《Player 47》


 001: Change

    Frey woke up in a crumbling hall of stone and dust, a splitting ache in his head. A dozen set of eyes were on him, eyes that quickly lost interest in him as he stood up, and he was standing among a crowd of a hundred people--maybe more--and all the faces he saw were nothing alike each other: there were men and women, boys and girls, and they all must''ve aged no less than thirteen and no more than twenty-five. Some were Caucasian-white, some African-dark, while others were copper-skinned and others still were yellow, and they all looked as confused and thrown out of place as him.


    A vast ceiling hung far above their heads, golden daylight streaming in through the thousand arch windows lining the chamber''s walls that circled them. Frey heard whispers, cries of ''where are we'' and ''what happened'', and those who weren''t darting their eyes across the hall nervously were pinching themselves back to reality.


    "Excuse me, Mister." he felt a tug at his left sleeve. Frey turned around to see a short girl (she might''ve been close to his age, but she looked much, much younger) in a black minidress with a pleated skirt that stretched until above her knees.


    "Yes?" he replied. She had silk-white skin, with flowing jet hair and bangs as flat as a plateau. Her eyes were no less black than her hair, and they were narrow at the corners, which might''ve told him all about her ethnicity.


    "Do you know where this is?" she asked with a smile, like a lost tourist asking for directions, although she was too collected herself that he could''ve been the one asking her. He shook his head. "No, I''m afraid we''re all on the same boat here."


    "I see." the girl sighed. "Thanks anyway, Mister...?"


    "Frey. Frey Alcott." he replied.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "Mister Alcott. The name''s Airi Ohara. Please remember it." the girl said.


    "I''ll try. Nice meeting you." he replied, and the girl''s face went dubious, almost cynical. "Is it? Is it nice meeting me? I think you are speaking too soon." She walked away and disappeared into the crowd, and Frey didn''t know what she meant then.


    In front of them was a circular stage of some sort, elevated good four feet from where they stood. There was a huge stone archway at the center of the stage, with runic characters carved along its craggy surface, and the first time he ever really noticed it was when the people around him clamored and pointed at the arch, as the runes on its edges were slowly filling up with blue light that danced and swirled like smoke, and when all the runes were filled, a screen of blue swirling light covered the insides of the archway. Everyone held their breath as they watched impossible happen, and when a figure stepped out of the typhoon of blue luminance beneath the archway, Frey swore they could have picked their jaw off the floor.


    "Greetings, Players." the figure was a woman in a pitch-black ball gown accented by blood-red frills on the sleeves and bodice and skirt. She had flowing long platinum-gray hair, and was the prettiest woman Frey had seen, no matter how badly he didn''t want to admit. But, as far as women''s wiles go, it didn''t distract him enough to miss what she just said.


    "I am Victorina, and welcome to the Hall of the Lost. I guess this is what you call Purgatory back on Earth, though I assure you it doesn''t work quite the way you think." Another round of whispers and exclaims swept the crowd, only to be extinguished when the woman, Victorina, laid down her next words.


    "Before I explain to you this... unlikely predicament you are in, I feel it is my obligation to tell you all first one, most important truth." people held their breaths.


    "All of you, are already dead."


    The hall was grave-silent. Frey couldn''t move. It was as if his body was an intricate sculpture of ice--static and cold. The woman in the black-red gown glanced at him, and in the golden sea of her eyes he saw his life flashing before his eyes. He saw stars and skies and soul and death. He saw everything, and nothing, then his vision went black, and he remembered.

 002: Genesis

    It was his girlfriend''s birthday and Frey, getting up as early as he could, which was somewhere around six in the morning, jumpstarted his day with a cold shower and a cold soak on a freezing tub. He doesn''t usually do this--preferring the lukewarm bath in such a cold autumn morning, but today he felt himself in need of a push. A hard one, at that.


    He knew the problems of a man with a girlfriend--had heard it a lot from his friends, that money was the greatest issue when dating a girl. He had enough money. The next worry he knew were the places to go to, and it wasn''t his problem, either: Elise was easy enough to please, and he only need to take her to a resto with good chilies and spaghetti, and she''d be happy as the sun. No, his worry was neither. He let himself slide deeper into the tiled tub of his apartment''s bathroom, heart shivering as the cold burned his body.


    He made a list in his head, places where he would take her today, the first one being the eco-park two blocks from here. They''d watch the butterfly garden there, maybe pick a few mulberries from the open farm, and then he''d take her to the new caf¨¦ that opened in front of the mall down Naval Street a few weeks ago. Andy said the place served good carbonara, and carbonara was one of Elise''s favorites. Then, after eating late lunch at the caf¨¦, when the sun is well setting, they''d go to an arcade. He''ll play the claw game (he was good at it, the few times he tried playing), maybe get the girl a stuffed bear or two, and they''ll walk home, and that''s where he hit a roadblock: he hadn''t made up his mind on how he would put a ring on her finger.


    He''d been through scenarios in his head, on the various way he could play it, and each one ended up leaving him exhausted and embarrassed. Should he propose to her before they go to the arcade, or after? Should he give her flowers with the ring inside the bouquet, or just give it to her on bended knees? Before he could finish pondering and freeze himself to death, he was out of the bath and was shaving his stubble and brushing his teeth. He dressed himself in a cool--but not too formal--blue button-down shirt, ironed at the ends, and black slacks. He opened his drawer and took a red velvet ring box, then shoved it in his pocket. He shouldn''t think too much on how he should do it, he thought, and he walked out of the door feeling a rush of blind confidence.


    He took the elevator to the fourth floor where Elise''s unit was at, walked down a hallway of synthetic wooden doors and wine-red carpet, and knocked on the door at the end of the hall.


    "Who''s there?" grumbled a woman inside.


    "Guess who?" Frey teased.


    The door opened a crack. "You''re too early." Elise peeked out, pouting, eyes half-closed. Her chestnut tresses were a bed-hair mess covering her face, but even then Frey found her as beautiful a woman could ever hope to be. "I''m gonna get changed."


    "Will you let me in?" he asked.


    "No way in hell." Elise growled, shutting the door on his face.


    "Hey, it''s not like I''ll peek, you know. It''s cold in the hallway."


    "Go elsewhere."


    Frey sighed. Sometimes he never did get Elise. He''d seen her naked before--just one time, actually, and that time it was an unavoidable situation, but the point is he''d already seen her--what was left there for her to hide from him? He shook his head, chucking it up to the woman''s overall conservative nature. Why, she''d never slept with him, not once in the six years they''d been in a relationship. She told him she wanted her first to be their honeymoon, and her sentiment was very unlikely in this day and age that he thought she was a Victorian woman sent to the future.


    He went out at the front of the apartment, Naval Street stretching before him, and watched people and cars pass by. Every five minutes he would glance at his digital wristwatch and stare up at the blue cold mid-autumn sky, then at the streetlights. Girls sure take forever to prepare, he thought, but if it was Elise, then waiting shouldn''t be a problem for him. It''s boring, though, to the degree that he found the occasional traffic jams entertaining. After what seemed like forever but was actually just thirty minutes of standing in front of the building doing nothing, he fished his pocket for his phone and opened a card game.


    He was not much of a gamer: he didn''t know what were the latest games, the hot stuff all males of his age talk about. The card game was his only game and it came with the phone, a simple solitaire platform, and he''d been playing it at his leisure ever since. He took a liking to the idea of a game you could play with no strings attached; when you win, you win, and you start another, and you can quit whenever you''re bored or life comes back to bother you. No commitments, no ''online friends'' to be disappointed in you when you start playing less--solitary, as implied by the name of the game. That, he thought, was what people of this ''social'' generation needed. Less sharing and talking and telling, perhaps more silence and retrospection. Maybe he''d love the company of people more, then.


    As of now, the only person whose company he truly enjoys is Elise, as she shares the same sentiment, from time to time asking him for quietness, and they''d lay hugging each other on his bed, not saying anything, but happy and strongly bonded together. Women like Elise, he imagined, are very, very hard to find, if not wholly impossible. He breathed, tore his eyes away from his phone screen, his solitary game, to look up at the sky. It was clear and blue as a clean pool that covered the Earth, and he decided he was lucky to have a girlfriend who understood him and his wants, even if she was a grump at mornings, and he''d be willing to wait for her, for the rest of his life, even if he gets bored again and again.


    He glanced at his watch--forty-five minutes, since he''d gone out of the lobby into the freezing outside. There was a shriek of help, coming from deep into the narrow path between the apartment building and a tailor shop that sold hand-made woolen sweaters and suits. The scream was distant, but by no means weak: he could hear it in his ears, as loud as it would''ve been coming from beside him. Yet, not even one person from the crowd of hundreds passing by the building, passing by him, even took the second to look around, hold their phone calls, to find where the scream came. It half-worried and half-disgusted him to see how blind and insensitive people can be, and before he knew what he was doing, he was speeding into the dark, obscure back-alley. The cold morning air burned his lungs, but he paid his wellbeing no mind. Jumping over garbage cans and used carton boxes he plunged deeper into the back alley with the wind on his back. The surrounding got darker and darker as he ran. A corner laid ahead, and beyond the turn shone faint blue light.


    Inside his head, a voice was shouting at him to turn back, to not take the turn, but it was never really a habit of him to listen to himself. He looked around for an object he could use to defend himself, if worse came to worst, which was a thin PVC pipe about two feet long. Cautiously he approached the source of the blue light. Just one step from making the turn he stopped, leaned behind a wall to breathe and think. Pulled out the cellphone from his pocket. No signal. No calling the police. Frey took a deep breath. What he would find beyond this wall might include from petty criminals like pick-pockets and addicts, to the worst kind like kidnappers and muggers.


    Think. Regardless of the kind, catching criminals require police intervention. He was no police. He considered running back to the open, call the police, and let them handle this. But what if the police came a moment too late and someone dies? What does he care? That''s not his problem, he''s not Superman. And besides, it''s been a good two minutes since he heard the shriek. The victim might already be dead. Yes, the most logical step is to call the police. He took a step back, two steps, three. Turned his back and broke into a silent sprint.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    He didn''t make it far. The shrill scream of a female rang out from beyond the turn, and all thoughts of fleeing inside him was flooded with the moral urgency to save. He turned around and ran. This time, there was no thinking twice as he stepped out of safety behind the corner wall. He raised his pipe, prepared to thwack whatever criminal would come at him.


    He was stupid. So stupid. He realized that a moment too late.


    Four meters ahead of him was the one making the shrieks. It wasn''t a damsel in distress, nor was it a hardened criminal in ski mask and black leather coat. Hell, it wasn''t even human. It was an octopus, only that it was at least three meters tall, and had a hundred tentacles too many, wriggling beneath its head, which was shaped like a brain, with dark red nerves pulsing beneath its translucent, slimy skin.


    Frey couldn''t move. Something told him he would die if he ran, but who was he kidding? He would die either way if he just stood there. He should''ve listened to himself. Shouldn''t have tried to be a hero. There was no victim. No victim, perhaps except him. Whatever the thing was, he knew it wasn''t something so kind as to spare him, nor was it something that could be killed by a flimsy pipe.


    In the middle of the thing''s head opened an eye as big as a football, solid yellow in color with black outstretched nerves, then a dozen smaller ones popped open around it, and it was the worst sight he had ever seen.


    "Hihihihi..." an ear-grating screech vibrated from the monster.


    It latched on the wall like a leech, then slowly crept toward him. Frey dropped the pipe and sprinted away from the thing.


    "Hihihihi..."


    He hadn''t gotten far. Sharp pain pierced through his back and straight through his lower spinal column. His legs went numb. He couldn''t feel his body from the waist down, as if his legs were severed from him. Protruding out his stomach was the tip of a tentacle, black and bulging with red veins. It wriggled like a worm, as if mocking him and his futile attempt at running. It lifted him three feet off the ground, and he yanked and thrashed and he imagined his feet would''ve been flailing then, if they didn''t limp still, unable to be felt, much less moved. The monster pulled him in slowly, its writhing tentacles waiting for him at the end of the line. His hands were painted red with his own blood, and with each passing second his consciousness strayed farther away from the reality of the situation.


    "Damn..."


    Bright blue light shone behind him. He looked over his shoulder and understood: the blue light he saw earlier was the light of the monster''s eye.


    ---


    "This is bullshit."


    "I can''t be dead!"


    Some cried, some shouted, but most were like Frey: paralyzed.


    He really did die. Anger, fear, anxiety and sadness all attacked him at once, and he was feeling everything at the same time, or nothing at all. He didn''t know.


    Airi Ohara, the Japanese girl, stood a few meters ahead, and in his eyes she stood out among the crowd of youth as the only one who didn''t seem daunted, surprised, in any way at all, about the situation''s development. Victorina spoke again, gathering attention. "I know how all of you feel; you are children, with so many great things left undone, so much love left unsaid. For the curtains of life to draw on you so soon, I know not of a greater anguish." angry shouts became weak whispers before the woman''s voice, cries turning to sobs as quick as the turn of a leaf, a calm, soothing melody, sweeping over the crowd as if her words were anesthesia to their sorrow.


    Even Frey found Victorina''s voice a calming salve, but it couldn''t heat the cold he felt, like the cold of becoming a corpse, and the woman''s spell just sat on the surface, unable to penetrate the murky depths of emotions ebbing and flowing in monotony in his gut.


    He was dead. As far as the world was concerned, Frey Alcott was dead, a hole in his stomach, body bathing in the pool of his own blood, in a back alley along Naval Street, or not; maybe the monster--whatever the hell it was--had eaten him whole, then Frey Alcott had simply gone missing, one cold autumn morning, and Elise, she might be looking for him now, knocking on his door, checking with the security, calling the cops, and she''d never find him.


    "However, all is not lost." Victorina smiled, a gentle, sweet smile, the reassuring smile of a surgeon before an operation, or the confident smile of a lawyer before a defense. "The gods have brought you here, all one-hundred-sixty of you, for the chance to live again. Redemption, how does that sound?"


    All eyes were on her then, and she paced around the stage, like a beautiful actress addressing the audience. "That said, a second life is not without a cost. You must prove yourself worthy of such a sacred gift, and you can only prove it by playing." she paused, sneaking another glance at Frey.


    "That''s right, you''re going to play a game. One hundred and sixty Players, all of you, but only one should win. To be that one, the other one hundred and fifty-nine Players should be eliminated."


    "Eliminated." Frey had a bad feeling, as if everything could get any worse. Victorina breathed on her palm, her breath a gust of blue stardust that swirled and spun above her palm, forming a galaxy of blue specks, before imploding, and materializing, into an orb of green and blue and yellow, a representation of a planet like Earth in color and vibrance, and it floated on her palm like hologram.


    "Your game is set in Eideleir, a place of gods and monsters as well a place for humans. Each Player will be in a borrowed body, and is eliminated when his or her body ceases all life function. Put simply, dead." this earned more than a few cries of indignation from the youth, now appropriately called Players, and Victorina waited for the noise to die down before speaking again.


    "To eliminate other Players and achieve the main objective of the game, each will be given the appropriate tools, at the start of the game."


    Frey was lost. He had some idea about what the black-gowned woman was saying, although he kept wishing he was wrong. Killing others for the sake of living again? It sounded stupid. And sickening. To think that someone, or something out there, would think of something so atrocious and call it a mere "game". And yet, it was the way out he needed. It was the way for him to bring back his life, to see Elise''s smile again. He clenched his fists and looked up at Victorina. She met his eyes, and she winked at him, a slow, playful wink, and he understood.


    The ground at their feet began to vibrate, and then crumble, cracks running like electricity through stone, breaking the floor in chunks and pieces, before it collapsed, and Frey closed his eyes.


    He was falling. His eyes were still shut. Elise smiled at him from above, and as he fell farther and farther down the endless black pit the face of his love became smaller, and smaller, until all he could see was black.


    "Wait for me." he muttered softly.


    He knew what he needed to do. He understood it was evil, and selfish, but what choice did he have? If it was for Elise, then, even if he had to eliminate a hundred people, he''ll do it. He must do it.


    Frey woke up in the middle of nowhere, which was a rainforest of ancient trees and thick shrubs and overgrowth. At his feet was a wooden chest, square, measuring one foot on all sides. Carved on the back of his right hand was a tattoo, of a sword encircled by two crescents on both side.


    He sat up, nausea in his motion. The sun was high in the sky, but the roof of leaves above him filtered the harsh sunlight. He inspected the chest, first looking at it, searching for openings, or locks. There were no visible locks, but the moment he touched its wooden surface something inside clicked, and the chest lid sprung open. Inside was a bracer of some sort, or an arm guard, made almost entirely of shiny steel. A blue rhombus gem was embedded into the arm guard''s surface, and inside the gem sea-green-colored dusts swirled like a galaxy in a universe of blue.


    Along with the arm guard was a green booklet, a little like the student handbook the school issued him when he was still in college, and it contained brief and trivial info about the school, and gave short description of the courses available. Frey opened the booklet, expecting a guide of some sort, like the student handbook, but it was empty. Then the first page caught on fire and he dropped the booklet on the ground. There was something funny with the way it burned: first, the flames didn''t spread to the dead and well-dried leaves around it and second, letters were forming on the page, written with the black color of burnt parchment, and when it was done writing the flames died, snuffed-out.


    Cautiously, perhaps a little spooked out, Frey picked up the book, and the first page that should''ve been empty, read:


    Player 47


    Frey Alcott

 003: Player 47

    Player 47


    Frey Alcott


    No more text seemed to burn on the first page, other than his name and "Player 47". Probably that''s his ID as a player. He turned to the next page. Sure enough, it was empty. He waited for a minute, two minutes. Nothing seemed to happen. He flipped again. Waited. Nothing. He repeated the routine until he was well half into the book, in which he caught glimpse of a page that had something in it. It was a drawing--a sketch of the arm guard that laid in his starting chest.


    The silver arm guard was long as to cover the whole span of his forearm. Its steel was a half inch thick, and looked like it could stop a bullet or two, but is totally useless since it only covers his forearm. At the center of its span protruded a clean-cut blue gem the shape of a rhombus square, and was about 2 inches long by 1 inch wide. He looked deeper into the gem, and saw a galaxy of green dust swirling inside.


    At the front end of the arm guard was a thin wide slit, which for all he knew might be a big SD card slot, or a place you can swipe your credit card through. Jokes aside, he was curious what the slit was for. Maybe something will come out of it. He didn''t know. In the first place, this whole affair was occult from the very beginning--no sense trying to make sense of it. He looked at the book again. No change on the sketch. He flipped to the next page, and three question marks burned in the middle of the new page.


    "Isn''t this book so useful..." he sighed and closed the book, put it in his jeans'' pocket, and went back to scrutinizing the arm guard. It was a little too large for his arm. The arm guard was, he discovered, large enough for his hand to pass through its ends without a problem. It was an arm guard, but it felt more like a hoola hoop for his thin arm. He didn''t know how something as faulty as the thing could be so useful. Was he supposed to fling it at enemies? Stupid. He''d die before he gets caught doing something so silly. The thing was useless as a tool, and looked more ornamental.


    Well, the blue gem at the heart of it looked beautiful enough to pass as valuable. He touched the gem. It lit brilliant green, the color of the dust trapped inside the blue gem. He should have expected it to be touch-activated from the chest, but Frey Alcott was as ever a logical man. The steel of the arm guard melted into thick, mercurial liquid. The melted steel did not drip down to the ground, as the law of gravity might suggest, and seemed to have life on its own, clinging to his skin like a leech would to its host. The steel was scorching hot to the touch, and he could only wriggle in pain as the arm guard fitted as it pleased on his skin from the elbow down.


    He screamed and trashed around, with the crunching sound of dead leaves accompanying his every footfall and chirps of disturb birds with every swing of his arm, which he thought was gonna fall off from cauterization. It was not long till he lost energy and succumbed to the pain and fatigue.


    ---


    When he came about, it was already night. The forest that had been dim during the day was ever darker during the night. Starlight filtered by the forestial roof of tree leaves gave barely enough luminance for him to see his surroundings. What happened? He remembered. His right arm was fine. He could still feel it as a part of his body, and could still fold and unfold his fingers. He sat up, took a look at the arm guard wrapped on his arm, and tried to pull it off, at first gently. It didn''t budge. He pulled on it again, with a much stronger force, and then decided his skin will tear off first before the damned thing let him go. He next felt around the arm guard''s steel body to perhaps find a lock or the like, but its surface was impeccably smooth.


    It was almost embarrassing as it was ironic that he thought the arm guard was too large earlier. Now it''s stuck on his arm. Hell, with how hot it was earlier, the steel might''ve even burned itself into his skin. He yanked on the arm guard for the last time, before giving up entirely. He glanced around. Not that he could see much in the dark. All he could see were outlines of shrubs, and the towering shadows of trees in the distance.


    He was starting to worry for himself. He hadn''t forgotten what Victorina said. The world was home to monsters and deities. Was it really okay for him to be in the middle of a dark forest this time of day, in a world where wild animals were the least threatening things you might find lunging out at you? Basic law of probability showed that there was a high chance of there being a bloodthirsty beast just waiting to pounce at him from behind the shrubs. The damned woman might be the reason he''s in this world, in this game, but he figured she wasn''t lying as much as he hoped.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    The real question of the day was, what was he going to do next? He''s in the middle of a forest, in the middle of God knows where, with not a map nor even a compass to start with.


    Not to mention food. Frey knew he was dead, but he doubted this "borrowed body" he''s in now can live with just air for sustenance. He had just rested and wasn''t yet hungry, but figured if he was going to survive this game, he''ll need the proper nutrients. He''ll need them sooner than later.


    For now he decided to consult his booklet. The blue gem in his arm guard glowed mild amidst the shadows. He used the glow of it to make of what''s written in the booklet. He flipped through the pages until he landed on the page where the arm guard''s sketch was drawn. Nothing changed much, except that there were now three question marks above the sketch, which was not there the last time he checked. The next page displayed three big question marks, as before. He flipped to the next page, and was surprised to see that something was actually written on it.


    Goblin Hound


    Only those two words were written on the top of the page. Must be some kind of monster and, by the name alone, a dangerous sort. He turned to another page, but nothing was written on it. A sense of foreboding made him want to dig a hole in the ground and hide in it until morning, but then the ground might eat him alive. Wherever teleport and sentient mercury is possible, everything is possible.


    He stood up, shook his legs awake. The first to-do on his list was finding shelter. A cave would be nice, decreases the chance of him getting eaten alive by whatever monsters lurk in the forest. One of them might be this "Goblin Hound" written on the booklet. He walked aimlessly but in a straight line, the glow of his arm guard the only guide preventing him from crashing into a tree. Finally he was finding some use for the thing, albeit a bit more trivial than he''d wanted and expected. He needed more than a lantern. He needed something to defend himself with. On his trail he found a broken branch, not a meter long, lodged between the thick roots of the oak (it looked like oak, but probably wasn''t) it fell from. He pulled it out and took it along. Better than bare hands.


    Frey stopped when a nearby shrub rustled. He pointed his arm guard at the shrub, his twig at the ready. The shrub was three feet tall, with green berries peppering its leafy exterior. The shrub shook again. Frey took a few steps back. He didn''t really know any fighting technique, and having a stick for a weapon didn''t make him any more comfortable.


    He could run, but that might attract more danger to him. Not an option. He took on an impromptu crouching stance, and waited for the monster to come out.


    It wasn''t a monster. Well, not by his standards, anyway. What shot out of the shrub was a furry pink animal the size of a bunny. It had looped horns like a ram on the two sides of its head, and it had blue marble eyes that shone as they reflected the green glow of Frey''s arm guard.


    Cute, he thought. And the shrub grew fangs and teeth and gorged on the little creature. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn''t the shrub that ate it.


    Came out of the green, still chewing the furry pink animal was a dog as large as a tiger. Its eyes were bloodshot, its mouth holding three rows of shark-like teeth, and two large front incisors that dripped with the critter''s blood. It looked pretty much like a "Goblin Hound" to him.


    The beast jumped, tackling and mounting him as his back crashed down the forest ground. Breath was knocked out of his lungs as the hound''s ton of a weight pressed on him, and sharp pain stung his body as the monster''s claws sink on his thighs. He swung his twig, and the Hound caught it between its razor teeth. One chomp was all it took for the wood to break off the middle. The Hound snarled a pissed-off snarl and it bit down, with the intention of swallowing his head whole, and would''ve succeeded if he hadn''t put his left arm between his face and the monster''s jaws. Tearing pain shot from his arm to his head as the dog gnawed on his left arm.


    "Shit, shit, shit!" blood and chunks of skin flattened on his face as his arm flesh was torn to shreds. In a panic he punched the monster with his right hand. A metallic clink came from the arm guard and, at the same time his fist collided with the beast''s jaw, a metal tip protruded out of its head, covered with dark-red blood. The gnawing on his left arm ceased. The hound went lifeless, suspended over him by the silver blade that pierced it. The blade, he realized, came out of the arm guard--from the thin slit on its front. The blue gem of the arm guard glowed bright green, as if to proclaim its blade had won.


    The blade retracted back into the arm guard with a shing as the blue gem''s light extinguished. The dead weight of the monster fell to the side, away from him.


    He was alive. He looked straight above, at the starry night sky past the tree leaves, feeling in his whole body less pain than numbness.


