“Hey, why’d the boss send us to tail this bunch of newcomers?”
Three men were sitting at the top of a hill near the skeletons’ clearing. Two carried swords at their waists. The third, two daggers.
“You know how the boss is. Short fuse,” said the one with short blond hair, one of the swordsmen.
“Too bad we’re the ones who have to do it. I don’t like killing people for no reason,” complained the brown-haired one.
“He didn’t say to kill everybody. Just a black-haired kid, about one eighty,” remarked the one with the daggers.
“You say that, but last time we ended up killing everybody.”
“Don’t talk like it was my fault. It was just supposed to be that sucker, but the tramp kept getting on my nerves.”
“You talk about the boss, but you’re worse than him.”
“Keep getting on my nerves and I’ll do the same to you.”
“Okay, okay. Seriously now: what about the other three?”
“The big one’ll be trouble, so he can die too,” said the blond. “The scrawny kid isn’t worth a cent. Now, the little girl ought to be worth a bundle on the black market.”
“Are they that weak? They’re killing those skeletons like it’s nothing.”
“They’re newcomers from Earth. They must’ve figured out some trick with those things. We’re three level 4s against four level 2s. Piece of cake,” said the one with the daggers.
“We can ask for the trick first. We promise to let them go if they tell us.”
“Good thinking, Hagrid. This’ll be the easiest money of the we…”
SHING
*
The spear went into his back and came out through his chest.
He slowly brought his hand to the blade, not believing it. I lifted him off the ground. A meter up, I pulled the spear back and, before he fell, spun the shaft. The head rolled toward the other two, who jumped back on instinct.
“One down.”
I swung the spear to the side. The blood sprayed onto the grass.
“Two to go.”
The voice was mine. The words weren’t. I had come down that hill with a simple plan, which was to scare the three of them, find out who had sent them and maybe, with luck, get a few coins. Somewhere on the way down, listening to the three of them argue about how much Lili was worth on the black market, the plan had been swapped for another. I didn’t remember swapping it.
“Who are you?!” the brown-haired one shouted. “You bastard, do you have any idea who you just killed?”
“A pig.”
“You…”
“Wait, Umberto,” said the blond. “This guy. He’s the one we came to kill.”
Umberto calmed down and looked straight at the face hidden under my hood.
“Ah. Kept your cool. Just as I thought: you’re the most skilled one in the group.”
“What’s impressive is you staying calm, since you’ve lost the element of surprise,” Hagrid answered. “You killed someone important. Now we can’t let you go.”
He said it firmly, but the hand on his sword hilt was damp. He hadn’t sensed my presence at all. Nobody gets close to three professionals without being noticed, and I had gotten close.
“Not that you were planning to.”
The two exchanged a look and advanced together, one on each side.
I vaulted off the butt of the spear planted in the ground, escaped the pincer and kicked them both. Umberto took the foot straight in the face. Hagrid blocked with his forearm and countered with his sword.
“Naive!”
Before the blade reached my leg, I arched my body in midair, and the sword passed a hair from my calf without touching it. I used the momentum to spin the shaft of the Hsu Quandao and hit Hagrid, who fell back.
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He goes for the legs of anyone in the air. A safe bet against a newcomer. Against me, it’s reading the same book twice.
“You bastard, who are you?”
“What do you mean? You know who I am. You were planning to kill me two minutes ago.”
“Cut the crap!” the blond shot back. “You’re not going to make me believe a fresh arrival fights like that!”
I smiled. I was level 2 with level 3 attributes and had, stored in my body, at least a year of combat. A year as a newcomer, who suffers much more than the natives to adapt. A year in hell.
I kept quiet and let him believe the lie he had made up all by himself.
“Tell me, what faction are you with?” he tried. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement so there’s no more trouble.”
“Didn’t you just say the guy I killed was important?”
His face said the rest. The one with the daggers had been someone close to the boss. Very close.
“Like I said, anything can be settled.”
“Die, you bastard!”
Umberto came from behind. His sword cut exactly where I had been and found only air.
“Behind you!” Hagrid shouted, too late. The second head rolled.
