The weight at his waist was heavier than mere bone and flesh.
As Kaelen climbed the steep canyon wall, the head of Sister Elara swung at his hip, bumping softly against his thigh. Every time the skin of the corpse's face touched his leg, Kaelen felt a piercing cold sensation penetrate his worn cloth trousers, as if he were carrying a chunk of dry ice.
However, the "curse" had its benefits.
Kaelen paused for a moment, driving his shovel into the chest cavity of a giant skeleton to hold on. His breathing was heavy, but his eyes were alert. Below him, about five meters down, a pack of corpse hounds was sniffing out his blood trail. They were hungry, savage, and numbered in the dozens.
But they stopped.
The hounds whined, their tails tucked between their legs, staring at Kaelen—or rather, what Kaelen was carrying—with a peculiar fear. They backed away slowly, then ran back into the darkness of the pit's bottom.
"They're afraid of you," Kaelen whispered, glancing down at the black hair tied to his belt. "Or disgusted."
Elara's head did not answer. Her eyes, sewn shut with gold thread, remained closed, but her mouth formed a very faint, thin smile. As if she enjoyed the authority she radiated even in death.
[Passive Effect Detected: Aura of the Defiled Saint]
[Effect: Low-level Necrotic creatures fear your presence.]
[Cost: Minor drain on Sanity while equipped.]
Kaelen snorted. Nothing was free. This protection was slowly eating away at his sanity, drop by drop. He could feel it—a buzzing noise at the back of his head, an impulsive desire to laugh for no reason. He swallowed it back down.
Focus. Find a way out.
Kaelen looked up. He was already in the upper "Disposal Cliffs" sector. The clay walls here were studded with rotting wooden stakes protruding out, remnants of failed earth-retaining structures. The pale yellow light from the surface was becoming clearer, illuminating floating dust motes.
About fifty meters above him, there was a wide stone platform—the only stable flat area. And at the end of that platform, embedded in the crater wall, stood a gigantic iron barred gate. The main sewage channel.
The exit.
Kaelen forced his sore leg muscles to move. He jumped from one wooden stake to another, his movements stiff yet efficient. His Stamina drained quickly. The yellow bar in his vision dropped until only a quarter remained.
When his hands finally gripped the edge of the stone platform, Kaelen didn't immediately pull himself up. He froze.
A heavy thumping sound vibrated the stone he was hanging from.
Boom... Boom... Boom...
Footsteps. Big. Very big.
Kaelen pulled himself up slowly, just high enough to peek over the edge of the stone. His pupils contracted.
In front of the iron gate stood a figure that made the corpse hounds from earlier look like cute pets.
The creature stood three meters tall, its shape resembling a human suffering from extreme obesity. But it wasn't ordinary fat. Its body was a lump of skins from different corpses, colored differently and stitched crudely to one another using barbed wire. Its stomach was open, revealing a small furnace burning dimly inside its belly, as if it were a walking incinerator.
Its face was covered by an iron mask welded to the flesh of its head. In its right hand, it dragged a giant rusty meat hook along the stone, sparking fire.
[Boss Entity Detected]
[Name: The Disposal Warden (Lv. 5)]
[Description: The guardian who ensures trash stays trash.]
The level difference was 4. In a normal game, that was small. In Aurelias, with Kaelen's pathetic stats, that difference was a death sentence.
Suddenly, the iron gate behind the creature shook. From the gap in the bars, a "Crawler"—perhaps another poor soul not yet fully dead—tried to crawl out.
The Warden stopped. He rotated his thick neck with a painful crack.
Soundlessly, the Warden swung his giant hook. The movement was slow, but the momentum was terrifying.
SWISH!
The iron hook pierced the runner's back, yanking him out of the gap in the bars like pulling a fish from water. The person screamed—a heartbreaking, hoarse scream—as the Warden hoisted him high into the air.
Then, with his free left hand, the Warden grabbed his victim's legs. Kaelen turned his face away, but he couldn't close his ears.
The sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone echoed across the platform. The Warden ripped the body in two, then threw the pieces into the corpse pit below, returning them to where trash belonged.
Silence blanketed the platform once more. The Warden resumed dragging his feet, patrolling in front of the gate. Right, left. Right, left.
Kaelen lowered his body back behind the cliff edge, his heart beating hard against his chest. He looked at his Strength stat: 5. He wouldn't be able to parry that hook. One hit, and Kaelen's body would shatter like a dry twig.
He had to think. He stared at the surroundings through his system eyes. [Gravedigger's Eye] activated, turning the world into gray structural lines.
