After the Honeydew Flies beheaded Vance, his head fell on the ground and rolled thrice. For a few moments, he remained conscious of his surroundings. His eyes could tell that the shrine of Thurvik was bleeding black blood. His ears picked up a faint sobbing sound—the weeping of a maiden. And his nose caught a rancid smell that reminded him of rotten flesh. Then the Honeydew Flies gathered around his head and body. They erased the world from his sight and deafened its sounds with their buzz. As they lay their sharp pincers and hideous legs on him, he finally surrendered and lost consciousness.
He entered a strange state that was neither life nor death—an in-between that contrasted with the two extremes. Perhaps it was somewhat similar to deep sleep. He lost his sense of time and lost his bearings. Then he began to dream. Slowly, creepingly, insidiously, a terrible nightmare started to torment him. Cromsville took shape behind a thick haze. The streets, the houses, the cathedral, the churches—everything materialized with striking realism in this nightmare world. But there was no sky, and there was no earth. Everything was floating without anchor or support.
The Sunshine Tavern appeared in the center of this suspended existence, and the dream version of Vance found himself inside. He was wearing his white beret and working in the kitchen as usual. Bianca and Nathan were also there. The blond waitress was serving dishes to hungry customers, while the young Pyromancer was shirking his few responsibilities. It seemed as if the dream was portraying a harmless snippet of everyday life—boring and precious. But then there came a loud neigh that shattered the flimsy peace.
“What was that sound?” Vance felt panicky all of a sudden.
“They’re finally here,” Nathan said.
“Who’s here?”
“Don’t play dumb, man. You knew they were coming.”
The answer left Vance restless. He dropped his ladles and knives and hurried outside the kitchen to check the source of the disquieting neigh. As he walked among the tavern tables, he made out his name in the chatter of drunken men. Cold sweat slid down his neck, but he continued through the tavern and finally reached its front door. A second loud neigh echoed. He wrung the door open with shaky hands, stepped into the streets outside, and immediately froze in place as if he had made a mistake.
A white prison wagon was parked in front of the tavern. Two white horses were harnessed to it, and the disturbing neighs seemed to have come from them. The wagon itself had a lone driver who belonged to the Inquisition. In the haze of the dream, this driver appeared almost like a giant crammed in a small seat. He wore a standard uniform: an ivory three-peaked biretta, a milky short cape that parted at the front, and snowy linen robes with a black trim. Above his seat, there was an opening through iron bars into the heart of the mobile prison, and at the back of the wagon, there was the Door of No Return.
When he saw this door, Vance remembered the priests and preachers who had given him sermons in his childhood. They had warned of this door in their fear-mongering speeches: whoever passed through it was condemned forever; whoever crossed it was guilty without doubt. It was suddenly difficult for him to breathe. He wanted to turn and run. If this wagon had come for him, then he needed to escape before it was too late. He took a step. He took another. He almost accelerated into a run, away from the Sunshine Tavern, away from the Inquisition. But then he found himself trapped between Bianca and Nathan.
The beaming waitress clenched his right hand, and the cheeky Pyromancer seized his left. Their clasp formed the manacles that had been missing from his arrest, and they walked toward the prison wagon and dragged him behind them. He tried to struggle, but they held him with the superhuman strength that the nightmare had granted them. Resistance was futile. In the end, they said something about how they had been longing for this day. Then they opened the Door of No Return, which let out a gut-wrenching shriek, and they tossed him into the darkness of the prison without a hint of mercy or compassion.
Inside this metal box, Vance felt the same fear as a claustrophobic would. He pounded the walls with his fists and hammered the door with his shoulder, but his struggle accomplished little. The prison wagon began to move. It rumbled through the streets and shook to the rhythm of the pebbles under its wheels. Vance finally gave up and fell to his knees. An unseen pungi started to play freakish songs, and the nightmare world began to reel, dancing to the repetitive themes of the hypnotizing music. At the same time, a group of bodiless voices were shouting at Vance. He could hear them even when he blocked his ears, as though they were embedded inside him like his heartbeats.
