Mila was thinking.
She sat on a stump, chin in her palms, staring at the man digging like a plow-ox. Grave after grave after grave. "Why bother? They'll respawn anyway. What's the point?" She started counting aloud, half-mocking, half-bored: "One… two… three… five… thirteen? Thirteen holes? But only nine bodies. Hah. Maybe he's planning ahead. Or maybe… maybe he's planning more."
Nameless leaned on the shovel, scanning the neat row. "Better to economize effort, to open destiny in advance. A cemetery in every corner, coherence for the lore, respect for Montanum's customs. And each grave patted flat nudges my alignment a fraction cleaner."
The irony lingered, grim and almost amused. "I could become the undertaker of this world. Not a hero, not a saviour—just the one who keeps the ledger of death in order."
Mila squinted at him. "He's like some rustic farmer," she thought. His aura still burned—brighter since the level-up. "Ah. Of course. When you climb, stats refill. That's why I saw it all."
Nameless set his thoughts straight, as always. "Points in the same columns. Metrics before vanity."
Emperor — Level 9
INT 35 · WIS 30 · STR 20 · PER 14 · DEX 4 · CON 8 · STA 6 · WIL 9 · CHA 1 · PRV 4
HP: 235
IP: 205
Breath: 79
Justice Points: 32
Skill Points: 2 (held)
Armor Total: 323
[Level 9]
994/2144 XP
"2144 for the next rung. Each rung doubles the climb. Excess carries, the rest is erased. Children of Fire—ten novices and one desperate marksman bled into a single faun, Level 18. All within the world's rule. 6 levels is a wall. 10 is miracle or myth. The scale is honest."
When the last mound was patted flat, he turned.
"Now that you have received your reward, I have a task for you. "
Mila blinked, pulled from her trance. She lifted the staff she had left by the dirt. The letters floated before her:
[Staff Enhanced]
Increased Nature Blood
Nature Connection: Secrets
Her lips parted. "How does he know this?" But all she said was, "Yes… what is it?"
"Come here," Nameless said.
She moved, uncertain, while he leveled his own staff sideways. From his left hand he drew the Heartwood Core and pressed it to the tip.
[Removed: Heartwood Core ×1]
"Best to use a Sylvie's hand. I didn't forge this weapon; I stole it. My race can't carve its bonuses into it. But hers can."
He asked without turning:
"Has your aura regenerated?"
Mila hesitated, didn't know the word. But her mouth betrayed her: "Yes."
Nameless didn't smile. "Aura is your sage's power. If you didn't know it, now you do."
She fell silent, bristling.
"Both hands. Same way you made your staff."
Her eyes widened—"he knows that too?" But she obeyed, fearing what else he might know.
She invoked Sylvie Mystic. The heart fused to the wood. For a while it pulsed green, then red, then yellow, before settling into a low, dark crimson throb.
[Ritual: Complete]
Nameless read the new inscription:
Special:
Nature Regeneration
Forest Core: 5/5
"The game gives no manual. I'm no surprised she didn't knew nothing and has been walking until here by feelings only - although she gives me the impression of having always lived this way, even in a world that has instruction manuals. Here, you learn what a line means by testing it, by bleeding into it", he thought.
"Nature Regeneration"—clear enough. The staff drinks when set in soil, heals its own bark,reparetes itself. Spares me blacksmiths. Practical. Narrative. Economy.
"Forest Core—more obscure. A reservoir. Up to five elemental abilities can be stored without claiming them, like seeds kept dry in a box until you can pay to plant them. A vault for intentions. No one tells you this. You infer it, or you lose."
He spoke before she could ask: "Consider it payment for being saved."
Nameless drew inward, his thought folding back on itself. "I remember this spawn-point. This clearing. Statistically the highest probability node in the western arc of Montanum." His eye traced the path the Children of Fire had taken.
"They cannot have gone far. Beyond is the wall of rock I placed—impassable, a cul-de-sac. Around it, the ring of crystal lakes: beautiful, yes, but stocked with teeth, aquatic terrors. At this level it is near instant-kill to try the water. That was the design - coffins cannot linger at the spawn; the world must push men out, as Hera pushed Alcides into torment. Without torment, no Hercules. Pedagogy by pain."
