Mel stayed in the doorway to the boss room until she recovered enough to feel comfortable moving out from her relatively safe location. With all the monsters dead, and no stagecoaches to run her over, she could take her time inspecting the rest of the tomb.

She found several small caches of loot, but still no pants. Not that it was a dire need. Her coat was more than long enough to cover her, but the fight with the mistwraith had made it clear that she would need them before long.

There were countless offerings to the dead. Mel wasn’t above a little light grave robbing. Especially if their reanimated bones had been trying to kill her an hour ago. Small pouches of coins, and old, rusted items that held no value that she could tell. Still, she took some of the more interesting items that might be useful.

Like the three [Managlass Bottles], their contents long-since drained, and several types of mushrooms that caught her eye. The [Grave Glimshrooms] were hard to miss. Found in the deeper alcoves, they glowed with jarring hues, like they were bathed in black light.

She wouldn’t have picked them up if the system hadn’t made it clear they were safe to eat.

[Grave Glimshroom]

(Copper Rank, Item)

(Common)

This bioluminescent mushroom grows in the darkest, deepest tombs and graves. Despite their colorful glowing caps ranging across the spectrum, they are not toxic. Fungus connoisseurs pay great sums for their favorite hue.

Imprint: When eaten raw, sates hunger, replenishes vital resources, and confers a temporary glow.

While Mel was fairly hungry, she wasn’t about to stuff her face with a suspicious mushroom she found in a grave, no matter what the system said about it.

Not when she might be able to find something outside.

However, there was no use in being too picky . If she couldn’t find something to eat soon, she could eat the mushrooms if she had to. She gathered up every [Grave Glimshroom] that she could find. And since they glowed in the dark, that was pretty damn easy to do.

The other variety of mushroom she found was significantly less appetizing. Which is saying a lot when you’re faced with eating a mushroom that looks radioactive from the way it was glowing.

It didn’t help that [Death Morels] grew on and around the graves rather than nearby.

[Death Morel]

(Copper Rank, Crafting Material)

(Rare)

A honeycomb textured mushroom that grows in areas steeped in Death and the lingering traces of Guilt. Contrary to its name, an overwhelming amount of energy is trapped within its wrinkled flesh. Highly poisonous if eaten raw.

Obviously not eating that either. I might be able to fight monsters with a twinblade and some magic mist, but some kind of funky Death poison? Nah.

Breathing fresh air outside once more, Mel stepped out under the dappled light of the canopy. She looked behind her, realizing how easy it would be to walk right past this place. It was built into the wall of a mountain. There was hardly any ornamentation that would offer a clue that there was something interesting here.

The only thing that told Mel there was something off here (aside from having come out of the damned thing) was that her [Ghostflame Lantern] was flickering and blowing toward it like the flame was being pulled into the tomb.

No matter which way she moved, the flame pointed at the tomb.

“Handy. You and me, ghostflame, are going to be grave robbers, I guess.”

The lantern flickered in response.

“Aight, that’s creepy.”

It flickered again.

“Listen, I’m not anthropomorphizing a god damned lantern, okay? We’re not doing this.”

The flame flickered from white to black, and the snap of a twig pulled Mel’s gaze up from the lantern to a skeletal creature draped in rotten flesh and rags.

“Oh.” She summoned her twinblade and fit the lantern onto her coat, leaving both her hands free to wield the weapon. She watched as the rotting skeletal creature squelched its way toward her, a rusted spear held in its bony hands.

She grimaced at the sounds, somehow more disturbed by that than the fact it was some kind of undead monster.

“I’m killing you just for those gross sounds,” Mel told the thing as she waded in with a probing strike.

Pale necromantic fires flared in its empty eye sockets. Some long-buried instinct in Mel had her diving to the side and rolling. At the same time, she threw up [Hidden Mist] just as a jet of pale flame roared from the skeleton’s mouth.

Monster Skill: [Flame Breath]

Had she continued to attack it, she would have been burned alive by that strange flame. Instead, she came around the side. Shrouded in the mist, the skeleton had no idea where she was, and with the icy patches forming on the forest floor, Mel’s boots made her even faster.

Paired with her higher agility, Mel closed the gap in record time. Even if the skeleton had known exactly where she was, she moved far too fast for it to do anything other than die a second death.

Her twinblade came whistling for its ribs, shattering them and its spine on impact. The rest of the body collapsed into a pile of bones. Mel tied off [Hidden Mist], worried that more monsters were around.

She held her twinblade at the ready, poised to strike again. The way her [Ghostflame Lantern] was freaking out told her this wasn’t over.

A moment later, pale streams of wispy light drifted up from the jittering pile of bones. Mel stomped with her boot, crushing whatever reanimating life force was left.

You defeat a [Skeletal Spearman (Mundane Rank)].

You gain runes of Mist aspect experience.

You gain Battle Points.

The notification confirmed that the ordeal was over.

New Quest: This isn’t Kansas

Explore your unknown surroundings until you find an area suitable to create a Haven.

Objective: Discover or create a Haven (0/1).

