For the first time in nearly three weeks, Rayna didn’t smell. She rolled over, pressing her face into the soft pillow and breathing in the crisp scent of fabric and pine soap. It wasn’t the scent she would have gone with, but it was better than blood and body odor.

A rustling noise invaded Rayna’s peace.

She kept her eyes closed, not willing to let the dream end just yet. Any minute now she would return to that creepy forest for another round of life and death battles against whatever nightmares crawled out of the dark. She wasn’t in the mood to fight, and if she wasn’t dead yet, that meant Daria had probably dragged her somewhere that was at least tentatively safe.

The soft sound of distant shouts reached Rayna’s ears as something cold and wet tickled her nose. She frowned, forcing her eyes open.

A furry rodent about the size of a small cat was sitting a few inches away from her face, sniffing her curiously.

Rayna screamed, rolling away from the creature and falling off the bed. She landed on a thick carpet that smelled the same as the pillows.

What the—?

Rayna jumped to her feet, her gaze darting around the room in confusion. She was in a large bedroom, decorated in a white and soft pink color palette. The bed she had been sleeping on was large enough to fit three adults comfortably, and there were nearly a dozen pillows scattered around it. The darker pink carpet stretched just beyond the bed posts, ending before the small coffee table and sitting area that was set up in the center of the room. A large fireplace lay dormant in one wall, but a dim glow from the ashes suggested it had only recently gone out.

In short, Rayna had awoken in the fanciest room she had ever laid eyes on.

Someone had changed Rayna into a satin nightgown that matched the color palette of the room. The light fabric made her feel like soot smudged on clean linens.

Rayna’s stomach growled and she tried to pull a ration out of her Inventory, but nothing happened. She opened her System to find an error message.

Your System is currently updating. Please try again soon. The System apologizes for the inconvenience.

Technology is useless everywhere, I guess.

Rayna turned back to the bed, ready to jump away if the rat attacked her.

A small dog sat back on his haunches. He tilted his head, returning Rayna’s stare with curiosity.

Rayna waved awkwardly at the dog. “Hello there.”

Had the System brought dogs from Earth? Or is this one native to Ember?

The dog barked happily, wagging its tail in greeting. Rayna smiled, reaching out to scratch him behind his ear.

“You scared the living daylights out of me,” she said, drawing another round of happy barking from the dog. “Maybe don’t wake people up after a near death experience.”

He didn’t have a collar, so Rayna assumed he was the stray. His System name tag wasn’t very helpful either.

[Cani]

“Not even a level, huh? What’s that about?”

The faint sounds that Rayna heard earlier grew louder as something burst through the door.

Rayna grabbed the nearest weapon she could find—a poker from the fireplace—and turned toward the threat.

A man in armor wrestled with a giant beetle, its pincers as long as Rayna’s forearm.

[Syle Beetle — Level 35]

Can’t I catch a break?

The man kicked the beetle’s belly, holding its pincers back with his bare hands. His feet dug holes in the monster, spilling greenish black blood onto one of the couches. The monster shuddered, falling still after one final kick from the soldier.

The man backed away, noticing Rayna for the first time. “Why haven’t you evacuated?”

Rayna frowned. “Evacuated from where? What’s going on?”

She kept her poker up, not taking any chances with the stranger.

The man frowned, looking back at the hallway uncertainly. He came to a decision, crossing the room and forcing Rayna into the wardrobe in the back.

“Stay here, and don’t make a sound,” he said. “I’ll send someone for you when the attack is over.”

“Wait—”

He slammed the wardrobe shut, locking it with a sharp click.

“Are you serious?” Rayna yelled angrily, kicking the door in frustration. The Cani barked angrily, scratching the door.

The man ignored the Cani’s barking and retreated from the room.

“There’s no way in hell I’m staying in here!” Rayna snapped, stabbing her poker repeatedly into the door of the wardrobe. Small chips flew at Rayna, and she had to squint to protect her eyes, but it barely made a dent in the wood. The light glow of the wardrobe, barely visible over the blue-tinged glow of Rayna’s hair, told her it was magically enhanced.

Rayna growled. What could she do? She wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for the man to come fetch her, especially not with giant man-eating bugs on the loose.

She searched the wardrobe for weak points; something she could exploit.

She didn’t find anything, so she changed tactics. Rayna jammed her poker between the doors, trying to pry them apart. She couldn’t get enough leverage and only succeeded in bending the metal tip.

Rayna cursed and threw the useless poker on the ground.

She would just have to get it open the same way she had been solving all of her other problems: brute force.