    Get up, his head told him. He tried. With only one healthy hand to push him up, it was more than a chore he could handle. His body was heavy, his thighs were cut pretty bad. The monster must''ve had knives for paws. He managed to sit up, but that was as far as he got before the world wobbled and blurred around him. He had to seal his wounds, but without strength to tear a piece of his clothes, he was helpless.


    He had to go. Anywhere but there, where scavengers might smell the dead Goblin Hound and think he was part of the happy meal.


    He pushed himself to a crawl, which was more of a creep along the floor. His mangled arm gushed out more blood with each movement, and soon blood loss got the better of him. He fell to his side, heat leaving his body fast, and he laid there on the ground in the middle of the forest, with a dead monster for a companion.

 004: Generation

    He was back in Purgatory. Or Hall of the Lost, as that Victorina had called it. Unlike the first time, no other Player was around except him.


    The hall was dim, but not pitch black. Purple night seeped from outside through the thousand arch windows carved out of the yellow ancient walls of the chamber.


    Victorina was, as before, under the stone arch in the center of the stage. She sat on a chair before a porcelain-white round table, sipping on a quaint teacup in one hand, holding a saucer in the other. He found her motions hypnotically fluid and graceful, down to the way she tipped her teacup further up as she emptied her drink.


    When she noticed Frey from the corner of her eye, she brought down the tea cup and its saucer on the round table before her.


    "I didn''t realize I have a visitor. How are you?" her voice echoed throughout the empty chamber, as melodious and charming as he heard it the first time.


    "I''m not a visitor." he replied, trying his hardest not to swoon over at the woman''s spell-like voice. "I don''t even know why I''m back here. Did I die again?" he answered, with none of the pleasantries he couldn''t afford to indulge in.


    "Hmmm..." she put a finger up her chin. "No you didn''t. You are merely... sleeping, for the moment.


    "That aside, come have a seat." Victorina ushered him to the seat across from her. Frey took the stairs up the stage, walked up to the archway and sat opposite to Victorina.


    "So you can watch us without actually being there, eh? Why am I not surprised?" said Frey as he settled on the cold, white-coated metal chair.


    "Frey Alcott, is it?" Victorina flashed him a seducing smile. "I am a goddess. I can see what every Player is doing. Can see what every living thing on Eideleir, is doing."


    "Right." he looked around the chamber nervously, gathering his thoughts for a moment. He didn''t like the place, for some reason, and he was convinced it had to do with more than just petty dislike. It was more of an instinct, that if he stayed for too long in the Purgatory, something would happen to him, or to his soul. Maybe the air feeds on his energy, as his shoulders began to slouch, and as the silence went on between him and the goddess he felt his teeth and tongue loosen.


    "I was... I was attacked by a monster." he uttered, breaking the silence of the hall. He remembered what he went through in that back alley. How the thing laughed as it chased him to his death. No, it didn''t even need to chase him. It was just toying with him, made him think he could run.


    "Yes, a Goblin Hound, wasn''t it?" Victorina sipped on her tea cup. "You''ve done well killing something so ferocious. Did you know, that villages send out ten men just to hunt one?"


    "No, I''m not talking about that hound." he shook his head.


    "Eh?" mild surprise shone on Victorina''s golden eyes.


    "I was attacked by a monster. On Earth." Frey continued. "It looked like an octopus, but big, and it had a lot of eyes and it could mimic people''s voices. I know, I fell victim to it." his eyes were swimming around as he said this, looking at the ornate teapot on the table one second, noting the poppies and bougainvillea painted across its porcelain surface, before his attention slipped to the teacup Victorina was consoling the next moment. It was akin to getting drunk, not that he''d drank himself silly before, he just assumed that was how it felt. "I assumed you knew, because you were the one who brought us here."


    "No," she shrugged. "It is my first time hearing it."


    "But I thought you were a goddess?" he raised a brow, or thought he had, since his eyes were half-closing then and he was less aware of what was happening.


    "Aren''t you a rude little thing?" Victorina snorted. "I''m a goddess of Eideleir, not of Earth. Although it is theoretically possible for a monster to cross worlds, this is my first time hearing a case of an earthling getting attacked by one.


    "I mean, it''s one thing if a monster managed to cross worlds, but whether it can stay alive on Earth long--given that Earth is a magically-dry world--is another thing in of itself. Monsters, unlike beings with soul, need to suck up magic power constantly to maintain its form. I guess I don''t need to explain to you what happens when they don''t get enough magic to feed on?"


    "So, you''re saying," Frey shook his head awake. "the monster should''ve died of starvation before it could even attack someone?"Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    "It shouldn''t have been able to even take form, in the first place. Or it could have, but it''d look more like a moving black sludge, than anything like a monster." she sighed. "But then again, we''re running on the assumption that it really WAS a monster."


    Frey tilted his head. "You mean it wasn''t?"


    "I''m not saying absolutely. I''m just stating the possibility that it might not have been a monster." Victorina''s expression changed from factual to one that hinted playfulness. "All these things aside, aren''t you playing my game right now? I love my players, but I see them no more than pets. I believe you''re being... too hasty, with your advances towards me. I am a goddess, you''ll find me not so easy to court."


    "... Courting?" his brain barely functioned.


    "Was that not your motive for visiting a woman so late at night, in the first place?"


    "I''m not here... for a night raid. I don''t even know, why I''m here. There''s so many things I don''t know." Victorina heaved a sigh of disappointment, her chest rising and falling as she breathed. In an effort to keep himself awake Frey''s gaze darted across the hall looking for something, anything, to focus on, not that he found himself momentarily focused on her chest, no. "Well, I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Frey Alcott," she put down her teacup on its saucer and rested it on the table. "but I''m afraid, Purgatory isn''t a friendly place for your physically-bound soul. Look, if you sleep here, you might never wake up again, you know?"


    "That, would probably be bad." he agreed. He rose from his seat with the grace of a drunkard. "I should go... I hate this place. Where''s the door?"


    "There''s no door here. Only me." Victorina ended their conversation with a mutter and a last seductive smile, then snapped her fingers.


    The corners of Frey''s vision wriggled. The space around him warped and skewed, Victorina''s face liquefying into a mix of colors of silver and peach and gold and he closed his eyes, let the transition between worlds, between dream and reality, pass him by.


    ---


    When he opened his eyes, he was laying alone in a small, dim-lit room. The dream had broken into incomprehensible fragments in his head. The ceiling was made of woven layers of dried grass, and the walls were made of thin wooden logs. There was no lighting except from the rays of golden sunlight peeking from the tiny spaces between the logs of the wall.


    He laid on a single sheet of cloth. Hardly comfortable, but it was enough. And no pillows. He was no longer in his shirt and pants. Instead, a loose white robe wrapped his body. What was this kind of robe called again? Kimono? His dirty shirt and slacks lay in a heap on one corner of the room.


    Rough bandages covered his arm from the elbow down. He could still feel it throb with pain, but he was safe from blood loss.


    He lifted his body up. With only his uninjured arm as support, he found it quite the struggle. His torso still ached all over, he wouldn''t be surprised if, under the robe, his body was peppered with bruises. The goblin hound wasn''t exactly light. Getting mounted by it was like getting run over by a scooter.


    He looked around the room, and couldn''t help but feel no one was living in it before him. Apart from the sheet of white cloth under him, nothing in the room suggested that someone used to live here, which made him wonder who could''ve helped him. Or what, and was he really helped.


    Just as he thought that, the sword mark on the back of his right hand, which existence he had completely forgotten until now, flashed bright. It lit bluish-green as though his skin was injected with neon lights, and it was bright enough to paint the wooden walls of the room with its intensity.


    He shuffled to his feet and readied his arm guard. He thought back to his fight with the goblin hound, the blade deployed right when he punched the monster.


    He look down at the arm guard, then at the flimsy door. He could feel it--footsteps, the breathing of the enemy. As if the mark on his right hand was feeding him information on the threat, whatever it was. He balled his right hand to a fist, and tore the air in front of him with a punch. Within the arm guard was a click, and out of it sprung a blade about one and a half feet long. Sleek and sharp, the silver blade had a double-edged body that tapered slightly until the tip. The blue gem of the arm guard glowed to life, eager for battle.


    His mark glowed brighter and brighter, as the detected enemy approached. It took leisurely steps, until it stopped in front of the door. Frey crept toward the door, careful not to make any sound when...


    "Oh good, you''re awake." the deep voice of a man--his enemy, rung from beyond the wooden door. "Hey can you uhh, open this door? My hands are full."


    "Who are you?" Frey shouted.


    "Me? Just an old man who found an injured boy deep in the forest sleeping with a goblin hound." the man said with not a hint of seriousness.


    Frey went still, then, torn between opening the door and not. The man outside protested.


    "Hey, you gonna open the door or what? Actually, this is my house, you know? I would hate to kick down my door."


    His mark only glowed brighter, as if telling him not to open the door. He grabbed the door''s steel ring. If the man really was an enemy, then he should''ve just left Frey to die in the forest. He relaxed from his stance. The blade withdrew. He pulled open the door and warm air and daylight poured into the room, and the man, carrying two large bags on both hands, passed by Frey as he entered.


    "Man, it''s a hundred degrees outside." the man said as he put down his bags on one corner of the room. He was tall and huge, head nearly touching the ceiling. Mid-40s, dark-skinned, wearing white kimono perfectly identical to the one he wore. A katana hung on his waist and, like Frey, the back of the man''s right hand glowed strong bluish-green.


    "You, you''re a Player." Frey uttered in disbelief.


    The man, without turning to face him, spoke.


    "So, what if I am?"


    "The game, is to eliminate other Players, isn''t it? Why didn''t you kill me?" Frey said.


    "Y''know, I really hate it when people talk about killing like it''s a damn sport." The man turned. His eyes were ice-blue sharp, betraying his laid-back facade. Frey was never an easy one to scare, but the glare of the man made his hair stand on ends.


    "And besides," the man continued, his expression slacking for a bit. "you don''t belong in my generation. What would I get by doing that?"

 005: Veteran

    Airi Ohara peeked from behind the bushes. Her unfortunate target stood in the middle of the arbor, looking around nervously, scanning the foliage and tangled roots--searching for her.


    He was perhaps, in his late teenage years, but she could be wrong. He could''ve easily been twenty, or twenty-one, who knew? But, whatever his exact age was, Airi''s sure he wasn''t more than thirty, or even twenty-five. From her observation back in the Purgatory, all the players were young, more or less her age of 19. That couldn''t have been a coincidence--the entity that identified itself as Victorina, said so: they all died young. Not Airi, though--she didn''t die. At the very least, not in the usual sense of death.


    Her target wore white shirt under an expensive black coat, that had lost its charm due to the dirt smeared all over its silky surface. His brunet hair was combed up and gelled, with a menacing, condescending grin that completed his picture as a filthy rich bastard''s son. Vain, Airi mused, in every sense of the word. He won''t last long. The sword the boy held was 60 centimeters long--short for a broadsword, but was light enough for fast swings and parry. The mark on his right hand beamed strongly of sea green, as bright as her mark would''ve been if she hadn''t wrapped her right hand with a strip of black linen she tore from the hem of her skirt.


    "I know where you are, little prick." the Player muttered, cutting with a swing the hanging vines that got in his way. "I can feel you." he closed in, a smug smile plastered on his face. He flailed his sword as he walked, trimming shrubs on his way.


    "Idiot." Airi couldn''t help but murmur. She felt the ground for an arrow without taking her eyes off her target. She knocked the arrow on her bow, and she drew.


    Her bow was something she made out of a curved twig she chopped off a shrub, and a string she fashioned out of fibrous vines she found hanging down from an ancient tree. The bow was a bit too rigid, and the force needed to draw it was tremendous, but that''s to be expected: She was in a different world, and used materials she was not familiar of. She couldn''t hope to get the perfect quality in such a bare environment without the proper tools.


    He turned her way and smiled even wider, thinking he got her.


    "Come out, ''ya scared bastard. Or did your momma teach you to hide like a sewer rat?" the boy mocked.


    Airi''s aim was still trained on him. With a breath, her sleek fingers let go of the bowstring. The arrow flew forth with an inaudible whistle, bursting through leaves and grass that were her cover. It settled into the boy''s heart with pin-point accuracy. He fell to his knees, clutching the arrow on his chest.


    Airi walked up to the boy, who then laid on the ground, writhing in pain as blood came out of his mouth. His swimming eyes followed Airi, who pulled something out of her ankle-high rubber boots. A dagger, with a curved blade about six inches long. It had the color of obsidian, its black sheen a flash of the death that was about to come.


    "Y-you..." the boy hacked.


    "I''m sorry." Airi closed her eyes and bowed to him, before bringing down the dagger upon his stomach. The obsidian-black dagger lit, its cutting edge glowing purple, and she felt energy surge from the grip of the blade, through her veins: a warm, intoxicating juice that made her cognition faster, the world around her turn slower, ever so slightly. Power surged through her muscles, making her stronger, faster. At the other end of the dagger was the boy becoming paler, colder, withering into a ghost of his former youth and vitality.


    His breathing stilled. The light of both their marks faded. She pulled her booklet from the hidden pocket inside her skirt and opened it.


    Player 106


    Airi Ohara


    She turned to the next page, and it caught on fire just like the last one, writing in trails of carbon across the parchment:


    Player 86 - Eliminated


    She closed the booklet and kneeled beside the boy, whose name she didn''t know. Whose name she didn''t have to know.


    The boy was stark-white, with not a hint of a rosy glow all new corpses had, for a brief moment after death. He was frail, a skeleton covered in thin, crumbling skin, and he looked as though he would disintegrate with a touch.


    She shook her head--she can''t afford to feel remorse. Not now, not ever. Remorse means death in this world, in this game.


    The game had just begun, and she claimed its first victim.


    Airi clutched her booklet and looked up at the blue sky beyond the tree leaves. It was no different from Earth''s morning sky. Earth. She have to go back. Soon.


    She opened her book on the second page, where Player 86''s elimination was reported, and traced the words with her fingers. The paper felt rough under her fingers, the text even rougher.


    158 Players to go.


    ---


    The small confines of the cabin was saturated with green, by the mark on Frey''s hand and the man''s. The light of their marks kept trying to outshine each other, so much that the sunlight from outside was lost as soon as it poured in through the open door.


    The two Players stood on opposite corners of the room, with Frey looking as confused as he was shocked.


    "Generation. What do you mean by that?" Frey closed the door behind him. The man turned his attention back to the two cloth bags he brought in. One bag, he assumed from the black apple-shaped fruits peeking out of it, were full of food. The other bag had swords, clothing and various tools mixed in. The man started by pulling out equipment out of the second bag, which were a pair of leather gloves and a roll of what seemed like cloth bandage.


    "It''s exactly what it sounds like. Catch." The man tossed the gloves and the roll of bandage his way. Frey caught them with both hands.


    "What am I supposed to do with these?"


    "Wrap your right hand with the bandage then put the gloves on. Or would you rather have your hand''s back glow all day like you''re some walking lantern?"


    He did as he was told. He wrapped his right hand in bandages. However, some of the green light still escaped from underneath the layers of cloth, albeit muted. He then slipped his hands into the leather gloves, which was a perfect fit for his bandaged hand, but a lousy fit to his other. It took care of his mark, but the man''s mark still burned with intense Turquoise light.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    "What about your mark?" Frey asked the man.


    "This?" the man caressed the back of his hand with his fingers. "This is actually called Victorina''s Symbol, or the Death Goddess'' Crest. We call it the Bitch''s Cross."


    "That''s misogynistic. I''ll stick to calling it a mark."


    "Anyway, I don''t have to cover my hand like you do. My Cross is a bit... special."


    The man smiled a devious smile, and it didn''t take a genius to know he deliberately kept Frey hanging. Within seconds, the light of the man''s mark began to weaken, until it went back to looking like a normal tattoo. Only then did Frey notice something different about the man''s mark. If Frey''s mark was a normal sword within two enclosing crescents, the man''s was an arrowhead inside a full circle.


    "Your mark is different." he concurred.


    "Mine''s an evolved one. At the start of the game all the players get the same mark as you, the standard Bitch''s Cross. But after three months, give or take, considering you have grown accustomed to fighting, you''ll start to notice change in the behavior of your Cross, or "mark", as you want to call it. My generation calls it Evolution, though, it''s not really the official term for it, I''d wager.


    "The end product of Evolution differs from each Player. You can say that each Player will have a unique mark, although there''s no hard evidence to that yet since I haven''t met enough Players to say for sure, and most I have met are already dead so there''s no asking them."


    "So," Frey eyed the man''s mark like it was a fascinating gem. "Your mark, what does it do?"


    "Mine''s called the Assassin Sigil. I can turn its light on and off with only a thought."


    "I can''t see how that''s useful... aside from the convenience of not having to wear gloves."


    "It''s well damn useful." the man retorted. "You don''t underestimate the Cross'' light, let alone the ability to switch it on and off." he sat on the floor, his back straight, feet folded beneath him. "Gonna sit?" he asked Frey.


    Frey sat on the wooden floor, not taking his eyes off the man. The planks creaked quietly as he crossed his legs to a clumsy Indian seat.


    The man breathed in, wiped the sweat off his forehead and temples, and he started. "A Cross is more than just a fancy proximity sensor. It''s hard to explain the theory in a few words, but think of it like a signal emitter, that is also a receiver, at the same time. When two players get within certain distance from each other, say, 30 meters apart as the crow flies, both their marks start to glow. Now this glow, isn''t just a candle saying, "Hey I''m here, come at me" no. You''ll see what I mean." the middle-aged Player caressed the black arrowhead at the back of his right hand, and it lit, slowly filling up with blue-emerald light. The rays started faint, growing brighter, denser, until he could see white glare streaking in between the green and azure beams.


    "Now, take off your gloves."


    Frey did, pulling the leather gloves off given to him by the man first. His hand was covered in bandages like a mummy, but there was a hint of green light coming from underneath the cloth. He was compelled to look at the faint trace of light, like gravity pulling his focus toward the mark on the back of his hand. The harder he stared at the diffused glow his mark was giving, the more he started to feel weird: he began feeling himself sitting, not in the way he sat with his legs crossed, but were instead folded beneath him. Another set of heartbeat overlapped with his, although much weaker, and he felt as though he was breathing for two people. The man smiled, and he felt his lips curve the same way, although he knew it wasn''t him who was smiling, but the man, the same way he felt the man''s walk earlier.


    "The light of your mark, when it registers to your eyes, transmits to you the faintest feeling of what the other Player is doing. Now, try putting the gloves back on."


    Frey slipped the glove back on. His senses went back to normal.


    "So, now that my hand is covered,"


    "Now that your hand is covered, it still glows, you can''t just see it. But, because you can''t see any light from it, the link is severed, you don''t gain information of the enemy. The principle is complicated, but, if your mark is covered considerably, it''s also unable to broadcast your feed to the enemy."


    Frey nodded, getting the gist of things. "Like a data exchange between two linked computers, only with lights as signals and eyes as receivers, right."


    "You''re a quick one to catch on, kid."


    "I''m already 20." Frey''s eyes narrowed into slits.


    "But," and his rebuttal was ignored. "You can still see the light of your enemy, assuming he''s not also covering his hand. You''ll know he''s a Player, but he won''t know you are."


    "Useful," concurred Frey.


    "Useful. This game isn''t played with just raw strength, you''ll see. This game will test everything you are, use every skill you have, exploit the most fundamental of weaknesses inside you. That Cross you have on your right hand, it''s just one of the tools you would need to survive this game." The man looked down, at the back of his own right hand. For a second Frey saw the shadow of a grimace on his face, that went as soon as it appeared.


    "You... know a lot about this game." he stared straight at the man''s eyes. He intrigued Frey. There were too many things Victorina didn''t tell them, things that this man knew, and was sharing with him so openly, and the reason bugged him. Was the man doing it out of good will? Or was it pity? What, if there was anything, was the man expecting he''d do in return for this gesture? He had to know. "Just how long have you been here, in this world, playing this game?"


    The man scratched his head, heaved an irritated sigh. "Brings us back to the original topic, eh? Well..." he paused, looking over at Frey, staring at his face as he looked for the right words. "Let''s just say that, I''m from another Game. The last Game. Yes, you kids aren''t the first ones to play it. This game has been going on for I don''t know, maybe millions of years now? It''s run by gods, see."


    "Gods..."


    "Yeah, like that bitch. She''s a goddess, y''know. The goddess of death around here, something like that. So, every twenty years--in this world, anyway--a new game is started. And I can see it doesn''t care whether the last game had ended or not, seeing you''re here. Where you from?"


    "UK."


    "A Brit, I see. The last Brit I saw wanted to flay me alive--it was fifteen years ago, if memory serves me right. Call me Shin, from the Land of the Rising Sun."


    Frey looked up the ceiling, digging his brain for a country with that title, when Shin interrupted him, "It''s Japan."


    "Ah." Frey knew that. He had simply... forgotten, as temporarily he had forgotten everything earthly.


    "So, you were asking how long I''ve been playing this game? I''d say twenty years is about right." Shin said, with ironic nonchalance.


    "That long?" he asked, and he wondered if he''d be trapped in this world as long as the man in front of him had been.


    "Our game has... stagnated, I should say. There''s only four of us left but, damn, what a pain the others are. One had become a king of a giant empire, the other a leader of some cult and the last, well, became a blacksmith. They''ve really settled here. Enough about that--how about I train you?"


    "... Train me?" Frey asked, confused.


    "Yeah. I''ve seen kids like you. The lanky, pathetic type who had never played outdoors. This world gobbled them up for breakfast and pretty soon, too."


    Frey wanted to hit the man, although he wasn''t exactly wrong--he was pathetic. He fell for a nasty trap trying to be a hero and he ended up dying because he couldn''t run fast enough. And, even though he knew no human was fast enough to outrun such monster, the fact that he couldn''t do anything about it still infuriated him.


    "How are you going to train me?" asked Frey, one brow raised.


    The man snickered, showing a toothed grin. "I''ll teach you the sacred art of keeping your head intact."


    "That''s handy." he replied.


    "And also how the game works. That lesson about the Cross was the free trial."


    Frey took in air, and exhaled--a sigh with only nose involved. "What''s the catch?" he asked, and it was not his first time asking the question. His father--although the man that had produced him could barely be called such, absent as he was in Frey''s life--thought him one important thing, if not much else, and it was that there''s no such thing as free lunch. Any man, woman, or otherwise, living in a world of loan sharks and bankruptcy and corporations, and whose only real currency is their time, would give none of it willingly without expecting equal or greater return, consciously or by instinct. Whether it was for bought affection, or bought happiness, or boot-lick approval, people would expect something, anything, than none.


    The man''s grin grew wider, more menacing. A living testament to his father''s lesson. "Hmmmm. There are actually two things I want from you." Shin said, playing with his stubble. "One, is you have to win your game."


    Easier said than done, Frey thought as he studied Shin''s face. Shin looked like a goofy, conniving uncle with his smile, and Frey thought he was joking, but he wasn''t.


    Frey gulped. "And the other?"


    "The second... Why don''t we talk about this over lunch?"

 006: Mentor

    Frey spent the better part of the morning following Shin, much like a tourist following a tour guide, minus the trivias. Personally, he felt like a bull getting led around by the nose. Outside the cabin was a clearing matted by thick green grassblades, bound by the treeline on all sides. Past the treeline, into the woods, west from the cottage, perhaps a hundred meters walk, was a babbling brook. It stretched toward a deeper part of the forest, and he remembered how the forest almost took his life, in the form of a not-so-friendly reptilian-canine hybrid with larger-than-life claws and more-painful-than-death fangs.


    The narrow brook had glass-clear water, foaming white against the rock heads jutting from its volatile, noisy surface. Shin said they were grabbing lunch, but he didn''t say anything about getting wet. Frey peered beneath the water''s clean surface and saw a family of silver-scaled fishes a bit larger than the palm and only swam close together. The fishes were burying their faces into the gravel below, working up dusts of gray and dirty brown, and he thought, this time clearer, "lunch".


    Shin carried a wooden pole as tall as Frey, sharpened brutally at the end. "Now, you think you''re not hungry, but," Shin walked up to the brook edge. "believe me, once you''re used to that body, you''re gonna be. In a week or so, you''ll feel like a human again, in your perfectly normal human body."


    "I don''t think so." Frey said, almost a snort.


    "Physically, anyway. I know mentally, you''ll never be the same." Shin lifted his spear--which looked more like a sharpened staff--and pierced the flowing water. "With that said, food, you''re gonna need it everyday." he had impaled a silver-scale fish square in the middle of the body. "Or every other day, if your body is efficient in burning energy."


    "Is this part of your training already?" Frey was inclined to ask.


    "Yes?" Thrust. Another fish was caught, a bit larger than the first. It flailed its fins and tail, in a futile attempt to slide free off the pike.


    "I thought you said we were going to discuss it at lunch. I haven''t yet agreed, and you haven''t yet told me what your second condition was."


    Shin glanced at him--a confused, unamused glance, the "what''s your point?" kind of glance. "You ought to chill my boy. I''m not conning you into working for me or something. And, this is a very important fact: my second wish isn''t even close to being as hard as my first."


    While the man was talking he had already caught four fishes, all plump and all shiny, scales glittering like beads of paste under the sun, a little like fishes decorated fully by Swarovski crystals.


