[Lexical Reservoir: 20/100]

"This is going to be a long night" Ethan thought to himself. Flashbacks of sleepless nights and piles of paperwork temporarily numbed his aching limbs.

Ethan is no stranger to guilt and its myriad manifestations. The smell of ink and paper which once gave him great joy, has become a source of grief in his adult life.

He was well aware that he isn't an employee to be pitied. The overtime wasn't borne out of corporate greed but out of his detestable habit of delaying himself from accomplishing the boring things. Pushing it aside until the dreaded night before deadline.

"Why did I spend most of my LRP trying to summon a monster? Ethan how stupid can you get!"

His incompetence with paperworks often masked by the adoration of his students who would listen attentively as he regales them with tales of the worlds he's been in through reading books.

Tension assailed the midnight air as Ethan's breath came in shallow gasps, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The summoning of Grendel—powerful, dangerous, unpredictable—had gone beyond his control. Now, he was paying the price. Unleashing his creativity has always been considered reckless behavior. He got fed up with the usual phrases of:

"Stay in your lane, you're not a permanent employee yet..."

"...don't show off unless you want more work"

"Arrogant prick, the youth are seldom aware of how the world works."

His old world was cruel; this one doesn't feel any different. "THIS is getting annoying, I'm tired of chasing."

As if in response with all the setbacks and undermining he experienced in life, he shouted at the top of his lungs— calling out the monsters' name. His thunderous scream broke the tension in the air. This is going to be his ascent, his plot twist, his revenge.

NO ONE can tell him otherwise.

Grendel roars back, its voice echoed through the trees as its massive structure crashed to a halt. The monster pivots itself and rushes back following Ethan's scream. Its glowing red eyes, wild with rage, sought Ethan out, and the ground trembled in his wake.

"You look like the embodiment of every mistake I've made," Ethan muttered to himself, ducking behind a thick oak tree just in time to avoid a massive claw that sliced through the air where his head had been seconds earlier. The tree splintered with a deafening crack, a jagged scar by Grendel's attack.

Lexcalibre slips out of his hand, spins and nests back on his palm. "I can control it with my thoughts?" touching the pen, His eyes momentarily fixated on its status screen. A sense for yearning grabs hold on him.

[Designate Pen Pal now? (Y/N)]

He wanted to take the easier route of requesting aid from Ashley or even Faye. Yet Ethan knew that if he falters now, nothing will change.

He stumbled backward, adrenaline coursing through his veins. Focus. The pen gleamed in the moonlight, an artifact that held the power to rewrite reality itself.

Grendel roared again, its massive form lurching toward him, claws outstretched.

A rustling sound interrupted his fragile moment of tribulation. From the shadows, figures emerged—dark cloaks billowing, their presence like a living, breathing omen. Ethan's eyes widened. The Night Brigade.

"Look at you giving a cool entrance, I almost thought you'd never show up!" Ethan exclaimed, genuinely relieved.

Their leader, a tall man cloaked in a deep, blood-red robe, stepped forward. Ethan recognized him immediately. Allan Edgar. The platoon leader of the Night Brigade, compared to when he saw him earlier, there is an air of mystery about him, a far cry from the petty sherry enthusiast he met before.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Edgar's face was hidden behind an ornate mask—"the Mask of the Red Death", Ethan quoted under his breath.

"Ethan," Edgar's voice was a whisper, yet it rang in the air like a tolling bell. "You've drawn my ire earlier, now you have drawn me into trouble."

Ethan frowned. "I didn't mean to summon him."

Edgar's lips curled in something between a smile and a sneer. "You... have the power to bring such terrifying creature into existence?"

Ethan shook his head, trying to focus. He couldn't afford to let Edgar and the Brigade distract him. Grendel was still there, restless and still volatile. He needed to rewrite one aspect of Grendel's nature, something that would help. Something that would stop him from his endless rampage.

But how to get close? How to change the monster when every step toward it could be his last?

