One of the most concerning things about the System was how it broke its own rules. You could encounter a monster that acted a certain way - simple, routine, and barely a hindrance - then suddenly there would be one who broke the mold. This was even before the consideration that some enemies had Elite or Champion designations that improved their abilities and intelligence. We were talking about normal foes who one day decide to ruin your life just for the amusement of it, as if some childish god was sitting behind the switch, gleefully watching you flounder.
As we stood and waited for my demon to report back on the secret passage, there was an odd sound of... ripping? I didn't want to add any more visceral clarifiers to what my mind tried to imagine was the cause.
“Clear, boss.” Roger’s voice came from inside the secret passage. Not dead, then.
I sighed as I couched down, feeling around for the height again so that I didn’t knock my top hat off. It might offer my vulnerable skull a little protection, for all that was worth. My face went through the illusion and beyond was a rough, dark tunnel that went on for a dozen feet before turning to the left. The bright purple pits of light that were Roger’s eyes glared at me from the other end.
A smell then hit me. Blood and other worse, damp things.
His face contorted in the dim light. “Well, there was a trap, but I think my legs jammed it up.”
Now, with my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I could see some kind of saw or spike trap had extended out halfway through the tunnel. The corpse he had been puppeteering had been caught on them, splitting the legs from the rest of the body and leaving a trail of internal organs down the last of the passage. Even the trap had been surprised at the process, and was now gummed up and stuck with gore and other things my mind tried to ignore.
“Oh joy,” I muttered. Trying not to breathe in most of the smell, I leaned back out of the passage and grimaced at the elf. “Roger has been cut in half. We’ll have to crawl over the parts, but the trap looks to be inert.”
Her expression dulled, which wasn’t saying much, but she nodded.
“Boss, there’s a dark room to my side here. It’s empty, but I can hear voices. Whispering voices. They beckon me to the light…”
“Roger?” I watched as the purple faded away and the spent corpse went limp. From checking my ability, it looked like he had self-dispersed rather than died—but clearly had to add a little bit of melodrama on the way out... because this whole encounter wasn’t stressful enough, apparently.
I crawled through and held my breath, trying to ignore the squelches and fluids soaking into my suit. Squeezing past the torso of the woman he had been piloting, I pushed into the dark room he had mentioned. In the dim light, I could see boxes to the right and left walls, a rather normal and worn door ahead of me. My breath escaped and relatively clear air entered my lungs. The System truly didn't pull any punches, and I wondered if the lack of Players encountered so far on the mainland was due to the more naïve and carefree being turned into mulch by the harsh world. A far cry from the cute slimes.
A small amount of grunting behind me, and Ren came through next. I offered a hand down to help her up, which she took.
“Hate that demon,” she grumbled, looking back toward the remains of the spent body.
I wasn’t a fan of how we had to crawl through the remains of the body he had possessed, but couldn’t fault him for disabling the trap. Much rather him than us, as she had said. I was sure she still held the same view, but was also unhappy about getting gore soaked through her outfit. That or the whole holy-demon thing went both ways. I'd better not dwell on that.
She crept towards the door ahead of us and moved her long ear closer to it, while I squinted around the room for anything of interest. It looked like it was used as a storeroom, although all the crates had lids on. It would be too noisy to open them right now with potential enemies just through the threshold. Somehow I doubted they had much useful to loot, anyway.
Ren moved back from the door quietly and put her mouth near my ear. “At least five in there,” she whispered, causing a shiver to run up my spine. “Ready when you are.”
I brought a card into my hand, putting it away, and drawing it again. Purple light flickered through the room. My right eye twitched and a short pain ran down my fingers as I split the card into one magic and one Hellhound. I wasn't sure the System was meant to allow me to do this, but I saw no reason why it shouldn’t be possible. It just hurt.
Dagger of Luck came up in my other hand, and I nodded to the elf. She had drawn her bow, and the green energy that swirled with strands of gold began to rotate around the arrow.
Assuming they didn’t all have ranged weapons, pinning them in place would allow us to pick a couple off and raise Roger again with little danger to ourselves. Hoping I didn’t make a fool of myself, I stepped forward and kicked the door. Thankfully, it swung open, relenting to my show of force. As I immediately drew the attention of all within, I then ducked and threw my cards out at the nearest figure.
Six thieves in the room - two by a closed doorway to the right, two around a table in the middle, two further back on a slightly raised area with some wooden boxes. None of them looking too happy to see us appear from their hidden room. Perhaps we should have brought a gift... oh—I did, but they probably wouldn't like it.
I curved my pair of cards around in the air, pain radiating from my wrist as the System fought the use of my summoning card this way. With a final flick, I sent the magic card into one of the thieves by the doorway, the canine card striking the wall beside him. As it was a summon card, I couldn't use it to attack. Seemed arbitrary, but I'd play by the rules as long as I could keep bending them.
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Ren's arrow flew over my head straight after, striking an opponent near the table. Vines spiraled out from the rock floor and held the four in that direction, the two by the door either out of range or resisting the effect. My Hellhound spawned out from an arcane circle on the wall and set upon the legs of the bandit I had struck.
“Go,” Ren commanded, a statement to let me know she wasn’t about to put an arrow through the back of my head accidentally rather than through her impatience.
I did go, vaguely unsure as to why I was approaching the danger, but still knowing I had to erase it from my view. As I stepped into the room, the two at the back started to draw crossbows.
One at the table growled, unable to come at me with a rather wicked-looking curved sword. “Shouldn’t have come h-“ he began.
My card found his open mouth wanting, and just as it reached his maw, I split it in two to slice through both cheeks on the way to his throat. His eyes flashed wide, and he dropped the sword to the ground to clutch at his face. The sound of an arrow zipped past my ear and slammed through his hands and into his head.
