SSSSS-Rank: Negative Leveling

Luthra walked through the Woods, one of his hands pressing the makeshift bandage against the hole in his stomach. The pain was significant, and his vision was starting to get a little blurry at the edges.

[Your vitality is not recovering. The negative energy from the previous attack is inhibiting your natural healing abilities. Returning to the city to seek professional medical treatment is the most logical course of action.]

'Shut up. I know that.'

He knew how expensive hunter-specialized medical services were. A single healing potion was worth more than a month's rent, and seeing a real healer-class hunter would cost a fortune he did not have. The 50,000 credit fine from the assessment had already been a major financial blow.

'The pain is not that bad. I can still move, so it is not a problem.'

He was lying to himself, the pain was so bad he wanted to vomit.

'I need to fix my weapon first. That is the priority.'

He continued walking, and after about an hour, he finally entered a part of the forest that felt different. The heavy pressure of the fox woman was gone, and he could hear the sounds of small animals again. He soon found what he was looking for.

In a small clearing, a group of about fifteen Horned Rabbits were eating some grass. They were F-rank monsters, known for being fast but very weak.

He stood at the edge of the clearing, unwrapping the broken chain from his arm. The injury in his stomach made it difficult to swing the heavy weapon properly.

'This won't work. I will have to try a different method.'

He held the two broken ends of the chain, one in each hand. The rabbits noticed him, their ears perking up, and their noses twitching. They were preparing to run.

Instead of trying to attack them, he threw the entire length of the heavy chain at the group like it was a giant net. The chain landed in the middle of them with a loud crash, and the sheer weight and chaos of the tangled metal links pinned several of the rabbits to the ground, while others were caught by their legs.

The rabbits that were not caught immediately scattered and ran away. He did not care about them. He walked over to the tangled mess of chain and rabbits and began to stomp on the heads of the ones that were trapped.

It was a simple but brutal task.

After he was done, he searched their small bodies and collected the glowing F-rank cores. He counted them in his hand.

'Thirteen. That is more than enough.'

He gathered his chain and wrapped it around his arm again.

'Now I just need one E-rank core.'

He took another step forward, but the world tilted sideways, and the ground wasn't where it was supposed to be. He fell face-first into the dirt, the impact sending a fresh wave of pain through his stomach.

'Ah, this is bad. I'm losing too much blood.'

His vision was getting dark around the edges, and the sounds of the forest faded into a low hum. The small pouch he had stuffed with the rabbit cores fell from his pocket, spilling a few of the glowing stones onto the ground.

'I'm going to pass out here, what a pain in the ass.'

Just as his eyes were about to close, he heard a voice.

"Mister? Hey, mister, are you okay?"

He forced his head up, and a young girl was kneeling next to him.

She was a small girl, maybe ten years old, with tangled brown hair and clothes that were mostly patches. She looked down at the dark red stain spreading across his shirt and the ground.

"Wow, you're bleeding a lot. Are you a hunter? Did a monster do this to you?"

She moved to help him sit up, but her hands were too small and he was too heavy. As she struggled, her eyes fell on the F-rank cores scattered in the dirt next to him. She stopped moving completely. 

Her gaze was now fixed on the small, dimly glowing stones.

'Ah, that look. I know that look.'

"Are these... are these real monster cores?" the girl asked, her voice just a whisper now.

He didn't answer. He couldn't. It was taking all of his focus just to stay conscious.

The girl didn't wait for a response. She let go of him, letting him slump back to the ground. She quickly scrambled on her hands and knees, scooping up the thirteen glowing rabbit cores from the dirt. She looked at the small pouch they had fallen from, and then snatched that too, stuffing the cores inside it.

She stood up and took a step back, clutching the pouch to her chest like it was the most valuable thing in the world.

"Sorry, mister. But I really need these."

She turned and ran away, disappearing into the trees without looking back.

He lay on the ground, watching the spot where she had vanished.

'Of course. Fucking hell.'

His vision finally went completely black.

---

When he woke up, he was in a cage. The steady, rhythmic jolting told him he was moving, the whole cage swaying back and forth on a set of wheels.

'What the hell? Where am I and how long was I out?'

His wrists were cuffed together with heavy iron restraints. He was not alone in the cage, there were several other people crammed in with him, men and women in worn-out clothes, all looking completely defeated. One of them was the young girl who had stolen his cores.

'Bounty hunters, of all the times for this to happen. How did they even find me?'

The young girl saw that he was awake. Her face was smudged with dirt, and she looked even smaller in the cramped space.

"Oh, you're awake."

He turned his head to look at her, his expression unreadable.

"You."

The girl had the decency to look away for a moment, then she just shrugged, a gesture that seemed too old for her small shoulders.

"Yeah, me. Looks like we both got caught, huh? Serves me right for trying to sell hot monster cores, I guess."

"What happened?"

The girl looked down at her cuffed hands, fiddling with the rusted iron. "Well, I ran off with your stuff, right? I went to the usual black market spot to sell the cores, but these big guys, bounty hunters, they were hanging around. They saw me, and knew a little kid like me couldn't have gotten so many cores all by herself."

She looked up at him, then quickly looked away. "So, you know, they weren't very nice about asking questions. They made me tell them where I found them, so I brought them back to you. They saw you were a hunter, and you were all messed up, so they figured you were worth more money than the cores."

He looked at her face. There was a dark, purplish bruise circling her left eye.

"They did that to you?"

She flinched and turned her head away from him, pulling the collar of her ragged shirt higher. "It's nothing, I've had worse. It was my fault for being greedy anyway."

They were quiet for a moment.

'Tch. What a pain. Now I'm a captive, and my only weapon is still broken.'

He needed more information to make a plan.

'System. Location check. How far are we from the city?'

[Calculating current coordinates. Current distance from the northern city wall: 51.2 Kilometers.]

His eyes widened slightly.

'What the hell!? We weren't even that deep in the woods before! These guys moved really fast.'