‘Arafel…’

  The name echoed in the hollow of her mind, heavy with syllables. ‘Of The Seven Unholy.’ She turned it over, testing its weight. It had the ring of something ancient, something that should inspire trembling and awe.

  Instead, it pinged a different association entirely.

  ‘Hmm. Why does that sound like a band name? Like something from those posters I used to plaster all over my bedroom walls.’

  The thought was involuntary, a reflex born from a lifetime of late-night internet dives and music video marathons. She remembered them vividly, five impossibly handsome men, each with perfectly tousled hair and choreographed smolders. Their abs had been sculpted by the gods themselves, arranged in symmetrical perfection that made even marble statues look undercooked. She’d been a fanatic. The kind of fan who knew their birthdays, their blood types, the exact date of their debut single. She’d spent her entire paychecks on concert tickets and lightsticks shaped like the stars.

  ‘Gosh… those days. I miss them a lot.’

  A soft, wistful sigh brushed through her consciousness, carrying the ghost of glittering arena lights and the roar of fifty thousand screaming voices.

  Then reality crashed back.

  She was a flaming bug. In a dungeon. Speaking, well, thinking at an entity so powerful it couldn’t even sneeze without potentially erasing her from existence. An entity that had just, very clearly, heard every single one of those thoughts.

  ‘Err… Arafel is a nice name!’ Her mental voice pitched upward into something desperate and cheerful. ‘A very dignified, powerful, totally-not-reminding-me-of-a-K-pop-boyband name! I-I’m Jessica, by the way. You can call me Jessica! Hehe!’

  The laugh was a masterpiece of disgraceful, forced cheerfulness.

  A long, weighted pause.

  “Sigh…” The exhalation was deep, resonant, and carried the profound weariness of something that had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations and now found itself saddled with this. “Kids.” Arafel mumbled to himself, the words leaking into the shared thought-space. “I am definitely too old for all of this.”

  The self-pity in his tone was so palpable, so genuine, that Jessica almost felt a pang of sympathy. Almost.

  “Anyways…” Arafel rallied, his tone shifting to something more practical. “Why do you not hurry and burn that bone? Your vitality seems… critically diminished. It would be a shame to survive my hospitality only to expire on the floor, little Jessica.”

  Jessica didn’t answer immediately. A screen had materialized before her, crisp and blessedly uncorrupted. The system was back.

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/4%] >>

  ‘Four percent.’ The number was a cold splash of water. ‘I’m literally walking, hovering consciously into the afterlife of flames right now.’ This was the lowest her vitality had ever been. Lower than the fall, lower than the drowning, lower than the moment she’d first sparked to life on that discarded torch. The edge was right there.

  The realization injected pure adrenaline into her fading form. ‘Y-yes! I’ll do it right now!’

  She didn’t walk. She launched. A frantic, desperate Leap-boing! carried her through the air, her small, flaming locust body arcing down to land squarely on the massive bone fragment. It was cool beneath her feet, but she could feel the latent power within it, a deep reservoir of ancient vitality waiting to be tapped.

  She closed her compound eyes. Her mental focus narrowed to a single point, a single intent. [Burn]

  For a heartbeat, nothing. Then, a faint warmth spread from where her tiny feet touched the pale surface. It grew, a gentle heat that seeped into the bone, awakening something dormant. The warmth became a glow, the glow became a spark. The spark caught.

  Vroom!!

  The bone ignited. Not with her usual sputtering, desperate flame, but with a clean, hungry fire that spread in steady, concentric rings. It was beautiful. It was feeding her.

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/5%] (+5) --> [HP/10%] >>

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/10%] (+10) --> [HP/20%] >>

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/20%] (+10) --> [HP/30%] >>

  Each notification was a pulse of relief. The grey fog at the edges of her vision receded. The heaviness in her limbs dissolved. The flame aura around her body, which had been a weak, guttering thing, began to roar, a healthy, vibrant corona of blue and orange.

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/70%] (+10) --> [HP/80%] >>

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/80%] (+10) --> [HP/90%] >>

  << SPECIES POSSESSED: CAVE LOCUST [HP/90%] (+10) --> [HP/100%] >>

  ‘Sigh…’ The exhalation was pure, profound satisfaction. Every fiber of her borrowed body felt… full. Alive. Powerful, even.

  She pushed off from the burning bone, leaping lightly to the ashen brick floor beside it. The bone continued to burn behind her, wreathed in her borrowed flames, a small, silent pyre in the vast, dark chamber.

  << FULL VITALITY ACHIEVED. BODY CONDITION: OPTIMAL. >>

  She felt optimal. She felt like she could take on a Mud Wolf. Maybe two. Okay, maybe not. But she felt good.

