Path of the Slayer B1 C3: Live And Die On This Day

Four years ago, I was a Rank 0 copper adventurer with the honor to teach a class that would normally have a bronze instructor teaching. I ensured my stance was cool and confident, my smile open and encouraging. The fresh batch of tin adventurers were mine to mold in the same sunny classroom where I once studied and learned as a tin.

By this point, my Epiphany was at 99%. It had been there for about a month after I made my way up slowly, thoroughly, taking on more artificer training in the guild’s workshops. I could’ve progressed faster with combat – I had an extremely high talent for that. But I wanted more. I was ambitious to a fault. So my progress had slowed as a result, and that was fine with the guild. I would be their first artificer warrior as a Rank 1 if everything I hoped for came to fruition.

Some of my peers from the first year were finally catching up. It looked like we would all Rank Up together and take on more responsibilities, more dangerous quests, as long as nobody had gotten something random that couldn’t be used in a combat scenario.

I dreaded that being my fate.

Wouldn’t it be ironic?

Still, I couldn’t stop smiling these days. I was filled to the brim with excitement. I’d heard the guild leader was smiling more than usual each time he brought up my name.

“Kid, if you can keep on with the pace you’re going, maybe I can finally retire and leave the guild in solid hands,” the guild leader had said to me a while ago.

From orphan to adventurer guild leader.

And from guild leader to the empire’s best adventurer.

That was the stuff of proper stories to tell the young.

But I have to prove myself first. So, here I was, helping as an instructor while a badge below the usual.

The newbies looked doubtful.

No problem.

“Who can tell me the main points adventurers must keep in mind when entering Realm via Portal?” I asked.

Half the class raised their hands sharply. The other half kept their hands down. During this time, I still had my right hand, which was my dominant hand, which I pointed at a student to hear her answer.

The girl strained in her seat, cheeks blushing with nervousness. As she answered, she became more confident. “So, I read the Official Imperial Portal Realm Guide and the Steel Blitz Adventurer Guide. I hope that’s enough.”

“It will be,” I assured.

Bobbing her head from the affirmation, she continued. “From both guides, I surmise that once a fully functional Portal is found, you stand as close as you can to sense its Rank without fully entering it. Then you go get a party that’s of the same Rank or above. You can tell if it’s your Rank or above once you meditate on it as best as you can. If you have the time.”

“Yes, indeed, if you have the time. Can’t meditate on it if you’re getting swarmed by monsters.” I nodded. “Anything else?”

The girl bobbed her head again. “The higher the Rank, the higher the deadliness of a Realm. From Rank 2 and up, Realms will have traps, strange environmental hazards, and other inner-Realm strangeness that could make the adventure harder or outright weirder. And you have the monsters, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated, nodding in approval.

I turned and pointed out a boy in the back who was scowling. The boy jolted in his seat and looked nervously at his peers for help. He had nothing to add.

Saying nothing in return, I picked out another boy who had his hand up. He was more prepared.

“Yeah, I, uh, recall from the guides that you gotta watch out for other Portals leading to other Realms while in the realm that tools us from the Supreme Sovereign Empire. That’s an easy way to get lost and separated and stuck out there forever and stuff. You can also face different monsters from different Realms while in that Realm connected to the Empire.”

“Indeed.” I picked someone else.

“Treasures!” she shrieked excitedly.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. The enthusiasm was appreciated.

My attention turned to another tin-badged student. The guy was rougher, older, a late bloomer, most likely, and he had a dark look in his eyes as he answered.

“You gotta slaughter and survive, sir,” said the older man. “No point wasting time. Forget the treasures. It’s like trying to find a needle in a dozen haystacks, from what I heard. My pa was an adventurer, y’know, and he said it best. Get to that Portal Boss. Get it killed. And move out. Those Realms out there are alive and filled with horrid crap that doesn’t belong in the good Empire of our God Emperor.”

***

Four years later, I woke up choking on thick, ashy smoke that smelled like rotten eggs. I was also choking on my blood and vomit.

