Chapter 18: The Glass Cage
The next morning, after a solid sleep and a hot meal that didn't taste of dungeon stone, Azazel and Reginleif returned to the guild hall. The air smelled of ink, wood polish, and ambition instead of damp and monster ichor. It was a good change.
Azazel scanned the quest board, his eyes skipping over the high-risk dungeon delves and escort missions. His gaze settled on a simple parchment pinned near the bottom.
Quest: Boar Menace
· Objective: Kill or scare off a rampaging boar terrorizing the western farmlands of Oakhaven.
· Threat Level: Low–Medium
· Complication: High charge damage, territorial aggression.
· Reward: 5 Silver Pieces + rights to harvested boar meat.
· Notes: Recommended for small parties. Teaches timing and positioning against single, powerful foes.
He plucked it from the board. "This one."
Reginleif leaned over to read it. "A boar? After what we just fought?"
"Exactly," Azazel said, bringing the slip to the counter. "After what we just fought, a boar sounds like a vacation. We get paid, we get fresh meat for rations, and we don't have to worry about fusion events or undead knights. It's called a morale booster."
The receptionist processed the request with a smile. "A wise choice. Many young adventurers underestimate a enraged boar, but for a pair who've braved the deeper Tears… it should be a straightforward lesson in field basics. Good luck."
---
The journey to the western farmlands was a revelation in itself. Sunlight, real and warm, filtered through leafy trees. Birds chirped. The dirt path was soft underfoot. It was almost disorientingly peaceful.
They found the affected farmstead easily—the tale of destruction was written in trampled vegetable plots, a splintered section of fence, and the fearful eyes of the farmer's family peering from a shuttered window.
The farmer, a wiry man with dirt under his nails, pointed a shaking hand toward a thicket of brambles at the edge of a fallow field. "It's in there. Comes out like a thunderbolt when it's hungry or riled. Took my best dog yesterday. Please, be careful."
They approached the thicket cautiously. The air was still. Then, they heard it—a deep, guttural snorting, and the sound of roots being torn up.
The boar emerged.
It was a monster of muscle and rage, not mana. It stood as high as Azazel's waist, covered in coarse, muddy-brown bristles. Tusks like curved daggers gleamed yellow from its slavering maw. One beady, red eye fixed on them immediately. It pawed the ground, sending clods of earth flying. This wasn't a dungeon creature with a magical core; this was pure, primal, territorial violence.
"Remember," Azazel said softly, his kukri held low. "Notes said timing and positioning."
The boar decided for them. With a snort that was almost a roar, it charged. It was terrifyingly fast, a low, hairy boulder moving with the unstoppable force of a battering ram. The ground vibrated.
Reginleif, true to her style, flowed to the side like water, letting the charge pass harmlessly. Azazel held his ground until the last second, then pivoted, aiming a slash at its flank as it passed. His kukri bit deep, but it was like cutting seasoned leather. The boar squealed in fury, skidding to a halt and whirling with shocking agility. The wound bled, but only seemed to make it angrier.
"High charge damage," Reginleif called out, stating the obvious as the boar focused on Azazel, its head lowered. "Don't try to parry that!"
"Wasn't planning on it," Azazel muttered.
The boar charged again. This time, Azazel didn't try to cut it. He focused on the patch of ground just before the boar. "You Shadow." The boar's own charging shadow, stretched long by the afternoon sun, erupted into grasping tendrils. They couldn't hold the massive creature, but they tangled around its front legs like tripwires.
The boar stumbled, its charge breaking into a clumsy, crashing roll. It righted itself instantly, shaking its head, disoriented and now incandescent with rage.
"My turn," Reginleif said. She wasn't darting. She stood her ground, fifteen feet from the boar. As it gathered itself for another charge, she drew her arm back and thrust it forward. "Piercing Feather."
The compressed wind shot true, not aimed at the tough body, but at the boar's shoulder joint. It struck with a wet thunk. The boar shrieked, its front leg buckling. It didn't fall, but its charge was ruined, reduced to a pained, lurching scramble.
This was the opening. The "positioning." The boar was hurt, unbalanced, and focused on the source of its new pain—Reginleif.
