I learned several important things in the next thirty seconds, and I learned them fast, because the alternative to learning fast was dying.
The first thing: running was a skill I already had, unlisted, no unlock required, and I threw myself into it with my whole heart.
"THIS WAY!" the barn-door boy bellowed, and — bless him — he didn't run from the goblins, he ran into them, carving a path with wide, brutal sweeps of that oversized sword so the three of us could pour through the gap behind him. "STAY ON ME! DON'T FALL BEHIND!"
The scowling girl grabbed my wrist and hauled, which was the only reason I moved at all, because the second thing I learned was that terror does not, in fact, make you faster. It makes you clumsy. It makes you a man tripping over his own bare feet in a monster-infested basement in another dimension.
The third thing I learned was the most annoying notification of my life, which chose to appear, floating and serene, exactly as a goblin lunged out of a side-crack with a rusted knife aimed at my throat.
[Quest: Survive the dungeon.]Reward: EXP. Failure penalty: death.]
"I KNOW," I screamed at it. "I'M TRYING."
The goblin's knife was a hand's width from my eye. I did the only thing my body could think of, which was throw up both arms and flinch — and something came out of me.
Not a skill. There was no chime, no box, no glowing rune. It was cruder than that: a wisp of black, oily smoke that guttered up out of my chest for half a second and then was gone. But the goblin hit it like a wall. It froze mid-lunge, every muscle locking, its yellow eyes blowing wide with a terror so total it looked almost human — and then it wheeled and fled into its own charging horde, shrieking, knocking a dozen of its fellows flat.
The blue pane blinked, unimpressed.
[Demonic Aura: involuntary discharge.]
"HE DID IT AGAIN," the robed girl howled, ecstatic, sprinting flat-out beside me. "That's a fear aura! Do you know what tier that is? That's not an F-rank— that's not even a skill, he's just leaking it—" She cackled. "You are the most broken thing I have ever seen and I would die for you."
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"Less dying," gasped the scowling girl. "More running."
We ran. The tunnel sloped up. The horde's shrieking, confused and thinned by their own panic, fell behind. And then — light. Real light, pale and cold, at the end of the throat of stone. We burst out of the dungeon mouth onto the open face of a mountain, and I skidded to a stop so hard I nearly went over, because the sky above me had two moons in it, one gold and low, one small and pale and high, and my brain simply refused to process them for a solid three seconds.
Behind us, the dungeon mouth ground itself shut with a low, final rumble, sealing the horde inside. The night went quiet except for four sets of ragged breathing.
[Quest complete: Survive the dungeon.]+40 EXP. Rank F: progress 8%.][Note: the world has felt your arrival.]
That last line hung there a beat too long before it faded, the way a person lingers in a doorway to make sure you heard them.
"'The world has felt my arrival,'" I read aloud. "Is that— should I be worried about that?"
The three of them exchanged a look. Nobody answered, which was its own kind of answer.
The scowling girl finally tucked her burned sheaf of pages away inside her coat, straightened, and looked at me properly for the first time — not as a failed summoning, but as a problem she was now stuck with.
"Vera," she said. "I'm Vera. The wall with a sword is Bruno. The one who wants to dissect you is Lila."
"Charmed," I managed. "So. What now?"
Vera opened her mouth to answer — and the blue pane cut across all four of us at once, one shared window, its light falling on every face.
[Pact Bond established.]Four souls bound. You share one fate.]You will feel one another's pain. You will fall together.]
The words settled over us like cold water. Feel one another's pain. Fall together.
"What does that mean," I said slowly. "Exactly. What does 'fall together' mean."
Lila had stopped bouncing. When she spoke, the manic edge was gone. "It's a binding. An old one. Your summoning got tangled into it." She swallowed. "It means if one of us dies — really dies — it drags on the others. Hard. Maybe fatally." She hesitated. "And we'll feel each other get hurt. Not the wounds, exactly. The echo of them."
"An echo," I repeated.
"You'll see," said Vera grimly, "the first time one of us bleeds. Trust me, you'll wish you couldn't." She turned to look down the mountain, where, far below in a black fold of valley, a scatter of weak lights marked a town. "Right now, the four of us are the only people alive who know a Demon King just walked into the world. Let's keep it that way as long as we can." She started down the slope. "Come on. And Adrian — for both our sakes, whatever you are up here—" she tapped her temple "—down there, be a nobody."
I looked up one more time at the two moons, that gold coin and that pale one, sitting far apart in the dark. Just moons. Nothing to worry about.
I told myself that, and I followed her down.