[Too many pending notifications. Wait...]

Experience points gained every time he killed a few monsters. Health points lost every time one of those sons of bitches, with too much luck, broke through his guard and scratched him. A green hell. An apparently endless hell.

But it ended. At the end of the bloody battle, Max let himself fall backwards, collapsing onto a mountain of corpses.

The stench was even worse than the feeling of the dead flesh beneath him. He felt like he was drowning in just the smell of orc blood and fallen elves, too. Many of the elves had died horribly, but the smell of blood wasn't the only thing hanging over the battlefield, that was clear.

Piss and shit. There were no noble ways to die. Not far away, he saw a raven pecking at the guts of some poor son of a bitch who wasn't even whole. In fact, he was so torn apart that the only way to tell if it was an elf or an orc was the color of the skin.

[You leveled up. You've reached level 3.]

[You leveled up. You've reached level 4.]

[You leveled up. You've reached level 5.]

The notifications kept popping up as he contemplated this hellish scene. It was like a mockery of the people who had valiantly defended their home, dying in the process or not. This was very real, not just a game. Too real.

Max stood up, stuck his sword in the ground, leaning on it. He bent over at the waist and vomited. Helen stroked his back, patting him. Nice gesture, of course, but he barely felt it, since the armor was in the way. A wall of cold metal separated her. Separated them.

Silvana approached, passing between the dead and those still dying. At a brisk pace. For a moment he thought she was in a hurry for some reason, but then he dismissed it. Surely the fight was over. Silence and death reigned in this space. Maybe that was what was lightening her pace, the feeling of relief, like rediscovering the weight and value of her own life. He was no warrior, not yet, but he could understand that. It was what he had felt after the cave, after the white serpent, and what he was feeling right now.

"You've done a good job, kid. Thank you." Silvana got straight to the point.

[You have fifteen attribute points to invest.]

Max frowned.

"You don't have to thank me. I did this for myself and no one else."

"I'm quite sure you did it more for the little one than for yourself, but it doesn't matter anyway. What matters are the acts. So thank you."

Most people didn't put it that way. What mattered was the intention, and his intention had been selfish, not to mention inconsiderate towards Helen. She had already seen and lived enough in his short life, but what was done was done, and what was the point of rejecting her thanks at this point?

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Max nodded.

"Anyway, okay, I did what I could. I wish I could have done more." His voice trembled.

"It doesn't matter, it's my fault. Not yours. I am the leader, the one responsible. I don't understand how they got through so many traps. Placed around the perimeter. I don't understand how they managed to ambush us, or how they got that particular bright idea, by the way. But what matters is the result, not the preparation, or the good intentions. I'm the one with blood on my hands. You are simply a traveler passing through."

He couldn't reject her words either. Max had reasons to feel responsible. But the truth is that she was blaming herself too much and making herself important. He was a traveler passing through. Today he would leave and not see any of these people again for a long time, if ever. There was no point in giving it more importance than it had. Although this was certainly a specialty of the human race.

"Thank you," Max said at last.

Silvana nodded gravely, briefly looking away. For a second he thought she would say something else. A glimmer in her eyes, a blink, who knows, made him think that. And in the end there was nothing, only silence.

Until...

"I'll pay you."

"You don't have to do that."

He had already received what he was looking for, killing so many orcs, leveling up three times. And he had no more and no less than fifteen more attribute points to spend.

"Of course I have to pay you, I don't intend to be in debt to anyone."

Shutting up and accepting it was the best thing. He needed money to survive in this world. Experience points were no good. They had agreed to this work as a way of paying them for healing Helen, nothing more, but the money would be perfect.

"Okay, I'll accept it."

"Of course you will," Silvana said. "I don't care if you throw the bag away as soon as you get out of my sight. But as I said, I don't intend to be in your debt or anyone else's."

Silvana took a deep breath.

"Elves are a proud people."

I can see that, he thought.

"Give me a moment to talk to my people and we'll reorganize to clean up the mess. Take care of the corpses and..."

"Take your time."

Silvana nodded softly.

She lowered her head, then shook it, turned around and walked away, moving among her people, giving verbal and non-verbal commands. She seemed sure of herself. At least she seemed to. Who knows what was going through her head? Max was worried sick with only one life in his care. Silvana had to take care of an entire tribe.

He had experienced the calm before the storm and survived the storm. Therefore, this was supposed to be a return to calm.

However...

"What now?" one shouted.

"What is happening?" shouted another.

Many corpses came together, dissolved, and gave shape to something terrible. A death golem, oozing blood, pus, and a black ichor. How many corpses had it taken to form that monster? Maybe it reached into the hundreds.

The eyes of that thing, because yes, it had eyes, locked onto him. They burned like two dark circles, but gave the sensation of being as cold as the emptiness between the stars. Deathly cold. Knowing that, he should have guessed what he was facing.

"So you are the new champion," the mass of death spoke with a strangely normal voice, jovial even. "You are even worse than the last one. I don't know where Ares finds them. You're going to die here. Don't blame me, kid. I'm just following orders. From my master. Hades, king of the underworld."