Everything hurt, especially the coughs, as I sputtered stuff up my throat and to the side. My ribs jostled loose and flared with sharp pain all over my chest. I learned quickly not to squirm, because I was screwed up beyond relief, and it was a wonder how I was still alive.

Living was a pain.

But I kept living anyway.

I couldn’t see out of my damaged helmet, and there was sticky gunk over my eyes, possibly blood. The back of my head hurt something fierce, more so than it should be hurting.

I did my best to remain still and listen to what was around me. My hearing picked up drizzling, hissing, moaning winds, and the tappy sounds of claws running across stone and kicking over loose rocks or debris somewhere further ahead of me.

A scared chittering from a goblin sounded out, followed by a loud whoosh and blazing roar. Then the chittering turned high pitch before cutting off under the sound of ferocious flames and popping flesh, like a pig on fire.

I wanted to cuss the God Emperor with every curse I knew. Instead, I clenched my jaw and played dead, stifling every painful coughing fit that wanted to come out despite how hard that was.

I strained my hearing to the absolute limits, giving myself a throbbing headache on top of my head trauma as I tried to listen to incoming danger. I heard hissing. I heard more falling droplets from a sky that I wasn’t under, having some sort of shelter over me that kept me dry. Then I caught the sounds of something flapping before whatever it was turned away and faded into the distance.

Finally, I let myself breathe. I quickly found out that I just couldn’t anymore. My vitals were failing me. The edges of my vision turned black once again, pulsating with growing finality. It would be easier to give in, but I refused.

I struggled way too hard to let death get me just yet.

Screw death.

With that in mind, I found some renewed willpower, as strained as that was. Something clicked in my mind, and with my still functional right arm and artificial hand, I reached down my side. On my hip, I found a hard pouch, flipped it open, and took out an intact bottle filled with miracle juice.

With my artificial hand alone, I popped off the cork precisely and carefully dabbled some drops into my mouth. I couldn’t even swallow, but the Rank 1 Vitality Potion did its job in record time.

My pipes opened up, and after I dabbled and swallowed some more drops, more fixes happened throughout my body. An itching heat spread everywhere. My ribcage made crinkling, cracking, crunching sounds as they mended.

A few pops came up along my spine that made me nearly shout. I released a shaky moan instead. Bleeding wounds, shadow and horrid, sealed up all over my torso and limbs. And my internals became better, much better, to where I had to clench my buttocks to keep from crapping myself.

The urge to drink more of the Vitality Potion struck me. I didn’t give in. I already had one compulsion. I didn’t need more.

Shakily, I placed the cork back on. I stuffed the damn magic health juice into its reinforced pouch on my hip. It was then I noticed that the casing to my lantern had cracks in it from when I brushed my hand over it. Thankfully, the oil hadn’t spilled much and the fire was out.

That was a bright spot of good news.

The bad news came as immediate withdrawals. This was why Rank 0s didn’t get to play around with most stuff that was made for Rankers.

The side effects of the Vitality Potion had me sweating and heaving every breath, my body hot and gross and laden heavily with drunken nausea. I wanted to puke, but I couldn’t. I felt like five rotten sausages in the shape of a vaguely human person.

I heard you could get used to the withdrawals, to where you could fight through it. Though, that depended on the state of your injuries from when you used a Vitality Potion.

Because my injuries were extensive, I suffered from delirium for a while, keeping me down for the count. Nothing came around to finish the job. Hooray for me.

Finally, after a wave of coldness passed through me, making me shiver with chills, the withdrawals ended. I felt more worn out than anything, which forced me to pass out again, left in an icky mess made of my sweat, blood, and vomit.

When I came to later, I was fiercely thirsty and hungry, and I was tired as hell. More tired than ever before. I wanted to stay put.

Old habits died hard with me, so I forced myself to sit up. Helmet off, I would’ve sighed in pleasure if it wasn’t for the nauseating air, making every breath a fight. My human fingers rubbed at my eyes and removed the flakes of hardened blood until I could open them and look around.

