I hadn’t realized how much time had passed until there was a banging on my door.

“It’s been a month, you need to either pay for another or leave.”

Holy shit, have I been working for two weeks? I call out “Okay, let me just grab my stuff real quick then I’ll get out of your hair” then start collecting all of my equipment that I’d spent the entire time tinkering with. My knives now had 3 major kinds of enchantments to them, the regular small knives had all been given the wing emblem, making them able to fly around under my control, and half had an old timey bomb with a lit fuse engraved into the hilt, making them disposable explosives that I could fly around before detonating like a dope ass kamikaze drone. The third kind of enchantment though is one I was particularly proud of, and was on the knives I had fashioned into daggers as well as my spear. I had tried funnels, spiraling whirlpools, and even a hypodermic needle, trying to find an enchantment that would steal the very concept of health from whoever I stabbed and transfer it to me, but none of them worked.

The funnel had made my knife less efficient but somehow more concentrated. When I stabbed a tree with it, the hole was smaller than the blade, looking more like a bullet hole than a stab wound. I would have still kept the knife to use, but it’s not like it had accentuated the power behind the stab, concentrating it. Instead, it had just stopped the damage on the sides somehow, making it wholly inferior. The whirlpool had the amusingly predictable effect of just making my knife spin around really fast like a drill, which would have been good if I had designed the blade differently. I kept that enchantment in mind for later as it could still be incredibly useful, but I still disposed of the knife. The needle was closest, as it could drain or inject whatever concept I wanted from/into whatever I stabbed it with, but whatever was drained wouldn’t come into me, and instead, became trapped inside of the knife, as an alternate energy source for when I wanted to inject something instead. This one I kept.

I finally succeeded when instead of focusing on the concept of draining, I considered stories about beings who could do what I wanted themselves in the stories of my old world, and ironically found my answer in the monsters that began my entire existence in this world. Vampires. I carved the image of a vampire’s fangs into the blade of a dagger and instinctively knew that I had succeeded. I had lucked out that my tools had all happened to primarily be comprised of bone, as that had assisted in my visualization, turning my knife from a dagger into my own Vampire Fang, a tooth that would drain the blood of my enemies and turn it into my own supply of health.

The only potential drawback I could see with this enchantment is that it would only work on enemies who had blood. I couldn’t just stab a tree and use its vitality to heal myself. Also, it would be a very ineffective weapon against elementals, and given the level of confidence Sophia had had when she informed me that I would certainly come across them, I assumed they were rather commonplace, so I would definitely need to find a way to actually fight against them.

Oh shit Sophia. I finally remembered that it had apparently been weeks since the last time I had spoken to her. I definitely am a major asshole. “Hey Sophia, sorry about the radio silence, I totally lost track of time there.”

Silence.

“Sophia? Hello?”

Nothing.

“Look I’m sorry man, really. I just get really obsessive when I throw myself into a new project. Please talk to me?”

I waited, but as the seconds passed, there was still nothing on her end. My heart started beating loudly in my chest, my eyes shaking so badly that it seemed like the entire world was vibrating. Relax dude, you didn’t talk to her for a while, she’s probably just sleeping or doing her own thing for a bit. I tried to reason with myself. Forcefully, I breathed deeply to push down on my heart and slow my pulse back down to a reasonable level, and contained the pressure on my mind, clouding my judgment. Once I got myself back to a cool-headed, rational state, I finished packing up my stuff, donning my newly refurbished leather pants and bearskin cloak, now both newly enchanted to keep themselves clean and repair themselves should they tear, as well as possessing the ability to become as durable as iron should I run my mana through them. I hadn’t had time to enchant my newer outfit as well, so my shirt would still be at risk of damage and becoming completely unusable, so I went without. I would be leaving town wearing the same gear that I entered with, but still looking much more presentable than I had done previously. Rather than cabin-murderer chic, I looked like a respectable huntsman, still raw and primal, but not quite so savage.

