Returning visitor cataloged

  Level: 3

  Agility: 1

  Physicality: 3

  Endurance: 2

  Archetype: Vagrant

  Special Classification: None

  Welcome back

  Meadowtint’s villagers were getting smarter. They stayed in clusters in their homes, and patrols looped the city limits, but the people spread out when working their field. That was his opening. One acre in particular seemed due for harvesting, the stalks tall and thick, and Nick lurked within the depths of it, the golden wheat swaying in the wind with a satisfying rustle. Nick brushed his fingers across the stalks, studying each individual strand and the way it felt upon his fingertips.

  It’s so real, he thought. So perfect. How advanced were its creators?

  Whoever they were, they certainly weren’t these vacant-eyed villagers. Nick lifted his sickle as a woman in a white blouse half-stained black by her own sweat and filth slowly made her way toward him. Her back was bent, her sickle swaying left to right.

  “Cataloger, who made this world?” he whispered as the woman neared. Might as well try for answers while he waited. Simon would be disappointed with him otherwise.

  I cannot answer

  “Who built the Artifact hosting it?”

  I cannot answer

  “What is this world’s purpose?”

  To foster life

  As expected, he’d have to get his own answers elsewhere, and that meant escaping Meadowtint. To do that, he needed to get past Sir Gareth, which meant getting stronger. Every trip to the village, he did just that. He sneaked through windows into homes, spilling blood, gaining progress toward reassessment. What did his deaths matter if those he killed stayed dead, while he grew in experience with his every attempt? He’d increased his level again, to three, but he knew he needed to be much higher than that to defeat the mighty knight.

  “One more thing, Cataloger—why do I still have this sickle?” he asked, realizing how odd it was that he’d kept it upon dying. “Same for my clothes. How do I keep everything after they…well…kill me?”

  Your possessions remain yours upon termination of your visit

  Which meant they couldn’t take any of his items off his body. Which, he also suspected, meant he didn’t leave a body behind at all when he died. He certainly never saw one across his repeated trips to Meadowtint, as disturbing a thought as that was. If he didn’t leave a body, it also meant, from the villagers’ point of view, he was abnormal, if not supernatural.

  “I guess that sort of explains that whole ‘demon’ thing,” he said, though not quite. They’d known something was different about him from the very first moment he spoke to the elderly woman in her chair. One look in his eyes, and she shrieked and labeled him a “demon.”

  Something more must be at play.

  Nick finally saw what he’d been waiting for, as Sir Gareth walked by on his patrol. He didn’t bother with stealth this time. The villagers didn’t frighten him anymore. In time, and with enough attempts, he could bring them low. Gareth was the real problem, and so Nick had decided during his last leveling to confront that problem immediately.

  “Let’s go, Gareth,” Nick shouted, holding his sickle out wide as he approached the village. “You and me, one on one, a duel to the death. We’ll keep it nice and fair.”

  The knight strode out to meet him. As always, he kept his shield on his back, and he pointed his enormous sword. His blue eyes narrowed.

  “Fair, says the monster that defies death itself,” he said. “But I accept your challenge, Nick. No other innocents must die between the time of your arrival and the time I banish you to your temporary grave.”

  “Not a grave,” Nick said. “More like small but cozy bedroom.”

  Gareth lunged, his sword aimed straight for Nick’s chest, and only a panicked dive kept Nick from being speared. He landed on his shoulder, rolled, and then burst out of the roll with frantic energy. No thought to tactics or discipline, just a slash with his sickle at Gareth, who looked caught off guard when Nick avoided the thrust by coming closer instead of retreating.

  His sickle struck Gareth’s breastplate and bounced off with a loud clang of metal. Nothing happened. The knight’s health bar didn’t even budge.

  What? he frantically thought as he fled a swing that would have cleaved his head off his shoulders if he were the slightest bit slower. Why?

  For simplification, armor values are flat reductions against potential damage

  Nick retreated several more steps, buying himself a breather while staring at Sir Gareth’s shining gold chain mail. His stomach sank.

  How good is Gareth’s armor?

  The brief summary flashed in the corner of his vision, this time modified with additional information.

  Gareth: Level 13 Human

  Archetype: Knight

  Special Classification: Deity Blessed (Vaan)

  Armor: Augmented Chain Mail, Quality Tier 7

  “Tier seven,” Nick muttered. “I’ll assume that means I need to hit him where he’s not wearing armor.”

  “Who are you speaking with, demon?” Gareth asked. He hopped forward a single step and then swung in a wide arc Nick had no hope of dodging. He flung his sickle in the way and braced himself. The metal collided, Nick’s arms gave in against the overwhelming force, and then he went flying into a hard, bouncing roll across the dirt. When he came up to his knees, he saw an almost insultingly tiny amount of red float off his health bar from being thrown like a ragdoll.

