Reincarnated With The Degenerate System-Chapter 256: Another Card

We kept on descending, and I saw people at the entrance trying to seal it off.

It was clear they were trying to keep something dangerous from getting in.

Soon, there was nothing left — no amber light, no dusty horizon. Just darkness pressing in from every side.

James moved easily. His hand brushed the wall at every turn without thinking, fingers tracing the cracks and bumps like a blind man reading a familiar face.

I followed quietly, too busy taking it all in to speak.

The stairwell opened suddenly.

I stopped.

Not because something was in the way — because my brain needed a moment to believe what my eyes were seeing.

The tunnel didn’t just keep going underground. It had changed into something else entirely.

What used to be a subway corridor had been widened over years — maybe decades by human hands.

The walls were pushed back in uneven sections and supported with anything that could be found: wooden beams, bent steel bars tied together with wire, chunks of concrete stacked and held with clay.

The ceiling rose higher than it should have, held up by columns made of welded pipes wrapped in old cables.

And beneath it all — people.

The main tunnel stretched ahead, wide enough for ten men to walk side by side.

On either side, carved into the walls or built outward, were stalls, shelves, and small rooms separated by hanging cloth or sheets of metal.

Lanterns and repurposed lights cast warm amber and pale blue in uneven patches, making the corridor feel like it was stuck between day and night.

"You’re staring too much," James said, without looking back.

"I’m observing."

"You’ve lived here your whole life. There’s nothing new to observe."

For the real Leon, maybe. I kept that to myself.

We moved deeper. Then the corridor ended, and the world opened up again.

It was enormous.

Whatever underground structure had been here before — a maintenance depot, a transit hub, or some kind of industrial space — it had been stripped and rebuilt so completely that its original purpose was almost unrecognizable.

Ceiling was thirty feet overhead, maybe more, strung with a lattice of salvaged cable and wire from which lanterns hung at every height like mismatched stars. The floor was worn smooth by years of foot traffic.

Four tunnel openings led into the chamber from different directions. People moved between them in loose groups, and I could tell they were used to this kind of life. Humans, after all, were very adaptable.

We cut straight across the open space. I matched James path and let the muscle memory of Leon’s legs carry me where his mind would have gone automatically.

The store occupied the far corner , where two walls met and someone had taken advantage of the natural alcove to build outward.

It wasn’t much to look at from a distance — a wide counter fashioned from a door laid flat across two barrel stacks, shelves behind it climbing the wall in uneven tiers.

A handwritten inventory board hung behind the counter on a square of flat metal, chalk marks updated in neat, small handwriting.

A girl was updating it when we arrived.

She stood with her back partially turned, chalk in hand, adding a new line to the board. She was somewhere shy of twenty, maybe right at it.

Her clothes were layered and worn — patched at the elbows, the hem of her outer jacket frayed in a way that had been carefully trimmed so it wouldn’t unravel further. A cloth tied back most of her hair, though a few strands had escaped and she hadn’t bothered to fix them.

None of it concealed her pretty face at all.

There was no polite way to say it: the grime and the patches and the dim lantern light didn’t stand a chance.

She turned when she heard us approach, and the chalk paused in her hand. A smile broke across her face.

"Leon." Her eyes moved to me first, then to James, then back to me. "So what did you get today?"

The memories hit me the moment she spoke. She had been one of my girlfriends.

But outside, we kept our relationship a secret because apparently she had a boyfriend.

Apparently, the body I was in now shared the same degenerate DNA as me — which was a convenient bonus. Now, if I got bored or frustrated, I didn’t even have to try to let it out.

I reached into my bag.

Not much. We both knew it.

Sera set her ledger aside without comment and began sorting through the items, turning each piece over once before placing it to the side.

The silence stretched.

"Ran short today," I said.

"I can see that. These are clean though. I’ll give you full value on both."

She tallied without ceremony. When she was done, she turned to the shelves behind her.

What came back across the counter was modest.

A stoppered jug of water — filtered, not raw tunnel runoff, which mattered more than almost anything else down here.

Two portions of dried food wrapped tight in cloth, dense enough to count as a full meal each, and a small loaf of bread.

A small oil tin, half full, the kind used to feed the lanterns that kept the dark from taking over every night.

James reached for the bundle before I could. His hands closed around the oil tin first, the way someone grabs the thing they were most worried about not getting.

Sera watched him do it. Said nothing.

Then she opened the ledger again, found our page, and made a mark. Not crossing anything out — adding to it. The debt column, not the credit one.

"That puts you at eleven," she said quietly.

Not an accusation. Just a number, stated clearly, so there was no confusion later about what was owed and to whom.

"Leon."

"I know."

"Do you?" She kept her voice low, conscious of the foot traffic passing behind us.

"Everyone is talking," she continued. "Saying you don’t go far enough. That you’re too afraid to venture out."