“Screw me,” I mumbled.

I was in a dilapidated stone structure with multiple holes in the floor and support columns that were weathered down. There were steel carriages that were gutted and left on dented metal wheels.

Orange lights beamed through a red haze from far beyond, illuminating the spaces that weren’t covered by the structures. Any place that harbored shadows looked like the blackest pits, where monsters could wait comfortably in ambush.

There were skeletons everywhere, and not the reanimated kind, thankfully.

Many of the skeletons were human.

Looking off to the side, I noticed a gaping wound in the ceiling where more of the orange light beamed down. Hissing rain and falling ash fell through with the light. There, I found the charred skeleton of a goblin. I could tell well enough after being part of enough monster autopsies classes.

I also found the ravaged remains of my adventurer pack, most of it half melted already while on the edge of the beaming light coming through. I looked around and spotted my dagger nearby. No short sword, though. I’d left that back in the sewer system in the Realm of my Empire.

Silently, I got to my feet, feeling uneasy and disgusting. I crept over to the illuminated spot and grabbed the pack with my artificial hand before darting back into the black shadows. None of the hissing rain, which I assumed was acid, touched me, thankfully.

I had some other small mercies to be thankful about.

Like a waterskin with water still inside. It was hard not to drain it fully. Very hard. I took slow sips with pauses in between, making sure I was focused on hydration instead of wasteful satisfaction.

Then I found the packs of nuts that I could munch on. No jerky, unfortunately. The goblins had gone for that or let it go to waste in this hellish place.

I hoped it had gone to waste instead of any goblin getting to taste the jerky. I was spiteful enough to wish for that.

I checked my System Logs.

[You’ve entered the Raining Ruin Hell Realm: Rank 2.]

“Ah, how lovely, a fitting name,” I muttered.

I sat down on what looked like a strangely wide and metal wheel for an alien cart. Meal in hand, I ate in relative peace, my mind empty, letting myself recover from all that I’d gone through.

After I finished eating my fill, I found a corner to do my business. Then I took another slow pull from my waterskin. Next, I reached into my ruined pack, my heart filled with joy as I gripped my toolkit.

Finding another dark corner away from the orange lights and sizzling rain, I performed some maintenance on my half arm.Good thing, too, because there were a few bobs and ends knocked loose that could’ve spelled trouble at the most inopportune time.

I sealed some rents, tightened things up, made sure the wires were done correctly, checked the runes and Aether circuitry, replaced part of the plating, and buffed out the scratches.

The work was meditative and helpful. It gave me some peace even when in a place called the Raining Ruin Hell Realm.

After some satisfying maintenance, I checked the area carefully for anything worth salvaging. In my left hand, I held one of my daggers. My right metal claw remained empty and ready for action.

The grip on the artificial hand was more crushing compared to my actual hand, so it could help to strangle something or save me from a fall.

After some searching, I came up with nothing useful. I sat down on another crumpled metal wheel and did an inventory.

I was down to sixty percent of my addictive Vitality Potion. I had fifty percent of water, four bags of nuts, two daggers, my ruined adventurer fit, the artificer toolkit, and some odds and ends. The lack of provisions for a Rank 2 Realm adventure wasn’t even the worst part.

I felt the compulsion and answered it.

[Arden, human.

Rank: 0.

Epiphany: 99%.]

“Hm, maybe I should’ve let death take me after all,” I mumbled, shaking my head, my dirty dreadlocks swishing. “Oh, well. Too late now.”

I remembered those early training days and the days I taught classes about Portals and Realms.

I’d gone into a Realm once, a Rank 1 Realm. That had only happened with a whole competent party of bronzes and one silver leading the way, escorting the most promising copper adventurers to give them a glimpse of their future.

I shouldn’t be here alone.

There was no escape unless I defeated the Portal Boss.

No backup either.

