Grant stood in the hallway’s darkest corner, concentrating on forcing silence into his ragged, labored breaths. He clung to his dagger, nestling it tightly against his chest. Soft footsteps on the stone and hushed voices came from his left; shadows grew longer as they approached. A gangling woman nearly as tall as Grant rounded a corner, swaying as she walked, and a far smaller, older, and plumper woman waddled forward with her.

  He was near one of the two doors he had not been able to peer inside in the Elder Sanctum. The first was a gate that towered as high as a cathedral’s bell tower, at the top of the longest, broadest staircase in the largest, widest cavern Grant had ever laid eyes on. Its doors were a foreign gray metal that looked like it would not so much as scratch to a battering ram. In the time that he had gawked in awe, he could only wonder what Skill or Spell in the Store could damage them.

  It had to be the throne of Bay’kol. It was one of the few places in the stronghold large enough for her to pass through, after all.

  The second was entirely unassuming, made of untreated wood, much like any of the other doors in this area of the fortress. Grant would suspect nothing of it on any other day, but it had one key difference: it was guarded by two burly cultists.

  Nothing was guarded in the Sanctum. Not the rooms, not the armory, not even the throne of Bay’kol itself. And yet the two squat, wide, bald men stood in perfect stillness, holding severe looking clubs and more severe looking expressions. In the dim light, they looked almost identical. The only differences he could see in the dim caverns were the one on the left had a pink burn scar on his face, and the one on the right was a bit taller. From afar, Grant had thought them statues, and almost walked right by them without Invisibility active.

  “State your business,” the one with the face scar barked, turning to the approaching women. It was the first time Grant had heard him speak in the hour.

  The women ignored him, plodding forward.

  “You will not approach,” he growled, taking another step. The head of his club threateningly padded against the palm of his hand. The women came to a halt.

  “We have come to question the Cursed,” the portly woman said, an air of annoyance in her voice. “Must you act like an unmarked initiate? We have had this conversation twice a day, every day, for nearly a week now. Allow us passage.”

  Grant's breath caught. It was exactly as he'd thought. He gripped Siphoning Fang tighter.

  “On whose authority?” the guard asked.

  Grant could hear the woman groan under her breath.

  “On the same authority as this morning, yesterday evening, yesterday morning, the day before, and every other time we’ve told you,” she snapped. “Elder Vindur’s.”

  “What is your code of passage?”

  She sighed with weary resignation. “Three ships, two captains, one army.”

  The man paused. “You may enter.”

  He took a single step back to his post as the women ambled toward the door. Grant checked his time on Invisibility.

  [Time remaining: 49 seconds.]

  He kicked himself for being so cautious, although if he could do it all again, he would probably do nothing different. Unlike the area that came before the gates, being seen here was a death sentence. There were far fewer elders than apprentices, and they actually talked with and knew each other. A foreign face in initiate’s robes would raise many questions he could not answer. He acted like a spooked alley cat rummaging through the garbage most of the time, turning Invisible and running as far away as his legs would take him at the first sign of threat.

  49 seconds was not enough time to solve the problem. But it was enough to at least scout the inside of the room.

  The woman turned the handle, and the door creaked open. Grant didn’t have the best angle, but he heard no sound of a key slipping in, and no sound of a lock clicking open. Perhaps the two enormous men with maces were deemed adequate deterrence, and Grant couldn’t fault their thinking. The greatest burglar in Evenon could not have made it half as far as he had. His Skill was essentially crafted for infiltration.

  His feet were moving before he turned Invisible. He needed at least twenty seconds of the Skill to return safely to the dust-covered room he had found, which gave him 29 short seconds to confirm the Cursed prisoners’ presence and status.

  He squeezed in behind the women and slid to a stop in the unnatural brightness of the room.

  The first thing that hit him was the stench. Grant gagged loudly when it reached the back of his throat and forced down the rising bile. The entire fortress had a distinct smell like sulfur, as if eggs had been left outside for slightly too long. This room reeked, completely overwhelming every sense, a combination of unwashed bodies, sour sweat, blood, and bodily fluids, how an unfilled mass grave might smell.

