Glen awoke in the same room he passed out in. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep, and given he'd locked himself inside a windowless, reinforced room, he didn't really have anything to tell the time with. Why was he in here again? Oh yeah, he was being chased by that relentless green monster.

While he certainly could've been asleep long enough that the creature had left, he didn't know that for certain, and it was not remotely worth the risk. So, he figured he'd give it thirty minutes or so just for his peace of mind. For the time being he only had his own company.

“What the hell was that thing anyway? I mean, I heard that before the Palisade humans lived among many other races and creatures, but I feel like this is a bit much to take in for a first experience…” He engaged in his bad habit of talking out loud to himself. “Where am I, anyway?”

Glen figured he might as well occupy his time a little by figuring out why this room was reinforced anyway. He finally stood up and brushed himself off, still incredibly sore from recent events. He took in the room around him.

Though only the door was reinforced, he noticed that the walls had a repeating pattern carved across them.

Curious, he approached one of the walls and lightly knocked on it. Bizarrely, though it should have reverberated like wood, the sound and physical feedback he received seemed to indicate that these wooden walls had properties similar to stone.

He figured he shouldn't dwell on it.

After searching around the room for a minute, taking in the impressive swords arranged on the wall, Glen accidentally bumped into something and tripped.

Irritated, he looked up to see what had tripped him only to realize that there was an armor stand in the center of the room that he had somehow managed not to notice even once as he was examining the room.

It only had two items on it.

First, a pair of extremely thin gauntlets. They appeared to be woven from metal at points almost like chain mail, with plates over the center of the knuckles, the back of the hand, and the sides of the arms. The gauntlets ran all the way up to the elbows, appearing to prioritize mobility over actual protection.

Upon closer inspection, all of the plates on the gauntlets had miniscule and unfathomably precise carvings covering the entire surface. They almost seemed drawn at random, but he couldn't seem to believe that, for some reason or another.

Wasn't there something else?

Oh, yes, there was a cloak. He couldn't take his eyes off the beautiful gauntlets, so he almost forgot. But the cloak…

He couldn't find the words to describe it.

No, literally. No matter how closely he tried to look at it, the words he was looking for seemed to evade him. Oh well, he might as well look elsewhere. There was certainly something very peculiar about that cloak, but he couldn't exactly pinpoint what.

Actually, now that he thought about it, everyone in this town was dead, so who would complain if he took something from here?

A devilish grin spread across Glen's face.

He removed the gauntlets from the armor stand and equipped them. He felt a strange sensation when he wore them. Almost like Deja Vu, but more akin to the sensation that you're forgetting something important. He paid it no mind as he stepped away from the empty stand to reach for a sword.

“Wait a damn second...” Glen said aloud.

He just reminded himself that the armor stand wasn't empty. It still had the cloak on.

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“What in the hell is up with this thing…?”

Before he could forget again, he removed the cloak from the stand and put it on. He felt… like it looked cool on him?

Despite being the most enigmatic item in the room, he didn't feel anything particular when we wore it. It was certainly bizarre.

Now, he finally stepped toward the swords on the wall.

There were twelve swords hanging on the wall to his right. He walked up to the wall. He examined the blades from where he stood, carefully noting their appearances.

“Yup, I still know nothing about swords.”

He then decided he'd pick one at random, but before he could, he realized that his hand was already on one of them. He didn't remember moving his hand in the first place, but oh well.

He removed the sword that his hand had wandered to from its rack and looked at it. He knew not a thing about how to appraise it, but he was sure, for some reason or another, that it was a fine blade. It appeared to be much older than the others lining the wall.

Frankly, Glen wasn't sure how he could tell this either.

It was a claymore, well over a meter in length. Ordinarily, he definitely wouldn't have said this was his style, but something about it felt right to him. He gripped the hilt with both hands, shifting unconsciously into a stance he'd almost certainly never practiced.

Or… had he? It felt extremely familiar.

He practiced swinging the blade. Time felt slow for a moment as the massive sword came down. A distant memory echoed through his mind. He felt the blade cutting into something… somehow he knew it was flesh.

He grimaced, his eyes closed tightly, his ears ringing.

•

The Blademaster stood tall, his blade slicing cleanly down into this weakling's muscle tissue.

He had had enough of this foolishness. They already knew what he was here for, and he wasn't going to let them toss him around.

The short, stout, bearded man on the ground before him grunted loudly from the pain of the strike. The Blademaster simply could not understand why these people continued to defy his demands.

“You know damn well you can't stand up to me, you dirty cave-dweller. Why do you refuse to accept your defeat and meet my request?!” The Blademaster shouted furiously at the man on the floor before him.

The bearded man looked up at the Blademaster, and despite his pain, he grinned and spat in the Blademaster's face.

“And you know damn well I'll die long before I guide you a step closer to the boss. Eat my Dwarven taint, ye filthy bast–”

Before he could finish his sentence, The Blademaster severed the man's head in a fit of rage. Even as the cave-dweller's head was rolling on the floor, the scum continued sneering at him. He sighed in frustration. This would certainly hinder him, but nothing would be able to stop him from getting what he wanted.

•

The blade came down and Glen blinked.

He could've sworn he just remembered something important, but it felt like trying to recall a dream. The blade cut through only the air, interrupted by nothing.

Though he was a bit concerned, he figured he was probably just a bit loopy because he was so tired. Nonetheless, while Glen was certainly no expert in the realm of equipment, he was quite certain by now that the gauntlets he equipped were enchanted somehow. This, however, begged the obvious question; why were these enchanted items abandoned in this room instead of in circulation or being used by a fighter?

Given the layout of the room, he figured at first it might be that the owner of this house was a wealthy collector and this was his display room, but the cloak, and especially the gauntlets were painted in a thick coat of dust. Having seen the display rooms of a few collectors when he was younger, he seriously doubted any collector would treat such intricately crafted equipment so poorly.

Well, at some point, there was no use dwelling on the question. Glen simply didn't have the answer, nor did he have enough information to glean what the answer may be. Regardless, he had far more pressing things to consider at the moment.

By now, thirty minutes had likely passed, and while he certainly was in no rush to have his second encounter with the monster he saw outside, neither was he especially eager to squander the unknown amount of time he had to make it to Tabre.

Glen pulled the cloak over his head and nervously gripped the sword he had stolen.

He hesitantly reached toward the lock on the reinforced door, lifting it as slowly and carefully as he could. He held his breath as he took one hand off the hilt of the blade and gripped the door handle.

He pulled the door open as fast as he could–