As I was walking out of town, I noticed a group of 5 men, also apparently leaving, walking a ways behind me. I assumed they were a party of adventurers, really driving home the point that I was definitely odd for going out on my own like this, but it couldn’t be helped. I regularly talked to the voice of a demon in my head after all, and if I were to travel with companions it wouldn’t take long for them to decide I was absolutely batshit insane and try to kill me before I lost it and took them all out. Though at the moment, that seemed like an unnecessary concern, as the voice of the demon in question was nowhere to be found. My heart started rising in my throat again unbidden, making me breathe deeply to forcefully calm it down. It’s all fine, I’m just not the only thing in her life, of course she won’t always be able to respond right away. Shit, she’s a big bad demon, I’m probably not even close to the most interesting thing she interacts with normally, she’ll respond when she thinks about it, just calm the fuck down.

Somehow, that thought had the opposite effect and caused my heartrate to start spiking again. By this point, I was out the gate and walking downstream once more. According to the map I had copied from the adventurer’s guild, the closest town would be down this river, even farther than the distance I had covered from my starting point to the first town. An interesting tidbit: These towns all technically had names, but they were impossible to convey to anyone outside of the people who lived there. Because of the way communication works, when someone speaks the name of a town, the intent behind the name is to specify which town they are referring to. You know what else is used to specify what town someone is speaking about? The words ‘this’ and ‘that’. So whenever someone says the name of a town to someone who doesn’t speak their local dialect, all they hear is ‘this town’ or ‘that town’, with enough vague recognition to know specifically what town they were referencing in the first place. I had asked Diego at the guild why that didn’t happen with people’s names as well, and he admitted that he had no clue. I would have asked Sophia, but…well….She still hasn’t answered me.

Shit. My attempt to distract myself hadn’t worked, and my thoughts still returned to my problems anyways. I could practically hear Ironic Process Theory laughing at my foolishness. It had been a few hours of walking since I left town, and the fact that Sophia still hadn’t responded to me was becoming gradually more concerning. I took a look around, trying to find something else to catch my attention, and saw that that same group of 5 was still off behind me, walking the same direction I was. Perfect, maybe I could distract myself by talking to them. I turned around, and made my way towards the group.

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“Hey,” I called out to them, “you guys are heading over to the next town too right? Since we’re going the same way, we may as well go together.”

Their eyes widened, their brows pushed together, small smiles on a couple of their faces. Surprise, confusion, and amusement being my best guesses as to their mental state. I guess they hadn’t expected me to speak to them. To be fair, my appearance did kinda scream ‘loner vibes’, and there was the whole fact that I had both entered and exited town on my own, which no doubt the entire town was aware of by this point.

“Yeah,” One of the men answered me. Judging by the way everyone had waited for him to make the first move, I assumed him to be their leader. “We’re heading downstream to the next town, but you won’t be coming along with us.”

Now I was the one who was confused. Not at the rejection, but the way he had phrased it. If he didn’t want me to join their group then why say it like it was a joke I didn’t understand? A simple ‘Nah man, we have our own group dynamic going on and I don’t wanna risk messing it up by trying to add someone else’ would have sufficed. Why had he….

The people in his group had started spreading out, not quite surrounding me, but definitely giving themselves room to work with, as they drew their weapons. They had formed a semicircle to avoid putting their friends in danger of their own crossfire.

An interesting thing about Spectral Quartz, if you had some diffused into your soul and then were killed, the soul would disappear and whatever money you had would pop back into the physical world next to your corpse, real life loot drops. Sure, you could also threaten someone into giving up their money and equipment, but that would only really work inside of a town, where they had relative safety. Out here in the wilderness, for most people, that would be a death sentence. This meant that these people weren’t simply trying to mug me.

“You’re going to kill me.”

The leader smiled in response, “Finally figured it out, have you?”.

Oddly enough, I don’t think I felt any fear at the threat against my life. Only a deep seated confusion, and some irritating feeling, like some creature was inside my body, sitting on top of my heart in my chest, and scratching at the base of my throat. I couldn’t place the second emotion, but the confusion at least I could reconcile.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, “I barely have any money on me and my equipment’s fairly cheap, so why go through the risk of killing me when you stand to gain basically nothing?”