  And before him was the source of the smell. 48 of the 49 prisoners with whom he had gone through the Portal stood against the walls. Prisoners who had been given a mission to kill him and failed. Prisoners who had followed him to Estreia, trying to finish the job despite their minds being turned to mud. Prisoners he’d tried to drag into a battle against a cult with hundreds, if not thousands, of members.

  They looked even worse than they smelled. The room was two thirds of the way to an open grave, and he wouldn’t be least bit surprised if they all succumbed to illness within days. Their once beige clothes were stained with still-wet mud and dried blood. Their swollen faces were discolored with thick smudges of dirt caked over bruises and open lesions. They coughed constantly, and their lungs audibly rattled when they inhaled.

  But their eyes, although heavy-lidded from exhaustion, were sharper now. There was intelligence behind them that Grant had not seen just days ago.

  “Who sent you?” the tall woman asked the room.

  The lightning-scar man stepped forward, rattling the bindings that tied him to the wall. “Let us go,” he said, raising a palm. “We wish you no harm. We have talked among ourselves, and we unanimously agreed to leave and never return.”

  The women cocked their heads at each other. Grant understood every word being said, but none of the prisoners or cultists possessed the Languages Skill.

  “Who sent you?” repeated the shorter woman. She was speaking a different language.

  One of the female prisoners choked back a cry. “Please. We don’t know why we’re here. The last thing we remember is being in a forest.” She shifted forward and winced in pain as it tightened the bonds of the thick rope across her wrists and ankles.

  Grant only had 24 seconds remaining on his Skill. He cursed, rushing out of the room and darting down the hallway, eyes burning with tears of rage, head pounding. His countrymen had tried to murder him, but the officers could have told them anything about him. And even if their intentions were purely selfish, no man or woman deserved what they had gone through.

  He turned a corner and set his jaw as he returned to his hiding spot. Well, maybe not no man deserves that. I can think of a few right now.

  ***

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  Grant squatted in a shadow, occasionally peeking out to check the room that contained the prisoners.

  Nothing had changed. The same two guardsmen still stood watch. They still had not moved an inch. They still held their cudgels by their handles, with the heads still resting on their palms. They still clearly took their task very seriously.

  But so did Grant.

  [Perfect Invisibility has been reset!]

  He activated his Skill and rushed the guard on the right, Resummoning Siphoning Fang. All evening, he had sat in the corner of the dark, dusty room, with one leg stretched out and the other tucked to his chest, desperately trying to find a nonviolent resolution to his problem. He had considered making a distraction, like a loud noise down the hall they would have to investigate. He had debated just opening the door as quietly as possible while Invisible, hoping they wouldn’t notice. Briefly, he had contemplated posing as an Elder, as he knew the passcode for the door.

  He came to the same conclusion each time. Not a single one would work.

  His mind then wandered towards violent, but non-deadly means he could take. One was to take a hostage. Another was to knock the guards unconscious with the hilt of his dagger, and then find something to tie them up with.

  But no matter how much he struggled, grappled, and pulled over his options, they all led down the same dark road—to the same fact that he had refused to address a full week after entering the Portal: he wasn’t thinking like a Campaigner. He was thinking like an 18-year-old inn worker. Not a single cultist in the fortress would lose a blink of sleep over driving a sword through his heart.

  If he were to sneak out of the stronghold today, leaving the Cursed and Estreia to their fate because he was uncomfortable doing what was necessary, what would happen the next time he was faced with the same decision? Would he be able to act if it were Roland’s, Ayers’s, or Lira’s lives on the line?

  He ran forward, hand steady and confident with the decision he made hours ago. With a roar only he could hear, Grant used all the momentum of his sprint to jam the blade of his dagger into the guard’s temple.

  [Critical Strike! (400% Increased Damage)]

  The man was dead before he hit the ground.

  [Perfect Invisibility has been removed!]

  [You have slain Svar Watsons!]

  [You have gained 841 Experience and 19 Points!]

  The second guardsman did not startle, to his credit. With sharp-eyed challenge, he turned toward Grant and pulled his cudgel back in a long backswing.