“Do you consider yourself an enemy of the Church?”
“When did you first violate the Decree of Amirani?”
“How many adventurers have you killed?”
“How many accomplices have you recruited in the course of the murders?”
“Who is this man you call Maven Hart?”
With every harsh question, the voices overlapped more until they merged into one distinctive roar. This roar shattered the four metal walls of the prison wagon, and Vance found himself in a new nightmarish setting. A courtroom spread around him, its floor tiles and furniture flipping into place like checkers. Behind the judicial bench, on the highest chair in the room, an inquisitor sat with a gavel in one hand and a holy book, Faith and Filiation, in the other. Only these two hands were fully visible, however, while the rest of the inquisitor was a gradient of shadow—brightest near the waist, darkest at the head.
“Answer!” the inquisitor roared. “Silence will not acquit you, sinner.”
Vance was about to retort with rude defiance, but then he realized that the high-seated official wasn’t talking to him. In the abject seat of the defendant lay an infant wrapped in a soft blanket. Short black hair. Dark eyes. Round cheeks. Tiny fingers and tinier toes. And it was at this thoughtlessly innocent baby that the inquisitor was shouting.
“If you will not speak, then the Inquisition will call its witnesses.”
The infant said nothing, and the witnesses were called.
One by one, the shadows in the nightmarish courtroom were molded into the victims whom Vance had killed. Benedict. Luke. Robinia. Severus. Kaz. All who came before them. All who would come after them. The testimonies they gave were sharp and precise. They all pointed at the infant and claimed that it was their murderer. Indeed, the accusations were unanimous, but there was still some debate about the final verdict. Some wanted the infant to be hanged; others to be burned at the stake; others to be drowned in a well. When their turn to speak was over, Raine was summoned to the stand as the final witness.
“Your Honor,” Raine said, “the sinner who appears before you has sold his soul to Primordial Chaos, and it is time to reveal the hidden intricacies of this demonic pact. The Federal Guild cannot be blinded or fooled.”
As soon as Raine finished this short statement, a personless voice echoed through the courtroom and revealed the hidden details of Vance’s class:
Class Report
Adventurer Slayer
The monsters fear the brave, and the brave fear you.
Rarity
Esoteric
Ascensions
0
Class Abilities
None Unlocked
Class Effects
Condemned You cannot lose the Curse of Thurvik (Bane). Guiltless Your Mana regeneration rate increases to 10 points per second. Murderous You do not get any EXP when you kill a monster, but you get 5 times the normal EXP when you slay an adventurer (a human who has killed a monster in the past 30 days). Killing other creatures, such as orcs and elves, awards normal EXP but may have unexpected side effects. Two-faced Only you can see your real stats. Others see fake level 5 stats, which are associated with your previous class. Your previous class has been set as Spectral Assassin.
“The lies have been vanquished, and the truth has emerged victorious,” the inquisitor said, with hauteur and pretension. Then, after dismissing Raine, he proceeded to announce the final verdict: “When Amirani created this beautiful world, he also created its natural law. Those who defy it have no place among us. To doubt the holy Decree of Amirani is to sin. To submit to Primordial Chaos is to sin. The Church has brought prosperity to this land—enlisted the orcs and warded off invaders. And our just rule will last forever. Our just rule sentences you to death, sinner.”
The gavel fell thrice on the judicial bench. Perhaps it was simply a formality, but it announced that the presumed guilt of the defendant was finally a fact. Vance heard every strike—an echo of wood against wood. Then there was an unsettling creak. He turned around and found the door to the courtroom open. The executioner who would carry out the sentence had just arrived, summoned to this nightmare from the darkest memories of the past. It was neither an inquisitor, nor a low-ranking priest, nor a bloodthirsty outcast in a black mask. When the door to the courtroom opened, Vance saw in front of him none other than his hulking father.