The Portal leading here would’ve shut off access after some  time following the first adventurer to enter. It wouldn’t open again until the Portal Boss was dead, or all adventurers were dead.

Many scholars speculated this was further proof that the Realms were more than just pocket dimensions spanning an unlimited cosmos. The only reason we could make sense of all of this was because the God Emperor fashioned the System that made Portals and Realms followed certain rules, though I’d heard talk that the System was more grand than what was taught to the public.

Such talk verged on heresy.

Either way, Realms beyond the Empire were something more, something purposeful, both with mysticism and mechanics. They were grand spaces of creations that only the God Emperor understood wholly, leaving the scholars to theorize and wonder within the bounds set by the Imperial Scriptures.

Still, the experience of entering a Realm had often led to sudden growth in Epiphanies. Many adventurers had Ranked UP from 0 to 1 from merely stepping into a Rank 1 Realm.

I was in a Rank 2 Realm by myself.

And not just any Rank 2 Realm. I was in a Hell Realm.

Hell Realms were even more special.

Even more difficult.

I checked again.

[Epiphany: 99%.]

Casting a dark gaze down, I observed the dagger in my hand.

I shook my head.

I really was a stubborn idiot, wasn’t I?

I shrugged. “Time to get back to work.”

***

I made all the preparations I could. I used some needle and thread to patch up the adventurer pack into something halfway decent, barely fitting the stuff I needed crammed in there.

I sealed the damage to the lantern with pieces from my discarded helmet. I used the remaining pieces of metal to seal the holes in front of my leather breastplate. I made modifications to my artificial half arm by using spare parts in the toolkit.

Now it could flip out and flip in the extra dagger from the forearm upon my whim. Unfortunately, the new action took extra Aether from the half arm. That was okay. I wasn’t planning to stay or live long, so I might as well go all out.

And it was a fun modification, so why not?

The little things helped me stay sane.

Satisfied with my preparations, I used paper and stencil to jot down my objectives. I was glad I knew writing, arithmetic, and analyzing information critically. That helped keep the mind focused on challenging adventures when sorting the mayhem with a list.

• Find a basic monster of the Realm to kill for practice.

• Locate Portal Boss and study it.

• Scavenge for useful stuff. Maybe find a treasure somehow.

• Prepare to kill the Portal Boss.

• Kill Portal Boss.

• Get the hell out.

• Rank Up!

“If I can’t Rank Up after all this, I’m done,” I said, ignoring the bitterness inside of me. “I’ll figure out the rest once I get out.”

I had to face facts. It was impossible to stay Rank 0 if I could pull off a silver quest that required multiple silver adventurers with a Rank 3 gold adventurer to supervise. At that point, I was truly a dud, destined to stay a non-ranker no matter what.

Surviving this would make for a kickass way to retire, though. I’d earn some begrudging respect if I could pull this off as a Rank 0 with only one fleshy hand.

Something flapped in the hazy and acidic air above the stone structure I was in. All of my attention snapped to a razor’s edge, still running high off sampling the Rank 1 Vitality Potion, regardless of the withdrawal.

My body moved with a predator’s grace. The grip on my dagger tensed in my left hand while my artificial right readjusted the straps to my rugged backpack. I stayed in the black shadows, drawing closer to the source of the flapping sound.

Finding cover behind a column, I peeked toward the opening and noticed a moving silhouette framed harshly by the orange light. After a few seconds of spying on it, I noticed the creature stabilizing its flight and shifting slightly in my exact direction.

Instincts kicked in, and I threw myself away from the column. A second later, a streaking fireball struck the column and roared with fanning flames that wrapped around the weathered structure, knocking pieces off, scorching all with its touch.

Even with some distance between me and the fireball, I felt the heat like I was standing right in front of an industrial oven running overtly hot. The fireball’s impact wasn’t much compared to other powers I’d seen, but even that was still dangerous for a baseline human.

One hit would lead to death.

