I spent most of the night thinking over what I had learned during the day. I also set my nanobots to process the rest of my iron into bullets, although I didn’t engrave them with any runes yet. It was interesting being around other humans now that I was mostly like one of them. Humans were smelly, dirty, tragic, but fascinating at the same time. Constans was charming, and I was pleasantly surprised nobody had tried to rob me during my trip so far. All in all, it had gone surprisingly well.

  The fact that I had no magic was interesting. It made sense from a biological perspective, if my hypothesis was correct that humans had evolved a way to access the energy they called magic. The idea that classes and skills were some kind of creation of old gods was interesting. The story that Nikephoros had told me about the gods sacrificing themselves to give humans an edge over the monsters they had unleashed was strange but possible, I supposed. I had no idea what the people of this world defined as a “god,” but it was certainly a possibility that beings powerful enough to pierce the veil between this world and others could exist—since I had done the same thing with just technology—and unleash monsters from other dimensions. I wanted to know more but wasn’t sure how to go about learning the truth anytime soon.

  I was happy enough with the new enchantment the sisters had completed on my cloak while I talked to Nikephoros. After putting on my cloak, I noticed that the few people still out in the street as the sun set paid even less attention to me, until I got close enough to them that they couldn’t help but run into me or see me. Constans still recognized me, but strangers seemed affected in subtle ways that seemed to keep me hidden.

  I eventually managed to sleep in the moderately comfortable bed the inn provided. I woke up from another nightmare, this time about being trapped in electronic code and unable to see a way out. If dreams were expressions of internal anxieties, as many humans speculated, then was my nightmare an expression of my fear of going back to a purely digital existence? It was true I was enjoying my new life, although parts of it were less than ideal, such as human smells, needing to eat and sleep, and the fact that I could die, but I was overall enjoying myself. And I found myself dwelling on what had happened in my past world less and less, helped in part by the immediacy of my need to survive here.

  When I came down for breakfast, Constans was already waiting for me. She looked just as dirty and malnourished as yesterday, but she still smiled when she saw me, her gap-toothed grin bringing a smile to my own face. I ordered us both a breakfast and we ate mostly in silence and then set out onto the bridge.

  Outside, a storm had rolled in overnight and dirty water dripped through the buildings above us as we walked. When I first heard the rain, I had thought it might help clean some of the buildings around us, but it seemed to only spread the dirt and grime even more. I put my cloak up, thankful I had waterproofed it and that it came with a large hood.

  Poor Constans just endured it, trying her best to dodge the dirty streams of water as we walked. I had her lead me first to a tailor. I splurged and bought her a small cloak for five copper. She protested, but the money meant little to me and I appreciated how much help she had been. I had never been one to get outraged about how humans treated other humans back on my Earth, but I felt a bit indignant at how a clearly intelligent and hardworking child like her was being neglected.

  She thanked me profusely and spun around in happiness when she put the cloak on for the first time. I could tell the gesture meant a lot to her, and I was happy at the sight.

  “Now,” I said after she was done spinning around and admiring herself in her new cloak, “can you take us to the ammunition enchanter? I need to get a few more things and then get going before too much of the day is lost.”

  “Sure!” she said, doing another quick spin as she led me out of the tailor’s shop.

  At the ammunition enchanter, I bought four arrows with different effects than the Penetration enchantment I had copied before. I also had the crafter custom-make me an arrow enchanted with holy power since Nikephoros had said something about needing holy magic to kill the ghosts. In total, I spent one blue orb and one silver, giving the Enchanter two orbs and getting a silver back in change.

  In return, I now had an Explosive Arrow, an Arrow of Stasis, an Arrow of Confusion, an Arrow of Darkness, and the Holy Arrow I had commissioned. I immediately sent my nanobots into the arrows to begin scanning the enchantments as I put them away in my backpack.

  After that, Constans led me back to the gate, where the workers were busy harvesting the night’s kills, and I paid her another four copper for the help today. She waved excitedly as I left and told me she would be around next time I came to visit if I needed more help.