“Cuz you might be lying about not having money,” The leader replied, almost pleasantly. A mix of confusion and amusement on his face, as he probably thought I was just trying to stall for time so I could figure out a way to escape. “and even if you’re not, something’s better than nothing. Besides, there are 5 of us and only 1 of you, not like we’re actually risking anything.”

Wait.

That’s right.

This is a different world, with different rules.

Could it be?

It’s not like there are any police who’ll run DNA or test for fingerprints. If someone gets murdered, then the attacker will get away scott free.

Does that…

Who’s right or wrong doesn’t matter here.

The only thing that matters:

Does that mean…?

Is who survives to tell the story.

Does that mean I can be a little free?

CRACK

“Yo freak what the fuck are you smiling about? That happy to die?”

I touched my face. Unbeknownst to me, a wide grin had started spreading across my face. A low chuckle started emanating from my throat, but it wasn’t him I spoke to.

“Sophia, please close your eyes.”

The next thing I knew, the point of my war scythe was run through the neck of the man who’d asked the question.

What is that sound?

Screams filled the night air, the man’s party members shouting as they sent their little spells they had prepared at me. They hadn’t expected me to make the first move so instantaneously, so the majority of them missed. I released my spear, grabbed the closest man by the throat, and spun around, hurling him into one of his friends.

Mixed into the screaming, what is that? Is that…Laughter?

I drew one of my knives and stabbed it into the leg of one of the two left standing, jumping over him to tackle the fifth into the ground.

Is that…me?

Along with the screams of pain and the shouting of orders, a terrible laugh could be heard in the woods. High, manic, crazed laughter. A blood curdling sound almost too terrible to have come from a human.

I sunk my teeth into the throat of the man pinned beneath me, crushing his larynx and ripping out his esophagus with my teeth.

Am I smiling? Or are those tears running down my cheeks?

By this point the man I had chokeslammed, the person I threw him into, and the guy I stabbed in the leg had all returned to their feet, so I charged at them.

Something hit me in the leg.

I got a knife into someone’s shoulder.

What is this roaring in my ears? This rushing sound inside my head?

I took a fist to the face, and then I saw someone’s knee, so I stomped on it. His leg snapped backwards, his splintered bone catching on his own tendons, ripping them outside of his skin.

Is my heart racing? Or did it sink down into my stomach?

The man with the leg was screaming too loudly, so I stabbed a knife into his open mouth, shutting him the hell up, and getting some of the quiet back that I so desired.

Is the earth trembling, or is it just me? What am I feeling? What am I thinking? I don’t even know…

I felt a cold chill running down my back. No, wait, it was warm, and wet.

I turned around, grabbed the guy standing there by the head, then slammed his chin down onto my knee. When he collapsed, I stomped his head and neck repeatedly until I felt something give.

Am I still laughing? Or am I screaming?

Now that there was only one left, I could afford to take my time. He swung, I dodged, then stuck a knife into his leg. He swung, I dodged, then stuck my knife in his arm. He swung, I dodged, then stuck a knife in his side.

Am I enjoying this? Am I afraid?

Within three minutes I had won. He was lying on the ground, with over a dozen stab wounds, blood and chunks of flesh littering the ground around us. Once he was dead I called out.

What did I just do?

“You can look now Sophia”.

I take a look at the ground around me. At the pure carnage. Limbs lying at the wrong angles, organs strewn about, the formerly white sand now stained crimson with the blood of the six of us. This wasn’t a fight between civilized men. Hell, I had killed one of them by biting through his throat like a fucking animal. I hadn’t used magic, hadn’t used any of the enchantments I had worked so hard on and thought so deeply about. This wasn’t a battle a human had waged. No, this…

Why the fuck am I laughing?

“Hey Sophia, tell me”

This was the work of a monster, wiping out a party of adventurers.

Am I just….evil?

“Are you going to leave me too now?”