It became a damn order! Hah!

  The troglodyte jumped back, hissed with that throaty, blind roar of his, and started circling. The spear was still in his hands, but his movements… just a bit slower. Barely noticeable. For anyone else, probably not at all. For me? Like someone turned on a small red light:

  The poison’s working, you bastard! It’s working!

  Instead of charging like an idiot, I pulled back and took a defensive stance. Body low, heads spread, tail ready to counter. Let him bleed out. Let the venom do its job. I’d already done mine — now I just had to not screw it up.

  He tried again. And again. The attacks got more frantic, less precise. His aura wavered, tore itself apart, like something was shredding it from the inside. I could feel it. I could feel him weakening. Just a little longer.

  Then he lost his balance.

  Stumbled!

  For a fraction of a second, he was helpless.

  That was enough.

  I threw myself at him with a roar that surprised even me. One head slammed into his shoulder, mine into the side of his neck. Blood burst out, warm, metallic on my tongue. I tore at him. He tried to pull away. I tore again — harder.

  The resistance stopped. Skin gave way.

  He dropped to his knees, and I had no intention of giving him any more chances. Furious, starving, on the edge of control, I bit in again. Once. Twice. I ripped him apart like a damn rag!

  There was no finesse in it. Just strength, fangs, and the need to end it.

  When he finally stopped moving, I stood over him, breathing hard, covered in blood.

  Victorious. Dominant. Blood dripping from our mouths.

  My legs were shaking. My wounds burned.

  In the end, I’d won. And inside, I was glad.

  It had been a long time since I’d fought someone this stubborn and relentless, completely alone. Like he’d been programmed not to give up.

  Any normal beast would’ve run away a long time ago.

  Something about this stank. If I’d run into one of them, what guarantee did I have I wouldn’t find more? Or some kind of leader? Or stronger allies? If the last few days had taught me anything, it was that this world was huge and complicated. Full of races, tribes, conflicts… and brutality.

  I had to be careful. I didn’t know how to get back up. Valeria probably thought I’d run away. She was probably hurt. The other goblins would follow her lead, and I couldn’t count on those little goblins having seen what happened to me. After all, some time passed before the floor collapsed. For a few long minutes, I stared at the ruins of that strange temple… I was on my own. Like most of my life. This one and sadly the last on Earth.

  I stood there for a while, trying to calm my breathing and the heart that was still pounding like a jackhammer. Options started forming in my head. Three paths. All of them shitty.

  First: keep wandering this underground city and look for an exit. Logical. Sensible. Theoretically the safest. Except I was already hungry, tired, and beaten up, and this place looked like a labyrinth designed by someone who really hated people… and everything else. I could walk here for hours. Or days. And then just drop dead.

  Second: those massive gates. The same ones that thing had come from. An aura almost like Zod’s. Just thinking about it twisted my stomach. That was the answer to my questions. And at the same time, the shortest road to becoming a smear on the floor. Economically? High risk, potentially massive profit. In practice? Sounded like suicide gambling.

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  Third: go deeper into this cave. If the troglodyte lived here, it meant it was possible. Maybe there was an exit. Maybe there were other creatures. Maybe there was anything that didn’t end in a collapse or a wall. It wasn’t a good option. It was… a survival option.

  I looked at the blood-soaked stones, at the corpse at my feet, at the darkness stretching into the tunnel. I sighed heavily.

  Great, Oskar. You fell into a fucking underground world and now you’re choosing how you might die.

  And me, like the idiot who always calculates costs and profits even when there’s no way out, started calculating not what was best… but what gave me the biggest chance of not dying today.

  For now, the carcass was still lying at my feet. Warm. Fresh. And, most importantly, edible.

  World’s ending, drama’s drama, but hunger is hunger. And I wasn’t in a position to be picky. Since I’d already killed him, it would be stupid to waste the meat. The troglodyte was about the size of a hunched, average man. Maybe fifty or sixty kilos of living weight. Just right to eat properly… maybe even forget for a moment how screwed I was.

  I got to work without ceremony. Fangs went in, claws helped. The taste? Metallic, heavy, strangely earthy. Not something you’d get in a restaurant, but it was calories. And it was mine. The venom was still in his body, but my organism handled it just fine — it wasn’t the first time I’d eaten something that had tried to kill me a moment earlier.

  I ate for a long time. Slower than during the fight, more methodical. Not in desperate hunger, but out of calculation. Every bite was energy. Every bite was energy for later. When I finally pulled my heads away from what was left, my belly was heavy but pleasantly full. It had been a long time since I’d eaten this well.

  And then the system spoke. I gained a new passive skill!

  After a moment, something shifted inside me.

  I felt odd… different. Like something inside shifted by one notch. The aura around me stopped being just a vague pressure on my senses. It became… more plastic. Easier to feel. Easier to suppress. Or boost.