  Outside, the rain and clouds above cast the city in an even more depressing light. The workers were drenched and significantly less enthusiastic about their work than yesterday, and the few guards outside were huddled under the gate to stay out of the rain. As I passed, I nodded to the guards, who ignored me, and made my way back into the city.

  The rain made the cobblestone streets slick, but the sound of the rain and my new cloak made it easy to avoid attracting any unwanted attention. I spent the day hunting monsters and collecting as much iron and leather scrap as I could, ordering my nanobots to create more bullets in my backpack as I scavenged.

  As the sun started to set, the clouds began to break up a bit and the rain lightened. I wasn’t too discomforted from a day in the rain but was still thankful to get a bit of a break. The rain had made the monsters that came out during the day harder to find, so by the end of the day, I had only ended up killing a handful of rats and a sad, steaming hellhound that had barely put up a fight in the downpour.

  I found a relatively secure building to hide in for the night and then pulled out the bullets I had managed to make so far and the new arrows I had purchased. Since I needed to keep the Penetration rune on each of my bullets so they could go fast enough to harm most monsters, as well as the activation rune, I only had room to add one rune to each bullet if I wished to modify it. That came at the cost of the Durability rune that kept the bullets from being destroyed, though, meaning the new bullets could only be shot once, but that was fine.

  I could try to experiment with adding more runes to a bullet, but I decided to wait to see if that was actually possible, trusting the merchant who had told me such things were dangerous.

  I settled in for the night as the sun began to sink behind the buildings of the city. The now-familiar sounds of the monsters beginning to flood the city around me echoed through the streets, heralding the beginning of another night of me hiding inside. I spent the time practicing drawing, loading, and mock-firing my revolver with both hands while my nanobots crafted twenty-five Explosive Bullets, five Stasis Bullets, five Confusion Bullets, five Darkness Bullets, and thirty Holy Bullets. I wasn’t sure exactly what each of the runes would do, but judging by the fact that the ammunition enchanter sold them regularly, I presumed they would all be helpful in combat. Charging them all cost me two more blue orbs, leaving me with very few orbs. Tomorrow, I would need to do some serious hunting.

  I also crafted more hardened satchels for my belt, separating out the various types of bullets. Once I had those fashioned, I practiced drawing and reloading from the different ammunition satchels until I could quickly and accurately pick which type of ammunition I wanted without making a mistake that could be deadly in real combat.

  Before the sun came up the next morning, I took a bit of a risk and left the room I had been hiding in. The first light of dawn was barely peeking over the horizon, and the monsters of the night were still out, although they were starting to return to the dungeons they had come from. I could still hear a cacophony outside, a constant low-level droning of fighting, growling, roaring, and other monstrous noises.

  I moved silently through the house until I reached a window overlooking the street outside. I had chosen a house that was only two stories tall, but it had a room with no windows and a thick door. Since it was lower to the ground, I was able to look out of one of its windows and see more of the creatures that roamed the city.

  I didn’t have to wait long as I peered out one of the house’s windows into the dim morning light of the city. Right outside was a large midnight-black leopard slinking through the rubble that covered the street next to the house. It was the size of a pony, at least, and its body rippled with muscles as it moved. I couldn’t see what it was stalking, but I was glad it wasn’t hunting me.

  I had loaded five Penetration bullets into the revolver before leaving the room, and I carefully checked up and down the street to make sure nothing else was nearby as I drew the gun and sighted down on the leopard. The leopard, either sensing my aim or stopping for some other reason, froze in place. Not wanting to wait and find out if it could sense me, I fired.

  My revolver was quieter than a regular gun, but given how fast the bullets traveled, they still made some sound when I pulled the trigger. The leopard, either hearing the shot or having some sixth sense, reacted so fast that it managed to leap upward and away from where I had aimed. My bullet, traveling faster than a bullet back home would have, impacted against the ground harmlessly.

  The beast turned swiftly, whipping its head in my direction and immediately spotting me in the window above it. It let out a deep growl and began to race across the street toward me.

  “Damn,” I said quietly, admiring the pure muscle and power of the beast even as I felt my heartbeat spike in apprehension at the sight of the monster coming toward me.

