Vicious—which I would continue to call him, no matter that I had relearned his real name: Dominic—and his friend, whose name was Claude, dragged me by the neck over to their side of the camp. They had tried to drag me by the back of my shirt, but the thing that had been my shirt had torn and crumbled under their grip. Vicious had a grip at the base of my skull and was hauling me bodily through rows of tents. Claude had his bloodied knife out to make certain I didn’t escape.

  We came to what was apparently their destination. It was a tent just a bit larger than the ones around it, but not nearly as large as some of the ones I saw off in the distance. It was made of canvas. All of the tents I had seen so far had been made of canvas, though, so it wasn’t so odd. This was likely the administrator’s office.

  As we entered, I glanced around. There wasn’t anything too special about the furnishings. There was a cot and a small side table in the far corner, a black and gold rug adorning the packed earthen floor, and a small metal fountain with a series of blurry runes engraved in its base. It was a fresh water generator.

  A massive desk piled high with paper and folders squatted directly in the middle of the tent. It had a small lamp on it, not more than what I assumed was a Light rune with a toggle switch—I had no idea how people managed to inscribe runes they didn’t understand—and a pen holder with no pens in it. The light looked weird to me, but that happened when the craftsman didn't know what he was doing. Those pens were scattered across the desk, slowly dripping ink and staining the nice golden grain of the wood.

  Papers rustled as the woman at the desk rifled through the stacks and pulled out yet another form to detail and sign. She was an older woman with the beginnings of graying hair, probably having signed up to be carried through the dungeon in return for her work as an accountant. That hair used to be blond, but now had taken on the color of aged straw.

  The whole place had an acrid smell to it, only slightly tempered by the scent of old books and vellum parchment. It was probably cheaper to use animal skin for paper than plants.

  Claude cleared his throat, and the woman looked up. She took a spectacle off her left eye and tucked it into a pocket. It was only then that I got a good look at her.

  Calamite Cleric(Lvl 14)

  She was an Initiate, and a higher level one than Vicious, at that. She had angular features and a longer nose than I had seen in quite a while. It was rather pointed.

  “Yes?” She asked. “Ah, Claude. Dominic too. I hope you brought me a snack that isn’t sticky this time. And who is the newcomer? He’s splashing blood all over the rug. You know I don’t like having blood in the tent, Claude—it makes things hard on the maids.”

  “Yeah, Ingrid, we know.” Vicious said. “But this isn’t a snack. We’ve brought you another one for the Barrier squad. You wanted a few more of those, right?”

  “Yes, yes,” the woman waved her hand distractedly, “What happened to his arm? And his leg for that matter. I suppose it doesn’t matter if he’s destined for the Barriers, but to be honest, I’m bored. I could do with a good story at the moment.”

  Vicious and Claude looked at me meaningfully, and I supposed I would humor the lady if it meant getting on her good side. I didn’t care about either of the men in the slightest, but I had a feeling Ingrid was more than she appeared.

  “I beat thumbody oo annoyed me to death with it.” I slurred.

  The two men looked at me skeptically, and Ingrid burst out laughing. She laughed and laughed until she was wiping tears from her eyes and had a case of the intermittent hiccups. “Oh, the Barriers will be perfect for him. He’s certainly got enough spunk for them. The only variable is his defense, which isn’t too much of a worry. He’ll be dead within a couple days anyway.”

  I blinked slothfully. Dead? Why would I be dead? “I don’ thee ow…”

  The world started to spin and twist out from underneath me. It was like one of those roller-coaster thingies I hadn’t gotten a chance to go on, only I was quite certain I was standing still. Disoriented, I put a hand out to steady myself, only to find the floor where the tent pole should be.

  Ingrid peered down at me. “Oh dear. He seems to have lost a lot of blood. Didn’t you take him to a healer before coming here?”

  A mumbled response came from the rapidly multiplying Viciouses standing over me. An equal number of Claudes that were dancing around the room joined in the muffled conversation, and I only barely managed to hear a piece of Ingrid’s reply.

  “—frozen? As in his blood was…”

  The world faded from existence as the screams of a thousand fractured faces took the tenebrous stage.

  “Who do you think he is?”

  “Dunno. He’s rather beat up to be here. Could have been a member of the other army, thought I doubt it. Probably just some fresh meat come for the slaughter. Bet he won’t last a day.”

  “I’m not taking that bet. Oh, look, he’s waking up.”

  I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes in the bright light. Well, bright to me at least. It was a candle burning on a nearby table. It illuminated my surroundings in a flickering shade of sinister.

  I was in a small, leather-made tent, not that that fact surprised me. I supposed most tents were made of leather when the source of it was so plentiful it nearly came out of our gills. No, what surprised me was that I woke up in a bed. A real, actually kinda comfortable bed. I had been expecting to wake up on some kind of doctor’s table.

  My surroundings were pretty bleak. There wasn’t much in the tent except for a trio of men, one of which was still asleep. The other two were sitting on their beds, chatting. They seemed affable enough, but my focus wasn’t on them. It was on my wounds.

