I had always imagined myself as a combat class. Maybe even someone with Heroic potential. When the Exorcist came and removed my demon, I had always fantasized that I’d become a Duelist – or maybe a Ranger. Someone who could hold their own in a fight. Someone strong and capable and unafraid. That was who I’d pretend to be when I was a kid at play in the woods outside Kwa’tar Village.
The Naga was winding up to hit me with the death-blow, coiling his whole body to accentuate the force of his next spear thrust. I couldn’t actually see him doing this in the pitch-black darkness – but somehow I still sensed it clear-as-day.
It was as though I was a boy again, shadowboxing with imaginary monsters. Back then, I could always find my opponent’s weakness. I could always predict their next move.
Because back then it was always all in my head.
And in the moment before the tip of the Naga’s spear would have penetrated my eye-socket and punched out through the back of my skull, I casually pivoted counter-clockwise—dropping my left, injured shoulder to lead my backward rotation—and the spear barely missed its mark. It tore a shallow gouge across my cheek instead of skewering a hole clean through my head. And I didn’t even flinch from the pain. Suddenly I was too locked-in to let it bother me.
The force of his missed thrust sent the snake-man lunging past and when I finished my pivot I was behind him, facing the opposite direction from where I began. I could take the Naga’s back now, even if I couldn’t see him – but I knew I had to act fast before he could twist his snake-torso around to be facing me again. I leapt forward with my jaw clenched and drove the shank into what I hoped was his kidney. But despite all the grinding I’d done in the days prior, my weapon simply wasn’t sharp enough to penetrate his chainmail.
Again! Harder! Again and again and again….
I needed to stab the snake-faced bastard again. Harder, this time. Maybe several more times.
But the Naga whirled around before I could attack, forcing me for the moment to give up shanking him so I could instead maintain the grapple. With my left arm stiff and weak from the wound on my shoulder, it took everything in me not to lose my position or my weapon. But I persisted like a gnat on his back and when he tried to dip and buck me off I stabbed his snake-torso three times as-fast-as-I-was-able and then suddenly lukewarm Naga-blood spurted across my chest and face. I had lucked upon a chink in his armor.
The Naga reared up and let loose a monstrous, shrieking howl. I’d critically struck some vital snake-organ and Death was coming if he couldn’t end this fight right away. We both knew it. He thrashed while I continued holding fast onto his back. His let his spear clatter to the scummy floor so he could use both hands to try and peel me off and then in the struggle we both went down alongside it with me still on top. The Naga writhed and twisted, maneuvering his weird body in ways which were completely alien to my human mind, struggling to get me off his back while I clung to his torso like he was a slimy willow tree. He attempted to wriggle backwards to slip out from under me and I suddenly found my arms tight around what I approximated as his throat, close up under his jaw. I arched my back and put everything I had into choking him but it wasn’t going to happen – identifying exactly where I should apply pressure to cut off a snake-man’s windpipe was impossible. The bastard was all neck, from head-to-toe. Plus, I mostly only had the one arm to choke him with. This simply wasn’t my best plan of attack.
I needed to come up with a different strategy.
And the strategy was to flat out lose my mind. Get feral.
Let go.
I had to let go of the Naga’s throat with my right arm if I was going to stick him with my bone shank. That meant I’d be holding on with only my weakened left. I’d get one shot to finish this fight before I’d lose the advantage granted by my position on his back.
I slipped my right arm out of the chokehold, turned the shank in my hand and slammed its sharp tip hard against the side of his head. I was aiming more for the side of his throat. The Naga shrieked and suddenly he found the strength to rise up once more with me still riding his back. And I was slipping off – couldn’t keep my grip with my hurt arm only. And as I began to tumble off him, I took up my shank in both hands and jammed it into the top of his skull like a desperate mountain-climber whose pickaxe finally catches in the last moment before he would have otherwise plummeted off an icy cliff.
There was a gruesome crunch and the Naga’s whole body tensed and began to spasm. He crashed back to the floor and I rode him down with both hands still on the shank and when we hit the ground I used the impact to drive my attack even further into his reptilian brain. Then I hopped up off his body and stood over the Naga while he twitched and writhed in his death throes.
I couldn’t un-ball my fists. The tears in my eyes felt like fire. My heart thumped in my ears.