  ‘Thank you. Very much, old gramps.’ The words came from somewhere genuine, stripped of sarcasm and panic. ‘This… this really means a lot. I mean it.’

  “Kukuku…” Arafel’s chuckle was warm, almost paternal. “It is but a small thing. A fragment of a fragment. Do not let it swell your head.” A pause. “And besides… that bone will not burn through quickly. It will take considerable time and repeated use before it is fully consumed. You would be wise to keep it with you.”

  Jessica, already in the process of turning away, stopped. Her mental brow furrowed as she rotated back toward the burning bone. ‘But it’s already burnt, so it won’t be useful anym—’

  The thought died.

  She stared.

  The bone, which should have been a blackened, crumbling husk, sat serenely in the heart of her flames. It wasn’t just intact. It was pristine. The pale surface gleamed, smooth and unmarred, as if the fire licking hungrily at its surface was nothing more than a gentle, warm bath. Not a single crack. Not the faintest smudge of carbon.

  ‘Flaming HELL!!’ The curse was pure, reverent shock. ‘It wasn’t even damaged! Not a scratch!’

  “Kukuku… As it originates from me, why would it be anything less than exceptional?” Arafel’s mental voice swelled with a pride so vast and ancient it practically creaked. “Greatness begets greatness, little flame.”

  ‘It really is great,’ Jessica breathed, her mental eyes wide and sparkling. Then, cautiously, hopefully: ‘Do you… really mean I can keep it? For later?’

  A long, slow exhalation of chain-rattling air.

  “Sigh… Yes. Yes, I have already said this. The bone will not be consumed easily. Keep it. Use it when the abyss stares back at you.” He was already sounding slightly exasperated, the paternal warmth giving way to the weary resignation of someone who had just realized they’d adopted a particularly persistent stray. “It is yours. Now please, cease looking at me with those... those *sparkling* mental eyes of yours.”

  Before the final syllable of his thought had fully formed, Jessica had already launched. Her flaming locust body arced through the stale air and landed squarely on the pristine, still-burning bone.

  Poof!

  The bone vanished.

  A new line appeared in her status, nestled neatly in its proper category.

  [Item Received: [Bone Of ARAFEL]]

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  ‘Hehehe.’ The giggle was soft, self-satisfied, and utterly without shame. She surveyed her status screen like a miser counting gold.

  [STATUS]

  +

  Name: Jessica

  Level: 2 [Infant Rank]

  Exp(Fragnet): [------[70%]---100%]

  Title: None

  Specie: Flame

  Species Possessed: Cave Locust [Hp/99%]

  Rank: [Infant], Cave Locust [Infant]

  Magic Cores: [You Are Currently An Idea], Cave Locust [1/1]

  Items: [Bone Of ARAFEL]

  Echoes: None

  Innate Abilities: [Possess] [Spark Instinct]

  Abilities: Unique Skill [Blabber Mouth], Flame Specific Skill [Burning] [Life Multiplier(By Snorting)], Cave Locust Skill [Flame Acid Ball]

  +

  'Hehehe…' The giggle was uncontrollable, a bubble of pure, childish glee. Full HP. A emergency battery in her pocket. And still alive. For the first time in four days, things felt… good. Manageable. Hopeful, even.

  The glee earned another deep, long-suffering sigh from the darkness.

  Eventually, the giggles subsided. Jessica settled near the center of the chamber, not too close to the chained darkness, but not cowering at the entrance either. She had questions. And, strangely, she wanted to talk. Not to interrogate, not to beg. Just… talk.

  So she did. She told him about her old life. The cramped apartment, the dead-end job, the streaming dream that never quite caught fire. She told him about Mark and Elsa, about the truck and the little girl in the yellow dress. She told him about waking up as a dying spark on a damp torch, about the wolves and the mushrooms and the terrifying plummet into the black water. She told him about the system's merciless teasing and the lonely, beautiful moment with the mud wolf pup.

  The more she spoke, the more Arafel listened. His presence, which had been a crushing weight, became something else, a patient, focused attention. He asked no questions, offered no judgments. He simply… absorbed her story, letting it fill the vast, silent chamber that had held only his own thoughts for so long.

  Hours passed. The torches guttered and relit themselves. The chamber seemed to be at peace with the calmness. And eventually, the conversation drifted from her past to her present predicament.

  “There are three regions in this nightmare realm,” Arafel began, his tone shifting to something instructional. “The first, the area you traversed to reach me is called ‘The Damp Labyrinth.’ It is the nursery tier. Everything there is… young. Learning. You survived it, which is more than most can claim.”

  Jessica felt a small, grudging pride.

