The 2,132th boss battle has begun.The 2,133th boss battle has begun.The 2,134th boss battle has begun.
Request for spectatorship of The 2,134th boss battle has been processed.Request granted.
Battle 2,134
Scenario Model: Undead Starter Town
Progress:
68 Undead Villagers have been killed.39 Undead Adventurers have been killed.5 Undead Captains have been killed.
11 minutes, 43 seconds until the Scenario Quest ends.
Battle
Alex Smith vs. Guildmaster Lionheart…Request for additional status purview has been processed.
Request granted.
Alex SmithTier 0 - Level 14, Unranked
Class: NoneBloodline: Forged in FireTrait: ???
Health: 68%Mana: 100%Stamina: 89%
> TitlesThe First Spark
> AttributesHalf-Dead Persistence
> StatsVitality: 3
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 4
Fortitude: 7
Perception: 6
Arcane: 5
> Skills
Stealth (Novice)
Metalwork (Novice)
Meld (Novice)
Examine (Novice)
WARNING: THIS IS A SYSTEM-HOSTED BATTLE. UNSANCTIONED BETS AND INTERFERENCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
Please enjoy.
* * *
A familiar notification appeared in Alex’s interface as soon as the fight began.
The constellations have taken interest in your fight.
He swiped it out of view as Lionheart barreled through chairs and tables. Splinters flew from his path like a wooden blizzard, but Alex still had time to charge his blade.
Pier—
Alex canceled the skill at the last second. He’d shown this move already, and the timed switch-up caught the undead off guard. Lionheart had been dodging left and right but suddenly shifted in direction—smacking into the wall with his right shoulder.
Alex swung upward at Lionheart’s left side.
The boss’s bulky steel Great-sword was five feet and unwieldy in the corridor between the wall and the next table over. Yet, in the hands of this giant, it was handled with the dexterity of a small claymore. He’d switched it to his left hand, maneuvering it reverse-grip like a dagger as he intercepted the blow. Even with Alex’s newfound strength—and even in spite of the awkward angle—Alex still found himself being pushed back.
But he was well used to being the weaker one in such an exchange.
He slid his blade along Lionheart’s towards the handle as the boss pressed down with more strength. Sparks flew along his blade’s path, and he arced the point of his shamshir blade towards the shadowy center of the boss’s chest—towards its core.
Glancing Blow
Before Alex’s sword hit its mark, Lionheart’s elbow whiffed past where his head had been. He quickly retreated, yanking his blade free. The bottom three rungs of the boss’s rib cage fell away from its right side as a result.
Lionheart used Alex’s retreat to recover himself. Then he shifted his sword back to a proper two-handed grip as he trailed after in pursuit.
Feather Foot
The skill activated, and his feet suddenly felt as if they could walk across air with how light they were. He ducked effortlessly to the right as the greatsword whipped past his shoulder.
Devastation followed the blow. Chairs splintered; the wooden floor ended up gouged with gashes. However, even with so much force behind his attacks, the boss left no openings for a counterattack after the first surprise Alex had given him. That fact spoke not just of its sheer power, but of its techniqueAnd that technique spoke of .
Alex backed away from Lionheart’s next blow, caution in his spacing.
He hadn’t expected this fight to be easy or anything, but you couldn’t always tell how difficult a fight would be just from knowing an enemy’s level. These had once been living things after all.
Two more vehement lashes assaulted his ears as they soared inches from his neck. He danced away, weaving behind tables as he dodged; the sword followed after, showering him with splinters. He found himself on the defensive as Guildmaster Lionheart wrecked his own pub in his madness. He concentrated on every minor movement the boss made and reacted immediately to preserve his life. He hardly had much opportunity to strike back.
When Alex found his back against the far wall, his breath had started to come unevenly.
Essence has been integrated with Dexterity!
+2 Dexterity
Essence has been integrated with Perception!
+2 Perception
Splinters were embedded in his skin, and his health ticked down to a point as he continued bleeding from roughly-bandaged cuts and gashes. Although he’d wrapped them with bedsheets, and even wasted a health potion to increase his odds of survival, his damaged life-force prevented them from healing completely. Blood still seeped out in small amounts as he moved.