  Although the following swipe aimed at Grant’s head was powerful enough to crush stone, the man might as well have been trudging through water. The blow would have obliterated Grant’s skull like a horse kicking a watermelon, but with his 31 Agility, Grant easily ducked under it, making the wild swing fly mere inches high.

  Using the man’s own forward momentum against him, Grant drove his dagger up under his chin and into his skull, and then violently tore it back.

  [You have slain Daniel Mulder!]

  [You have gained 1,026 Experience and 24 Points!]

  Grant stood over the two bodies at his feet, heaving hot breaths in and hissing them out. The adrenaline washed away, then the shock, and now a sharp, sobering chill came over him. The second man’s name had been Daniel. Perhaps his friends called him Dan. He had nothing in common with Grant’s best friend, as Dan would rather die than join a cult.

  But it fell on Grant’s chest like an anvil from a rooftop.

  Two bodies lay at his feet, leaking blood on his boots.

  Two lives that could have ended tomorrow or in 50 years were over.

  Two souls were now floating toward the afterlife.

  They were not the first men Grant had killed. The first was Zerrick Heath, a name now seared into his mind like a bull’s brand, thanks to the damned Notification. But that was self-defense, and he was only trying to free himself from the man’s grip that would’ve snapped his wrist like a twig.

  And in a twisted, indirect way, Zerrick had saved his life, too. Had Grant not killed him, he never would have had enough Points to buy the Languages Skill. Had he not bought the Languages Skill, the cultists would have found him out atop that altar. It had gotten him into the cult, and it could end up saving the lives of the other prisoners.

  Grant braced himself and moved with purpose, pushing his guilt down. There would be time for that later. Now he had more pressing matters, like undoing the damage he had already done by leading the Cursed here.

  He turned the door’s unlocked handle, and with a sharp click and soft creak, it swung open. The same smell as before leaked even between its cracks, but this time he was prepared for it, and took short mouth breaths as he pressed on. When he stepped into the room, some of the prisoners were asleep with their hands hugging their knees to their chests and their backs against the walls.

  The others cried out, startling them awake.

  “Who’s that?”

  “What happened outside?”

  “I have to get out of here!”

  “Did anyone else hear something?”

  Grant pulled back his hood to show his face.

  Their faces turned to pure shock.

  A woman tried to step forward, but she was pulled back by her bindings.

  “How?” she whispered, tears welling at the corners of her eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  Grant stared at their smudged, cadaverous, clueless faces. It was just as the woman had said when she was being interrogated. None of them had any memory of being led here. They remembered the forest before they were Cursed, but the early days of the affliction must have passed like a blur for them.

  They’re helpless! a voice rasped.

  Grant jumped, looking up at the ceiling. It felt like something was whispering in his ear.

  You can take their—

  “We don’t have much time,” he said, cutting it off. He didn't know if the voice he'd known all his life was changing. But it sounded wrong. It had wanted him to kill the man in the forest, and now it wanted him to gorge on the prisoners' points. Like Belal or Raella would. "I'm not like them," he whispered.

  There was a long, quiet hiss, like the sound of a campfire being quenched with a bucket of water.

  Grant shook his head, then focused on the prisoners. “I need you to listen to every word I’m about to say.”

  Every eye in the room was on him, every mouth pressed shut.

  “You are afflicted with a Curse. How much do you know about it?”

  A short woman stepped forward. “I have a Spell called Investigate. It enhances my Interface and provides more information about Buffs and Debuffs. Curse of the Tomb Fiend is a Curse, but the further we are from the Tomb Fiend, the weaker its influence grows.”

  Grant nodded. “How much influence does it hold over you now?”

  “It makes me more irritable and more aggressive, but little else,” the same woman answered with a shrug. “If we enter the Scourge Barrens, it will immediately advance to Stage III.” She looked at the floor, her shoulders trembling. “We will lose all autonomy and self-control to the Tomb Fiend’s commanders.”