  “The second region is ‘The Swamp Zone.’”

  Her pride evaporated.

  “Every span of that domain is saturated with black water. And the water itself… is a living entity. A single, vast consciousness, its source coiled at the heart of the subterranean river. It is protected, of course. A large monster dwells in the depths, bound to the water’s will.”

  A pause. Then, with genuine, ancient enthusiasm:

  “Is it not fascinating, little Jessica? An entire ecosystem born from a single, sentient organism?”

  Jessica stared into the darkness where she imagined Arafel’s immense, chained form resided. Her mental expression was flat.

  ‘Fascinating.’ She let the word hang. ‘Heh. Fascinating.’ A dry, humorless laugh. ‘If that’s your definition of ‘fascinating,’ old gramps, I’m almost afraid to ask what your definition of ‘dangerous’ is. Because that? That is a definition of a ‘NO GO’ for me. Flaming HELL!! Why would I ever, in any conceivable timeline, willingly go there?’

  “Ahem.”

  The slight, deliberate clearing of a throat that hadn't been used for speech in millennia.

  “Because beyond that river, past the living water, its guardian, and maybe some other monsters, there is a gate. A passage out of this nightmare realm and into the outside world.”

  The words landed like a physical blow.

  Jessica’s frantic, internal objections stuttered to a halt. The gate. Freedom. The sun, the grass, the sky she had been desperately imagining for days. It was there. On the other side of a living ocean and a monster.

  ‘Sigh…’

  The sigh was deep, resigned, and carried the weight of dawning obligation.

  'So I really do need to stay here longer. Get stronger. Maybe level up a few dozen times. Become a totally different, much more powerful creature. Then, maybe, I can think about the terrifying sentient bathwater and its giant pet monster.'

  Just as she was settling into this grim, necessary acceptance, Arafel continued.

  “However.”

  Her hope, a fragile, battered thing, perked up.

  “There is another route to that gate.”

  ‘Yes! Yes! Tell me! What is it? A secret passage? A teleportation circle? A friendly dragon taxi service?’

  “It requires traversing the third region.”

  The hope began to dim.

  “‘The Treacherous Land of Darkness.’”

  The hope expired with a soft, internal whimper.

  “It is… slightly more dangerous for one of your current capabilities than the river approach.”

  ‘Slightly.’ The word echoed in the hollow of her mind. ‘Slightly more dangerous.’

  She looked down at her small, flaming locust body. At her [Level 2] status. At her single offensive skill that was essentially spit-wading into combat.

  Then she looked into the darkness where an ancient, chained, self-proclaimed ‘weak old fellow’ sat, who considered a continent-spanning sentient swamp monster with a pet leviathan like monster to be ‘Fascinating’, and a land simply named ‘Treacherous Darkness’ to be a slightly worse option.

  The mental image that formed made her shudder so violently her flame aura guttered.

  ‘Oooh, how the world hates me.’ The thought was a familiar, bitter refrain. Her brief respite, the warm glow of gratitude and full health, evaporated as the highlight reel of her terrible luck began to play behind her eyes. The three-way fork. The mushroom horde. The swamp monster’s jaws. Each memory a fresh bruise on her psyche.

  She was spiraling, sinking into the comfortable, well-worn grooves of self-pity.

  “And after all that,” Arafel’s voice cut through the gloom, his tone brightening slightly, “we arrive at the final option.”

  Jessica’s mental spiral stuttered to a halt.

  “Which is, objectively, the easier path.”

  She didn’t dare to hope. She couldn’t. But something in her, that stubborn, foolish ember that had kept her moving through four days of hell, perked up its ears anyway.

  ‘Easier?’ She swallowed a mental gulp.

  ‘What… what is it?’

  A beat of silence.

  Another.

  And another.

  And another.

  'Hey. Old gramps.' Her mental voice was flat, the patience of a woman who had survived four days of system trolling and was not about to be trolled by an ancient cosmic entity. 'You're keeping me on a cliffhanger here. Just tell me I'm doomed already and let's get this over with. I’m ready. I’ve accepted my fate. I’ll just live here. With you. We can be dungeon roommates.'

  “Kukuku… patience, little flame.”

  'I have been patient! I waited four days to not die! That's a lot of patience!'

  “Well, you see…” Arafel continued, utterly unbothered by her outburst. “That last option is to find a human.”

  Jessica paused.

  “A human from the outside world. And then, together, you both could teleport without the use of a gate.”

  ‘A human.’ She turned the word over. ‘And teleport. Together.’

  “Correct.”

  She turned the concept over, examined it from every angle, poked at its soft underbelly.

