Dungeon Raider System

Liv's smile crumbled as soon as Uriel's skin touched hers because that was all she needed to gain access to his memories. She knew everything about his harsh upbringing, his feelings, his friends and more importantly, she knew Uriel had found out she was the skinwalker.

Actually, Uriel had suspected her from the minute he saw her. His mystical sense didn't alert him nor did she act in a way that could have been described as suspicious for a girl her age, but when Alan disappeared he had turned to look at her because she yelled. Besides, even if she didn't try to get Charlie and him to fight each other she had tried to push them to break the rules over and over.

Not just that, once they found a safe place she started to become anxious, which was contrary to what one would expect from a scared girl.

The confirmation of his theory came when Uriel asked them to go to the watchtower, since it was a senseless idea that came with no benefit at all.

Liv's skin shifted from a pale complexion to a tanned one, her hair became longer, her figure also became more exuberant and her hunter's clothes became buckskin dress, giving the cryptid the same look a tribeswoman would have. She hissed at Uriel and then exited the room breaking the barricade without breaking a sweat.

Splinters of wood and alloy shards flew all over the place and by the time they wanted to notice, Liv was nowhere to be seen.

"What did just happen?" Charlie's eyes were wide and her mouth was gaping.

"I let her touch me."

"What!? Is that related to your trait!? Is something like that going to happen to me too!?"

"Of course not," Uriel sighed. "I touched it with something made of silver I hid on my hand. I could show it to you but I don't think we should break the rules even if it went away." He lied, of course. Stay tuned to My Virtual Library Empire@@novelbin@@

What Uriel actually did was to show her what would happen to her if she decided to attack them. While a horror level skinwalker mus have been way stronger than them, Uriel had an extremely unfair advantage.

No matter how it tried to kill him, all he needed to survive was to activate Water warlock's blessing and to kill her, he just needed to enter his trait, buy something made of silver and figure a way to make her swallow it. This way, he wouldn't need to show any of his abilities to Carlie and he wouldn't need to kill her afterwards.

The fact that he didn't really care much for human life anymore didn't mean he didn't know that killing innocents was wrong or that it would be inconvenient for him to lose his professor.

In short, Uriel had an unfair advantage. However, he didn't need to kill it to gain the reward, he just needed to keep Charlie alive until dawn.

That gave the skinwalker two choices, to either fight them and risk dying while having only half a meal or to leave unharmed. But something didn't add up, why didn't he receive the reward already?

There had been a few occasions where the system rewarded him for doing something, like when he took care of the eclipse that was possessing Rocky or when he completed the physical trainings, but it was always instantaneous.

"But why didn't it attack us!? Why did it just leave?"

"You're a ranger, aren't you supposed to know these things? Beast rank cryptids eat everything they can but the higher a cryptid's rank is, the more picky they become. A horror level vampire would only drink human blood the same way a horror level cryptid would only feed on people who break its rules."

"A horror rank cryptid... you don't mean..."

"Yes, it's confirmed. It was a horror rank cryptid. The most likely option is that everyone in this outpost has been dead for a while now."

"But I've seen many people getting called in here!"

"Has anyone made it back to the city?"

"Huh..." Charlie placed the tip of her finger on her chin while looking upward, giving her a naive appearance and Uriel a chance to fully appreciate her shapely body without being spotted. The reason he did so was, of course, to confirm whether or not the passive ability of his Lewd Ladies magazine would activate, but the same system message announcing it was stolen appeared.

"No one has made it back ever since the dungeon exploration."

"I guess this brings the possibility that this cryptid came from the dungeon to the table, but that's not great news."

"There's something you're forgetting. We received a message, cryptids can't operate our technology. Or at least nothing that works with electricity because their FOD would shut them off."

"Shit!" Uriel cursed and ran over the broken barricade, then he started checking the doors one by one.

"What is it!?" Charlie followed him closely on high alert.

"This means Liv is still alive, the real one!" That also meant that if she died, the system wouldn't reward him the juicy sum of credits he was already expecting.

They ran frantically through the whole building, taking care to not open or close any doors or looking at their reflection. As Uriel pointed out before, the fact that he outed the skinwalker didn't mean they were safe yet.

If they broke the rules they might become too appetizing to the cryptid and it might attack them despite knowing how it would end. After all, a crypid's instinct was to attack humans on sight.

Out of a sudden, Charlie stopped right in front of a door open to a slit and silently called for Uriel's attention pointing at the room, to which he replied by nodding.

The door was already half opened and the rule wouldn't be broken if they got inside, but they weren't prepared to what awaited them inside that dark room in the abandoned outpost.