That confirmed things. I was dealing with an Aether-special monster type. No Vitality. No Suppression. Just raw magical power and its monstrous advantages.

Now, how could I bring it down to me?

I faded back from the opening, retreating deeper into the darkness. I kept multiple objects between me and the monster, such as the stone columns or the broken down metal carriages. I also had the ceiling in the way.

The creature knew I was here.

Either it came to me or it left me alone.

Eventually, it came down from its higher flight and entered a hover. I had a better look at it that way – it was scrawnier than a goblin, surprisingly, with stubby arms and legs. Its head was long, with a horn sprouting from its foreheads. Its greatest features were the leathery, bat-like wings flapping from behind it, keeping it aloft, with a wingspan that was fifteen feet wide.

The monster’s beady eyes narrowed, seeing through the deep darkness, catching glimpses of me weaving back and forth between a dozen obstacles. Letting out a raspy screech, it conjured another fireball in the time it took me to pick up a stone off the floor.

It thrust its little hands forward, launching the burning thing with motion and magic. The fireball crossed the distance fast, like a streaking meteorite, and collided with a column a few obstacles ahead of me. To my surprise, the flames didn’t splash in a wide and useless spread.

They smeared through the air in my direction like reaching tendrils. They still fell short, but that was still closer than I wanted for comfort.

Great.

The fireballs came with smart splash magic.

I kept backtracking, staying dodgy, like playing a game of cat and mouse. For however long it took, the flying monster kept throwing magic fireballs, and I kept scrambling around. The abandoned carriages and weathered columns between me and certain death were my best of friends.

Finally, the thing I waited for came to fruition.

The monster let out a squeal of frustration and flapped forward to get closer, to get a more accurate bead on me. I waited until it crossed the point of no return.

With a piece of stone in my artificial hand, I came running out from behind a column and threw with a snappy pitch for the wing. It was a larger target, much easier to hit with a hard throw.

I struck the target!

The monster’s flight dipped down, forcing it to flap wildly to overcorrect, taking its attention on me. With all of my human vigor and some lingering energy from the Vitality Potion, I ran down the monster that had hovered too far under the ceiling and away from the sky.

It recovered faster than I expected, conjuring another fireball and thrusting it at me.

I leaned forward with no hesitation. I dove and rolled.

Rubble, hard and sharp, dug into my shoulder and back. The fireball burst into roaring flames somewhere further behind me. Then I landed on my boots and came up from under the monster, my claw clamping down on the thin ankle of the toddler sized creature before it could get away.

It screamed and flapped hard, harder than I’d expected, yanking me off balance and along with it.But I could only smile as I raised and sunk my dagger with my left hand into the monster’s bulging belly. Deep, too.

I yanked it back toward the floor while it screamed and tried to fly away. The power and magic behind its wings forced me to scramble over rubble as we drew closer to the orange light and reddish skies.

Even without Vitality, the creature was subtly strong, its body forged by a Hell Realm. But the knife in its gut made it whimper and cry as I eviscerated the creature during our tug-of-war. Eventually, we reached a tipping point, with the dagger exiting through the groin in a splash of gore and viscera.

Still, it fought me to escape.

It fought while making another hasty fireball in its hands.

My next dagger attack struck the hands from underneath, deflecting its aim. The fireball flew up and collided with the ceiling. The effect was smaller than the past ones, but a few smoldering pieces of the ceiling dropped free anyway. My shoulder took a hit, and if it wasn’t for my metal claw, I would’ve let go. I focused all I could through the pain and saw a piece of rubble smash down on the monster’s head, busting up its skull.

The monster jerked hard in a way that caught me off guard, making my hurting shoulder hurt even more. I should’ve let go by that point, but when my feet found no solid ground, it was too late. There was a hole under us that had stayed hidden in the black shadows, and holding onto the imp as we plummeted downward was my best move. If only its wings didn’t give out suddenly, turning our descent into a sudden uncontrollable fall.

I put all my gumption into tugging the monster under me, rotating midair, before the inevitable happened. We hit the next floor below.