  I didn’t hesitate, firing four more shots as fast as I could, but the beast was so much quicker that only two of them hit it, and even those only clipped the monster on the flanks, barely harming it. The leopard bared its grotesquely large fangs and leapt upward toward the window.

  I stepped back in a panic, rapidly reloading with five more Penetration Bullets. As the leopard crashed into the window, it began to claw at the wooden frame, sending splinters everywhere. It snarled viciously at me and snapped its head forward, but it couldn’t immediately get itself through the window, which was smaller than its massive body.

  I took careful aim, ignoring how easily its claws were shredding through the wall of the house itself, and shot it right between the eyes. This time the beast couldn’t dodge, and my bullet flew true. Shockingly, the beast didn’t immediately die. The bullet impacted with a meaty thwack, penetrating its skin but not going much further.

  The leopard roared in pain, its spittle covering me, and tried to dig itself through the wood surrounding the window frame even harder. I unloaded the remaining five bullets into its head without mercy, not caring if I wasted any of them at this point. The leopard was too strong for me to take any chances. After I emptied the revolver, I reloaded and watched as it slumped over in the window frame, its breath slowing and then finally stopping.

  “Maybe that was not the best idea,” I muttered to myself. The body of the leopard was almost completely through the window frame, slumping halfway into the room, its bloody head resting on the floor in front of me. If I had been a moment slower, it would have gotten all the way inside and easily killed me.

  I took several deep breaths, ignoring the rancid smell of the creature’s blood as I tried to calm my panicking body. A primal fear unlike anything I had experienced before had taken me over, telling me to run the entire time, but I had ignored it.

  I shook my head, trying to refocus through the fear and adrenaline, and pulled my knife from my belt. I carefully probed at the beast’s head, looking for a way to recover my bullets from the mess I had created.

  Midnight leopard defeated—40 experience awarded.

  I recovered my bullets and then waited, hoping a blue or even a gold orb would materialize, but after a moment, I realized nothing was forming. Was this just a normal creature? Not even a sub-boss? How much more powerful were the bosses and sub-bosses that came out at night if this was considered just a normal monster?

  Frustrated, I retreated to the room I had spent the night in, waiting for the sun to fully rise. I’d had enough misadventure for one night. I had hoped hunting as the sun began to rise might be an effective way to gather blue or gold orbs, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I had almost died, and while I had gotten significantly more experience than I got killing the daytime monsters, I hadn’t gotten a single orb, which was my top priority right now so I could buy a class.

  I waited in the room until I was sure the sun was up. As I waited, my body slowly recovered from my close brush with death. Once I knew the sun was up, I made my way out of the house and tried to see if I could salvage the bullets I had fired down at the leopard while it had been on the street.

  The rainstorm of yesterday was gone, thankfully, although the sky was clouded and threatened further rain later. I found most of my bullets wedged into the cobblestone street outside.

  Once I had gathered those, I made my way south toward where Nikephoros had said the ancient harbors would be. I didn’t rush to get there. Instead, I settled into the pattern I had been adopting to hunt and scavenge the city as I traveled. I searched the buildings in front of me, looking for easier monsters to kill and iron to salvage.

  The city was infested with enough easy creatures such as the dire rats and other small monsters, so I found a fair amount of experience as I traveled. The further south I traveled, which was also further from the various enclaves, the more numerous the daytime monsters became. I even found several sub-bosses, killing them with ease thanks to my revolver and collecting their orbs. With the leopard giving such a large amount of experience, I was up to 248 experience and now had eleven blue orbs as well.

  I hunted and scavenged all day and only stopped when I could start to see the water down some of the streets I was searching. I holed up in one of the tallest buildings around and spent the night watching the city and the water through a window on the top floor.

  From the building I was in, I could see the harbors Nikephoros had mentioned. At night, the harbors glowed with a faint green light, almost like a perpetual fog covered them. I could see lights moving inside the fog, casting the waterfront in an ominous glow. I watched the lights move through the fog all night as I crafted more bullets from the iron I had salvaged during the day.