He laughed inwardly, the sound dry as shale.
The memory flashed: the faun tearing off Destroyer's leg like bark from a stump. "My training cannot stop here."
It was then the noise came—heavy steps, a rabble rising. He looked at the girl before the sound grew louder.
"First: I do not exist. Otherwise, neither will you. Second: stand by the faun's corpse. They will believe it yours. Third: heal the idiot's leg. I will not say it twice. Should they try harm, I will be in the trees."
And before she could frame a reply, he was gone—up the tallest trunk, movements noiseless, sepulchral, watching from the crown.
Mila's jaw tightened. "Bossy bastard. I don't even know his name." Her lips twitched anyway, the absurdity of the order almost comic. She felt wounded, but playing along, because it was easier to stay useful than risk the void.
The steps broke into the clearing. Destroyer dangled over Grinblade's back like some kangaroo-borne parasite, the disciple now a mother-beast carrying her wounded child.
Thalmeris moved first, calm eyes scanning. His gaze fell on the graves, the churned earth, the spray of blood across the glade like pigment thrown from a painter's bowl. He could not tell how the battle had ended, only that it had.
Nightveil's bow lifted, silent, a taut line of suspicion.
They halted, and there she was: a lone figure in the heart of the ruin. Hood drawn, robes pale green and white, a girl that looked less like an enemy and more like apparition. To Thalmeris's eye she was sylvan, a guardian of groves—though the slaughter around her told a different tale.
Nameless, high in the canopy, let his irony coil. "Memento mori." His gaze flicked from graves to girl. "Memento mori and vanitas—always siblings, always hand in hand."
All of them halted. Out of the ruin, a girl stood—hooded, cloth pale-green, more linen than armour. Not a boss, not at first glance. "A spirit of the forest," Nightveil thought, cold and measured. He followed: "Thalmeris seemed not to know her; no glyph of her name sat in his memorised lore. So perhaps not a hostile mob, not a scripted encounter. Still, the half-Sylvie's mind had always read too many codices, too many wikis. Nerd. He really did read the whole lore."
Thalmeris was the first to speak, stepping forward with the gravity of liturgy.
"My lady, spirit Sylvie of the wood, guardian of this vale of shadows—aid us."
Mila almost burst. Her gut cramped, her lips fought a grin. Inside she was shrieking with laughter. "Spirit of the wood? If only you knew. Look at the scene, you nerd."
But Nameless, watching from the canopy, saw more than her mask. He saw the graves in their row, the earth torn raw; he saw the faun, headless, chest opened, heart stolen; he saw the ground painted in blood. All of it framed her, cloaked her in a darkness she did not even notice. From above, she looked less like a girl and more like a shrine gone wrong—a guardian of nothing but ruin.
He smirked inwardly. "She even bothered to customise her starter gear, painted the colours. I didn't touch a thing…"
"They see a fairy-tale spirit," he thought. "What stands there is vanitas itself."
She forced her face still, a marble mask. A puppet left on stage, waiting for the ventriloquist's hand.
To them she was a spirit. To her it was farce. A grotesque, dark parody of sanctuary.
Mila, her mask of composure unbroken, finally spoke—voice too smooth to be natural.
"Yes. I will heal your leg."
They froze. None of them had asked, nor even suspected she could. Thalmeris had only cast a stone into dark water, to see if ripples came back. He thought, with a flicker of smugness: "A bonus from a side quest I didn't even know I'd triggered."
It would prove the hardest quest he'd ever stumble into. The only quest, in truth, authored not by the system but by Nameless himself.
Destroyer was set on the ground. He drew from his pack the grisly token: his own severed leg, clutched like a relic. Grimacing through the pain of pressing stump to stump, he held the pieces together. Mila walked forward, solemn, lifted her hands, and spoke: "Natural Cure."
