The light of a hallway lantern shimmered in the reflective surface of the raised metal blade, and I prepared myself to pounce.

I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with the sorts of dagger our attacker wielded, but I have to say: I’m usually far more comfortable on the other end of it. Still, I knew that its range was short, and I would need to wait until the last moment to fling myself from the bed and tackle him to the floor.

Floorboards creaked gently under the attacker’s feet as he paced slowly across the room. I found myself holding my breath—not just to remain silent, but in anticipation of the fight to come. These things were always worse in anticipation, as they say.

It was to Val’s bed, on the other side of the—admittedly very small—room that the attacker paced, offering me the cover of his shoulder, obscuring me from view, some. I’d need every advantage I could get, what with my low level.

The attacker stepped into the small stream of moonlight that seeped in through the window, and I caught sight of their face. The cultist from the inn. I wasn’t exactly surprised by his identity, but there was an intensity in his gaze that I hadn’t quite expected. A fury, perhaps. A passion. No—a fervour.

The cultist arrived at the side of Val’s bed, the creaking floorboards disguised by Val’s intense snoring. It was a wonder I managed to get any sleep at all, with her around, really—though I suppose the last few days truly had been exhausting. Beneath the bed covers, I tensed my legs, and as the cultist raised his dagger, I sprung from my position.

…And found my legs caught in the surprisingly heavy quilt.

A heavy thunk announced my arrival on the wooden floor—there would be bruises in the morning, for the record—and two heads turned to face me. The cultist turned, alarmed, still holding the dagger in mid-air, and Val, wrenched from unconsciousness, blinked over at me.

I really needed to get my Stealth skill levelled up.

‘What are you…’ she started, mumbling, trailing off when she noticed the man standing over her. Val looked from him, to me, and then back to him again. There was a moment—seemingly an eternity—where nobody moved. Then, Val muttered simply, ‘Hades’s fork!’, then we all moved at once.

Our attacker correctly guessed that the person not currently on the floor was the greater threat, and concentrated his efforts on Val, instead. The dagger flashed before her as she ducked, eyes scanning the room, presumably to find some way of using her skills—whatever they were—to her advantage.

As I sprung back to my feet, my own blade in hand, dust whipped towards me. Or rather, it whipped towards the cultist, and I was just collateral damage.

I staggered backwards, blinking my eyes aggressively to clear them of grit, then pressed forward once more. I slashed near-blindly with my dagger, aiming for the blurry unfamiliar shape and hoping I wasn’t about to slice up my new friend. See? I care more about collateral damage than she did!

The tip of my dagger caught flesh, and I knew I’d hit my target only because the resulting groan came from an unfamiliar voice. I risked pressing my eyes closed for a second, ridding them of the worst of the dust, and when I opened them…

The ground gave way beneath us.

Around us—me, Val, and our attacker—was nothing but an infinite void. A darkness, black only due to the absence of light, but the void itself surely colourless. I had a familiar yet unfamiliar sensation in my stomach as I plummeted; one of momentarily weightlessness, as though I was a child falling from a tree. Or a grown man falling from a bed, I thought.

The attacker shifted his weight, and in doing so he created a space between him and my dagger as we plummeted. The blade fell free, my grip having loosened for the obvious reason of astonishment at falling through nothingness. I reached out to grab it, and succeeded only in knocking it further from me.

Only now thinking to glance at Val, I saw that her eyes were wide; her shock at current circumstances was near as much as mine. ‘How do we stop this?’ I called to her, but she responded only with a shrug. Big help.

I turned my attention back to our attacker, who’d created more distance still, by holding his limbs closer to his body, streamlining his form like a bird falling from the heavens. His apparent comfort suggested that he’d been in this situation many a time before.

Copying the man below me, I pushed my legs together and held my hands flat at my sides, and closed on the dagger spinning through the void ahead of me. When I was close enough that I was in danger of accidentally slicing my face with my own blade—for a second time, and the first wasn’t enjoyable enough that I was in any rush to repeat it—I whipped an arm forward, and snatched the dagger out of mid-air.

I caught it by the blade, of course.

‘Argh!’ I groaned, then pressed my lips together and concentrated on ignoring the pain of a slashed palm. There’d be plenty of time to complain about it later. That was, if we ever got out of this one.

Right. How did we get out of this?

I fixed my eyes on the cultist—who was getting no further ahead of us now that I’d got the hang of this whole flying business—and activated my basic identification ability.

Identification — +50xp

Level 22 Ascendent Worldbender

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Race: Human, Elf

‘...worldbender?’ I repeated, loud enough that Val could hear. ‘What in the hells is a worldbender?’