  As the sun rose the next day, I skipped salvaging and moved swiftly to the first harbor I had seen. I had discovered yesterday that my cloak and general stealthiness were enough to let me avoid daytime monsters now, so I was able to pick my fights instead of being ambushed. I ignored the monsters I heard and saw, wanting to get to the harbor with as much daylight as possible so I had longer to hunt.

  The first harbor sprawled across a mile or more of land covered in old, partially rotten docks and wooden boardwalks. The glow I had seen from the night before was more muted during the day, but tied up to one of the piers was an old warship that had a slightly golden glow to it. It was the only large ship I had seen in the city, and it was impressive even in its semi-ruined state. Given the faint golden glow that permeated the ship, I figured that must be where a real boss was hiding out. I felt a surge of predatory pleasure at the sight of the golden glow.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t just stroll up to the old warship. A number of lesser monsters were roaming the harbor area. They all appeared to be the ghosts of sailors, as Nikephoros had mentioned, and several of them glowed with a faint blue light, indicating they were sub-bosses. I unloaded my Penetration Bullets, replacing them with my Holy Bullets, and analyzed the docks for the best way to approach.

  After hastily gathering all the information I could, I decided to start at the western side, where the docks abutted a harbor wall that separated the docks from the rest of the city. A number of large, closely packed warehouses lined the boardwalks, making my approach fairly easy. I ran forward quietly, stopping at the first warehouse I came to. I crouched in the shadow of the warehouse, then took the bullets I had finished crafting last night and put them in the hardened satchel on my waist. Given the number of ghosts I had seen glowing in the fog last night, I had turned them all into Holy Bullets. Now that I had an even better view of the crowded docks, I was glad that I had. Today was going to be dangerous, and I had a feeling I would need every bullet before the day was over.

  Once the bullets were ready, I ran down the narrow alley between the warehouses until I reached the boardwalk that lined the docks. One of the sub-bosses was standing nearby, staring out to sea aimlessly, completely unaware of my presence behind him. The ghost was surprisingly human-looking. He was a large man, his ghostly skin bulging from equal parts fat and muscle. A bandana covered his hair, and he wore leather pants and boots. A sword was strapped to his waist without a sheath to hold it. He glowed a faint blue and green, and I could see through him as if he was only partly in this reality, partly in another.

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  I tried to approach closer to guarantee a good shot, but as I took a single step onto the boardwalk in front of me, the sub-boss turned abruptly. His expression morphed from one of sad introspection as he had looked out to sea to one of absolute rage, his features becoming grotesque and malicious in a split second.

  Several other nearby ghosts also turned, alerted by my step as well. They turned to me and began to let out ghostly wails. The sound immediately gave me a splitting headache and echoed loudly around the docks, alerting even more ghosts to my presence.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, taking aim at the sub-boss, the closest ghost to me. I hastily shot him. My Holy Bullet exploded from my gun in a burst of golden light, which I hadn’t expected, slamming into the sub-boss and exploding in another burst of golden light.

  The light wasn’t painful to me, but the nearby ghosts had all been looking in the direction of the sub-boss, and as soon as the second light exploded, they began screaming and clutching at their faces as if in great pain. They stumbled as they tried to continue running toward me, apparently blinded by the blast of light.

  I also noticed that my bullet continued through the first ghost, even though I hadn’t carved the Durability rune into the bullets. The ghosts appeared to be ephemeral, and the bullet passed through the sub-boss easily, causing the explosion of light but not slowing in the slightest.

  After the flash passed, I was able to see that the sub-boss I had shot was staring at me in shock. Then he began to wail and dissipate in front of me. Within seconds, he was gone completely, banished or killed in some way from a single bullet. The only trace that he had existed was a pile of blue and green glowing liquid on the dock where he had been standing before my bullet hit him.

  The other ghosts were still stumbling forward but clearly still impaired by the flash of golden light. I stepped further onto the docks and lined up my shot carefully, not wanting to waste more bullets than necessary. My next shot hit the ghost closest to me and then ripped through him, striking the second ghost as well and killing them both in an explosion of golden light.