“Another one down. One to go.”
Hagrid backed up two steps. You could see the questions passing through his eyes, one after another: how did he vanish, who is this, how did I end up here.
“If you kill me, others will come! The boss’ll put a price on your head! Let me go and I’ll make it look like an accident, I swear, like it never happened!”
He had trained for many years to reach level 4. He couldn’t believe it was all ending like this, on a hill, because of a kid of one eighty.
“You’re forgetting one detail.”
I took a step back, with the hood up, and vanished from his sight. The stealth of the Hood of Specters didn’t work against someone looking straight at me. But I had another skill, and, combined with the equipment, it made all the difference.
[Shadow Walk - Level 1]
[Stealth doubled in shadows]
The next second, I reappeared in the air, at high speed.
He drew on his experience and tried his last chance: hitting me in the jump. I vanished into the shadow again, like smoke, and came back right behind him. The spear spun once.
“With no witnesses, who’s going to tell what happened?”
*
Unlike most skeletons, all three left souls.
That’s a problem.
The question was whether the souls had appeared because the three were level 4 or because they were human. I kept looking at the three spheres in the air and decided not to think too hard. If I started doing math with that, I wouldn’t like the result.
I had no intention at all of becoming a mass murderer. It went against everything I wanted: to climb, to reach the top, to understand what exists at the center of Erebus. Being the strongest in the world only makes sense if there’s someone else in the world.
[Level 4 Soul collected]
[Strength +1]
[Level 4 Soul collected]
[No attribute gained]
[Level 4 Soul collected]
[Dexterity +1]
Not even a soul at double my level is a sure thing. What’s the rule? Maybe only by advancing my class would I find out.
I searched the bodies. All three carried the same symbol: a planet with a ring. The same as the big guy from Expansion Reach.
“Just as I thought.”
I took the symbols, the weapons, the equipment and what little money they had.
“Most of it’s junk. The weapons must be worth a few shillings. The boots and the pants will fit Rafael.”
Sun and Lili might not understand it yet, in such a small group, but the most important position in a group is the shield: the one who takes the blows and draws the attacks. The rule is old: if there’s someone who can take the blows, any monster can be defeated.
I folded the pants and the boots under my arm and stood still, looking at the three bodies.
I waited for the nausea. In my first life, I had thrown up after the first man I killed; that much I was sure of, even without remembering his face. Now I waited, and it didn’t come. Only a small tiredness, and the strange feeling of having watched a video of myself made by someone else.
One down. Two to go. I had never talked like that in my life. The other one did.
I tried to make a joke about it, and one came. At least the inventory’s up to date. It was my way of talking, my usual words. Except the inventory was three men on the ground.
It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s been a long day.
“Better get back. They must be worried.”
It was almost nightfall, and I still had a long night ahead. I needed to start forging the bracers. If I took too long, the newcomers would pass the level at which they were useful, and I’d be left with stock nobody wanted to buy.
Thinking about stock helped. Spreadsheets always helped.
*
When I got back, Lili was the first to see me. She didn’t run. She stood still, looking me over from head to toe, and I realized too late that there was blood on my sleeve.
“Hurt?” she asked.
It was the first question she had asked me, and not Rafael or the air. I didn’t know what to do with that, so I answered.
“No. It’s not mine.”
She kept looking at the sleeve. Then at my face. Then she nodded, just once. She had stored that away somewhere, along with the other things she stored and didn’t tell anyone.
Rafael didn’t ask anything. I took the pants and the boots and held them out to him.
“A present.”
He looked at the clothes. He looked at my sleeve. He took them.
“Thanks, kid.”
[Name: Kai Sehun]
[Level: 2]
[Class: ???]
[Tier 1: Umbra Initiate]
[Available attribute points: 0]
[Strength: 16 (+2)]
[Dexterity: 12 (+4)]
[Intelligence: 15 (+1)]
[Vitality: 11]
[Tenacity: 9]
[Luck: 8 (+3)]
[Umbra: 2]
Two more attributes, and the record had no line at all for the rest. In the city, someone from Expansion Reach must be waiting for news of three men. He could wait all he liked.