The public gate shut with no Ray on Marco's side.
Steel met steel behind the group. The visitor center vanished behind blue-white light.
Marco stood inside Dry Creek with twelve arrows, two retreat routes, five other G-striped entrants, and Graham Vale between them and whatever the last patrol had missed.
Vale wore an F badge, a scarred jacket, and a boar spear with a crossbar below the head. He checked the group by face rather than badge.
“You stay within one turn of me,” he said. “I call movement. I call retreat. If I engage, you do not gather around to watch. Pair up and move.”
Nina from the licensing course took rear position beside Marco. The two brothers walked in the middle with bows cased until the first collection pocket. A gray-bearded fungus collector and a young woman with a pick completed the group.
Cold dampened the collar of his secondhand jacket. His headlamp reached thirty yards down a limestone passage worn smooth by twenty-five years of boots and equipment carts. Reflective route markers ran along the right wall. Between them, older paint showed through: numbers from the quarry, half buried beneath mineral film.
The mana alarm shone green on his chest.
He looked behind him. The inner gate remained visible. A red lever would call the station and cycle it if the field stayed stable.
Marco took out his phone, held it beneath the route clock, and photographed the group's entry time. 7:34.
Then he sent Sarah the message they had agreed on.
Inside. Route normal. Next check-in 9:00.
Her reply arrived before ordinary signal disappeared.
Leave while it is still normal.
He put the phone away. Vale lifted the spear, listened through a full count of ten, and led them forward.
Dry Creek differed from The Ridge in ways the map did not convey. The Ridge's regulated galleries carried infrastructure everywhere—conduit, painted lanes, fans, voices over radio. Dry Creek had markers, emergency lamps, and the occasional cable box, but the dungeon existed in the spaces between them. Water moved inside the walls. Bluecap fungus gave off a low gray light in seams beyond the trail. The ceiling lifted and narrowed without regard for the quarry above.
Another guided group had entered twenty minutes earlier. They saw its boot prints, one chalk arrow, and a smear of fresh slime on a wall where no slime appeared on the morning board. Vale touched the smear with a test strip and changed their order without explaining until everyone had moved.
“Animals move after patrol,” he said. “That is why the board has a time.”
At marker Q-Four, he stopped to inspect the secondary connector. Ray's circle on the map corresponded to a shoulder-wide crack opening behind a steel post. Orange arrows marked Refuge Two through it. Marco took off his pack, turned sideways, and moved ten yards into the connector until he reached the first bend.
Vale stood at the opening while Nina watched the main route. The rest of the group waited instead of drifting ahead. Their impatience cost Marco less than discovering the connector under pursuit.
The floor was dry. The ceiling snagged the top of his pack when he tested it. A fast retreat would require carrying the pack low or abandoning it.
He wrote that on the map.
Back on Quarry Loop, he marked the intersection with two chalk slashes at knee height. County markers could fail. His own marks could wash off. Redundancy was useful precisely because nothing deserved complete trust.
At Q-Nine, the maintained path narrowed between a limestone pillar and a collapsed shelf. This was his planned choke.
He checked both directions before taking out the wire.
The rock horn on the left remained solid under his weight. Marco wrapped the wire twice, threaded it through a small sliding loop, and ran it six inches above the floor to a lower anchor. The line would not hold a ridge crawler. It might catch a foreleg long enough to spoil a charge.
He tied two strips of scent bait beyond the line. The bait smelled like old blood and hot copper even through its wrapper. Ridge crawlers hunted mostly by scent. Poor eyesight did not make them less dangerous; it made the direction of their attention easier to purchase.
Marco backed twelve yards down the passage and knelt behind a shelf of stone. From there, he could see the bait and the pale wire against the floor because he knew where to look. He marked his side with chalk so he would not forget under pressure.
Primary retreat: back to Q-Four and the gate.
Secondary: connector to Refuge Two, a delay position if the exit route closed.
If something came from the entrance side, he abandoned the shooting position and used the connector.
If the alarm changed, he left everything.
If the crawler did not follow the bait, the trap was decoration.
He stayed still for three minutes and listened.
Water tapped somewhere beyond the pillar. Air moved steadily toward the entrance. Nothing scratched stone.
Marco stood and continued to the first resource pocket.
Vale cleared the pocket by walking its edge and striking two dark shelves with the spear butt. Nothing answered. Then he assigned pairs to opposite sides while he moved between them. The pocket had been harvested so thoroughly that even the trash looked picked over.
Cut fungus stems covered the damp shelves. Fresh knife marks showed where another delver had removed a broad patch of bluecap. Beetle casings lay crushed in the mud, their usable inner plate already stripped. Marco found three damaged shell sections worth carrying and a cluster of fungus skirts browned at the edges but clean near the base.
Salvage drew his attention toward what remained without promising that anyone would buy it.