    "I''d prefer you just say it now, so I can think clearly." Frey said.


    "Impatient, as all youth are. I''ve been impatient once, so I understand." Shin speared another fish, and another, pushing the fishes farther into the pole to make room for more fish. He looked at Frey, and smiled. "I hope you were watching how I caught fishes. I would''ve taught you hands-on how it''s done, but your arm is not yet up for strenuous exercises, so maybe later this week. Back to the topic, I''ll tell you what I want.


    "After you''ve won, I want you to find my daughter. On Earth. You don''t have to greet my family, just my daughter. I want you to tell her I loved her, and that I was alive, not on Earth but alive, and thinking of her dearly everyday. I''m not sure how time works between here and there, but I''d assume she''s still at her teenage years. And she''d be the color of pure white snow, and she''d be beautiful, I hope anyway, that she looks like her mother. Her name would be Aoi, as her mother promised me she would name her." Thrust, another fish skewered at the midsection.


    "I want you to do that, and in exchange I''ll teach you how to live, if only for a month, but I''ll make sure I''ll have taught you all you need to know about the game by then." Shin pushed in two more fishes before calling it a day, totalling to eight Silver-scales. He smiled at Frey, annoying, but somewhat pained, and Frey had trouble answering. "Well? What do you say?"


    "I don''t have a choice, do I?"


    "There''s always another choice," Shin said, ripping off what must have been a cliche line from a popular movie. "In this case, it''s going off on your own and figuring stuff on your own."


    "That doesn''t sound as good an offer." Frey agreed, almost reluctantly.


    They walked back to the clearing, a patch of yellowing grass vast as a basketball court, only that it had an unidentified shape, resembling a rough circle. On their way home Shin had picked snapped-off branches sticking out the mud and managed to collect a dozen of them, fit for a fire. He set up the twigs by the cottage, in crossing piles, and started a fire by rubbing two of them expertly.


    The spear became the rod of a spit, with the fishes skewered into its pole. Shin roasted the fishes, rolling the spear over the fire, until the scales became equally healthy brown on all sides, and let it cool off. As they waited for the food to be edible-warm, Frey had declared his stand.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "I," he stared at his feet, awkwardly. "I''d never been much of a fighter. As a child I didn''t go out much to play hopscotch with the neighbor kids, and my P.E. teacher always threw a fit because of how I ran behind everyone else. I never fought for my life, before I came here." he almost chuckled, remembering the eldritch abomination that had killed him. He guessed that one didn''t count as "fighting" for his life but rather "running" for it, and it didn''t end well.


    "I guess, I did well in class. When I graduated, immediately I was offered an okay-paying job, working as a librarian-slash-curator of a private library, and I was getting engaged, to a wonderful woman, before I died."


    "Well," Shin pondered, in an objective way, "Do you want to return to that life?"


    "I do." Frey said, without hesitation. His brain was hard-wired for a life in a modern world, where the worst that could happen were traffic jams, or thesis deadlines, or peer pressure--none of the monster he had seen on his last day alive, nor the monstrous Hound that tried to chew his head with its kukri-like fangs.


    "Then, are you prepared to kill others to have that life back? Prepared to deprive them of their chance to live again, for that life?" it was a question he had no fast answer.


    Frey asked himself, was he? Was he prepared? Was his old life more important than others''? And then, as if a reminder of what he had lost, Elise popped in his head, wearing a black dress and had black veil covering the left side of her face. She was alone in a wake, his wake, weeping and sobbing on a white casket that housed his dead body, embalmed and smelling of moth balls and formaldehyde. For a moment he was sadder than he ever was sad for himself, and he opened and closed his mouth, before nodding, hesitantly.


    "That''s all I needed." Shin, still holding the spear that was at the same time a giant fish skewer, clapped him on the shoulder. "We eat, we let your body heal for a couple more days, and we''ll start."


    The two sat on the grass, the fire crackling between them. Frey ate fish the way Shin expected him: with bare hands. In one hand he held the smoked head between thumb and finger, and in the other he had the tail. He was munching on grilled fish flesh as he would a corn, occasionally having to spit out sharp bones that stuck between his teeth. The meat tasted of, well, fish, the cream dory type of taste, that, when cooked well, melted in the mouth like good tofu.


    He''d already forgotten the last time he ate, much like how his life on Earth, which had ended a mere day ago, was already a memory of a distant past. But, he did not forget Elise. Could still see her, like he always had, in the back of his head, and when something troubled him he''d see her, smiling, and he''d smile thinking "this will be over". Not this time, though.


    Frey was not convinced this game will be over, anytime soon.


    "Let me with your arm." Shin said, cleaning his fourth fishbone.


    Frey was still halfway through his second fish. He extended his left hand, bandaged white from wrist to elbow, with dull blotches of brown-dried blood beneath the rough folds.


    "Not that." the old man shook his head. "The other one."


    The sun above was a glaring jewel, riding hinged to an invisible path that bisected the sky. The sunlight it threw reflected off Frey''s silver arm guard, giving it a painful glimmer that stabbed the eyes of beholder. He held it up for Shin to look at.


    Shin crawled up to him and took a closer look at the arm guard (was it really called an arm guard?).


    "What''s wrong?" asked Frey, mouth full of fish and prickling, hair-thin bones.


    The old man scrutinized the weapon as a coin collector would an authentic 16th century coin. He didn''t miss an angle. Finally, Shin said, "Nothing. Can you remove it?"


    "Tried and failed." Frey swallowed, picking out the bones with his tongue, while letting the soft meat into his throat. "I think it''s bonded with my skin. I don''t know. Why?"


    "You used that to kill the goblin hound, eh? Did it speak to you?"


    Frey looked at Shin, puzzled, whether he was asking about the hound or his weapon. Realizing he was asking about the weapon, Frey shook his head. "No. I haven''t fallen that far into psychosis."


    "There are weapons that talk, though. The strongest kind of weapons, Artifacts. They bond with the owner, the same way yours had, and more often than not the owner and the Artifact would be in some sort of mutualistic relationship. The Artifact feeds on the owner''s energy bit by bit, so that when it''s used, it dishes out its own energy. They''re like magic weapons, but with separate battery. If it talks, you''ll know it''s an Artifact."


    Frey wasn''t sure if the man was babbling on himself, or he was expecting Frey to make sense of everything he said, but one thing he knew for certain was that weapons don''t talk.


    Shin was silent, for a moment, deep in thought, sight alternating from the arm guard that clung to Frey''s arm, and then at the sky above, and back to the fire in front of him.


    "Um. Shin?" Frey called.


    "About the goblin hound." Shin said, snapping out of his head. "Good job killing it. You were either dumb or smart, or stupidly brave, to defeat a monster that would''ve killed a dozen men in a tussle."


    "Thanks." said Frey, meaning it. "I couldn''t have survived though, if you hadn''t found me. I guess I owe you one."


    Shin laughed, heartily, like an uncle in a fairytale, because Frey had known no uncle who smiled and laughed like uncles did in heartwarming fantasy stories. "I don''t know about owing me." Shin scratched his graying stubble. "I was kinda tracking the beast for days. Color me surprised when I saw it dead beside an unsufferable-looking brat."


    "Well I''m sorry I stole your game."


    "No, it''s fine. You actually helped me cut it down. I only needed its eyes anyway--good magical items, would fetch quite the ruby at an alchemist."


    "So you sold it?"


    "The skin and eyes." replied Shin. "I didn''t spend it all on myself, mind you. You were the one who killed it, so the money I got from it I used to buy materials for your training, and your food."


    Frey just nodded. He wasn''t really concerned at all about the proceeds. He hadn''t even thought of hunting the hound for money; he just wanted to live. Although, knowing he was dead already, gave the sentiment an almost metaphorical quality to it.

 007: Magic

    A massive beast towered before Moreen Dell. It had three yellow eyes forming a triangle on its wide forehead. Red-skinned, biceps bulging with muscles, the Hill Giant laughed at how tiny Moreen was. A booming, derisive laugh that echoed throughout the grass clearing, carried by the whistling wind blowing from east to west. Rays of the mild sun hit the back of the giant, casting upon Moreen an enormous shadow the deformed image of his colossal opponent.


    Moreen''s only weapon was the double-bladed axe he held with both hands. The edges of its crescent blade were fine and sharp. At the summit of its metal pole was a spherical ruby gleaming with bloodthirsty sheen. Earlier he had hunted small animals with it, with the largest being a ram-sized beast with six feet and a snake tail. He was dubious as to whether his weapon was effective against something as thick-skinned as a four-man-tall giant.


    The giant growled. It brought its fist down on moreen, tailed with the shrill sound of air being cut. Moreen jumped back, barely escaped being pummeled to death. The soil trembled as if the giant''s fist was a boulder that fell from the sky.


    He had to run.


    Moreen kicked the ground and ran as hard as he had ever ran. Just when he thought he was getting away, he looked back only to see the giant''s stride diminish the distance between them in a second--a distance he accomplished in more than three seconds. He admitted he wasn''t the athletic type of person, and his running speed had always been ridiculed by his peers back in middle-school, but seeing the giant shrink his gain in just a stride brought his self-esteem to its all-time low. He should''ve gone out a bit more, instead of holing up in his room, playing video games 24/7.


    The giant launched a downward jab to the direction he was going to run to. This time, his momentum did not allow for him to dodge. The red fist of the giant was fast approaching, and in a last ditch effort to save himself, he swung his axe toward the giant''s fist just before it slammed against him.


    The giant''s fist and Moreen''s body recoiled from the impact, although he was worse off than the giant. He flew four, five meters away from the impact, a few of his bones cracking as his body rolled across the dirt, mowing grass in his wake. His vision shook, his consciousness groggy. His axe lay a good three feet ahead his sprawling body, half its blade buried into the soil. He wanted to crawl but his hands numb from the impact didn''t have the strength to carry his body.


    The giant roared. It cried as it picked up three fingers severed from its right hand.


    "So it works, huh?" he looked at his axe that stood out from the ground. Its edge was bathed red with blood, which seemed to flow from the blade, to the pole, then sucked into the ball of ruby embedded into its pole. The ruby glowed blood red, and soon the edges of the blade lit with the same atrocious color.


    The enraged giant caught sight of Moreen. It bellowed, slamming the ground with its left, undamaged fist. The sword tattoo on Moreen''s right hand glowed faint, growing brighter each second, but he didn''t notice. His eyes were on the giant, who shook the ground with each furious step it took toward him. He was going to die. His body won''t move. His axe glowed red with power, but he didn''t have the slightest capability to walk up to it. The giant once again casted shadow on him, as it towered before his laying body. The giant was not exactly pleased his fingers were cut. The giant''s nostrils flared with untold rage, and red veins have webbed into its three yellow eyes.


    Projectiles flew from the corner of Moreen''s vision. Three ice shards, each a meter long and emitted white vapor, shot through the air and dug into the giant''s bulging biceps. In a flash they exploded into a rain of smaller shards, and the giant''s whole red arm turned crystal-blue as ice encased it. The giant pounded with his left hand the ice clinging to his right arm, in an attempt to break his arm free. The ice did break under the giant''s brute force, but with the ice came the whole of his arm, severed from the shoulder down and broken to pieces with the ice still clinging on its skin. The giant roared in pain louder than before, almost destroying his eardrum.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Moreen''s breath caught in his throat, as he watched the monster he found impossible to defeat just lose a whole arm with one attack.


    Attack from whom?


    "Are you okay?" a woman''s lovely voice reached his ear. He turned to the direction of the voice and found a girl running up to him. She had straight and long black hair, a contrast to the white coat she wore that billowed outward from the wind. On her left hand she wielded a rapier. Her right hand glowed bluish-green. A Player. An enemy. But he felt hope swell up from within his heart at the sight of something other than monsters and trees. While the giant mourned for the loss of its arm, the girl helped him up.


    "Can you stand?" the girl asked sweetly. She slid her silver rapier into the sheath hanging from her waist and draped Moreen''s left arm over her shoulder and carried him away from the giant.


    She was beautiful, Moreen thought. Her skin was porcelain white, her eyes a swirl of amber and gray. And she smelled nice too, with a floral scent he haven''t smelled before on Earth. Unlike him, who had been stuck roaming the forest the whole two weeks he''d been here in this world. He was not in a shape to feel self-conscious, but he felt it anyway. With such a beautiful girl around, who wouldn''t be?


    "Wait," The girl looked back. When she saw the giant slowly come to sense, she unsheathed her blade and brought him down gently to the ground in a sit. "stay here, okay? I''ll be back."


    "Uhmm... Yeah." Moreen nodded.


    The girl smiled. Moreen melted into a speechless lump of goo. The beautiful girl charged the beast head-on, her long black hair flowing with the wind as she ran.


    She thrust her right hand forward. She opened her hand and two ice shards flew out of her white palm. One ice shard hit the giant''s chest, freezing the entirety of its massive torso. The other shard pierced its only arm left, which turned into a block of ice. The giant couldn''t bare the weight of its arm and fell to its knees. The girl used the monster''s frozen arm as a staircase to its body, though Moreen didn''t know how the girl didn''t slip off the ice. With her rapier gleaming from the sunlight, she thrust her blade into the giant''s frozen skin. To Moreen''s surprise, the rapier did not break the ice. Instead, it phased through the ice''s crystalline surface, as if it was a ghost. The giant couldn''t even spit out a last cry, and just fell to the ground with a shockwave of dust and grass, its three yellow eyes still open.


    Atop the fallen behemoth stood the mysterious girl, her coat and hair swaying with the wind, right hand glowing green as bright as his was. When the game started, when he saw in his booklet the first death, he thought for sure all Players were at each other''s throat. Now, as he watched the girl jumping off the giant''s carcass he realized one thing.


    Not all Players are killers. At the very least, one of them isn''t. Two, if he counted himself.


    The girl ran toward him with the light strides of someone in a good mood. Both the girl''s and his mark glowed more intense as they got closer to each other.


    "That was amazing." Moreen stretched an awkward smile. The girl smiled at her in return.


    "Isn''t it? I only learned that two days ago."


    Moreen''s black eyes widened. "How?!" he asked. Two weeks into the game and all he learned was how to skin weird animals and cook their meat. And while he was playing forest chef, this girl was training to be a badass, cool and beautiful giant-slaying battle-mage straight out of an RPG game.


    "How? Don''t you have one? It''s a Crest..." the girl fished for something on the flip side of her coat. It was the green booklet he also happened to have. "Look." she opened the book, turned a few pages, and showed him a page with the words "God Crest" written on top.


    Below the page title was a sketch of a weapon. It looked like a scepter with its pole roughly sculpted from ice, with ice shards floating beside it, and was encircled by two long dragons chasing each other''s tail.


    Under the sketch was a name and a description.


    Poeia


    Crest of the envious god imprisoned in eternal cold.

 008: Contract

    It''s been two weeks since Frey started training under Shin on how not to die. So far, he had taught Frey little about anything aside Japanese Sword Art.


    Everyday, Shin would wake him up before the sun even rose. After a quick breakfast of Corberries--black, apple-sized fruits that tasted like bitter seaweed, Shin would make him spend his morning doing five-hundred basic swings with a real Japanese sword, which was something Shin requested from an old smith friend.


    Frey thought that five-hundred repetitive swings a day was a walk in the park, but that turned out to be nothing but a foolish assumption. The katana wasn''t exactly light, despite having a thin blade and an overall sleek design, and five-hundred was a really big number. The first three days were hell for his biceps, but after two weeks of basic swings, he''d gotten comfortable with the weight of the sword, and could already swing it fast enough to actually hit something. Still not fast enough to land a hit on Shin, though.


    After the practice swings in the morning came deflecting techniques. Shin happened to tell him during one of their training sessions that Shin''s family owned a dojo on Earth which pretty much explained Shin''s skill in both the sword and the art of using it.


    Frey learned a lot from him, like the fact that practitioners of the Japanese sword don''t use shield. They fend off attacks with their sword, but not quite in the same way the shield does. Instead of pushing against the enemy''s attack with equal strength, a practitioner must learn to deflect blows by letting them slide across the blade and shift the weight of the blow away from the practitioner using minimal force. Clashing swords with the enemy by using brute strength will chip the blade of the katana, and that was one lesson Frey hoped to never learn the hard way. Shin loved his swords, after all, took pains to clean it every night with cloth. Who knew what he would do to Frey if he so much as dented one.


    In the afternoon came the attacking techniques. Again the training was done solely by using a katana. For some reason, Frey got the feeling Shin didn''t want him to rely on his arm-blade, and although he asked Shin why, the man dodged the question. It may simply be that Shin only knew how to use katana. Whatever the case was, Frey never bothered to ask him again. It didn''t matter much, after all, he can just swing his arm-blade anytime, no training needed.


    The attack techniques of the Japanese sword relied on swift attacks and the sheer sharpness of the blade, to deliver deadly blows with just the right amount of power. The katana''s curved blade was ergonomically-designed to reduce the air resistance met by the blade during a swing, or so Shin said, allowing for faster attacks for less effort.


    Shin taught him moves and styles that had long, weird Japanese names that translate to animals like cranes and snakes and dragons, and plants like grass and cherry blossoms. Frey aced the moves, for the most part, but the names were impossible to retain.


    After the sun had set and Frey had learned the particular technique Shin taught him for the day, Shin would pack up the physical training and they would set a little campfire just outside the cottage and eat dinner. Dinner would always be an animal Shin hunted from the nearby forest, or fish he''d caught from the nearby pond, skewered with a stick and roasted above the campfire.


    Today Shin caught fish that had the mouth of a squid. While they both waited for their food to cook as they held it over the fire, Frey saw this as a perfect chance to ask what had been bothering him for the past few days.


    He made sure Shin heard him clear his throat. "Hey Shin."


    "What?" Shin answered. Both of them sat on two logs facing the fire.


    "I know you''re teaching me how to fight, but I just have to ask. Why the katana?


    "I mean, before we started with training, I thought you''d teach me a little bit of everything, like hand-to-hand combat, how to use my Player Weapon, kinds of monsters I should avoid, basically stuff about this world and the game I''m better off knowing."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    Silence hung between them, only disturbed by the crackle of wood burning under the heat of fire. Finally, Shin burst into laughter as if Frey had cracked a joke.


    "So that''s how you feel, eh?" Shin wiped the corner of his eyes with his finger.


    "Yeah and I didn''t remember joking." Frey narrowed his green eyes at the man, like he was looking at an idiot.


    "Sorry, sorry. Tell me, how do you think I''ve survived the game this long?" Shin''s sapphire gaze pressed him for answer.


    "You''re pretty strong. You''ve been training all your life in your family''s dojo, right?"


    "Wrong, but that''s a part." he turned his fish by the stick for the other side to get cooked. "In my opinion, I only managed to stay alive this long because I had discipline. And, to tell you the truth, I''m not teaching you the sword as much as I''m teaching you discipline."


    "Huh?"


    "There''s a reason for everything I''m teaching you. Those swings you do every morning? You may see it as just physical training, but more than that, you learn patience. Learning how to deflect an attack is not just learning how to not get hurt: It''s learning that raw strength is no match for true skill, that raw strength alone gets you nowhere.


    "Last, the strokes of the blade teach you that there must be reason within your every attack. Each technique exists for different purposes. You can''t just flail your sword around mindlessly, hoping you''d eventually hit your enemy. No. Whether it''s to incapacitate, hurt, or kill, your attack must have a purpose, just like every living thing has the reason for existing.


    "Those three lessons are anchored to discipline. If you''re not disciplined enough to keep on training, forget winning the game."


    Frey fell silent at Shin''s profound reasoning. Clearly, he hadn''t thought of his training as something so philosophical, so... meaningful. He only thought of it as learning how to swing a sword but in many fancy ways.


    He pondered about Shin''s words the whole time he was eating, thinking how he''d taken his training for granted. He was too deep in thought, that he didn''t notice Shin going back inside the cottage. Frey only noticed he was ever gone when Shin returned to the campfire, a familiar object in hand. Shin sat beside him and held Frey''s booklet.


    "This," Shin said. "Do you know what this is?"


    "My book?" Frey tilted his head.


    "No. This is you, as a Player." Shin''s eyes betrayed no softness. Cold as a glacier, the blue of his irises were. "You asked me to teach you the game, didn''t you? Well, you got it."


    Frey nodded. It was high time he learned how to play.


    "Again. This thing, stop thinking it''s your book. It''s you. It''s Frey Alcott in this world. This book will contain anything and everything about you, as a Player. All your weaknesses and strengths. Information about your weapon, your magic, your name, your Player number, along with a list of Players who have been eliminated. This is a tool to track your progress and the progress of the game, but most importantly, to see yourself. And believe me, it''s useful, but only for as long as you have it.


    "Lose it, and you''re dead. At best, you''ve lost your only way to know changes within you. You also lose track of how many of your enemies are still kicking. Worse, a Broker gets ahold of it, assholes who''d sell your book to other Players. By the way, Brokers are also tools you can use to your advantage. After all, there are no rules to this game, you can play it however dirty you want."


    "Right." Frey rolled his eyes.


    "Your worst case scenario is if another Player gets your book. You''re in deep shit, no question."


    Kinda figured that out, Frey thought.


    "However, there''s a certain way to avoid that."


    "Which is?"


    Shin hung the booklet over the fire. "Burning it."


    Frey understood quickly what Shin was suggesting.


    "Now the choice is yours kid. Keep it and run the risk of it getting stolen or burn it now and be done with it."


    "No." Frey shook his head.


    "Why not?"


    "I''m not stupid enough to get robbed."


    "Correct answer." Shin put it away from the flames and handed it to Frey.


    "No really, that was a trick question, wasn''t it?" Frey took the booklet from Shin.


    There was actually no upside to burning the book, unless he was careless enough to accidentally lose it. Otherwise, he''d have to be dead before someone else got ahold of his booklet, which will render the booklet useless. Besides, when two Players meet, chances are they will try to kill each other, not get their enemy''s book. The game was to kill, after all, not build a collection. Shin was testing his confidence and how serious he was about playing this game. Well, if Shin only knew how far he''ll go just to win.


    Shin slammed his back and grinned. "I like you, kid. If and when you find my daughter back on Earth, you''ll have my full permission to marry her."


    "I have a girlfriend. Her name''s Elise." Somehow, the warmth of the campfire stopped reaching Frey. Everything suddenly got cold, the freezing night wind seeming more real than before.


    "Oh no... Now you have zero motivation to find my daughter. That''s so sad."


    "I will still find her, your daughter." Frey looked straight into Shin''s cold blue eyes. "That''s our deal, after all."

 009: Artifact

    "I like you. I honestly like you." Elizabeth Everwood''s words were like foreign language to his ears. Frey understood none of it. Or maybe, his head had simply stopped working altogether.


    He only came all the way up to the school rooftop because Perry told him there was a surprise waiting for him up here. Should''ve known that idiot''s grin spelled trouble for him.


    Alone on the rooftop the two of them were. Elizabeth stood three meters ahead, and she''d been sightseeing, leaning against the railing, before she sensed Frey. She began marching closer to him, with large strides of confidence.


    "Hey Elizabeth," Frey cleared his throat. "maybe you''re mistaking me for someone else? I only came here because my friend told me to--"


    "--Shut up." she cut him off. Elizabeth was finally in front of him, her face inches close to him.


    The sky was deep orange laced with purple strips of cloud. The sun, well setting to the west, painted the whole scene with a scarlet glow.


    Sunlight complemented Elizabeth''s face like a charm, and suddenly Frey was aware of how long her lashes were, colored chestnut like her wavy short hair. How her blue eyes glowed. How soft her pink lips looked. Frey never found Elizabeth so beautiful before. Sure, she was beautiful, treated the Campus Queen by everyone in the school, but he couldn''t care less about her. Until now.


    Even when they go to the same book club every Thursday, Frey always had his head buried in his book, that the most he''d seen of her was around the corner of his vision.


    "Elizabeth?" Frey turned away, cheeks burning, palms cold. Her face was close. Too close. Safe to say, it was the closest they''ve ever been to each other, physically.


    "A lot of boys had asked me out," Elizabeth started. "but none of them interested me more than you. You never tried to talk to me, never tried to impress me, and to be honest, I took it as an insult. Who does this guy think he is, ignoring me?"


    "I didn''t mean to ignore you."


    He was ignored.


    "I sneaked glances at you when you weren''t looking, and I always tried to make you look my way, even hiding your books so that you''d ask me if I knew where they were. I didn''t notice it, but I began looking forward to attending book club every week."


    "Uh... So you hid my books?" Frey asked.


    "Yes. It was your fault anyway, you were such a snob. You got a problem with that?" Elizabeth raised a brow.


    "N-no." he had a lot of problems with it.


    Frey didn''t know Elizabeth Everwood was so... irrational. He was reminded again why he didn''t talk to people, especially to women.


    "So if you don''t have a problem, that means we''re dating now, yes?"


    "Yeah we''re--wait what? Aren''t we taking this a little too fast?"


    Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. "So you''re saying you don''t want to be in a relationship with me?"


    "No I don''t mean... I mean I don''t mind, but don''t you think we should get to know each other better first? Look, I don''t even know a thing about you."


    "You''re right. We should get to know each other." Elizabeth held his cheeks. She pulled him in for a kiss. Frey closed his eyes, savoring the warmth of the moment. What was just three seconds of touch of their lips felt eternal to him. An eternity that ended too soon. He opened his eyes.