Reward: [Soul Kiln]

[Campfire Instant Scroll]

If I was from Kansas, I’m pretty sure I would consider this an improvement, Mel thought to herself as she looked for more monsters. At least it’s not Ohio. She suppressed a shiver.

Enshrouded in mist that spread 10 feet around her, Mel moved slowly through the underbrush. Like the stagecoaches, the skeletons and living armors seemed to be mostly magical.

She would have thought that meant they could more easily detect her within the mist, but that clearly wasn’t the case. She snuck up on one living armor sitting ramrod straight, peering directly at the entrance to the tomb. Mel crushed the second life from its body with a decisive blow to the back of the helmet.

Stomping on the pile of rusted armor did nothing but scatter the pieces and alert the nearby monsters to her location. It wasn’t until the armor began to reanimate that she could finish the job.

Noted.

Nearby monsters came to investigate, but once they came upon her [Hidden Mist], something seemed to go haywire in their heads. They froze, stiff as a statue, and went completely inert unless they heard a sound.

Mel tested her theory several times by throwing rocks and sticks, which broke the spell and caused the creatures to investigate the noise.

After that, it was easy to dispatch them while only taking minor damage. Somehow, the mist she made was more than just visual. It also magically obscured her.

Unfortunately, the monsters had nothing of worth on them. The few items they seemed to possess broke down into nothing when they were defeated.

Out of spite, she took one of their bones and stuffed it into her inventory.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Now how the hell do I find a “Haven”? she thought to herself.

She doubted they would have motels or friendly campsites already set up with attendants ready to greet her.

Then again, maybe my luck is so bad that I–

Mel didn’t have a chance to get the thought out before a flash of light streaked by her left ear and drew a line of blood across her cheek.

By then, her mist had completely faded away, leaving her exposed. I was sure I killed all the skeletons! Then she saw her assailant.

A man dressed in ragged crimson robes, his hood barely concealed his grinning yellow teeth. “That was a warning shot,” he said, tapping the short bow in his hand.

Mel touched the wound on her cheek with her fingertips. She inspected the scarlet stain with more interest than the man. Partly because the amount of blood that coated her fingertips was far more than the thin wound should have bled.

Sure enough, a glance at her health bar showed a jagged wound marker at roughly 90%.

Affliction: [Bleed (1)]

While she was patently ignoring the bleeding wound and the man, she focused on her periphery.

She couldn’t have said why she did it other than instinct. Something within her screamed out that there was more to this than met the eye. This man could have killed her, so either he wanted something, was a terrible shot, or something worse.

And in Mel’s opinion, when the options are bad to worse, always believe the worst thing.

“There are bears out here,” the man said jovially. “It might do to be kind to people you find out here.”

Mel chuckled to herself. “I’d take my chances with a bear,” she told him. “I could use a new fur coat.”

There! Off to the left, she saw shadowy movement. A flash of red told her that these people didn’t have any idea how to blend in. On her right, another red robed form was slipping through the underbrush.

If she had focused her entire attention on the man in front of her, she might have missed them. Now she had a better idea of what was going on.

“Then, by all means,” the man began, “go play with your bears. But leave your loot. I saw you leave the dungeon. You’ve got something worth taking, and I’ll be doing the taking. Think of it as a way to pay your respects to the Bloodtide Covenant.”

Great, Mel thought, a creepy group of dudes. That’s exactly what I want.

She focused a trickle of mana to activate [Hidden Mist], using it to coat the ground from the grass up for several yards instead of spreading out from her. In the short time she had with the skill, Mel had learned several tricks.

She just had to be careful with how much mana she spent. She didn’t seem to have much of it, and it drained faster than any other resource.

There was a shuffle to her left as the fog began to obscure the man stationed there. [Hidden Mist] typically spread out from her location, but with a subtle twist of mana, she could perform the inverse and leave a clear center while obscuring the outer reaches.

To the bandits, it probably looked like an innocuous mist was rolling in. The sun was falling after all. It couldn’t have been that odd.

Once both cloaked men on either side were completely shrouded, Mel made her move. She took a few steps forward, holding her hands up non-threateningly. “All right, you got me. I took some choice loot from that…dungeon you called it?”

“That’s right.”

“So you take it and leave me alone, that’s the deal? Nobody else is with you?” Mel asked, pausing only a few feet away from the man.

“Just me. I’m a forward scout for the Bloodtide. We know you Earth folk are new to the way of the world, so we’re taking pity on you.”

“Earth people, huh?” Mel said, taking one more step. She created a slick patch of ice right behind him, hidden by the low-lying fog creeping in from the periphery. “And you’re some alien or something?”

The man snarled. “Why do you use that word? We are human like you, only better! Now hand over your items and we won’t have to show our superiority.”

To show he wasn’t messing around, the man nocked an arrow to his bow and gave it a light draw.

Before Mel could make her move, somebody shouted from the side, “She’s a Witch! This fog isn’t natural, Ian! Kill her and take that title!”

Mel’s eyes widened at the same time as Ian’s did. The man snarled, drew back the arrow to his cheek and made the last mistake he would ever get to make.

Stepping back to brace against the draw of his bow, his rear foot hit the icy patch and kept going. He went down in a painful, awkward split, made all the more painful as Mel summoned her twinblade and speared him through the chest.

