The C-rank barrier cleanup in District 7 required an escort.
Guild protocol was clear: C-rank environments were not certified safe for solo Carver operations. Residual mana concentrations could trigger secondary spawns, ambient energy could corrupt organic materials mid-extraction, and the occasional C-rank monster simply refused to die on the clearance squad's schedule. Carvers who entered C-rank barriers went in pairs, with at least one D-rank Attuned escort.
Voss didn't have a D-rank Attuned escort. What he had was a standing arrangement with a bored Gate Guard named Hask who, for two hundred credits per shift, would sign the escort verification form without actually escorting anyone.
"District 7," Hask said, not looking up from his lunch. He was eating noodles from a foam container, chopsticks in one hand, pen in the other. "The crystal beetles?"
"Stone beetles. C-rank. Cleared at oh-four-hundred."
"That's three hours ago. You're cutting it close."
"I'm always cutting it close." Voss set two hundred credits on the desk. Hask signed the form, stamped it, and went back to his noodles.
The barrier was in an industrial district. Warehouses, empty lots, a decommissioned water treatment plant. The dome was still holding — C-rank barriers lasted longer than the lower grades, their internal mana supply deeper and more stable. Voss could feel it as he approached, a pressure against the new sense behind his eyes. The dome wasn't just containing monsters. It was containing energy. Dense, compressed, vibrating at a frequency that made his teeth itch.
Inside, the stone beetles lay where they'd fallen. Four of them, each the size of a compact car, their carapaces split open by the clearance squad's heavier weapons. Mana axes, judging by the fracture patterns. Clean kills but messy extraction — the fighters had cracked shells to reach cores, leaving the internal anatomy partially exposed.
Good. Saved him time.
Voss activated Thread Sight and the warehouse interior lit up.
Threads everywhere. More than he'd seen in any previous barrier — the C-rank monsters were simply larger, more complex, their bodies woven with denser networks of power. Gold threads in four colors: the warm red-gold of strength, the green-gold of speed, the blue-white of defense, and silver threads of mana scattered through the crystalline structures of the carapace.
And in the largest beetle — the one that had required three fighters to bring down, based on the overlapping weapon scars — an ability thread.
It was blue. Deep, glacial blue, thick as a rope, coiled through the beetle's subterranean drill assembly. The organs that let stone beetles burrow through solid rock, moving earth as easily as Voss moved through shadow.
He wasn't interested in drilling through rock. But the thread was there, and it was valuable, and he had forty-seven hours left on his ability thread cooldown from the Shadow Step absorption.
Stat threads first.
He moved through the beetles systematically, harvesting in order of priority. Mana threads from the crystalline carapace — four of them, each one expanding his Thread Sight range by another fraction. He could feel the boundaries of his perception widening, the threads coming into sharper focus, their colors more distinct. His range was approaching fifteen meters now. Not huge. But enough to scan an entire barrier interior from a central position.
Defense threads next. The stone beetles were defense specialists — their blue-white threads were dense and potent, each one layering another film of durability across his skin and bones. By the time he'd harvested twelve defense threads across the four beetles, his skin had a quality he could only describe as resistant. Not armored. Not invulnerable. Just harder to hurt.
He checked his absorption count. Fourteen threads. Nine over his normal daily limit of five. The fatigue was building — a grinding pressure behind his eyes, a heaviness in his limbs that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion. His body was telling him to stop.
He compromised. Took one more mana thread — his range was the priority, always the priority — and forced himself to step back from the remaining beetles.
The ability thread in the largest beetle pulsed at him. Patient. Waiting.
Forty-six hours until he could absorb it. The beetle would be long past the freshness window by then. A loss. He filed it under acceptable costs and started the conventional carving work.
---
Two hours into the shift, someone entered the barrier behind him.
Voss heard the footsteps before he saw the person — heavy boots on concrete, a deliberate stride, someone who didn't bother being quiet. He kept his blade moving. A Carver looking up from their work attracted attention. A Carver who kept working was part of the scenery.