    Elizabeth... Elise, was no longer the one in front of him.


    It was a woman with golden eyes, seductive red lips, wearing a black gown laced with red.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Frey Alcott." Victorina smiled. Paralysis shot through his body.


    "No..." He couldn''t take a step back. He couldn''t do anything. Victorina locked lips with him, but it was cold, poisonous. He felt as though she was sapping the strength out of him. He didn''t close his eyes. Who knew what would happen if he did.


    Over the rooftop''s metal railing a fray of black tentacles appeard. They coiled around the railing, as bright blue light slowly rose up. Victorina still held him in a kiss. He could hear the slurch as the thing that killed him dragged itself over the railing and onto the rooftop, its dozen eyes glowing fatal blue.


    Frey''s eyes shot open. Above him was the cottage''s ceiling made of weaved grass.


    "Elise..." he murmured, still laying in bed. His heart pounded on his chest. Beads of sweat peppered his face.


    It''s been a month since the game had started. A total of four Players had been eliminated since then.


    It was the end of his training. He dragged himself up and wiped his body with cloth, before going out.


    He walked up to Shin, who sat on the grass outside the cottage in deep meditation.


    "Shin." he called out from behind.


    "Yo." the man said without turning to face him. "It''s your graduation day. You ready?" The wind blew, cold and gentle, ruffling the grass and soothing their kimonos.


    "Hell yes." he said. He meant it.


    "Then you best pack your things up and get suited. But, before that," the man stood up with a grunt. "follow me."


    They both walked to the back of the small cottage. Frey didn''t know why. Shin unstrapped the sheathed katana from his waist. Frey never saw Shin use the sword, but he knew it was his Player Weapon.


    "Hey, kid. Remember what I told you about Artifacts?" Shin asked.


    "That they''re the strongest weapons that grow stronger with use?"


    "Right. Actually, there''s one thing about them that I forgot to tell you."


    "What is it?"


    "Well Artifacts grow with time and use, but they have a side effect to the owner."


    "Which is?" He was growing suspicious. Why did Shin choose to tell him now, of all the times, and not sooner?


    "Artifacts, they bind with their wielder, one way or another. It''s some sort of a mutualistic relationship between owner and tool.


    "I''m gonna go straight to the point, Frey. The reason why I never taught you how to use your Player Weapon, is because your armblade is an Artifact. And it''s not a good one."


    "What... do you mean?"


    "I''ve seen your weapon--fought against it, even, twenty years ago."


    Frey''s face contorted in bewilderment. "You mean, a Player of your generation had the same Player Weapon?"


    But how can that be? He thought each Player was given their own unique weapon suited to their fighting tendencies. Was that not how it worked?


    "I don''t know. It''s been a long time ago and honestly, I wasn''t sure it really was the same weapon, until yesterday Mori confirmed it."


    "Who''s Mori? Your smith friend?"


    Shin tapped on the hilt of his katana. "This, this is Mori."


    He grabbed the sword''s handle and pulled it from its scabbard with a flash. Gleaming acidic green was Shin''s mysterious blade finally drawn. It was a thin Japanese sword that, instead of having a black and silver blade, was jade-colored all over with a toxic luster. On the blade collar just before the guard, a green eye was affixed.


    The eye shifted, that it stared at Frey with its jade-colored iris. It blinked a few times, before turning away.


    Frey had pretty much lost it at this point. In this world, books write themselves. He thought he had understood that this world was magical, and therefore he shouldn''t expect anything "normal" to come out of it, but still a sword with an eye? Is it gonna talk next?


    "I do not like the stare your student is giving me, human. He''s perfectly like you when we first met: Rude." The sword told Shin.


    Okay it talked. Without having a mouth.


    "Now, now." Shin stroked the blade softly with his hand as if caressing it. "He''s a good kid."


    "Stop whatever you are doing right now, or I will be forced to kill you." Shin stopped soothing the blade.


    "Anyway, Mori here is my buddy, as you can see. He doesn''t like people except me so--"


    "--I don''t like you as well, human." the sword cut him off.


    "Savage." Frey tried not to giggle.


    "Harsh." Shin forced a dry laugh. "Mori here has better memory than I have. He was the weapon I was using when I had an encounter with the owner of your armblade. Isn''t that right, Mori?"


    "It is. It''s the same weapon." Mori confirmed. "Though I do not know how that can be; I was the one to destroy that weapon. I''ve cut it to a million pieces, after its Player had died."


    "You see, when a Player dies, his Player Weapon becomes the property of the Player who killed him. I have killed thirteen Players. Twelve of their weapons I buried. They''re thirteen feet underneath the soil we''re stepping on right now, in a large chest only I can open." Shin glanced at the ground and tapped his foot. "The one remaining, I destroyed."


    Shin was onto something, Frey was sure. And he didn''t like where things were going. He looked at his armblade, on the green-speckled blue gem sitting on its steel. "And that one you destroyed, you believe it''s this weapon?"


    "Right." Shin nodded.


    "But why? Why did you destroy it, instead of burying it with the other twelve weapons?"


    Shin bit his lip, head bowed down. The only time he''d seen Shin like this, was when he talked about his life on Earth.


    "Foolish human." Mori interjected. "You would have done the same, if you knew what that thing on your arm can do.


    "No, I am sure you will, once it goes out of your control."

 010: Scar

    "Get to the point, Shin." Frey said. "This thing on my arm--"


    "--is a demon, Frey." Shin sheathed Mori and strapped it back to his waist. He grabbed the left shoulder of his white kimono, and without hesitation pulled it down, revealing the entirety of his left torso.


    "What... the hell?"


    Green roots webbed all over his chest, like overgrowth protruding out of the land. They pulsed and throbbed, along with the rhythm of his heartbeat as if they were a part of his body. Beneath the roots Frey could see bits of dark, jagged, circular scars that made gunshot scars pretty in comparison.


    "If Mori didn''t take over this part of me, I would''ve died." Shin slipped his robe back on. "The Player who attacked us, he was no longer human. He was faster, and stronger, moving as though he was a beast, a frenzied monster. His weapon was a silver arm guard like that one, but with a key difference. It had many blades, and they moved on their own, seeking enemies, as though they were alive.


    "A friend of mine was unlucky, got impaled by one of them blades, and he was already dead. You''d think the blade would leave him alone because he was already dead but no: the other blades followed suit and dug into his body over and over, as if they were feasting on his flesh."


    Frey listened to Shin''s narrative with hollow eyes, faced contorted with horror more than disgust. He remembered how Shin''s body looked, feeling in his bones how much torture it had been.


    "While the blades were busy desecrating my friend''s dead body I moved in, chopped the Player''s head off. I thought it was over, but it wasn''t. One moment of carelessness and the blades had gone through my chest. The bastard could move without his head. That''s when I realized I wasn''t fighting a human. He''d been consumed by his weapon, and I was fighting the Artifact, itself."


    A big lump got caught in Frey''s throat. He looked at the silver arm blade like it was the most repulsive thing he''d ever laid eyes on. The idea that something so malicious was on his body terrified him the most. If it really was the same weapon as the one in Shin''s memory, he may very well share the same fate as that Player--a slave to his Artifact.


    "We should destroy this¡­ this thing." Frey said.


    "No."


    "Why not?"


    "Because we don''t know what would happen to you if we do that." Shin sighed. "Artifacts bind with the wielder in some way. The growth on my chest is the connection between me and Mori. Now your weapon, it''s already bonded with your arm. If we destroy it now, you might die. Or not. Maybe something even worse will happen to you, since you''re already dead, and you''re just in a body given to you by that bitch Victorina. You can''t take the risk.


    "I know you can''t."


    Elise''s smiling face flashed before Frey''s eyes. Seemingly satisfied with Frey''s reaction, Shin nodded.


    "However, to prevent it from growing, I suggest you avoid using it, as much as you can."


    "Easier said than done." Now that he thought about it, he would need another weapon, if he was to survive this game at all. A weapon that wasn''t going to eat his soul, preferably.


    "Hey you''re worrying too much." Shin chuckled. "I won''t throw you into the battlefield without bullets." Shin kneeled to the ground, his left leg folded beneath him. He drew Mori and planted half the blade into the dark forest soil. Shin began digging the ground with it.


    That can''t be good.


    "Hey Shin," Frey called. Shin returned a ''hmm?'' without looking his way.


    "Wouldn''t your sword get mad? I mean, you''re using him, literally, to dig dirt."


    "Oh that? Don''t worry about it. Artifacts, well, each of them contain the soul of a powerful creature. Some house fairies, others, gods. Mori, he was a forest deity once before he died. He had a different name then, but I named him Mori, as in the Japanese for ''forest''. Believe me he likes the dirt."


    "Stop babbling nonsense human and get to work." Mori growled.


    So the sword that talks incidentally likes the muck. This can''t get any weirder, Frey thought.


    "Slave driver." Shin mumbled before picking on the ground double-time.


    Before long, Shin had hit a hard object beneath the dug soil. He shot Frey a playful wink. He dusted off the surface of the object with his hand, revealing the wooden planks of a chest at least a foot wide and two feet long.


    "Is that,"


    "The Player Weapons? No." Shin said. "I''ve buried those much, much deeper. And besides, I can''t give them to you, even if I want to. Since I''ve killed their Players, game rule is that they''re mine now, meaning only at my touch will their special... properties, become usable."Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    "I see." Frey nodded, storing the information into the back of his mind.


    "Unless you kill me, then they become yours."


    "I don''t think I can do that, even if I want to."


    Shin laughed. "Nothing''s set in stone kid. You''re just half my age, yet you''ve learned in a month what I''ve trained in years."


    "Just proves you''re a good teacher." Frey meant it. If Shin hadn''t found him in the forest that night, he would''ve died from blood loss. Or he could''ve been eaten by scavengers.


    Shin pulled the chest up the ground with a grunt. "I''d rather be called a good father, but that''s not gonna happen anymore." he said with a wry smile.


    Shin didn''t know much about his daughter, aside the fact that he and his lover agreed to name her "Aoi". However, their child was only three months inside the mother''s womb when Shin died. Frey may never understand his pain, but at the very least he knew that never getting the chance to see his own child, was a scar worse than what Shin had on his body.


    "You''re a good father, Shin." Frey began. Shin looked up at him, tears welling up on the corners of his eyes.


    "This isn''t out of pity or bullshit like that. Maybe you never had a chance to be a father to your child, but you''ve been a good father, to me. It may have been for just a month, but you''ve taken care of me more than a stranger should''ve. That''s more than enough to earn you the title."


    Shin had taught him more lessons than his real father ever had. Frey had been a credit card baby ever since he was born, and the most his father had taught him was how to use his credit card to buy anything he wanted. Owning a large software business was tough job, Frey understood, but he just couldn''t grow to sympathize with his father.


    "Thanks, kid." Shin laughed as he wiped his eyes before the tears dropped.


    "I''ll win my game. I''ll find Aoi, tell her how much you love her. Better yet, I''ll finish your game. Then you get to talk to her yourself." He might be getting a little too cocky, but for the minute he didn''t care. He was feeling it: the desire to win. The desire to see Elise once more. The desire to pay Shin, his mentor, his second father, back.


    "You just focus on your game, kid. I''ll play my own." Shin''s eyes glowed with determination Frey had never seen before. After twenty years his game had stagnated, finally he had regained the spirit to resume and win.


    Shin opened the chest, and Frey peered in.


    "Now this is not much, but it''s the gear I''ve used during my playing days." Shin said.


    Inside the chest was a black, long coat made of thick-woven, wool-like material. A pair of black leather gloves, black shoes, black pants, a steel plate vest, a dozen steel throwing knives, and the most impressive pieces of the collection: three black Japanese swords, each one smaller than the next, strung to a black leather belt.


    "Who needs this many blades?" Frey joked, but deep inside he was excited to try all the swords.


    "Each of them have their own purpose." Shin picked up the longest sword of the three and pulled it halfway out of the sheath, revealing a carbon-colored blade. "This is the katana, your main weapon."


    He brought the blade back to its sheath and put it back in the chest. He picked the second blade, shorter than the katana but longer than the last.


    "Your companion sword. You use this in situations where the katana would be unwieldy."


    Frey nodded. Smaller sword for when you''re fighting in confined spaces where the katana would be hard to use due to its length.


    "What about the last one?"


    "This," Shin picked up the last, shortest sword. It was more of a knife, and unlike the first two which were curved, the last one had a straight blade. "This is for close quarter combat, and also for utility purposes. You can use this to skin animals, throw it to distract your enemy, among a myriad of things."


    He gave the knife to Frey. Frey pulled it off its scabbard and held it in a backhand grip. It was light as though he wasn''t holding anything. He swiped the air in front of him with it a few times. It felt good.


    "Now these things are cool and all," Frey clipped the sword back to the belt with the other two. "but I think you''re gonna need them now that you''ve found the will to play again."


    "No kid." Shin grasped his shoulder. "I''m giving these to you as your graduation gift. You earned it. And besides, using these things will only bring back painful memories. All the comrades I''ve lost, all the mistakes, all the Players I''ve killed. If I''m gonna start again, I have to start fresh."


    "I see."


    "I can sense your excitement. Get inside the cottage and try the gear on."


    So he did. After thirty minutes and a few struggles getting the steel plate vest strapped, he stepped out the cottage looking and feeling like a bona-fide warrior in black, stealthy gear. The black long coat was a perfect fit, and the steel vest although it looked bulky at first, was light enough to allow swift movement. Strapped to his black leather belt were the three swords, the katana and its companion sword on one side and the knife on the other, along with an array of steel throwing daggers tucked into small holsters the belt had.


    Shin was waiting for him outside, under a clear blue sky, in the middle of the little grass clearing that had been his training field for a month. Thirty-six Eidelian days, not that long in others'' eyes, but to Frey, it was all he knew of this world. That''s about to change today, he figured.


    He walked up to Shin and bowed. "Thank you for this. For everything."


    "Hey, you''re gonna make me tear up." Shin laughed his hearty, old-man laugh. "Here."


    He held out his calloused hand to Frey. On his palm were two white fangs each a handspan long. The fangs of the goblin hound he killed, Frey recognized.


    "You should save one as a trophy for your first monster kill." Shin said. "The other, use it."


    Frey took the fangs and appraised them. The insides of the fangs were black and hard like metal. "Use how, exactly?"


    "Go to Redel and, remember that friend I told you about?"


    "The smith who makes all your weapons?"


    "That. His name''s Barton. He owns a workshop there. Bring the tooth to him and tell him you''re my apprentice. He''ll know what to do."


    "Barton... Sounds like a Western name."


    "That''s because he''s also a Player. He''s white, used to live in New York if I remember."


    "You made friends with a Player of your generation?"


    But that meant Shin would have to kill him eventually, or else their game won''t end.


    "We''re in a truce. We won''t fight each other until we''re the last ones standing. There are still two other Players, so until they die, we''re good. You best get going, kid. Redel is five days away from here."


    "How do I get there?"


    "Go directly north. Within a few hours you''ll find a road leading west. Just follow that and you''ll get there. Go."


    Frey bowed to Shin for the last time, before walking forward. He accelerated to a jog. He didn''t look back. His jog turned to a light sprint. Only then did he hear Shin''s large voice shouting at him.


    "See you on the other side."


    Frey smiled. He ran.

 Update 1

    Chapter 10 marks the end of the 1st arc. I hope you''ve enjoyed the ride so far because more are coming.


    Next arc will touch more on the world of Eideleir. Also see other Players and where they stand in the grand scheme of things. Prepare to see some more blood as the Players collide with each other!


    Now onto the more concerning things. Release is still every 2-3 days, twice or thrice a week, but releases might get delayed without prior notice. I can only write so much with life and personal affairs in the background. Hope you guys understand! Now, I usually proofread and edit my chapters before releasing them, but sometimes due to time constraints, I overlook minor mistakes. I always reread them when I get the time, though please if you see a glaring error, I''d appreciate it if you shoot me a PM or shout in the comments.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Generally Player 47 had been received well, on other platforms (now top 3 in the Supernatural genre weekly ranking on Honeyfeed!) and also, on RRL. Thanks for the support guys! Couldn''t have finished these chapters without your encouraging feedback and stellar reviews. Hope you continue supporting this project until, well, until it gets axed. Kidding. And as always, thank you for reading Player 47!


    Also available on Rebirth Online, Honeyfeed, and Webnovel. Author-san is too lazy to drop links.

 011: Morals

    With the sun going down and the sky shifting to a magical mix of purple swirls and scarlet clouds, Frey decided to set up camp for the day.


    He got off the dirt path and conjured a campfire from twigs and dead leaves, not far from the roadside. Aside from the goblin hound that attacked him on his first day, there weren''t any dangerous creatures native to the forest, and so he wasn''t worried about the fire attracting monsters. Frey sat by the fire in a seiza, and closed his eyes as he breathed in the warm air radiated by the flames. Shin always used to do the same thing after they ate, and ever since Frey left Shin for Redel, he''d started to take on the practice. Helps clear the mind.


    It''s been three days since he set off for Redel. If Shin was to be believed, then Frey was only halfway through the journey.


    Thirty-nine Eideleir days since the game had begun, he had yet to meet a Player of his generation. Didn''t know what would happen if he did. He was almost certain it would come to a fight, but whether he''d have the guts to kill when the time came, he didn''t know. He shook his head. No, he couldn''t afford to doubt himself. He''ll never win if he doesn''t grow the stomach to kill. And he had to win. He already made a promise to himself, that he''d see Elise again, and to Shin. He can worry about his wellbeing later.


    He opened his eyes. The sky was then completely dark. The campfire crackled with life as it fought the cold night wind. Frey reached inside his black long coat and pulled his booklet out.


    His name and Player number, 47, was written on the first page. The second page displayed the Player numbers of the four who have died so far, which were as follows:


    Player 86 - Eliminated


    Player 92 - Eliminated


    Player 34 - Eliminated


    Player 20 - Eliminated


    The following pages were empty until the tenth, the page where the sketch of his arm blade could be found. Above the sketch of the arm blade three question marks were still written--no changes. Not sure he wanted to see it change. He hadn''t forgotten the story of Shin, about his arm blade''s true nature.


    The eleventh page had three big question marks in the middle. Shin said it was most likely the page for his mark''s evolution, whatever it''ll be. Next page was the monster list. The book seemed to exclude local animals from the list, so other than the goblin hound, no more entries were written. The forest was harmless, with the exception of a few stray wolves and snakes. He figured he was just too lucky, to encounter a goblin hound and get nearly killed--on the first day, no less. It was like picking the one bad apple out of a million.


    Speaking of the goblin hound... Frey fished for the two hound fangs in one of the many pockets his black coat had. He held it up to scrutiny: two fangs thicker than his thumb, longer than his handspan. They were curved almost to the same degree as his katana, tapering to a pointed tip. The goblin hound almost chewed his arm off with these, he remembered. He rolled up his coat''s sleeve.


    Miraculously, his left arm didn''t have so much as a scar from such grievous wounds. Shin told him it was the corberries he''d been eating every morning. Stuff''s regenerative, and this forest had plenty of it on low bushes you can find in almost every inch of the forest.


    These goblin hound fangs were the main reason he''s going to Redel, to bring them to this "Barton" guy. They didn''t seem impressive, although knowing Shin, he had a reason for making him go through all this trouble of bringing it to the city. These fangs might be something. Frey gripped them tight in his hand.


    Verdant green light winked at him from the woods on the other side of the dirt road. Instinct kicked in and Frey dumped a fistful of soil from the ground onto the campfire, snuffing out its flames. He got up from his seiza and drew out his katana. Its black blade was almost lost in the dark cover of the night.


    An enemy Player. He finally got to meet one.


    ---


    The tattoo on the back of her hand burned a blinding green. Liezel Magtala, with heart pounding against her chest and panic in her limbs, ran. She didn''t bother choosing a direction and just sprinted where the wind would take her, with the green light of her Player tattoo as a guide to help her not to crash onto trees.


    Liezel grimaced. Just how unlucky was she, to meet someone she should at all costs avoid? Worse, her spear, the only thing that she''d been counting on to survive, had been taken by those brutish guards back in Redel. Forget about fighting other Players, Liezel was never a fighter. She was scrawny and short, and the only fight she''d ever fought was against a classmate that had been bullying her back in her high-school in Tondo. That was when she was what, fourteen? She''s nineteen now, and thought she''ll never have to pull on someone''s hair ever again, or fight for her life, for that matter.


    She looked around without stopping. She couldn''t see a trace of her pursuant, couldn''t hear anything other than the crunch of dead leaves getting crushed under her every stride. Her tattoo still glowed, but why couldn''t she see her enemy''s light? Unless...


    Unless her enemy''s hand was covered.


    Intense sharp pain pierced her right ankle. She let out a shrill moan as her momentum sent her crashing face-down to the ground. She tried to get up, but the fall numbed her arms. Sticking out her bleeding right ankle was the half of a steel dagger, its edge flashing as it reflected the green light of her right hand. There was a rustle. Forcing adrenaline into her arms Liezel turned around and lifted her upper body, so that she was facing her enemy.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    She crept backward until her back hit a tree. She shone light toward the shadow closing in on her. It was a young man, tall and lanky, wearing black coat and black clothes. In his right hand he held a curved blade, like the one she''d seen in her History teacher''s visuals: the sword used by old Japanese warriors. It was thin and black all over, almost blending with the shadows.


    Liezel felt as if she would pass out from the burning pain in her ankle. "Please." she cried out between labored breaths. She looked up at the young man with pleading eyes, sweat and tears falling down her cheeks.


    The Player stood at her feet and raised his sword. It was the end of the line for her. Game over. As if she didn''t know that from the start. Liezel didn''t have what it takes to kill. Why did she have to, anyway? Why did God let her get dragged into this crazy game? Was there anything she did so wrong? Unbelievable. Unforgivable. Tears fell in streams down her face. She didn''t do anything wrong. She didn''t deserve any of this. If father and mother were still alive they''d tell her she''d been a good girl, that she''d been a good older sister to her dearest siblings. She''d been a good girl and yet,


    Why?


    She didn''t want to die. Not again. At the very least, she wanted to say goodbye to her siblings--something she couldn''t do before she left Earth.


    She looked up at the young man before her. Her enemy. A Player like herself. He had his sword raised overhead, poised to cut her in half in a heartbeat. But his hands were shaking, blade unsteady.


    His lips were contorted in anguish and in his green, emerald eyes, there was doubt.


    ---


    All he had to do was swing the blade, like he had done a million times in his training. The enemy laid there on the ground, a thin girl with copper skin and messed-up black hair, dressed in a worn-out white one-piece. Her right hand glowed a venomous green color he was all too familiar of.


    All he had to do was swing, and there''d be one less Player to fight with. And yet, his hands won''t move. Why? What''s the matter? Do it. His conscious shouted at him. Frey gritted his teeth.


    The girl broke into tears. "Please... I didn''t do anything wrong." she pleaded, her voice small and cracked.


    "Shut it." he snapped.


    Frey didn''t do anything wrong, either. He doubted any of the other Players did, yet they''re still here, forced to kill each other in this game orchestrated by a mad goddess.


    Its exactly because they''re in a game that he had to kill her. She''s a Player. He must, or the game won''t end. His hands gripping the blade handle were stark white. It will be quick, she''d feel no pain. He told himself.


    Do it.


    Do it.


    Do it.


    His eyes met the girl''s. In their black depths, past the tears and the pain, he saw it. The reason she was crying.


    He closed his eyes and breathed in.


    "I''m sorry, Elise." he whispered.


    Frey threw his blade away.


    He slumped to the ground, fell on his knees at the girl''s feet.


    "Dammit. Just, damn."


    The girl had stopped her ugly bawl, but he could still hear her sob like a child. Irritating. Very irritating. He crouched up from his slump and glared at the girl--the enemy he failed to kill. He delivered a quick hand chop to the side of her neck. Her consciousness wandered off. She was still, and Frey was left alone with his mind.


    He cupped his hands on his forehead and cursed the ground.


    He was weak. Beyond weak. All that talk about winning the game, when he couldn''t even kill an unarmed girl. He hated himself.


    He looked up at the girl knocked out before him, at her innocent face wet with sweat and eyes swollen from crying. Somehow, he was even glad that she was alive, that he wasn''t yet a murderer. And that made him feel worse.


    Frey hated being human.


    ---


    Five minutes later and the girl was still out cold, her back resting against an ancient tree. Frey, in his fit, might have hit her harder than he should have.


    He patched her wound. Frey didn''t know why he bothered. He carefully removed his dagger from her flesh and rinsed the cut, with water he scooped from the stream running parallel to the road. He cut a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress and wrapped her ankle once the wound had been cleaned.


    Frey took the glove off his left hand and slipped it onto the girl''s right to mute the light of her mark. Pulled some vines off the old tree above her and tied her hands behind the tree with it, just in case she decided to run off. He also took off the glove on his right hand and, with his mark''s glow as a torch, rummaged the nearby Corberry bushes for fruit.


    Accidentally while foraging around the shrubs his mark casted light upon a very familiar item, caught between the branches of a Corberry bush. It was a booklet only a bit smaller than a pocket book, bounded by a green leather cover. The girl must''ve dropped it while running. Frey pocketed it and went back to picking up Corberries. He put them in a small sack he had stored in one of his coat''s pouches.


