Since entering the underwater portal and meeting the Silverdagger Clan, Logan had learned a ton of information about his new world. He’d learned that not all skills were equal, and that the Collective considered [Regenerate] something so valuable it might as well be a fairytale. He’d kept that ability close to his chest which had turned into a smart decision when he’d learned that to obtain a bonded companion skill, they didn’t bother bonding with the animal, they boiled it alive.
He'd learned that an S Grade item was so valuable that nations went to war over it.
That [Life Cycle Master] was unique and possibly more valuable than [Regenerate]. Logan speculated that you didn’t know what was valuable if you didn’t know it was possible. After all, he’d barely scratched the surface of [Life Cycle Master]. Any skill that allowed for the possibility of star-creation had to be colossal.
He’d kept his abilities close to his chest, only demonstrating a small portion of what he was capable of in the horror of the dexterity trial. And that was due to necessity rather than choice. Even when acid had been sloughing off his skin, he’d maintained the armour around his neck, hiding his spatial collar through hell and back.
And after all of that, it had been the Cursed Rope that tripped him up.
It made no sense.
It was just a rabid, misbehaving rope with a mind of its own. And yet, the Silverdagger Clan looked as if Logan had turned into a baby killer.
“What…” Logan cleared his throat, his body tight with tension. If he hadn’t collapsed his talons before he’d returned to the viewing arena, he would have crushed the egg.
Logan looked at Asthea. He could understand the guards turning on him; he’d never trusted them. Even though Arsen had seemed to soften towards him after the dexterity trial, Logan hadn’t forgotten his verbal abuse and his threat of stringing Logan up with an intestine necklace. He was betting that they’d only need an excuse to turn a threat of murder into a reality.
Yet, that didn’t explain Asthea.
Logan had gotten to know Asthea throughout this trial. She wanted to win and impress her mother, but she wanted to win fairly. After the dexterity trial, her gratitude had been real. That wasn’t faked. When things devolved into insults and threats, she’d repeatedly interfered and encouraged everyone to get along. How could one Cursed Rope change that?
“Asthea,” said Logan, his voice tight. “Why are you pointing a weapon at me? What’s going on?”
Asthea’s lip trembled, but she only adjusted her grip, the bolt of the crossbow pointing dead centre at Logan’s chest. “Where did you get that rope?”
“Are you kidding me? This is really about the rope?”
Arsen’s frown only worsened. “Answer the question!”
Fuck. This was serious. “I shouldn’t have to answer without an explanation,” he ground out. “You’ve ambushed me, you’ve surrounded me after I rushed back here expecting a welcome. A congratulations. I know I’m not really part of your group, but I thought we’d started to get along.”
What Logan wasn’t saying is that he’d been excited to rush back to the viewing arena to find out what they’d thought of his performance. He equated his reception to a group of friends who’d prepared for a marathon together, went on workouts together, and then entered a race. Only when everyone reached the finish line, they’d pat everyone on the back but one. That person would be ignored, snubbed. As if they were invisible.
It would have hurt just as bad.
Errol adjusted his whip, his mouth in a snarl. “He’s purposely not answering. He knows what it is. It’s as bad as we feared.”
Around Logan’s shoulder, the rope twitched, shifting like a snake uncoiling from a branch.
Rope, Logan sent, don’t move. I need you to obey me. If at any other time, obey me now. If the Silverdagger clan thought Logan was attacking them due to the rope, he’d have no chance to deescalate the situation.
Logan took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves. He couldn’t let himself get angry. The guards looked as if they’d already made up their minds, but Logan was convinced that his perception of Asthea’s character wasn’t wrong. She would listen to reason.
“Asthea,” said Logan. “You have to help me out. What’s going on?”
Asthea gazed at him, her expression torn, avoiding direct eye contact as if ashamed. Hesitating, she dipped her crossbow and removed her finger from the trigger. The spring made a sharp twinge as it reset.
“Logan,” she said, her wolf ears drooping. “Do you really not know? This isn’t another lie? You said you weren’t a stealth player, but I know that isn’t true. You lie, you lie so much. For someone who does that… how do I know this isn’t yet another falsehood?”
“How can I be lying if I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. It’s just a rope!”
“Liar!” said Thorin, spittle flying. “Trickster! Don’t listen to him, Asthea!” He lifted his sword as if getting ready to swing.
Asthea frowned at Thorin. Lowering her crossbow until she leaned it against the wall, she turned to face the others. “Give him a chance to explain himself.”