A green radiance spilled between flesh and flesh. Muscle and bone found one another, the seam closing until the titan could feel his weight again.
Nameless thought, watching from the trees: "Good thing he kept the leg. Otherwise only a mid-tier healer could have patched that hole. He'd have lived the rest of the game a cripple."
Destroyer staggered upright, tested the limb, then slapped his thigh with satisfaction.
"Well done, spirit," he boomed, flashing his teeth. "Destroyer remembers those who serve. You've got my gratitude."
Grinblade clapped as though it were theatre. Nightveil, as ever, stayed flint-faced. Only Thalmeris watched with his hollow calm, eyes calculating.
Their gazes moved to the faun's corpse. Headless, gutted, heart torn out, its ruin made her seem—if anything—more convincing as some dark guardian of the woods. It chilled them, but in the same breath, relieved them.
Nightveil muttered under his breath, almost in wonder:
"So the game really did plant a guardian at the spawn… to keep newbies safe. A tutorial."
Thalmeris shook his head, voice still low.
"No. That would break the doctrine of Nameless. He would never codecandies."
"Nameless," Destroyer spat, sudden and harsh. "That megalomaniac bastard."
Nameless almost laughed from above. "Look who's calling me megalomaniac."
Mila, noting how quickly they had reduced her to NPC, leaned into the mask harder. Her voice came firm, level, demanding:
"What do you want? Why are you here? Where do you go next?"
Nameless, watching, was faintly impressed. At least she had gone straight to the root.
Thalmeris answered with the flourish of a chronicler:
"We are the legendary company—Children of Fire. Known across this land already. A faun rose from the wood to destroy us, but you saved us. Now we must rest. Night approaches. This day was lost in growth."
She inclined her head.
"You may rest and I shall protect you —so long as you do not leave this ground. It belongs to me."
They nodded, satisfied enough, and began to set camp.
Later, voices drifted through the fire-smoke.
"Do you think she sleeps?" Grinblade whispered, sly. "Maybe we kill her while she does. See what loot she drops."
Nameless listened impassively from the nearest tree, already expecting as much.
Thalmeris cautioned: "Better not. If she stays, we rest safe tonight. Tomorrow we return to the road."
She remained where she stood, unmoving, until a sound came from the brush. Nameless's voice, low and edged:
"You may sleep. Stay in the role you've taken until morning. They kill players—if they discover your trick, you're finished. I'll remain nearby. I owe them a debt, you might say. Not that it implies I'll be the one to pay it."
From the shadows he passed her a small bowl. Meat simmered in a thick broth, rich with fat and smoke. "A delicacy," he said flatly.
She lifted it, hesitating. The flesh was dense, darker than venison, iron-heavy, with a sweetness at the edge—like chestnuts roasted too long. The taste clung to the tongue, half-game, half-earth. Faun meat. An unearthly stew, bitter and rich, both revolting and exquisite.
Beside the fire lay the faun's husk. Not a carcass anymore, not even a body. Bone only. Every shred of flesh had been stripped, marrow drained, the skeleton propped like refuse at a butcher's stall. It gleamed pale in the fire's low light, obscene in its emptiness.
Her breath caught, the word slipping before she could cage it:
"Brutal…"
[Stored: Faun Meat ×3]
She sat beside his hidden fire, the trunk shielding smoke from sight. For a time they ate in silence. Then her voice came, insistent, pointed, the second time she'd asked:
"What's your name? If you drag me into danger, at least tell me."
He thought a moment, then spoke: "Meles."
She narrowed her eyes, catching at once it was only a nick. "Velena," she answered, giving her own in turn.
He smiled, thin. "So you read some of the lore. Veela spirits—old fairy breeds. Who'd have guessed. You really are a forest spirit, then." His tone was dry as ash.
Her cheeks flushed with irritation. But irritation passes quick when it has no roots in the head.
Nameless laid out the rest. "Sleep above. A bed of leaves waits in the branches. You'll be hidden. Use the cloaks of the fallen for cover."
The night grew cold, autumn's edge pressing down, but she agreed. Better leaves in the dark than eyes in the firelight.
