The road to the 73rd dungeon, or its approximate location, was filled with lessons that nearly ran Daniel out of paper, his lettering scrunched tighter and tighter as the pages ran slim. Descriptions of dungeons, what Ghost herself had encountered, how she had defeated them, how they were to fight the undead they expected to encounter â flames and head destruction â and countless more topics that he attempted to consume like water from a fire hydrant.
The final question was one that had been lingering since he first met Theo. âWhat are those black circles on your neck? You and Theo each have one, Specter has a few.â
âAh, excellent question, one that should really come in the beginnerâs guide to being Reborn. Those are world marks, acquired through the completion of a world, be it success or failure. Iâve been reborn in only a single world prior to Etheril, and so I bare a single mark, empty to show my failing for everyone to see â fortunately not much of an issue for me,â she explained, a smattering of laughter following her words.
âI was a bit surprised when I came to Etheril, to be honest with you â my prior rebirth put quite a lot of stock in the marks. We were referred to by our number: Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, and so forth. Zeroes were called such, and your Mark status was a shorthand way to refer to strength and skill. I expected it to be a more universal system, but Etheril seems largely unconcerned with it, composed primarily of Zeroes as it is.â
Daniel scribbled his notes down, tapping his pen against his leg when he finished. âWhy do you think that is? Why Etheril mostly has Zeroes, I mean.â
There was silence for a moment, Ghost gathering her thoughts, or choosing which to share. He couldnât tell without a look at her face. âIâm afraid thereâs no mystery there. To complete a world is to gain strength, particularly if youâre victorious in your mission. And Etheril is a doomed world, its mission unable to be completed. Any Reborn concerned with growth or success would kill themselves and move to the next.â
He frowned at the answer, details not lining up as he thought they should. He chose to brush past the doomed nature of Etheril. If the mission was impossible to complete, the Primordial Beast unkillable, heâd find out eventually. âWhat do you mean âgain strengthâ? Surely attempting to complete the mission is a valuable experience, whether you can succeed or not.â
âMmm, of course, to experience is to learn, and thereâs some value in that. But experience is not all that we gain when we complete a world. To finish the mission, to slay the creature deigned necessary to die by our patrons, is to be granted great strength, even if weâre not the ones to land the killing blow. All Reborn benefit from our mission being completed. Even if our world mark is an empty one, our abilities are strengthened. Of course, the true killer of the target receives the greatest boon of us all.â
Additional questions chewed through his mind, but the carriage had finally rolled to a stop, Specter knocking on the wall to indicate this was a permanent stop and not one of their short food breaks. Daniel hopped out of the carriage with Ghost a step behind.
They were at a natural end to the cobblestone road, the smoothed rocks overtaken by the increasing overgrowth of plant life, patches of foreign wildflowers and daisies crowding the grass. Far behind, in the direction they had approached from, he could see the tops of buildings tucked behind the hump of a hill, their slanted roofs showing patchwork repairs even from a distance.
Broken fences stretched between the carriage and the village, pastures that had been long abandoned, another question mark added to the piling curiosity of where the domesticated animals were.
But Specter, wrapped tightly in his mottled cloak, wasnât looking backwards. He had freed his weapons from the back of the carriage and was stalking up the nearest hill, a quiver slung over his back and bow drawn.
âWeapons out, friend,â Ghost said. A hand moved to his shoulder, revealing her form. Heâd expected to see her wielding a bow as well, her practice with him in the upper ring demonstrating her skill, but she was not.
Instead she carried a massive glaive that she held in her right hand like a staff, the towering weapon over a foot taller than even her. Its metal held a clean blue tint and the pole featured worn but cared for leather-covered grips. The blade itself was a beautiful flowery design and split in two uneven halves, the smaller a short spike beneath the primary blade that Daniel imagined could scissor difficult material well.
He obliged the order, freeing his weapon, chain in the left, scythe in the right, giving the former a few warm up swings as they climbed the hill, following Specter. When they passed the crest of the hill the dense woods ahead of them made themselves known. The cusp between open field and shadowed forest was a daunting barrier.