His stats had increased, but he didn’t even have time to revel in the fruits of his labor. He scanned his surroundings and prepared an escape plan in case things went sour—not that he intended to flee. Across the pub, the undead straightened from his last blow. Instead of continuing his pursuit, he started cackling to himself.
When he turned toward Alex, the look in his hollow eyes chilled him. There wasn’t anger anymore. Instead, Alex recognized a look he’d greeted himself with every day over the past years. Tiredness
“Ha! Haha… Ha…” The undead covered its eye holes with bony fingers, barking his laughter, “Ahh… that’s relieving. relieving! Lugrin, my Captain, you see… he always said he wanted to die in battle against a worthy foe! Well, die as in…”
“I know,” Alex said.
“And well, I really do apologize. I saw that weapon of yours and thought you were one of Really put me into a rage, that did.”
Alex nodded. He knew the type all too well. The System didn’t allow patronage or sponsorships this early, but the Constellations had their ways. Little gifts hidden here and there, or whispers of knowledge and sponsorships established before Integration even began.
“But it seems my friend Lugrin got his wish after all! Good for him, eh?”
Lionheart laughed. It no longer sounded jovial.
“Yeah, good for him.”
The creature before Alex probably couldn’t even put a name to the feeling it felt. Sadness. Loneliness, maybe. Honestly, an undead retaining this much heart was unbelievably rare.
But that was neither here nor there. If the boss was giving him time for a breather, then…
“Don’t even think about it,” Lionheart said.
He pointed his blade toward Alex, who had only just summoned another mana potion from his inventory. Alex thought about it and reached the same conclusion as Lionheart. He could close the distance faster than it would take to drink the potion and react.
“Ah, it’s always like this,” Lionheart complained, “Sometimes you just want to talk to a person before you kill them. Get to know them before you bleed their life from them, y’know? Why can’t the living ever interact in good faith, dammit.”
Alex felt a genuine puzzlement in the boss’ words, and he had to suppress a pang of pity for the terrifying thing. A sorrow that wasn’t entirely his swelled in his chest, and though Alex’s heart still hammered, his anger slowly faded.
“I… suppose I should apologize,” Alex said.
“Finally! Someone who gets it! I’m here, you’re here, what’s the need for those blue things anyway? Let’s do this fair and honorable, yeah?”
Alex wasn’t apologizing for , but he didn’t bother to correct the man’s misconception.
He’d forgotten in the years since he’d last faced them. Undead were many things: creepy, deadly, tediously hard to kill, massive irredeemable assholes—but they couldn’t be faulted for their nature. They had things taken from them; things they wouldn’t even know were missing.
And perhaps another person might just wave that all away, but Alex understood. After all, he, too, had once been broken. He knew what it felt like to be less than whole like something at the core of his being had been taken from him. And he knew what kind of torturous existence the man before him led.
“It seems I’ve been hypocritical towards you,” Alex finally said. He gave a long sigh. “I don’t have a grudge against you now, but I’ll be finishing what that young man over there started, if you don’t mind kindly dying for me.”
The boss had been practice-swinging with his sword arm, peering curiously at his missing ribs. He stopped at that, and whatever trace amount of vulnerability Alex thought he’d seen left the boss’s expression as he laughed some more. It was a deep, infectious, booming laugh—the kind that made following a man into hell just a little easier. That of a natural-born leader.
“Ha! I’d have it no other way! Guess this one will be for my fallen comrades then. But… not like this. No, this won’t do at all. These things have a proper decorum, don’t they? Let’s see… how did it go”
He scratched his skull, then stopped, seemingly remembering something. Then the atmosphere of the room shifted.
Crystal lights flickered overhead, and the undead boss straightened with unreal posture. His left foot snapped to attention next to his right; the flat of his sword faced Alex as he held it straight in front of him. What hair he had left began to flow and levitate from his cracked skull. Though the strands were dry and dull, Alex imagined there had once been a luscious mane of red.
“My name is Lucius,” the boss announced, “second son and heir to the Lionheart Barony. Once, I was a famed Adventurer, known across Kingdoms as the Rambunctiously-Righteous Blade. In retirement I became the Grand Guild-master of the Aygoran Valleys, known then as Banisher of Darkness and the Valley’s Protector. I am the Guild Master here, but as you can see, we’re in need of a renovation.”