Nameless leaned back into silence. "The training must continue. Not much longer. But enough."
Morning came slow, thin light prying through the canopy like a thief. Mist clung to the hollows; the air smelled of ash and rot turned sweet. Mila stirred above, her bed of leaves damp with dew, the cloaks heavy on her shoulders. She glanced down once—the camp below had become a nest of beasts in slumber.
Nameless was already awake. He had not slept, only shifted from branch to branch, watching them breathe. Sleep was a luxury, and luxury was a trap.
Destroyer rose with the groan of timber splitting, leg still stiff but holding. He brandished his sword, swung it once into air as though to remind the world he still ruled it. Grinblade, ever eager, came skipping close.
"Master! Teach me more. Yesterday was thunder—today I'll be lightning."
Nameless, from his perch, almost smirked. "Lightning fed by thunder. Idiot poetry."
Destroyer barked: "Then watch. King's Wrath!"
He swung wide, the blade howling through mist, chopping into a dead trunk. Wood cracked, bark split; chips scattered like teeth. He pulled the sword free, smiling like a butcher. "That is how kings speak—with the blade."
Grinblade clapped as if it were theatre again, eyes glinting not with loyalty but with greed.
"Yes, master! Each cut sharper than the last. You'll make me dangerous just by standing near you."
Nameless whispered inwardly: "Chalk, grinding yourself to dust so he may write his own name."
Thalmeris stood apart, robes still damp, voice smooth and cold.
"Spend not all your fury at once. Even wrath needs a scaffold, lest it collapse on itself."
Destroyer sneered but nodded, too thick to catch the irony.
Nameless watched every motion, every slash. He mimicked in silence—arms describing the same arcs, body learning what the brute wasted. From a distance one could learn as well as from the center.
He moved his own sword through the air, lighter, precise, translating berserker rage into something colder. Each motion carried the stamp of bloodlust, but Nameless drained it, made it ledger instead of frenzy.
He checked his Breath by feel—nearly full again. Destroyer had spent half his own; clumsy stamina leaking out of him like a cracked barrel. "Good," Nameless thought. "He bleeds in training, so I don't have to. I can harvest the pattern without the cost."
Destroyer stirred first, shaking sleep from his shoulders with a growl. He planted the sword in the dirt and leaned on it, eyes narrowing at Grinblade.
"You especially need training. You're too damn useless as you are. If you want to walk beside me, stop squealing and start cutting."
Grinblade's grin sharpened, all mock-devotion.
"Of course, master. Teach me to be less useless—I'll make even my clumsiness a lesson."
Destroyer barked a laugh, half approval, half insult. He raised the blade and carved the air.
"Then watch closely. King's Wrath!"
The brute's voice roared again, sweat dripping down his neck.
"King's Wrath! Again! Again! Until the world knows it!"
And as the sun broke higher, pale and merciless, he felt the ledger tally another entry in silence.
[Short Sword Proficiency +15]
[Short Sword Proficiency +15→ 52/10,000]
[Skill Warming — Finished]
[Skill Learning — Initiated]
[Breath: 24/74]
The training ended. Steel dulled in the air, Breath almost over, the ground marked by shallow cuts where Destroyer had swung too wide. They turned to leave for the road when the spawn broke the stillness.
A girl stood there—short, stocky, slate-grey skin veined with stone. Petrosi blood, half. "The squat Petros, grey-skinned and granite-veined, endured like stone itself, short yet unyielding."
Eyes sharpened. Destroyer's hand tightened on the hilt, the blade already bare. A thrill lit his jaw. He would have cut her down without thought, but Thalmeris's hand rose in time.
"Wait. She is not merely our guardian—she guards this region, these novices. If she suspects us of spoiling the spawn, she will resist. Better to play both sides. Let the lambs walk out of here; we'll take them later, on the road."
Agreement passed in silence. Even Destroyer grunted, sheathing noise into obedience.
