Maybe a minute passed before I realised that she was dead. I almost expected her to finish the sentence any moment, even though I knew.
“Your name was Mŕtvy,” I whispered into her ear. Her body was still warm as it slumped against me. My arms were getting tired of holding up her lifeless body, but I persisted.
“In your home country that means…” I sniffled once. I couldn’t help it. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “Dead. That’s what it means…”
I couldn’t really tell you why, but I ended up using my sword, and later my hands, to dig her a grave in the middle of the courtyard. The top layer of the earth was almost completely solid, but a few centimetres down it was more like mulch. Half an hour later I laid her body to rest in the cold earth. It was a shallow grave, but I hadn’t seen a single animal in this World outside of the Village and Gothershall, so I doubted she’d become food for scavengers.
Argh, again I was applying too much real-world logic to this realm. It was starting to become a bad habit. I doubted someone like Iberius was thorough enough in the design of this World to create a functional food-chain. After all, he had himself admitted to manufacturing whole characters just to have a specific kind of pastry to enjoy. Clearly his priorities were less about realism. It made me wonder if the following Worlds would be the same. I hoped not.
I turned back to where she had died and awaiting me were two separate floating wisps. One by the discarded cursed sword and the other directly above the large bloodstain Mŕtvy had left behind. I went to the cursed sword first and looked at the tooltip before deciding whether or not to pick it up:
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‘Claw of the Forlorn Shadow’
-Melee Weapon-
Sword > One-handed > Greatsword
“Some say it was an argument that caused the Prince to kill his King, others say it was greed. Nobody knew that a shadow had wormed its way into his mind as he slept and set the wheels spinning. The Royal Guard interred the murderous Prince to a cell amongst his ancestors, but soon they found themselves compelled to set him free, as if guided by some unseen hand their bright fires could not dispel. With the help of his former captors, the Prince found his way to the blade that whispered to him at night and hummed a familiar tune in the deep silence amongst the dead. Pulled from the tomb lit by that bright flame, the slumbering being within the sword came to life and left its vessel for another. Unnatural darkness fell upon the new King's realm and those who did not abandon their towns, died in their homes as the Forlorn marched from the Keep they had once sworn to protect. The Forlorn King took one final seat upon his throne and never again rose from his place. In the dark of his throne room, only the light of a True Flame could make him shed his Forlorn Shadow and let his soul rest alongside that of his dead father.”
Trait(s):
‘Heavy’
‘Pact’
‘Tainted Blade’
Equip
Discard
Weight: 6.3 kilos
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Its weapon category sounded preposterous when I first read it, though that explained why the handle was so short and why its attacks were slow. Its weight was an immense 6.3 kilos, which made my assumption about her armour seem likely. If used by someone in metal armour, they would likely not have much leftover capacity to carry much in their inventory, nor have much in the way of stamina and movement speed.
The ‘Heavy’ Trait did exactly what I’d first guessed: “Weighs more than normal greatswords and attacks slower.” The second trait description was a bit of a surprise: “The wielder has to enter into a pact in order to be able to use the weapon.” But the biggest surprise came when I read the final trait’s description, which stated, “Inflicts taint, causing wounds not easily healed.” It was true though, my shoulder wound was still bleeding, and the pain had made me switch to using mainly my left hand while digging the grave. Even the reasonably-shallow cut on my left arm hadn’t congealed either. But I didn’t have any healing potions, so it wasn’t like it made a difference…
The item art showed the double-edged blade, the short handle, and a static swirl of darkness around the edge. And then there was the flavour text, which was quite extensive, and provided important insight into this World and its lore.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I was fairly sure this should’ve been my reward for defeating the Forlorn Shadow, as it specifically mentioned the True Flame, which was directly tied to the quest Father Adam had given me. Maybe only one player could wield it at a time, or perhaps it wasn’t a guaranteed reward. During my last talk with Jakob, he’d told me that he didn’t even know there was a special ‘quest-chain’ for the old monk, since no one talked about it in public. It kind of made me wonder what the normal boss fight would’ve been like, though, if I had to guess, it was most likely nowhere near as difficult, at least when compared to fighting the Forlorn Shadow itself.
After staring at the tooltip for a minute longer, I remembered the thing my possessed ring had said: “Seek the blade.”