Azazel moved in from the side, the boar's blind spot. He didn't slash. He timed his step with the boar's lurch, planted his feet, and with both hands on the hilt, drove the point of his kukri down in a brutal stab behind its shoulder, aiming for the heart.
The blade sank to the hilt. The boar's violent shudder traveled up the steel into Azazel's arms. It let out one final, bubbling snort, its legs gave way, and it collapsed heavily onto its side, the fight gone out of it.
Silence returned to the field, broken only by their breathing and the distant caw of a crow.
It was over. No fusion, no second phase, no tragic lore. Just a dangerous animal that had threatened people's livelihoods, now dead.
The farmer emerged, tears of relief in his eyes. He paid them the five silver on the spot and insisted they take the entire boar. "You've saved more than my crops," he said, his voice thick.
It took the better part of an hour to field-dress the massive animal. They kept the best cuts of meat—enough to fill their rations for a week—and gave the rest to the grateful farmer and his family.
As they walked back toward town in the late afternoon sun, the scent of blood and earth on them, Azazel felt a strange sense of… closure. The gold from the core was for the deep, dark, insane work. This silver, and this meat, felt earned in a different, cleaner way.
"A vacation," Reginleif said, echoing his earlier words as she shouldered a pack wrapped in clean cloth. "But a useful one."
"Yeah," Azazel agreed, a faint, genuine smile touching his lips. It was a good lesson. Not every fight needed to be a world-ending duel. Sometimes, it was just about timing, positioning, and protecting a patch of dirt someone called home. It was a simpler page in their manual, but a necessary one.
The road back to town stretched ahead, peaceful and ordinary. For today, it was enough.
---
After reporting the successful boar hunt and collecting their silver, Azazel and Reginleif lingered by the guild board. The afternoon light slanted across the parchment, highlighting various pleas and bounties.
Azazel's eyes, honed by a life of spotting bad deals, scanned past the high-risk dungeon dives. He wasn't looking for glory; he was looking for information and low-risk yield. His gaze snagged on a simple notice pinned on the lower edge of the board.
Quest: Missing Villager
· Objective: Locate Tarin Feld, a woodsman from Oakhaven's outskirts. Last seen three days ago near the western treeline.
· Threat Level: Low (No monster activity reported in the area)
· Reward: 3 Silver Pieces for confirmation of status.
· Notes: Likely lost or injured. Search and rescue.
Reginleif read it over his shoulder. "A woodsman. Probably twisted an ankle in a gully."
"Maybe," Azazel murmured, but his tone was flat. He reached out and tore the notice from the board. "Low-threat quests are where people lie."
"Or where amateurs get killed because they stop paying attention," Reginleif finished, her smirk lacking any real humor. It was a shared understanding. The simple ones hid the rot.
The farmer they'd just helped pointed them toward Tarin's isolated cottage. It was neat, too neat. No signs of struggle, but no signs of recent life either. A cold hearth, a half-whittled piece of wood on the table.
The real trail began at the tree line. It was subtle, but Azazel's eyes—trained to see what people tried to hide—picked it out. Drag marks, but not the chaotic skid of a body being pulled. They were intentional, spaced. A boot heel digging in periodically. Someone walking, but struggling against a pull. Broken twigs weren't scattered; they were snapped at measured intervals, as if something wide was being carefully maneuvered.
He knelt, his fingers brushing the moss. He brought them to his nose. Beneath the scent of damp earth and pine, it was faint, but unmistakable—a sharp, acrid, metallic tang that spoke of chemical reactions and heated glass.
"Alchemy," he stated, rising. "Bad alchemy. Not healing draughts. The corrosive kind."
The trail didn't lead deep into known monster territory. It curved away from the village, toward a crumbling stone structure visible on a nearby hill: an old watchtower, abandoned decades ago. A place no sensible villager would go. A perfect place to not be seen.
They approached in silence, using the terrain as cover. The wooden door was splintered, not broken in, but carefully pried open. The metallic scent was stronger here, mixed with something coppery.
Inside, the grey light from arrow slits illuminated a scene of methodical horror.
They found Tarin Feld. Alive. Barely.