Mila, meanwhile, drifted forward, smiling with that easy warmth that made her look harmless even in a graveyard. She crouched slightly to meet the Petrosi's heavy gaze, words spilling light and playful, as if they had been friends longer than breath. The half-petrosi girl answered bluntly, voice like gravel, the sharp edge of someone who preferred commands to pleasantries.
Nameless watched. "So be it. Now she is entertained. Less speaking for me. Good."
He turned inward. "Let us to the point. Today cannot be wasted. Nature makes no leaps, but roads do." The irony pressed at his teeth.
He moved along the margin, watching the Children of Fire align themselves for their next "hunt." His mind wandered the edges. Perhaps the three had known each other before—Thalmeris, Grinblade, Nightveil. Spawned near each other, maybe. Some alignment of race and ping, drawn by servers, geography, latency. A convenience mistaken for fate.
"Or nationality," he mused, counting the probabilities. "they should be at closers IP's"
His thought cut to language. The universal translation system worked well enough—every word flattened into common tongue. But beyond this region, across borders, players would need to learn the dialects proper: Sylvie, Petros, Ratiol, without counting with the multiple non-humanoid dialetcs. Half-breeds had the advantage; they spawned already bilingual.
And himself? He smirked. "I am polyglot. There is no tongue in this game that is not mine, for I forged them."
Our little Tolkien never had it so easy.
The laugh did not escape his throat, but it trembled inside him like a fault-line.
They returned to the road, eyes cast for new victims to grind beneath their climb. Nameless lingered in the treeline, weighing once more the trick of the stone. A repeat was dangerous. Another faun drawn from the brush would be worse than folly; there were not enough bodies left in them to contain such a beast twice. A remedy harsher than the sickness.
He lowered his hand to the staff, feeling the wood answer him like a nerve. Nature Connection. The world within the trees stirred. He let its lattice speak, tracing the subtle pulse of life near and far. Shapes gathered in his mind—roots, feathers, bones still warm in the earth. He listened until the whisper settled.
Relief washed through him when the silence confirmed it: no fauns, not here. Their absence was a mercy. His breath deepened, though it carried no ease. To call such creatures again would be to call his own death.
But then—something else. Small, sharp, circling like embers carried on air. The staff gave back the impression of wings, the metallic taste of blood dried too long, and hunger that was never sated. He narrowed his gaze into the canopy, eyes catching motion he would have missed unaided. Black shapes poised on high branches, watching the road as if the road itself bled.
He stilled. Something worth using.
The tree bent with weight, black fruit where no orchard should bear. Nameless's gaze fixed on the crooked limb, and the carrion bird fixed back.
Carrion Crow — Level 8.
Its feathers were not mere black but black soaked through, as if dyed in blood that never dried. The beak gleamed bone-pale, split for tearing, and its eyes were glass beads that caught no light, giving none in return. Its wings hung like cloaks of ash, ragged at the edges, as if smoke had tried to take form and failed.
"This carrion road deserves carrion birds," Nameless thought, irony dry as dust.
The plan came fast. Nightveil: too contained, too precise, the only one in the band who thought rather than shouted. Hardest to handle in single combat, easiest to bury in accident. A mirror opposite of Destroyer's noise. "A crow for a crow," he murmured inwardly. "Even the most exact hand can be led to fumble if the right beak pierces it."
He remembered a maxim, echoing like an old lesson: aggression without purpose is waste. A useless man might yet be bent into use. Nightveil was not useless—he was essential. Which made him the perfect rung. "A ladder," Nameless thought, teeth baring in silence. "Level 6. I climb through him. This is the moment. An axe falls when the wood is green; wait too long and the grain hardens."
He climbed higher into the crown of the tree, quiet as shadow. From his pouch he took raw flesh, a strip of wolf's meat saved, knotted it to a stone, and let it drop into the branches where the crow brooded. A second piece he bound the same way and, from the height, heaved it outward—straight down onto the head of Nightveil below.
[Removed: Wolf Meat ×2]
[Critical Hit — 15]
[Status: Confused]
The archer staggered, eyes snapping wide, stunned by the sudden strike. His hand went halfway to the bow, but nothing came.
