Infinite Extraction System Can a Beast Reach Havenly Tier?

CHAPTER 3: THE FLAWED TRAP

The trap was simple, cheap, and born out of three years of surviving off scraps in the dark.

Lucian dragged a length of rusted iron chain—thick as a wrist and heavy as a bag of coppers—from a collapsed drainage winch near the archway. He looped one end around a cracked basalt pillar at the chamber’s entrance and wedged a three-foot slab of jagged iron grate into the stone floor at a forty-five-degree angle, pointing directly down the narrow corridor.

The logic was basic: lure the beast into charging into the narrow passage, snag its hind legs with the chain, and let its five-ton momentum impale its soft underbelly on the iron grate while Pip struck from above.

"Simple," Lucian muttered under his breath, tying off the hemp rope around the bloody, severed leg of the Dread-Hound. "An E-rank hound falls for this every time."

He hurled the hunk of hound meat into the center of the flooded reservoir.

It landed with a loud SPLASH.

The sloshing water inside the reservoir froze instantly.

The Mire-Gorged Toad stopped its wet crunching. Its two lidless, milky yellow eyes rolled slowly in their sockets, turning away from the shredded centipede carcass toward the fresh, blood-soaked meat floating thirty feet away.

Lucian fell back into the shadows of the narrow corridor, pulling Pip down beside him. "Wait for it," he whispered, his pulse racing. "Let it come through the archway..."

The toad didn't hop.

It didn't even move its massive, squat body.

A low, wet gurgle rumbled deep within its throat—a sound like bubbling mud. Then, without a fraction of a second of wind-up, the creature’s wide jaw split open.

THWIP.

A wet, muscular projectile—thick as a tree trunk and dripping with shimmering, yellow-green slime—shot across thirty feet of open chamber like a ball from a siege engine.

It didn't go for the bait. It went straight for the archway where Lucian was hiding.

"Move!" Lucian screamed, throwing his weight sideways against the wet basalt wall.

BOOM.

The toad’s thirty-foot tongue didn't just strike the corridor; it violently smashed through the stone archway. Concrete splinters and ancient mortar exploded into the dark air like shrapnel.

The heavy iron grate Lucian had wedged into the floor was flattened like a tin can, bent entirely in half by the sheer kinetic weight of the impact.

Lucian tumbled across the wet gravel, his shoulder slamming hard against the stone. Blood immediately trickled into his left eye from a deep cut on his temple.

It didn't fall for the bait, Lucian realized in horror, wiping the warm blood from his brow. It didn't even care about the meat. It smelled live prey.

A sharp, horrific screech tore through the tunnel.

"Pip!"

The tip of the toad’s tongue hadn't missed entirely. While Lucian had managed to dive clear, the barbed, muscular tip had whipped across Pip’s left flank as it retracted.

The yellow-green mucus coating the tongue touched the shadow-rat’s newly formed obsidian carapace—and immediately began to hiss.

SZZZZZZZT.

It wasn't just acid; it was high-density, corrosive mana. The obsidian bone armor that had effortlessly deflected the Dread-Hound's claws was melting like wax under a blowtorch. Thick, foul-smelling black smoke billowed off Pip’s side as the acid ate through the dark plates, dissolving the flesh beneath.

Pip let out a ragged, metallic shriek of agony, thrashing violently against the stone wall as dark blood and black mana leaked from the gaping burn across its ribs.

[Warning: Companion Sustaining Severe Corrosive Damage!]

[Obsidian Carapace Integrity: 64% and falling.]

[Companion Core Destabilizing...]

"Dammit!" Lucian spat, scrambling back to his feet.

There was no narrow choke-point trap anymore. The entire archway was crumbling, and the Mire-Gorged Toad was already shifting its massive bulk, its hind legs flexing as it prepared to launch its five-ton body directly into the mouth of the corridor to crush them both flat.

Lucian looked at his hands. No weapon. No armor. Only a small iron skinning knife that wouldn't even penetrate the monster's outer hide.

An E-rank creature doesn't trade blows with a D-rank, the brutal truth slammed into his mind. We aren't hunters here. We're meat.

"Pip, shadow-step! Left!" Lucian roared, lunging forward with his newly gained agility.

The shadow-rat, despite the agony tearing through its side, obeyed instantly. A ribbon of pitch-black smoke exploded beneath its paws as it vanished from the corridor, reappearing ten feet to the left—just as the massive toad launched itself through the ruined archway.

CRASH!

The entire conduit shook. Tons of stone debris rained down from the vaulted ceiling as the toad landed squarely where Pip had been standing a fraction of a second prior. The shockwave of the kinetic landing hit Lucian like a physical wall, throwing him off his feet and slamming him flat on his back into the stagnant water of the reservoir.

The wind was completely knocked out of Lucian’s lungs. Coughing up dark water, he looked up through the haze of stone dust and mist.

The Mire-Gorged Toad turned its massive, flat head slowly toward him, its yellow eyes bulging with cold, dull malice. Its wide throat swelled up like a bloated balloon, emitting a low, vibrating croak that shook the very water around Lucian’s legs.

CROAAAK.

The toad's jaws unhinged once more.

Lucian didn't have a weapon. Pip was bleeding black mana, crippled on one side.

And they were trapped inside the monster's lair.