Chapter 7 A-Rank Problem, Zero-Rank Solution

The creature closed the distance in three strides.

"Kane!"

"I see it!"

He moved without thinking, cutting into the charge path instead of away from it. Every instinct in his body screamed that this was wrong, that nothing about running toward forty feet of angry rock hide made sense. He did it anyway.

The creature ran through him.

Not into him. Through him, like he was smoking, like the ground itself had more weight than he did. He felt the rush of displaced air, the heat off its hide, and then it was past, bending around him the way water bends around a stone without ever touching it.

"Kane!" Lyra's voice cracked. "What are you doing!"

"It can't touch me!" He was already turning to face the beast as it wheeled around. "It ran right through me!"

"That doesn't help me!"

"Tell me its weak points!"

She dodged a limb sweep, rolling hard across the ash, breath tearing out of her in ragged pulls. "I don't know! The suppression's blocking half my skills!"

"Best guess. Anything."

"Joints!" She scrambled back to her feet. "Every creature's weakest there, always!"

Kane's eyes snapped to the nearest leg. Thick plates covered most of it, but where two met near the base, a dark seam ran along the joint.

He ran underneath the beast as it turned for its next charge, close enough to feel the heat off its hide, close enough that one wrong step put him under one of those feet.

"Kane, what are you doing!"

He drove the knife into the seam with everything he had.

The creature's whole body convulsed. It couldn't register him, couldn't process the source, but the damage was real, and it staggered hard on that leg, throwing off the rhythm.

"Now!" he shouted, rolling clear.

Lyra saw the change and moved without hesitation, cutting low and fast at the same joint.

"Again!"

"Working on it!"

He circled wide, dodged a wild swing from a foreleg, and came at the next joint from a new angle. Drove the knife in again. The beast roared loud enough to shake dust loose from the surrounding rocks and stumbled another step.

"Kane, its head!"

"Legs first!"

"We don't have time first!"

"We have exactly as much time as it takes to break its balance!"

The fight went on messy and brutal, neither of them landing a clean hit, both of them chipping away, Kane finding joints, Lyra turning the broken rhythm into real damage. Sweat ran into his eyes. His arms shook with exhaustion he didn't have time to feel. His knee slammed into a rock somewhere in the middle of it, and he barely registered the pain at all.

Eight minutes in, the front leg buckled completely.

It went down hard, one whole side collapsing into ash, and stopped moving.

Kane stood there, chest heaving, knife hanging loose in his shaking hand. Lyra dropped to one knee a few feet off, breathing just as hard, bad arm pressed tight against her ribs.

"Is it dead?" Kane said.

"Down. Not dead. Move, before it gets back up."

They put two hundred meters between themselves and it before either of them slowed. Lyra bent over, hands on her knees, then looked up at him with something between disbelief and anger.

"You ran under an A-rank creature."

"I did."

"On purpose."

"Yes."

"You knew it couldn't touch you."

"Pretty sure."

"Pretty sure."

"Ninety percent," Kane said, wiping his face. "Give or take."

"That's not the same as knowing."

"In my experience, ninety percent is usually good enough to act on."

She let out a short, disbelieving laugh, the first real one he'd heard from her. "You're insane."

"I've been told."

She straightened, testing her shoulder again. Kane turned back toward the fallen creature, its side rising and falling in slow, ragged breaths.

Something caught his eye near the wound.

"Wait."

"What now?"

He narrowed his focus, and something shimmered into view above the joint. Fading.

SKILL REMNANT DETECTED: GRANITE STRIKE UNASSIGNED. STATUS: DISSOLVING.

"Lyra. Do you see that?"

"See what?"

"Something's there. Above the wound. It's fading."

She squinted at empty air. "I don't see anything."

His mind raced. A skill. Failed, unassigned, dissolving because the System had nowhere left to send it. A loose thread, no home.

He thought about Ghost Step. About the way rules had edges if you looked hard enough.

What happens if I catch it?

"Kane," Lyra said, watching his face. "What are you thinking?"

He didn't answer. He was already walking toward the fragment, hand reaching out on pure instinct even as some small, sane corner of his brain screamed that this was a bad idea.

"Kane, stop."

He didn't stop.

His fingers closed around empty air.

For one full second, nothing happened, and he almost laughed at himself for the stupidity of it.

Then something closed around him instead.

Not physically. Deeper. A pressure bloomed hot behind his ribs, and every notification he'd shut off in the last hour roared back at once, red and screaming.

SYSTEM ERROR UNHANDLED EXCEPTION. NULL ENTITY ABSORBED UNREGISTERED SKILL PROCESS. ASSIGNMENT FAILED. SKILL: CONTAINED IN NULL SPACE. SYSTEM DOES NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS.

Kane staggered back a step, hand still raised, staring at his own fingers as they belonged to someone else.

"Kane!" Lyra was at his side instantly, gripping his arm. "What happened! Talk to me!"

He didn't answer right away. He was too busy staring at words burning behind his eyes, at the shape of something impossible sitting inside him now, something the System had no box for.

Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. The first real one since the ash.

"Kane." Sharper now, worry cutting through her voice. "What's wrong with you?"

He looked up at her, breathless.

"I think I just found the exploit."