In that moment, as if reading his thoughts, Edgar's voice pierced the air again. "You're reading him, aren't you? Yes, I can see it in your eyes. You're trying to anticipate his movements, like a game of chess. You think you can outwit the monster? What a brave soul!" Edgar chuckled, a dark sound that made the hair on the back of Ethan's neck stand on end. "There are moments when even death is helpless against those who move with purpose."

Ethan felt the words take root. Purpose. That's what he needed. He needed to rewrite Grendel's sensitivity to sound. The monster was caught in an endless cycle of rage triggered by noise. If he could silence that, he could stop Grendel's tantrum, calm him long enough to recalibrate.

But how? (Looking at the broken trees scattered like splintered twigs laying around); How could he get close enough without becoming splintered bones in the process?

Ethan's mind flashed back to his days as a teacher. The classroom, the endless mountains of paperwork, the never-ending cycle of forms to fill out, documents to grade. He had struggled with the bureaucracy, his frustration mounting. "Teachers weren't supposed to be creators—they were supposed to follow the rules, adhere to the structure— is what my superiors used to say, bunch of old degenerates"

The system was inflexible, and yet, it demanded his full attention.

The Brigade stepped forward, "Allow us to be your decoys."

Ethan didn't question it. Time was running out, and Edgar's presence—his aura—could be enough to buy him the space he needed.

"Do it," Edgar commanded, and the Brigade surged forward, spreading out in a flurry of motion, distracting Grendel, keeping the monster's focus away from Ethan.

Ethan moved quickly. The pen in his hand glowed, he made a dash towards the monsters blindspot, drawing a line on his sticky skin as he whispered,

"Rewrite Characteristic, Sound Sensitivity to Silence."

–20 Lexical Points

[Lexical Reservoir 0/100]

The moment he finished encoding, Ethan felt light-headed. He groggily looks to confirm that Grendel has stopped on his tracks, and to his relief, the rampage had ended. His heightened senses finally have room to relax, He was about to fall down, the physical toll of the previous fight finally weighed on him, but Edgar Allan was quick enough to support his frail stature.

We pan out of Ethan's perspective and look into the world through Grendels' eyes. To him, the world stood still. The rush of sound, the growls, the crashes, the whirring in Grendel's ears—all vanished in an instant. The forest around him became eerily quiet.

Grendel laid down in a fetal position. He was no longer the raging force it had been—he had been calmed, rewritten. But it wasn't just the noise. It was something deeper.

Grendel's eyes, once wild and full of fury, softened. Some of the soldiers even spied a tear rolled over its cheek. A low, guttural whisper escaped his lips—"Mōdor."

Ethan knelt. In that moment, his heart went out to the creature. Mōdor. He recognized the word—mother. There was more to Grendel than just unbridled chaos and destruction. There was an untold pain. A wound buried deep inside the creature.

Before Ethan could fully process the weight of this revelation, he heard a massive screeching sound, the fabric of space forcibly torn as eyes and tentacles sprawled out of the tear. It was Parallax, the Beholder.

"Well well, we meet again. You might've twarted my initial plans, but I'll settle with this mosntrosity as a token of compensation. The next time we meet, will be the end of you."

The monsters' many eyes locked on Grendel, its gruesome appendages violently grappled the now docile Grendel, it lifted him into the air, disappearing into the abyss from which it had come.

---

It was a phyrric victory for both Ethan and the night brigade. While the soldiers are tending to their wounded and wrapping the dead, Ethan shakily approaches Edgar.

"Their sacrifice would not be honored by mere apologies. If you want to honor their deaths, treat the surviving members to a round of Sherry back in the guild," Edgar preempted Ethan.

"The Amontillado?" Ethan asked, his downcast expression belied his calm query.

"Yes. The Amontillado..." Edgar replied.

The Night Brigade left as quickly as they had arrived. The long night, a terrifying sequence of events, had come to an end.

Ethan stood alone in the quiet aftermath, the weight of his pen still heavy in his hand. He had calmed the monster—but there was much more to this world, much more to uncover.