Val gestured to the void around us, the nothingness through which we plummeted. ‘Look around, idiot,’ she replied, then ripped off her cloak, pulled her limbs tight, and soared ahead of me, closing on the cultist. Her smaller frame allowed her to near our attacker quickly, but when she reached him, she attacked only with her fists.

The cultist made little attempt to block them, and it soon became clear why—he was strong enough that Val could do little damage with hands alone. A few blows in, the worldbender grabbed at Val’s wrist, twisted it, and soon had her tumbling away once more.

‘Use your magicks!’ I shouted.

‘We’re in a void!’ came the response. ‘I’ve got nothing to work with, in here. My abilities… they work by altering that which is already there. But there’s—’

‘Then summon something. I’ve seen you do that, at least.’

Though Val’s mouth moved, I didn’t hear a response, and could only assume she was grumbling. So her solving this wasn’t an option, it seemed. I was going to need to do this myself—a pitiful Level 4 Peasant against a Level 22 magic user. They were certainly long odds; I was going to need to get creative if we were going to escape this infinity of falling.

What did I have to play with? Basic Stealth Attack was out, obviously, being that the cultist knew full well that we were both here, and there wasn’t exactly much to hide behind; the Void wasn’t known for having, you know, stuff in it. And of my remaining abilities, only two were combat-related: slice and stab.

I sighed. With no other options available to me, I figured I’d give them a go.

Closing the distance between myself and the cultist once more, I reached out and sliced with the dagger. But our opponent was quicker, and instead of moving to escape the attack, he altered his skin into thick scaled hide—just for a moment, just for long enough to negate the attack. It made sense, now, why he’d not been worried about Val punching him, either; if a knife couldn’t hope to hurt that hide, then fists definitely couldn’t.

I pulled away, giving myself some space to evade any attacks forthcoming from the cultist. Neither of my Knifework abilities, in their current form, could hope to pierce that hide. It was useless. How could I think I’d be able to help take down a player, of all things, when I couldn’t even take down someone at level 22? What had Val done to my ego to make me think this was a viable route? What did—

I caught myself. I was spiralling. Mentally, that is—that I was spiralling physically too was obvious.

There was, perhaps, one option. My abilities, at the moment, didn’t have enough force to pierce this magic-bent hide. Of course they didn’t; I was level 4. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t find additional force from elsewhere…

‘Val,’ I called out. ‘Can you stop his magicks?’

‘Why?’

‘Gods, Val, just answer the question! Can you do it?’

Val seemed to weigh this up, tilting her head from side to side. ‘For a second, maybe?’

I nodded, then repositioned myself above the cultist, knife held out, tip pointed downward. ‘Do it,’ I said.

Val outstretched her trembling hands, reaching them toward the cultist in a clawlike shape, a snarl revealing clenched teeth. Though I couldn’t see her magicks, not these, it certainly seemed like there was some great exertion on her part.

And, a moment later, the floor of the inn’s bedroom hurtled towards us.

Val and the attacker hit the wooden floorboards first, each grunting with pain at the impact—I could only imagine the shin splints—as I gripped the dagger tightly, and activated my stab skill.

I’d been on a few dates, a while back, with an academic. She was a quiet sort, most of the time, but when you directed the conversation onto her field of study—the physics of our world—there was no putting a cork in it. Her eyes lit up, and word after word after word tumbled from her mouth. You could only settle down and enjoy the show. I mention this now only to explain how I know the phrase “terminal velocity”.

Thanks to the cultist’s worldbending powers, the three of us had been falling for, oh, five minutes or so? And as a result, we’d all reached the maximum speed possible, I suspected—or at least thereabouts.

While I was still travelling this speed—at terminal velocity—for moments longer, the cultist had already come to a stop beneath me. Our relative velocity—yes, that phrase came from the physicist too—was extreme.

It was extreme enough, even, that my stab ability had force enough behind it to pierce even the thickest of hides.

When the tip of my dagger hit the cultist’s thick flesh, it pierced, this time. But it did more than that. In fact, blood splattered everywhere.

Ascendent Worldbender defeated!

Knifework — +2,200xp

Knifework increased to level 6!

Knifework increased to level 7!

Knifework increased to level 8!

Base Points gained — +3 DEX, +3 STR, +6 Free Points (VIT/DEX/STR)

Level up!

You increased to level 5!

"Styk"

Level 5 Peasant

Base Stats:

Vitality — 2

Intelligence — 5

Dexterity — 11

Strength — 16

Wisdom — 8

Charisma — 0

Skills:

Knifework — Level 8

Identification — Level 4

Stealth — Level 1

Abilities:

Slice (Knifework) — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].

Stab (Knifework) — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hinds and armour. Damage scales on [STR].

Basic Stealth Attack (Stealth) — Passive. 10% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.

Basic Identification (Identification) — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].

Active Effects:

Legacy of Sisyphus:

XP gain increased by +400%