Card Fan flashed up in front of me, absorbing one crossbow bolt while the second was dulled, but still struck me in the shoulder. Painful, but superficial, hardly worth worrying about. I pulled the bolt out and threw it at the second table thief - but switched it for a dagger at the last second. Expecting a harmless stick, the gruff man instead raised his arm to be pierced by the sharp blade. I dropped the pact demon summon on the first corpse as radiant light illuminated Ren’s bow.
The sudden rush of air beside me had me stumbling backward by instinct, the slash of a blade cutting through my left arm as a seventh thief appeared from invisibility. I clutched at the wound as it burned. Some kind of poison? As he stepped towards me, I moved backward again, and he stumbled against a chair that was suddenly in front of his feet. While brief confusion flared across his bearded face, I hopped atop the chair and brought both hands down - the metal cooking grill appearing in my grip, which I slammed down onto his head. I hopped down after him and spun with a flourish, both objects vanishing behind my flared jacket as I stood straight with a click of my heels.
Dazzle icons popped up on all the thieves paying me attention. With a quick twirl, I popped the cork from an Antidote potion and downed it. Almost as gross as the healing one.
A flash of golden light came from the door where Ren stood as she shot one of the thieves with her smite arrow. The figure stumbled backwards, their plain tunic soaking through with blood. Next to them, a sweaty woman scowled at the hound, her arm and leg shredded from his attacks.
Roger flipped the table over as his ears burst from the top of his skull, pinning the other thief behind it. He took two crossbow bolts to the torso and stumbled slightly, the arrow Ren had fired also still sticking from the head of his puppet. The demon then flopped atop the trapped enemy, clawing at the man’s face and trying to gouge his eyes while his own bloody maw hung open, drooling blood.
Purple cards flew from my hand, splitting through the air and coming down on the two at the back - but not aimed for them exactly. Their weapons jostled as I cut through the taut cables of their crossbows, rendering them loose and inert.
After a brief look of confusion, they dropped the weapons. One of them drew a sword and broke free of the entanglement to come straight for me. An arrow zipped towards the door pair. A crunch came from the table where Roger lay prone. I grinned and drew two cards, tense in anticipation for the imminent melee with the sword-wielding thief.
As he reached me, I held out my empty left hand toward him - the lit torch from earlier then appearing from my Inventory, blinding and waylaying his sword swing. My cards went out straight into the forearm of his weapon hand. The pain made him let go of it and blue System boxes flickered quickly in the side of my vision. The commands activating at speed; I pushed in toward him and the weapon vanished, now in my possession as I looted it from the air. I spun, the flame of the torch circling behind me and then emerging from the other side as my dagger instead, stabbing straight into his wounded arm as he tried to block it.
His other hand punched into my stomach. Not exactly damaging, but winding. As I stepped backward, a blur of blue enveloped his foot and he stepped forward to trip me. The whole hideout shifted and the stone floor hit me hard, knocking the hat from my head as my skull earned a new bruise. Neither of these events I really appreciated - even less so when the wounded thief landed on top of me, knocking the air from my lungs and then wrapping his rough hands around my neck.
I needn’t have even bothered panicking, really. I was in a room full of allies, and despite the dark spots flickering through my vision, it was only a matter of time before one of them- oh, there it was.
The horror show that was the possessed corpse loomed over the thief. With jaw open widely and running with blood, Roger's eyes of deep purple pits stared down at me, before the hands that had been punctured by Ren's arrow wrapped around the chin and neck of my assailant.
Having the life choked out of me wasn’t exactly fun, but watching my demon slowly snap the man’s neck backwards while my vision dimmed wasn’t adding to the experience either. At last, the hands relented, and I took a big gasp of air - only to be rewarded with a hideous crack of bones as the man's struggling muscles were overcome. Roger pushed the body from me and helped me up with his bloodied hand.
“You okay, boss?”
I was still panting and regaining my vision, but I gave him a nod and a smile - just before a hammer cracked his head in two. He dropped to the ground with the last spasms of life, the purple mist fading away to reveal the assailant. The last thief from the back, an arrow in his chest, and his face contorted from pain. The Hellhound leaped from the side and took his arm, disarming him as a second arrow struck him in the forehead.
Silence now filled the chamber, except for the growled gnashings of the hound, and my own heart and lungs screaming out inside my head.
“Sorry about Roger,” Ren said, stepping over.
Either I had hit my head too hard in the fall, or that was genuine sympathy for my bloodthirsty pact demon. “Oh? He’ll be okay. He gets a little holiday now, I suppose.” I turned to the elf, and she handed me my top hat. I twirled it up to its rightful place.
“You’re not a brawler, Max. Stop getting so friendly with death.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “As good as I am, I can’t risk firing arrows into melee with you.”
“Sorry, I did get a little carried away.” That was putting it lightly. I ran up and hit someone with a cooking appliance.
“I don’t want to say anything that might encourage you, but you seem to be able to do a lot with bullshittery.” She glared at me, hoping I didn’t take it as permission to flaunt with danger. “From what I've seen, people aren’t normally able to interact with the Inventory that quickly, especially to switch things mid-combat.”
I likened it to typing. While most people could plod along using one or two fingers, my words per minute were bordering on showing off. Naturally, that was just par for the course, for the world’s greatest magician. Open, select the intangible grid square, select Hold or Drop. A process that I seemed to take to like a duck to water.
My mouth turned up into a wide grin. “I feel like I am just getting started. I’m practically salivating for another Power Token.”
“Next one is yours, trickster. Just don’t waste it by dying immediately after.” She raised an eyebrow, knowing she was inviting destiny to muddy my plans.
I smiled and nodded, though. There was no intent to die just yet.
In fact, if I got good enough, we’d never had to worry about dying ever again. We'd be infamous.