    His little captive was still sound asleep when he returned. He dropped the sack off by the tree the girl was tied to. He roamed the vicinity, picking up twigs on the ground. When he had enough he set up a campfire by rubbing two of the twigs until they start to spark from the heat produced by friction. He put his right glove back on, no longer having need for his mark''s light.


    He snuck a glance at the girl to make sure she was still out, before he pulled out the booklet he had found.


    Player 7


    Liezel Magtala


    Was that her name? It sounded weird. It was hard to tell what country she was from, with just her name alone. He looked over the girl once more.


    Copper-skinned and slim built, height barely over five feet. Her black hair was a mess of tangled waves, falling until her shoulders. She was beautiful but wouldn''t beat Victorina in a pageant. She had a small nose proportionate to her sunken bridge. Her cheeks had a rose blush to them. Unlike Victorina, whose beauty was unreal, the girl''s charm leaned more into simplistic, natural beauty. She ought to fix her hair, though.


    The second page of her book contained the number of the four Players that had so far been eliminated. The next pages were empty, just like his booklet. The tenth page had a sketch of a spear with a diamond-shaped spearhead. Below the spearhead were angelic wings, and the middle of the two wings was outfitted with a rhombus gem reminiscent of the gem on his arm blade.


    Above the spear drawing "Saphiel" was written in large print. So her weapon had a name. Unlike his. That said, the girl didn''t have this weapon with her. Interesting, he thought, as he flipped to the next page.


    Saphiel


    Soul Inactive


    Manifestation Not Yet Possible


    He had absolutely no idea what those entailed. No such thing was written in his book. He couldn''t shake the feeling that he was missing on something vital. Was it because he hadn''t been using his arm blade, that his booklet was missing info of this sort? Not that he''d start using his Player Weapon even if that was the case. It was too great a risk, taking Shin''s word for it.


    The next page was empty... or it had been. He almost dropped the book when the parchment caught on fire. Live flames burned through the paper, drawing with their trails an intricate conch shell, carried on the back of two seahorses facing opposite from each other.


    On top of the page "God Crest" was written, and below the sketch was a name and a description.


    Laerina


    The prideful Sea Empress'' crest that ebbs and flows.


    The girl jolted awake.

 012: Interlude - Threat

    "So Forty-Seven chose to keep her," Victorina sipped on her teacup. "Interesting. Beholder, open Player 47."


    The creature flying beside her, a large yellow eye with black bat wings attached to its either side, hovered above her white table. Its red iris heated up with white-blue light, and in front of it a rectangular projection grew apparent.


    Frey Alcott sat before a campfire, reading a Player Tome that, Victorina recognized, was not his own. Opposite to him was Player 7, sitting tied to a tree, already awake.


    "I see that Player have caught your attention." Victorina heard a voice behind her, deep and bold. She was alone in the Purgatory. Supposedly.


    "Foolish of you to come here." Victorina put her teacup down its saucer on the porcelain round table before her. She turned her head only so slightly and, when a black-robed figure entered the corner of her view, she spoke. "Have you finally decided to join your masters in the cold void?" The beholder kept playing a live feed of Player 47''s circumstances.


    The figure laughed as though she had thrown a good joke. "On the contrary, I think I will be having them join me in this living realm, once more." It was then Victorina who chuckled.


    "Surely you jest. Ten thousand years have passed, and you''re still trying to revive the relics of a dark past? You should get over your loss, Raggoth. Your masters have tried us, and it did not end well for themm. Do them a favor and let them rest in peace."Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    "Say what you want, Goddess. That sharp tongue of yours won''t spare you from the reckoning that''s about to come." Raggoth said. His true nature was concealed by a red mask that had no holes, no features whatsoever.


    "There will be no "reckoning", lowly servant. There''s only your futile attempt at revenge." Victorina wondered why he even bothered wearing a mask. She already knew what was behind it, anyway.


    "Of course there will be. The gods of Earth have joined my cause, Goddess. The Deira will fall, and Edeleir will be ours."


    Victorina vanished from her seat. She appeared behind Raggoth, brandishing a heavy black sword almost three feet in length and had a half-foot blade span. The edge of the sword flashed red, cleaving Raggoth in half.


    Raggoth, laughing for the last time, exploded in a shower of blue, luminescent ash.


    An Illusion, just as she thought. The barbarian wouldn''t have the courage to face her head-on. She let go of her sword. Before the sword hit the ground it faded into a whiff of swirling black smoke. Her Beholder had stopped playing the feed.


    "Turn it back on." She demanded and settled back down her seat. The Beholder''s iris lit up, and a rectangular vision of Player 47 popped in front of her, along with Player 7. They were talking, but to Victorina their voices were nothing more than the chirp of birds in the background. What she heard loud in her ears were the words of Raggoth, playing over and over again.


    The gods of Earth have joined my cause. The Deira will fall.


    She doubted his words were more than a bluff but, in the off-chance that they''re true, and that the Olympians are backing him, then they''ll be quite the nuisance.


    Victorina sighed. Now, to tell the others...

 013: Burden

    The girl kept squirming. Frey was at a loss for words. Why, she was tied to a tree, and even if she wasn''t, she still can''t run away, not with a cut tendon in her ankle. Yet she acted as though she''ll get anywhere by wriggling like a worm. He was beginning to think her an idiot.


    "I wouldn''t flail around so much, if I were you." So far Frey had asked her if she was Liezel Magtala, and the only response he got was a growl of "Let me go!" and a lot of thrashing about.


    The shadows surrounding them grew thicker as the night deepened. The dry air got colder, and he had snuggled closer to the fire to battle the bone-piercing chill. He thought of lending the girl his long coat--thinking she might catch a cold, wearing nothing but rags--but then the asshole side of him argued she was moving enough not to freeze over.


    Frey rifled through the rest of her book, finding blank pages until the back cover. Just like his book, hers was devoid of a lot of information. Victorina sure enjoy keeping her Players in the dark, doesn''t she?


    Still, that God Crest worried him. He''d heard of it from Shin before, the ability to use powerful magic, A.K.A. God Crest. It differs from Player to Player, some allowing the user to spit out fire, shoot blasts of wind, or even become invisible and undetectable. The speed of realization also varies from each Player, with some realizing it as early as few weeks into the game, to months. And that''s his problem: his God Crest hadn''t showed up yet. He was lucky that the enemy he first encountered was a skinny girl with seemingly no knowledge at all in combat. He might not be so lucky next time.


    He closed the book and tucked it in his pocket. He looked over the girl, thrashing and grunting about, worry drooping over his eyes. He was worried not for her sake, but for him. His magic better show up soon; Player magic was nothing to sneeze at, and even the sword skill he learned from Shin might not be enough against an awakened Player. Even this idiot of a girl might kick his ass once she realized she had awakened. As he thought, he really should kill her now.


    But... can he even do it?


    When his sword was raised, when he was inches from eliminating the girl, something tugged on his heart. When he was peering into her eyes--her brown, murky eyes, it was as though he was staring into her very soul. He saw longing, fear, anger, bitterness inside, underneath the pity for her self. But more than all those, more than her, he saw the reflection of himself. It wasn''t the reflection of what he was then; it was a reflection of who he will become, after he crossed the line.


    Frey rested his face on his palms. Killing was the only way to win the game. The only way to go back home and feel Elise''s warmth again, was to be the last Player standing. Frey knew that, and he was prepared to kill this girl, all the other Players, for Elise, but had he ever thought about what Elise would want? Would she want him to be a murderer, just for her sake? No. Of course not. It was one thing if he was just defending himself, but he was about to kill an unarmed girl, just for his selfish cause Elise never asked of him.


    This girl before him already have magic. She''s a Player, and she might use it against him. Frey will kill her then. But not now. It''s stupid and unpractical--he knew that. He was keeping a time bomb by letting her live. But he can''t just kill someone who did nothing wrong. He knew Elise won''t let him, even if he''s all too ready to sacrifice his humanity for her. Elise is kind, behind the sassy attitude she always wanted everyone to see.


    Elise...


    The girl screamed, jerking Frey out of his head. It was more of a screech, ear-grating and shrill, blowing crows out of their nests as it reverberated throughout the shadowed treeline.


    "The hell was that?" Frey asked.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "It, it hurts..." The girl hissed, her face contorted in pain. She looked down her wounded foot, biting on her lower lip. The bloodstain on the bandage wrapping her right ankle grew wider and redder. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead as she stressed all her nerves not to twitch so much as a muscle in her leg. Smart move, Frey thought, though the cut wouldn''t have bled out again if she didn''t accidentally--and comically--stomp with her wounded foot in her mindless fit.


    Never mind killing her: she could do that by herself just fine.


    Frey stood up from his seiza and walked over to the girl. She looked up at him, seeking help. Her hands were still tied behind the tree, and she couldn''t do anything about her reopened cut which, by the cramped look on her face, must''ve hurt like hell.


    "I told you not to move so much, didn''t I?" Frey crouched at her feet and hauled her injured leg atop his knee. He could hear the girl''s heavy breathing as he carefully uncoiled the bloodied bandages from her ankle.


    The fresh cut cried out drops of red blood from its reopened crevice. It spanned as the width of his throwing daggers, about an inch and a half. His throwing daggers were sharp, therefore the cut was clean. It''s less trouble to sanitize than a rough cut, at least. With his gloved right hand he applied pressure to the wound until it had stopped bleeding profusely. He reached beside the campfire where a bowl laid full with clean water from the nearby stream.


    The bowl was the half shell of a giant fruit resembling chestnut, but was big as melon. Although it was a fruit, he doubted it was edible due to the fruit flesh being tougher than the shell. With how big and heavy the fruit one can even use it as a throwing weapon, or to bash the enemy in the head.


    He tipped the bowl and let a steady stream wash her wound. The girl let out a sheepish moan as lukewarm water ran over her skin, arching her back in pleasure.


    With the rinse done all that was left was to wrap it again. Frey kept a roll of bandage in his side pocket, which he used to cover his mark before slipping on his black gloves. He drew a clean strip from the roll and cut it with his ornate black Japanese knife. As he wrapped the bandage around her ankle he looked at the girl. Their gazes met. She turned away in reflex. That''s fine, he thought. She didn''t need to like his face. He was her captor, after all.


    When the bandage had been tied and the girl already calmed, he circled behind the tree the girl was tied to. Frey drew his black knife and with it severed the thick vine binding her hands to one another. He hauled up the small sack of Corberries he had picked earlier and dropped it beside the girl.


    "Eat," he said. "if you don''t want your wound to fester."


    The girl looked up at him, puzzled, then down on the sack. She took one fruit gingerly and inspected it. She cleared her throat. "This isn''t... poisonous, or anything, right?"


    Frey sighed and picked one. Without hesitation he sunk his teeth into the Corberry''s black, juicy flesh. Bitterness exploded in his mouth, the prologue to a flood of strong seaweed taste over his tongue. It wasn''t exactly the most delicious experience, but it reminded him of his training under Shin, how he made him eat the same bitter fruit every morning until his wounds healed without a trace. It''s only been three days since, but he missed the old man already.


    The girl followed his example and bit into the fruit. The face she made was priceless.


    "Ugh..." She grimaced as if she was chewing a bitter bug. Or fruit, for that matter.


    "You''re gonna eat two more of those."


    "What?"


    "Don''t what me. That''s medicinal." Frey pulled the girl''s booklet out of his coat and handed it back to her. "Here. You dropped this." She eyed him cautiously as she took it. "Thank you."


    Frey clicked his tongue. "I''m leaving. If you know what''s good for you, pray we''ll never meet again. I can''t guarantee your life."


    He turned his back and left for the road. He can''t be traveling and taking care of an immobile person at the same time. And she''s a Player--that hasn''t changed. He vowed not to kill her, but he didn''t need to help her. Even if she''s a wounded girl in the middle of the wild. He''d done enough by treating the wound he had inflicted and giving her food. He walked, shaking the guilt off with every step he took away from the girl.


    "Wait." He hadn''t gotten very far when a shaky voice called interrupted him from behind.


    He turned around. The girl''s right hand shone green as she waved around the partner of the glove he wore on his right hand. He completely forgot he used his left glove earlier to mute the girl''s glowing mark. He took it from the girl and slipped it on his left bare hand.


    "Where are you going?" The girl asked.


    "It''s none of your business."


    "You''re following that road, aren''t you?" She pointed east, where the dirt road to Redel laid.


    "What if I am?"


    "Don''t!" the girl warned. "Don''t go to Redel. You''re a Player. They''ll... The royal guard, they will kill you."


    He drew his blade--there was rustle ahead.

 014: Purge

    Washed by the green radiance of the girl''s Mark, what stumbled out of the shroud before them was a boy. He had tanned skin smeared with greasy filth, and wore a sleeveless, dirty white frock with poorly-sewn patches of discolored fabric. Very similar to what the girl sitting frozen beside Frey wore, although hers didn''t have as much patches.


    To Frey''s surprise, the girl reacted first--quite violently, at that. "Tack?" her face was a confused mixture of happiness and shock.


    The boy, glass-eyed with fatigue, blinked out of his stupor. "Li-Liezel?" he weakly eeked. His scrawny frame was hunched over, shaking knees folded to a squat under his must-be-insubstantial weight.


    "Tack!" she must''ve forgotten about her less-than-functional limb: the girl jolted up from her sprawl not far beside Frey. She moaned as soon as she planted the wrong, wounded foot on the ground, lurching forward. Frey barred his left arm in front of her in reflex, and instead of crashing down the leafy forest floor her chest slammed against his taut-muscled arm, and she wrapped her arms around his like a fledgling koala scared of falling from the Eucalyptus.


    Liezel Magtala, was it? Her carelessness amused him yet again. He wondered how someone like her lived this far into the game, and he got the strangest feeling he would know soon enough. She looked up at him, confused. She casted her gaze down, to see how she was hugging his forearm like a body pillow across her chest. He could feel her heart rate triple as they stood there, locked in an awkward staring contest.


    "You shouldn''t be here." they heard the boy utter, his voice shaking. They both turned to see tears washing the boy''s grimy cheeks. But he wasn''t bawling. His face was gray, emotionless, broken.


    "I told you to run, didn''t I? I told you not to stop, until you get to Kazil. Why?"


    "Tack I,"


    "Why?!" Liezel Magtala was cut off by the boy named Tack.


    Not sooner than Tack''s outburst faded in the wind did the soil beneath them vibrated with the faint march of footsteps. Frey thought it his imagination, but when Liezel bit her lip and stared down her Mark with squinting eyes, and the boy turned around with a jerk, he knew it wasn''t.


    "We have to run," Tack said with a flat, croaking voice. He staggered toward Liezel, but before he got close Frey had pointed the tip of his black katana to his neck.


    "Run from what?" Frey asked. Although he already had an idea what. It must be the guards Liezel warned him about: those who were tasked to kill Players. But the boy didn''t have a Mark. Maybe something else were chasing them.


    Tack stopped just before the blade punctured his neck. Still, his face was blank--unafraid, even with a sword-end under his chin. He looked at Frey, jaded eyes devoid of any emotion.


    "Who are you, sir?" he asked, "Actually, that doesn''t matter... You should get away as well. The guards will capture you too, when they see you aiding a Player. Aiding us."


    So he wasn''t wrong; the ones chasing them were guards from Redel. The rumbling was a lot closer now, and he could hear the clanking of steel accompany the heavy march of footsteps. By the frequency and the weight of the sounds, he estimated there to be at least a dozen pair of footsteps, belonging to full-grown men. That''s a whole platoon.


    But, that didn''t have anything to do with him. The boy was right; their fight was not his. He''s got no obligation at all to help them. He was a Player, but only Liezel Magtala knew that. He can masquerade as a normal inhabitant of this world as long as his gloves were intact. The guards wouldn''t know, and he can get into Redel without a hitch as long as he''s prudent. He didn''t need to help the two, and possibly get himself killed trying to. There was no hope of escape for them. The boy was tired and weak. The girl can''t run with her wounded leg. Both of them had no weapons. They will die tonight, and the girl holding onto his left arm knew that fact very well.


    She hadn''t squeaked a word in the past few moments. Her head was hung low, and he couldn''t see the look on her face. But she was crying. He knew, without looking, and without hearing a sound, she was crying. Warmth fell in drops onto the sleeve of his woolen coat, conveyed to his sense by the wetness of the thick fabric.


    He put down his katana and slid it into its black scabbard.


    Tack, without his obstruction, gently pulled Liezel''s hands off of his arm. The girl all but weakly draped her arm over the boy''s shoulders, her left foot planted firmly and right foot tiptoeing. Tack''s knees buckled under her weight suddenly resting on him.


    Tack looked Frey in the eye. "You should run, while there''s still time." The boy walked past him, one unsteady step at a time, supporting the girl by his side, in a speed that wouldn''t beat a snail in a race.


    "Worry about yourselves." Frey snorted. "With her weight dragging you down, you don''t have a snowball''s chance in hell outrunning them." Forget about hiding; the girl''s glowing Mark made sure they couldn''t. The marching should''ve been less than ten meters then, growing into a deafening tune beyond the shadow of trees and foliage. .The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    The girl flinched at his words. Stuttering she said. "He''s right, Tack. You should leave me. At least one of us will live."


    Tack simply shook his head, taking another strained step forward. Frey admired how brave and kind the boy was, but hated how foolish he could get.


    "No, boss Barton told me to get you and the others to safety." he said.


    Just then something in his head clicked, like a light switch flicked on, the second he heard the familiar name slip from the boy''s mouth.


    "Wait." Tack and Liezel looked at him over their backs.


    "What do you know about Barton?" Frey didn''t think twice to ask.


    The boy opened his mouth to speak, but stopped and froze. Finally, his face betrayed emotion. And that emotion was fear. He was no longer looking at Frey anymore, but behind him, jaded eyes bulging in shock.


    Frey understood why. He turned around to see some six middle-aged men, clad in steel armor and leather paddings, form a half circle in front of him and before his campfire. Two of them to his right wielded spears and bucklers, while the rest had their gleaming broadswords stare at him at arm''s length. Frey stepped back and drew his dark blade. The soldiers encroached on him, their eyes menacing.


    "Hold it." an orotund shout halted their advance. Cutting their formation from behind was a soldier taller than the rest, with shoulders broad as hills, covered in layers of steel plates. He was brown-skinned with a wrinkled face well past forty, but his strong, straight posture showed only a man in his prime. He was no shorter than seven feet, and in his right hand was a broadsword about thrice as broad as his katana and a tad longer than the other soldiers''.


    On the left chest of his plate mail, shining scarlet in the light of the campfire, was a polygonal red crest with two etched blades crossed to an ''x''.


    "Put down your sword and speak your name, vagrant." the imposing soldier demanded. "I am Captain Zalvik Slord of 48th Infantry Battalion of the Redel Imperial Force. What is your connection to these two criminals?"


    Behind him was Liezel squeaking in fear. He didn''t turn around to know that their route had been blocked, and they''re surrounded by the rest of the squad.


    "I didn''t know they were criminals." Frey lowered his sword, but didn''t put it back in its sheath. He turned at Liezel weeping behind him. She had been seized, a guard locking each of her arms. The boy was in the same predicament. They didn''t bother struggling. Liezel shook her head at him in frantic manner, staring at him with brown, crying eyes that plead to be saved. Crying eyes that prickled his conscience with thorns the longer they took root on him. He turned away from her gaze, to spare him the unnecessary guilt.


    "I''m from a hamlet down south," Frey continued, "sent by our Elder on an errand to deliver a strange material to a blacksmith named Barton in Redel. I was on my way to your city when I came across these two distressed souls. I thought they were beggars and pitied their helplessness so I thought as a good man I should help."


    "... I see." the Captain furrowed his brows at his lies, skeptic, but didn''t push on it further, as Tack and Liezel didn''t say anything against his words.


    "Where is the material?"


    "Pardon?"


    "You said you''re to deliver a strange material to Barton, but he is in the custody of the King, so you will have to turn your parcel over to us."


    Frey gasped, feigning shock. He wasn''t really surprised that this Barton was in bars. The boy called him "boss" just then, and more importantly, he remembered, Barton himself was a Player. Not a Player in his game, but a Player nonetheless. And Players, for some reason unknown to him, was on the whole kingdom''s shitlist.


    "Do you mind if I ask a question, Captain Zalvik?"


    Captain Zalvik growled. It was weak, but it was there. "Go on."


    "I haven''t been to Redel before, and I know not of the blacksmith Barton, which is why before I turn in to you the package, I must ask, what did the man do?"


    "It was by the order of the King that the famous blacksmith be detained. He is a traitor and as much a criminal as these two. As an outsider, that is all you need to know. Now," Captain Zalvik held out a palm covered in leather. "the parcel."


    "Right." he reached inside his coat.


    A throwing dagger flew out of Frey''s hand, straight into the chink between the shoulder guard and the steel armor of the Captain. His guttural grunt as he pulled the dagger from his shoulder sprung his lackeys into action. In the next second, swords were swinging Frey''s way. He stepped back from their slashes. Spearheads were onto him; he sidestepped out of their thrust.


    Tack and Liezel, and the four soldiers holding them, watched Frey jump around and over the enemies'' strikes deftly with their mouths agape.


    Frey couldn''t believe how fast his reflexes acted. He could dodge the swift spike of a spear he only saw coming from the corner of his vision. The katana was suddenly light, but he attributed it to the hot adrenaline pushing the cold off his nerves. He deflected the smash of a broadsword and redirected its force to the side. The enemy soldier tumbled with off-balanced momentum propelling him past Frey harmlessly. Another swing came his way, and he didn''t bother clashing sword with the enemy. He ducked below the swipe as he unholstered a dagger from his belt. When the enemy''s blade had gone past his head he sprung up, pushed a dagger into the enemy''s neck with his gloved palm. The soldier wandered off Frey''s sight, scratching his itchy neck, or rather the gash he''d carved into it. One down.


    Another rushed up at him; he was a soldier wielding a spear, ducked behind a round, steel-rimmed wooden shield. He''d been dodging the two spearmen for too long. It was time he took out one of them. Frey stood still and calmed his breath. The spearman took a phalanx position with the spear and buckler decked out in front of him. Then, the soldier charged his way like a bull aiming for the matador.


    Frey sucked in air and, in the last second before the spearhead pierced his chest, he dodged out of the way. The spearman rammed past, exposing his open back to Frey. He brandished his sword, a black katana gleaming under the moonlight, and its edge collided with the steel plate covering the soldier''s back. Then, something disturbing happened. The katana was supposed to clash with the enemy armor; he even half-expected the edge to chip, or the blade to snap in half. At the very least he would feel something, anything, an impact, a sound, friction. He felt nothing. The black blade did not clash with the steel plate--it cut through, but Frey felt no resistance. It''s as if he slashed through thin air. As the blade rend through the soldier''s armor and flesh like knife through butter, Frey felt energy get sucked out from his whole arm to his right hand, and flow straight into the blade. Dark, impalpable smoke drifted behind the curved black sword like fading afterimage.


    The spearman dropped face-down on the floor, a deep, black cut across his back. Blood didn''t flow out, as if the wound was cauterized. Frey couldn''t afford to be stunned as more swords came his way.

 015: Strongest

    With the sickening slurch of flesh tearing, Frey''s black katana dragged a dark trail across yet another soldier''s armored chest. The soldier fell to his knees, shooting Frey one last glare of indignance before falling at his feet.


    "Well, that''s the last of them." he waved his sword down, shaking the blood off its edges and splattering drops of red on the ground. Frey eyed Zalvik and, with a morbid smirk plastered on his bloodied face, he spoke. "Are you gonna come at me next?"


    Zalvik pushed forth, squeezing between the four soldiers holding Tack and Liezel by the arms. There was a dangerous gleam in his cloudy brown eyes, and a condescending grin framed with red stubble. He planted his steel boots in the ground and took a stance with his trunk-like legs spread far from each other. The broadsword he held in front of him was massive--the largest Frey had seen. But then again, he hadn''t seen that much variety of swords. Not yet, at least.


    Frey also put up his guard. Even after Zalvik had watched him mow down the whole squad, Frey couldn''t see even a hint of caution in him. Instead, the old man was smiling ear to ear. He was tempted to ask Zalvik what could be so funny, but it was Zalvik who first opened his mouth.


    "You have impossible sword skill for a vagrant. And that sword," he eyed Frey''s black katana, grinning with avarice. "I''d like to take it once I kill you."


    That wouldn''t even matter to Frey if he died, he thought, but didn''t voice it out. Instead, he held his blade forward and fought Zalvik''s cocky grin with his own. "Don''t worry, I''ll give it to you. Where do you want it, across your back, or deep in your neck?"


    "Cocky, you remind me of my early days. Tell you what, vagrant, you give me the sword, and I''ll let you walk away without a scratch." he peered behind, were Tack and Liezel hung limply on the constricting arms of the soldiers. "You can even take the boy with you, as a sign of my generosity, but sadly, the girl has to remain."


    Frey pinched the growing stubble on his chin, as if really pondering the idea of selling his sword. He never thought of his weapons as having that high a market value, but then he''d practically been living with Shin the whole time, deep in a forest, away from the touches of civilization. He wouldn''t know what is valuable in this world and what''s not. He looked down at the sword he was holding, then at Zalvik with his head tilted.


