My hands dragged down the scorched silk of the midnight-blue jacket. I pressed my palms against my ribs, patting the heavy fabric. The fused glass beneath my boots radiated a relentless, dry heat that baked the sweat into my neck.
I needed steel. A dagger. A hunting knife. Anything. Rakan had faced the demon with a glowing longsword, but that blade had shattered or vanished into the void with him. I was completely unarmed.
My fingers caught on a hidden slit inside the left breast of the coat. Supple leather met my knuckles. I yanked it free.
It was a drawstring pouch, roughly the size of a bruised apple. I tugged the leather cords apart and tipped the opening toward my palm.
Gold spilled out.
Heavy, stamped coins clinked against each other, catching the dull light of the smoke-choked sky. I stared at the metal resting against my skin. The profile of a stern, bearded man—a king, probably—stared back from the surface of each coin. I ran my thumb over the milled edges. Back in Guinmill, a single silver piece paid for a month of flour. Gold was a myth told by traveling merchants.
I peered into the pouch. It was packed to the brim. There had to be over a thousand pieces inside.
My brow furrowed. I hefted the pouch in my right hand.
It was wrong. A thousand gold coins should weigh fifty pounds. It should have torn the silk lining of the jacket right out. But the leather sack resting in my palm weighed less than a wet boot. I squeezed the pouch. The coins shifted, grinding against each other with distinct, metallic friction. They were solid. Real. But they possessed a fraction of the mass they should.
Noble magic. Or an enchanted weave in the leather itself. Either way, it was enough wealth to buy my entire destroyed village ten times over. I shoved the coins back inside, pulled the drawstrings tight, and tucked the pouch securely into the inner pocket.
I had no weapon. But I had a fortune.
I turned my back on the blast zone and started the long, blistering climb up the glass slope. The smooth, fused rock offered terrible traction. My calves burned. The royal boots, though crafted from expensive leather, weren't meant for a sheer incline. A sharp blister formed on my right heel, rubbing raw against the stiff heel cup with every step.
The transition at the rim of the crater was violent. One second, I was breathing superheated ash. The next, I crested the ridge and hit a wall of damp, biting chill.
The canopy overhead blotted out the sky. Trunks the width of a merchant's cart anchored themselves into the loamy soil, their roots twisting over each other like massive, moss-covered serpents. The air smelled of wet rot, crushed pine needles, and ancient earth. It was a forest, but the scale was entirely wrong. Guinmill's woods were tame compared to this oppressive, silent timber.
I stumbled over a knot of exposed roots, my chest heaving. A subtle, cold pulse caught my attention. In the lower right corner of my vision, the minimized blue icon flickered.
[SP: 100 ➔ 85]
I stared at the retreating number. Fifteen points of stamina burned just from climbing out of a hole. The System didn't care about my adrenaline. It quantified my fatigue, projecting the exact limit of my endurance. If that number hit zero, I doubted I'd be able to lift my arms, let alone fight.
I pushed deeper into the ferns, my boots sinking into the wet leaf litter. Twenty yards in, a massive oak had split and fallen, creating a tangled barricade of splintered timber. I grabbed a thick, gray limb protruding from the deadfall. The wood felt dense, heavier than the pine I was used to chopping.
I planted my boot against the trunk and yanked. The branch groaned, then snapped free with a sharp crack that echoed too loudly in the quiet timber.
I stripped the smaller twigs off, leaving a four-foot shaft with a jagged, pointed tip. I hefted the makeshift weapon. Instinct took over. I dropped my center of gravity, planting my feet shoulder-width apart, and gripped the wood near the base—the standard brace of a Guinmill pikeman preparing for a horde charge.
My wrists twitched.
A sharp ache spiked through my forearms. The muscles—Rakan's muscles—rebelled against the stance. My right hand instinctively slid up the shaft, attempting to find a point of balance. My left foot tried to pivot outward, shifting my weight for a lunge and a parry rather than a static brace.
The dead prince's muscle memory fought my own. A swordsman's refined reflex clashing violently with a peasant's blunt-force habit.
I gritted my teeth and forced my hands back into the brutal, two-handed pike grip. My knuckles popped. I was driving this body now.
The forest remained dead silent. I tightened my grip on the heavy wood and stepped deeper into the shadows.
The ambient hum of the forest died. The chittering of unseen insects, the rustle of leaves high in the canopy, the distant snapping of dry twigs—it all cut off like a severed string.