Rayna rammed her shoulder into the doors, aiming most of the pressure on the lock. She cursed, letting out a hiss of pain as her shoulder started to throb. Taking a deep breath and bracing for the pain this time, she did it again. The door creaked, but the lock held firm.

Gritting her teeth, Rayna slammed her shoulder into the door over and over, trusting her amulet to heal the damage she was inflicting on herself.

The wood of the door split open, spilling Rayna onto the carpet. She jumped up, crying out when she jostled her shoulder. An angry purple bruise colored the badly swollen flesh.

“What?” Rayna tried to check her amulet, but the System was still down.

Rayna tried casting Basic Heal, and to her relief, her spells weren’t out of reach just because she couldn’t open her System Menu. She cast Basic Heal three more times, bringing the swelling under control and returning the arm to its normal color. She didn’t heal it the rest of the way yet, just in case she needed to heal a more serious injury later.

The Cani was nowhere to be seen, and Rayna hoped he hadn’t been eaten. There was nothing she could do for him at the moment.

Rayna grabbed another poker from the fireplace and ran out of the room.

She skidded to a stop. The hallway was packed with bugs, ranging from the size of a cat to the size of a small pony.

“What are you doing out here? Get back inside!” the same soldier from earlier shouted as he skewered his opponent with a pike.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Rayna snapped, stabbing a nearby bug through the head with her poker. “If these things overpower you, what exactly was I supposed to do? Wait to die?”

“The wardrobe was reinforced,” the soldier said. “It would have held.”

“It didn’t hold me.” Rayna stabbed another bug in the stomach and smashed a smaller one with her foot. She grimaced as bug goo squished between her toes.

The soldier frowned, an odd look on his face, but he was distracted a moment later by one of the larger beetles.

Rayna focused on the smaller bugs, thinning the horde down to a more manageable size while the soldier kept the larger ones busy. There were less than a handful of the monsters that were above Level 50, the rest being well below Level 10.

Rayna spotted the Cani’s tail as he tore through the bugs on the ground, biting and stomping his way through the horde.

By the time the hallway was empty of monsters, Rayna was covered in bug guts and right back to smelling like a sewer.

I hate this place.

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The soldier gripped his side, favoring a puncture wound that he had received when two of the beetles ganged up on him.

Rayna cast Basic Heal on him a couple times, stopping the bleeding and scabbing over the wound.

The soldier frowned disapprovingly. “Did you just waste all your Mana? You should have kept some for yourself.”

Rayna rolled her eyes, healing her shoulder with a few more casts of the spell. “I have plenty left. You need to work on not making assumptions.” She took a deep breath and prepared to rejoin the fighting. “Where are the rest of them? I assume this isn’t the only hallway that was attacked.”

Rayna was going to make sure the area was secure before she started asking her questions.

“Outside,” the man said, looking exhausted. “These were the only ones who got in. The others should have blocked the doors by now, so we’ll be stuck here for a while.”

“They locked us in?” Rayna asked incredulously.

Was locking people into things a common tactic for protection on Ember?

“Yes,” the man said. “To keep the rest of the bugs from getting in and destroying the place. They knew I could handle the ones in here.”

“Could you?” Rayna asked doubtfully. “Because it looked to me like you were losing.”

The man grimaced. “I should have been able to.” He shook his head. “You might as well get comfortable. It might be a while.”

He sank to the floor, not seeming to care at all that he was sitting in bug remains.

“You’re all insane,” Rayna said.

She found a decently clear spot on the floor, about ten feet away from the soldier, and took a seat, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the wall.

“Are you all right?” the man asked, his tone worried.

“I’m tired,” Rayna said. “And I’ve just woken up in a strange place to a hell of an infestation, so no, I’m not all right. I think I want to go back to bed.”

The Cani trotted over, wagging his tail happily as he sat in bug goo.

“At least someone enjoyed themselves,” Rayna said. “Does this sort of thing happen often?”

The Cani barked and ran up and down the hall, somehow full of energy even after the battle.

“Say what you will about Cani, but they make great familiars,” the soldier commented.

An explosion rocked the mansion and Rayna jumped to her feet, slipping in beetle remains. “What was that?”

A look of relief settled on the soldier’s face. “That would be Lord Emery returning home.”

A few minutes later, a man burst into the hallway, glowing so brightly that Rayna had to squint. He took in the devastation and the two people in the middle of it, and his power dimmed.

Now that she could see him properly, Rayna realized that he wasn’t human. His skin was covered in bright green scales and he didn’t have any hair—not even eyebrows. She took a closer look at the soldier and realized he was the same species, but instead of green, his scales were a light peach color.