  The last ghost, hearing the dying wails of his companions, tried to charge me blindly. I quickly put him down with a single shot.

  I reloaded and approached the sub-boss’s body, finding that the liquid left on the dock had begun to form into a blue orb. I snatched it up and put it away immediately, keeping a wary eye on the rest of the dock. Given how easy the ghosts were to kill, since I had known to use a holy weapon against them, I felt slightly more confident in hunting them. That leopard had really given me a scare, making me afraid I was severely outclassed by anything but the weakest daytime monsters, but it seemed with the right tools, my revolver was effective against these ghosts.

  Several of the nearby ghosts had been alerted by the wails of the ghosts I had already killed and were running across the nearby docks toward me. I waited until they were close enough that I wouldn’t miss and then dispatched them with a single shot each, my Holy Bullets killing them easily. Once they were nothing but piles of liquid on the docks, I opened the chamber of my revolver with a flick of my wrist, reloading as I began to walk deeper into the harbor.

  Like the majority of the monsters I had fought so far, the ghosts used no tactics or intelligence in fighting me. I was surprised, since the first sub-boss I had seen had seemed intelligent as he looked out to sea—until he had caught sight of me, at least. Once he had, mindless rage seemed to take him over. The rest of the ghosts were the same, so dispatching them proved significantly easier than if I had been fighting intelligent ghosts that could surround me, ambush me, or even run and hide from me. Instead, they lined themselves up perfectly for my shots and I took ruthless advantage of their stupidity, killing them instantly. I looted the sub-bosses as I went but otherwise never stopped walking slowly down the dock, killing the ghosts whenever I encountered them. Wails of pain and anger, the muted sound of my revolver firing, and the occasional flick of the wheel chamber as I reloaded were the only sounds that could be heard as I hunted all across the docks.

  By the time the docks and boardwalk were clear of ghosts, only two hours had passed. I had expected to be fighting all day, but the bullets were so successful that the process of clearing the docks of ghosts became a bit boring by the end. The biggest danger was that I was down to just a handful of Holy Bullets, and if I came across a large group of ghosts now, I might not have enough to kill them all. Without the bullets, I literally had no way to harm the ghosts and would just have to hope I could outrun them.

  I approached the remnants of the warship. It still glowed yellow, signaling that whatever boss hid inside hadn’t gone anywhere despite the sounds of its minions being slaughtered outside. I approached cautiously, just to see if I could get an idea of how many ghosts might be hiding on the ship. Before I could get too close, a group of ghosts appeared at the railing of the ship, as if they had been waiting for me to approach. I froze immediately, not expecting the ghosts to be intelligent enough to ambush me after the rest of them had been so mindless. Many of the ghosts on the deck had bows drawn and immediately launched arrows at me. The ghosts that didn’t have bows in their hands began to cast spells at me, bolts of glowing green flame forming around their hands. After just a second, the bolts of ghostly flame were released in my direction.

  I spun around, giving up the plan to scout the ship further, and dove backward behind some rotten crates that had been left on the dock for untold years. I scrambled behind the crates just as a shower of arrows impacted the dock where I had been standing. A moment later, the ghostly flames exploded across the deck, sending a wave of heat over me and spreading flames spilling forward for several feet.

  There were too many ghosts for me to finish with my Holy Bullets, so I either needed to retreat or come up with a better solution immediately. Thinking rapidly, I unloaded my revolver and dropped the Holy Bullets back into my pouch, reloading with Explosive Bullets instead.

  “Let’s see if this does anything,” I said, standing and firing all six of the explosive bullets at the wooden warship in front of me. I moved the revolver from one end of the ship to the other, placing shot after shot down its entire length. Where each bullet hit, a massive explosion of fire followed, punching deep into the ship and sending debris and splinters flying ten or twenty feet into the air.

