The curious light of the latest night shined over the entrance to Linvia. It was a city hidden among the woods, very rare in the age of Industrial advancement and with a closed border, represented by the enormous bronze-colored gate that reached at least twice the height of Aylen. Extraordinarily, it was slightly opened, probably due to the monster invasion that had just happened. In fact, when the two travelers confirmed that it was safe to get near it, they found very large claw marks all over the metal.

“Damn, I wonder if they opened it through brute force… Maybe everyone is stuck inside.” Aylen thought loudly.

“Well, considering the number of beasts required to keep an entire town imprisoned… The problem is possibly way too out of our league.”

“Won’t hurt to check, right?”

“Sure.” She laughed “Unless they’re right at the entrance and ready to attack us.”

A chill crossed Aylen’s bones as he remembered their cold touch, voided of life.

“Look, we can’t stand here for too long, Reaper. Let’s get inside already, I doubt that they would just wait for us to enter if they really were in the entrance.”

Let down by their possibilities, he accidentally looked at the walls and instantly opened his mouth to propose an idea.

“Don’t even say it. The walls are too tall. Do you really think they would build protections that are short enough to be climbed.”

“If you put it that way...”

“OK, now let’s get moving. Silently, of course.”

And under the blinding darkness they moved forward, ready to face whatever was hiding behind the opulent walls of Linvia, a town of stone streets and brick houses mixed between the rustic wooden lairs. The main street, beginning at the gate, started straight but slowly raised towards the hill at the city’s end. From any place inside the town you could see the magnificent mansions atop the elevation, specially the baroness’ one – a trophy of richer times, bathed in gold and luxury. Wantria carefully looked at it when it first got into her sight, but no damage could be seen from such distance.

When they actually reached the great doors, the little gap that allowed for anyone to get inside proved to be only wide enough to fit a single person. As Wantria was ahead, she went in first, paying attention to what was right after the gates. A mixed smell of smoke and death invaded her nostrils and burning cinder forcefully came out as it heated her insides. Little could be seen of the general state of the place as rubble and other debris covered most of the main avenue, leaving little space for those who dared to travel around the city. There was a modest watchtower close to the walls from the inside, but it was in pieces, menacing to fall at any given moment – looking closely, an arm could be seen hanging from the platform with blood eerily dripping from the tips of its fingers.

“C’mon, let me pass too!”

The Stalker didn’t notice how concentrated she was in witnessing the aftermath of such tragedy. Not saying anything, she gave space to her companion and got back into observing what could have happened – all of that couldn’t be caused by the little devils that had ambushed them. One of the houses had its roof smashed in what looked like a single blow of a mighty hand; the powers in play were certainly more than Rank 1.

“Aylen… You should retreat. Me too actually, although I can investigate stuff from the shadows a bit more safely...”

Just like her after taking a look at the scenery, his face was distorted in a horrified expression, clearly understanding that whatever did that was much stronger than something like a Raiser. However, when Wantria thought he would agree and calmly step away, his eyes became sharper and the horror and fear started looking more like anger and sense of justice.

“Hell no. I’ve already came here, I must do at least something. I know it’s a game and all and that I should preserve my character, but I never back off – specially not when the problem is right at my face.”

His short speech could’ve come straight from an anime or TV show, Wantria thought, but it was goodhearted as few people seemed to be in that digital world. Making him go away was surely the right action, and the woman went to ask herself later: “Why did I let him come?”, however, the choice from the burning heart was to let him trace his own path, with the Stalker mindfully looking after him – only for a while, of course.

“If you insist… It’s your funeral, buddy.”

“No problem.” He smiled “I’ll just make another character and come back here.”

She wanted to laugh at the dumb determination – her hands were already reaching for her mouth when the sound of shuffling stones draw both of their attentions. A good piece of cement had clearly been moving as a cloud of dust settled down around it. It had came from the only standing wall of one of the ruined houses nearby and it probably meant that someone was spying on them. Aylen thought of suggesting that it could be a player, but if it really was one, he or she would probably try to reach for the fellow adventurers, not stay hidden and then run away.