“Sir Renir,” the new man said. “I’m glad to see you made it. Did you get them all?”

Sir Renir nodded. “I think we got them. We’ll keep an eye out for stragglers when we’re cleaning up.”

Rayna waited for one of them to acknowledge her, but when it became apparent that they weren’t going to she cleared her throat.

The other man turned to frown at Rayna. “Why didn’t you evacuate with the others?”

“Try asking someone who didn’t sleep through most of it,” Rayna said. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on and how I got here from the forest?”

The rest of the man’s glow extinguished. “I am Lord Enalus Emery. A young woman named Daria saved your life and brought you to my attention. I’m sure you have many questions, and so do I, but I believe it might be a conversation better saved for after you have had a chance to clean up.”

Rayna would have asked her questions right here, but Lord Emery didn’t seem like he was going to tell her anything yet.

She turned toward the room she had woken up in, calling over her shoulder, “I broke your wardrobe, by the way. You can send the bill to Sir Renir over there.”

She walked away, ignoring the stunned look on Lord Emery’s face.

* * *

Rayna stood in Lord Emery’s office an hour later, her hair mostly cleaned of bug goo. She had changed into one of the outfits from the broken wardrobe; a white shirt and tan pants that were too long for her. She missed her self-adjusting clothing, but since her Inventory was still out of commission, she would have to make do with what she had.

Luckily, whoever had changed her clothes while she was unconscious had placed her rune-enhanced shoes next to her bed, so Rayna wouldn’t have to run around barefoot while she was waiting for her System to come back online.

Lord Emery sat at a desk piled high with papers. He didn’t even seem to notice that Rayna was there as he jotted down notes on another page and moved a bundle from one stack to another.

“I can come back at a better time,” Rayna said passive aggressively. She had no intention of leaving until she got some answers, but she also didn’t want to wait an hour for him to finish his paperwork.

“What? Oh, Rayna! My apologies, I—” he paused, frowning at her name tag.

Rayna glanced at it, only to realize that it was gone.

What happened to her name tag? She tried to pull up her System Menu, but she got the same error message that she had before.

Rayna shook her head. It would come back eventually.

She raised her eyebrows expectantly, waiting for Lord Emery to recover.

He cleared his throat. “Pardon me. I have a question for you, and it’s important that you answer honestly. Did you kill the Ursivul?”

“Was I not supposed to do that?” Rayna asked. She wasn’t going to apologize for killing a monster that was intent on eating her.

“No, no!” Lord Emery rushed to assure her. “I will simply need some sort of proof. I have determined that you are not a noble, despite the suspicions of the villagers, but if you are strong, you could still be a great asset.”

Proof? Asset? What was he talking about? He better not be expecting some sort of hunting trophy. If Rayna had to start keeping claws or feathers to prove she killed monsters, she was going to avoid working with people altogether. She didn’t want a bunch of monster parts in her Inventory. The teeth and bones had been creepy enough.

“A kill notification would suffice,” Lord Emery continued when it became obvious that Rayna wasn’t going to answer. “If you had help dispatching the monster, it will say that ‘you and your party’ killed the Ursivul, and if you killed it alone, it will not mention your party. It is an important distinction at the moment.”

“I never claimed that I killed it alone,” Rayna pointed out.

Daria had been there with her spear at just the right time. Rayna wouldn’t have been able to gain the upper hand if she hadn’t climbed on its back.

“Then you had help?” Lord Emery asked, his shoulders drooping slightly. “I suppose it was my own folly to hope otherwise. What is your category rating, if I may ask?”

Rayna had no idea what Lord Emery was talking about. “Category?”

“Your C-level,” he explained unhelpfully. “The multiplier on your stats.” He tapped his fingers on his desk. “You do have some schooling, don’t you.”

Rayna crossed her arms. “Whatever schooling I got didn’t include categories, whatever they are. If you could explain in full sentences, I might be able to answer your question.”

Lord Emery sighed. “Actually, you will not, since it means that you have never been tested. The category system was designed to redefine System stats in a way that was more accurate to a player’s true strength. We are all given the same amount of stats, at least in the beginning, but the System doesn’t take into account our individual physiques.

“The stats have an amplifying effect on our own natural abilities, so where you start is important. Each player has four category numbers to represent the four variable stats: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance and Intelligence.

“The other stats are always C-1, so we don’t bother testing those. If you take your stat points and multiply it by your C-level, you will have what we call your true stat.”

Hadn’t Daria mentioned something similar?

“So when Daria said that the Ursivul was C-10…?” Rayna prompted.

“If you multiply an Ursivul’s stats by ten, you will have a more accurate measure of its strength, yes.”