  “Just talking to myself,” Nick said. “Since no one else seems interested in a chat.”

  “We need not heed the words of heresy.”

  Nick spat a bit of blood as he stood. “Heresy? I barely know where I am, and you think I’m here to spout heresy?”

  Gareth frowned, apparently uncertain how to respond. Nick tried to seize that confusion for his own gain, closing the distance between them while slashing for Gareth’s armpit. The knight’s hesitation was not enough to make up the enormous gap between their raw skill and speed. His sword batted away Nick’s sickle, and then he extended his off hand.

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  Spell: Time Slow

  Gold light shimmered about his fingers as he cast his spell, slowing all Nick’s movements so that he felt maddeningly sluggish.

  According to Cataloger’s rapid spew of information, lasted a mere three seconds. It was amazing how long three seconds could feel as Gareth planted his back leg and swung, his sword smashing into Nick’s ribs. Nick gasped, blood spewing from his lips as the weapon ripped free, taking with it a staggering amount of health. He stumbled, his momentum ruined and his vision turning dark as the effects of the spell faded. Gareth caught him by the throat and effortlessly lifted him into the air. The tip of his sword pressed into Nick’s belly.

  “The same fate as always,” Gareth said, and thrust.

  Health: 0

  Visit terminated

  *

  Nick groaned and rubbed at his temples. His forehead ached as if a spike had been thrust into the center of it.

  “You’re certainly improving,” Simon said, seated in the chair beside the bed. He checked his watch. “It only took you four minutes to die that time.”

  The beep of the heart monitor seemed to laugh along with him.

  “Asshole,” Nick said, and closed his eyes.

  *

  Another duel in the center of the village. Gareth showed even greater patience than before, which made Nick wonder if he was choosing the wrong tactic. The knight wanted these duels. He wanted Nick focused solely on him.

  “Let’s go,” Nick said, shifting to the left to avoid being cleaved in half down the middle. “Come on, faster. Hit me, Gareth. Hit me!”

  The knight did his best to oblige, and regardless of whether or not it seemed cowardly, Nick weaved and retreated from each strike. Only rarely did he try to swing his sickle, for he was too busy studying Gareth’s movements. With each successful dodge, he better understood the world he found himself in: Levels were important, but Gareth still had to hit him with his sword to actually leverage those levels. Nick could avoid, engage, and strike whenever necessary. The odds were horribly stacked against him, but the outcomes didn’t seem to be a purely numerical decision. Skill mattered.

  The problem was, Nick was not exactly overflowing with skill in swordplay, either, whereas his opponent had what seemed like a lifetime of training.

  “Is your goal to tire me out?” Gareth asked after yet another failed swing.

  “The thought had occurred to me,” Nick said, and grinned.

  Gareth chopped, a half-hearted attempt to gain a bit of space, and then yanked his sword to his side.

  “Enough of this.”

  The knight extended his hand. His fingers shifted, moving into shapes, but now Nick knew them for what they were—magic—and he had a theory about how to stop the casting of the spell. He lunged in, his sickle swiping for the moving digits. Gareth screamed as the curved blade sliced alongside his hand, cutting his thumb and forefinger deep without severing them. The red bar of his life shaved off a sliver at the end.

  To Nick’s glee, the spell halted. No freezing time. No slowing his movements to an agonizing degree.

  “Sorry, no magic,” Nick said. “We’ll have to see how good you are without it.”

  Gareth pulled his shield off his back. A shadow fell across his handsome face.

  “That magic also ensured you suffered a quick death,” he said. “But that is not your way, is it, demon? Everyone must suffer, even yourself.”

  Nick swung his sickle twice, and each time the shield batted it away with insulting ease. The third, he pretended, but Gareth never fell for the feint. He only smirked, his knees bending, his elbows flexing.

  “Foolish creature,” he said. “Do you think I need my magic? My armor?”

  He lunged forward with terrifying speed. Nick had no idea how to react, no real training to rely upon. He backpedaled while flailing with his sickle, dimly aware of how similar he was to the villagers he’d so recently slaughtered.

  Gareth’s sword pierced right through his stomach and sank halfway up the hilt.

  “When will it be enough?” Gareth asked as Nick collapsed to his knees. He couldn’t breathe. The pain flooding through him was far beyond what he’d ever suffered before. His health—he had a single point left. Since the hit wasn’t fatal, he wasn’t freed from it, wasn’t spared the sensation of the steel sliding within the folds of his stomach.

  “So many dead,” the knight continued, ripping the blade free in a shower of blood. “So many innocent lives lost, and for what, demon Nick? Your pleasure?”