He spent fourteen minutes trimming the fungus and six more scraping mud from shell. The resulting material fit into two small bags. Together they might cover bait.
At 8:31, Vale called the station from the hardwired route phone near Q-Twelve. Six entrants, one warden, no contact. The station repeated the crawler warning near Q-Seventeen, unchanged from Monday.
“Monday happened Monday,” Vale said after hanging up.
Marco's turnaround point sat before it.
He should not see the animal if he kept to the plan.
The first sound came while he knelt beside a mineral shelf.
A scrape. Then two quick clicks of claw on stone.
Marco froze with one glove inside his collection bag.
The sound came from behind him, on the route he had walked.
“Movement behind Q-Eleven,” Marco called.
Vale answered from beyond the bend. “Second contact at Twelve. Fall back to your marked choke. Nina, keep the collectors with me.”
Two animals. One warden. The escort had not vanished; it had become occupied.
His hand moved to the bow. He stood without turning quickly, set the bag down, and faced the passage.
Nothing occupied the headlamp beam.
The alarm stayed green.
He nocked an arrow and backed toward the choke.
Another scrape came from beyond the bend. Low. Fast.
The crawler entered the light twenty-eight yards away.
It was larger than the juvenile from the maintenance spur, broad through the shoulders and dark with wet. Its head stayed low between heavy forelegs. Clouded eyes reflected almost nothing. The narrow nostril slits along its muzzle opened and closed.
It smelled the bait.
Then it smelled Marco.
The crawler stopped.
Marco had pictured this moment often enough that the real animal seemed to violate rehearsal by breathing. Its ribs expanded beneath the hide. One ear twitched toward dripping water. Saliva shone at the lower jaw.
He reached full draw.
The crawler moved sideways.
Marco loosed too soon.
The arrow passed over its shoulder and struck the far wall. Carbon snapped with a hard dry crack.
The crawler charged.
Every calm instruction disappeared beneath the speed of it.
Marco turned and ran.
His first step slipped. His boot recovered on rough stone before he went down. He kept the bow in his left hand, did not reach for another arrow, and followed his own chalk marks back toward Q-Nine.
The crawler's claws struck in uneven fours behind him.
Twelve yards to the choke.
The bait lay beyond the wire from Marco's direction. He had planned to shoot from this side, not sprint through it with the animal close.
He saw the white chalk slash on the floor.
Marco shortened his step, lifted over the line, and nearly clipped it with his trailing heel.
The crawler did not slow.
It hit the wire with its right foreleg.
The lower anchor tore free. Wire whipped against stone. The loop cinched above the creature's paw and pulled its stride sideways. The crawler struck the pillar shoulder-first, rolled once, and came up dragging the ruined snare.
The trap had not caught it.
It had bought perhaps three seconds.
Marco used two of them finding an arrow.
He backed to the stone shelf, set his feet, and drew. The crawler shook the wire loose. Blood darkened one foreleg where the line had cut.
It lunged.
Marco held through the first movement. The sight pin crossed muzzle, neck, shoulder.
He released when the crawler planted its injured leg.
The arrow entered behind the near shoulder. Not the eye. Not the heart. The shaft buried to the fletching and drove the animal off line.
The crawler hit the shelf below Marco's position.
Stone slammed through his boots. He stumbled backward, nocking hand empty, while claws scraped for purchase less than six feet away.
The crawler snapped at the ledge. Its breath smelled of carrion and the copper bait. It hauled one foreleg onto the shelf.
Marco reached for the hatchet.
The animal's weight shifted. The buried arrow struck stone beneath its body and broke. Its front leg folded.
It fell back to the passage floor.
Marco retreated three steps instead of leaning close.
The crawler tried to rise. Air bubbled wetly around the shaft wound. It made half a turn toward him, collapsed, and dragged itself another foot with its forelegs.
He had a third arrow nocked by then.
He did not shoot.
The angle pointed toward the hide and gland he hoped to sell. More importantly, the creature was no longer closing. Marco kept the bow drawn until his shoulder began to shake, then lowered without relaxing his attention.
The crawler stopped moving after forty seconds.
Marco waited two full minutes.
Nothing else came to the bait.
His breath hurt high in his chest. The headlamp beam trembled across the carcass because his whole body had decided to confess fear at once.
He looked toward the primary retreat.
Open.
Toward the connector.
Open.
Alarm.
Green.
Only then did he approach from behind the animal with the hatchet extended. He touched the handle to one rear foot.
No response.
The crawler was dead.
Vale reached the shelf with blood on his spear and Nina three steps behind him. Somewhere toward Q-Twelve, another crawler screamed once and moved away through the dark.
“Bitten?” Vale asked.
“No.”
“Arrows?”
“Two lost. Ten intact.”