He gestured around the room with an offbeat sense of humor as the town’s rampant fire finally touched the building’s front entrance.
The boss’s energy began to thicken now. There was a scent of death and tarnished honor. And more than that, an eagerness to fight, kill, and spill blood across the land with the moon and stars as witnesses—that energy filled the hall as the fire began to spread.
“I tell you this,” Lionheart continued, “Not so you remember me, but so you know my blade will honor your death. This is your end, ”
His stance shifted as he turned the sword’s sharp end toward Alex, and a shadow of greatness stood in his likeness. Of the hero he’d described. Seeing that, Alex couldn’t believe he was merely a level 17 boss. Perhaps he was , but he couldn’t always have been.
It was curious now that Alex thought of it. He’d always assumed that the enemies in Nightmare had been tailored to match , but now that he knew the basics of how necromancy functioned, that seemed dubious. These weren’t some characters in a game but organic material. They were still in a twisted sense. The System was known to recycle assets, but it wasn’t as if it had a limited supply of souls to choose from. So why did the boss before him feel so at odds with his level of power?
Alex had never had the time or insight to wonder about these things in his last life, but now the question bugged him.
he reminded himself.
All this talk about Constellations had reminded him that they were watching, and even if they couldn’t hear what he was saying, it would be wise to move things along. He could feel the warmth of the fire approaching him. His hair bristled on his skin from the pressure the boss gave off, and he lost yet another health point from blood loss just by standing around. Given how long he’d marketed himself in a supportive role, Alex’s dueling skills still weren’t up to par and things were looking worse by the minute.
But despite it all, he felt his lips crack in a small, unwitting smile.
“Good,” he said. “Your life will make for an excellent reforging.”
Lionheart looked on in consternation as Alex held his shamshir blade at him. She . There was tension in her, a desire in line with Alex’s own. A scent of mourning yes, but beyond that, she yearned for finality and felt a small comfort partaking in it.
Alex tried to cloak stealth over himself.
WARNING: You cannot cast stealth in the presence of enemies—
Alex felt for his stats; ten dexterity, eight perception
Alex didn’t have a generational talent like Jun. His senses couldn’t discern or navigate the pathways of skill patterns like prodigies could. What he did have, however, was experience.
Stealth was far from his favorite skill, but ironically, it had ended up one of his most leveled by the end of his life. It’d been his very first skill, and he’d used it relentlessly, wearing it for hours on end like a snug blanket during nights when dangers prowled. He may not know those Essence-patterns for what they were, but he knew what its imprint intimately.
He searched his Soul for it now, the imprint woven into his Vital Essence, and rather than altering it, he it—further stealing from his bound Essence beyond the System’s Gate. The pattern of Stealth
For a second, it almost worked, but like a rubber band stretched too far, it suddenly contracted on itself and the Essence returned. Alex couldn’t have that.
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He strained against the instinct to let the pattern settle—
Error: Ano—
Error Resolved.
Alex expected the pain this time, but he hadn’t expected it to fade so quickly. He frowned at that, but pushed it from his mind as Stealth’s
Stealth: 93%...95%...98%...
Stealth has been upgraded to Adept Rank.
Stealth (Adept)
This skill can now be cast and maintained for limited durations under direct attention of enemies.
A dark, hazy, and formless shroud covered Alex now, and the difference was immediately noticeable. If before he’d been a shroud of imperceivable darkness, it was now as if he wore it like a cloak. It didn’t hide him entirely, of course—not under Lionheart’s direct scrutiny—but now he blurred and blended with the shadows lying in plain sight, making it harder to discern his form
“Thank you for waiting,” Alex said. “Frankly, I’m surprised you did. Your commitment to your sense of honor is not something I’ll forget.”
Though, naturally, Alex hadn't counted on it.
The undead scratched his skull in befuddlement, then his killing intent returned as though it had never left. Lionheart acknowledged his thanks by charging Alex. He barreled through the remaining tables with ease, and Alex leveled his sword for Pierce
Despite the skill’s incompatibility with his Shamshir, he’d lost count of how many times he’d used it in this fight as a means to create space. He was using it as a crutch this fight and he cringed at how much mana his sword consumed as he lunged forward.