  Grant grimaced, but with that information, he knew what to do. “I have some very bad news for you. In what could be hours from now, an emissary of the Tomb Fiend is going to arrive. I do not know what he can do to you when he gets here, but I assume he will be able to exert control over your every action.”

  The prisoners cried out and began speaking over each other.

  “I cannot guide you to escape!” he yelled over their voices, and they went quiet, eyes wide with hope. “But I can cut your bonds under two conditions.”

  They stood in silence, their faces pale and stained, their eyes hopeful, their hair matted with sweat.

  “Well get on with them!” snapped a tall, frail man. “If you need us to steal the statue of the Goddess from the Shrine, we’ll figure out a way!”

  “I don’t care what it takes, just get me out of here!” shouted a woman in the back corner. Murmurs of agreement spread through the crowd.

  “The first,” said Grant, “is that you do me no harm. I am well aware that you made a deal with the Evenonian military to kill me.”

  They looked around awkwardly.

  “Consider your deal with them off.”

  “Yeah, yeah, never much liked those shits anyway,” said a woman.

  There were murmurs of agreement and nods around the room.

  “The second,” Grant continued, “is there is a town north of here. Its name is Estreia. You will go nowhere near it under any circumstance.” He paused. “Which I would not recommend anyway, as that would only take you closer to the Scourge Barrens.”

  “Is that all?” ask the man who had offered to steal the statue of the Goddess. “Because I feel like we’re getting off pretty easy if it is.”

  “It is,” Grant replied. He still held Siphoning Fang, which slowly dripped blood on the floor. The prisoners watched wide-eyed and eager. “I know nothing of your lives on Evenon, but I will not allow these fanatics to chain you up like animals. As long as you can promise not to act against me and the town, I require nothing more.”

  “Well that’s a good thing,” grunted the tall man. He gestured down to himself with bound hands. “Seeing as I don’t have nothing else to give.”

  With a final nod, Grant went to work. He moved from prisoner to prisoner, his sharp blade cutting their bonds as if they were wet paper, making sure to keep an eye on those he had freed. From afar, what held them together seemed like rope, but upon closer inspection, it was more like thick wire. Their wrists and ankles were bruised and bloody, and they smelled of rot and infection.

  They looked at him expectantly, rubbing the red welts on their skin. He wondered if they saw a leader in him, but he had no intention of being one. As far as Grant was concerned, his debt to the men and women was paid in full, and all guilt they had for conspiring against him was wiped free.

  “You are all free now!” he roared, fury rising at how his countrymen were treated worse than animals in a slaughterhouse, how much of the fault lay with him. “These cultists are in the service of a giant wyrm named Bay’kol! They pillage, kidnap, and sacrifice the innocent at their Queen’s command! But now it is midnight, and they sleep, titillated by sick dreams of her atrocities. Nobody will stop you if you wish to kill them in their beds, and nobody will judge you if you flee for your lives. Take what weapons you can carry, use what you bought from the Store, and fight for your lives!”

  The men and women cheered, and then poured out the door as one.

  Grant smiled to himself. All you cultists wanted to be impaled, crushed, and smothered so badly, so I hope you lunatics enjoy it.

  by FrankG

  No memory. No name. No idea who she was before the crash.

  A mechanical spider rebuilt her dying body on an alien planet.

  When the System gave everyone combat classes, she got Engineer. In a forest full of warriors where only fighters survive.

  They want her dead. The System locked her at Level 0 to guarantee it.

  But something hacked her evolution.

  Now she's leveling in secret. Every level makes her sharper. She sees patterns in alien technology others miss. Reads systems they don't understand. Turns broken machines into traps that cut through enhanced flesh.

  She remembers nothing about her past. But she's learning this forest runs on ancient tech nobody else can touch.

  The warriors hunting her have strength to shatter stone and speed she'll never match.

  They're faster and stronger. She just needs them to step in the wrong place.

  What to expect:

  ? Underdog engineer vs combat-class warriors

  ? Intelligence, preparation, and problem-solving

  ? LitRPG progression focused on strategy and invention

  ? Fast-paced survival and escalating danger

  Novel Cover Drawn by: Dagmara Gaska ()