The air left my lungs in a violent rush. My leg broke, and so did a few other things. My entire world was nothing but pain, but I clamped down on my urge to cry and focused on what was happening now.

The imp was under me, its body squished, bloodied, and broken. The wings were mangled while folded under me as well, having cushioned some of the fall. Still, I was on the verge of passing out, so I looked for a pick-me-up.

A notification.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 2 imp!]

I’d never killed anything Rank 2 before.

I held onto that. The achievement kept me from blacking out. That made me very aware of the broken pain and other sources of pain, but I used that as fuel to stay conscious, and to pay attention to my new surroundings.

I was hoping for stillness. Peace.

I heard something shift to my right instead.

Then I heard a shuffle to my left.

More shifting and shuffling sounded from around me, the deep darkness making it sound louder. I was far from alone down here, and when the sounds transitioned into shambling steps over piles of debris, I did the inevitable.

I sparked the flame in the lantern, and half of the room fell under its illumination.

Grotesque humanoids surrounded me. Almost like zombies, but still alive somehow.

They were all mockeries of people, with ragged clothes, flesh covered in lesions and sores that leaked blood and pus. Their limbs were misshapen, stiff, and swollen in some places while malnourished thin in others.

Some of them had obvious acid burns, especially over their faces, with strings of flesh stretching open and plenty of holes running through, revealing the bone underneath. And in their milky eyes, their pale gazes held no humanity, only a glint of fiendish hunger.

They reached out to me with their horrid hands. They stumbled slowly across a floor littered heavily with rubble and skeletons, with me on a higher mound at the center.

They were everywhere, and I had no way of escaping.

Pulling out the Vitality Potion from my reinforced pouch, I checked my Epiphany.

[Epiphany: 99%.]

I dumped half of what remained down my throat. The Vitality surged with magic the moment I tasted it.

Waves of intense heat, highness, and the weird muted sensation of my leg getting snapped back into place struck at me. Other breaks fixed themselves as I got my feet under me.

Somehow, I stayed standing as the side effects from the potion and the overlapping fields of Suppression had their way with me. There was some good news.

The Suppression was Rank 1.

And I was high as a kite, regardless of the side effects.

Lucky me.

Placing the lantern on a crumpled metal carriage behind me, I ensured this one lone light illuminated the area in all directions, even if it wasn’t perfect. Once the adventurer pack came off, I got to work against the creature that had drawn the closest, one that seemed like it was once a human woman or was trying to be a facsimile of one.

I let it get close enough to lunge at me with a sudden burst of speed.

I dodged aside by the skin of my teeth, moving further than intended. All of my movements were juiced to the extremes by Vitality magic that my body wasn’t meant to deal with yet. I readjusted as fast as I could, getting behind the monster with surging swiftness, and snapped out a kick.

My boot struck the back of the creature’s knee with some oomph, and it instantly fell. Then, with a flick of my artificial arm, the dagger inside flipped out. I stabbed the dagger in my left hand into the side of the monster’s head while raking the dagger in my metal forearm through its neck. With a viscous yank, I ripped off its head, a critical strike.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

Wasting no time, I twisted around and flicked the skull off the handheld dagger and right into the face of the next lunging ghoul. The skull-to-face throw didn’t stop the monster, but it distracted a little, fouling its lunge.

I swept around with the same tactic. I kicked behind its knee, sent it collapsing down, and used my handheld dagger and forearm dagger to take its head.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

The heat was building up. The withdrawals were kicking in. But it wasn’t as bad as before. My body felt jittery, hot, chilly, dead, and all over the place, with sweat pouring out of me profusely, soaking my bloody clothes more than the viscera from the dying monsters.

I was in no state for combat.

I pushed myself, anyway.

“Faster,” I huffed.