"You Dren?"
Male voice. Deep. The kind of deep that came from either a large chest cavity or deliberate vocal training. Voss glanced up without stopping his cut.
The man was big. Six-two, six-three. Dark skin, shaved head, tribal tattoos running from his wrists to his shoulders. Standard RDC field uniform but with a berserker's sigil on the chest — a red fist inside a broken circle. A-rank, minimum. The tattoos were poorly done, the kind of work you got from a street shop at three AM. He was grinning.
"Depends on who's asking."
"Dispatch said there was a Carver on-site at the District 7 beetles. I need one of those shells intact for a requisition order." He held up a form. Official letterhead. "Captain Galeth's request. He wants a full carapace for his shield tech."
"Which beetle?"
"The big one."
Of course. The one with the ability thread. "The big one's partially cracked from the kill strike. I can preserve the ventral plates and the forward section, but the dorsal shell is compromised."
The big man walked over and looked at the beetle. His footsteps were loud even on concrete. Not clumsy — just large. Like his body occupied more space than most people's and he'd stopped apologizing for it.
"That'll work. Galeth just needs the surface material, not the structural integrity." He crouched beside the beetle. Up close, Voss could see the missing tip of his right ring finger — an old wound, healed clean. "You're fast. I watched you for a minute before coming in. Your knife work is clean."
"It's my job."
"I know a lot of Carvers. Most of them aren't this fast." He extended his uninjured hand. "Dex Torr. A-rank Berserker. Squad 7."
Voss didn't take the hand. He was holding a blade covered in beetle viscera. "I'll have the ventral plates separated in twenty minutes."
Dex retracted the hand without offense. He settled into a cross-legged position on the concrete next to the beetle, pulled out a small ration bar, and began eating. He showed no sign of leaving.
"You don't have to wait," Voss said.
"I don't have to do anything. I'm on light duty today. Pulled a hamstring in yesterday's barrier." He bit off half the ration bar. Chewed. "Besides, this is interesting. I've never watched a Carver work up close."
Voss didn't want an audience. But telling an A-rank Berserker to leave wasn't an option — they outranked him by classification, by military standing, and by roughly a hundred and fifty pounds.
He kept working. The ventral plates required precision — the carapace was layered, each plate overlapping the next, bonded with biological adhesive that dissolved when cut incorrectly. He found the seam lines by touch, set his blade angle to thirty degrees, and separated each plate with the efficiency of someone who'd done this ten thousand times.
Dex watched. He finished the ration bar and pulled out a second one. The man ate like a furnace.
"You're cutting the seams blind," Dex said. "No reference marks. You know where every joint is."
"I've carved eight hundred stone beetles."
"Eight hundred." A low whistle. "How long have you been doing this?"
"Twelve years."
"Since you were — what, twelve?"
"Twelve."
Dex was quiet for a moment. Not the comfortable silence Voss preferred — the evaluative silence of someone reassessing. "F-rank awakening?"
"Yes."
"That's rough."
Voss didn't respond. He separated the last ventral plate and set it on the collection tarp. Twelve plates, each one intact, the surface material undamaged. Clean work.
Dex stood. Gathered the plates carefully, wrapping each in protective cloth from his pack. He moved with more delicacy than his size suggested — gentle hands, precise placement. The contrast was notable.
"Thanks, Dren." He shouldered the pack. "I'll make sure Galeth knows the work was quality."
"It's my job."
Dex paused at the barrier exit. Looked back. "You know, Squad 7 has a Carver slot we've been trying to fill. Field assignment. Double the guild rate, plus combat pay, plus first access to fresh kills."
First access to fresh kills.
Voss kept his face neutral. "I'm not combat-rated."
"The slot doesn't require combat rating. We just need someone who can carve fast under pressure. Someone who knows monster anatomy well enough to call out weak points during a fight." He shifted the pack on his shoulder. "Think about it. Ask for Sigma Squad at the Legion intake desk if you're interested."