  I was a complete mess of scars. They criss-crossed my shirtless chest and wound their trailing way down my barely covered legs. I was wearing a pair of boxer shorts, nothing more. My leg was back in working condition, though it still hurt a little—likely phantom pain from back when it had been wrenched and twisted until it mostly stopped functioning.

  Looking over to my left, I sighed. They hadn’t put my arm back. Of course they hadn’t. Regrowing a limb required a highly specialized type of healing that wouldn’t be found until Initiate tier, and even then it was pretty rare. And expensive. Very expensive.

  Everything else felt horrid. Buzzing sensations zinged up and down my sides and back, my left arm burned terribly, and my right arm creaked when it moved. So, in other words, they had done a quick patch-up job that was just enough to keep me alive so I could heal on my own. That was standard fare in most armies, especially ones that were tight on funds which I guessed this one was.

  Oh well.

  I flicked through my system interface to find I had a massive backlog of notifications waiting for me. I hadn’t had the opportunity to look through them yet, and I was honestly curious to see what had happened that I wasn’t aware of just yet.

  Madness has been cured.

  Moonsickness has been cured.

  Tears of the Night has abated.

  Congratulations! You have reached Level 7.

  Because you do not have a tier, the system will assign your stat point(s) for you.

  Str 5 > 6

  Def 8 > 9

  You have completed the Floor Quest!

  Reward: Sword

  Mind of Steel —> Titanium Mind

  You have stood in the presence of Madness himself and have not faltered. Your mind is stronger than steel and tougher than iron. Comparison against your peers is useless.

  Achievement: Child of the Ancients

  You have been acknowledged as a Child of the Ancients. This path has been traveled only once before, and the one who walked it never completed it. What lies at the end? Only time will tell.

  You have gained a new attribute!

  Attribute name: Cor

  Cor > 1

  There were some massive changes in there. First off, I had managed to cure my afflictions by killing Dalia, something I hadn’t been completely certain would happen. The system said it would—in a roundabout way—but I had still been worried.

  There there were, of course, the levels. I had been expecting them, so they weren’t much of a surprise. What was a surprise, though, was that I had jumped over level six. I had been nearing it before the fight, but getting a full level and a half of experience was more than I had expected.

  I pulled out my quest reward. It was a plain sword, well-built and sturdy and with an enchantment as well.

  High-quality Steel Sword

  This sword is perfectly forged, made of high-quality steel. It is balanced according to your needs and will cleave through everything up to the very beginning of Initiate tier with ease. Anything past that will require extra effort to cut, but this sword will cut up to the middle of Intermediate tier without excessive difficulty.

  Enchantments: Sharpness

  Now this? This was a good reward. I could tell it was supposed to go with the shield, but I had broken that in the fight with Dalia. Giving it a couple of practice swings, I could tell it would be perfect.

  It was a gladius, designed to be used in extreme close-combat and easy to wield. It required less training than a more specialized sword such as the katana or the khopesh, which made it the perfect weapon for beginners. I was not a beginner, but the amount of rust I had gained in the eight years since my last practice session with one of these things could be measured in inches.

  I put it back into my inventory.

  Moving on, I came to my achievements. My Mind of Steel achievement had upgraded to Titanium Mind due to my “conversation” with Madness, and I had received a strange one called Child of the Ancients. I had no idea what it entailed, other than the fairly ominous message contained in the subtext: You might not survive either.

  And then there was the last notification. The one about my new attribute. It was called Cor, and it obviously referred to the new lump in the center of my chest, the place where the Shadow had taken up residence. It was set to one, and my guess was that it would tick up every time I absorbed another Shadow. The thought made me shiver. Just one had been rather unpleasant, and I was not looking forward to what the next felt like. Presumably, it would be even worse.

  But that wasn’t what really unsettled me about the stat. Nor was it the existence of the new stat in the first place. I had heard of these things happening before, usually under some pretty unusual circumstances, so it wasn’t that unique. No, what unsettled me was the fact that I didn’t actually know what the stat stood for. These stats were usually shortened forms of some other word that explained what it was. This one could be any number of things, and I had no way of telling which of them was correct. It was frightening. Very frightening.

  That was all for the notifications, but there was one more thing that needed to be addressed before all was said and done: the floor quest. Last floor’s quest had been a multi-step process of investigation and eventually murder. Hopefully this one wouldn’t be so involved as that. And looking at it, I could tell that it wouldn’t be.

  Floor Quest: Survive the war.

  I shook my head. I did not like the sound of that word “survive.” It meant bad things in terms of my overall health and welfare.

  Not that last floor had been any better. I was still missing my arm.

  Right, well, there was no point in worrying on that which the future might bring. I had a pair of men staring at me, watching me look at a screen they couldn’t see with odd looks on their faces. Which made me realize I had been staring into space for a solid five or so minutes, despite the fact they only expected me to have one or two notifications at best. Yeah, that explained the looks.

  Closing out my interface, I looked over at the two people sitting on their respective beds.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” I said, “Nice to meet you. I sure hope this conversation includes an explanation of what in the nine circles of ever-burning wrath is going on with some of the people in this guild.”