He saw the Warden's patrol pattern. The creature was heavy, sluggish. He saw the footing on the stone platform. The stone was slippery with corpse fat. And he saw something else...
Above the iron gate, there was an old pulley with a large chain holding a pile of stone debris—likely remnants of a broken gate defense mechanism. The chain was severely rusted. Its weak point glowed red in Kaelen's vision.
A crazy and dangerous idea began to form in his head.
He couldn't defeat the Warden with muscle. He had to use gravity.
But to do that, he had to climb higher, directly above the gate, without being detected. And then, he had to lure the creature into the right position.
Kaelen stared at Sister Elara's head. "Hey," he whispered as quietly as possible. "Can you sing again?"
The head's mouth didn't move, but a sarcastic voice echoed directly in Kaelen's brain, sharp as a razor. You want me to attract that abomination's attention, Gravedigger?
"I need a distraction. Five seconds. Exactly when I give you the signal."
And why should I help you commit suicide?
"Because if I die," Kaelen grinned coldly, "You will fall back to the bottom of the pit, and rot there forever with those hounds."
Silence for a moment. The threat was effective.
One song, Elara's voice sounded sour. Make it count.
Kaelen took a deep breath, filling his still-aching lungs. He slipped the shovel onto his back and began climbing the cliff side, circling far to the side to avoid the Warden's view.
His fingers gripped the stone crevices, his nails breaking and bleeding. He ignored it. Three meters. Five meters. He was now above the gate, right next to the debris-holding chain. The Warden was below him, standing still, back to the wall.
The position wasn't perfect yet. The Warden was too far from the drop zone.
Kaelen untied Elara's hair from his waist. He held the head with one hand, dangling it over the cliff edge.
"Now," Kaelen commanded in his mind.
Down there, Sister Elara's mouth opened. Not a quiet mumble like in the coffin. This time, she screamed a high, clear soprano note—a holy hymn that was ear-splitting to creatures of darkness.
"GLORIA IN EXCELSIS...!"
The Warden jolted. He spun around quickly, eyes behind his iron mask searching for the source of the holy sound burning his ears. He saw the woman's head held by someone's hand atop the cliff.
"GRAAAH!" The Warden roared, the sound of a broken steam engine. He ran forward, toward the wall below Kaelen, raising his hook high to reach that disgusting head.
Right in position.
Kaelen pulled Elara's head back, then quickly swung his shovel with all his might at the rusty chain link.
CLANG!
His shovel bent, but the rust lost. The chain link snapped. The half-ton pile of stone debris held above was released from its restraints.
The Warden looked up just as a massive shadow covered his face.
CRASHHH!
Dust billowed high. The screech of metal clashing with flesh sounded sickening. The platform shook.
As the dust began to thin, Kaelen peeked down.
The Warden was buried half-body under large boulders. His hook was thrown far away. However, the creature was not dead yet. His giant trembling hands tried to push the rocks crushing his back.
His health bar, now visible to the System, had very little remaining. [Health: 5% (Crippled/Stunned)]
"Tough bastard," Kaelen jumped down, landing with a clumsy roll on the platform.
He didn't waste time. He ran toward the Warden's head, which was pinned between rocks. The creature groaned, trying to bite Kaelen through the gaps in his mask.
Kaelen didn't use his shovel. The shovel was blunt. He looked at the Warden's giant hook lying on the floor. He wasn't strong enough to lift it, but he could drag it.
He dragged the sharp end of the hook, positioning it right above the Warden's exposed neck gap.
"Good job," Kaelen said coldly, staring into the monster's panicked eyes.
He jumped, stomping on the hook's handle with his entire body weight.
Shhhk.
The iron hook pierced the Warden's throat, severing the head from his fat body. The giant body convulsed once, then went still. The furnace light in his belly went out.
An immense warmth flooded Kaelen's body. Much greater than before.
[BOSS DEFEATED: The Disposal Warden]
[Calculated Kill: Environment Tactics Bonus +50% EXP]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Level: 1 -> 3]
[You have obtained: 150 Runes]
[Item Dropped: Key to the Faithless District]
Kaelen fell to a sitting position, his breath racing. He had gone up two levels at once. The pain throughout his body due to the instant Level Up began to spread—his muscles stretching forcibly, his spine popping. He groaned, curling up on the cold stone floor while chuckling amidst his suffering.
Beside him, Elara's head rolled slowly, her face looking bored.
What a mess, the voice in his head commented. But you survived. What a pity.