Specter lingered at the top of the slope, scanning the path in front of them with small turns of his head. He freed an arrow from his quiver, swiping the length of it with his thumb before jamming it into the soft ground beneath his feet. Then he grabbed another, swiping it same as he had the first and notching it. He glanced to the side, where both Daniel and Ghost stood, then drew the arrow. Ghost explained for him.
âWeâre sweeping the forest for the outlet of undead â the new entrance of the dungeon thatâs appeared. Weâll separate to maximize our coverage of the ground, but never out of eyesight of one another. Youâll keep Specter in sight, I will keep you in sight, and weâll progress towards where his second arrow lands. Understood?â
Daniel clutched the scythe tight in his hand, a more casual and comfortable grip on the chain. âUnderstood.â
Specter let loose the arrow, the narrow projectile flying through the woods, missing trunks and branches of the towering pine trees until it stuck into an object Daniel couldnât see. On impact, there was a bright flash of light, and the orange glow snaked back towards them, connecting to the arrow stuck in the ground. The string-like beam remained, connecting the two arrows and showing a path out of the woods.
Specter descended the hill, crossing into the woods with an arrow nocked. Daniel followed, shifting to the left as much as he could without losing sight of the leader.
It proved a difficult task keeping Specter in vision while watching his surroundings, but the hunter seemed aware of this and would frequently stop and hold up a hand, breaking the camouflage of his cloak to ensure Daniel could locate him.
He imagined the process of searching the woods was more difficult with him around, but he improved as they walked, learning to use the corner of his eyes to track Specterâs movement rather than actually keeping the other man in his field of view. The trick quickened their pace and allowed him to watch the ground before him, which led to his first encounter with the undead.
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Ten paces ahead, sticking out from a dense, prickly bush, was an arm. It was white as bone, its nails bruised and black, the veins tracing up its forearm a sickly, swollen red, burst in several locations.
Daniel choked back a surprised yelp when he saw it but Specter paused all the same, hearing the soft noise that escaped his lips. The hunter didnât move, didnât break formation. This was Danielâs to deal with.
The knowledge Specter was paying attention brought him some confidence, and he swung the weighted chain a few times, warming up his shoulder before casting the first throw.
It missed, shaking the bush and landing near the arm, and Daniel whipped the chain back to him quick as he could, hands shaking after a miss. He needed to calm down, but sweat was beading on his forehead even though the arm didnât react to having a weapon thrown near it.
He sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to steady his nerves. He spun the chain again, keeping the movement tight, feeling the momentum of the weapon and the familiarity of Svelâs chains, the bizarre intimacy of them that came from her patronage. He imagined the arm was a dummy in the DCTâs practice rings, just a target to hit with practiced motions.
He swung again, the chain cast out, the fangs of the weight sinking into flesh of the pale arm. He pulled it back and the arm danced with the chain, retrieved like a fish on a hook, the limb unconnected to anything else. The arm came to rest at his feet and he planted a boot on it to free his weapon from the dead flesh. No blood came from the wound, but the arm had been split open like a crack in a loaf of bread, the black and red underneath rotten and foul.
Daniel looked up, Specterâs watchful eye still on him. He wasnât sure if he should say something, if that might alert something they didnât want to. But his flailing at a severed limb had made as much noise as his voice would. âItâs just an arm.â
Specter continued his prowl forward and Daniel followed suit. Far to his left, he heard a crunch of boots on fallen pine and twigs, and he assumed Ghost had continued moving as well.
They moved for another few minutes of undisturbed quiet, about a quarter of the way to the distant arrow, when Specter let loose three arrows in rapid succession. Each struck a meaty target, the thunk into flesh an oddly familiar sound, though Daniel could see only one target â the closest one.
He hadnât seen it on approach, but the movement of Specterâs arrow drew his eye. Kaliâs direction of âthink zombieâ was accurate. It was a zombie by every definition.
The undead flesh, a broad white body drained of blood and life, sank when the arrow pierced its skull. But it was close enough to a tree that its body was caught, propped up by a series of stubby branches that had little use with the great expanse of foliage above them.
Its head lulled forward, the limpness confirming a clean headshot was enough to remove the unnatural life put back into the shambling corpse.