My boots sank into a patch of waterlogged moss. I stopped. The ironwood branch rested heavy across my thighs, the rough bark scraping against the fine silk of Rakan's trousers. I forced my breathing to slow, drawing the damp, freezing air through my nose. The chill bit at the back of my throat, a stark contrast to the oven-like heat of the glass crater just a few hundred yards behind me.
A new scent overpowered the rotting pine. Copper. Old, dried blood. And the thick, oily musk of wet, unwashed fur.
I tightened my grip on the makeshift spear. The prince's muscle memory twitched again. My right foot tried to slide backward, angling my body into a narrow duelist's profile. My wrists wanted to loosen, preparing for a fluid parry.
I clamped down on the impulse, planting my boots squarely in the mud. A duelist's stance required a balanced blade. All I had was a heavy stick.
Ten yards to my left, the shadows between a cluster of massive ferns detached.
It didn't growl. It just moved. A mass of matted, grey-black muscle pushed through the undergrowth, the thick fronds parting around its bulk. The beast stood as tall at the shoulder as Miller's plow horse back in Guinmill. Thick plates of hardened mud, pine sap, and coarse hair formed a jagged, makeshift armor across its chest and flanks. Yellow, viscous saliva dripped from jaws heavy enough to snap a man's femur in half.
A dire wolf. The tavern drunks in the logging camps always made them sound like overgrown hounds. They lied. This was a siege engine made of meat and bone.
The wolf locked its pale, pupil-less eyes on my chest. The heavy haunches coiled.
It launched itself over a rotting log. No howl. No battle cry. Just the terrifying, rhythmic thud of heavy paws tearing up the wet soil.
Panic seized my chest. I didn't run. Running from a predator meant a broken spine in three seconds. I dropped my center of gravity, scrambling backward until my heel hit the exposed, knuckle-like root of a towering pine tree.
I jammed the blunt end of the ironwood shaft into the notch between the root and the dirt. I aimed the jagged, splintered tip toward the charging mass of fur. Both hands locked tight around the wood, my knuckles turning white. The militia brace. It was the only tactic I knew. Plant the base, hold the line, and let the enemy's own momentum do the killing.
The wolf crossed the distance in three bounds. It lunged, a mountain of muscle blocking out the scarce, bruised light filtering through the canopy.
The ironwood tip caught the beast squarely in the center of its chest.
The impact traveling down the shaft felt like catching a falling boulder. The vibration instantly shattered the feeling in my fingers. The thick wood bent, groaning under the sheer kinetic force of a thousand-pound animal in motion. I gritted my teeth, digging my heel harder into the root, my shoulders screaming from the sudden strain.
For a fraction of a second, the wolf's momentum stalled. The jagged point bit into the matted armor of mud and fur.
Then the ironwood exploded.
The four-foot branch splintered into jagged shrapnel. The brace collapsed.
The beast didn't just clip me. It ran right through me. A wall of muscle and matted fur slammed into my chest with the force of a runaway logging cart. Thick, jagged claws tore through the midnight-blue silk, sinking deep into the meat of my left shoulder. The hooks scraped against my collarbone, tearing muscle fibers apart.
The impact ripped my boots from the mud. I launched backward, the breath completely compressed out of my lungs. I slammed spine-first into a moss-slicked boulder. A sickening crack echoed inside my own chest.
I slid down the rock face into the dirt. The world spun in a chaotic, agonizing blur of gray bark, green rot, and the coppery spray of my own blood.
Air refused to enter my lungs. I tasted dirt and hot iron.
A sharp, metallic ping echoed directly behind my eardrums. A glaring crimson notification overrode the muted, muddy colors of the forest, flashing aggressively in the center of my vision.
[HP: 115/150]
Thirty-five points. Almost a quarter of my life, gone in a single, brutal second.
Fire traced lines down my left arm, radiating from the deep gouges in my shoulder. Every frantic heartbeat pumped warm blood down my side, soaking the silk shirt. The physical pain was blinding, immediate, and entirely real. The LitRPG interface didn't numb anything; it didn't filter the agony or slow the bleeding. It just provided the brutal, unforgiving math of my own mortality.
Ten feet away, the wolf recovered its footing. It shook its massive head, dislodging a six-inch splinter of ironwood from the matted fur on its chest. The makeshift spear hadn't pierced deep enough to hit anything vital.
I pushed my back against the boulder, my left arm hanging heavy and useless at my side. My right hand scrambled blindly through the leaf litter, fingers closing around a heavy, jagged two-foot section of the broken branch.
Twelve Strength. Ten Agility. The numbers meant nothing right now. The beast lowered its head, the pale eyes tracking the fresh blood dripping from my fingertips into the moss.