The crow shrieked—offended, lured, and incited all at once. Its cry was no mere noise but a summons. The sky answered.
The air thickened. Three shadows broke from the canopy, wings slashing the light into ribbons. Carrion crows, black rain with talons. Their cries scythed the road, and their descent was aimed not at the forest, not at Destroyer's bluster, but at Nightveil—the one marked by meat and stone.
The trap was sprung.
The despair turned. The ambushers were ambushed.
It was Nightveil who paid the toll first. A crow dropped like a black blade from the canopy, claws razoring for the sockets. The sound was not even a cry but a wet snap, feathers and blood tangled. His eyes—lifted from his face like fruit torn from branch. He staggered once, then fell, flat, writhing in silence too thick for screams. The archer, immaculate until now, was useless, reduced in an instant to a heap, sightless, smothered in his own red veil.
The others froze, tacit, stunned. Even Destroyer's jaw slackened. For one heartbeat the guild looked less like hunters than prey.
Thalmeris moved first. His robes snapped with the force of his wind—Impetuous Wind bursting out, shoving the three birds off their kill. He did not console; he bought space. Grinblade and Destroyer bent at once, forming a crude guard around the collapsed body, covering their own eyes, their faces tight with the fear of being next.
Nameless, high in the branches, watched. The stage was ugly, the lines improvised.
Destroyer was the first to strike back. He raised the blood-fed blade and bellowed, King's Wrath! The swing caught one crow mid-wing, snapping the joint like tinder. It crashed into the dirt, thrashing, the world narrowed to its broken arc. A critical stroke, luck as much as will.
Thalmeris kept the rhythm: every time the birds wheeled for eyes, he scattered them with another burst of wind. Not wounds, but distance—that was his liturgy.
Grinblade ended the cripple. His Sinister Cut slid across the neck, steel parting feather and vein, leaving the crow stiff and silent in the dust.
[XP 7: Assist — Carrion Crow (L8)]
Nameless saw the notice flicker. "The clown's technique improves."
The rest pressed on. The crows circled, feinting for sockets, always for the soft matter, but were thrown back again and again by the half-sylvie's gale. And there, between the gusts, Destroyer and Grinblade alternated their crude liturgy: the Wrath and the Cut, blow and reply, thunder and echo.
The sky poured black again. The crows returned in pairs, feinting, always darting for the eyes, but each rush met the same gale—Thalmeris, patient, not killing but scattering, holding the air like a leash.
Destroyer struck in wide arcs, steel clanging, his blade less weapon than shrine of violence. Every cut he swung was louder than the last, as if sound itself could make him sovereign. Grinblade moved around him, smaller, quicker, answering with his Sinister Cut, not a strike but a parody of one—half devotion, half mockery, his grin drawn tight as wire. Together they held, though the shape of their defence was crooked: one roaring, one smirking, and the storm of wings testing both.
Thalmeris stayed behind, gaze unreadable, speaking little, his wind rising only when it must. He did not swing, did not sweat; he simply measured, and when the measure was right, the birds broke off.
Nightveil lay still, his blood soaking into leaves. His hands, once precise, pawed useless at the dirt, smeared red.
The crows circled but did not dare dive again. The clearing was marked—steel ringing, grins flashing, wind stirring—and Nameless in the distance, silent as the trunk that hid him, letting the charade of loyalty unfold.
While Nightveil writhed on the ground awaiting an illumination that never came, now that all external veils had been torn from him, the fight dragged on.
The line broke when a crow fell oblique upon Destroyer. Talons carved across his chest, raking close to the heart, as though the very altar he mistook for godhead had been profaned. He roared, but the sound rang hollow—the brute's strength already spilling out like blood on packed earth.
Grinblade rushed to cover him, the same crooked grin still hanging, but a black beak struck through it. The jaw cracked; teeth scattered; the arc of false devotion torn into a jagged seam. The smile that held their pact dissolved into a guttural rasp, laughter crushed into silence.
The two of them staggered side by side: the brute with his chest split open, the jester with his grin torn away.