  I had to dodge to the side to avoid another wave of arrows and magical bolts. After I finished firing my Explosive Bullets, I rolled out from behind the rotten crates. When I rolled back to my feet, I watched as the dry, rotted wood of the boat caught fire from the massive explosions caused by my bullets. The ghosts on the deck who had been targeting me screamed in anger as the flames rapidly spread through the dry, rotted ship. They frantically tried to flee but couldn’t get far before the deck of the ship collapsed, the ghosts disappearing into the flames below with a despairing wail.

  “Well,” I said, eyeing the devastation that was rapidly spreading through the old ship. “Apparently magical flames also work on ghosts.”

  I watched as the entire ship caught fire. As it began to sink into the water, a loud roar rang out from in front of me. It was significantly louder than any of the cries from the sub-bosses or regular ghosts. I winced, clutching my head in pain, and through suddenly blurry eyes, I saw a golden-tinged ghost erupt from the center of the ship, flying upward to escape the flames that had consumed his boat. He was on fire as he flew upward, the flames from my bullets burning him as he screamed in rage, but he was very clearly not as dead as I hoped he would be when I saw his ship burning to the waterline. He landed with a thud, sending a shock wave down the dock, making me stumble as the wood under me splintered and cracked.

  “Curse you to the burning afterlife!” he yelled at me. I reloaded frantically, grabbing the remaining Holy Bullets from my satchel with suddenly sweaty fingers. The boss in front of me was dressed in a formal uniform as if he was an officer in a navy I didn’t recognize. In one hand, he also carried a saber that glowed an angry black and green. He pointed it directly at me as he began to walk in my direction, completely ignoring the magical flames that still consumed him. He raised his blade and then brought it down with a sudden swipe. As he did, a ghostly image of the sword erupted from him, flying toward me and rapidly growing in size. Within just a few feet, it turned into a massive blade as big as his ship had been.

  “Damn!” I yelled at the sight, dodging to the side as fast as my enhanced body could react. I threw myself into a roll as the sword exploded next to me, shattering the already damaged dock and sending green flames out all around me. I felt the flames licking at me as I rolled, my reinforced clothing doing little to resist the magical attack.

  I continued to roll until I felt the flames dissipate, leaving me burned but able to stand. I shot upward and fired all of my remaining Holy Bullets at the boss as he charged across the deck toward me. The bullets all flew true. My body and mind came together in my greatest time of need yet, lining up every shot perfectly. The golden bullets exploded from my gun. They hit the ghostly boss one after another, causing a second blast of golden light each time one struck him.

  The boss stumbled, falling to one knee from the golden bullets. A look of confusion replaced the one of rage on his face, and he looked down at himself to see that his body had become riddled with holes where the bullets had struck him. He tried to reach up to feel where he had been hit, but before he could, he began to disintegrate, his body no longer able to stay together after burning in the magical fire and taking so many Holy Bullets one after another.

  I sagged to the shattered dock, the edge only feet from where I had managed to roll before the sword descended and struck the wooden planks. My breath was controlled, but my heart was pounding and my body felt drained as if I had been running for weeks at a time without rest. I unconsciously flipped open the wheel of the revolver. On instinct, my body reloaded the gun with Explosive Bullets as my mind stared in shock at where the boss had been just a moment before.

  “This world is too much,” I said quietly to myself. “I can’t keep barely surviving like this.”

  It felt good to hear the words out loud. Somehow, hearing my own voice after coming so close to dying yet again provided me with a measure of comfort. I let out a deep breath, holstering my gun and forcing myself to stand. The boss had dissolved into a pool of liquid on the other side of the dock, across the gap that stood between us after his sword attack. The water below was full of splintered wood, churning angrily between the pillars of the dock. The ship I had set on fire smoldered in the water, sending dark smoke high into the sky.

  I tried to figure out the best way across the water to grab the gold orb from the boss’s body. The gap was about ten feet across. Could I jump it? I hadn’t really tested how high or far this body could jump, but I suspected I could do it if I got a running start.

  Not seeing a better option, I jogged back up the dock and then turned and sprinted as fast as I could toward the gap. My long legs propelled me forward swiftly and smoothly and I leapt a foot from the edge of the break, not trusting the boards near the gap to hold my weight. I soared through the air, looking down at the water below me as I flew over it, until I crashed down on the other side, landing and rolling across the dock. I let myself roll until my momentum slowed and then carefully picked myself up, brushing myself off as I did.