“It’s been years, you blood-sucking elf,” the father said. “But I knew this day would come. You destroyed everything I worked so hard for, and it’s only fair that I do the same.”
Although everyone in the courtroom had been addressing the poor infant, the father alone was talking to his adult son. He took heavy steps toward Vance. His leather boots sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. His black pants and gray tank top gave him a rough appearance. And his smith’s apron was covered in a mixture of rust, sweat, and blood. He stopped right in front of Vance and looked him in the eye as if he had been trying to intimidate him. Vance backed a step away, but he grabbed him fast by the collar. His foul-smelling breath blew into Vance’s nostrils, and his yellowish teeth appeared with a snarl.
“You want to run away again, don’t you?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Vance couldn’t say a word.
“That’s all you’ve been doing,” his father continued. “Ruin innocent lives and run away. You killed my Jana. You abandoned your sister. You blew your only chance to become a noble. And what did you do after every mistake? You just decided to run away and pretend like nothing happened.”
“Leave me alone,” Vance said.
“Leave you alone?” The father formed his hand into a strong fist. “I wish I could forget all about you, you blood-sucking elf, but I just can’t.” He raised his hand and punched Vance, who fell immediately on the ground. “Everyone will say that I raised a goblin. Everyone will call me the father of a murderer. That’s why I have to end it all now. That’s why it has to be me and no one else. You gotta understand.” His father kicked him in the stomach. “I can’t run away the way you do. I have to fix my biggest mistake.”
“I didn’t kill Jana,” Vance groaned.
“Enough with the lies!” His father kicked him again. “Get up!”
Pushed, pulled, and prodded, Vance was forced back to his feet. Then he was led toward the seat of the defendant, where he picked up the tiny infant. With the baby in his arms, he walked out of the courtroom and found himself in a public square. There was no earth; there was no sky. Crowds of angry people shouted and threw rotten eggs at him. He wanted to run away, but his father was right behind him, so he only embraced the infant and continued to walk. With every step, he felt more and more as if he had been abandoned on an island of savages, but his pride wouldn’t let him shed a tear of self-pity.
In the center of the public square, a guillotine was waiting for him. A heavy blade was shining with ominous sparks, but it was attached to the crossbar in an inverted position: the sharp bit was facing up, and the blunt side down. Such an orientation meant that the guillotine couldn’t behead its victims properly; it couldn’t even cut through their flesh. A condemned sinner would face a slow death resulting not from beheading but from battering. And it was this terrible fate that awaited the infant, whom Vance was forced to place in the guillotine.
“Everyone has a place in the world. You should’ve known yours. A hammer can’t replace a chisel. A swage can’t do what a mandrel does.”
His father rotated a mechanical arm until two safety clamps were open. Then he pulled a lever. The blunt side of the guillotine blade descended upon the defenseless infant. It hit with paralyzing force, but the infant only laughed. It was Vance who experienced the pain. It was Vance who felt the bones of his neck breaking. It was Vance who squirmed and struggled for his next breath.
“Why are you still breathing? Why are you alive?”
His father rotated another arm and brought the blade up to its mechanical zenith. Then he pulled the lever that released it, and as blistering as before, it plummeted onto the infant. More innocent laughter echoed, but Vance felt the brunt of the excruciating pain.
“How long will you continue struggling like an elf?”
The blade climbed to the sky and fell again.
“Die, and bring us back our peace!”
Up and down.
“Die, you blood-sucking elf! Die for what you’ve done to Jana!”
Vance endured one pang of pain after the other. He became soaked in blood, mangled at the neck, white-eyed and white-faced. No matter how many times the blade of the guillotine descended, he didn’t die. The nightmare had settled into a loop of suffering. After all, a lot had to be done to please Amirani. The loop continued for two hundred more times, up and down, up and down, all while the father shouted his abusive words, all while the infant laughed. Then, after yet another nameless iteration, the buzz of the Honeydew Flies suddenly interrupted the terrible torture. This sound announced that the nightmare was reaching an end and that the rite of passage to Middlerift was finally complete.
