I must’ve stared into those hateful eyes for a long time, as Fury suddenly put a hand on my shoulder, startling me out of my fixed gaze. The bright-blue glow had left his bloodstream and he’d at some point healed his grievous shoulder wound.

“He’s dead.”

“I know,” I replied.

Fury had returned his swords to their sheaths and was rubbing the bridge of his nose, a nervous tick I guessed. “I can’t believe this just happened.”

“Yeah…”

“I mean, I’d heard about people killing each other over loot, but I never imagined that I’d ever experience it.”

“He didn’t try to kill us because of the Twinswords,” I replied. “He told you ‘No’, because it’d stop you from picking them up and giving you an advantage when fighting him.”

“You think so?”

“He planned to kill us from the start. I’m sure of it.” It would explain a lot, that was for sure. The reason why he saved Ismail and I in the beginning of the Stage was likely to make us drop our guard around him, so that he could strike us when the best opportunity presented itself.

“But he had so many chances to do it earlier,” Fury argued.

“I’m guessing he didn’t want to die needlessly. His plan was probably to find another group to infiltrate after killing us. If he’d managed to deflect my arrow, he might have been able to seriously injure or kill us both.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he belonged to the same group that tried to kill anyone who wanted to beat the Forlorn Castle. Who knows if we’re even the first group he joined for this Stage? He might’ve killed other players before us…”

“Hmm,” Fury hummed, contemplating my words. “How do you know he’s part of the same group as the Player-Killer in the Forlorn Castle?”

“They both wore black and they both referred to someone who ‘named’ them.”

“Shit…” he cursed, realising something. “Do you remember the Guilds I told you about?”

“I do.”

“Well, there’s one of them that’s known for their black attire. They all report to someone called ‘the Mentor’, who gives them names like ‘Trash’ and ‘Doll’ in their native languages. No one knows the actual name of the guy or what he looks like, but even the pros at the Frontier are scared of him.”

“Does this Guild have a name?”

“Yeah… ‘Iniquitous Vagabond’. They’re the worst of the worst, though I had no idea they resorted to tactics like this to stop people from progressing.”

I didn’t know what to say. The fact that this was my second encounter with a Player-Killer already, made me dread going to the next World. I tried to clear my head of any worries, but then my gaze fell on the lifeless body of Ismail and the floating white wisp above him. I couldn’t convince myself he hadn’t been real. And even though he was not fully dead and would awaken outside the Forgotten Village, the person he’d been was gone, erased along with the memories of the life he’d lost.

“We should bury them,” I said.

Fury looked at me with some concern in his eyes, but didn’t argue. He was no doubt feeling pretty terrible about the whole situation too, though he probably just knew how to hide it better.

Digging into the Red Spider Lily field was a simple task, as the ground was porous and utterly soaked with rain and blood. Forty minutes or so later, when our hands were covered in mud and our nails full of dirt, we’d managed to dig two fairly-deep graves, one for each of our deceased teammates. Though Verdugo had tried to kill us, I felt that he deserved to be buried nonetheless.[1] Once we’d lowered Ismail’s body into his grave last, we shovelled mud and broken Spider Lilies on top of their bodies with our hands, and put their weapons into the ground next to them as grave markers.

Afterwards, I looked around and saw that two wisps still hovered over the bloodstains where they’d died, as well as one further away, above Lord Suzaku’s headless body.

“You should take the Twinswords, then we’ll split their loot.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Okay,” Fury replied, somewhat dejected. The joy he should’ve felt from acquiring such strong weapons was tarnished by the bloody memory now tied to them. It would probably take a while before he’d be able to look at his new swords without associating them with Verdugo’s betrayal and Ismail’s pointless death.

“I wonder what memory I just gave away,” he contemplated.

“Hopefully it wasn’t horse-riding, because then we’re fucked.”

He chuckled, but there was no mirth in it.

When we searched through Verdugo’s loot, after Fury had equipped his new weapons, we found that he had a ‘Potent Healing Potion’ and two ‘Modest Healing Potions’, as well as roughly seven Ryō in coins and two-or-three-days’ worth of food. We split the loot between us, with Fury receiving the Potent potion.

“How on earth did he manage to get his hands on one of these? They normally cost a fortune.”

“They probably have a sponsor, these bastards.”

“That would explain his strange weapons, I guess.”

“Oh, you noticed that?” I asked. For some reason, I’d assumed that I’d been the only one to notice. I felt kind of silly for underestimating Fury so much, after all he was very knowledgeable and fought well, albeit cautiously to a fault.