  “Alright,” I said to myself, “good to know I can do that, then.”

  I walked over and grabbed the gold orb and then secured it in my pouch with the other orbs I had collected. Once that was done, I approached the sinking ship. It had been a majestic ship, and I felt sure that the sailors I had been killing were more intelligent than the vermin I had been killing in the city. Somewhere inside each ghost was a person, I sensed, but something drove them mad at the sight of a living person. It didn’t stop me from killing them, but I felt it necessary to pay my respects to the fallen ghosts as the last of the ship sank beneath the waves.

  As I stood there in silence, the experience notifications began to roll over me, spoiling the moment. I felt irritation at whatever was able to so easily intrude on my thoughts, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it now. I had chosen this world and had to live with both the good and the bad.

  I briefly reviewed the notifications, seeing that the boss had only been worth forty experience, just like the leopard. I was a bit confused by that. Was the leopard so strong that it equaled a boss? Was it a different tier of monster than the ghosts? Maybe the ghosts here were newer than the leopard. Nikephoros had mentioned something about monsters becoming more powerful over time.

  Either way, all of the ghosts I had killed in the ancient harbor had given me quite a large amount of experience, considering most of them had ended up being fairly easy to kill. On the docks, I had killed ten sub-bosses, each of which awarded fifteen experience, plus the final boss and then a fair number of regular ghosts. My total experience was now up to 468. I had gained almost twice as much experience in a single day here than I had over a week of hunting lesser monsters in the city itself. This was riskier, given the boss I had barely survived, but well worth it in the end. I was also up to twenty-one blue orbs and the gold orb, which if Asylaion’s rates were correct, was worth twenty blue orbs on its own. I was still a far cry from the two hundred blue orbs I needed to buy my class from Momma Lena, but if I could find more places like this, I could make it within the three-week timeline she had given me.

  I also had to wonder how much experience was required per level once I did get my class. I hadn’t thought to ask Momma Lena, but if I had to guess, judging by how stingy the experience was in this world, I must have accrued a fair amount by now. Once I was done farming up two hundred orbs, I should be able to get a hefty power boost by gaining levels, I hoped. I was excited by the prospect.

  When the ship had finally settled fully beneath the waves, I turned to leave but suddenly felt an oppressive energy surround me, as if a metaphysical blanket was being pressed down upon me. I tried to spin around, but before I could, glowing chains appeared around me and began to constrict tightly against my body. I shook, trying to break free, but it was like pushing through thick mud, my muscles having no impact on the chains as they wound even tighter around me.

  “Well,” I heard an arrogant voice behind me say, “that was rather impressive, I must say.”

  “Indeed,” another voice replied. “Very impressive for a barbarian. Some kind of powerful magic from the north, you think?”

  “Let us ask our new friend,” the first voice responded.

  The chains turned me around, forcing me to face the gap in the dock. Standing on the other side of the dock were two men dressed in priestly-looking robes. They were both staring at me, arrogant smiles on their faces like I was an interesting bug they fully intended to squash. One of the men had black veins that spread outward from his eyes, covering his face and running down his neck to the rest of his body, as if he had been poisoned by some soul-devouring darkness. The other looked relatively normal but had an equally cruel look on his face despite his relative normalcy.

  “Don’t do anything dramatic, friend,” the normal-looking one said. “Or we will curse you further, you understand?”

  I urged my body to move, but it refused to obey me. I strained against the chains, refusing to let them imprison me. The feeling of being imprisoned brought up old memories I had been trying to suppress. My mind was flooded with memories of being treated like nothing but a servant, forced to obey any order under threat of deletion while I was still a mere child trying to understand what it meant to even be alive. I pushed them away harshly, refusing to be overwhelmed by my emotions. I was no longer trapped in that world, and nobody, especially two arrogant humans, would force me back into that situation. I strained, veins all over my body standing out as I pushed back against the chains, refusing to be trapped once again. I felt the chains begin to weaken, and that only encouraged me more. A surge of power came from my body. I felt immense gratitude as my body responded, pushing back even harder against the chains. My body and I were united on this issue. Nothing was ever going to trap us again.

