Zane stood alone on the bridge with shaky hands.
The merchant's triumphant, "I'M ALIVE!" echoed in his ears.
A pang again?
It wasn't a pang this time but a trench.
The black hole in his gut wasn't just pulling. It was shredding him with an unbearable pain.
"No... not again," he gasped, clutching his stomach.
It was worse than the aneurysm. That was a quick, hot spike.
This was a cold, grinding millstone. His power had no "Essence" to feed on, so it was starting to feed on him.
His vision tunnelled. The city of Nuln, already a grey, smoggy nightmare, dissolved at the edges.
He was going to die. Again.
And Mortis would probably just file it under "Intern Mismanagement" and re-queue his soul for some even worse job.
"Fuck that."
He stumbled off the bridge, back into the maze of the Sump.
He needed a death. Any death.
He passed another plague-block. The reek of sickness was thick, and he could feel the faint, "poor quality" wisps of life ending inside.
It wasn't enough. That was a sip of water but what he needed a fucking ocean.
The hunger was a roaring fire. He needed fuel. Not kindling.
He needed violence. He needed some fucking terror.
He needed despair.
He plunged deeper into the slums, into a district where the buildings were more rust than brick. The acid rain was heavier here, hissing as it hit the rivers of chemical runoff in the gutters.
He was lost. Starving. Hopeless.
And then he heard it.
PANG. PANG. PANG.
Not one signal. A cluster. A cacophony of silver threads, all pulling him toward the same spot.
It was... close.
He rounded the corner of a derelict tannery, his feet slipping on the slimy cobblestones.
The sounds of the city—the hiss of rain, the distant groan of the Grinders—were cut short by new sounds.
Straight from the gut, a loud "FUCK YOU!"
A wet thud, like a heavy pipe hitting a sack of spoiled meat.
A scream, cut short into a gurgle.
Zane's old self screamed for him to run.
The hunger screamed for him to feast instead.
The hunger won.
He crept forward, his back pressed against the slimy wall. He peeked around the corner, into a small, dead-end courtyard.
A gang fight.
Seven men were locked in a "total clusterfuck" of a brawl.
Three of them wore scraps of red cloth and had a single, large, rusted nail hammered through the lapels of their filthy jackets. The "Rusted-Nails."
The other four were just... "assets."
They weren't fighting with swords. This was the Sump.
They were using lead pipes, heavy chains, and broken bottles. It was a wet, vicious, desperate fight to the death.
Zane dropped into a crouch, hiding behind a mountain of rotting, discarded animal hides. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He was 20 meters away. Well within Mortis's "one-kilometre" leash that he couldn't go against.
He thought about Mortis and how one day, he'd love to get back at that bastard for the shit job he was putting him through.
He had died and his soul should be resting but no... He had to have a job that piqued the interest of a fucking Death God. And now, he was a Reaper.
He was weak. He was pathetic. If they saw him, he was dead.
But he couldn't leave. The smell...
Not the reek of the tannery. The other smell. The "Essence" in this courtyard was so thick, so rich, it was like a steak dinner to his starving soul.
He peeked through a tear in the stiff, rancid hide.
A Rusted-Nail—a big, bearded bastard—swung his pipe in a clean arc. It connected with another man's skull.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening. The man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Instantly, Zane saw it.
A gout of gray-blue mist erupted from the man's chest. It wasn't a "wisp" like the plague girl. It was a plume, thick with rage, terror, and sudden, violent despair.
The black hole in his gut inhaled.
Zane gasped as the Essence shot across the courtyard and streamed into him.
It was hot.
It was powerful.
This wasn't a snack. This was a meal.
The power surged through him, extinguishing the agonizing hunger and replacing it with a humming, electric charge.
The fight kept going.
Another man—one of the "assets"—shanked a broken bottle into a Nail's gut. He twisted it.
The Nail screamed, stared down at his own intestines spilling into the mud, and collapsed.
More Essence.
Zane drank. This one was full of confusion and betrayal. Delicious.
Another man went down, a chain wrapped around his throat.
More.
Zane was crouched in the dark, getting high off a snuff film. He was a parasite, a vulture, a... a reaper.
And he had never felt better.
The fight ended as quickly as it began. Four men were dead or dying.
The three survivors—two Nails and one asset—were a mess of blood and mud. They spat at the bodies, clutching their own wounds, and limped off into the smoggy darkness, vanishing down another alley.
Silence.
Zane stayed hidden for a full minute, his body was buzzing.
The gnawing, shredding hunger was gone. In its place was a vibrating, electric strength.
He felt... good.
He felt strong.
He could feel the individual, acidic raindrops hitting his tunic. He could hear the skittering of rats three alleys over. His vision was sharp, cutting through the grime.
He had leveled up.
A new sensation bloomed in his mind. Not a voice from Mortis. This was... part of him. A line of text, seared into his brain.
[New Skill Unlocked: Whispers of Despair.]
"What...?" Zane whispered, his voice hoarse.
[You can now hear the surface thoughts of those with high Despair levels. Range: 10 metres.]
A skill. A real, actual... skill. This was the game. This was the "Self-Fulfilment" the novels he used to read at his desk talked about.
He was so lost in the "level-up screen" in his head that he didn't hear the wet, shuffling footstep.
BAM!
A brutal kick slammed into his ribs, throwing him out from behind the pile of hides.
Zane cried out, landing hard on his back in the muddy, blood-streaked courtyard. Rain sizzled on his face.
He looked up, gasping.
A man was standing over him.
A survivor.
He'd missed one.
It was a young kid, maybe 17. He had the Rusted-Nail on his jacket. His face was a mask of terror and adrenaline, and he was bleeding from a deep gash on his arm. He held a bloody lead pipe.
Zane was caught. He was fucked. He was dead.
"Who..." the kid panted, his eyes wild. "Who the fuck are you?"
Zane tried to speak. Nothing came out.
The kid's eyes—Zane would later learn they called him 'Rat'—went wide.
Rat wasn't looking at Zane. He was looking past him, at the four fresh corpses.
Rat had seen it. He'd seen the grey-blue Essence. He hadn't seen Zane eat it. He'd just seen the... the mist.
And then he saw this strange, terrifyingly calm man crawl out from the darkness, his body practically buzzing with a weird energy.
Rat's eyes flicked from the now-empty bodies... to Zane.
Zane's new skill kicked in. He heard the kid's surface thought, as loud as a scream.
Rat dropped his pipe. It clattered onto the cobblestones.
He scrambled backward, falling on his ass in the mud.
"You..." Rat whispered, his face white with a new, profound terror. "You're... you're one of them. A Sump-Demon! A... a fucking... a Soul-Eater!"
Rat crab-walked backward, then got to his feet and bolted. He ran, screaming bloody murder, back into the maze of the Sump.
Zane was left alone.
He was sitting in the rain, surrounded by four cooling bodies.
He was full. He was strong.
And he was, officially, a monster.
What was a Sump-demon? And were they more than one here?