    "Is my weapon that valuable?" Frey asked. He wasn''t really considering Zalvik''s offer, but it would seem the enemy in front of him was about to teach him a bit of economics. Or, he was about to make him.


    "Despite saying you do not know anything about Barton, you are holding one of the weapons he himself forged."


    Frey''s eyes widened.


    "What, you thought I was a simpleton to not notice?" Zalvik continued. "That kind of blade, with its weird shape, is not commonly used in Eideleir. It''s also not distributed, because only one blacksmith forges that type of blade. Namely Barton, a Chosen from another world." he glanced at Liezel as he spat out the last word.


    "Chosen?"


    "It amazes me how much you try to feign ignorance, vagrant. Someone who is acquainted with Barton and who wields one of his weapons... On top of that, you can handle eight full-grown men on your own. You are not just a mere messenger out to deliver morsels. Who are you?"


    "Does it really matter who I am?"


    Zalvik burst out laughing. "Let''s see. You''ve killed my men and had been found assisting fugitives. I cannot arrest you for your crimes without knowing your name. Or would you rather I don''t bother with arrest and just bury you here?"


    "What happens if I give you the sword now?"


    "Your sword? I can always take that after I''m done with you, vagrant."


    Frey expected as much. That deal about letting him go in exchange for his weapon was just a bluff. Not that he would''ve taken the deal even if it wasn''t.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    After all, Zalvik is not his equal.


    Frey wiped the splatters of blood on his cheeks with the cuff of his coat. The night was deep, and the shadows surrounding them deeper. Yet, he could see clear the heaps of metal and flesh laying in large lumps on the ground all around them. Some of these lumps had steel knives sticking out of their vitals, while others laid unmoving with deep, black gashes running over their armor. He looked back at Zalvik. Soon, the captain would be joining his squad.


    "You were asking for my name just then, weren''t you?"


    "That is so." Zalvik nodded.


    "It''s Player 47. It''s okay if you don''t remember it."


    Liezel and Tack, who had been listening to their banter with despondent faces, had their eyes pried wide by Frey''s words. Liezel even shook her head at him, as if to say he shouldn''t have done what he did.


    Zalvik''s jaw dropped the moment he realized what Frey just said. And then he laughed raucous and heartily, like he also found his move stupid. "I was expecting you would give your name, but you gave something even more interesting. Are you that desperate to die?"


    "Do all the captains back in Redel talk as much as you? Should be a very lively army."


    "What did you say?"


    "Weren''t you going to arrest me? I''m right here Captain. Tell you what, I''ll give you this sword if you actually beat me. Though I don''t think I would lose to someone whose whole squad took hours chasing after a kid and a girl."


    Trembling with rage, Zalvik shot Tack and Liezel a glancing glare, before narrowing his eyes at Frey.


    "You do not know who you are mocking, Chosen. I don''t take kindly to upstarts getting ahead of themselves. You think you''re so strong, after beating pawns? They were hardly the strongest of my force. You will get what I mean soon."


    Zalvik kicked the ground and in a stride, closed the distance between them into a mere two meters. Just in range for a swing with his massive broadsword. Frey arched his back, letting the tip of the sword wheeze past his neck. Still reeling from the centrifugal force he himself made, Zalvik was vulnerable in all spots. He must''ve been planning to get Frey in that one attack, but it just didn''t work that way. Frey held his katana, gleaming lustrous black and deadly, and brought it home down Zalvik''s steel shoulder guard. Zalvik had lost an arm. Or at least, that''s what Frey thought. The blade''s weird magic should''ve acted then, and would''ve rend through the steel guard. But it didn''t. A stinging vibration ran from the edge through the body of the sword, climbing until his fingers. A loud clank boomed as steel repelled steel, and he suffered the tingling feedback of it. A hook came from his right and he backed out just in time to avoid getting knocked out by Zalvik''s surprise boxing. He was smiling, despite not landing the hit.


    "Surprised your sword''s little trick did not work?" Zalvik asked as he gathered his posture.


    So it doesn''t work on him. Frey bit his lip and grimaced. Plan B.


    He dashed toward Zalvik, brandishing his black blade. Zalvik blocked with his massive sword and pushed his relatively light katana without much effort. Frey tried again, this time he crouched and sliced low, out of his parry range. Zalvik jumped a step back, but Frey didn''t relent. He followed suit, with yet another swing overhead. Zalvik blocked again with his broadsword. This time, Frey didn''t pull out his sword from the clash. With Zalvik supporting his sword with his both hands, his body was open. Frey delivered a swift boot straight onto Zalvik''s side. Zalvik staggered sideward like a crab washed ashore.


    His fate was sealed.


    Frey rushed at him, katana in his right hand. He swung at Zalvik''s neck, but his blade was met with the overlapping steel plates of Zalvik''s arm guard.


    Fast reflexes, Frey thought. He wasn''t captain for nothing. But, his reflex alone wasn''t enough.


    With his left hand, Frey reached for the hilt of the companion blade strapped on his belt. It was a bit shorter than his katana, but had the same shape and the same black luster on its surface. With it in his left hand he swung forth.


    Zalvik couldn''t seem to understand what was happening as he watched his arm fall off from the elbow down. The overlapping plates of steel covering his forearm protested with clangs as they hit the stones and twigs littering the forest floor.


    Warm, crimson blood sprayed forth from the stump of Zalvik''s right arm, and then his guttural scream came shortly after. In a last ditch effort to protect himself Zalvik used his remaining left hand to lift his massive sword. He swung at Frey. Frey circled to his back and, with a deft hand, pushed the companion blade deep into the back of his neck. The blade protruded half a foot on the other side, its black edge snuggled under his chin. Zalvik had stopped screaming.


    Frey pulled his companion blade out of Zalvik, and the man fell face-down on the floor, his beloved broadsword beside him.


    Frey heard rustle, and then the groans of Tack and Liezel as they hit the floor. When he looked over, the boy and the girl were on their knees, confused. There were four shadows scampering behind them, into the woods, quickly fading from sight. Frey didn''t want to chase after them. There was simply no point in it. And he was tired. All around him were bodies covered in steel and blood, as dead as the dessicated leaves littering their grave, framed toxic green by the light emanating from Liezel''s Mark.


    He looked at his feet, where Zalvik laid with a hole in his neck.


    Frey won, didn''t he?


    He won his first battle. The cost of it didn''t matter to him for the moment, as he let his victory sink in.

 016: Gratitude

    A stranger looked up at him from the murky surface of the pond, framed by a moon hovering far behind. He looked exactly like Frey, but with eyes that must''ve been decades older than his young face. His hair was in black unkempt spikes, and a two-day stubble had grown on his chin. Caked on his cheeks were spatters of dark red blood that had since dried.


    The man staring up at him wasn''t Frey. It was a murderer. He took off his gloves. He was far enough from Liezel that his mark didn''t glow. It''s the last thing he wanted to see right now. He cupped freshwater in his hands, doused his face cold with it.


    How does it feel, crossing the line? His devil mocked as he let water drip from his face.


    "Shut up." he muttered.


    I had no choice.


    But you could''ve walked away.


    I needed info from the boy.


    Is that all there is to it?


    Frey plunged his head deep into the water. That seemed to have stopped the voice in his head. He stayed under for a second, two, his eyes closed, breath steady. He could hear nothing but the pressure knocking on his ears.


    He wished Shin was there to guide him. He would always know what to do.


    Frey got out of water and wiped his face down with his hands.


    "Chilling night, isn''t it."


    He turned around, to find Tack walking toward him, eyes skyward.


    "I''m used to it." Frey answered.


    "How long have you been traveling? On your own?"


    "You don''t have to know that." he slipped on his gloves and sat in a seiza.


    "Right. I apologize."


    "Where''s that girl?"A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "Resting and alive, thanks to you."


    "I didn''t do it out of kindness. And I certainly didn''t think of saving her. She just happened to get involved while I was saving you."


    "Me?"


    "I won''t beat around the bush. You have something I need, that''s why you''re still alive."


    "I... figured as much." the boy heaved a sigh. "You''re looking for Boss, aren''t you?"


    "Damn right."


    Tack sat beside him, mimicking his posture, with legs folded underneath his body.


    "Like the captain said. He must be in the dungeons of Redel right now. Rest assured though they will not kill him. He''s too valuable."


    "Start with why they captured him. Does it have something to do with him being a Player?"


    Tack shook his head. "No oh. The King only apprehends the new Chosen. Boss Barton got caught, because he was helping the Chosen escape. We were."


    "Is that so... Still, I don''t get why they''re so dead set on hunting us, the new generation."


    "It has something to do with the King''s soothsayer. The soothsayer prophesized the end of his reign will come by the hands of a young Chosen from the other world."


    "And he believed something so reeking of bullshit?"


    "The whole kingdom believes it." Tack sighed. "The Chosen are powerful and unpredictable beings. That''s why, before their powers grow, the King is hunting them."


    "So if I go to Redel now and behead the King, I''d have made the prophecy true, right?" Frey joked.


    "... Could you be,"


    "No don''t go there. I was just thinking how much bullshit prophecies are. I don''t plan on overthrowing a king."


    Tack heaved a sigh of relief. He doesn''t take jokes too well, Frey thought.


    "What''s your name?" the boy asked.


    "Frey. Frey Alcott."


    "An otherworldly name indeed." Tack chuckled. And for the first time, Frey saw anything but hopelessness in his face. "Hey Frey."


    "What."


    "You''re a good man."


    "Huh? You must have a few screws loose, kid." Frey snorted. "I''ve just become a murderer tonight, with a dozen signed under my name."


    Frey lifted himself up. He dusted off his coat, and looked up at the midnight sky peppered by a hundred stars flickering to a dance. In the middle of it all was a crescent moon, smiling moonbeams upon the arboreal pond stretched out before them.


    Murderer. That''s what he was from now onwards.


    "You chose not to run away. You chose to save us."


    "And I killed people for it."


    "But you were just doing what you thought was right, weren''t you?"


    Frey looked down, at the boy who stared at him with eyes that saw everything.


    What he thought was right. Frey nodded. He liked the sound of it. Like an actual justification for his actions. It was naive thinking, but one he wished was true.


    "I wouldn''t know. But it''d be great if I was." with one vague answer, Frey turned heel and went for the road, leaving Tack''s gaze glued to his back.


    "Where are you going?" Tack asked.


    "Redel. I have a prisoner to break free." Frey replied without turning around.


    "What about us?"


    "You don''t owe me anymore, if that''s what you''re asking. Do what you want."


    Frey walked, not looking back even once. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his black trench coat. It was indeed a chilly night.

 017: Happenstance

    "So we meet again." a familiar voice roused him to consciousness.


    "... Victorina?"


    Frey was sitting on a posh wooden chair, in front of a tea set perched on a white-mantled table. There, sitting opposite to him, was a woman he''d rather not see in the morning.


    "Greetings, Frey Alcott. How''s the game going for you?" Victorina said. She grabbed the porcelain tea kettle on the table and poured herself a cup of black tea. The fragrance that wafted about reminded him of Earl Grey, but was distinct in a way he couldn''t explain.


    "Slow. Full of setbacks." Frey answered.


    The purgatory was bright gold, basking in the daylight flooding from the thousand arch-shaped windows lining the walls.


    Victorina took a sip on her cup. "Are you talking about Player 7?"


    "She''s one."


    "You should''ve killed her."


    "Right? But I didn''t."


    "However if you had killed her... How do you think you would see yourself then?"


    "No worse than how I see myself now." Frey said.


    "I wonder about that." Victorina smiled. "You would''ve beaten yourself over and over about it. You might''ve even gone insane. That''s how you are."


    "How would you know?"


    "I know a lot of things."


    "Sure you do." Frey reclined on his seat. "So, do you also happen to know why the hell I''m here again?"


    "Isn''t it because you wanted to see me?"


    "Are all goddesses as sexually-frustrated as you?"


    "No, all of them are frivolous." Victorina remarked almost with disdain in her voice. "They don''t know the pain of having to stay in this place, observing the game from above, for eternity."


    "You mean all you do is watch us play all day?"


    Victorina''s well-endowed chest rose and fell as she heaved a huge sigh. "That is what I do."


    "Who even put you in charge of this?"


    "Deira. The council of the gods. They said since I was the Goddess of Death, naturally I should be the one supervising you."


    "Because we''re already dead?"


    "That is so." she held the cup to her lips.


    So even gods have problems of their own.


    "But then, I get some enjoyment out of watching the Players. They are amusing sometimes, the choices they make, how they struggle so much." saying this carved an impish smile on the woman''s face.


    "You enjoy watching people suffer? Sadist." Frey rolled his eyes.


    "At the very least, I do not enjoy risking myself for others." Victorina retorted.


    "Shut up."Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "You are amusing yourself, Frey Alcott. More than you imagine. I wonder why?"


    ---


    Frey woke up to the chirping of birds. Raw sunlight filtering through the canopy of tree leaves made him squint. He threw his body up and sat.


    He checked his booklet first thing, as per his routine. Not much has changed, but two Players have been added to the list.


    Player 64 - Eliminated


    Player 29 - Eliminated


    Frey wondered who they could be. How did they die? Was it by the hands of another Player, or was it because of something else, a monster, or perhaps nature itself?


    In any case, the game has ended for both of them. They have lost their stake at second life. Frey hasn''t. He was still Playing. He hasn''t yet lost.


    Frey pocketed the book and got up. He should probably hunt for breakfast.


    He was going deeper into the forest when he heard faint noise coming from the direction of the road. He snuck to the roadside and strained his ears. Steel clashing and shouts. It was coming from up ahead.


    Probably something he shouldn''t get into. But he thought it didn''t hurt to look so, skirting along the roadside, sneaking behind trees with his sword drawn, he went to see the commotion.


    It was a bandit attack. At least it looked to him. From behind a tall shrub he watched four Redel soldiers fend off six, uncouth-looking bald men. The soldiers had their backs against a wagon pulled by two horses. Whatever was inside it, Frey couldn''t see, as the wagon had roof and walls made of cloth supported by wooden frames.


    Yep, something I shouldn''t get into. Frey thought at first.


    But, the direction in which the wagon was facing caught his eye. It was heading to Redel. If he got to hitch a ride on the wagon, he might get to the city faster than he would have on foot. It was a tempting prospect, one that made fighting bandits seem worthwhile.


    "Oy." Frey heard behind him. He turned around to see the glint of a sword coming for his head.


    Instinct kicked in and he rolled back, dodging the attack. The only problem is he rolled the wrong way, out of the cover. He rolled out onto the road, and the only sets of eyes that weren''t trained on him were the horses''.


    "Oh shit."


    There was no backing out.


    Bandits and soldiers had stopped fighting to look at him, confused, but that only lasted a mere second as the bandit who attacked Frey charged out of the foliage, looking angry as all hell with a pirate cutlass raised.


    "Kill him." the bandit said.


    Frey raised his katana and parried the strike of a bandit. It didn''t matter which bandit, they were all bald and ugly. He threw the enemy''s force to the side and, as the bandit cruised past him, Frey barred his neck with an elbow.


    The bandit writhed on the floor, holding his neck with both hands as his mouth frothed.


    Another enemy came swinging. Frey sidestepped his attacks and circled behind. With the hilt of his sword he pummeled the bandit square on the noggin, knocking the lights out of him.


    Seeing two of their friends already down and the playing field leveled one is to one, the remaining bandits scampered like rats into the forest.


    Two of the soldiers seized the bandits Frey incapacitated, while the other two walked up to him, smiling.


    "That''s good skill you have there lad. What''s your name?" the one asking was old, with thinning gray hair and a wrinkled face. Santa''s beard hung on his chin, and you would mistake him for a drunkard if not for the eloquent way he spoke.


    "Frey Alcott." he answered.


    The man held out a leather-gloved hand. Frey took it, flashing the old man the best smile he could manage.


    "I''m Hugo, and this is Gren." he pointed at the thin, young soldier beside him. "I must say lad, you''ve done the kingdom a great service today."


    "I did?"


    "You see that wagon over there? It has expensive cloth for the royals. Those nobles don''t like getting their fancy clothes delayed, so had we been ransacked by those scalawags, a lot of tailors would''ve been whipped. You know what I mean?"


    "Ah. I see."


    "More than that, we would''ve died." It was Gren who spoke, scratching the wild curls of his red hair. "Those were the Southern Robbers. They don''t take prisoners, from what I heard."


    "Then it''s probably a good thing Frey here came along!" Hugo cackled with genuine mirth. "We were outnumbered back there. It would''ve been a real miracle if we all got out alive."


    "I don''t think I''ve done too much." Frey said.


    "Ah, there''s no use being humble. Would you join us for a drink?"


    A drink in the middle of the day? Frey shook his head. "I''ll have to refuse. I am currently traveling, you see."


    "Oh a traveler. Well, you wouldn''t be anywhere near these parts if you weren''t one. Where are you heading?"


    "Redel."


    "Redel, huh? Well lad, good deeds get paid. Hop on the wagon, we''ll take you there."


    "Really?" excitement shone in Frey''s green eyes. Though of course, he had planned all these from the beginning.


    "Yes. It''s the least we can do." Gren chimed in.


    Frey bowed with a "thank you", but deep inside his head was screaming "mission success".


    "We done hauling the bastards, sir." one of the soldiers reported to Hugo.


    "Good. We''re leaving, I don''t want an earful from the Count and his ill-bred daughters." Hugo turned to Frey. "The inside will be cramped with the prisoners and the cargo in. Will that be alright with you?"


    "It''s plenty fine." Frey replied. Beggars can''t be choosers.

 018: Slave

    "So, what business brings you to Redel?" Hugo asked. He was sitting beside Frey, inside the wagon. Across from them were two unconscious bald men, looked over by Gren who sat beside them.


    "Looking to get a better weapon." Frey said. "I heard there''s an exceptional smith in Redel going by the name of Barton. I wish to see if he is indeed as good as word-of-mouth makes him out to be."


    Half of the wagon interior was occupied by stacks and stacks of shiny, satin-like cloth that came in different bright colors. Gren called them "Vermillion", or something close. Probably something Frey didn''t have to know, but every bit of knowledge about this world helps.


    "Oh he is probably as good as you have heard, alright." Hugo said. "But, the thing is, Barton''s been apprehended for masterminding a prison break."


    "He did that?" Frey asked as if knowing nothing, though he was about to mastermind a prison break himself, or something not wholly different from the idea.


    "We were all surprised, you see. For the past decade he''d been the supplier of arms for the Imperial Force. I''m something of a patron of his services, myself."


    Hugo drew the shortsword that had been hanging on his waist the whole time.


    Simple was the best word to describe his weapon. A double-edged steel blade, tapering at the end. The guard was made of bronze, with the handle coated with leather.


    "This was the earliest weapon I''ve bought from him. It''s been with me for twelve years, yet I can count in one hand the times I''ve had to sharpen it."


    Interesting. So that''s what Tack meant when he said Barton was too valuable to kill. His craftsmanship was considered impeccable throughout Redel, that the king himself contracted him. If Frey didn''t know any better, Barton might''ve even been friends with the King at some point.


    "It''s a real shame that he went rebel, you know? He''s the best there is, and his apprentices don''t even come close."


    "Ah, is that so?" Frey wore a cramped smile and said nothing more. Tack wouldn''t want to hear that one.


    "Rumor has it the Runic class weapons he used to produce could beat some of the Artifact class." Gren added.


    "That''s just rumors. Those who could afford to buy Runics from him are probably collectors from a rich family. They wouldn''t even use them."


    "General Kred has one, allegedly."


    "The spear that can blast fire?" Hugo flared his nose. "Oh please, that''s just bored captains seeing things. Even if it has magic, I doubt it''s a Runic from Barton. Those cost a castle each."


    "B-but we wouldn''t know for sure, right? I mean he''s a general and all. And he''s involved with corruption..."


    "Shush kid," Hugo shook his head. "Even if it''s obvious, you don''t get to say those things. You''re going to get yourself hanged."


    "Aye, sir." Gren hung his head.


    The wagon rocked, skidding to a halt.


    "Oy, why''d you stop?" Hugo shouted to the two soldiers at the reins outside the wagon.


    "We''ve reached the crossroads sir. There''s... a prison caravan ahead." replied a soldier.


    "Is it ours?"


    "It seems so, sir."


    "I''ll check." Gren was rising from his seat when Hugo held down his lap.


    "I''ll do it. You go watch these two cretins, we don''t want them out of sight."


    "Can I come?" Frey asked.


    "But of course."


    A dissatisfied frown overtook Gren''s face, and Frey could feel his glare follow him as he stepped down the wagon.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    He''s not going to be a problem, is he?


    The caravan the two soldiers were talking about laid a good ten meters ahead, lodged by the roadside. It consisted of two cars, each smaller than the cargo wagon, and were pulled by one horse each instead of two. Inside both cars were dozens of women and children crammed like sardines packed in a can. They all wore the same dirty white rags he saw Liezel and Tack wearing, but with the addition of steel cuffs around their wrists and chains binding their ankles.


    Four soldiers were sitting in a huddle beside the caravan, laughing with flasks of liquor in hand. When they saw Frey and Hugo approaching, they waved bottles at them.


    "I do not like this." Hugo muttered under his breath.


    Frey didn''t open his mouth, but he was feeling about the same. As they walked past the first wagon, toward the four soldiers, Frey couldn''t help but look in the eyes of the prisoners. Perhaps it was the gloom in their gazes, their silent plea for help, that made him stop for a moment and stare.


    "Help us, please." he heard a woman beg from among the prisoners. He turned away.


    Not now. He told himself. Biting his lower lip, with his fists clenched and trembling, Frey walked on. He was already in a favorable position with the guards. He wasn''t about to ruin it for a vague sense of justice. He shouldn''t.


    Catching up, he took Hugo''s side and walked to match the old man''s leisurely pace.


    "This isn''t a prisoner caravan at all." Hugo said, a scowl of distaste falling onto his face.


    "What do you mean?" Frey tilted his head. Ahead, the four soldiers beckoned for them with delirious smirks on their faces.


    "It''s all women and kids in there. If that isn''t a slave pack, I don''t know what is."


    Slave. Frey shuddered at the thought. He should''ve expected it from how medieval the soldiers of Redel seemed, wielding swords and spears and wearing armor, but nonetheless it was bile in the gut to think an actual slave trade flourished so openly in this world. Humans are cruel creatures no matter the world they''re in, aren''t they?


    Just before they got close to the huddle of drunken troops Hugo put a hand on Frey''s shoulder.


    "Stay here," Hugo said. His chest was puffed as he walked with a robust gait, and Frey simply watched Hugo approach the four steel-clad knights wearing the crimson Redel emblem on their chests.


    "Good day, men." Hugo greeted. One from the group, a tall man with an unkempt stubble on his fat chin and a beer belly stood up and intercepted him. Frey couldn''t hear what they were talking about, but he didn''t move from where he stood.


    The talk between Hugo and the fat soldier continued. The fat soldier pointed below the first car where, instead of a wooden wheel, a grainy rock was lodged, keeping the bottom of the wagon from kissing the ground. Hugo nodded, and the other soldiers got up and broke their mid-day party. They were suddenly alert, two hopping on both of the horses leashed to the wagons, while the other pair went with Hugo back to the cargo wagon.


    "Ardey, Horan, get our spare wheel out." Hugo shouted at his two soldiers standing by the cargo wagon. Frey understood what was happening then, and waltzed back inside the cargo wagon. A displeased Gren greeted him as he climbed up the foothold and eased into the wagon, sitting opposite from Gren and the two bandits who were then already wide awake.


    "What''s all the commotion about?" Gren asked. The two bald bandits sitting on his either side didn''t so much as move, watching Frey with caution and fear seeping from their gazes.


    "A stranded slave caravan. They''re fixing the wheels right now, shouldn''t take long." Frey replied. The bandits kept their stares locked onto him, but he paid them no mind. He wasn''t about to be intimidated by them.


    "I see. What a bother." Gren clicked his tongue. Outside, they could hear tools clanging and soldiers heaving, working, conversing with one another. Above their voices were Hugo''s authoritative tone, giving orders to the soldiers like a boss. Probably because he was.


    Minutes passed in utter silence between Frey and Gren. The silent animosity Gren held toward him, and Frey''s indifference to it, brought about a tense atmosphere swirling in the cramped confines of the wagon. It was one of the bandits who broke the uneasy silence.


    "You don''t look like a Red." the bandit to the right of Gren opened his mouth. He had a hulking body and a tanned complexion, wearing a leather vest over white shirt. His face looked striking and rugged, but clean-shaven at the same time.


    "Are you talking to me?" Frey pointed at himself.


    "Yeah you. Who else? I can tell you''re not with these Red bastards." the bandit snorted, passing Gren a sidelong glance.


    "Shut it, criminal. You''re not allowed to talk." Gren chided.


    "Oh come on, where''s the harm?" the bandit laughed, raising his cuffed wrists and dangling them in front of Gren.


    Gren gritted his teeth, at a loss for a rebuttal. The bandit turned to Frey and grinned with his canine sticking out.


    "You really should choose who you''re siding with, kid. We may be thieves, but we never raid villages and steal women and children and sell them like jewelry. I tell you."