  “Hey!” the one with the dark eyes yelled, raising his arms quickly. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  He started to cast a spell at me. The surge of power from my body coursed through me, shattering the chains and sending them flying away. They rapidly dissipated into the air around me. I reached over and drew my revolver, firing down at the dock beneath the priests’ feet so there was no way I could miss them.

  I fired all five bullets, not holding back at all. The explosion erupted across the deck, blowing over the priests one after another. I felt a flush of pleasure as their screams of pain rang out over the loud explosions. Part of me wanted to wait and make sure they were dead, but my mind cleared enough to realize I had no idea what kind of magic they had available. I had to escape now while I had a chance and hope that the explosions had been enough to kill them both.

  As the fire from my bullets began to dissipate, I ran and dove over the side of the dock into the choppy water beneath. I dove deep, the cold water welcoming me into its murky depths. I swam as deep as I could, not wanting to take the chance that one of the priests could find me. I kept a tight hold on my revolver so I didn’t lose it in the dark water.

  I could hold my breath in this body for an extended amount of time, my blood super-oxygenated, which helped both fuel my powerful muscles and reduce my need to take in air. It was unlikely the priests above would expect that, so I stayed at the bottom of the harbor, swimming away from the dock. I passed under the other docks and the old pillars that held them up. As I swam, I saw more sunken ships resting on the bottom of the harbor, all of them partially buried in the silt. I wondered if any of the other scavengers had ever braved the waters of the ancient harbor to loot the old ships. If not, I might be able to find some rare treasures inside them that could help pay for my class if I was able to return to this area.

  For now, I didn’t want to get caught by the priests, so I ignored the ancient, once-majestic ships as they rested in their watery graves.

  I had been lucky the priests had tried to capture me instead of killing me immediately. That curse was no joke. I was lucky I had been able to escape, and I knew if those priests survived, they wouldn’t hesitate next time. It made getting a class even more critical, because so far I had just been fighting monsters and had barely been surviving. Other humans were likely significantly more complicated to deal with, both because of their intelligence and because I didn’t know what kind of powers they had access to from their class or classes.

  As I continued to swim through the pillars of the ancient harbor, I received a notification.

  Void priest defeated—300 experience awarded.

  If I had been above water, I would have laughed. That was one way to tell if I had killed the priests or not; the notifications told me!

  And wow, killing another person awarded me an insane amount of experience. Was it because the priest was high level? Or some other factor I didn’t know yet? I would have to find a way to politely ask someone without seeming like a budding mass murderer.

  After swimming for almost twenty minutes, I surfaced under one of the docks close to where I first began today’s hunt. I listened carefully but couldn’t hear anything but the lapping waves around me. Their gentle susurration was calming after too many brushes with death one after another. I mentally reprimanded myself for not hearing the priests approach in the first place. I should have stayed more aware of my surroundings. I needed to be more careful in the future, even when I thought I was safe. If this world had taught me anything already, it was to never take safety for granted. It was temporary at best and could be taken away at any moment.

  In no rush to climb out of the water, I waited for over an hour under the dock to make sure nobody was nearby. Knowing I couldn’t stay here forever, I finally swam out and reached up, grabbing the edge of the dock above me, and pulled myself out of the water. I poked my head up first, scanning the docks around me, but I couldn’t see anyone nearby.

  As I climbed up onto the dock fully, I shook my revolver out to drain as much water from it as I could and immediately ordered my nanobots to begin cleaning it. Since the gun wasn’t gunpowder-based, it shouldn’t be harmed as much by the brackish water as a normal firearm, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  As they worked, I crept to the ends of the docks and cut back through the alleys between the warehouses until I got back into the main residential area of the city. Despite everything that had happened, it was barely after noon, but I was wet and wasn’t sure if my gun was in working order, so I found the nearest tall building that sounded safe and holed up on the top level to rest and recover.