Unfortunately, there wasn't anything useful Xenos could take, other than the sword, of course.
Though he wasn't too displeased as—
Ding!
His lovely system came through.
—
{Level: 1}
[Experience: 0/10 → 6/10]
—
Each kill had netted him two experience points, which wasn't too bad at all.
Early leveling was going to be easy; the numbers would be flying—a sight most loved.
Something about seeing a number increase triggered his brain to release dopamine in a way that was perhaps unreplicable by anything else.
This dopamine would slow later on, much to his... displeasure, and that of most, though not to worry, as it'd be replaced by dopamine from felling strong foes, something which Xenos was already looking forward to.
In the short term, however, he needed to get through this and acquire what he saw as a must if his peak build were to ever get a chance of coming to life.
But—
'Oh, even before that...'
He looked around, eyes scanning above the bodies, hoping to see a glow...
There was none.
No Rune had dropped, not even from the Moros-ranked Cerberus and the Hierophant.
He expected the latter's Runes to be gone, since all under Hieron were Rune-leashed, their Runes being sent back the moment they died, but the former was simply unfortunate, likely a result of his Calamity.
'Unfortunate indeed.'
Thinking that, Xenos flipped the poor Hierophant's body, searching for anything useful for one last time, but again, finding nothing.
He couldn't exactly take his armor and sell it. Anyone seeing him do that would put two and two together and call on Hieron to lock him behind bars for good.
And no, he couldn't go sell it in some black market either; it wasn't a place anyone could just walk into, nor was it a single knock and password kind of deal...
There was an entire quest he had to go through, people he had to meet, maybe even kill, to even get a chance of getting in.
Anyhow, even the carriage was empty.
'...Who leaves their home without a wallet?'
That made zero sense.
Not one bit.
So, naturally, it led him to the idea that it was likely inside one of the monsters, who probably thought that it was a snack.
The dessert after a hefty meal.
'Yeah, no.'
Xenos knew better than to gut each one out here in the open; it wouldn't be long before someone made their way through here.
'I'm too weak to drag them...'
Cursing under his breath, Xenos moved on.
There was no purpose in staying here anymore, and he needed to continue; there was a deadline he had to meet.
After some looking around, Xenos walked up to the Acheron River, which was thankfully nearby, and began his trek northward, his eyes never leaving the tree line on his left.
His trek lasted about an hour or two before he eventually stopped and headed to a nearby hill.
There was a small valley beneath that hill.
He stepped toward it, and before he knew it, everything around him was covered by a fog.
Death's March.
This was a place no one but the insane and the desperate dared to approach, for they, no matter their class, would experience sorrow unimaginable.
Their mind would simply break.
But, thankfully for Xenos, he wasn't exactly capable of feeling such sorrow; the only thing he'd struggle with would be the distance.
'Don't go... you aren't ready.'
And so, ignoring Eris's warning, he stepped forth, knowing not what he was getting into.
***
...
...
...Pain.
It usually held many names, but now...
Now it wore a single name, Achlys.
The origin of this fog.
It wrapped me the moment I stepped into it, coming from nowhere and everywhere, clinging to my hair, arms, and clothes.
I was lost in its embrace.
Gray was my world.
Forward was a thing of the past.
My legs only moved now, directionless.
And before I knew it, what could only be counted as the first hour had passed.
My boots pressed into the ground I could no longer trust; the horizon had stopped meaning anything.
I put one foot in front of the other because that was what one did when they walked.
Because it was how I could stay resembling something alive... how I could escape this death I breathed.
Sorrow began as a pressure behind my eyes, small at first, something I thought negligible.
I knew sorrow.
My life was never far from it.
I was immune; I told myself that for years.
Immune to the swell of feeling other men drowned in.
But this... this was different.
This was not ordinary sorrow.
Achlys ate at the shape of me.
Eris was right; I wasn't ready, far from it.
This fog was far beyond mortal limitations.
It pierced through my shell, banging names of those I despised into my skull, forcing me to stand before faces I'd never forget.