    "A rascal like you dares to talk about the Empire like you''re some saint? I find that very funny." Gren retorted, smiling like he won the argument. The bandit simply exhaled and looked the other way.


    The wagon shook as the two soldiers Ardey and Horan, the ones in charge of the reins, mounted the wagon front. It wasn''t long until Hugo climbed back in, telling them the repair was a success.


    "The caravan requested to form a convoy with us." Hugo then said. This earned a frown from Gren and silence from Frey and the bandits.


    "Hugo, wouldn''t they slow us down?" Gren complained. Hugo just sighed, shaking his head.


    "I don''t like it either, but refusing isn''t an option. They''re under direct order of General Verkel. You know how he is, don''t you?"


    "But still..."


    "And besides, the city''s only a day away. Bear with it."


    "Sir, we''re ready." the soldier named Ardey shouted.


    "Okay. Slap them horses as soon as the caravan rolls." Hugo affirmed. He looked at Frey, then at Gren, nodding at both of them.


    "Understood sir."


    The wagon shook, moving forward once more. The bandit stared at Frey, shaking his head.

 019: Monster

    The ride went uneventful for hours, and was uneventful still. Yet, as the sun faded down the treeline, Frey couldn''t help but feel anxious. Night tends to bring changes. In the shade of night, things happen, unseen. It was night when he met Liezel. It was night when everything went wrong with Zalvik and his squad. Nothing brings about change faster than the night, and Frey hated change. He hated the unexpected. But perhaps, living in this world, and finding himself in life-and-death situations a couple of times got him used to it, even for a bit.


    "It''s getting dark." uttered Gren as he stared at the shrinking scenery of trees behind us.


    "It is. We might have to camp here for the night." Hugo held his chin, turning to Frey. "What do you think?"


    "A little rest is called for, I think." Frey answered.


    "Isn''t it? Ardey, Horan, we''re stopping here." Hugo shouted. The horses neighed as the two soldiers pulled on their leashes. The wagon, creaking and groaning, tilted as it swerved left to the roadside and parked near the shrubs. The slave caravan ahead of them followed soon after, stopping in front of them.


    Frey jumped out of the wagon, eyes peeled, ears straining. The sky above was a murky shade of purple, the trees on either side of the road shadowed green.


    The two bandits followed next, pushed on their backs by Hugo and Gren. The bald bandits didn''t so much as struggle against their captors. One of them, the bandit whom Frey had a conversation with earlier, gave him a passing glance before Gren kicked the tall man forward.


    Ardey and Horan came rushing, both carrying coils of thick twine. With their help, Hugo and Gren tied the two captives on a thick-trunked oak. Even when he was tied, the bandit kept glancing at Frey, nodding with a grin on his face when he sensed Frey looking.


    You don''t have to tell me. Frey clicked his tongue in irritation.


    He walked to the front of the cargo wagon. From behind the horses, Frey watched the soldiers of the slave caravan drag the slaves out of the cars one by one. The soldiers threw each of them onto the ground. The slaves, with their ankles shackled together, couldn''t balance themselves from the brutish push of the soldiers. Grunts and cries rang out of their lips as the slaves fell kneeling on the ground.


    A truly disgusting sight. Something inside Frey wanted to reach for the hilt of his sword and behead the bastards there and then. He sucked in air and took deep breaths, cold burning the walls of his throat. His anger soon subsided.


    When all the slaves were out, the fat soldier (which Frey assumed to be their leader) did some sort of a head-count of the slaves. Frey counted eight women, ranging from late teens to thirties, all thin and poor. The children numbered at least a dozen, all girls, their ages varying from toddlers to pubescent.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    As the count went on three other soldiers got sacks out of the other car, full of what must be food rations. The soldiers handed each slave one yellowish lump that looked like bread drained of all moisture. The children nibbled on the bread hungrily, while the women ate the stone-cold food with grimace on their faces.


    The fat soldier doing the head count trotted toward Frey at the end of the head-count. Frey wasn''t one to judge appearances, but he just didn''t like this one. The fat soldier was ugly, with black, beady eyes, a greasy forehead, and a debauched grin plastered on his face.


    "Gotta keep them vermins in line." the soldier said as he approached Frey. Perhaps a funny coincidence, both the horses of the cargo wagon brayed at the same time the fat soldier passed by them.


    "Right."


    "Your are?"


    "Frey." he answered. "Frey Alcott."


    The fat soldier raised a brow. "A weird name. Almost like a Kazilian. I''m Krul Radu, Lieutenant of the 56th Infantry Batallion under General Verkel."


    "Kazilian?" Frey asked.


    "Weaklings of the North. You don''t know them?"


    "I grew up in a village down south. News on other kingdoms rarely get there."


    "Is that so? Well, even I can tell you''re not from the capital. Why are you with captain Hugo?"


    "I was to find the blacksmith Barton in Redel. Hugo''s just helping me get to the capital, that''s all."


    "Barton, eh? The bastard''s gone now. He''d been assisting rebels and helping prisoners escape. He was asking to be caught." Krul placed a hand on the horse beside him and caressed its back. The horse closed its eyes as it breathed relief. "So, what do you do? You a hunter or something?"


    "Something like that." Frey nodded.


    "What''s your biggest prize so far?"


    "Prize?"


    Krul narrowed his beady eyes at him. "The strongest monster you hunted. You''re a monster hunter, aren''t you?"


    "Ah. A goblin hound, I guess."


    "Really?" the fat soldier gasped. "That''s gotta be a stroke of luck."


    Something didn''t feel right. Frey felt as though he had stepped on a landmine, a switch that he shouldn''t have pressed.


    Krul inched closer. He stood beside Frey, and dropped a hand on his shoulder. "Say, what do you think about them?" Krul pointed at the huddle of the slaves, more precisely at the women sitting on the ground, chewing on bread they held with their cuffed hands. They were covered with grease and grime, but Frey could see traces of white and fair skin under all the dirt.


    "These bitches may be dirty, but with a little wash and brush, you know. They make good toys." the man''s smile grew broader, menacing, saliva almost dripping from his mouth. "Gotta give it to Kazilians, they''re exceptional whores."


    A lump clung on Frey''s throat, and he couldn''t speak. He held his anger, resisting the urge to throw down Krul to the ground and strangle him. He inhaled, exhaled, letting the heat inside him flow out into the frigid open.


    "I''m... I''m listening." Frey uttered.


    "How about I give you a taste tonight, for free? After that..." Krul brought his face close and whispered to his ear. "You can buy one. Any one."


    Frey turned to Krul, his heart numb, eyes dead cold.


    "We have a deal. How much will it be?"


    "You talk fast. I like that. Pick one, I''ll tell you after."

 020: Criminal

    Frey had watched the wagon''s ceiling for too long, it wasn''t helping his psyche at all. The chill creeping into his flesh, for what he was to do next, kept his eyes wide open and his brain overclocked. All the pieces were in place, yet he was feeling anxious, for some reason.


    He sat up slow, careful not to make the floorboards of the wagon creak. Sleeping on the wagon seat to his right, snoring like a bear, was Hugo. He wouldn''t be waking up soon. The one sleeping on his left, Gren, on the other hand, appeared to also be sleeping, with his back facing Frey.


    He crept out of the wagon and looked around. Krul stood ways behind him, back leaning against a slave coach. The disgusting grin on his face looked almost carved, perpetual. Frey will be tearing the smile off his ugly face, very soon.


    "I''ve been waiting." Krul''s sly tone carried over the wind.


    Frey approached him, hands tucked in his pockets. "Well I''m sorry, I didn''t want to wake up Gren and Hugo."


    "We won''t be found out kid. You''re too nervous for your own good. They won''t be waking up, not with the booze I made them drink." Krul tapped his back. "Now come, fun awaits."


    He led Frey deeper into the forest, passing by the two bandits that were tied to a massive tree. One of them was sleeping, while the other, the one whom Frey started to think his best friend, only pretended to be. He wasn''t even trying to fake his sleep, as he gave Frey a wink as he passed. Krul didn''t notice at all, or he simply didn''t care enough to think any of it.


    "So, do you have enough money for my stuff?" Krul asked, twigs and dead leaves crunching under his boot as he walked two steps ahead of Frey.


    "I wouldn''t know. You haven''t told me yet how much your slaves cost." Frey answered.


    "Fair enough. Well, we can worry about the transaction later. Right now, let''s just focus on getting our fun, eh?"


    "Right..."


    A woman''s scream rang out ahead. Frey halted, grabbing ahold of his sword, while Krul walked on without a care, only shaking his head.


    "What an imbecile, that Dotan. He''s been insatiable ever since I let him in my business. A little too rough on my pets, and very fond of children, if you know what I mean. He''s quite troublesome."


    Frey knew what he meant, and he tasted the bile rising up from his stomach.


    "Hey Krul."


    "What is it?" not a second after Krul turned around did Frey''s hand clamp on his shoulder.


    "I don''t buy broken things." Frey said, voice grave cold, eyes gleaming with killing intent.


    "But of course." Krul nodded. "That was just Dotan teasing her a bit. I have prohibited him from breaking anything, be it bones or minds."


    "As long as we''re on the same page." Frey let go of Krul. He didn''t anticipate any of Krul''s soldiers participating in this under-the-table deal. Selling slaves without their superior''s knowledge and permission, surely Krul knew the risk if he got found out. Yet he still recruited an accomplice who can turn on him anytime. Krul is a risk-taker, and that might just work against Frey.


    He had to hurry.


    They reached a minor clearing, secluded from the rest of the forest by walls of tall foliage. Beams of the moon above bathed the clearing a shining silver, without tree branches and leaves obstructing them.


    There, in the middle of the clearing, stood a slave. She was skinny, with the humble height of a highschooler. Her platinum hair was cut short just until her shoulders, contrary to the long, flat bangs hanging a paper''s breadth above her dull, sleepy eyes. A dozen long cuts covered both her arms, most already closed and healing, some fresh and would bleed with a press. Frey didn''t dare think what the girl went through, in the hands of Krul''s men. Slowly fire built up inside him, unnoticed. She''ll be free from Krul soon, Frey swore to himself.


    Beside her was a scrawny soldier in steel vest and leather pants, holding the end of the chain hooked to the slave''s cuffs. Must be the one named Dotan. He didn''t matter to Frey at all. Why, he would die soon anyway.


    He stepped forward into the clearing, attracting the eyes of both the slave and the soldier.


    "Is she the one?" Frey looked over his shoulder, back at Krul.


    "You asked and I delivered." Krul puffed his chest and trotted beside him like a peacock. "She may look childish, but she''s the governor''s daughter. You said you want a toy that''s fun to train, well, she''s what you''re looking for. I mean, who wouldn''t want to break a proud noble lady? Make them kneel, do every unspeakable thing there is to them, and they can''t do anything but obey... I''ve had fun with her, myself." The swine of a man beside him cackled. Frey clenched his fists, rage filling up his head, mixing with the hot blood coursing through him.


    Irredeemable, isn''t he? Unforgivable. Loathsome. A voice whispered. It was cold and layered, like many people talking to him in sync. It was all he could hear, drowning even Krul''s sadistic laugh with its echoes. It was all inside in his head, yet, it felt real, as if it was a real person talking to him.


    Can you even call something so vile a human?


    His right arm began to throb. It wasn''t painful, but it was there, the feeling of something tugging at his veins. His arm guard. He almost forgot its existence, being hidden under the sleeve of his coat for so long. But why? He never used it ever since Shin told him not to, yet...


    The throbbing intensified. It then felt as though his nerves were convulsing underneath his skin. The voice was laughing. His head was getting filled with the voice''s laugh. Krul was saying something as they walked closer to the slave, but he could hear none of it. Everything felt cold, the surrounding completely dark. All he could see was Krul. The disgusting thing beside him, walking as though it was human. Frey must''ve been smiling then, as Krul''s grin grew wider as he talked, stretching until his ears. The laughter in his head stopped.


    Now, what do you do with a scum like him?


    Something snapped at the back of his mind. Frey wrapped his fingers around the handle of his sword. Krul didn''t notice, as he was too busy laughing on his own sick delusion.


    "Hey Krul." Frey stopped in his tracks, leaving Krul walking forward on his own.


    "Oh?"


    Frey glanced at the slave, then at Dotan standing by her side. They were at least a dozen meter away, too far to notice such a small movement. Before they do, it would be too late.


    "It''s about to get really noisy in here. You sure Hugo and the company won''t be bothered?"


    "What a sick man... So you''re going to make her scream after all?"


    "I''m not talking about her."


    Krul froze midway through his turn. He groped for the steel broadsword hanging on his waist.


    Frey drew his sword, a second faster than Krul could get ahold of his sword''s handle. Frey swung forth, swirling black smoke trailing behind his blade.


    Krul vaulted back in pure instinct. He drew his broadsword, shaken by the fact that his client just tried to kill him. The smile on his face was no longer there, replaced by a trembling scowl of pure hatred.


    "That''s good. That''s good." eerie laughter filled the air, the same laugh echoing in Frey''s mind. "That''s the face."Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    Was he the one laughing? Frey wasn''t sure. But he felt good. So good, he wanted to kill the thing in front of him so badly. Flay it. Tear off its limbs.


    Make it a worthy sacrifice.


    Sacrifice?


    The katana fell out of his grasp, dropping harmlessly on the ground beside him.


    Red flashed before him as intense pain shot through his head. Frey fell to his knees. He clawed at his temples, face warped in pain, eyes bulging from their sockets.


    It hurts.


    It hurts.


    We have waited for too long, imprisoned in cold nothingness. This pain is the crest of our suffering. You have touched us, and now you too share the burden of our punishment.


    The pain in his head subsided.


    Dotan, Krul, as well as the slave were staring at him, eyes wide, jaw dropping. Quickly he rolled up the sleeve of his right arm, beneath which his arm guard laid.


    The gem at the core of the arm guard shone with a Turquoise radiance, shifting like smoke, flickering, dancing in sync with the tone of the voice inside his head.


    Hate them. Loath them more. Spawn of Karias. And then...


    Krul came at him, broadsword raised overhead. Frey, in such a defenseless position, braced himself, raising his arm guard as defense. Krul brought his sword down upon Frey, a complacent smirk carved across his pudgy face.


    A shockwave of green and blue light erupted from the sapphire of the arm guard, blinding and with a deafening boom, the instant the edge of Krul''s sword touched the arm guard''s silver surface. The explosion catapulted Krul across the clearing, screaming and flailing his limbs. He cruised the air two good meters off the ground, falling fast toward the ground. Krul crashed three feet in front of Dotan and the slave, landing on his behind with a nasty thud.


    Dotan rushed to Krul''s aid, dragging him away safely. Krul was unconscious, his right arm bent in an unnatural angle. The arm guard''s glow faded.


    "Now." Frey stood up, grabbing his blade. Dotan drew his sword and charged at him. Frey stepped forward and put all his strength into a fierce slash. Dotan blocked with his broadsword, thinking it would save him.


    Their swords met each other. Half of Dotan''s steel fell onto the ground, impaling the soil.


    Dumbstruck, Dotan was wide open. Frey shoved a heel deep into his abdomen, the impact sending him staggering a few steps backward, before crashing sprawled on the forest floor. Frey approached Dotan at a leisurely pace, katana in one hand, a steel knife in another. The soldier crawled away from Frey''s piercing glare, desperation in his eyes, tremor in his knees.


    "He thinks he can escape. How cute."


    Whether it was the voice he was hearing in his head, or his own thoughts, Frey already couldn''t tell. Were they even different, to begin with?


    Regardless, he knew what he had to do. He could see it in front of him, the work he must finish. Frey flipped the knife in his hand, holding it in a backhand grip. He glanced at the slave... the girl, their eyes meeting for a moment. At that moment he could see her feelings and longing, staring beneath her cold sapphire eyes. And then he saw again the wounds adorning her thin arms, the bruises on her bare thighs, almost camouflaged by the dirt sticking to her pale skin.


    He won''t be killing a man today. He would merely be sending monsters to hell.


    Frey pinned Dotan''s thigh with his knife. The scum howled in agony as steel gorged on his flesh, reaping blood out of his veins. Frey didn''t feel guilt. The thing in front of him was a monster who torture women and children to indulge itself. If anything, it excited him to see it suffer. Frey reached inside his coat and pulled out another knife, shoving it deep into Dotan''s other thigh.


    "Having fun, aren''t we?" Frey grabbed Dotan by the collar and pulled him close. Beads of sweat clung onto the young soldier''s forehead. His nostrils were spilling snot while tears streamed down his cheeks.


    "I-I was just following Krul''s orders. I never really wanted to hurt them." Dotan''s eyes shook as he explained himself between stutters and sobs. His breath reeked of alcohol, Frey wasn''t exactly pleased by it.


    "Your name?"


    "Dotan--"


    "Wrong." Frey pushed the knife deeper into him. "Do you ever call swines by name? No, because they don''t have one."


    Dotan grunted as more tears burst from his eyes. "Please! I''ll do anything! Don''t kill me!"


    "Anything?"


    "Yes!"


    "... Then die."


    Black steel dug through Doran''s chest, immersed in dancing, swirling smoke as it went through his metal plate like a specter through a wall. The tip of the blade shot out of his back, painted unholy crimson.


    "Aaa..."


    Dotan died eyes wide open, mouth agape, horror in his face as the last of his tears fell. Frey didn''t feel anything. No remorse, no guilt, no pleasure. Dead. If he was feeling anything at all, it would have been the heavy gaze of the man who, since before the battle began, had been watching him from beyond the shadowed green.


    "How long are you gonna stand there, Gren?"


    Behind him, emerging from the shrubs with a rustle, was the soldier who was supposedly sleeping soundly back in the wagon with Hugo.


    "You... You killed him..." Gren''s already frail voice trembled even more.


    Earlier that night, Hugo and Krul''s team set up camp by the roadside. Frey made the fire, with Ardey and Horan gathering firewood. Gren and Hugo hunted and foraged for the food, while Krul''s team took care of the drinks.


    They presented the whole camp with wine and beer, and a vile drink that tasted like champagne but burned holes through his throat. Krul personally handed each of them a cup, good old camaraderie as pretext, but Frey knew that aside from him and Krul, and now apparently Dotan, all of the others were being handed "special" drinks for sweet dreams.


    Everyone not involved with the transaction was fated to spend the whole night above the clouds. However, one of these men was so bad with liquor, that he excused himself from the campfire storytelling to puke out all the booze he had drunk on the foot of a tree.


    It was no other than the man standing behind him.


    Frey pulled his sword out of Dotan, the sensation of steel grinding through flesh running through the shaft, crawling straight into his skin. He let go of the dead man''s collar, letting the body fall to the ground. Frey got up from his knees and stood up, shook Dotan''s blood off his katana, then looked over his shoulder, eyeing Gren.


    "I did."


    "Traitor. I knew it. You''re a Kazilian, aren''t you? I should''ve known, scum. I tried to tell Hugo, but it seems you got a strong hold on him." Gren drew his sword and took a stance.


    Frey let out a dry laugh. "That''s quite the assumption. But really, it doesn''t take a traitor to do what I did. By how intense your gaze was watching us behind that bush, I can tell.


    "If you weren''t so afraid of getting the noose for treason, you would''ve killed him yourself. Am I wrong?"


    "Shut up! You dare imply that I would kill a fellow knight? I''m not like you." Gren barked and lashed at him, but didn''t take a step forward, nor pointed his sword at Frey.


    "So then, you''re telling me you are fine with letting a monster who tortures women and children, just for the fun of it, roam free?"


    Gren averted his gaze, grinding his teeth.


    "You want to keep up that noble templar act? Fine. I''ll indulge you." Frey turned around and took a step closer to Gren. "I can see that slavery is a legitimate market around here, but I heard from Krul himself that these slaves are the kingdom''s property. Hell, he even told me the slavemasters of Redel brand them before selling, as proof of ownership.


    "Yet, Krul agreed to sell her to me," Frey pointed at the girl, who looked over at them with the expression of a mannequin. "even before she got branded. And for a lower price, too. Now isn''t that stealing from the king?"


    "Shut up."


    "You''re right, Gren. You''re not like me." he turned his back on Gren and walked up to the slave girl. She didn''t try to run, nor begged for freedom. She just stood there, watching Frey get close. She didn''t squeak a word, nor moved a muscle; Statues would''ve been annoyed at her for stealing their jobs.


    "You''re not like me. You''re straight-laced. I''m crooked. But I am stronger, because I bow to no king."


    He stopped three feet shy from the girl. "Hold out your arms." Frey told her, raising his blade.


    The girl did so without protest, extending her arms forth, pulling them apart from each other for as far as the chain of the cuffs let her.


    "And because of that, I get to choose which way I go." Black smoke belched out of his sword, swirling and dancing, engulfing the blade in an intangible haze. He swung down, severing the chains that bound the girl''s hands together. He crouched and did the same with the shackles on her ankles.


    "Thank you." said the girl as she stared at her hands and feet, no longer chained.


    "Go." Frey answered.


    She bent her back and bowed to him, before turning heel. He watched her short, thin frame grow smaller with each step she took, until she disappeared completely into the shadow of the forest.


    Will she survive in the forest? He didn''t know. It didn''t have anything to do with him.


    "Hey Gren."


    "Don''t talk to me so casually, scum."


    "You want to free the slaves as much as I do, don''t you?"


    "Nonsense. What makes you think that?"


    "You had all the time in the world to alert Hugo and the others of me. Yet you didn''t."


    "I am not helping you. There is no way you can explain this to Hugo, much less a whole slave pack disappearing."


    "You don''t have to worry, I already planned for that." Frey sheathed his blade.


    "Planned how?"


    "I''ll tell you. But before that..." he pointed at the unconscious Krul, laying on the ground a few feet away. "Tie him up."


    ---


    A few minutes later, Frey was treading through the dark forest. Gren followed close, dragging a tied, fat man behind him with a dissatisfied scowl.


    "Just how long are you going to make me carry him?" Gren grunted as he pulled Krul out through a shrub.


    "Not long. Oh look, we''re here."


    In front of the was a large tree with a thick trunk and with vines hanging from its branches. On the foot of the tree were the two bandits from earlier, their hands both tied around the base of the trunk. Both of them had their eyes closed, but Frey knew only one of them was really sleeping. The other, well...


    "It''s the bandits" Gren gaped at him, figuring out what''s exactly on his mind. "Oy oy, what are you planning? Don''t tell me you''re..."


    "Good job figuring that out."


    Gren''s hand gripped his shoulder. "Is this a joke? No matter how you cut it, they''re,"


    "They''re what? Criminals?" Frey retorted. The grip on his shoulder slackened. He walked up to the bandit, the one he considered an "acquaintance" of him, and spoke.


    "Stop playing dead. Let''s make a deal."


    The bald bandit, eyes still closed, chuckled at his words.


    "Really, I thought you''d never ask."

 021: Abomination

    "Oh? What''s with the Red behind you?" the bandit tilted his head, eyes narrowed at Gren.


    "Why you..." Gren dropped the knocked-out Krul and marched toward the tied bandit with his right hand gripping his sword.


    "Stop." Frey barred Gren with an arm. He turned to the bandit. "Don''t mind him. He''s working for me now."


    "Huh?! Who died and made you my boss?" roared Gren in his face.


    "Don''t sweat the small stuff."


    The bandit chuckled, ignoring Gren''s outburst. "What can I say? You''re really something else, kid."


    "Don''t call me kid, I have a name." said Frey flatly. "Frey Alcott."


    "Frey? Your parents must''ve hated you, naming you a girl."


    "I''m not here for pub talk."


    "So serious." the bandit sighed. "I''m Aruk, and this moron here is Docks." he pointed at his partner tied beside him, whose eyes slowly opened from deep sleep.


    Still in a daze, Docks threw Aruk a questioning glance. He looked up at Frey, his mouth a wide chasm of shock. He shifted to Gren, then to the hog-tied, fat soldier laying in a lump on the leafy forest ground behind him.


    Docks'' eyes bulged out of their sockets. Frey expected a shrill hysteric scream out of the short bandit''s gaping mouth, but only a muted eek reached his ears.


    "Oh. Docks can''t talk." Aruk explained.


    "Oh." Frey had been wondering why the other bandit didn''t so much as squeak back in the wagon the whole ride. Now it made sense.


    Docks glared at Aruk, producing muffled sounds that Frey assumed was meant to chastise Aruk.


    "What is he saying?" Gren asked.


    "Don''t know." Aruk whistled, like he wasn''t hearing the mute squeaking angrily beside him.


    "Enough." Frey crouched before the unconscious Krul behind Gren. In the side pocket of the wicked man''s leather trousers Frey shoved his hand, fishing out a ring with a single rusted key dangling from it.


    "This is the key to all the slaves'' chains." said Frey, showing Aruk and Docks the key. Gren turned sour at the side, but he didn''t care.


    "You''re going to free them, then lead them somewhere safe. I''m sure you know where that is, don''t you?"


    Aruk met his cold gaze with a sly grin. "The Southern Thieves know all there is about the South. Finding a village or two that would be willing to harbor Kazilians is child''s play. But really, that''s not what this is all about, is it?This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    "After all, you''re freeing us for a different goal entirely."


    Gren and Docks exchanged confused glances, having been completely left out of the talk.


    "And that doesn''t matter to you, does it?" Frey snorted.


