Night has devoured the city. The streets are wiped clean of civilians and merchants. The Skytowers are locked and heavily guarded by the Skywatch, per the nightly curfew ordered by the Royalty. Two adventurers and a glowing cat walk alongside the Citadel, a magnificent monolith stretching into the boundless sky. Occasionally, they would get stopped by the Skywatch who advised them to stay inside. On other occasions, armored knights would hurry by, paying no notice to them.

“Is that a musket rifle? A freaking gun?” Cenvin whispers to Durand in awe.

Temporarily forgetting his anger, Durand turns his head back to see.

“That’s definitely a musket,” he whispers back.

Nyri’s entire body flashes red, dyeing her luminescence crimson for a split second.

“What’s wrong?” Cenvin whispers. Durand looks at her, alarmed and worried. Nyri points her tail toward a distant silhouette gliding down the streets.

“Wraith,” Durand quietly says. He rushes to the side of the street and pulls Cenvin into a nearby open room at the base of a Skytower. “We gotta hide.”

“What is this place?”

The room is pitch black. Cenvin feels around, his hands scraping something metal. He gropes for it and turns it. The sound of flowing water erupts into the room.

“Turn that off!”

“I am!”

The sound echoed through the confined space.

“I think this is a restroom. A public one.”

“So this was what the Royalty was spending on? Public restrooms? Seems awfully ahead of her time, don’t you think?”

“That’s not the most urgent question right now, ‘k? Did the wraith hear us?”

“It probably did. How about we run?”

“No. We should hide. If it comes in here we can probably ambush it. Where’s Nyri? She’s not in here.”

A glowing orb sprouts from a faucet. It breaks into tiny pieces and forms a word in the air.

S C O U T

“Well, that explains one question, doesn’t it?” Cenvin says. The dim light cast by the pieces light up a portion of the adventurers’ faces. Their face separate entities in a void. Nothing else in the quiet space. Just their terrified face and the voices stitched to it. Then another object enters the glow. A dead husk of a human face. Half-decomposed, half translucent. Cenvin yelps and Durand falls over.

“Fu-”

“The hell-”

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Recovering relatively quickly, Cenvin throws his two shortswords at the wraith. The blades embed themselves in the wraith’s form, and Durand quickly stands up and slashes the wraith into a misty cloud, which soon dissipates into the floor. Cenvin leans and picks up his shortswords.

Durand begins, “About those shortswords, I’ve been wanting to ask-”

“God! Another one!”

The adventurers dismantle the wraith easily, but instead of puffing into mist it simply vanishes. Another one. The same thing happens. The glowing pieces have folded themselves into a tiny face resembling Nyri’s. She watches with interest.

“These feel like illusions.”

“Same. I’m not getting any satisfaction nor experience from them.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve disabled the XP system and simply handed you level-ups when I want to?

“It just doesn’t feel the same, okay?”

Yeah, you’re right. They are illusions. You should just let the next wraith linger. Maybe they just really need to go and have no intention of harming.

“We’ll pass.”

Another dark form enters the restroom. Different from the normal wraiths, who always attack psychologically, this form is more solid and larger. Two giant claws disproportional to its size slowly scrape the floor as it floats closer. The sound is genuinely very offputting.

Cenvin charges headfirst, wielding his shortswords and stabbing frantically. The creature grabs him and slams him against the wall, the impact taking the air out of him. Durand strikes precisely with his longsword, aiming for its relatively thin arms, but the creature parries it with its claws last second, sending Durand back. His back cracks against the faucet, breaking the wooden pipe, and grunts in pain.

From the gaping hole slowly squeezes out a pure white slime, shedding a rainbow of lights in the restroom. The slime plops onto the ground and wriggles into Nyri’s feline form. She looks at Cenvin, then Durand, back to Cenvin, and meows teasingly. The spectral leans in to gut the comatose Cenvin, but a jet of luminescent liquid pushes it away. The spectral shrivels upon contact with the glimmering water and fades away.

The liquid flies back into Nyri’s tail.

“Nyri!” Durand rasps. He struggles to stand up. “Good!”

Nyri purrs proudly and her tail extends across the room to slap Cenvin. He wakens with a jolt.

“The hell? Shoot. My back feels broken.”

“You’re fine. Stop whining. It’s me who should be complaining, don’t you think? We could be drinking beer at a bar right now, but you had to

satisfy your kleptomania.”

“Shut up…”

Nyri flashes red once more. She seems to be eager to do that. Durand and Cenvin shoot their gaze at her, injuries forgotten.

I L L U S I O N

“That thing? Damn good illusion then,” Durand smiles, obviously not believing. Standing behind him is a creature that is a wraith, but more hideous and unnerving.

“The hell-”

“Wraith!”

Hmm. I like that name. I think I’ll call it a hellwraith then. Sounds pretty good. Anyways, you guys need me to roll combat initiatives, right? Oh.

“You don’t need to do that.”

Pieces of the hellwraith puffs into mist. Cenvin and Durand’s hands are dark with the wraith’s intestines. Face red, Durand huffs in frustration and sits himself on the ground. He shifts his legs to make himself comfortable.

“I swear if there’s one more thing that comes through…”

As Durand mutters to himself voices come from the outside.

“The Skywatch! We’re saved!” Cenvin says excitedly. Durand hushes him.

“Idiot. Cenvin the Dishonest, more like the Witless.” Cenvin sits down in understanding.

The voices stop. Flickers of torchlights peer into the restroom and along them, wavering shadows. Before the strangers can walk in, Cenvin is already on top of them, trying to stab them with his shortswords. He stabs one in the abdomen but the other one throws him off. They raise their torches.

They are the heavily armored knights the adventurers had seen patrolling the streets before. They are covered head-to-toe in plate armor, a shiny emblem depicting a fallen meteor on their breastplates, and wielding unusually shining longswords. One of them knocks out Cenvin with one tap of his longsword hilt. The other one struggles with Durand, who is expertly defending himself, but the other knight joins in and they put down Durand. Nyri hisses and converts into her liquid form.

“By the name of Orions, stop, Creature!” One of the Orions order. Nyri ignores them and slithers through the cracks in the floor out into the streets, dissolving into the dirt and gone.

The Orions carry the unconscious adventurers and walk out.

“Mission fulfilled,” one of them remarks happily.

It’s been a couple of chapters since the last death counter, and counting all the Otherworld creatures and normal animals that have died we are at… 491 deaths! Three digits so far, but I can assure you in a few more chapters this death toll will go four figures! Thank you for reading, more content to come!