The woodsman was strapped upright to a heavy wooden chair, his head lolling. Crude, fiendishly intricate glass tubes and vials formed a cage around him, running from his wrists and temples into a central, pulsating crystal apparatus covered in jagged, unstable runes. Thin, precise lines of his own blood traced through the crystal channels like macabre circuitry. The crystal hummed with a low, hungry frequency.
Standing over the apparatus, adjusting a dial with a focused, almost tender care, was an adventurer. His gear was worn but well-maintained, leather and steel. The guild tag on his chest was clearly visible: Iron Rank.
He turned slowly at their entrance, not startled. A thin, pleasant smile spread across his face. It was the most disturbing thing Azazel had seen in the dungeon.
"Ah," the man said, his voice calm, conversational. "Bronze rats. You're early. The resonance hasn't peaked yet."
Reginleif's blades were in her hands in an instant. "What have you done?"
"Research," the man replied, gesturing to Tarin as if presenting a mildly interesting experiment. "Trying to force a Mythic resonance in a mundane subject. The Glass fragments are so... particular. They need the right frequency of life-force to vibrate. To awaken."
Azazel's mind, already in threat-assessment mode, slotted the pieces together. The Brotherhood's interest in dungeons. Their blockade of information. "The Brotherhood," he said, his voice dangerously low. "They're paying for this."
The Iron-Rank's smile widened, showing teeth. "They pay exceedingly well for reactive data. They don't particularly care if the subject lives. Only if the glass reacts."
Tarin let out a weak, guttural scream as the crystal's hum intensified, the blood in the channels flowing faster.
Reginleif took a step forward, her knuckles white. "You used a villager like livestock."
The man shrugged, a gesture of pure, chilling indifference. "Villagers are cheaper than adventurers. Less paperwork, too."
That was all the justification they needed. Reginleif moved, a silver dart aiming to dismantle the apparatus. The Iron-Rank adventurer didn't flinch. He simply raised a hand.
His Glass Mythic activated.
His skin didn't glow; it fractured. His body became a mosaic of translucent, shifting plates that refracted the dim light. Each movement left behind razor-thin, shimmering afterimages. With a thought, shards of hardened glass coalesced from the air around him, forming into jagged blades that shot towards Reginleif.
The watchtower became a deadly kaleidoscope. Glass constructs exploded on impact, sending deadly shrapnel in all directions. Reginleif weaved through the storm, using her daggers not just to parry, but to shatter incoming projectiles with precise, concussive blows, the air ringing with the sound of breaking crystal.
Azazel didn't charge. He observed, his Analytical Mind dissecting the threat. The glass wasn't just a weapon; it was a lens, a prism. It bent light, created false images. He saw Reginleif lunge at a refracted afterimage, her blade passing through empty air. He focused on the man's shadow, distorted by the swirling glass.
"You Shadow." He didn't try to bind the man directly. Instead, he commanded the shadow to twist and swell in the man's peripheral vision, a sudden, disorienting blot of darkness amid the glittering light show. The adventurer faltered for a half-second, his concentration broken.
It was enough. Reginleif, adapting instantly, changed her target. She didn't aim for the man, but for the stone floor near his feet. A downward stab with all her strength, not to pierce, but to shatter. The flagstone cracked violently. The man stumbled, his graceful, refractive dance broken by physical instability.
Azazel closed the distance. He saw it then, in the man's eyes behind the fractured glass—not fear, not greed. It was a feverish, obsessive gleam. This wasn't a mercenary doing a job. This was an artist, a fanatic, enraptured by his own cruel craft.
"It's not unstable," Azazel realized aloud, his kukri held ready. "Your Mythic. It's obsessive. You like this."
The adventurer, regaining his footing, laughed—a brittle, cracking sound. "Seeing the potential awaken... it's beautiful! The moment of breaking... and becoming something more!"
Reginleif, seeing an opening created by his rant, moved. A low, sweeping kick, enhanced by a gust of compressed wind, caught his already unbalanced leg. A sickening crack echoed. The man cried out, his glass form flickering as pain overrode his control.
Azazel was there. He didn't deliver a dramatic slash. He performed a single, brutal, Pragmatically Violent thrust. The kukri's point aimed not for the heart, but for the center of the glowing, pulsating glass core that had manifested on the man's chest—the source of the Mythic. The blade punched through the crystalline plate with a sound like a windowpane giving way.
