The Dungeon Delver's Debt

The Unseen Strength

Ethan stared at the massive, half-collapsed pillar section. It was a jagged tooth of reinforced granite, easily weighing a thousand pounds.

Even for a B-Rank Strength specialist, this would be a challenge. For an exhausted E-minus who had spent the last hour sweeping dust, it was a death sentence for the joints.

But Marcus Thorne wasn’t asking for a clean workspace; he was asking for a public confession of worthlessness. He wanted Ethan to strain until he snapped, providing a mid-morning comedy routine for the elites.

Ethan’s mind went cold and analytical.

Failure condition: Inability to execute a physical task under extreme social pressure.

Goal: Maximum humiliation. Maximum strain. Maximum payout.

"I... I can try," Ethan said, forcing his voice to crack. He let his shoulders slump, playing the part of the broken dog perfectly.

Marcus and his squad erupted. "Hear that? He’s going to 'try'! " Marcus shouted to a passing group of A-Rank mages.

"The Debt-Boy thinks he can move the mountain! Maybe if you pray to your dead credit score, it’ll get lighter!"

Ethan ignored the jeers. He stepped up to the pillar, his boots crunching on the marble.

He wrapped his arms around the cold, abrasive stone, feeling the jagged edges bite into the fresh welts on his chest.

He inhaled, filling his lungs with the crisp, mana-rich air of the plaza. Then, he braced his legs and pulled.

He didn't hold back. To trigger the System, the effort had to be genuine.

He poured every ounce of his available strength—both the meager muscle he was born with and the residual adrenaline from his [Pestilence Immunity]—into the stone. He used every lifting trick he’d learned hauling crates in the warehouses of Earth.

His back screamed. His legs shook so violently they looked like they might buckle.

Veins corded in his neck, and his face turned a deep, bruised crimson. He pushed until his vision tunneled into a dark pinprick, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The pillar did not move a single millimeter.

{ERROR! PHYSICAL STRENGTH CHECK FAILED.}

{TARGET: IMPOSSIBLE WEIGHT DISPLACEMENT.}

{SINCERITY OF EFFORT: 99.8%.}

Ethan collapsed back, his hands slipping from the stone. He hit the ground hard, gasping for air, his lungs burning.

He looked legitimately spent—because he was. He had reached the absolute ceiling of his humanity and hit it at sixty miles per hour.

Marcus, however, wasn't satisfied with a silent defeat. He wanted the final flourish of degradation.

He wanted Ethan in the dirt.

"You know what, Rylan? You’re an eyesore," Marcus sneered. He walked over, his silver-plated greaves catching the sunlight.

"You should just stay on your knees where you belong. Just like you begged those collection agencies for your mother’s trinket."

Marcus didn't just walk past. He wound up and delivered a sharp, contemptuous kick aimed right at Ethan’s hip.

It was a strike meant to send the kneeling man sprawling across the marble into a pile of sharp debris. It was a strike backed by the casual, overwhelming power of an A-Ranker.

Ethan saw the silver boot coming. He didn't flinch. He didn't move to block.

He focused entirely on the point of impact. He had failed the strength check; now he needed to fail the defense check.

CRACK.

The silver-armored boot connected solidly with Ethan’s thigh. The force was enough to break a normal man's femur.

The pain was a white-hot spike, but then, the System’s logic overrode the nerves. The 10% damage reduction from [Iron Skin (Lvl 1)] and the [Hardened Soul-Skin] from the lashing acted like a high-tech shock absorber.

The kick, intended to send him flying, merely knocked him back a few inches. Ethan stumbled, his hand slapping against the granite pillar for balance, but impossibly, he stayed upright.

The plaza went quiet. A few high-rankers who had been laughing stopped mid-breath.

An A-Ranker’s kick should have folded an E-minus like a lawn chair. Instead, Ethan was still there, hunched over but firmly planted.

{ERROR! STABILITY CHECK FAILED. TARGET: RESILIENCE.}

{EFFORT: 100% (Sincere effort to remain upright detected, despite total lack of equilibrium).}

{FAILURE GRANTS POWER: [Iron Skin (Passive) Level 1] has been ENHANCED.}

The blue interface in Ethan’s mind flared with a blinding intensity.

[Iron Skin (Lvl 1)] → [Iron Skin (Level 2)].

{NEW EFFECT: Reduces all incoming non-magical, blunt, or bladed damage by 20%. Passive.}

The rush of power was like drinking liquid nitrogen. It was cold, sharp, and instantly stabilizing.

The skin on his legs and back felt subtly denser, like the grain of a hardwood tree. The throbbing ache from Marcus’s kick didn't disappear, but it was suddenly distant—like a sound heard through a thick wall.

Marcus dropped his foot, his composure flickering. His face twisted from smugness to a confused, hot-tempered fury.

"What the hell? I told you to stay down!"

He stepped in close, grabbing Ethan by the collar of his grime-stained tunic. He shoved him hard, putting his full weight into a push designed to slam Ethan’s head against the stone pillar.

Ethan accepted the shove. He let his body take the hit.

The increased 20% reduction of [Iron Skin (Lvl 2)] absorbed the kinetic energy like a sponge. Ethan’s heels slid back an inch on the smooth marble, but his neck didn't snap back.

His head didn't hit the stone. He simply absorbed the blow and stood his ground.

Marcus let go, stumbling back a half-step from the sheer lack of expected resistance. He looked at his own hands, then at Ethan.

"You... how are you still standing?"

Ethan slowly straightened his back. He didn't look like a beggar anymore.

He didn't look like the "Debt-Boy" from Earth. He wiped a smear of blood and stone-dust from his lip, his eyes burning with a cold, triumphant fire that made Marcus’s teammates instinctively reach for their weapons.

The time for calculated failure was over. Ethan had reached the threshold where the "interest" on his suffering was ready to be collected.

"Is that the best an A-Rank can do?" Ethan asked. His voice was quiet, but in the sudden silence of the plaza, it sounded like a thunderclap.

"Because I've had harder shoves from the sewer rats in Delta-9."

Marcus’s face went from red to a ghostly, enraged white. "You're dead, you talentless piece of shit!"

Marcus’s hand began to glow with a violent, orange heat. He was calling on his Fire Affinity.

This wasn't a playground shove anymore—this was magical assault in a public square.

Ethan didn't move. He stood right in the path of the heat, his mind already calculating the reward for "Failure to Resist Magical Thermal Damage."

"Go ahead, Marcus," Ethan whispered, a jagged grin cutting through the dirt on his face. "Hit me. I can afford it. Can you?"