I caught each memory before it slipped, losing myself in each, yet they all remained vaguely away from me...
A taste on my tongue.
The Rune in my Soul, my Luck, kept pulsing, trying to soften what landed directly on my psyche, what broke it bit by bit, yet it kept failing, too weak to resist.
I let it try, using it as a metronome.
Time kept me on track, even if everything else tried to push me off to an agonizing death.
Two hours passed... or so I believed.
The stone in my eyes became a boulder pressing me into myself, the sorrow thickening, turning viscous.
It tried to sink fingers into me and pull out the easy things: warmth, anger, even the small comforts that made me human.
There was none; only voids stood there, cracks that it caught and repeatedly widened.
No longer speaking to me, it gnawed threads from the edges of my memory until the fabric of my self came undone.
I could feel names slipping; I could feel the weight of those I tried so hard to love turning into sinful death.
And yet, somehow, I kept... smiling.
It never left my face, a wrong thing in the wrong place, curdling and making the fog pause, as if the fog itself didn't expect it.
My lips did it automatically, because a broken mind could no longer break; it was stubborn for change, and I leaned into that stubbornness.
Three hours had to have gone by.
One moment was sorrow; the next...
A bright, impossible happiness.
I felt love and loss at once, a peculiar double vision that made my head ache with the effort of holding both, a violence of contrasts, grief and glee landing on the same chest in the same breath.
My head stuttered, whatever remaining of my memories overlapping, making my stomach roll, making me grin, then cry, then grin again.
The Rune's pulse grew more insistent, hammering my very being:
Hold.
Hold.
Hold.
Walking was doable now only because my fracturing made it so.
It didn't stop the swallowing from swallowing me; it only kept my feet on the ground and my spine from folding, the Rune lucking me through each motion, a blunt instrument.
One that remained pulsing beyond the end of the first day...
Or at least what I believed to be the first.
It was bad, heavy, and... insane.
I could have stopped...
Let the fog have me...
Some part of me wanted that.
The part that was tired of holding steady...
But my mind was a stubborn anchor, my Rune a relentless reminder of what never ceased: time.
Day two was when the fog knew me fully, teasing me with my favorite things... Things that I no longer remembered, trying its best to crack what remained of 'nothing.'
Sorrow was clever; brute force was never its implement, forcing me to pay out small increments of sanity and set conditions:
Keep going.
Never speak.
Don't look back.
By what I could think of as the end of the second day, the fog layered sorrow with nostalgia so thick I wanted to lie down and sleep forever in that pleasant ache.
Instead, I kept moving...
Kept living, reaching the third day.
If the first two days were the fog learning me, the third day was the fog using all that it now knew, trying to destroy me from every single unfathomable direction.
It brought unfamiliar memories so vivid that it felt like I was drowning in someone else's life.
My insanity was not a single moment; it was many sets of failures compounded together, and all said sets, from lives of myself I never knew, came at me all at once.
I was shown victories I had not earned and tenderness I had not given. I felt the warmth of companionship and the hollow collapse of loss.
It was maddening and holy.
Everything... it was everything.
I felt like I was bracing my hands against two opposing currents and refusing to be pulled.
I swallowed the sorrow and the smile together until my mouth tasted of both.
My being had reached a point where no numbers made sense.
Time could no longer be counted...
My metronome was broken too.
Yet it wasn't all bad.
The sharpness had dulled.
My mind learned better how to breathe with it.
I learned the rhythm: let the fog take a piece, let the Rune replace it with a scrap of Luck...
Keep walking.
I couldn't know how many days I walked after that. "Many thousands" sounded like bragging, and I wouldn't dare brag, but again I kept forth until finally, at some point...
A moment so ordinary I nearly missed it...
The fog thinned.
I could see it, at the end.
There was pale light and a floating... figure.
Offering it a smile one last time, the fog accepted me, or at least it didn't try to take it away from me, and I...
I walked towards it and finally stopped.
This was the origin of the fog.
Before me was a God.
A descended God.