Mana: 41%
His sword followed the strike’s momentum through, carving a small chunk from Lionheart’s pelvis. Alas, Lionheart had witnessed the move too many times now, and although Alex was in the open, he glanced back to find a large, hulking blade soaring toward him, a venomous roar behind it.
Feather Foot
Alex increased the flow of his mana through the skill, nearly stumbling over himself as he dodged. Lionheart’s blade whiffed past his head, severing a lock of his hair.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The hairs the boss’ blade had touched slowly started turning gray, and the color began to spread to Alex’s bangs. Recognizing the symptoms, he quickly leaped behind an upturned table and cut the remnant of that lock from his head.
The blade carved through it a split-second later, and Alex rolled out and under the blow, scrambling for more cover. He rolled behind another table, then, against his better judgment, attempted an ambush from out of view.
His mana welled up in his blade as he felt the approach of danger.
Pierce
Wood from the table splintered from the path of Alex’s blade, and Lionheart reeled for a second—the table hiding the Shamshir’s trajectory. Then the boss raised his blade to take the skill on its flat. The longsword giant blade held its form as the Shamshir slid off it—scathed by the impact.
Something clicked in Alex’s mind, and he twisted his blade so that it curved the great-sword rather than it.
Unfortunately, Lionheart took this in stride—abandoning defense entirely. He shifted his core to evade the pierce’s direct path, and swung his sword straight through the table. Alex’s strike had only taken a single rib, and now Lionheart aimed to split him down the middle in recompense.
He should’ve expected this boss to have a trick or two up his sleeve. From the start, using pierce here had been a terrible idea since his sword-arm was now firmly lodged into the table.
But Alex rolled with it. He kicked off with all his strength and the circular table rolled him. It exploded into splinters as Lionheart’s greatsword whiffed his shoulder, and he followed up with a swift, agile twist, closing in on the man.
He swung his sword upward, aiming to sever the boss’ left arm, but Lionheart sidestepped his attack and swung his greatsword downward on Alex’s left, where he took the strike on the Shamshir’s blunt spine, dangerously close to its guard.
It cracked. Yet the Shamshir’s strong curve saved him and he used Glancing Blow
He thought. Then he cursed himself for under-utilizing her extreme curvature the entire night. He’d adjusted somewhat to the Shamshir’s style, but under pressure, he reverted to wielding her as if she were his old arming sword. He backed away, creating more distance as Lionheart heaved his sword out from the floorboards.
Unfortunately, there was no time to take a mana potion, but Alex used what spare time there was to adjust his stance. He took a guard that felt similar to the fool’s guard in nature: His Shamshir was curved so far above his head that it practically hugged his back, leaving his entire body full of openings. Yet Alex knew that with the Shamshir’s strong curvature, he would be able to whip her over his head in an instant—and when Lionheart charged, that’s what he did.
The tight arc gave Alex’s swing even more momentum as he sidestepped Lionheart’s approach.
It still wasn’t fast enough to get jump on him unfortunately. And as soon as their blades met, Alex decided to abort the maneuver. He could get close enough again to make the great-sword unwieldy, but the boss had already shown himself to be adept at hand-to-hand combat and far from reliant on his blade alone.
So by the time the fist swung, Alex had already evacuated and was wracking his brain for any other ideas. He had plenty, but each had its caveats. Before long, he was fighting evasively again, scrambling from place to place for cover.
He was scrambling—curse his sorry fate. He nearly tripped over himself again as he dodged another strike.
There was a reason Stealth’s Apprentice-tier rank-up required such high Perception. When your form became more challenging to discern, it also made it harder to perceive where your Add some scuffed footwork with and it was like Alex was trying to track a shadow in a field of shifting lights!
Not to mention, he had to watch Lionheart for—
Body cues on where—
?WARNING
You have been inflicted with the sepsis debuff. So long as you have open wounds, HP will drain 5% every thirtyseconds for two minute—
?WARNING
Your lifeforce is wounded. Sepsis cannot be combated with vitality. So long as you have open wounds, HP will drain 10% every thirty seconds until death.
Alex touched his cheek, cursing, but it came out mumbled. Was this the first wound he’d received this fight? It hadn’t felt like it.