I went straight at the third ghoul, ducking right under the lunge, right under the armpit. Instead of kicking, I whirled around to stab the side of its head directly, forcing it to stumble aside. It moved in the direction my forearm blade came, splitting the vertebrate in one smooth move.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

I still ended up ripping the head off to chuck the skull off my handheld dagger and into the face of the next ghoul. Still, I noted that the killing speed was significantly higher without a kick to the back of the knee.

I could do better.

“Faster,” I growled, throwing myself at the next.

Two came up this time, and in a game of chicken, I won by dodging around to my right. The lunging ghouls collided with each other. One took a kick to the back of the knee while I stabbed the other in the side of its head. While the knelt one slowly recovered, I ripped free the head of the second, threw the skull at a different ghoul outside of my immediate radius, and stabbed my dagger into the one I kicked. I soon took its head as well.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

“FASTER!” I roared, my body alight with drug magic and frenzy.

I turned to face three of them coming at me from the front, left, and right.

The nearest one, the ghoul on my left, took the brunt of my fury. I went at it directly instead of dodging around, slamming chest first, the collision stopping me in my place, a stark reminder that I wasn’t the equal of the ghoul’s Vitality-enhanced body.

No matter. Both of my daggers ended up poised on either side of the ghoul’s neck. I wrenched them in opposing directions and hacked its head free. The blood splashing my face felt cool compared to the blood inside of me.

[You’ve overcome a Rank 1 ghoul!]

I used its headless body as a shield to throw at the other two, fouling their lunge, leaving me some room to escape further toward my left. I was going to finish them, but three more ghouls lunged at me suddenly.

I redirected, dodging around the one to the right as they collided with each other. A sudden hand that was swollen up and shaped like a club struck my artificial arm, jarring me up, forcing me into a sudden spin. Rubble shifted quickly from under my heels, and somehow I stayed on my feet instead of falling.

Another hand appeared close to my face, forcing me to jerk aside as its ragged nails clawed my cheeks. I pulled free of another lunge, and when I finally found some stable footing, I found myself surrounded by all sides, a dozen pressing in with me in the middle.

I was going to die. I knew it. There was no escaping this.

There was no secret power up.

There was no mercy to be found in the milky white eyes of the hellish horde.

They were going to rip me apart.

And I was going to suffer a horrible death.

Yet, I kept my arms up, ready to fight to my last breath. I wasn’t a quitter, even when it was hopeless, even when I had no luck.

Or … so I’d thought.

Just when the ghouls got a hold of me, their grip on the verge of tearing flesh and breaking bone … a dark miracle happened.

[The Fallen Slayer has entered the Raining Ruin Hell Realm.]

[It is weakened.]

[Realm Quest Initiated: Overcome the Fallen Slayer and be rewarded!]

All the ghouls stopped.

I didn’t dare breathe.

Then, all at once, the monsters turned toward a corner in the room. They left me with bruises and a few stress fractures that would soon heal from the lingering Vitality I had inside of me.

I stood, watching, as their hideous shambling backs receded into the deep darkness. My little lantern illuminated what remained, making it more obvious there was an exit out of this death trap.

I counted fifty of them on their feet when they left.

All that stayed behind were me and the corpses of the Rank 1 and Rank 2 monsters I’d killed.

The sudden inaction had me on the verge of collapsing. I only kept myself upright to fulfill my compulsion.

[Arden, human.

Rank: 0.

Epiphany: 99%.]

I nearly cried.

The frustration was too much.

Was I forsaken?

Was I cursed?

Why was this happening to me?

A wave of weariness struck as I came down further from my high of fighting while drugged by a Vitality Potion. I also felt like puking. I forced myself not to. I couldn’t waste the food and water.

Somehow, I stayed on my feet.

Somehow, I looked to the side and noticed something alarming.

There was a strange glow behind a demolished column.

My heart skipped a beat.

With hurried, drunken steps, I approached the glowing thing and came to a stop once I reached it.

Apparently, the System was on my side still.

One of the rarest of things was in front of me. No adventurer from my guild had found one in half a year.

A Realm Treasure Chest.