  He pressed the tip of the sword underneath Nick’s chin.

  “Don’t come back,” he said. “I am no torturer, but against your cruelty, I will ensure your next death is lengthy and full of pain.”

  The blade thrust.

  Health: 0

  Visit terminated

  *

  “All right, new plan,” Nick said as he stepped out of the ring of stones. The black sun remained firmly set in the sky as always, but the yellow sun was just starting its descent. Late afternoon, then. He could work with that.

  Nick snuck through the wheat, keeping his back bent so his mode of travel was a sort of crouch-walk. It made his muscles ache, but he endured until reaching the end of the field. Meadowtint spread out before him, a shell of itself compared to when he first arrived. He didn’t know how many he’d killed across his many visits, slowly whittling down the population. Fifteen? Twenty? They were blending together in his mind, a blur of bloodshed and agonizing pain before he jolted awake once more in his bed aboard the research station.

  “There’s no answers for you here,” Nick told himself as he watched a patrol of two men and a woman curl around the outside of the village. “It’s time to run.”

  Going through the village was out of the question, so he skirted Meadowtint’s exterior as closely as he could without leaving the field. If he was quick, he’d need only worry about the rare patrol that wandered the outer perimeter. Nick remained patient, watching and waiting, until he saw that exact patrol. Two men, one of them holding a torch. He grimaced. Were they trying to burn him alive now?

  Nick certainly had no desire to experience that particular death. He watched them slowly curl around from the south, plodding along. They did not speak with each other but just walked, their black eyes the only alert part of them. It gave him shivers studying them so closely. Something was clearly wrong with this village, some disease or sickness.

  Do you know what it is? he silently asked Cataloger.

  The people of Alder call it the blight

  Yes, but what do you call it? What is it truly?

  The affliction is not cataloged

  Nick was starting to wonder just how helpful this voice in his head would be if she kept finding ways to not answer his most intriguing questions. Then again, he suspected a lot of what he asked was beyond her purpose. He was doing the equivalent of asking philosophical and metaphysical questions to an AI tour guide.

  Once the patrol was curling around the western edge of the village, Nick burst out from the wheat. He ran across the grass toward the nearest home. He’d thought about giving the village an extra-wide berth, but he feared the open space would only make him easier to spot. Instead he dashed from home to home, keeping in their shadows, always ensuring he could not be seen from the main road. Perhaps he could have shown more caution, but once his pulse was pounding, he found it hard to slow down. A whole world awaited. He just needed to get past Meadowtint.

  When he was a few hundred steps beyond the borders of the village, Sir Gareth’s voice broke the tense silence.

  “Demon Nick!”

  Shit shit shit shit shit!

  He refused to look at his green stamina bar as he sprinted, just focused on breathing in and out. It helped to pretend it was his actual body running—keep those arms and legs swinging. The sprawling forest beyond the creek was near. He just needed to cross it, that place of his very first death.

  Nick half expected the mysterious woman in silver to be waiting to freeze him in ice again. Instead, he found just the shallow flow of the creek. He splashed straight on through without stopping. Beyond were the thick trunks of apparent oak trees, and he dashed into them without a care for direction, bobbing and weaving among the trunks. His stamina was almost 0, but he dared not slow down. Just a little bit farther, a little bit…

  Once he suspected Gareth could not see him through the dense trees, he hooked an immediate right and ran parallel to the tree line. Outrunning Gareth was impossible in Nick’s current state, but if he could get a moment to catch his breath and watch that stupid little green bar refill? Then he’d have a chance. He sprinted until his meter hit 0, when his entire body locked into spasms, his ability to run utterly annihilated.

  Nick collapsed behind a tree, his back pressed to the trunk and his legs pulled up to his chest. There he sat, gasping for air as quietly as he could manage, while Gareth barreled into the forest at a distance, sounding like a rampaging bull smashing through underbrush and low-hanging branches. Nick closed his eyes, daring to crack a smile. The juke had worked.

  Won’t find me over there, Nick thought as the sound of the knight’s frantic searching grew more distant.

  While he was hardly safe, Nick suspected it would take mustering the whole village to catch him in a search. Perhaps they would, perhaps not, but Nick had no plans to wait to find out. Once he felt like he’d recovered, and his heart wasn’t hammering hard enough to punch out the front of his chest, he stood and stretched his arms.

  “All right, forest,” he whispered. “I have no idea what’s in you, but it can’t possibly be worse than what’s waiting for me back at Meadowtint.”

  Perhaps this was untrue, but Nick pushed the thought away as he jogged deeper into the woods at a southward angle away from where Sir Gareth chased. He did his best not to fret or feed the anxiety settling into his belly at entering this unknown stretch of land.

  At least if he got killed, it’d be by something new.