A small thin line of blood trailed along his bone where the sword had barely grazed him, and that side of his face was already starting to numb as his veins began turning gray underneath, spreading like cracks on a mirror. He knew Sepsis well enough. Soon, his left eye would cease to function, and eventually, the whole left side of his body would too.
“What’s wrong,” Lionheart teased. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Tha’ wazen vewry nobvle obv you,” Alex spat
“Yeeeah.” He cracked his neck. “I don’t know where I was going with that crap anyways.”
Alex said nothing to that. He was out of time, not because of sepsis, but because of his mana. Between the constant drain of both Light Foot Stealth
Not that Alex could write off sepsis’s effects, of course. He grimaced as its first tick began.
HP: 54%
His sword was damaged during this fight, and Soul Link was even further damaged. It would only take two more ticks of sepsis before his health went below 34%, his personal threshold for when he was no longer in fight shape.
From there, he would be unable to stop the bleeding effects without a healer or health potion—the second of which he , but it would be a damn shame to waste a high-grade potion just to gain back a couple dozen health points.
Mana: 24%
Lionheart made a sudden jerking motion, and Alex instantly leaped into movement. There was only one way he could see himself ending this fight quickly, and it involved learning a new skill. However, the skill in question wasn’t a basic combat skill. At minimum, this sword would probably sap him 20%
Alex wished he could simply ask his sword for her thoughts and opinions, cause he was certain now that she had them. Unfortunately, there was no time to give it thought.
Lionheart wasn’t playing any longer, and Alex couldn’t spare any attention from evading his attacks. His mental capacity was overclocked, taxed both by adapting to the use of his skills and by attempting to read the movements of a veteran swordsman. He didn’t have much time left. Both Feather Foot and Stealth were passive skills, and the combined drain totaled about 3%20%
Alex leaped behind the info desk counter. Lionheart sent a horizontal slash through the info desk, creating an absolute blizzard of broken wood and appliances. The entire set-up went flying, creating the barest moment where Alex had the chance to activate Stealth while fully out of sight of Lionheart.
He took full advantage of it, trailing the large chunk of debris that was the desk surface, and it bought him a precious second as the guildmaster’s head swerved to find him. He’d been steadily growing more capable of the Stealth-Feather Foot skill combo with each second that passed, and by the time that gigantic sword trailed Alex’s path, he was ahead of where Lionheart thought he was.
The guildmaster’s sword art was impeccable—on par or perhaps even greater than Alex's own. Yet, as Alex saw more of it, he noticed a weakness. The same weakness all undead had.
Cutting off a few rungs of an undead’s ribs didn’t hinder it the way it would a human, but when wielding such a large sword, retaining balance within your body was vitally important. Alex had ruined that, expecting that Lionheart might re-correct it due to his experience. He He’d —then adjusted down from there. This told Alex two things:
One, if he’d overcorrected it once, he’d be liable to do it again if he was under more pressure. And two… this most definitely wasn’t a Level 17 boss he was dealing with—not truly. It’d only been a hunch before, but now he was certain.
He was facing an opponent far more skilled than that. Much, more. And he was not used to fighting in a body so weak. It was… a bad match for his sword style.
Alex thought.
Sepsis ticked away another inch of his health as he raised his sword to parry the undead’s giant swing, glancing it off at an angle. It had too much force behind it, and his death blade started to crack, but he had faith in her structural integrity.
Lionheart’s own blade was properly crafted steel. It weighed heavily at the bind of their weapons, but just this once…
Those cracks deepened along the Shamshir from stress. Alex’s left-side vision blinked out. His face slackened even as his well-placed footwork carried him out of the way from a knee blow and inside his large man’s space. Wisps of shadow followed him, and sparks flew where his blade followed the other down—evading its crossguard at an angle, severing a loose thumb.
All these things happened simultaneously as Lionheart’s momentum threw the blade over Alex’s head. He eyed the undead’s core as it started to swim from his blade’s path, away from any accessible gap between the ribs. It ducked behind the sternum.
Alex’s blade may be an undead’s kryptonite, but the thickness of bones would still slow him down too much. It would only be a fraction of a second, but—
Mana: 21%
He followed through with his swing regardless, pulling on a tide of mana. But not for Pierce. His mana practically burned his body from the inside as all of it joined the storm, following those tethered pathways of essence—and he reached for a skill, the only one he could count on, funneling all his mana into it.