That was… brutal.
I didn’t know I had it in me.
Was it some remnant of the System? Had breaking that Naga priest’s mirror somehow empowered me? Had I possibly become a Duelist? I sure did seem to be decent at stabbing my opponent in sensitive places – a hallmark of the Duelist class.
But why can’t I see any notifications or skills or anything?
Because this wasn’t the System I was experiencing. Or at least it wasn’t the whole thing. My demon was still in there, restricting my access. Feeding off my Virtue.
Someplace off in the distant, dark dungeon, an explosion occurred. The whole place trembled and dirt sifted down through cracks in the ceiling.
What in blazes was that?
It didn’t matter right then. The Naga at my feet had already stopped twitching. My shoulder throbbed and my cheek stung. My teeth chattered from the adrenaline come-down. And then all at once it struck me: I could leave my cell. After a week-and-a-half of being trapped in the Naga dungeon – I could finally try to make my escape. The door was open and I had killed a pair of my captors.
I had killed a pair of monsters.
“Don’t forget the shank.” My lips moved – but were those my words? Maybe the shock of committing my first murders had put me into a bit of a dissociative state.
Oh yeah? You think so?
“Reisuke?” Frog whispered upon hearing the sound of my voice. I knelt and jerked my bone-shank out of the snake-man’s skull. “Hey, Rei – you still alive over there?”
“Yeah, but don’t ask me how.” I cleaned the brain-matter off my weapon by wiping it against the thigh of my trousers. “I don’t think I could tell you.”
“Whatever. Come on, let’s get out of here – find the key that fits my cell and let me out!”
It was still dark enough to bruise my eyes. I knew the torch was on the floor someplace but it was almost certainly ruined; drenched with blood. I would need to search for the keys by memory and touch alone.
The snake-priest was still exactly where I remembered; sprawled in the doorway, half-in and half-out of my cell. I knelt and felt around, finding his arm and tracing it to his limp fingers where I pulled free the keyring. Then I paused.
I was having another idea, like the time when I recently came up with the devilishly ingenious plan to turn a putrid sewer-bone into a toxic shank:
The shards from the mirror were still scattered on the floor all around the priest’s body. Most of them were probably becoming sticky with his cooling blood. It turned my stomach, but maybe I should suck it up and gather some of the broken, bloody pieces, anyway. Afterall, they apparently possessed some potent variety of Demon magic or possibly a Divination spell which had allowed me limited access to the System. Maybe these mirror shards could still be of further use.
Needing something to carry them around in, not wanting to haphazardly shove shards of broken glass right into my pockets, I decided to make an impromptu pouch from the Naga-priest’s robes. I tried to tear it but my hurt shoulder was too weak and the fabric was too strong. Evidently snake-tailors were producing fine, durable garments these days. But my shank had no problem poking through it and then I ripped loose a larger swatch from there.
“Rei?” Frog wondered. “What’re you doin’? Come on, man, quit wasting time – let’s go before more of them show up!”
“Patience, Brother Frog. I’ll be right there.”
Careful not to slice myself on the broken glass, I felt around on the floor and in the Naga blood that was becoming stickier every second. I collected some shards together into a small pile and I picked them up using the swatch of fabric. I gathered the corners of the cloth and then twisted and knotted the end to make an impromptu pouch. Then I stuck that in the pocket of my trousers and made my escape.
I felt along the clammy wall to find my way to Frog’s cell. I could have taken the brute’s spear—without question, a more traditional weapon—but the nasty crap-shank I’d forged held some twisted sentimentality, I guess. Plus, I’d seen that it was classified as a Rare weapon and I felt a sense of pride at having crafted something so oddly fine. The Naga’s spear must be Common at best, a clear downgrade. I didn’t imagine that Frog would want it either, since as fasr as I knew Monks typically favored unarmed combat almost exclusively.
There must have been thirty keys on the Naga-priest’s ring, but after some desperate trial-and-error I found the one which fit Frog’s cell. I let him out and for a moment we just we stood there in the pitch-black Naga-dungeon, both more than a little stunned, I think.
“What now?” we asked at the same time.
The Naga had brought us into the dungeon unconscious, meaning we had no idea which way to head for the exit. Stumbling around in the dark, we’d be much more likely to get re-captured than to happen upon a way out – but we didn’t have much of a choice. Our options were to fumble around blind or simply climb back into our cells.