Vale checked the body, the broken wire, and Marco's retreat line. “You shot early.”
“Yes.”
“Then you ran to the plan instead of away from fear.” He looked toward the passage where the second animal had fled. “We dress fast and leave together. It may circle.”
Marco sat down on the stone shelf before his knees made the choice for him.
The first arrow lay broken against the wall. The second had shattered inside the carcass when the crawler fell. Ten intact arrows remained in the quiver.
The wire snare was kinked, bloodied, and pulled free at one end. It would never hold shape again.
The plan had failed in three ways.
The retreat had still worked.
Vale gave him six minutes to field dress what mattered while Nina watched the shelf and the brothers watched the passage.
“Six is not a harvest promise,” Vale said. “I hear it circle, you close whatever bag is open and stand.”
Marco photographed the kill site, tagged the time, and opened the field roll beside the body. The arrow path had damaged part of the near shoulder hide but missed both scent sacs. Salvage helped him locate the ducts before the knife touched. His hands remained clumsy from adrenaline, but the gallery gave him no clean table and no right to wait until they stopped shaking.
He clamped both ducts. One gland came free intact. The second tore at the lower edge when he changed grip too early.
“May,” he muttered, hearing Ray's voice.
The damaged sac might still sell for reduced use. He bagged it separately rather than contaminate the good one.
Vale called four minutes. Marco stopped searching. He cut one clean hide section, one rear tendon group, and the obvious secondary tissue. Teeth, the second tendon, and usable belly hide remained with the body. Surface post-processing could clean and grade what he sealed; it could not make the dark corridor wait.
The pack gained twenty-four pounds.
At 10:18, the group reached the second pocket on the way out. Vale allowed ten minutes because the entrance route remained clear and everyone could work inside one chamber.
Bluecap fungus grew along a wet shelf in pale rows. Much of it had already been cut. A deeper opening behind the shelf showed fresh mineral and the edge of another growth bed.
Marco could have reached it in five minutes, but the opening lay beyond Vale's sight line. His legs had stopped shaking. The group was already leaving.
He stepped off the maintained path to inspect the footing.
His left boot landed on a sloped stone concealed by mud.
The ankle rolled outward.
Pain climbed his leg fast enough to empty his hands. Marco caught the wall and stayed upright, but his bow struck limestone with a sharp knock.
He tested weight.
The ankle held. It also hurt enough to change his breathing.
The deeper pocket waited beyond the shelf. Pale fungus shone where no one had cut it.
Marco looked at the route clock.
10:22.
He could leave the pack, cross the wet stone, and tell himself the warden remained close enough. The material might add thirty dollars. It might add eighty. The opening might also hold whatever had pushed two crawlers onto the maintained loop.
His primary retreat now included an injured ankle and twenty-four pounds of field-packed material.
Marco turned around.
The decision did not feel wise. It felt expensive.
He tightened the boot, wrapped the joint with the elastic bandage from his kit, and moved the heaviest bag closer to his spine. Each downhill step sent a narrow pain above the ankle bone.
At Q-Twelve Vale radioed the injury and moved Marco directly behind him for the rest of the retreat. Nina took half the sealed recovery load despite Marco's first refusal.
The System notice appeared while the group waited for the entrance gate.
Marco chose Perception while the crawler's false retreat and sudden turn were still fresh.
Perception: 10 → 11. Integration estimate: 24–72 hours.
The broader profile did not move with the level. His System Rank remained G. The Perception point had not yet become proven judgment, and the public license had not changed.
Perception eleven would integrate later. For now, Marco had a bad ankle and twenty-four pounds to carry.
He put weight on the joint and kept walking.
The gate came into view at 11:31. A station attendant met him inside the field, took the sealed field-recovery bags for offsite post-processing, and pointed him toward a bench before he could claim he preferred standing.
“Missed noon?” she asked.
“No.”
“Route deviation?”
“No.”
“Alarm?”
“Green throughout.”
“Injury?”
“Left ankle. Rolled on mud at the second pocket. Wrapped, weight-bearing.”
The attendant examined the bandage and entered the report. “You pursue after?”
“I left.”
She looked at the heavy pack, then at the G stripe on his license. “Good.”
Marco texted Sarah before the clinic aide arrived.
Out early. Mild ankle sprain. I am at the station clinic and can walk. One crawler, materials secured. Calling in five.
He watched the message deliver.
No softened words. No bump. No unnecessary reassurance.
The clinic aide prodded the joint, confirmed a mild sprain, and told him no independent delving for one week. Work duty would depend on swelling and Ridgeway's clinic.
Through the station window, processors weighed his bags. One held the intact gland. Another contained fungus and plates gathered from what more glamorous visitors had left behind.
Marco's pack had been heavy enough to alter his balance all the way out.
He still had no idea whether any of it had paid for the trip.