He sliced the undead in two.
The only thing he hadn’t expected was the shrill scream from his blade as he did so. Throughout his years, Alex always liked to think he was more in tune with his blades than the average swordsman. That he was as much a vessel for them as they were to him.
Only a handful of times in his life had that actually proven true. And as the shrill, metallic scream reached a fever pitch, reverberating in his bones, those doors that beckoned during that final attack with Lys beckoned once more, and through the sliver of its cracks, Alex thought he could see it. The place this had once been.
Music chiming a joyous Celtic rhythm, barmaids scampering to and fro, everyone with genuine expressions on their faces as they gambled away that day’s earnings—it was the kind of place Alex himself might frequent. And in the middle of it all was Lionheart—grinning ear to ear with a satisfied look as he looked over an unscorched town.
Then, just as quickly as it appeared, the vision was gone. The pub was up in flames with the rest of the town. Lionheart was nothing but bones and ash next to the pile of items and gear he’d donned.
Guildmaster Lionheart Level 17 has been slain!
+100 points!
+5,000 Essence!
Quest: Lionheart’s Madness complete!
Evil has been vanquished! Guildmaster Lionheart’s maddened ritual of sacrifice has been ruined, and those afflicted with his deathly mark have woken! The High Council awards your sense of justice!
5,000 Essence Crystals have been awarded!
Alex hardly took note as the notifications blipped as the essence settled into his soul. He just watched with his blank look where the boss’s core lay sliced in two—lifeless.
Alex felt something from his sword and knew he wasn’t just imagining it now. It no longer had that sharp edge nor that underlying sense of sadness. She was… , oddly peaceful As if she’d just had the most filling meal of her short life. And the boss’ core that should’ve been there was dull and drained of all its aura.
Alex scratched his head. He was still looking down where his hand gripped her hilt, recalling the sensation he’d experienced during that final moment of battle, and how similar it’d felt to what he experienced with Lys. Then he realized his sepsis debuff was still ticking down and recentered himself.
He let out a long exhale as a support beam crashed down beside him. Then he pulled the iron sword and all the other loot into his inventory as he got up. The Core being unusable was a great loss, but all things considered; he was in no shape to be crying over severed cores.
Quickly, he pulled his knife from his inventory and heated it by the collapsing pub’s fires. He had no way of stopping the sepsis affliction at this moment, so he’d really been hoping it would go away with the boss’s death. But at least he had a way to stop its bleed effect. He grimaced as he lifted the hot knife to his skin to cauterize his worst gashes—then froze.
He suddenly spotted another prize in the boss’ ashes, one he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there before.
[Holy Gauze (Unique)]
Gauze enchanted by a divine being to prevent blood loss from wounds and seal death aspect afflictions.
Alex’s grimace deepened into a scowl as he recognized the item for what it was. Regardless, he picked it up anyway and it instantly wrapped around his wounds. He’d have been stupid not to. Cauterization would’ve worked well enough, but the scarring would’ve been permanent.
Still, he didn’t take it lightly. This… was undoubtedly a custom gift from a Constellation, someone who had broken the System’s rules to give it to him. Someone that wanted him for one reason or another, and he wasn’t mistaken enough to think it was to gain his sponsorship. Being a Constellation’s plaything would be bad enough, but if this were , he would’ve been given an overpowered skill or an enchanted weapon of some sort. Alas, it was just life-support, and no gift came free. The only thing worse than being a Constellation's plaything was becoming one’s pawn.
Alex hadn’t drawn much attention to himself, yet somehow they’d been watching the boss battle even began. If it were , he’d understand but… well, there was only so much enlightenment to be gained from wondering, so Alex simply sighed and stood up.
[Sepsis] has been sealed. Bleed effect has been halted.
He walked slowly through the torn-up and still-burning pub, careful not to put too much stress on his injuries. He held his blade gingerly in both hands, and his gaze lingered there for an instant.
As far as combat skills went, SeverCutwhy that was. He hadn’t ever needed to, and he realized that was true about a lot of things now. He had a lifetime’s worth of trivia from what he’d experienced, but he never felt the need to ponder the question. And now that things weren’t adding up, it was really starting to grate.