    "Well, that''s true." Aruk sighed. "Anyway, hurry up. Tree ants had been biting me since those Reds tied me here." he wriggled in place with a disgusted expression, all the while shooting Gren an oblique glance.


    Frey unsheathed the smallest of the three swords hanging on his waist and knelt, behind the oak where Aruk and Docks'' hands were tied together by a Gordian knot of twine around the trunk.


    Gren''s face was warped in sheer dissatisfaction. With his black, curved knife, Frey sliced the rope binding the two bandits. There was no turning back, as the cutting edge of the knife mowed through fibers of the twine with a soft, scraping sound.


    The moment the ropes came off Aruk and Docks sprung up to their feet. Aruk did a few jumps in place and stretched his limbs, smiling.


    "Now, your end of the bargain." Frey sheathed his knife. He threw the rusted key.


    "Even thieves have honor." Aruk caught the key in his hand, without so much of a look. "We got this. Besides, I was getting pretty annoyed myself, seeing the Reds pull those poor children around." Docks nodded, balling his fist.


    The two wasted no time heading to the roadside where the slave wagons were parked. Aruk roused the children inside the wagon awake and unlocked their shackles one by one, while Docks filed them in an orderly line.


    "You have a lot to answer for, scum." Frey heard behind him.


    "Like I said, I have a name. You don''t have to call me scum every damn time." Frey retorted, not taking his eyes off the two bandits as they liberated the slaves.


    "You didn''t have to let those rascals go. I could have freed the slaves myself just fine."


    "You don''t have faith in me at all, do you?" said Frey, smiling. "Did you know, Gren?


    "The bandits killed Dotan and Krul, because the two caught them escaping."


    "What--"


    "Yeah, bandits are terrible, aren''t they? Not only that, they also stole all the slaves. Now that''s just plain unforgivable, right?


    "If I were Hugo, there''s no chance I''ll figure out that the real culprits are among my men."


    "That''s..." anything Gren wanted to say fell short. He could only stare at Frey''s back, wide-eyed as gears in his head shifted and turned, digesting the situation.


    Ahead, Aruk had finished uncuffing the slaves, and was then ransacking the other slave car for the rations of the slaves. He got out two sacks of the bread-like food, then followed Docks as he led the slaves into the woods on the other side of the road. Despite the rustle the two bandits made, none of Hugo''s nor Krul''s men awoke. Frey had Krul to thank for giving them all a good night sleep.


    "Now one last thing, Gren. Can you drag Dotan here? See, it''s going to be a pain to explain to Hugo why he died so deep into the forest."


    "Fine, but what about him?" asked Gren, pointing at Krul, who laid tied up and knocked out at his feet.


    Frey''s vision swirled and shifted for a second, before stabilizing back to normal. His right arm throbbed.


    "Leave me with him." he said, his voice hinting no emotion.


    Gren jogged deeper into the woods without another word. As soon as his back disappeared, a smile crept on Frey''s face. Muffled light escaped underneath the sleeve of his right arm. He rolled up his sleeve. The arm guard''s jewel glowed a bluish-green hue.


    He was feeling good. The feeling of being alive again, was good, though it would''ve been better if he wasn''t confined in such a constricting body.


    "But, something about being in this body feels so... Intoxicating." he muttered. "I wonder if it''s the Karias?


    "Whatever. It''s not important." he looked down, at the ugly creature laying on the ground before him. The way it slept so soundly even with its hands and feet tied reminded him of a pig... Yes, a dirty, lowly pig. Livestock. He raised his foot and stomped down, pressing the pig''s bulging stomach inward. Its eyes jerked open, looking up at him with a face contorted in pain and fear. Spit sprayed out of its mouth as it grunted in tears.


    "That''s the face." Frey smiled. A flash of silver accompanied the double-edged steel blade as it sprung out of his arm guard.

 022: Accomplice

    Noon found their camp digging by the damp roadside a resting place for two corpses. The sun was a scalding disc high in the sky, raining golden rays that filtered through the canopy of leaves protecting their backs as they turned up the soil with makeshift tools. Hugo and Ardey dug with the end of their scabbards, while Dolor and Horan raked the ground with sturdy fallen branches they found nearby. Frey, they didn''t make him dig, as he was an outsider and this was company''s business. He watched on them full of guilt--that these men were the ones cleaning after his mess, not because he killed two of their comrades last night, and they didn''t deserve a grave. No, he reiterated in his mind, they didn''t deserve a grave.


    Krul, when the camp found him by the brushes near roadside, was a grisly, gory mess; skin was ripped off his whole face, leaving only forehead skin and scalp and skin on the jawline. All four of his limbs were torn--not cut--seemingly by brute force, and were thrown randomly about the nearby trees, and blood seeped through the stumps like rivers of flesh and blood. A mangled hole was ripped out of his chest, about the dimensions of a fist, and what was left of his body was wrinkled and withered and stunk as though he''d been weeks dead, and he wasn''t. Krul was too horrid of a cadaver, that even the forest maggots didn''t touch him, even though he smelled plenty dead.


    Frey didn''t remember how that happened--how he killed Krul; hell, he could barely remember his bout with Dotan, the fat man''s partner in crime, just bits and pieces of the fight, and only the exact moment he drove his blade into Dotan''s chest remained in his head, and after that was just blabber with Gren, and the bandits, and the rest was just black. Needless to say he was horrified out of his wits, if he was the one who had reduced Krul to the sloppy mess he was, which, he thought it, very unlikely. He had the guts to kill, but torture? And in the scale of tearing the victim limb by limb... He just couldn''t see himself being able to do something like that.


    Unless, he wasn''t the one who did it.


    He gulped, and felt with his left hand the cold silver arm-guard clinging onto his right, under the black sleeve of his coat, and he shook his head in denial. ''No, it couldn''t be. Maybe it was an animal, like a wolf, or a vulture, or maybe a monster like a goblin hound or something I hadn''t seen yet.'' but he knew he was fooling no one.


    He did it. Or at least, his body did. He felt sick at the thought then, and for a bit he saw himself becoming a monster, in his mind, a bloodthirsty fiend who lusts on death and decay, but he shook the image away. He then saw his hands were shaking, in intermittent spasms, and his fingers wriggling, looking for something, anything, to touch. He balled his fists and the spasms faded, slowly. The devil--as he called the mad voice whispering in his head--hadn''t surfaced since he woke up. Maybe that was a good thing, maybe it went away, though he felt it wasn''t the case. Far from it. Something told him the devil was just starting with him, still growing, inside his little head.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    And when his head becomes too small for it...


    "Boss was a nasty man," Dolor, one of the only two soldiers left of Krul''s convoy, smirked with snark as he impaled the ground with his branched oak twig. "Hell, he probably was the most sadistic boss I''ve ever had. Whips slaves with a shout and a smile, works us to the bone, but sometimes too generous with booze that it made us feel kinda glad to be stuck in this shit hole of a job with him. Figured one day he''ll meet an ugly end for all his evil, but not this ugly." he shook his head and kept digging. Dolor was a thin, soft-bellied man in his forties, wearing a leather hauberk and shoes and steel shoulder plates, along with a perpetually worn-out expression on his face. His head sported graying spots of hair, as gray as the silver wisps climbing their way into his beard.


    Ardey and Horan exchanged troubled gazes. Hugo shared a look of dismay with Dolor, but not as much. Frey had the impression that Hugo hated Krul''s way of spurring the slaves into action, with kicks and with scorns, and the sadness on his old face was not without an undertone of guilty relief.


    "Those South Thieves are just pure monsters," started Ardey. "I don''t know how they did what they did with the Lieutenant, but by the sorry state we found the bastard in, I can say truly I wish we had lynched those bandits on the spot. Right, Frey?"


    Frey looked up, away from his trembling fists, and caught Ardey waiting for his nod. He didn''t. "I don''t know, sir. The bandits might''ve been the ones to knock Lieutenant into the coffin, but I doubt they mutilated the Lieutenant. I mean, would they really waste time flaying him, when their goal was to escape, and knowing that the camp might awaken anytime? I think it unlikely."


    "So someone--or something else did that to him, is what you''re saying?" Horan asked, thoughtful. "But what?"


    "Maybe it was a lich, or something." Hugo chimed in. "You saw how the body was shriveled and withered. That only happens when life was sucked out forcefully from the body, and I don''t think those two scoundrels had access to lost magic."


    "Whatever. The fact still stands that they took the whole slave band with them. That''s felony in its own right." Ardey scoffed.


    "That might be true, but coming from you, who was supposed to be the watch last night, they mean nothing at all." the one who said this was Gren, who overheard the conversation as he finished a round of scouting the periphery, along with a soldier named Bautu, who was, along with Dolor, the two soldiers that are left of Krul''s company. Bautu was young and silent, and he had bluish-white skin contrasting Dolor''s sun-tanned complexion. Bautu reminded Frey of Dotan--young and innocuous and head-lowered, but Dotan turned out to be a sadistic bastard and Frey hoped this one wasn''t like him.


    "Hey, you picking a squabble with me, Gren-boy? I can show a rookie one or two tricks." the hot-tempered Ardey bore holes in Gren with his feisty gaze. Gren was unfazed, and little was stopping Horan from face-palming.


    "Stop it, Ardey." said Horan calmly. "It''s true anyway: you slacked off and snoozed even though you were given duty." Ardey''s copper face flushed red, and he became tame.


    Gren turned to Hugo. "No more sign of the bandits around, sir. They made better use of their morning, from how it looked. We saw tracks leading east, fresh ones--a pack of them, probably the slaves, and I say we can''t hope to give chase." he snuck a glance at Frey, and it was rife of loathing and repulsion, of fear and disgust, all mixing in a spiral in Gren''s muddled brown eyes.


    He would have to talk to Gren soon, before he became liability.

 Update 2

    Wow, no releases for more than two months. That gotta suck. Sorry for that. Right now''s supposedly my vacation, but damn what a busy vacation this turned out to be. While I was in hiatus, I was pondering on, and actually working on, some revisions of the earlier problematic chapters of Player 47 (nothing plot-changing, mind you, just some editing and weighing of the constructive criticism some of the readers have given. Very grateful for them, by the way).


    That said, you probably won''t see them revisions just yet, as they''re still in the works, though, like I said, they won''t alter much of the story, just some cleaning and trimming useless elements and yes, fixing some of the things one genre-savvy reader pointed out on chapter 3 (was it chapter 3? I don''t remember). Anyway, the revisions don''t take priority over the releases, but I''m working on my older fictions. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    As for release schedules... I really don''t have anything like that, and by now with so much shit interruptions and the recent hiatus, I figured it was stupid to give you guys a release cycle I won''t be able to adhere to. We''ll see what happens but for the meantime, the story is far from dropped.


    Thank you for reading Player 47 as always. Have a good day.

 023: Spite

    By early afternoon Hugo and company have finished digging a grave the width of two coffins. Carefully they hauled Dotan''s almost pristine body--with only a piercing hole through his chest--down to the pit, covered in a grainy sack. Then came Krul, and Dolor and Bautu who were carrying their leader''s desecrated body in a burlap had their nose wrinkled the entire time. Rueful laughter was shared as the company pushed heaps of dirt back into the hole. It seemed to Frey that, no matter how vile the person, people will still count the good in him, at the end of the day, when he''s laid down in his grave. Ceremonies were made, with the highest commanding officer present, Captain Hugo, cutting a slit on his thumb and letting blood drip down the damp soil above the deceased.


    "Let my blood be a prayer to thee, old and everlasting Seer o'' War. May these warriors who fell today, rise to your halls of blood and metal, forever aroused with the thrill of battle, and those who dare lay sacrilege upon thy warriors'' grave die not in battle but waste away in crippling disease of your making."


    After Hugo''s litany, the company impaled the former grunt''s and lieutenant''s swords into the grave as placeholder for headstones. Gren took him away then, patrol as a pretense, into the treeline on the other side of the road. Frey trailed closely behind as they went deeper and deeper into the woods and the camp was slowly fading into a scene of trunks and branches. None of them said anything. And then when they were far enough that no one will hear any one of them scream, Gren took Frey by the collar of his steel vest and pushed him, hard, onto a tree. A grunt escaped from Frey''s lips, and then nothing more, even when Gren unsheathed his sword and poked the side of his neck with its tip.


    "What are you?" asked Gren. It was a threatening whisper of sorts, and he was trying hard, but Frey heard the tremor in his voice, and the clattering of his sword as it shook in his hands.


    "A Player. Or a Chosen." Frey answered. "Whichever."


    "Now I see why the King wants you bastards dead. You are all monsters." Gren''s voice still trembled, but with more hatred than fear.


    "Are we all? I don''t know. They''re not like me. I''m not like them." said Frey. The sword pointed at his neck didn''t scare him--even though it should''ve--for some reason.


    "I was a moron for thinking Hugo''s trust in you was well placed. You''re a scum. You low, god-hated scum. I saw what you did to Krul. I saw you laughing as you tore off his legs with your own two hands. I don''t know how you did that but you did, and you were laughing. You were laughing. You were enjoying it, weren''t you? And before he could scream you pulled out his tongue, you sick bastard." Frey felt the sword puncture a dot through his skin, and a hot drop of blood roll down to his collarbone, then to his chest, before his shirt absorbed it.


    "So you''re saying I did that to the Lieutenant, huh? Then how would you explain his rotting flesh?" Frey tested him.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    "The demon up your sleeve. That''s how."


    He had heard all he needed to. Frey started to giggle, then the giggle turned to cackle, and he''d made it so vile and disturbing, that Gren''s hands shook more than ever at the sound.


    "I''m a monster, yeah? I guess I am." Frey said. He looked straight at Gren''s brown eyes and he saw fear and hesitation, and the reflection of his smiling face. "And believe me, your sword isn''t as lethal as you think it is. It can kill me, yes, but not really. I may die but, you see, what''s up my sleeve is an artifact. A nasty one. You can carve my neck right up, decapitate me, and I can still kill you, then I walk out of here, just without a head, but alive."


    Gren backed off. "Showing your true colors, aren''t you? Maybe I''m not enough to kill you, but there''s no fooling the camp now. If I die here, know that Hugo and the others will avenge me."


    "Ah, yes, the cavalry." snorted Frey. "Do you know Captain Zalvik? I think he was of the 48th infantry battalion--something, didn''t really bother to remember. He and his squad was chasing a Player a few ways back from where your cargo was raided, where he met me. He''s still there, you know? And some dozen men of his squad--though they won''t be telling you what happened. You see, the dead can''t talk." he was feeling cold, even though it was a hot afternoon, and numb, emotionally and mentally. Yet the words came out naturally from his mouth, and they were his, not the devil''s. It felt a little like auto-pilot, with his heart taking a step back to let his reason do the work. Do this because it''s for the best, not because you like doing it, that kind of auto-pilot.


    He continued, throwing in more effort into scaring the man in front of him. "Now, not saying I will kill you--no, I''d hate that, you''re the good man Zalvik wasn''t, but you ought to think of who you will be telling this to, I mean, I handled an infantry squad on my own, and I wouldn''t want to do the same to Hugo and the others, too. They''ve done me no wrong, and I''m still grateful to them for the ride down capital, after all."


    Gren lowered his blade, reluctantly and with a face as if he was chewing pickled gourd. "Wise choice, Gren. I''m counting on you again."


    Gren gritted his teeth. "You''re a pitiful creature. You don''t deserve their trust. Are you even a man, under that skin?"


    Frey straightened, fixed his clothes and dusted his coat and pressed the puncture on his neck. It had stopped bleeding. Not just that, the minute wound was already gone. "I don''t know. I was put in this, and I didn''t have much of a say about it, but I sure hope I still am. "


    ---


    The two returned unnoticed, as everyone was busy packing up camp and riling up the horses. Gren spoke to Hugo for a bit, and while Frey didn''t overhear, he knew Gren didn''t tell Hugo about him. Gren was still a good man, at the end of the day: a man who wouldn''t risk the life of his comrades for his own sense of justice.


    Then the convoy rode forward, once again. Frey asked to be put into the empty wagon where the slaves once slept in, and both Dolor and Bautu agreed. Now he had a room all to himself--it might''ve stunk of piss and bile and human odor, but he was alone with his mind, for the rest of the journey. He needed that the most. He thought of Elise and how they first met. It was when...


    "When... was it?"


    He had forgotten, and he didn''t know just for how long he had already forgotten. The wagon he was on did not have any seat, and he sat in a corner, hugging his knees, and he cried for the first time since he could remember, and it was no more than a sob quickly drowned by the rocking of the wagon and the gallop of the horses.

 024: Redel

    In the dream Frey was inside an apartment that, during the chill winter morning, smelled of frying eggs and breakfast. He was small, perhaps six years old, sitting on a mauve velvet carpet of the living room floor, reading a book, and he doesn''t look up from it, as though it had caught his attention truly.


    The book had mostly pictures in it, sketches, depicting a monster two legged like a man, but with jet-black skin, bulging biceps and big hands with razor claws, with a head that had the twisted horns of a ram and the face of a black dragon. The monster was naked, except for the chains around its midsection, and the steel shackles around its huge wrists. Below the sketch was a word, or he thought was a word, written in cuneiformic runes but he knew didn''t come from Sumeria, and below the runes was a title written in English "The shackles-god".


    There was a knock on the door--a gentle knock, and Aunt Jill came rushing out of the kitchen to get it, still in her frilly blue apron and her crow-black hair tied in a high ponytail behind her head. Pancake sizzled on the pan she left unattended. She opened the door, and was pleased to usher in a tall man in a black trench coat and gentleman''s beret. A child psychiatrist he was, Frey''s psychiatrist, to be exact, though he couldn''t remember ever having a shrink, but then again, his childhood was probably so unremarkable that he ended up forgetting most of it.


    After closing the door Aunt Jill disappeared back into the kitchen counter, a bit peeved, but not irate, when one side of the pancake became a bit too brown. This, was probably a memory of the time when Aunt Jill didn''t yet have a husband, no family to take care of. Since Frey''s mother and father were both well into management of their brainchild, a software company that developed satellite imaging, GPS platforms that are considered primitive now but were cutting-edge technology then, and his parents were lovebirds at work making chunky pounds of income everyday, but they never had time for their only child.


    Aunt Jill for quite a few years before her marriage, became his mother then, and in summer and winter vacations he''d stay in this small unit she rented, reading books or watching Animal Planet, and before she left him for a family of her own he was old enough to handle himself. She taught him how to cook, really cook, not just use the oven to heat grocery bread, or use a can-opener to open SPAM which, frankly, he never did like.


    Aunt Jill asked the man to sit down for breakfast at the dining table, which was antique mahogany Aunt Jill inherited from Frey''s late grandmother. The man just smiled at her and answered, "I won''t be long, just checking up on the kid." the man walked up to him then, and crouched so that they were eye-level. Frey looked up from the book.


    "Hey, little man." the man said. He looked at his fifties, with a creased forehead and graying slick-back hair under his dark-blue beret. Frey said nothing, just staring at the man with the curiosity of a child. "You enjoying my gift?" the man looked at the giant book Frey held in his tiny hands, at its bleaching brown leather cover, where "Advent of the Forgotten" was written in large, spidery handwriting. Frey quietly nodded, remembering the book was given to him by the man, not too long ago.


    "You know, that book is old. Very old. Probably older than most gods I know."


    Young Frey pointed at the sketch of the monster, then down at the runic inscription below. "... This means?" he asked. The man spoke a garbled word, and Frey didn''t catch it. "--he''s the god that imprisons other gods. The shackles-god, the very idea and concept of incarceration." Frey looked at the man with his head tilted, obviously confused. The man sighed, ruffled his hair. "When you grow up, you''ll understand. For now you must read. Finish the book, and maybe you''ll see the shackles-god yourself." the old man in the black trench coat smiled, and Frey felt creeped by it, though he couldn''t tell why. He left quickly after that, like he said he would. Aunt Jill called him, "Breakfast''s ready, sweetie." and Frey closed the old dusty book. The breakfast didn''t fill him up, no matter how many pancakes he had eaten. He downed two plates of pancake and bacon that morning, and he asked his Aunt for more.


    Aunt Jill, although a little surprised, was more than happy to see her nephew eating with a big appetite--something that she had never observed before, in the months she had spent looking out for him. Mary would be very pleased, she thought, that her son was finally eating with vigor, although she did not know that what the little boy was really hungry for, was not food.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ---


    Frey woke up in the dark corner of the wagon. He was cold, and he was hungry. He thought back to when his last full meal was, and he remembered eating one of those pink-furred, ram-horned rabbit meat Hugo roasted over the campfire yesterday night. It tasted and melted in the mouth like chicken breast, except for the hind legs--those felt stringy and got stuck between the teeth, and tasted more like horse meat than poultry. Thinking of food only made him hungrier, his stomach protested in a low growl. Behind him, on the other side of the wooden wall separating the inside of the wagon and the coachman, Dolor and Bautu were talking.


    "Y''know, I don''t feel like going back to the capital." said Dolor.


    "Why?" Bautu asked.


    "Well, I wouldn''t want to explain to the General how by the great Humos'' grace the slaves were stolen. I''ll admit it, I''m kind of scared. I know the man, I''ve served under him for ages now. He could whip us, or feed us to his gargoyle pets, whichever he feels like doing at the time of the day." Dolor answered.


    "I am not afraid." Bautu said. "I am loyal to the gods of my land, and they will protect me."


    "Ay, where did you come from again?"


    "Hasuk, in the West. My kin worship the gods of the wild. Haun of the wind, Keta of the leaves and the summer growth, Makula the protector of the wilderness. Good gods, although a little fervent at times, tempestuous."


    "Well kid, I just hope the power of your gods stretch until this far. ''Cause in''ere in South, in the territory of the King, we only worship one god, and he likes blood."


    Outside was an orange night, and they were leaving behind acres of golden crops, green grass and vineyards, watched over by towering wooden silos and hulking barns. As they went further, Frey saw pastures and ranches, and peasants herding six-legged sheeps into stables. There were also cattle, but were at least two heads taller than an Earth cow, and was much more beefy in size. He could eat a cow that big, he thought.


    The wagon slowed, and then stopped. Either Dolor or Bautu knocked on the wooden wall of the wagon. "It''s the capital, kid." Dolor said. "Wake up."


    "I''m awake." Frey replied. He crawled toward the exit and stepped off the car. He breathed in fresh air, and was more than glad he finally got out of the slave car that reeked of urine and lingering despondency. He looked around, catching sight of farms and huts and livestock, and then ahead, where everything was a giant black. He rubbed his eyes, and when he looked once more, they were at the foot of a wall. A giant one.


    Redel Capital was behind three meters of impossibly large, undoubtedly heavy stone slabs, stacked in an alternating pattern up to what, he guessed, sixty meters off the ground? The wall was not nearly as thick or as tall as the Great Wall of China, but it was an impressive sight, and thinking it covered a whole city made it even more so. There might''ve been a trench on top of the wall, but the wall was either too high, or the fog was too thick, that Frey couldn''t see all the way up, or both.


    Blocking the road into the city were two soldiers wearing the same leather-and-steel implements as that of Hugo and Krul''s company, but they came with standardized pikes and the crimson emblem of Redel on the left of their chest. They halted Hugo''s cargo, and one of the two soldiers checked on the expensive stacks of vermillion cloth the car lugged, while the other soldier talked to Hugo and Ardey and Horan, and the two coachmen laughed with the soldier, while their old captain, Hugo, looking older and more burdened than the first time Frey saw him, stood by, not really pitching in with the jokes and army jargon, just listening by the sidelines seemingly tired, mentally more than physically. Within the next few moments, of the soldiers inspecting the cargo, but mostly just chatting with their returning colleagues, Hugo''s wagon was given the green light. Ardey shouted "Let''s go!" at Frey, and once again he was inside the cargo, sitting between Hugo and the rainbow assortment of silk-like vermillion sheets. He was face to face with Gren, who looked beyond Frey pretending he did not exist, not in front of him. Frey was fine with it--made things easier for both of them.


    Ardey cracked the whip on the horses, and they pulled away fast, from the huge city gate made of intersecting steel bars, into a bustling community of merchants, warriors, mercenaries and shopkeepers, and before he lost sight of the gate he saw Dolor and Bautu, no larger than kidney beans in his vision, but he recognized them even from that distance: Dolor''s wrinkling copper skin, and Bautu''s sterile-white tone, and they got smaller and smaller until he couldn''t see them anymore. Somewhere in his mind he thought, possibly, that it was the last he''d see of the two men, and he''d been right.

 Update 3

    Chapter 24 ends the part 2. It was hard writing new chapters while revising old ones, to be honest, but it was fun.


    The much-needed edit of chapter 2 was released yesterday in time with chapter 24, and the word count rose from 2.2k to around 3.1k. It was hell of a revision, and honestly I had more trouble fixing chapter 2 than I had making chapter 24.


    Enough about that. Next up is some world-building, the Redel Capital, some more Players, and Barton, the sought-after blacksmith.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    The recent releases were fast, if you ask me, and I might be able to keep this pace, maybe even faster, as long as no snafu suddenly happens.


    I''m also thinking of changing the cover of the book (it was something I made back before I knew where the story was going) although that''s for another time, as I''m out of ideas in my head.


    So anyway, that''s it for this update. Do look forward to the part 3, and let me know what you think about part 2. Thank you for reading Player 47.