“Shit, the observer must have been there since I appeared. We must move, we can’t give them the chance to bring reinforcements to deal with us.”

“It running away from us… It’s kinda of calming isn’t it?”

“Why would that be?”

“Well… Not wanting to get caught by us means that he will surely lose the fight. Maybe this destruction was caused by them as group...”

“There’s a slight chance that you’re right, but I wouldn’t count on that. Most of the destruction seem caused by huge singular blows and I doubt that even a huge flock of those shadow beings could simply go around destroying houses and making everyone run.”

“...I’ll think more about stuff before saying anything.”

“Yeah, you should. But right now we don’t have a lot of time for thinking. Let’s cross a path through the ruins – it’s easier to hide around them and harder for something to quickly get to us.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Not saying a single word, Aylen nodded and tilted his head forward, pointing at a walk-able path in the middle of the destruction mess and going in a curve to the center. Wantria initially thought it was too exposed, but as their options were scarce, it ended up being the chosen path.

“Let’s cover each others back, Reaper. With all these shadows and spots to hide, it’s difficult to see anything lurking around, even more when they don’t want to be found.”

“No problem… Whisper if something looks wrong.”

Doing a little bit of acrobatics, they got through a big column supported by a completely cracked wall and barely managed to escape when it fell with great impact. Wantria instantly started looking around to see if any movement was caused by the noise, but the night shadows covered every possible movement. Now that she noticed, the place was very dark for a town in ruins. Outside of some still functioning street lamps like the one in the entrance, there was no reliable light-source. Even with all the destruction, no fires existed.

With the dust settling down, they felt comfortable to start moving again. Walking on their knees or even crawling seemed to be necessary for the planned route as it crossed too many obstacles and destructed houses. It was as they planned since someone needed a very good vision to even see them going through that place. Maybe tracking the enemies would become a necessity in the near future, but for the moment it was calm.

Aylen had never visited Linvia and Wantria only walked through it once and she had just walked along the main street until the hill’s base, so they didn’t really have a good spatial notion of where they were going. Their objective as initially stated was to reach the city’s center and try to follow the avenue from there, however, the path wasn’t as straight as they imagined and they slowly lost their reference. The Reaper noticed it when they didn’t know which bifurcation they would follow.

“Err… we lost the center, didn’t we?”

“No… I mean… Maybe.”

Wantria turned her neck to all directions possible, but there was nothing familiar – she could barely tell where they had came from. Only a very faint light seemed to bright above one of the tall constructions the town had. She suggested:

“We lost it, but I think that these taller buildings are near the center.”

“Oh, right. Usually the most developed part of a city is its center, huh? It’s probably where we should be going, then.”

“OK, let’s move before something notices us standing here.”

Going back to their predefined route, Wantria started to pay more attention to what could come from any direction. They were now going to somewhere wider and potentially more populated with the dark creatures, even with the theoretical larger ones that destroyed houses with punches. A more well-defined alley marked the exit to Linvia’s central point, a nice park full of trees as Wantria remembered. The nearby buildings were clearly larger and looked like businesses instead of inhabitancy and were also less destroyed – the larger creatures either didn’t reach them or were already tired when they did. Whatever was under the light couldn’t be seen from the duo’s position and they slowly approached it, alert to any movement in the shadows.

The shapes carved in the floor by the lack of light started to became clearer – little humanoids, misshapen creatures… Obviously frightening, but at the same time relaxing as their size were equal to the ones they had faced before. A trap? Quite likely seeing that a group went back after seeing the humans kill a good amount of fellow beasts. Aylen prepared his next step, only to be held back by his companion. He looked at her, trying to find an explanation, and observed her gestures.