  It wasn’t a miracle or a sudden leap in power. More like solid foundations. The skill organized the flow of aura in my body, made it easier to suppress, strengthen, and fine-tune it without wasting energy. Less loss, more control. Simpler. Cleaner. More effective.

  It sounded like something that should come in the starter pack, but apparently this world preferred selling foundations as upgrades!

  I snorted.

  From the point of view of a cautious economist, it was gold. Every drop of saved energy meant a longer fight, more escapes, and fewer stupid deaths. If I was going to survive here, these boring upgrades were exactly what made the difference between living and being someone’s lunch.

  I stood over the troglodyte for a while longer, still breathing hard, letting the pulse of aura calm down a bit. [Basic Aura Manipulation Enhancement] throbbed in my veins, and I felt like I finally had something to work with — like someone had finally handed me the instruction manual for my own body. Not a miracle. But a solid foundation. And a foundation can always be built on.

  I wandered around the cave, eating mushrooms off the wet walls, licking dripping water, breathing in the stench of rot, blood, and the remains of the troglodyte’s guts. It smelled like the home of a mad alchemist — and I… felt weirdly comfortable. Every breath, every step reminded me that at least in this world I had fangs, claws, and venom. The rest was just gambling.

  After a few minutes, I got up, shook myself off, and went deeper into the tunnel. The labyrinth stretched on endlessly, the walls wet and cold, full of cracks where worms and something else hid — something I didn’t want to know. The space seemed to swallow the light of my vision, and the shadows of my two heads danced on the wet stone like sick ghosts.

  At some point, something moved in the darkness. A huge, bloated, slimy worm crawled onto the path. Eyes like black pearls, yellowed fangs. I felt its aura — uneven, chaotic, full of hunger and instinct. For a moment, it looked at me like I was the snack. I snorted. Not this time, asshole!

  I swung my tail and smashed it into the middle of the thing. A crack of armor, a snap of scales, metallic air in my mouth. The worm screamed, twisted, tried to bite me with its slimy fangs, but every movement was slow compared to my strength and speed. Instinctively, I bit into its neck with my other head, venom burning through its muscles. No finesse. Just brutality and hunger.

  Slipping on the wet ground, I crushed it again with my tail, pinning it with my claws. The sound of its chitin breaking mixed with dripping water and my own breathing. When it finally stopped moving, I ate what was left of its massive body, feeling that blunt, caloric satisfaction. It wasn’t a feast. It was survival. And that was good enough.

  With hunger sated and energy back, control returned too. The aura felt even more plastic, like the foundations I got from the troglodyte were starting to pay off. I could manipulate it more precisely now, suppress it, boost it, feel how the surroundings reacted. It was power I hadn’t had before — and now I could use it whenever I wanted.

  I moved on, deeper into the endless cave. The walls melted into darkness, the echo of my steps rang like a grim symphony. Every turn, every shadow, every sound could mean another trap, another enemy, or something even worse. But now… I was ready. Not just with teeth and claws, but with aura that was finally starting to be my tool.

  Wandering through that cave labyrinth, I felt my body and mind slowly falling apart. Fatigue poured into me like thick, stinking oil, and boredom crushed every thought. I almost wanted to cry about all of it — about my stupid decisions, about this damn place I’d ended up alone in. I kept walking in the dark, every tunnel looking the same, like I’d been circling for many, many hours and no one, damn it, was coming to get me out.

  I collapsed on the ground, depressed, resting my head against wet stone. The stench of damp mixed with the metallic taste of blood, and I didn’t even have the strength to get up. I stopped caring about any strategy. I just wanted it to end, or for someone to come in and fix this chaos. Even though I knew I was the chaos.

  Then, from around a bend, came a sound that tore me out of it — a low, powerful, tiger-like roar, followed by an even deeper, bull-like bellow. Something fucking big. Something that wasn’t going to ask questions. My heart started hammering, all my senses snapping to attention.

  I looked around nervously, and my aura sense immediately picked up… three tunnels around me. In each of them, a strange, disturbing aura pulsed — none of them like the troglodyte, none of them natural. There was something… aware in them. Something that shouldn’t be here. Something that was waiting. And suddenly I felt it: I was screwed. Completely. No way to run, no way to predict what I should do.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking shit…” I groaned under my breath, because I had no idea what was happening anymore.

  Every part of my body screamed run or die, but the tunnels seemed to pull me in deeper, like a living trap. The aura around me pulsed chaotically, each of those three lines like a twisting, sucking tongue — and I didn’t know whether I could ignore them or whether I was about to walk straight into my own death.

  The last light of my patience and control started to fade. I felt the weight of this cave, of the whole underground world, and inside it myself — a small, bullied kid who’d been a loser at school, now swallowed by chaos he didn’t understand. Fuck. I was deep in shit. And it looked like I might stay here for a long time.

  And then… silence before the storm. Then a roar shook everything around me, and the aura of the three tunnels pulsed as if it were alive. My whole body tensed, ready to fight. I was alone.

  I was in deep shit!