He looked at his blade.
[Undeath’s Bane (Uncommon)]
Status: Disrepair
He sighed as he made the wise decision to move his undeath’s bane to his inventory, lest she crumble in his hands. She’d started looking less like a blade and more like ice that was beginning to crack and split.
Soul Link has been damaged. HP cannot be restored.
Alex paused for a second to look out the tavern door. One of the hinges was broken, allowing him to see the rooftops of the other buildings through the gap. Hundreds of undead villagers and a few adventurers were still out there, but with few capable leaders, they weren’t a threat for the moment.
They had all been human once. This was their world, and Alex and all the others were intruders. These facts had never been terribly hidden from them, but somehow, Alex had never thought to question it. How did this world end up the way it did? Was it a similar case to Uern, or was this something different? How did all its natives end up Undead? Did they—
O
Well, Alex care now, but as he looked up and saw the place literally burning down around him, it occurred to him that it wasn’t the most pressing concern right now. Socrates phrased it best: The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
That could be his enlightenment for the day. Along with another classic: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Alex stood over Jun’s body.
“It’s done,” he said. “You’ve been avenged, and those people you risked yourself for will have a fighting chance now.”
He set the man’s skill-stone from the first scenario down on his chest, giving the longest moment of silence he could afford. It was a precious treasure, but Alex had meant it when he said it was an even split. This night was his rebirth; if there was ever a time to uphold senseless honor, now would spell a good omen.
More than that, he respected him. Jun had neither the instincts nor luck required to survive Nightmare, but he had something just as important. Something Lionheart had. And something Alex hadn’t even realized he was sorely missing until it was too late. There were more brutal, magical and potent ores in all the worlds than those found on Earth, but in the end, there was nothing he found more reliable than steel. It might bend its way a little. It might chip or damage. But if cared for well, it didn’t break.
“If even this place couldn’t break you, then nothing can.”
Only when he turned his back did Alex feel the slightest pulse of essence. He froze, then staggered back. It was the silent plea of a man beyond death still trying his damndest to live. Those wounds had most definitely been fatal, but when he looked again, there was a cold aura emanating from Jun and his skin was fluctuating between paleness and color.
Alex had been about to ask that aloud but felt it would be insulting. He uncorked his health potion and poured it between the man’s lips. He shook his head in exasperation when a heartbeat pulsed in the man’s chest.
“If I still believed in god, I’d call this a miracle,” he muttered.
Alas, Alex knew now what this was, and it was no less astonishing. As it turned out, he’d been wrong about Jun. The man kept surprising him and he’d begun to think he was blessed with extreme talent, the depths of which only few have known.
But no, that wasn’t it. Alex tipped the rest of the HP bottle back, a shiver going through him. Jun didn’t have any talent at all. What he did have was one of the rarest, most priceless affinities known to man: an affinity with the Life Aspect
Alex sighed. The pub burned as hot as a furnace, and he knew every second spent here was another gamble. But that was the thing about gambling, wasn’t it? You roll the dice once, and you’ll roll it again. Someday, that karma comes back with a vengeance, but that day wouldn’t be today.
, Alex swore. But especially not if Jun’s tossing and turning was any indicator.
That was fine. Alex wouldn’t stop him. He had reason to believe it wasn’t as futile an effort as it originally would’ve been, and if good steel didn’t survive the tempering stage, that was simply a fact of the process. Alex wouldn’t join him; a good gambler knew when to step away.
If Jun survived what was to come, then was when he’d know if he was an ore worth shaping.
It would take a lot of convincing, of course. Even if Jun had forgiven him, things probably wouldn’t be pleasant between them. But Alex was starting to see he couldn’t do this on his own, and he had to at least . Jun was just worth that much.
The reason Life Aspect
Yeah… Jun wasn’t going to like it one bit. But that was fine for now. No amount of pragmatism could smother a craftsman’s joy when laying eyes on such priceless material. Nor could it quench the fire that bellowed in his heart. It had truly been a night of enlightenment for Alex, but if there was one it brought above all others, it was this:
Humans, too, could be forged.
SCENARIO 2 HAS ENDED.
Please wait for the distribution of rewards.