“Alright, I’ll lead,” Frog said. “I have some ranks in Perfect Dodge and Stone Skin, so if we get ambushed it’s better if they strike at me, first.”
“No argument here.” I massaged the throbbing spear-wound on my shoulder. The gouge on my cheek was beginning to hurt worse, too. I wondered if possibly the Naga’s spear-tip had been treated with some exotic variety of poison concocted by the snake-men. Or perhaps they could simply milk their own poison-glands directly onto their weapons? That was a gross thought. And I also wondered how much Health I had lost.
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And I guess while I was simmering this stew of thoughts, I began to absent-mindedly fondle the little pouch of mirror-shards in my pocket. Suddenly—without explicitly meaning to or even knowing how I had done it—I gained access to some of my recent logs:
Sizlax(Naga Soldier) lands a glancing blow!(3 damage from piercing)
Your Health is reduced by 3 (57 of 80 remaining)
If I lived long enough for an Exorcist to track me down and remove my demon, I’d gain permanent access to my logs. With a simple act of will, I’d be able to pull them up at any time to study precisely what had happened in past combats. But for the time being, the only information I received was an answer to the very specific thought I’d had only a moment earlier:
How much Health have I lost?
If the glancing blow was the attack which had gouged my cheek, then doing the math that meant the stab to my shoulder had inflicted an even twenty damage. Both of these seemed to be reasonable assumptions. But it was decidedly unreasonable that a quarter of my freaking Health was taken from me in that single stab to my shoulder.
“Alright,” Frog interrupted my thought-parade. “Let’s roll.”
We began shuffling down the corridor, feeling along the wall. I listened for any sound that might indicate freedom. I listened too for any sound that might indicate the Naga were coming. And always I listened diligently for the scuffling sound of Frog’s feet, to ensure I didn’t lose him. To ensure we didn’t become separated. But mostly, I could only hear my own, shaky breath.
And then another far-off explosion shook the dungeon, the shock of it made worse by how closely I had been listening to my surroundings. I flinched and I think Frog did, too – I could hear it in his voice when he wondered:
“What was that?”
“Maybe the Naga are digging more tunnels?”
“Yeah, that could be.”
Our blind, shuffling march resumed. It was impossible to know just how long we went on that way. It seemed just short of an eternity. But then Frog suddenly stopped in place and before I could react I bumped into his backside. He didn’t even seem to notice.
“You feel that?” he asked. “It’s getting warmer.”
He was right. Wherever we were headed, it was hotter than the cellblock we were escaping from. After only a few more paces, I realized I was starting to be able to see a little bit, too. Somewhere up ahead there must have been torches hung on the walls or perhaps just a large fire, lifting the darkness here just barely.
Shortly thereafter we came to a ‘T’ in the tunnel. On our right was more pitch-black darkness, and to our left was the subtle, gray lightening caused by the distant flames.
“Which way do you think?” Frog asked.
“We have to go toward the light, right? Maybe we can find a torch. We’ll never get out of here if we have to keep going forward blind.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Probably gonna be Naga, though. We might have to fight.”
“Blessed to be in the company of a legendary Crane monk then, ain’t I?”
Frog chuckled. “Come on.”
By the time we reached the end of the hall, we could see reasonably well. The tunnel opened into a huge chamber. It was the altar room. We had entered onto a small landing positioned high up toward the ceiling. A ramp led down to the floor-level – for obvious reasons, the Naga weren’t big on stairs. We’d caught a break here; the position gave us a great vantage to study the room without needing to worry too much about being detected by the snake-men.
Because Frog hadn’t been wrong – there were Naga here, alright. A dozen or more, mostly wearing robes like that snake-priest I killed, milling about while some held mirrors and others wielded wickedly serrated ceremonial knives. The kind of cutting tool you’d use to extract mirror shards from your victim’s belly, I reckoned.
In the center of the room was the altar. Just a wide stone slab, stained red from so much sacrificial blood. And around its perimeter it was lined with torches mounted at the tops of tall poles. The victims would be chained to that altar and their whole field of vision would be filled with fire in the moments before the Naga priests began to mutilate them.