Arsen’s lips were in a flat line. “Asthea…”
“Remember what he did for us in the dexterity trial. I refuse to believe that someone who saved me from insect torture is the owner of the Scourge of Arcopotal. Tell him.”
Arsen’s eyebrows drew together, his hands clenching into fists. “I would recognize that rope anywhere. You’re too young. You don’t know what we experienced.”
“Arsen,” she said, firm. “Tell him.”
Arsen licked his lips, his eyes full of disgust as he looked Logan full in the face. “This… man. The Scourge of Arcopotal. The System gave him access to a unique keystone. A lodestone that no one else could touch. It gave our people hope! We had just come through decades of horror after the System Integration, our civilization crumbling, our children dying. It took fifty years before we built up our society and created a semblance of what our world once was.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Arsen rubbed his thumb against the edge of his dagger, cutting himself and letting droplets of blood drip to the ground. He glanced down in satisfaction before giving the other guards a sharp nod. The action seemed ritualized.
Errol and Thorin straightened, their hands clenching on their weapons.
Logan felt dread sizzle in the pit of his stomach. That wasn’t the action of a man who was giving Logan a chance. That was the action of a man who’d already made up his mind.
There was no exit. He was in an enclosed room the size of a small theatre, surrounded on all sides. He had no confidence that he would win in a fight against all three of them. And worse yet, it wouldn’t just be three once Thorin deployed his clones. Logan was convinced that at least one of them had a True Grit Ring. Not to mention the other problem:
[Thorin Silverdagger: Level 99. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Strength.]
[Arsen Silverdagger: Level 93. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Strength.]
[Errol Silverdagger: Level 77. A Silverthorn male. Highest stat: Strength.]
Errol was the only one who had leveled up once in his trial. Thorin and Arsen had leveled multiple times and were almost E Grade. An E Grade level with the possibility of True Grit Rings. Logan didn’t like those odds.
“Go on,” said Asthea in encouragement.
Arsen rubbed the blood that had pooled onto his thumb over his face in a stripe, adding yet another layer to his mud warpaint. “And then the man came,” he said as he added another stripe to his other cheek. “Bringing hope through a mythical lodestone, access to food, to accessories, to power. But like everything granted from the System, it gives nothing for free.” Arsen’s expression was far away, his face haunted.
Grasping one of his daggers with bloodless fingers, he looked like he was envisioning stabbing it in Logan’s eye. “Through the lodestone, the System gave the man a unique weapon, a weapon that didn’t look powerful. At first. At the end of the day, how powerful could a rope be? But that was its power. Its power was its disguise. It’s an insidious rope.”
Arsen curled his lip. “Being the owner of such a thing you must have noticed that it levels as you level, no? As it grows, it influences. Each time the man leveled, he fed the rope, creating a cycle of feedback and corruption. Feedback and corruption. Until the man was no longer a man with a conscience; he was a man who ate and ate with an appetite for unending murder.”
Logan blinked in disbelief. “You can’t possibly think it’s the same rope.”
He hadn’t taken out the rope around people because he couldn’t trust it to obey, but he’d gotten no inkling of anything other than a misbehaving sentient weapon. As his bonded companion, Ernie would have noticed if there had been a problem.
Arsen ignored him. It was as if Logan hadn’t spoken. “This man on our world was known as Hallkelsdottir, the Slaughter of Arcopotal. And then the Slaughterer of Worlds.”
Logan stared. “You think I’m some horrible monster? And that I somehow inherited this man’s rope? Asthea, you know me better than that.”
Asthea took a step towards Logan. The guards let out rumbles, growls deep in their throats that sounded like a pack of lions protecting their cubs.
“Enough,” she snapped.
They didn’t obey.
Asthea hissed out a breath. “We can kill it, that’s something, isn’t it?”
Arsen snarled. “The corruption would have already started. Even if we destroy the rope, there’s no saving him from that.”
Asthea seemed to be grasping at straws. “Then examine it. Maybe Logan’s right. Maybe it isn’t the same weapon. Wasn’t Hallkelsdottir’s weapon the size of a dragon at the end? This thing barely compares.”
Logan unwound the rope from his shoulder. It was still in its inert form, but Logan got the sense that it was full of anticipation. A bated breath.
Behave, Logan sent, now’s not the time to—
Hallkelsdottir was weak. Too long to level, too long to level. Unlike the user, the user is strong. The user will get even stronger.
