Thalmeris's voice carried like stone sliding across stone—measured, grave, never rushed:
"West. Run. I am dry of IP. Destroyer, your Breath is almost gone, and the fool beside you no better. Hold nothing. Spend the shell, keep the core. We reach the clearing, or we do not reach at all."
The words bound them, and so the fidelity of brigands fulfilled itself: one must be left for the pack. Nightveil fell behind, the chosen marrow, the offered bait. His bow clattered uselessly as he tried to notch again, but the crows had already marked him.
They came low, black arcs against a sky the color of ash-water. Wings clipped the air with a sound like cloth tearing, and then talons struck. One drove into his shoulder, the other into his face. His cry broke short—half-breathed, half-swallowed—and was smothered under the beating of wings.
They stripped him alive. Beak after beak, tearing, rending, the sound less like feeding than chisels into wet stone. His hands clawed upward, groping for light, until one bird thrust its head down and took the eyes entire. From then he was no more a man than a sack of twitching meat.
Nameless watched the carrion work, the wings blotting out what little sky remained. A thought slid across him, sardonic: "Some peoples used to give their dead to the birds—laid them naked on high towers, a sky-burial for the faithful. But those were rites, sacraments of air and fire. This… this is no rite. Only waste dressed in feathers. No priest to chant, no flame to lift, only crows scratching the soul out of the meat."
He let the image settle, the fevered grove around him trembling in its silence. "Even in death, Nightveil is denied the dignity of burial. His bones will not guard a soul, only feed a hunger. Perhaps that is fitting: the hidden man consumed by mouths he never foresaw."
[XP Gained: Kill — Nightveil (L6)]
[XP +1170]
[Level Up]
Emperor - Level 10.
[Fist Weapons Proficiency +9]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency 51/10,000]
Nameless begins his meditation: "Nightveil's carcass paid the toll I had no wish to spend."
In PvP, XP is earned based on merit, and there is nothing more meritorious than PvP. The amount of XP is adjusted proportionally by the level difference between individuals, not given individually as when killing a simple creature - is proportional. Today they were ambushed by their own reasoning, defeated by a player who better calculated the variables. The solution they sought was no different from his; only the intensity of the method changes: "Kill strong players above all else."
The crows worked him with patient frenzy. Fabric shredded into ribbons, ribs cracked like green branches under weight. Blood misted and fell in rain upon the dust, turning it to paste. The noise was of feasting and of tools, as though they were quarrymen gutting a mountain, not birds gutting a man.
By the time they rose—bellies glutted, wings slow—there was no Nightveil. Only bones scraped clean, a shirt twisted with gore, and the dust beginning to drink the rest. No burial, no pyre, no cairn. Just the eroded truth of carrion: that some men are eaten until even their names are not believed.
Around him, the woods bent inward, febrile and stifled. It was a desert without sand—only trunks, ash leaves, and the smell of rot thick enough to weigh the lungs. The silence afterward was worse than the cries: a silence swollen with fever, like the desert within the hermits where even breath itself feels like blasphemy.
Nightveil had been the hidden one, the unnamed of the band. Now his knowledge lay scattered, in tatters, unburied.
Nameless watched from the canopy until the last feather settled. "My unburied ladder," he thought, and let the numbers tally themselves in silence. Then he turned, already moving with the fugitives' shadow, because the play was not finished and the book had more pages to spend.
The three came crashing back into the clearing, stumbling, breath ragged, feathers and blood clinging to them like second skins. Their noise broke in upon the two who had been standing apart—Mila and the half-Petrosi girl. They had been locked in some quarrel of tone and posture, Mila all eager warmth, trying to coax, the other answering with granite bluntness, a voice that treated softness as a fault. A petty tug-of-war between gift and command, honey and stone.
Nameless, watching from above, smirked dry: "They disturbed the female sector mid-HR dispute. A delicate case of office politics—of course the men arrive bleeding, turning gossip into triage."
Mila turned, lips tight, sighing under her breath. "Always the same. They break things, then expect me to fix it." Still, she stepped forward with that condescending patience that cloaked irritation like perfume.
She laid a hand on Destroyer's chest, grimacing at the sweat and stench, and whispered Natural Cure. Green light crawled across the torn muscle, knitting flesh enough for him to stand without coughing blood. Then she moved to Grinblade, her fingers hovering at his ruined jaw. Her thought flashed: "Ugly even before the crow did the work." She pressed her hand to him nonetheless. Another flare of light. The cracks closed halfway, the worst pain dulled. They were not whole, but not useless either.