***
When he regained consciousness—the tormenting nightmare forgotten, the guillotine rusting in the back of his mind, the patriarchal demon quelled at last—when he recovered control over himself and reconnected with reality, Vance realized that he had become a headless body with a dark flame burning at the top of his neck. It’s gone. My head … It’s completely gone. He had no eyes, but he could see; no ears, but he could hear. And his limbs obeyed his commands and moved with as much freedom as when his severed head was still attached.
I was decapitated, but I’m not dead … I’m not dead? He reached this tentative conclusion, but he remained confused and disconcerted. How am I still alive? My heart is beating, but the air isn’t going to my lungs ... Am I an undead now? And where did my head go? He couldn’t understand what had happened at the shrine of Thurvik, and it was a perplexing mystery, to say the least, where the fiendish Honeydew Flies had taken his head. Then, as he raised his body from the wet ground, although he already had enough on his plate, he realized that there was another reason for worry: he was no longer in Blackmoss Forest.
Ascension Alert You have arrived at Middlerift
Class Effect Deactivated: Condemned The Curse of Thurvik has been removed from your Banes.
Class Effect Activated: Headbound
While you are inside Middlerift, your highest two stats are doubled.
Intelligence 262 → 524 Duplicity 201 → 402
Vance calmed himself down and looked above him. A cold mist lingered in the air and hid much of the world, but through windows of thinned white, he could see the overarching sky. It was dusky and somber—subdued hues of red, orange, yellow, and black intermingling with great finesse. There were neither stars nor moons, but there were five celestial spheres that appeared at different distances from the ground. He thought of them as planets, but only because he didn’t know what else to call them. Then he turned his attention to his more immediate surroundings, which were much more relevant and important than the bizarre features of the sky.
He was standing on the muddy shore of what seemed to be a lake of blood. Bone-like plants and fingernail-like fungi were growing around his shoes, and some seemed to have broken under his weight while he was still unconscious, revealing spongy marrow and discharging pus-like fluids. He felt completely disgusted, wiped the repulsive discharges off his clothes, and washed his hands with a health potion—not considering it wasted, because he no longer had a mouth to drink it. After he felt slightly cleaner, he took a few steps away from the lake, and a dense growth of spiny trees appeared around him. It was a forest of gray bipinnate leaves and blue bulbous fruits.
How did I end up in this place? As he took another step, he suddenly had a vision of the past. His headless body fell from the sky into the lake. It drifted on the blood and washed up on the shore, where it lay as still as a corpse. Is this how I arrived here? Just a body? He paused pensively and tried to remember anything about his missing head. His recent memories, however, were so disorderly and discontinuous after the nightmare that he couldn’t arrive at anything useful. Perhaps if he had had time, he would’ve been able to sort them. But at that moment, he heard a sussurant sound.
Equip Spectre. With undisguised panic, he searched the misty forest for any possible threat. He expected to witness the rise of a grotesque monstrosity—a stomach-turning mass of flesh, bone, or chitin—but he instead spotted three brown monkeys dangling from the branches of a nearby tree.
“Look, Shem, he’s finally awake.”
“And he’s got an evil-looking weapon.”
“Must’ve lost his head when he saw us!”
The three monkeys laughed, whooped, and chattered.
“Maybe we should sing him a song to calm him down.”
“Nah, he’s a big boy, Ham.”
“Yeah, just give him time, and he’ll get his head together!”
They cackled and snorted.
“But what will we do if he attacks us?”
“He won’t, Japheth.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Can’t you see he’s got a good head on his shoulders?”
They chortled and clapped with their feet.
“Here he comes! Here he comes!”
“Mommy, I’m scared!”
“He’ll knock my head off!”