He left. His footsteps echoed in the empty warehouse, loud and unself-conscious, and then the barrier flap closed and Voss was alone with the beetles.
First access to fresh kills. With a squad that fought C-rank barriers minimum. D-rank cleanup shifts gave him scraps — old corpses with fading threads, picked over by time and mana degradation. A field assignment with an active squad would put him at the kill site within minutes. Within seconds, if they worked close.
The threads would be at peak brightness. Full potency. Every color, every type, available for harvest in the critical window.
But it meant being near the fighting. In the fighting. An F-rank Carver standing next to A-rank fighters in barriers where the monsters were strong enough to kill trained soldiers.
He looked at the beetle he'd just carved. The ability thread had faded while he worked — gone now, dissolved into ambient mana, taking whatever power it held with it. Another loss. Another thread he'd been too slow to claim because he was working alone, on a timer, always arriving after the kills instead of during them.
That was the problem. He could see the answer now, laid out like anatomy on his cutting table. The freshness window was ten minutes. Transport to cleanup sites took thirty to sixty minutes after the all-clear. By the time he arrived, most threads were already gone.
The only way to get the best threads was to be there when the monsters died.
And the only way to be there when the monsters died was to stand next to the people killing them.
Sigma Squad. Squad 7. An A-rank Berserker with a loud voice and a missing fingertip, offering him exactly what he needed.
Voss finished the conventional carving work. Cores extracted, hides separated, materials bagged. He filed the collection report at the Guild desk, collected his pay — twenty-one hundred credits, C-rank rate — and walked to the transport station.
He didn't go home. He went to the hospital.
Mira was awake, as usual. The corkboard had two new pins. The spreadsheet had three new columns.
"I was offered a field assignment," Voss said.
She looked up. Read his face. Read whatever was behind it.
"Tell me everything," she said.
He told her. Dex. Sigma Squad. The field access. The risk. The math — fresh kills versus stale cleanups, the exponential difference in thread quality and quantity.
Mira was quiet for a long time after he finished. She pulled up the RDC database on her laptop and searched for Sigma Squad. Read the public record. Unit history, commanding officer, mission profile.
"Their captain is Ryn Ashara," she said. "A-rank Combat Medic. She lost her previous squad two years ago. Full wipe. She rebuilt from scratch."
"I know."
"She rebuilt a squad that lost everyone and she's still in the field. That's either impressive or reckless."
"Or both."
Mira closed the laptop. The mana monitor beside her bed beeped its steady rhythm. The frost line had crept past her wrists now. Her watch hung loose on an arm that was slowly losing the ability to feel its own weight.
"Take the assignment," she said.
"It's dangerous."
"Everything about this is dangerous. But dangerous with access is better than safe with nothing." She met his eyes. "You need those threads, Voss. I need you to get those threads."
He didn't argue. The math was the math. And Mira had always been better at math than him.
He left the hospital at midnight and walked to the Legion intake desk in the RDC's central district headquarters. The desk was staffed by a single clerk who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.
"Sigma Squad," Voss said. "I was told there's a Carver slot."
The clerk found the file. Typed something. Looked at Voss's classification card.
"F-rank," the clerk said.
"F-rank."
A pause. The clerk typed something else. Printed a form. Handed it over.
"Report to Captain Ashara at oh-six-hundred. Building 14, Room 3." The clerk went back to his screen. "Good luck."
Voss folded the form. Put it in his pocket with Mira's critical strike guide and his thread classification notebook.
The walk home was cold. The city at one AM was quiet in the way Voss understood — the silence of a body at rest, all its systems running on minimum, conserving energy for the next day's demands.
He had fourteen months. He had Thread Sight. He had an ability that let him step through shadows. And in the morning, he would have access to the freshest kills in the city.
The numbers were starting to work.
