Kaelen hissed pushed himself up.
The sky was…ugly was the nicest word he could think of.
A pale, bruised yellow, like a week-old bruise slowly healing. No sun, no clouds, no stars, just that flat, endless yellow stretched across a horizon that seemed too far away and too close at the same time. The air was dry, so dry that each breath felt like swallowing sandpaper, and it carried a smell he could not name, it also something metallic, something that reminded him of the bone fields. Like a war ground.
The ground was brown grass, each blade as tall as his knee and sharp enough to slice skin.
The system flickered:
[Location: Unranked Dungeon – The Grass Sea]
[Classification: Unstable. Unmapped. Unranked.]
[Warning: Proceed with extreme caution. Dungeon has not been scouted.]
[Objective: Find the exit. Do not die.]
Kaelen stood slowly, his thighs screaming, his palms stinging. Sprite's claws were small pinpricks against his shoulder, the creature's breath warm against his neck. The beast was trembling. Something that made its yellow eyes go wide and its tail puff to twice its normal size.
"What," Kaelen whispered, "the fuck."
He rarely swore.
Around him, scattered across the grass like bones in a shallow grave, were weapons.
He saw swords driven into the earth, their blades rusted to red streaks. Axes with cracked handles, their heads buried so deep only the wooden stumps were visible. Spears lying flat, their points bent or broken. And closer to him, almost at his feet, a bow.
It was not like any bow he had seen. The limbs were made of crystal pale blue, translucent, with veins of darker color running through them like frozen lightning. The string was not string but a thin, glowing filament that hummed when the wind touched it. Beside the bow, tangled in the grass, were two daggers. Same crystal. Same blue. Same humming.
The system added:
[Weapons Detected: Crystal Bow of the Fallen (Unranked). Daggers of the Broken Path (Unranked).]
[Note: These weapons are bound to the dungeon. They cannot be removed. They can be used.]
Kaelen bent down. His fingers closed around the bow.
The crystal was warm.
He picked up the daggers. They were lighter than they looked, balanced for throwing, their edges sharp enough to catch the dead yellow light. He tucked them into his belt, one on each hip.
The grass whispered around him as he walked, each step sending up small clouds of dust that tasted like old bones. The horizon did not change. The yellow sky did not darken or lighten. There was no sun to track, no shadows to measure the passage of time. He could have been walking for minutes or hours. The hum beneath his skin was his only clock, and it beat slow and steady, unconcerned with his urgency.
Sprite's claws relaxed slightly. The creature's trembling had stopped, replaced by a low, continuous growl, more vibration than sound.
Then the grass moved.
Kaelen stopped. His hand went to the dagger at his right hip. The crystal was cool against his fingers, the edge so sharp it seemed to hum a different note than the bow.
Then the grass parted.
They came out of the brown field like fish breaching water, smooth and fast. Humanlike but not human. Their skin was the color of old parchment, stretched too tight over too many bones. Their faces had the right features in the wrong places: eyes where mouths should be, mouths where eyes should be, noses that were only suggestions, indentations in the flesh that breathed but did not smell. They walked upright, but their joints bent backward, knees that curved the wrong way, elbows that folded like broken wings.
Seven of them. No. Nine. More were still rising from the grass, pulling themselves up from the earth as if they had been buried there, waiting.
The system flickered:
[Hostiles Detected: Harvesters – Not supposed to be in ?//'@#$$]
[Threat Level: Moderate. They hunt in packs. Do not let them surround you.]
What?
Before he could ask, the first one lunged.
Kaelen moved before he thought. His hips twisted. The dagger in his right hand came up and across in a sweeping arc that caught the creature across its throat except the throat was not where a throat should be, and the blade bit into something soft and wet that sprayed dark ichor across his wrist.
His wrist burned but the creature did not fall.
Kaelen's mana flickered. His bleeding hand throbbed.
[Assessment: Acid-type corruption detected on external contact point. Source: non-biological fluid exuded by entity. Corrosion progressing at 0.3% per second. Estimated tendon damage in 47 seconds.]
Kaelen looked down at his bleeding knuckles. The dark, thick fluid was 'moving'. Just slightly. Seeping into the tiny cuts he had from punching silas.
[Recommendation: Purchase 'Minor Purification Tincture' from the System Shop. Cost: 150 points. Immediate neutralization of acid corruption. Permanent scarring prevented.]
'Advertising?' Kaelen thought, half-hysterical. 'Right now?'
[System Note: Would you like to purchase? Y/N]
[Acid corruption now at 8%. Tendon damage in 38 seconds. Purchase 'Minor Purification Tincture'? Y/N]
'Yes,' Kaelen thought. 'Fine. Yes.'
[Purchase confirmed. 15o points deducted. Applying tincture…]
A cool sensation spread across his knuckles. The dark fluid dissolved, the cuts stopped burning. His skin pulled itself together like a letter being folded.
Kaelen dropped to the ground, rolling sideways into the grass. The blades sliced at his arms, his cheeks, leaving thin red lines that stung and bled. He came up on one knee, the bow in his left hand, the dagger still dripping in his right.
The bow has no arrows, he thought. But maybe—
He pulled the string back.
Nothing happened. He coughed embarrassed and glad no one saw that.
Then the hum beneath his skin screamed.
The amber on his neck flared. Golden light poured down his arm, into the bow, and the string answered. Not an arrow a lance of light, thin and bright and burning, formed between his fingers, it was hot he released the string.
The light shot forward. It passed through the first creature's chest, through the second behind it, through the third behind that. Where it touched, the Harvesters did not die they unraveled, their parchment skin peeling back, their too-many bones collapsing into dust, their mouths-eyes closing one by one as if falling asleep.
The remaining Harvesters froze. Their head-turned faces tilted, un-jointed necks rotating too far, too fast. And then they screeched a sound like metal on metal.
Kaelen's ears rang. his vision blurred, he stumbled back, the bow dropping from his hand, his fingers going numb.
Sprite launched from his shoulder.
The small creature, no bigger than a house cat, all fur and fury, flew at the nearest Harvester, claws extended, mouth open in a hiss that was bigger than its body. It sank its teeth into the creature's face, right where a nose should have been, and bit down. The Harvester staggered, swatting at its own head, but Sprite held on, shaking, tearing.
Kaelen did not wait.
Clearly emotion was a trigger.
He scooped up the bow, pulled the string, and this time he did not think about the light or the amber or the hum. He thought about two point two million gold coins spent on a gate that was a trap.
He released.
The light lance flew not straight this time, but curved, bending around the Harvester Sprite was mauling, carving through two more before embedding itself in the chest of a fourth. The creatures unraveled. The screeching stopped.
The last Harvester turned and ran. It did not run like a human. It ran like a spider, all limbs, no grace, vanishing into the brown grass with a rustle that faded too quickly.
Kaelen stood in the silence, breathing hard. His arm ached. His ears were still ringing. Sprite dropped from the dead Harvester's face, landed on all fours, and licked its paw with deliberate unconcern.
The system flickered:
[Combat Complete. Hostiles Eliminated: 6 of 7. One escaped.]
[Power Increase Detected: Unknown entity named Sprite's combat capabilities have awakened.]
[Task: Find out it's mana path and train it]
[Reward: Title of beast trainer]
Kaelen looked down at the little beast. Sprite looked back, yellow eyes unblinking, a smear of dark ichor on its white muzzle, it did not burn it.
Sprite yawned.
Bang.
The ground shook.
In the distance, where the horizon met the dead yellow sky, something moved. Something larger than the Harvesters. Something that made the ground tremble and the grass lie flat.
Kaelen nocked another lance of light.
The ground trembled again.