Vance kicked the tree. Shem and Ham were able to escape in the last second, but Japheth felt the brunt of the shock and fell headlong to the boggy ground. The unlucky monkey rolled twice and came to a stop at Vance’s feet. With its chin in the mud, it looked up and smiled nervously. Its eyes moved right and left, searching for someone or something. When it didn’t find its mysterious quaesitum, it sat up straight, scratched its butt, and said with some hysteria, “How did you find the Blood Pilgrimage? Exhilarating? Tantalizing? Painful? Or all three combined? Ha ha!”
“Blood Pilgrimage?” Vance pointed his spectral dagger at the monkey.
“Yes, the Rite of Passage!” Japheth said impatiently. “You visited the shrine of Thurvik. You asked for a Class Ascension. And like all the other slayers, you were in for a nasty surprise. Ha ha! The Honeydew Flies snapped your head off and trapped you inside one of their quirky nightmares. Then they carried you and embarked on a long pilgrimage. They traveled far and wide and in the end brought you here. Welcome to Middlerift, miserable Headbound!”
“A nightmare and a pilgrimage?” Vance repeated and laughed.
“You don’t remember anything, do you?” Japheth also laughed. “Oh, those flies … They magnify your tiniest fears … feed on your darkest memories … make you cry blood right into that lake.”
“All of that happened during the Blood Pilgrimage?”
“Yes! Yes! Did you really forget all the pain? All the sweet torture?”
“How about we try to remember together?” Vance moved his dagger closer.
“Ha ha! You’re a riot! I like you! Let’s do it!”
Without warning, Japheth sprang up, grabbed Vance’s hand, and pulled the dagger toward its own head. The weapon stabbed its brain, and it fell dead on the ground. What the hell? Vance backed a few steps and stared at the monkey’s corpse in shock. It seemed that an abrupt end had come to his meaningless interaction with this idiotic creature, but only a few seconds later, the supine corpse began to twitch. The mud surged and coated it with a thick layer. Then, absorbing this mud, the monkey stood up as if nothing had happened.
“That refreshed my memory,” Japheth said. “Now it’s your turn!”
Vance prepared for battle.
“Just kidding!” Japheth burst into laughter. “Chill out! Don’t take my words too seriously! I’m just an immortal Mud Monkey! Nothing special!”
At that moment, the trees susurrated again, and Ham and Shem brachiated among the boughs and branches. They appeared from inside the mist, jumped down acrobatically, and stood next to their brother.
“What do you want from me?” Vance finally said.
“Nothing,” Ham answered. “You’re the one who charged at us, so we thought we’d play along and act all scared. It was funny, wasn’t it? Did you see the way Japheth fell from the tree? Comedy at its finest!”
“I have no time for this,” Vance said, turning away from the three irritating monkeys. “I need to find my missing head and complete my ascension … What’s the fastest way out of this forest?”
“I’m sorry, Headbound,” Shem said. “But you can’t leave so fast.”
“What do you mean?” Vance turned to face the monkeys again.
“You opened your Mental Eye in Rust Lake,” Japheth said. “It’s not often that a Headbound awakens here. This area is safe, but it isn’t as big as you think. And once you leave, you can’t return to safety. You’ll be hunted down before you find your misplaced head. The hunter will be hunted!”
“Even as a Headbound, you can still die,” Shem continued. “You’re not like us. You’re a mere mortal. And an incautious mortal is fodder for the beasts.”
“Look around and judge for yourself,” Ham added last. “Is it safe to venture anywhere while this mist shrouds the world? And it is no normal mist, if you ask me. Who knows? It might start spewing lightning soon!”
Vance looked around him uneasily. “How long am I supposed to stay here?”
“Only a few hours,” the three monkeys said in creepy unison. “Once the sky is clear, you’ll have a chance to make it out of Rust Lake in one piece.”
“Or two!” Japheth added, laughing annoyingly.