His filthy robes offered no protection to her blade except to cover up the profusely bleeding wound.

She made her weapon disappear into ash to disengage from the man as fast as possible. There were still two other archers more than capable of attacking her if she stood around.

Despite that, an arrow thudded painfully into her shoulder. Another arrow struck about a foot lower, at a more tender target.

“My ass!” she cried out in fury and pain.

Spinning around, Mel dropped low to the ground and summoned her mist to flow up over her shoulders to completely hide her. She scrambled awkwardly to the side as more arrows whizzed through the mist where she had just been.

I’d have been dead without the mist obscuring their shots.

Even with her boots enhancing her speed over difficult terrain, and Mel’s ability to see through the obfuscating fog, she still couldn’t find the two accomplices in the gloom of the forest.

Remembering an effect of the mist she hadn’t tested out yet, Mel dangerously injected more mana. The mist became suffused with a dull glow, illuminating the darkest shadows of the trees and underbrush, easily marking out her two attackers.

Their lack of reaction told her that the illumination was for her eyes only.

Now playing the role of hunter, Mel crept painfully through the trees—her every step a symphony of agony—as the two men tried in vain to locate her. They weren’t complete idiots. They fired, moved, then fired again, always at the spot they guessed she might be.

They couldn’t have known how fast Mel could move in the mist. She was behind one of them after a few volleys, slicing into the tendons on the backs of his knees.

Once his legs gave out, Mel drove the twinblade down through his shoulder and into his chest like she was planting a flag. “That’s for shooting me in the ass!”

The man gurgled and gasped, his fingers moving shakily as red sigils burned in the air.

Mel had only a moment to react. She dove to the side and put herself flat to the ground a fraction of a second before the man’s body swelled grotesquely.

Aspect Skill: [Blood Bomb]

The ensuing spray of scalding blood and viscera burned her back but was quickly put out by her mist. Trees shattered and bent away from the gruesome explosion. The air was blasted from Mel’s lungs as if a giant had just stomped on her.

You defeat the [Bloodtide Covenant Archer (Mundane Rank)] .

You gain runes of Mist aspect experience.

You gain Battle Points.

She was still recovering when she heard muffled footsteps and then a shrill cry. “Toman!” the other man called, his voice choked with pain and sorrow. “Please, answer me! Toman!”

As Mel’s senses returned to her, she realized the majority of the mist had been blown away from the attack. Which only made it more curious why the sobbing man only a few feet from her hadn’t noticed and killed her yet.

Splintered debris littered the ground all around her, but it wasn’t until she looked over her shoulder that she realized the truth. Her coat looked nearly indistinguishable from the mist itself. Its dark leather was now a pale swirling gray, helping to hide her in the remnants of the low-lying fog.

That’s right, my coat’s imprint stated it would change with my first aspect.

Mel could hear the grief in the man’s voice just a few feet away. He must have thought she was killed in the blast. It certainly was strong enough. If she hadn’t been supernaturally fast, this would have been the end of her story.

Picking agility had been the right choice.

Pushing down her sympathies for the third man who had just tried to kill her, she surged to her feet and lunged at the grieving figure.

He wasn’t as off-guard as she would have thought. The man raised his bow just in time to block the attack. A swift kick to her gut knocked the wind out of her lungs again. Mel jerked to the side and rolled off his boot. She fell hard onto her shoulder, where she spun about on a patch of slick ice to line up another desperate attack.

Kicking out with one leg and hooking with the other, she snared his ankle and took him down alongside her. Her twinblade came down on his exposed neck like a guillotine blade. There was little force behind the attack, given the disadvantageous angle, but there didn’t need to be.

Her twinblade’s razor-sharp edge was more than enough to cut through the man’s exposed flesh. He flailed around while Mel rose unsteadily to her feet.

That was when she noticed the cut wasn’t as deep as she thought. If he died, it would be a long time coming. Somehow she missed the arteries and instead only opened up his throat.

“My bad,” Mel said, driving her twinblade down like a pike into his heart. “I didn’t mean to do you dirty like that.”

You defeat the [Bloodtide Covenant Archer (Mundane Rank)] .

You gain runes of Mist aspect experience.

You gain Battle Points.

Mel winced. Her shoulder and butt were on fire from the still-buried arrows, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near here when the rest of this Bloodtide Covenant showed up.

She was all alone with nobody to help her. But first, she had some bodies to loot. She could practically hear Tom Cardy singing “ loot that body, gotta loot that body now ,” in her head as she limped around to each of the bodies. In the case of the Acolyte, she found that she didn’t need to touch the body at all.

Which gave her a mini-panic attack when she realized the reasoning. A chunk of him was in her hair. Also, on her shoulder. And a suspiciously brown smear on her wrist.

Would you like to loot the (2) [Bloodtide Covenant Archers (Mundane Rank)]?

Would you like to loot the [Bloodtide Covenant Acolyte (Mundane Rank)]?

“Yeah, yeah, hurry up,” she whispered, trying in vain to wipe the Acolyte’s remnants off her with a bundle of dried leaves.