I fast walked to the eastern forest, and Gastard rode along beside me. I was on the lookout for anything edible, but now that I was in contact with a town, I wasn’t as worried about the food situation. If I was going to build another house by the river, I needed a lot of wood. After a few minutes of watching me process a tree into coins, Gastard got off his horse and strung a bow.

“I will hunt.” He said, and I gave him a thumbs up. He squinted at the gesture, then returned it, before striding off. Did they not do thumbs-up here? I’d always taken it as being universal, but as similar as Plana was to medieval Europe, there were bound to be some cultural differences.

There were plenty of birds around, but knocking down trees was a good way to spook anything he might have wanted to shoot. I spent a few hours processing trees while Gastard was deeper in the forest. He’d hobbled his horse, and it spent the time munching grass a good distance away from me.

As a bonus, my harvesting session won me a new item.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

[Tree Nuts]

You’ve got nuts. These little guys are nature's power snacks. They're packed with energy and nutrients, perfect for keeping you fueled for a long day of crafting. Don’t eat the shells.

Before harvesting, they were round, brown, smoother than walnuts, but a similar size, and too hard for me to break open by hand. But when they converted to coins and back again, the shells disappeared, and I had myself a satisfying snack. Soon after, Gastard came back with a rabbit, and we returned to camp. As taciturn as he was, I found myself wishing he’d been around all along. He skinned the rabbit like an expert, and it was soon roasting over the fire pit. I broke out the nuts, and he accepted a handful, but didn’t eat them.

Gastard gestured at the cells.

“Why?”

“It’s for the shamblers,” I said. “Koroshai. I want to capture them.”

He patted his sword at the mention of monsters, and I took that for approval. The nuts had an almost buttery taste, and they were remarkably filling. Either that, or my stomach had shrunken over the last couple of days. Eating them made me feel more energized than a snack on an empty stomach should have. Supercharged. I started fidgeting.

“Have you fought koroshai before?” I asked.

He shook his head. I followed up with several more questions, but he didn’t have any answers for me. Either he didn’t want to talk or his grasp of English was preventing him from holding a conversation.

Darkness came, and with it, the first moans. The horse was inside with us, which made the shelter feel cramped. It had a hell of a time getting down the stairs.

I’d added a ladder to get up to the window, and Gastard peered through it, muttering something in his language. He was going to have more than enough evidence that the monsters appeared around me at night, rather than having followed me from Dargoth, or whatever he had originally suspected.

“Sleep in shifts?” I suggested.

He nodded, but it didn’t look like he was interested in going first. I didn’t completely trust him, so I ended up crawling into my coffin and pretending to sleep. I doubted it fooled him, but at least I didn’t have to worry about the fire going out.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The cells remained empty until the middle of the night. Then it happened. A zombie was shambling around inside the first and largest room I’d excavated. I got out to check on it, and it pressed its nasty face against the hole in the logs, gnashing its teeth at me.

It wasn’t a finished proof, but it seemed like they needed unencumbered space to come into existence. I stabbed it in the eye with my sword and blocked off the cell for good measure. Gastard had drawn his weapon as well, but he let me take care of it. His horse hadn’t liked it when the shambler appeared, whinnying and stamping its hooves, so he went to calm the animal.

“Have you seen a zombie out there that looks different from the others?” I asked him. He narrowed his eyes, and I waved a hand over my face. “It has human skin.” No need to explain whose skin it was. “I think it’s smarter. It stays out of reach.”

“One is different,” Gastard said, and I climbed up to the window to check. I had to wait for another shambler to move out of the way of the opening, but there it was. The monster wearing my face had taken up the same position far enough away from the shelter that I would have to come out to get at it.

Neither the small cell nor the cell filled with junk spawned a zombie at any point during the night, despite having the same light level as the one that had. It was decent evidence that the shamblers would only come into being if there was room for them to do so. Fire or no fire, I could sleep soundly in a coffin.

Gastard walked up the ramp and tapped the wall with his fist.

“I would kill the koroshai.” He said, turning back to me.

“There are too many,” I said. “They keep coming all night.”

“You are afraid.” He said. “A hero would not fear them.”

“I don’t care what you think a hero would do. We’re safe in here, and we’re not out there. I don’t think it matters how many you kill. They would just keep coming.”

“I will fight them,” he said, his face hard.

“No, man. I mean, maybe later, when I’ve got some better armor. But I’m not ready yet. Let’s focus on getting through the night.”

He came back down and put his hand on my shoulder, gripping hard. “Open the way, and I will fight alone.”

“No,” I said again. “Not tonight.” Even if we turned an opening into a choke point, giving the shamblers a way in seemed like the worst possible idea at this point.

We went back and forth about it for a while, with Gastard growing increasingly frustrated by my refusals. What was with this guy? Wanting to kill monsters was admirable, but with as little control as we would have of the situation, it seemed almost like a death wish.

He eventually gave up and went to sulk by the window. We didn’t talk after that.

When the sun rose, the shambler trapped in the cell was dead, and mushrooms were already sprouting from the soil around its body, which was swiftly decomposing.

Whatever these things were, they were unstable. Their flesh broke down quickly, and either they had spores inside of them already or the local spores reacted dramatically to their presence.

“I will go,” Gastard said. As far as I knew, he hadn’t slept, but he had sat down and closed his eyes for a while, resting his sword across his lap. I harvested enough blocks for him to get out.

Gastard led his horse up the ramp and mounted it once he was outside, not looking at me. I got the impression that he was still salty about not having been able to kill monsters through the night.

“I will tell the mayor what I saw,” he said.

“Great, see you soon. Let them know I’m going to move my shelter to the river.”

He grunted and set off. It didn’t look like Gastard and I were going to be buddies, but at least he hadn’t attacked me when we were alone. It was a relief to have people to interact with, even if they weren’t all friendly. From what little information I had, it looked like I was going to have to overthrow a Dark Lord, and that would be easier to accomplish if I had some allies.

I walked around the shelter to check for damage to the walls and was immediately ambushed. The sun was still low in the sky, and there were deep shadows in the lee of my base. It lunged at me as soon as I turned the corner, and we both fell back into the light.

A distorted version of my own face pressed close, its mouth open to reveal jagged teeth, and I put my arm against its throat to prevent it from biting me. The zombie’s skin sizzled as soon as it was in direct sunlight, and it didn’t seem as strong as the last time I had wrestled one.

We rolled, and I got up off of it before the tentacles under its skin cloak latched onto me. Then I kicked it in the head as it rose.

It moaned, and moisture evaporated from its skin in a pale mist. I kept kicking it. I doubted I was going to kill it that way, but it was visibly weakening under the influence of sunlight. Its flesh dried and shriveled, and a moment later, it was on fire.

I backed off, and it crawled toward me. The fire wasn’t normal. It was pure white, with no heat. The flames increased, and rather than continuing to attack me, it thrust itself back under the shadow of the shelter.

That didn’t stop the flames. As I watched, the zombie disintegrated. There was ash and flaked skin left behind, but not nearly enough to account for its entire body, which had simply vanished.

I checked myself for bites, but apart from my racing heart, I was fine.

Well, that was something. Time to start the day.