With a sudden snap, the rope swelled in size, turning into four times the width of Logan’s forearm. It crackled with blue electricity that hit one of the white walls and rebounded. Leaping into the air and jerking out of Logan’s grip like a bolting horse, it flew towards Asthea like a snapping cobra, its mouth gaping wide.
The user will get strong; the rope will do what’s necessary. The rope will eat.
It happened so fast that Logan didn’t have a chance to react.
Asthea raised her hand, trying to shelter her face from the punishing electrical current, the True Grit Perception Ring glinting in the white light of the room.
Glee glee glee. Ring!
The rope swallowed her hand and arm whole. The muscles in its mouth fluttered as it secreted acid, tearing into her flesh, severing tendons and veins. Turning red as it sucked in her blood, its fibres glistened and dripped like an oversaturated towel.
Asthea screamed as her arm started smoking. She jerked back, blindly bashing the rope with her other hand like she was trying to repel a shark.
“Cursed Rope, come back!” Logan yelled both out loud and with his mind. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, his chest tight with panic and desperation.
Once the guards had a sense of what was going on, it was pandemonium. Weapons forgotten and clattering to the ground, they rushed towards Asthea, their eyes wide, white showing around the whole irises. Thorin let out a guttural roar as he bashed the Cursed Rope repeatedly with his fist, punch after punch, his fist steaming as acid ate into his knuckles.
“Soncontal piece of shit!” Errol pulled on it by its tail, tugging with his veins standing out from his skin, his face splotchy red with rage.
Arsen’s chest vibrated with a roar as he wrapped his hands around the rope’s neck just underneath its mouth, squeezing it like he was trying to pulverize it into mush.
Come back, you fucker! With every ounce of his mental willpower, Logan willed it into his spatial collar.
Ding!
[Error! You cannot store living beings inside a spatial storage device!]
Shit shit fuck! Adrenaline shooting through his system, Logan dropped the egg and rushed towards the fray. If he couldn’t make the rope obey with commands, he’d do it with force. Unlike the guards, Logan was immune to its secreting acid, and he might have a chance to force it into its inert form and then throw it inside his spatial collar.
But Logan was too late.
The rope had severed Asthea’s arm and swallowed it whole.
Becoming limp as if someone had popped a balloon, it shrunk in size, its rope fibres spraying blood as it reverted to its coiled, inert form.
Lifeless. Dead. Nothing but a fibre rope.
“Oh, Asthea,” Logan said, his voice layered with horror.
The Silverdagger Clan huddled around her as she looked down at her severed arm with glazed, uncomprehending eyes, her face washed of all color, her breaths rasping. She didn’t seem aware of anything as acute shock overwhelmed her senses. Asthea was made of steel; she was someone who had impressed Logan with her determination and resolve, but when she took in her severed limb that gushed a torrent of blood, she hit her limit.
Her eyes rolling back in her head, she became limp.
“No!” bellowed Thorin as she sagged in his grip.
Unconscious. Please God, let it be unconscious only.
Thorin’s hands clenched on her shoulders as he shook her, but Arsen brushed him to the side. “Give me room,” he snapped as he tore off a strip of fabric from his shirt and wrapped it around the severed end of her arm like a tourniquet. Asthea’s lips were blue, her ears limp and limbs boneless in his grip as they hovered over her. A pool of blood soaked the floor like spilled paint, gradually spreading around her body.
Logan stepped towards Asthea and held out his hand, then hesitated before dropping it. The Silverdagger Clan was surrounding her like a pack of lions protecting their cub. He would just get in the way if he tried to approach. A pounding was in Logan’s ears, the sound of his pulse racing as he stood there, paralyzed with shock. He couldn’t do anything! Fuck, what could he do? They were stuck in a trial dungeon!
“Arsen, get the resurrection crystal ready in case we need it,” said Errol, glancing at Arsen’s spatial storage bracelet.
Arsen glanced down at the bracelet on his wrist and blanched. “She used it on me!” His voice was full of agony. “I don’t have a way to bring her back!”
“Soncontal,” Errol swore.
Arsen pressed his finger against her throat, his eyes closing as he barely breathed. Sagging with his whole body in relief, he dipped his chin towards his chest.
“Well?” demanded Thorin.
“That’s all we can do.”
Logan’s throat felt as dry as a desert. “Will she be…?”
Silence.
Then as one, they turned to face him with murder in their eyes.