The wolf didn't rush this time. It knew I was broken. It stalked forward, broad paws sinking silently into the blood-soaked moss.
My breath hitched. A sharp, grinding pain in my chest confirmed the System's glaring red text from a moment ago: Fractured Rib. Every inhale felt like swallowing broken glass. I pressed my back against the damp boulder, my useless left arm pinned to my side. My right hand squeezed the two-foot section of shattered ironwood. The jagged end trembled.
Twelve Strength wasn't going to stop a thousand pounds of muscle.
The live coal in my chest—Rakan's trapped ocean of power—pulsed against my sternum. It responded to the spike of absolute, primal panic flooding my veins. Heat bled into my collarbone, thick and suffocating.
I didn't know how to cast a spell. I didn't know the theory or the metaphysical hum of the aether. I only knew how to chop wood and brace a pike.
Put the heat in the stick. I squeezed the ironwood, gritting my teeth. I tried to mentally shove that suffocating heat down my right shoulder, through my forearm, and into the wood.
The magic rebelled. It was wild, unshaped energy hitting the rigid vessel of a peasant's body. A searing cramp seized my bicep. The energy threatened to detonate right inside my elbow joint.
A sharp snap echoed directly behind my eyes. The translucent blue interface flared.
[Skill Acquired: Aether-Coated Strike (Blunt/Pierce) - Beginner]
A sudden, freezing vacuum opened in my chest. The blue icon in my periphery violently updated.
[MP: 50 ➔ 30]
Twenty points ripped out of my core in a single heartbeat.
The agonizing pressure in my arm vanished, bleeding directly through my pores and into the makeshift weapon. The rough bark of the ironwood darkened, drinking in a faint, blue-white hue. The wood didn't explode with energy; it hardened. The jagged, splintered tip crystallized, the grain fusing together to take on the density and wicked edge of tempered steel. The branch suddenly weighed twice as much in my grip.
The wolf's ears pinned back. The yellow saliva stopped dripping. For a fraction of a second, the predator hesitated.
Then it lunged, aiming straight for my throat.
I didn't try to parry. I didn't try to dodge. I drove the aether-infused wood upward, putting every ounce of my twelve Strength behind the thrust.
The splintered tip met the thick plate of matted fur and hardened mud on the beast's chest. It slid through the natural armor and dense bone with zero resistance, like a butcher's blade through a rotting melon. The wolf's own momentum carried it forward, burying the hardened ironwood deep into its chest cavity until my knuckles slammed wetly against its sternum.
The beast's jaw snapped shut inches from my face. A hot spray of dark blood coated my neck. The massive body went completely rigid, then collapsed off to the side, ripping the branch from my grip and hitting the ferns with a heavy, dead thud.
The faint blue glow faded from the ironwood sticking out of its ribs, returning to ordinary, blood-soaked bark.
I stared at my empty, trembling right hand.
A sudden, profound chill swept through my veins. The suffocating heat that had been burning in my chest just seconds ago was gone, replaced by a hollow, echoing emptiness. It wasn't physical nausea—my stomach was perfectly fine—but the sheer, jarring shock of feeling a tangible piece of my internal energy just vanish left me breathless. I shivered, my teeth clattering together. I had never felt anything like it. Using magic wasn't just throwing an invisible punch; it felt like spending a piece of my own pulse.
A sterile ping cut through the quiet of the forest.
[Target Eliminated. Analyzing Experience Yield...][Animus Synchronization: 2.0% ➔ 2.1%]
I squeezed my eyes shut, ignoring the prompt. The blue text didn't care about the shock vibrating through my nervous system. It just tallied the math.
I forced my good right hand flat against the mud. The scent of the wolf's blood was already mixing with mine. More would come.
I dragged my legs under me. The fractured rib screamed as I stood, forcing a pathetic, breathless hiss through my teeth. My left arm hung dead, the torn silk of the midnight-blue jacket heavy and slick.
I staggered away from the boulder and the corpse, moving blindly through the dense ferns. The canopy above started to thin. The oppressive, damp shadow of the ancient timber gave way to a bruised, gray twilight.
My boots caught on a thick root. I pitched forward, unable to brace my fall.
Instead of moss, I hit hardened, rutted earth.
I rolled onto my back, gasping at the sudden, sharp pain in my side. I was lying in the middle of a wide, deeply grooved dirt track. Wheel ruts crisscrossed the mud, leading out of the timber and toward a distant, low valley.
A merchant road.
I let my head fall back against the cold dirt, staring up at the sliver of open sky. I was out of the woods.