El opened his eyes to blood.

His heart, still pounding as if it would jump out of his chest, his first realization was that he was still alive.

He noticed a heavy weight in his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. He opened his eyes to check it out. The only thing he saw was blood. It was dripping down his eyelids, threatening to enter his eyes if not wiped. There was also blood in his mouth, having entered when he was attempting to breathe, filling his mouth.

He knew it was blood because of the metallic tase of it, as anyone who has licked a cut on their hands might know. Instead of the happiness he perhaps should have felt, El was surprised.

Surprised at how easy it had been to take a life, not that he had done it on purpose. But a life nevertheless had been taken.

He was numb to the cut he noticed in his left hand, which had been deeply scratched by the goblin, and was bleeding.

Still stunned, he wiped his brows absently, so as to get rid of the blood, and looked around.

The whole area around him was red. For a creature as small as a goblin, perhaps one would have expected a sparce amount of blood, but it had flown out of the goblin like a river, and there was still a copious amount flowing out from the wound he had made.

It seemed that the goblin had launched itself at him and managed to get his chest punctured. Once El pushed the goblin off of him, he noticed the goblin was still twitching.

It was weak. To a point that it couldn’t move anything but its arms, and yet it looked at him with its beady eyes full of hate. Wanting to kill him.

As El watched, the goblin bled to its demise. Much slower and yet faster than he would have thought it could.

Bruden came up to him, smiling, “Well done! Especially for a first kill!”, as if unbothered by the ocean of blood in front of him. El took a look at the three goblins Bruden had killed, and he only saw more blood, adding to the queasiness that he already felt.

His whole body started shaking. While this was a daily happenstance to Bruden, it was a novel experience for El.

Still shaking, he went into the stream, and washed off the blood, from his head to toes, and yet the blood had soaked into his clothes, touching his body directly, refusing to come off. He sat there for a while, in a daze.

Bruden, aware of how people usually reacted to their first kill, gave him space.

After perhaps a few minutes, El thinking he was ready, withdrew from the water, as his body had stopped shaking. He drank some water from further upstream, and within seconds, had regurgitated it back into the river. All the contents of his stomach eagerly left him, as if giving him some alone time with his guilty conscience.

He knew it had been necessary to save his own life. And yet, no matter how many truths he told himself, his conscience told him he was guilty of killing.

He argued with himself that if he hadn’t taken action, he would have been just as dead as the goblin, unmoving in the floor, with lifeless eyes. And yet, his conscience argued with him.

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It was a vicious cycle of hurt, of disgust that he had killed, and yet it had been the necessary step to preserve his own life.

It took him some time before his stomach was empty of all its contents leaving his stomach as empty as he felt.

El’s objection was not to the death of the goblin itself. No, this went deeper than that. It was due to the fact that he had killed for the sole purpose of leveling up.

He, like, everyone else had grown up reading and hearing the adventures of brave people throughout history and mythology. The likes of Heracles, Achilles, Jason in earth. This world also had a fair share of their own legends. Rulmoick Goldenbrow, the dwarf archer, who had been ridiculed by his own clan for picking up the bow. Varhmiel the winged, who shot his own wings out as if they were knives. Thraum the barbarian, who had, with his party, been the first voyager to raid the first isle, leading to the discovery of the four isles and the center vale.

And to these heroes, killing had come naturally. They did not seem to have questioned why or how they killed, just that they did, while El felt his own sense of morality being questioned. He had not thought about this subject in his past life, being too focused on surviving. This was his first time being exposed to this kind of emotion. It was a somber event, going back to the caravan. He noticed that Bruden cut off the ears of the goblins and pocketed them, but he was too consumed with his own thinking to say anything.

They got back to the caravan after supper time, when almost all were asleep, and there was food waiting for them.

Bruden took his share, and El tried to eat his, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat and slept hungry.

The next morning, everyone in the party noticed El’s mood. Bruden seemed to have told them of what occurred yesterday, and El was given space to work through his emotions. While it was never explicitly discussed, all adventurers suffered from this condition.

Killing was in their job title, and they justified it by saying that it was necessary for their survival, and yet the first kill was always the toughest one.

Some got used to it, some never did. But all realized that without strength, if they didn’t cull these monsters, then they would instead be hunted.

El spent the next two days running, barely eating.

El had lost track of how many days they had been on the road, but on what he suspected to be the eighth day, Respen and Akhur Icebrow, the leader of the mystic eagles, a dwarf that had taken up the bow, following in the hero’s footstep, both received a dire message from the Guild Master of Sadena.

The Guild had a messaging system. All team captains, when teams were composed, had to enter the emergency link system, to allow the Guild to communicate with them. It was not used unless in cases of emergency as a result of the expense need to activate it.

It was dire news. The captains of the five teams, along with the merchant were in deep discussion for some time, and a decision had been reached.

It had been decided that the two iron and two silver teams would answer the call from the Guild, as it was unignorable for them. One iron team would be excused as they were necessary for the protection of the caravan.

Once this was settled, all of the captains were tasked with informing their teams and preparing for a swift departure.

In the Iron Rose’s camp, captain Respen disclosed the reason for the Guild summons.

The dungeon that the golden shards had not returned from was now undergoing a dungeon break.

This occurred when the mana core inside the dungeon was too saturated and produced too many monsters. The high level of mana would not only produce monsters, but it would also attract all animals, monsters and beasts to it, resulting in a horde of mana enriched beings all congregating in one location.

“What happens to the merchant and the wagons?”, Asked El, wondering what his situation would be.

“The Silver Builders will stay behind” Respen responded.

“You will continue to journey with the merchant. There is less risk to the caravan now that the break has started.”

It was a worrisome time for all, since a dungeon that most likely killed a silver rated team had broken out. The advent of such a serious situation had broken El out of his stupor and given him something else to think about.

There was a lot of movement in the camp that night as the teams prepare to head into the fray. As the sun started to head down for its rest, the adventurers set out for what would be a bloody battle to reclaim the city of Sadena from the hordes of monsters and beasts that would inevitably try to claim it for themselves.