With five flashes of white light appearing within the designated teleporter zone in the middle of Berkhamsted's town square, Deacon and the rest of Ravenlight were dumped unceremoniously to the floor.
Berkhamsted Town – the first Floor Five ever lived in, and the first ever Floor to be completed that wasn't by Generation One and was completed by Generation Three.
Honestly, he'd half-expected to see it as some sort of fortress town, given that the last few Floors had been fortresses. But instead…
As he picked himself back up, he looked around for a moment to take in the sight of the second-ever town created and lived-in Floor.
On the right side of the town square, they could see rural-looking houses made of stone and brick with angled black roofs that lined the main street, with their chimneys puffing faint threads of smoke into the night sky. He also noticed that along these rural-looking houses, there were oak-colored wooden fences with tidy flowerbeds going along their base, and from what he could see, there were laundry lines strung along the sides of the fences.
On the left side of the town square was something that looked far more modern and recently built, signifying it as the commercial area of the town, further proven by the convenience and general stores that lined its front, along with various taverns and a massive CFMT Tower, a couple of buildings down from them, which for some reason stood above a water fountain.
It was unsettlingly normal, ignoring the placement of the CFMT Tower, so much so that his mind immediately went back to Floor Zero's town square.
"Ah, fuck me–" Bonehead hissed through his teeth, or what remained of them, as he struggled to keep upright – immediately snapping everyone out of their revelry of being in a new town.
Bonehead instinctively tried to clutch at his ribcage with the stub of his left arm, but of course, nothing was there to clutch with. The whole upper-left part of him was missing, and the bones around with covered in lightning-like cracks of bright golden mana – Holy Mana.
"Easy," Deacon muttered, already moving to catch Bonehead as his skull began to rattle when he tried to steady himself after the teleport. He shoved his shoulder beneath Bonehead's remaining good arm, hauling the skeleton upright. The familiar weight pressed down hard, even though it was mostly bone. Bonehead's jaw was grinding faintly as he tried to suppress the pain that was quite literally corroding his body.
"I got you," Deacon said, more firm this time. His eyes darted up, scanning left and right, trying to find a marker that informed him where a graveyard was, or some crypt.
Glancing down at the holy mana that was creeping up Bonehead's bones, they needed to find one fast before it started to heavily affect his core.
"Two hundred meters west," Esmerelda snapped quickly, pointing with her whole arm at a signpost at the crossroads ahead, clearly read: "BERKHAMSTED GRAVEYARD – 200 meters".
Deacon's gaze locked on it, and his jaw set.
"Perfect," he muttered as he began to shift his positioning and in one motion, he crouched, dragged Bonehead onto his back, and straightened into giving Bonehead a piggyback ride. The skeleton groaned but held on tight, hooking his remaining arm around Deacon's neck.
Deacon broke into a sprint toward the graveyard, Sam falling in a few paces behind. Together they formed the spearhead, bulldozing straight down the road that led to the graveyard while yelling at people to get out of their way.
Behind them, Esmerelda and Jass slowed, already breaking off toward a cluster of shops near the square.
"We'll grab a Party Room!" Esmerelda shouted after them.
"And order a table for the five of us!" Jass shouted just after Esmerelda did.
Sam only gave a single, quick thumbs up over his shoulder as he continued to push himself to keep up with Deacon.
After pushing past the crowded street that led to the graveyard, the Berkhamsted Graveyard's spade-tipped gates came into view and revealed to them that they were closed by a thin bolt lock.
But Deacon didn't slow down.
Instead, he adjusted his grip on Bonehead and vaulted straight at the large fence gate. As he reached the apex of his jump, his boots barely touched the spade tips of the fence before pushing off from them and clearing the gate in its entirety.
He landed harshly atop the wet grass of the graveyard, causing mud to splatter across the lower half of his body and face, which in turn almost caused him to tumble and slip, but with a miraculous grab, he managed to catch himself by grabbing hold of a tombstone.
Not a second later, as he steadied himself, a loud metallic clang resounded from behind him.
The cause? Sam's entire body smacked against the bars.
Even though the gate was met with the full force of a level 10 mage with relatively decent physical stats, the gate didn't so much as budge.
Sam peeled his face off it with a painful groan, clutching the side of his head like he'd just been sideswiped by a carriage.
"Ugh… just go on, I'll catch up," Sam muttered, stumbling back into place before immediately doubling over and vomiting off to the side as he was now suffering from both immense vertigo and a critically low mana reserve.
"I'll be heading to the east side!" Deacon shouted back as he cut left.
Deacon's boots carried him fast through the maze, weaving around hundreds of gravestones and unmarked graves without breaking stride.
As he ran through the graveyard, Deacon immediately took notice of the many groups of undead either slumping against gravestones and monuments or dragging themselves towards the emptier side of the graveyard and tossing themselves into the empty graves marked as "Resting Grounds".
Their heads turned lazily to trace Deacon as he carried Bonehead, but none of them made an attempt to do anything other than that.
Bonehead groaned against his back, golden veins of holy mana crawling further across his ribs, his jaw grinding loud enough for Deacon to hear past his own breath.