There were many other entrances to this altar room, too – so it stood to reason that hanging out for a minute on this platform at the mouth of the tunnel we’d entered from wasn’t placing us in too much extra danger of being found out. I wondered if every other tunnel I saw didn’t also lead to a dungeon wing. A dungeon wing where young humans were being held prisoner. Where they were tempted to eat rats and craft shanks out of shitty bones.
“What now?” Frog asked.
“Now we get some revenge.” Frog looked confused. I don’t why, but I was suddenly sure, “we can take them.”
“What? There’s like a dozen Naga down there.”
“We can take them.” Another explosion in the distant dungeon rumbled as if to punctuate my statement. Frog looked at me with a mix of awe and suspicion; like he wanted to fight, but couldn’t believe I’d want to, too.
“You have some sort of plan?”
“No.”
“We can’t just rush a dozen Naga without a plan, Reisuke.”
“Something will come to me.”
Another thunderous impact rattled dirt loose from the dungeon walls. Seemed much closer this time. I should have been scared of the looming combat and the ominous explosions – but I just wasn’t. I guess maybe deep down some part of me knew I had nothing left to lose. I mean, I’d recently come very close to eating a live dungeon rat. My mouth had watered at the thought of it. That kind of thing changes a man.
Suddenly the altar room echoed with screams. The Naga were about to perform their next ritual. A girl was brought in from one of the far tunnels. A brute of a Naga like the one I had killed in my cell led her at the point of his spear. And a priest came along close after, carrying shards of broken glass in his cupped palms. The girl was guided to the center of the room; pushed and prodded to the altar, where the snake-men began to congregate en masse. They forced her down onto her back with her wrists and ankles bound to the altar with manacles and chains.
“Dammit,” Frog whispered. “Dammit dammit dammit. Fine, Rei – you just let me know if that plan of yours ever comes to you. I can’t watch them kill that girl.” He cracked his knuckles. He cracked his neck. And then he jumped down from the ledge where we had been observing from and he shouted, “alright you overgrown worms, let’s dance.”
The Naga turned-as-one and for a split-second they were paralyzed from the surprise of seeing one of their prisoners loose – but then the priests began to fall back and a quartet of chainmail-clad snake-soldiers emerged in formation, the tips of their spears pointed at Frog, slithering forward shoulder-to-shoulder like the front row of a phalanx. I hustled down the ramp to have Frog’s back, still oddly confident that we’d win this fight.
The girl’s chains had been disconnected and now she was being dragged away and she was screaming.
Frog took the offensive. He charged toward the Naga-brute foursome and went airborne. I’d never seen anyone jump like that. Must have been a Monk ability taught by the masters of his sect – what with cranes being birds, after all. Whatever the case, he soared clean over the Naga soldiers and suddenly their spears were pointed at me, for a lack of Frog.
But he went to work right away on their flank. Before I knew it, the snake-men in the middle were disarmed and turned around to face Frog. And the other two separated and slithered to better surround him. I stood frozen, watching while the pair who were still armed attempted to skewer him but Frog was too quick. He evaded each stab with seeming ease, his movements fluid and relaxed, like he was slow-dancing with an invisible maiden.
“Perfect Dodge,” I muttered, recalling the name of the ability Frog had mentioned earlier. He must have activated it.
I wondered how long he could keep it up – and that’s when his eyes caught mine. The desperation I saw there let me know he couldn’t keep evading their strikes forever. He needed my help.
I crept forward, quickly but careful, hoping to gut at least one of the brutes from the back before the others could even notice. The pair which Frog had disarmed had already managed to reacquire their spears and I rushed one of them before they could join in on the attack. I aimed for the kidney again and it was much easier than it had been back in my cell because I could actually see my target with my eyes. And this time the shank split the chainmail without any resistance and penetrated the Naga’s scaly side.
He jerked and slid suddenly away from me and my blade came out of his back. For a fleeting second, I felt proud and strong as I had removed one of our four enemies from the battle at least temporarily. But then another of the other Naga’s caught me admiring my work and before I could react his spear stabbed me in the gut. Instinctively I dropped my shank and gripped the spear instead, just compelled at an animal-level to keep it from going further into my body.