Even though I knew I wouldn’t use the massive sword, I put a hand on its hilt, and my surroundings were immediately drowned in shadow as a disfigured apparition appeared opposite me, stooped over the blade as though a reflection of myself. An odd humming filled my ears, like a cup overflowing with wine, and I lost all awareness of the world around me. I looked up into its ‘face’ and it mirrored me.
“I knew you would not let this power pass you by.”
“How are you still alive? I killed you.”
“We live on the fringes of light and flourish in the dark. Even the Sun itself could not purge us all from this world.”
“Well, I don’t want your power.”
“A shame. We could have had so much fun together… you and I…”
Then the apparition vanished and so did the cursed sword, snatched from my hand by the shadows around it. Its disturbing voice still reverberated through the air as the shadowy veil faded and the humming quickly subsided.
“The blade was yours for the taking, senseless mortal. You would scoff at such immense power? What insolence,” the voice in the ring berated me.
“Shut up,” I replied. I knew honeysweet lies when I heard them. Wielding that blade would only have made me a slave.
Hopefully nobody else would figure out how to obtain the sword, or I’d have to come back and deal with them as well. There was clearly something perverted about the sword’s power, I mean, why else would Mŕtvy have been trying to kill me?
I then remembered something that someone had told me: “No one has cleared the Forlorn Castle in a long time.” So that was what it was. She hadn’t just been targeting me, no, she’d probably killed dozens of players trying to clear this Stage, maybe even more than that. I wondered if she would’ve attacked me immediately, had I not entered the castle through the catacombs.
I realised all these hypothetical questions could never be answered, so I instead went over to the other floating wisp. As I held my hand inside it, a long list of Mŕtvy’s items popped up. She’d had enough food to last three weeks, and also two ‘Potent Healing Potions’, although very little money. The idea of looting a dead player’s inventory irked me at first, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to miss these items. Mŕtvy wouldn’t even be able remember that she’d lost them, so I might as well take the things that could help me progress.
After two-or-three minutes of looking through it all, I ended up only taking the two potions, her remaining thirty-seven silver, some bread, and a full waterskin.
I popped the cork off one of the flasks and downed the entire bright-red liquid inside it. As that familiar heat burnt away my pain and started knitting shut my wounds, I realised that the ‘Taint’ inflicted by Mŕtvy’s attacks still affected my body, as only the shallow wound of my left arm healed completely. My shoulder wound had stopped bleeding, but hadn’t fully healed. Perhaps it would just take longer for the healing to do is work, otherwise I’d have to use the other healing potion to fix it, which I wasn’t keen on, considering it was the Potent type, which required Artisan-level Alchemy to make.
Hold on a minute.
The potion Kerebor had given me had also been a Potent one. It made sense that someone like him would have that high-level of an item, considering he was part of the Frontier, but how the hell had Mŕtvy gotten her hands on these? Had she bought them? If so, weren’t they worth a fortune? I knew from my brief experience with the craft that levelling the Alchemy skill was very time-consuming, and I highly doubted it would be possible to reach Journeyman-level, let alone Artisan, in the first World. Just by a rough estimate, I knew I needed to craft over a hundred ‘Weak Healing Potions’ to level up to Journeyman, which would not only take an immense amount of time, but also cost a fortune in materials. Which meant: someone had to have given these potions to her or she was a player who had returned to this World after progressing through the later Worlds. Which also reminded me of her last words. She’d said He gave her the name ‘Mŕtvy’. I didn’t like the idea of someone out there helping player-killers, but it wasn’t like I had any ideas on how to find or even stop whoever was behind this. I just hoped that Mŕtvy was the exception and that I wouldn’t encounter more PKers waiting at boss fights.
When I was completely sure I had everything I needed, I left the castle behind, going through a convenient hole in the courtyard wall that I hadn’t spotted when I first arrived with Father Adam.
I took the snaking road down the slope carefully, as my entire body was incredibly-exhausted from going without sleep for so long. Meanwhile, the sun slowly poked its head up over the horizon.[1]
By some minor miracle, my commandeered horse still grassed by the foot of the cliff where the Father and I had left it the previous day.
I crawled onto its back, grabbed the reigns, and kicked it into motion. Despite the constant jostling followed by every step of its hooves, I dozed off a few minutes later.
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[1] Great time to show up… Not like I could’ve used the help of the sun to deal with that obnoxious shadow or anything…