  'I'll be a bug snack if they see me. And even if I try to be clever. Even if I possess something bigger, something less snack-like. I’ll still be a monster. A possessed monster. Which is probably worse. That’s how you get a heroic quest marker over your head.’ Another pause. ‘And even if—EVEN IF—I somehow managed to possess one of them directly? Which, by the way, is the worst possible first impression. Their levels will be way higher than mine. The system already confirmed that. I can’t possess something stronger than me. So that’s three layers of flaming ‘no’. Isn’t that right, old gramps?'

  A pause. Then, reluctantly:

  "Yes. Your analysis is sound. My awareness extends throughout this realm. Every human who ventures here possesses an average combat level of ten or above. Possession of such a target is, at your current stage, impossible."

  ‘Sigh…’

  The sigh was deep, ancient in its own small way, carrying the accumulated exhaustion of more than four days of relentless, universe-sanctioned misfortune.

  'Ten. Or above.' Her mental voice was hollow. 'I'm level two. I fight mushrooms for a living. I almost died to a puddle.'

  Another deep, bone-weary sigh.

  ‘So that’s it, then. I’m going to be here for years. Maybe decades. I’ll level up, one terrified mushroom at a time. I’ll evolve. Maybe I’ll become a slightly larger bug. Then a medium bug. Then, eventually, a bug that can politely approach a human and ask for teleportation assistance without being immediately incinerated.’ A pause. '.. Or maybe I'll become an ancient forgotten spirit of this dungeon. They'll put me on a torch and tell legends about the grumpy, chatty flame that won't go out.'

  “Little flame.” Arafel's tone was firm, cutting through her spiral. “Do not surrender to despair. I have not yet presented the full terms.”

  'Old gramps, let's just… leave it for now.' She cut him off, not harshly, but with the flat finality of someone who has already calculated the odds and found them wanting. 'I'm alive. My HP is full. I have your bone in my pocket. That's enough for today.'

  She paused, gathering herself.

  '…What is it that you want me to do for you?'

  The question was quiet, direct. A trade had been offered. A gift given. She understood the nature of such transactions, even across gulfs of power and time. Nothing was ever truly free.

  Arafel was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was different. Less theatrical. More… serious.

  “Sigh… I was getting to that. You cut me off mid-build-up. Young people today have no appreciation for narrative pacing.” A pause. “But very well. Since you have asked so directly.”

  The chamber shuddered. Not from Arafel’s voice, but from a deep, resonant tension that suddenly filled the space. The chains tightened, groaned, and for a moment, the darkness at the room’s heart seemed to coalesce, to take on a shape that was almost, briefly, visible.

  “Little flame.”

  The words were no longer casual. They were weighted, ancient, carrying the gravity of centuries.

  “I need you to retrieve something for me.”

  A pause.

  “It is called ‘The Nameless Lever.’”

  Jessica’s mental breathing stilled.

  “It is a mechanism. A key. A single point in the prison that has held me for longer than your world has known fire. It lies beyond this chamber, in a place that even I cannot see clearly.”

  Another pause. The chains groaned, as if the very act of speaking the words caused Arafel physical strain.

  “Retrieve it. Activate it. And the chains that bind me here… will loosen. Perhaps, for the first time in ages, I may be able to move.”

  The silence that followed was not empty. It was full... full of implication, of ancient hope, of a weight being carefully, deliberately placed on very small, very fiery shoulders.

  Then, Arafel’s tone shifted. The solemnity remained, but something else crept in, something almost… businesslike.

  “And in exchange for this service, I can guarantee you a reward.”

  ‘A reward.’ Jessica’s mental voice was cautious.

  “A free level. Upon completion, regardless of how much experience you have accumulated, I will ensure your level increases. No grinding. No hunting. No risk.”

  A free level. The temptation was immediate, visceral. She had spent four days clawing her way from 1 to 2. The promise of skipping that entire arduous process for an entire additional level…

  But Arafel wasn’t finished.

  “And..,” he continued, his voice dropping to something almost intimate, conspiratorial, “I can also guarantee you something far more valuable than power.”

  A pause. The chamber held its breath.

  “A body.”

  The word hung in the air, heavy with possibility.

  “Not a possession. Not a temporary vessel scavenged from the weak and the dying. A true form. Your own form, shaped to contain your consciousness without degradation, without the constant, gnawing hunger for vitality.”

  Another pause, letting the weight settle.

  “A form with which you could speak. Touch. Feel the sun on skin that does not burn.”

  Jessica said nothing. For once, her internal monologue was completely, utterly silent.

  “That is my offer, little flame. The Nameless Lever, in exchange for your freedom from this endless cycle of borrowed flesh.”

  The chains settled with a final, resonant groan.

  “So. What say you?”