"Hold on Ben," Deacon muttered, ducking under the wing of a moss-covered angel statue as he pressed eastward. "Just a little longer and I'll find a good, isolated place for you to heal."
He cut through a narrow path between two tilted obelisks and leaped over a gravemarker covered in bright white flowers - nearly slipping on a stray tulip, but managing to right himself by grabbing hold of a cross-shaped gravemarker belonging to a man called Tim El-Hindi.
Once he passed into a section of the graveyard that caused the air around him to feel heavier and was thick with the faint stench of rotting bodies, he began to slow his pace and began to actively look for a place to put down Bonehead.
Spotting a clearing tucked between rows of stone tombstones and far enough away from other undead, Deacon quickly made his way over there.
Upon reaching the clearing, he kneeled atop the mud and carefully slid Bonehead down from his back. Leaning him against the backside of a tombstone, he made sure to position him so his bony ass wasn't planted directly above anyone's grave.
Bonehead let out a low grunt as his core rattled faintly within his sternum as he pushed himself upright into a sitting position, which caused the golden cracks lacing across his ribs, left arm, and leg to flicker in the moonlight.
Deacon gave him a firm pat on the shoulder before getting up from his kneeling and took a couple steps back while taking in their surroundings.
Hopping atop a cube-shaped pedestal that held up a stone statue of some warrior whose head and sword in both hands faced down, Deacon then began to watch as Bonehead connected himself to the graveyard.
Thin tendrils of shadow leaked from the graves around them before they began to coil towards and into the holy mana that was actively corroding his body.
Bonehead's jaw dropped open in a gasping moan as the undead miasma forced its way inside his body and actively began to forcibly overwhelm and push out the holy mana that had seeped into and was corroding his bones.
Pulling his gaze away from Bonehead as he healed, he took notice of various groups of undead lingering further down the east side of the graveyard.
Some were leaned against statues like he was, and others were slouched beside tombstones, not unlike Bonehead.
As if sensing Deacon's gaze, their own gazes flicked his way and remained on him before they landed on Bonehead.
[Skeleton Lv 24]
…
[Ghoul Lv 32]
Deacon's hand instinctively hovered near the hilt of his blade at the sudden feeling of being hit by at least twenty types of Identifies, but slowly lowered his hand as they then turned their gazes away from the two of them.
Letting out a tense breath, Deacon turned to the side and saw many groups of undead that were around level 10 nursing their own wounds that were drenched in holy mana in the exact same way Bonehead was, meaning that they were also in the same generation as them, Generation 327.
At the sound of heavy panting and the humanoid bubble of wind mana moving in his direction, Deacon snapped his head around, still tense from his encounter with the higher-ranked undead – but as he faced who was rushing towards him, he visibly slumped back down against the statue's facedown blade.
Stumbling into the clearing like a toddler learning to run, mud streaked across his armor and sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, Sam finally caught up.
With a loud groan that echoed throughout the graveyard, which in particular caught the attention of a couple of ghouls, Sam managed to pull himself onto the stone cube pedestal where Deacon sat and collapsed onto his back with his hands splayed out like an eagle as he drew in deep breaths.
"That was one hell of a bang," Deacon said, smirking as he watched Sam's exhausted state trying to recover. "Like Bonehead's spirit got your ass back in revenge."
Bonehead let out a low, amused chuckle as the pain of the holy mana that invaded his bones was now subsiding, as the corrosive cracks they caused along his bones and the minor gash they caused in his core were now being filled with undead miasma. "You're lucky my spirit stopped there and didn't decide to fill your shampoo with anti-hair solution instead," he added.
Sam pushed himself upright slowly, mud crunching beneath him, and slumped into a sitting position on the pedestal beside Deacon. He didn't snap back at Bonehead, didn't throw a jab of his own. Instead, he lowered his head and let out a long, quiet breath. "Man… I'm sorry, I didn't–"
"Man~, shut the fuck up," Bonehead cut him off as he turned to look at Sam. "I'm not dead, so everything is good… I mean, none of us knew that the room we entered would be a trap room. So, it's fine."
"But I was the one who suggested going into that room," Sam interjected.
"I was just about to say the same thing. If you hadn't, I would've," Bonehead said with a dismissive wave, clicking his tongue. "Shit happens, but the world keeps spinning."
"So, let's just drink and talk while I finish healing. No need for apologies between friends." He reached into his Spatial Satchel and, with careful fingers, pulled out a can of beer – ironically named Graveyard Lager, brewed so even the undead could get drunk. With a flick of his skeletal digits, the tab snapped open.
"Amen to that," Deacon said with a smirk as he reached into his Spatial Sling Bag and took out two regular beers and handed one to Sam, who begrudgingly took it.
Deacon cracked open his own beer and quickly took a sip of his own as he let his eyes continue to scan their surroundings. "What do you mean by that saying, 'Shit happens, but the world keeps spinning'?" He asked as he hid his mouth with the can. "It's the first time I've heard that saying before."
Bonehead shrugged. "I dunno, to be honest. I just saw some old-ass poster back on Floor One that said that, and it kinda sounded fitting to say."