Jones hit the ground hard, and the ground wasn't ground at all.
One second he'd been sprinting across campus, a materials science exam waiting. The next, a collapsing floor, a flash of blue light, and now darkness. Cold stone. Dripping water. The air tasted of iron.
Status. The word surfaced in his mind unbidden, and a translucent panel bloomed before his eyes.
Jones. Class: Synthesist. Skill: Transmutation. ATK: 12. DEF: 9.
"A support class," he muttered. "Of course."
Above, light flickered, far out of reach. The surface world had thrown him down here, the Abyss, where his classmates' voices had laughed as the bridge crumbled. Useless class, the princess had said. Dead weight.
Something growled in the dark.
An armored wolf, eyes burning crimson, stalked from the shadows. Jones scrambled backward, palm slapping against the wall. Instinct flared. The stone beneath his hand shimmered, and understanding hit him like lightning.
Crystalline structure. Grain boundaries. Tensile strength.
Four years of engineering coursework screamed through his mind. The Synthesist skill didn't just reshape matter. It obeyed understanding. And Jones understood materials better than any hero summoned that day.
The wolf lunged.
He pressed both hands to the ground and rewrote the rock, aligning its lattice, hardening it to something beyond steel. A spear of dense, glittering mineral erupted upward and punched through the beast's chest.
Silence. Then the system chimed.
Level Up. New Skill Acquired: Ore Devour.
Jones stared at the corpse, heart hammering. Then he smiled, thin and sharp.
He had no allies, no light, no way home. But he had a skill that turned the whole Abyss into raw material.
"They threw away the wrong guy," he whispered.
Deeper in the dark, something far larger stirred, waking to the sound of his laughter.
He picked up his spear and walked toward it.