That explained a lot. The System numbers were only half of the equation. Going into a battle without knowing the monsters C-level would basically be going in with no information at all.

“There are other ways we can determine your potential,” Lord Emery said. “What was your starting Strength and Endurance when you were first initialized—without any titles, if you were lucky enough to get one.”

“Isn’t it rude to ask?”

Rayna’s base stats had been almost non-existent. Even if that wasn’t the case, he was doing a lot of talking and not a lot of explaining. Rayna had come in search of answers and all she was getting was more questions.

“It is,” Lord Emery acknowledged. “And I apologize for the necessity, but I have many matters I need to attend to and I have to determine how much time I may commit to your tutelage.”

In other words, I’m a waste of his time if I’m weak, Rayna thought. What is this guy’s problem?

Well, maybe if she told him the truth, he would stop pestering her with questions and answer some of hers instead.

“Five Endurance, zero Strength,” Rayna said.

Lord Emery frowned. “Five? How have you even survived this long with a defense like that?”

“Excessive use of healing spells,” Rayna said flatly. “And some leveling to bring it up to a more reasonable number.”

Lord Emery looked doubtful. “I’d like to see your stat sheet.”

Rayna snorted. “You and me both.”

Lord Emery froze. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“My System is offline,” Rayna said, sharing her screen with the update message. “I don’t know when it will be finished updating. Until then, I can’t show you my Character Sheet.”

Lord Emery gripped the edge of his desk, his nails biting into the top of a stack of papers. “Get out of my house,” he said in a shaky voice.

“What?” Rayna closed her screen.

“Get out!” Lord Emery snapped. “I don’t want to see you near me or any of my citizens. Leave Helia if you know what’s good for you.”

“Hang on, you were the one who brought me here in the first place.” Rayna took a step forward, her hands balled into fists at her side.

That was it? He asked his questions and now he was kicking her out? Does no one on Ember have a lick of sense?

“I said leave!” Lord Emery shouted, grabbing the object closest to his hand and throwing it at Rayna.

The small metal ball flew at Rayna with alarming speed, but she was still faster. She raised her hand to catch the ball in the air.

Lord Emery rose from his chair, horror on his face. “No, don’t—”

The metal ball hit Rayna’s palm with so much force that it shattered all of the bones in her hand. She cried out, refusing to drop the ball as she fell to her knees. She cast Basic Heal until her hand was back to the right shape, waiting for the pain to subside.

Lord Emery’s horror only grew as Rayna stood, her expression thunderous.

She walked up to his desk, holding the ball slightly in front of her.

Lord Emery sat back down, his eyes wide and he leaned back in his chair, trying to move away from the metal ball as Rayna held it a few inches from his face.

She slammed the ball down on his desk, embedding it halfway into the wood.

Lord Emery stared down at it, the scales of his face growing paler.

She exited the room, leaving utter silence in her wake.

* * *

Enalus stared at the artifact embedded in his desk, both horrified that he had accidentally used it on the girl and terrified that it hadn’t worked.

It was an Essence Leech—a holdover from the First Dark Age, when desperate artisans had crafted something to try to absorb Essence without the help of the System. The device would suck all of the Essence out of its target and transfer it to the owner. It was supposed to be used on monsters, but more nefarious individuals had realized its potential as a means of stealing the Essence from other players as well.

The devices hadn’t worked as intended, or rather, Essence cannot be safely absorbed without the System’s help. They had done little more than kill their owners, melting them from the inside out. Since then, they had only been used by suicidal maniacs.

Enalus was studying the Essence Leech in the hopes of solving the System’s energy problem. If he could rig it to transfer the Essence to the System instead of himself, he might be able to shorten the coming Dark Age considerably.

The notification that he received when the girl caught the insidious device only added to his confusion.

System Access Denied

The System may not access the Essence pool of a player as a safeguard for their progression. Any attempts to circumvent this safeguard will be punished severely. This is your only warning.

It had added a new line in his menu as well; Essence Notifications.

Enalus pried the device out of his desk, examining it for damage. It seemed to be working perfectly, though he didn’t have a safe way to test it at the moment.

Regardless, getting that girl out of his house had been the right decision. System glitches were a bad omen. He wanted nothing to do with it.

Enalus stood, stowing the artifact in his satchel. He needed to gather the nobles to discuss this; maybe even try to get the King to crawl out from under his covers long enough to attend. The Dark Age was coming faster than they had anticipated. They needed to either increase the quotas or prepare for the coming apocalypse.

They wouldn’t have time to do so when the monsters broke through the System’s wards.