SSSSS-Rank: Negative Leveling

Luthra lay on his stomach, looking down at the Gorgon Mines. It wasn't a mine. It was a fortress of black stone and timber walls. Guards moved in tight, disciplined patrols. Archers stood watch on every tower, their eyes scanning the wastes below. The main gate was a reinforced choke point, a perfect kill box.

'This is a military base. Going in now is suicide.'

Rebecca crawled up beside him, her chin resting on her hands. "So? We just sneak in at night?"

"They have watchers with enchanted scopes. We'd be spotted a hundred yards out."

"Then we fight our way in?"

"And get turned into pincushions by a hundred archers? No."

He watched the guards change shifts. No weaknesses. 'We're exhausted. They're on high alert. This is a death trap.'

"We're pulling back."

"What? We just got here!"

"We rest. We come back tomorrow with a better plan."

"You said you didn't have a plan!"

"I'll make one while we rest."

---

They found a small, hidden canyon a few miles south. Rebecca was asleep in seconds, curled against a sack. Luthra couldn't rest. His mind turned the problem over and over.

'The Sigil is my only chance. But I need to touch him. How do I get past three hundred guards? I need a distraction. A big one.'

He looked down at the black chain coiled around his arm. A memory surfaced, something he'd forgotten.

'Wait. The weight. The chain gets heavier for enemies.'

He stood and walked to a clearing dotted with boulders. He chose one, a solid mass of granite the size of their cart. He unwrapped the chain.

'Okay, Lilith. Negative Chain Arts, level minus two.'

[Correct. Current effect: The perceived weight of the chain is increased by 400% for any entity it is in contact with, other than yourself.]

'So if the chain weighs a hundred pounds...'

[For an opponent, or an object, it would effectively weigh five hundred pounds.]

'Five times. Let's see what that feels like.'

He swung the chain and wrapped it securely around the center of the boulder. He stepped back, holding the other end, and focused. He imagined the chain sinking into the stone, its weight multiplying, becoming an anchor.

The chain pulsed once with a faint, light-absorbing darkness.

Nothing happened.

'Did I do it wrong?'

He walked closer. The chain was just a chain. The rock was just a rock. He put a hand on its rough surface.

A low groan came from deep within the stone.

Thin, hairline cracks spread across the boulder's surface, all from where the chain was wrapped. The ground beneath it started to crumble, compressed by an impossible weight.

"What's that cracking sound?"

Rebecca was awake, standing at the edge of the canyon and rubbing her eyes.

The groan became a high-pitched splintering. The cracks widened, pieces of the surface flaking away. The entire rock was collapsing under its own immense weight.

With a final, explosive crunch, the boulder imploded. It didn't shatter outward. It collapsed inward, the granite turning to dust and gravel in a violent implosion. A shockwave of compressed air blasted through the clearing, throwing Luthra from his feet.

He landed hard, the wind knocked out of him. A cloud of gray dust settled where the boulder had been. All that remained was a shallow crater and his chain, lying clean on the flattened dirt.

Rebecca's jaw hung open. "What did you just do?"

He stared at the chain, then at the dust. A new plan formed in his mind.

He looked north, toward the distant silhouette of the Gorgon Mines.

"I think I just figured out how to knock on Silas's front door."

---

On a guard tower overlooking the western approach, a man lowered his spyglass.

"You see anything?"

"Just a dust cloud, a couple miles south. Probably a rockslide."

His partner grunted, not looking up from sharpening his knife. "Happens all the time out here. This place is falling apart."

The man raised the spyglass again, focusing on the distant plume. He'd seen hundreds of rockslides. This one felt different, too sudden, too violent. 'It didn't look like a slide. It looked like an explosion.' He watched for a few more minutes, but nothing else happened. He shrugged and went back to his patrol.

It was probably nothing.

---

The training yard looked like a storm had torn through it. Broken wood scattered everywhere, metal dummies bent at impossible angles. Borris brought his mace down one more time, and the last practice dummy folded in half with a metallic shriek before collapsing into the dirt.

"I'm going to tear him apart," Borris said between heavy breaths, his knuckles super tight around the mace handle. "Piece by fucking piece."

Jako sat in the shade cleaning his daggers, each stroke of the cloth slow and precise. Misha stood next to him, staring at the empty spot where Goran always used to stand during their morning drills, right there by the weapon rack, complaining about the heat.

'We got him killed,' she thought. 'We were screwing around out there. Thought we had an easy paycheck.'

"We were careless," Jako said without looking up from his blades. "We underestimated him."

Borris spun around, his face red. "Underestimated him? Are you serious right now? He's some nobody with a chain! We're the Gorgon Syndicate's elite hunters! We shouldn't have to estimate anything about him! He should be dead already, should be nothing but a stain on my boot!"

He slammed his mace into the ground so hard the earth cracked. A red light pulsed from the tattoo over his heart, visible through his leather armor, and he doubled over, clutching his chest.

"Fuck this thing," he gasped.

Jako touched his own chest where the same mark burned under his shirt. 'The Heart-Lock. Silas keeps us on a leash with this thing. Makes sure we can never get strong enough to challenge him.'

The Heart-Lock monitored their mana output every second of every day. Pull too much power, become too much of a threat to Silas, and the sigil activated. First came the pain, like someone squeezing your heart in their fist. Then your body would lock up completely. Then you died.

They could fight, sure, but never at full strength. Never enough to matter.

"If it wasn't for this damn lock," Borris straightened up as the pain faded, "I would've crushed him the second he showed his face. Could've ended the whole thing in ten seconds."

"We all could have," Misha said. "But we can't. That's the whole point, isn't it? We're strong enough to do Silas's dirty work, just not strong enough to ever be his problem."

"So what, we just let this stand?" Borris waved his arms around the destroyed training yard. "Goran's a fucking garden decoration now! And we look like idiots because we're fighting with our hands tied behind our backs!"

"No." Jako stood up and slid his daggers back into their sheaths. "We messed up. We let him control the whole fight. Next time we don't play his game. We don't chase him around like dogs. We don't split up. We corner him and we end it, lock or no lock."

'He's right,' Misha thought. 'We got sloppy, relied on power we don't even have access to. That's what really got Goran killed.'

"Jako's right," she said. "We don't need our full strength to kill one guy. We just need to stop acting like morons."

Before Borris could respond, an alarm wailed through the compound, the pitch so high it hurt their ears. The main alarm, the one they only used when someone was attacking the mines directly.

A guard came sprinting into the training yard, nearly tripping over the broken dummy parts, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"The main gate!" he gasped. "It's under attack!"

Borris grabbed him by the collar and lifted him clean off his feet. "Who? Which guild? The Association finally making their move?"

"No! It's just one person! And he is carrying a massive chain!"

Borris smirked, "So he has come to us, what a fool."