“Yeah. I even asked him about it, but he just said he bought the shield and spear in the Village...”

After divvying up Verdugo’s loot, we moved on to Ismail’s wisp. Unlike looting Verdugo’s stuff, going through Ismail’s things felt wrong. He hadn’t deserved to die like that.

We both looked up at one another after searching through the things he’d left behind.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Fury said, exasperatedly.

“I have no words.”

“Damnit Ismail, you idiot…”

The majority of his inventory was food and there were barely any coins, perhaps a total of twelve Shu,[2] and there were also no leftover potions, meaning the Weak potion he’d drunk to heal his arm had been his last one…

“I don’t even know how someone can manage to be so poorly prepared,” I remarked, utterly confounded.

“He could’ve just asked for coins if he needed to buy supplies.”

“He might’ve been too proud,” I guessed. After all, he’d seemed pretty quick to project his own insecurities onto me whenever I’d asked a question.

“I could’ve saved him if I hadn’t been so worried about the swords…” Fury said, clearly blaming himself for giving in to temptation.

“You wouldn’t have had to if I’d given him my ‘Modest Healing Potion’,” I replied.

“Without you, he would’ve died when we fought against the Lady. In fact, he would’ve died even earlier if Verdugo hadn’t stepped in to cover for him.”

“He was totally unprepared,” I repeated.

“I thought he was pretty experienced. After all, he talked an awful lot about how skilled he was with a spear. I think even Verdugo was convinced.”

“How did you even meet him in the first place?”

“Oh…” Fury replied as he suddenly realised something. “I met Ismail and Verdugo together. I think Verdugo must’ve carried him through the Stages or something.”

“That would certainly explain a lot,” I replied.

“He should’ve known better… PKers often form groups with new players to gain their trust and then strike when they least expect it.”

I had no real reply, so I just fiddled with my rain-soaked hair absentmindedly, trying pointlessly to squeeze the water from it. It was a depressing thought that you had to be so on guard because of people like Verdugo. It was bad enough that the trials set forth by the Watcher tried to kill you in a thousand ways while torturing your mentally the whole time, with player-killers added into the mix, it just felt unfair. But, unfortunately, it also seemed the Watcher actively encouraged player-killing, as there seemed to be no demerits, at least as far as I was aware.

“So, what now?” I asked after we’d been standing around in silence for a while.

“We still haven’t finished the Stage, and I need to return to the Old Crone who gave me the quest for the Alt-Mode.”

“Okay then, let’s go,” I said, wiping my mud-caked hands on my drenched trouser legs.

We retraced our steps back to the Vermilion camp, and, while we walked back, I snacked on one of the onigiri that Ismail had stuffed into his inventory. The rice had a strange red hue to them, and inside the rice ball was a sour plum that caught me by surprise, but it tasted great and was a filling snack that could hold me over until I returned to the city. I felt kind of silly for forgetting to buy any rations of my own, despite accurately predicting that the final Stage would be a long one.

When we entered the camp, it was desolated, though corpses still littered the battlefield around the twisted pale tree. For a moment, it seemed as though the survivors had left the field, but then we entered into the roofless tent and found it full of tied-up Vermilion soldiers, perhaps numbering somewhere in the eighties, and who were overseen by a score of fully-clad jet-black Samurai with an insignia of a white Magnolia flower. None of them wore helmets and all of them had their hair tied back in knots. I recognised one of them immediately, the blacksmith who’d fixed my cuirass and told me about the Tsukikusa. The tailor from the marketplace who’d sold me my jacket was also there.

A few of the Samurai wore a type of armour that seemed impenetrable, similar to the Tower Guard who I’d fought in the Tournament Stage, as it was comprised of carapace-like layers that left no visible gaps, except for their exposed heads.[3] Something peculiar about many of the Samurai, was the fact that they didn’t have the blackened eyes that marked pretty much every person of these lands, Fury and I included.

One man stepped forth to greet us. He had a brutal scar from his forehead to below his left cheek, which had destroyed his eye and given him a strange smirk.

----------------------------------------

[1] I suppose that I felt that even a murderer deserved a burial. After all, I’d buried Mŕtvy, so it would be kind of hypocritical if I didn’t also bury him, regardless of the fact that burials were obviously pointless here.

[2] It was almost like he’d been preparing for a camping trip or something, and it wasn’t unthinkable with the amount of food he’d carried in his inventory that he’d spent most of his money on it…

[3] They were like turtles, basically. Minus the retractable heads of course.