Frog saw. He abandoned his evasive dance and shot forward. He took the spear—still stuck an inch inside my belly—and first yanked it straight back out and then stripped it away from the Naga. He broke it over his knee and then he dual-wielded the two halves of it like a pair of clubs. He struck a blow on each of the Naga’s biceps and I saw his arms goes limp. It must have been another special ability – a strike which rendered Frog’s target’s limbs paralyzed at least for a time.
I had a mind to retrieve my shank and stick it in that snake-man’s throat but I just couldn’t. My hands both went to the wound on my belly. It bled worse than any wound I’d ever suffered before. This was what it meant to be a combat class, wasn’t it?
This is how you would have wanted to die. On your feet.
But as a matter of fact, I couldn’t stay on my feet. I was too dizzy. Would this kind of thing have happened to a genuine combat class? I staggered backward only a couple of steps and then I fell on my bottom, my shank just beyond my reach. Another explosion detonated—terribly close this time—in one of the tunnels leading off the altar room.
The explosion distracted Frog just long enough for one of the Naga’s to place him in a rear-chokehold with the pole of his spear held tight across Frog’s throat. He dropped the two halves of the spear he was dual-wielding and slid a pair of fingers up between the pole and his throat to try and keep from being strangled. The other snake-men began to crowd in with their spears. And I could only watch, vision swimming, incapable of taking any action beyond using both hands to try and slow the bleeding from my belly.
I had been wrong. We couldn’t take the snake men.
What could I have been thinking?
And in the moment before they murdered us both, I saw a devil with his face painted bone-white. His eyes ringed in blood. His mouth a smear of blood. He strolled in from one of the tunnels—where the most recent explosion had come from—carrying a whip in his left hand and short-bladed sword in his right. He caught the snake-priests by surprise and he held up his sword and a bright blue fireball shot from it and then the entire clergy was bone and ash. Immolated in an instant; the heat was incredible. The brutes who were busy trying to skewer Frog turned in wild wonder. Who was this devil?
His whip cracked twice and then he swung it out and it entangled the spear-arm of one brute and the devil jerked it back toward himself and the Naga’s arm was torn clean off. Blood fountained out in opposite directions from a pair of dangling arteries.
The devil then threw his blade and it whirled and hummed through the air and then it completely decapitated another of the brutes before impaling itself in the far wall. Now there were only two of the brutes left – and I’d earlier stabbed one of them in the back.
This devil had stolen their will to fight. And I realized suddenly that he was no devil – but rather just an ordinary man with his face painted. He wore form-fitting blood-red armor fashioned from a material I couldn’t identify. It could have been steel or it might have been cherrywood or I supposed it looked like it could have somehow been made from hardened blood.
His whip cracked once more and then shot out and wrapped around the stabbed brute’s neck. The devil jerked it back and the Naga wasn’t quite decapitated but it was clear that under his skin—in the realm of ligaments and bone—something had gone terribly awry. He fell limply to the floor, not even dead as far as I could tell, but completely paralyzed.
I’d seen some whip-work in my day. I’d even wielded a stock-whip before when herding the aurochs my family had raised to provide Kwa’tar with meat. But never had I even imagined someone could use a whip this way; to rip off limbs and shatter bones without so much as breaking the skin.
The last Naga standing had lost all his will to fight. He dropped his spear and he turned to flee. But the devil was too quick. He leapt across the room—defying physics the way Frog had just moments earlier—and when he landed he had positioned himself to block the brute’s path of escape.
“Where are you going?” he asked. He did not speak in the voice of a devil. He spoke in the voice of an older man.
The Naga back-slid, but it was already too late. The devil held up his hand with his fingers twisted into some arcane formation and then the Naga began to come apart like smoke. This was dark magic, deconstructing the physical matter of the snake-man. This wasn’t the type of spell you’d ever see cast by a Scholar or Shaman or Druid. This was Death Magic, and it could only mean one thing:
“He’s an Exorcist,” I muttered, too quiet for anyone to hear.
But he turned his gaze to me and smiled as if he’d heard, anyway – even as he continued to channel the last few seconds of the spell which was vaporizing the snake-man. Even as he destroyed the Naga brute’s soul.
He said in a calm and friendly voice, “hello, Reisuke Kira, you are not an easy man to find. My name is Major Vitaly Viktorovich. I have come for your demon.”