She was pointing to somewhere besides Aylen, who turned his head in curiosity. A narrow path between two constructions could be seen but nothing else – darkness consumed whatever vision reaching it. The Reaper looked back in confusion as there was nothing to be seen on the place she had indicated.

Wantria whispered to herself.

“Oh, right, I’m dumb. I have improved night vision but he doesn’t...”

After talking to herself, the Stalker slowly approached Aylen and put her mouth very close to one of his ears. A warm breath touched the side of his head as she informed him:

“Just putting our faces out wouldn’t be a very smart move… There are some pipes in a building that could allow us to climb it and see things from above…”

Now that he knew what to look for, Aylen noticed copper pipes crossing a building’s entire wall and they seemed firm enough to allow a lightweight person to cling onto them. Wantria looked at him, waiting for his confirmation – he nodded. In a rush, the Stalker advanced to the structure and started checking its integrity. Left behind, Aylen checked if the shadows had moved in response to her movement – after a few seconds of inactivity, he felt safe to follow the girl.

The copper pipes were a bit rusty, as Wantria had imagined, but good enough to endure at least one or two people using it to get to the roof. To be safe, she indicated the approaching Reaper to stay there until further notice and slowly touched the lowest pipe with one of her legs, applying her weight gradually. There was a noticeable creaking, so she had to climb it fast and ignoring the best positions to preserve the structure’s integrity. After getting her hands to the best position, she started the rising in an unbelievable burst of speed, reaching the top in around three seconds. As she completely lowed her body on the roof, Aylen observed with newfound admiration for her physical capabilities.

Fortunately, the roof wasn’t composed of tiles, instead, it was a flat floor of concrete, making it easier for her to sneak around without a lot of noise. A few signals were enough to tell Aylen to maintain his position. The Stalker felt confident to advance a little further and maybe try to reach the roof’s border in order to check the amount of enemies in the center, their number, organization, etc. She advanced in little crawls, stopping every time to see if it had caused any reaction. Below her, Aylen acted the same: constantly checking for any suspicious activity.

A handful of minutes passed before Wantria could even reach the border with her stretched arms. Things got a little bit more intense when the bizarre sounds of night beasts started to echo around, making the two very uncomfortable with the situation. She thought of maybe going back, but she had Shadow Dive in case of enemy discovery. Trying to check the terrain, Wantria put her pinky finger in vision of anyone in front of the bulding – nothing seemed to change. Then it was the ring finger; followed by the middle finger in reaction to the complete lack of reactions. For a final check, she had her entire hand out for anyone to notice – the situation remained unchanged.

Damn, Wantria thought, they’re either oblivious to me or they’re just faking it so I can put my head out. I mean… I doubt that they’re intelligent enough to do a trick like that, so… Maybe I should peek a little.”

Confident in her abilities, the girl slowly stretched her neck out, tilting the head to let her right eye in a good position to see what was down there. Probably answering the lack of reactions to her appearance, there was nothing right below the building, only some rubble and the same black ooze from the road ambush. The actual monsters seemed to be more concentrated inside the badly illuminated park, far from the still functioning gaslight lamps. It was dark enough between the trees that not even the Stalker’s improved night vision was able to identify anything far from the tree border. The situation was better than she had thought, although she didn’t know the exact number of shadows hidden in the park. Ready to go back and inform Aylen, a male scream of surprise pierced her ears. It was coming from behind.

“Fuck! We were separated for too long!”

Not caring about the stealth anymore, Wantria charged to the other side of the roof, ready to fall in a plunging attack to whatever was attacking her companion. In the middle of readying her kukri, however, a loud impact happened and everything in front of her was pitch black.

“No… My eyes are not closed...” She imagined.

And they really weren’t. If anyone ever saw the situation from an aerial view, he or she could admire the presence of a truly giant shadow interrupting the Stalker’s passage. His corrupted breath was enough to let Wantria know that it really wasn’t a quest appropriate for their level.