But Daniel had no extra time to examine the kill shot. Motion swept through the line up of trees, bodies stumbling and crawling, put into motion by an unknown force. Specterâs rain of arrows continued, his draw fluid, each shot a kill, but his focus was on his section of the woods, a pointed exclusion of the undead in Danielâs path.
âLearn, or join the corpses,â he muttered, a quiet guess at the hunterâs newest lesson.
The swing of his chain picked up, careful arm movements with a focus on his shoulder to preserve the finer muscles of his wrist. Two bodies were working towards him, staggered thanks to the pointed terrain that they had a tendency to get caught on. The one further in the back had found itself troubled with a log, its leg pierced on a pointed branch that it tugged at with its single arm and mindless groans.
The closer had found a clear path. Daniel sucked in a sour breath, the stench of decay harsh on his tongue, but breathing a necessary exercise to calm himself. It was just a smell. Smells could be tolerated. It was just a body, one that was already dead, even. He wasnât even killing anything, really.
He led with a vertical strike of the rib, hoping to catch its head with the deadly weapon and end the ordeal in one movement. But he overshot, unpracticed at estimating the throw against a moving target, hope nothing in the face of inexperience.
He yanked the chain back, the rib catching on the creatureâs shoulder and slicing through it cleanly, returning to Danielâs feet. The zombie was unconcerned with its new wound, its steady shamble increasing with an excitement at being so close to the living.
Daniel danced backwards, careful to watch his back step so as not to trip, and shifted the spin of the chain to a horizontal swing over his head, letting momentum carry it through a few practice swings before he sent the chain soaring towards the zombie.
The weight completed its arc around the neck and shoulders of the undead beast, the counterweight to Svelâs rib biting obediently into its flesh on the return swing, entangling the zombie in a tight grip of chain. Daniel closed his left fist and pulled, yanking with as much force as he could muster, the weight of his body thrown into it.
The zombie gave easier than he expected, stumbling and falling to the ground, pulled forward. Its head was in striking distance and Daniel lifted his scythe, bringing it down into the creatureâs skull with a sick crack.
Severed flaps of flesh and crunched bone spit out from the fresh wound, the smell rancid and near unbearable, but he didnât let it slow him down. He bashed its head again, then a third time, to be sure. The zombie lay still and Daniel reeled back, wiping a rush of stress-induced sweat from his brow.
Then he lifted his gaze, searching for the second undead that had freed itself from its log prison and began the shamble to him, now on the clear path his brother had taken.
Daniel lifted his hand scythe, the chain clicking against the bottom of the handle where the two met, wrought with tension. He gave it another pull, the heap of a body weighing the weapon down, the realization of his mistake burning hot in his chest while the zombie staggered closer.
The creature gurgled its hunger, bile and spit falling from a mouth that served a single purpose, as Daniel yanked at the chain, less than two feet free, panic searing through him. He should have practiced more. He hadnât considered more than one target, the dangers of a weapon so easily tangled, the tension caused by the weight of a body he hadnât anticipated the fall of. He couldnât pull the scythe back far enough, couldnât get the angle needed to put proper force into an attack.
The zombie stumbled over the dead oneâs legs, falling to its knees with its arms outstretched.
A lucky break.
Daniel released the weapon all together, taking a hasty step back only for his ankle to catch on knotted, gnarled roots. He fell backwards and caught himself on his palms, the zombie crawling over the other corpse, attempting a shaky rise to its feet.
But he was faster, human, alive. He pushed himself to his feet, taking a brief running start to slam his foot into the head of the zombie with all the practice of an elementary school soccer player.
The zombie fell back, an awkward lurch to its side, a loss in balance throwing it over the waist of the other corpse. Daniel rushed it, continuing his onslaught with another kick to the head, then a stomp, bringing his heavy boot down on the creatureâs skull again and again until he felt it break and cave in.
Shuddering breaths racked his body, desperate inhales he couldnât control the rhythm of anymore as he turned wildly, searching for anything else coming his way.
There was nothing, only Specter watching from a distance. No arrow was nocked on his sturdy longbow, and Daniel was left to wonder if they believed in him, or if they would have watched him die.