The adventurer collapsed, his Mythic dissolving. The beautiful, deadly glass shattered into mundane, dusty fragments. He lay on the cold stone, blood—real, red blood—mixing with the crystal dust. He coughed, a wet, failing sound, but he was still smiling, his eyes wide with a dying ecstasy.
"You think... I did this just for money?" he rasped, looking up at Azazel with an almost reverent gaze.
Another cough, a spray of red.
"I wanted to see it happen. I wanted to watch someone break... and be reborn in the light of a new power. Some people aren't evil because they're poor…" His voice faded, then gathered its last strength in a whisper. "...they're evil because they're curious."
Azazel stared down at him, the words settling like stones in his gut. He thought of all the violent, greedy men he'd known. This was different. This was a sickness of the soul he understood on a terrifying level—the lure of the experiment, the cold fascination with pushing limits, regardless of the cost. But where Azazel's curiosity was bent on survival, this man's was bent on transcendence through torture.
"I used to think bad people did things like this for money, or power," Azazel said quietly, his voice devoid of its usual sarcastic edge. It was just a flat, cold statement of a revised worldview. "But some of you are just… fucking crazy."
He ended it. A quick, merciful slash across the throat. The obsessive light in the man's eyes winked out. The last of the glass shards around them lost their inner light and became just rubbish.
The silence that followed was heavier than any dungeon quiet.
They freed Tarin, who was pale and shivering, his arms marked with fine, glowing scars from the apparatus. He would live, but he was broken in a way no monster could achieve. Reginleif systematically smashed every piece of the glass apparatus, grinding the runes under her heel.
"Burn it," Azazel said, his voice tired. He picked up the Iron-Rank's guild tag from the cooling corpse. Proof.
Reginleif did. She used oil from their supplies and set the wooden chair and the notes she found on a small table ablaze. "No one should repeat this," she said, watching the flames consume the madman's research.
---
Back in Oakhaven, they didn't lie. They gathered the villagers, the farmer whose boar they'd slain, the elderly headwoman. Azazel laid it out with brutal, transactional clarity. He told them about the rogue Iron-Rank adventurer, about the experiment, about the Brotherhood's funding. He showed them the tag.
There was no cheering. There was grief, a deep, communal rage, and a chilling fear that settled over the small community. The monster wasn't from the woods; it wore their own guild's insignia. Tarin would survive, but he was a ghost of himself, haunted not by shadows, but by the memory of his own blood singing in a crystal cage.
The villagers thanked them anyway, their voices hollow. The headwoman pressed the three silver pieces into Azazel's hand, her grip tight. Some truths, Azazel understood, watching their frightened faces, hurt far worse than comforting lies.
---
In the guild hall, the atmosphere was different. The casual chatter died as they approached the counter. Azazel didn't hand over the quest slip. He slammed the Iron-Rank guild tag onto the polished wood. The sound was like a gunshot in the quiet room.
"Iron-Rank adventurer. Rogue. Deceased."
The cheery receptionist's face went pale. She called over a senior clerk, a stern-faced man with a platinum pin on his lapel. They submitted a terse, factual report. Azazel dictated; Reginleif confirmed. They mentioned the Glass Mythic experiments and the direct involvement of The Brotherhood.
The clerk's expression grew graver with each word. He stamped their quest parchment with a heavy, final thud.
QUEST UPDATED:
Missing Villager — RESOLVED
New Threat Registered: Rogue Adventurer Activity / Brotherhood Influence
The reward was issued—the three silver, plus a five-gold "Hazard Discovery" bonus. But the coins felt insignificant.
What mattered was the look in the senior clerk's eyes as they turned to leave. A look of reassessment, of wariness, and of dawning recognition. They were no longer just another pair of Bronze rookies doing pest control.
They were a variable. A catalyst.
Azazel and Reginleif had been noticed.
Walking out into the twilight, the weight of the day settled on Azazel. The clean, brutal lesson of the boar had been overwritten by a darker, more complex truth. The world wasn't divided into monsters and villagers. It was filled with people, and some people carried a different kind of darkness within them—a cold, curious madness that was perhaps more terrifying than any dungeon-born beast.
He glanced at Reginleif, her face set in a grim line. She felt it too.
End of Chapter 18