Chương 21: The Million-Point Stat Sheet, and an Upside-Down Trap

The first sensation of stepping through the spatial barrier wasn't pain. It was pure vestibular betrayal. Lucian's stomach lurched. An invisible force flipped his entire body a full hundred and eighty degrees in midair. When his boots finally touched solid ground, what caught his heels wasn't the familiar forest floor — it was the vaulted ceiling of an ancient hall built from ash-grey granite.

Rusted crystal chandeliers, growing upward from beneath his feet, pointed straight down into the sky, while the original ground — lined with rows of shattered stone pillars — floated far overhead, stretching endlessly into a bottomless, violet void. Dust didn't fall. It drifted upward, vanishing into the infinite space above his head. Lucian bent his knees slightly, lowering his center of gravity to adjust to the strange pull of gravity.

The air here hung thick with the smell of ozone and sharp, fine mana particles, carrying the suffocating pressure unique to an unexplored dungeon. Beside him, Sylvia landed as gently as a falling feather. Her silver ears perked up to catch the air, her tail swaying to keep perfect balance. She tucked a lock of silver hair behind her ear and swept her gaze across the inverted stone outcroppings. No enemies in sight, for now. While it was safe, Lucian blinked twice to summon the System's newly upgraded interface.

Since completing the Phase 1 summary at the dungeon entrance, the plain notification board from before had been replaced by a sharper, cleaner, far more intuitive display. Gone were the long descriptive lines — his entire current capability now fit neatly into seven rows of numbers. Ting.

[Host: Lucian Vance] Level: 21 Rank: D — Elite Physical Strength: 184, 720 Speed: 221, 884 Endurance: 308, 441 Mana: 392, 441 Spell Power: 227, 115 Spell Control: 308, 604 Learning Rate: 143, 992 Combat Power: 1, 481, 773 Lucian stared at the last number. One million, four hundred eighty-one thousand, seven hundred seventy-three. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. A seven-digit number. The ten-year-old's round face relaxed into a grin.

An indescribable satisfaction settled into his chest. In every story he'd ever read in his last life, a combat rating past the million mark was reserved for regional boss villains or great knights who'd spent half a lifetime grinding. He was ten years old. He'd just run away from home, swindled a group of bandits, and bought himself a tutor — and already he had the combat power of an elite squad. Turns out I'm not half bad, huh.

Curious, Lucian glanced sideways and, out of habit, aimed the System's appraisal function at the figure standing beside him. A secondary panel popped up next to Sylvia: [Target: Sylvia Lunaire (Seal Removed)] Combat Power: 4, 890, 115 Assessment: Capable of snapping the Host's neck in 0. 8 seconds if Blink is unavailable. The air around him seemed to freeze solid. Lucian stood frozen between the two inverted chandeliers. The smug smile that had just started to bloom on his lips locked into a flat, rigid line.

Four million, eight hundred ninety thousand. Nearly five million. More than triple his own number. And the flat, clinical assessment beneath it didn't even bother softening the blow — it calculated, to a tenth of a second, exactly how fast he'd be dead. Lucian took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened them again, and stared at the beast-eared girl standing half a step away. This person... he'd bought her freedom himself, for thirty thousand gold.

She was now contracted for twenty gold a month, ate bread beside him, and still respectfully called him "Master." If she ever got angry enough about a pay cut, he wouldn't even have time for last words before his head parted from his neck. Feeling the unblinking stare on her back, Sylvia turned around. Seeing Lucian frozen in place, eyes wide, expression carved in stone, she hurried over and bent down anxiously.

"Master, is the reversed gravity making you dizzy? Or is the mana density in the air making it hard to breathe?" Lucian swallowed audibly and quietly took a half-step back, keeping himself just outside the reach of her claws. He cleared his throat, forcing his voice as level as he could manage.

"No. I'm just recalculating your workplace accident insurance premium. The current rate seems a little low given... your operational capacity." Sylvia blinked, then noticed how carefully Lucian was studying the inverted hall. Whatever had startled him, he was already working again. She stepped back one pace and turned her attention to the surrounding ledges, giving him room to think. Lucian was already scanning the environment, trying to work out the rules of the cursed dungeon.

The Vael-Kharas Inverted Spatial Relic. Rank: C — Monster-class. This was an independent pocket space, completely severed from the outside world. The most dangerous rule here wasn't the monsters — it was the endless void overhead. In the real world, a misstep sent you falling to the ground. Here, a misstep off the inverted stone floors sent you "falling" straight up into that violet sky, drifting forever into a Void with no way back. One wrong step meant death with no body to recover.

Lucian bent down and tested his footing on the inverted granite slab.

'Silent Step' and 'Sound Cadence' automatically activated, locking the muscles under his soles to the stone's surface and erasing the vertiginous feeling threatening to swallow his balance. Then, faint tremors of mana traveled up through the soles of his boots. From the jutting rock ledges in the distance — where the floor should have been, but was now stone shelves hovering overhead — three dark shapes crawled out of crystalline cracks.

They were creatures over three meters long, scorpion-like in build, but their armor plating was made entirely of translucent silver crystal. Each sharp stone leg dug into the rock wall, releasing tiny purple sparks of spatial lightning with every step. Crack... crack... Three sharp crystal tails rose high, locking onto the two intruders standing beneath the inverted hall's vault. Lucian let out a slow breath, his right hand slipping into his cloak, closing around the hilt of his silver dagger.

"Sylvia."

"Here, Master."

"Get ready to work. Looks like we've got our first shipment to liquidate." Before he'd even finished speaking, all three crystalline monsters released their grip on the stone wall at once, gravity reversing as they shot straight down from the sky toward the two of them, three silver arrows tearing through space.