Both muttered thanks, each in character: Destroyer loud and coarse, clapping his chest as though his own strength had healed him; Grinblade's words syruped with flattery, crooked smile already half-back, as if even gratitude were a performance. Together with Thalmeris they withdrew toward camp, slower than pride allowed, dragging weariness like chains.
Destroyer spat into the dirt. "This place's turned to hell. Days we walked this wood and nothing came. Now the forest itself hunts us. Blood for blood."
Grinblade hissed laughter, jaw still aching. "Or maybe it's you, master. You shout loud enough to wake every beast."
Thalmeris said little, only: "Balance never leaves a debt unpaid."
Nameless, crouched in the canopy, let the words run their course. His thought cut beneath them: "The road has been confined to the clearing. The owners of the road now lie impoverished in the forest. Better so—for the new spawnlings. The grown men have returned to the womb of earth, to the soil they never left."
When the grove had stilled again, Nameless slipped back through the trees. The clearing was quieter now, the crows gone, their feast finished. Where Nightveil had lain there was little left but tatters of cloth, bones gnawed pale, and scraps that spoke more of mockery than of man.
He knelt, searching without haste. Most was refuse—splinters of gear too broken to mend, cloth too torn to patch, trinkets emptied of value. Hardly worth the weight.
But deeper in the ruin, hidden beneath what passed for ribs, his hand closed on metal. A small dagger, silver-veined, its hilt etched with quiet markings.
He turned it once in the light, watching the blade catch against the ash-grey air. Silver—an edge keen against those creatures born of malice, the ones that stank of corruption in the code itself. A rare thing to see in such hands.
He thought dryly: "Of course. The man who hid his level would hide his weapon too."
Nameless slid the blade into his belt. He had no need for a dagger—his staff was ledger enough, his mind sharper than steel—but use was never simple. Nightveil, even gutted, could still serve. A blade like this, obvious yet concealed, would cast another veil. Let them take him for a rogue, a shadow-skulker, a player who traded in poisons and backstabs. The longer they misnamed him, the longer he lived.
"Nightveil," he whispered inwardly, almost amused. "Even in death, you darken the sight of others. Continue, then—veil me too."
[Stored: Silver Dagger — Blessed — L4]
Special:
+10% against evil-aligned
Destroyer sat hunched, blade sunk in the dirt, sweat still dripping from his beard. His voice came out hoarse, cracking with irritation:
"We need another bow. That spirit-girl—make her join us. Replace the coward. Nightveil's gone, so she takes his place. Done."
Grinblade's laugh was thin, twisted, playing both sides.
"Recruit an NPC, master? What's next, we ask the trees to swear oaths? She looks pretty enough as decoration, but can a doll hold a guild sigil?"
Thalmeris adjusted his robe, his voice quiet but edged with iron.
"The system should not allow NPCs in guilds. Only players. If she joins, it is because she is not what she seems."
Destroyer spat in the dirt, gripping the hilt tighter.
"Spirit or not, she heals. That's enough. We bind her, we use her, she stays."
Their quarrel rose, but Nameless heard only noise. He leaned back into the canopy, letting their words wash over him like stagnant water. His own ledger mattered more.
He drew inward, assigning his climb:
Emperor — Level 10
INT 36 · WIS 31 · STR 21 · PER 15 · DEX 4 · CON 8 · STA 6 · WIL 9 · CHA 1 · PRV 4
HP: 240
IP: 242
Breath: 84
Justice Points: 65
Skill Points: 3 (held)
Armor Total: 323
He smirked, thought curling like smoke. "They whine about wasted days. I leveled in silence. Their road closed, my road opened. Pedagogy by loss. I'll let them sweat until dusk, then watch them train again. For them, salvage. For me, harvest."
Evening came. Destroyer drove himself into cuts, blade biting air with rage rather than rhythm. Each swing was fever, each cry louder, as though sound alone could raise him higher. Impatience chewed through his grip; the brute was bleeding his own Breath just to quiet the humiliation of being penned here, no longer lord of the road.
Nameless mimicked, patient. His staff traced arcs in silence, each movement distilled, violence boiled into precision. He stole the shape without the waste.
[Breath: 24/84]
The ledger answered:
[Skill Learning — Finished]
[Short Sword Proficiency +15]
[Short Sword Proficiency 67/10,000]
[Trained Skill: S-rank Sword Gift — 5%]
Master: Destroyer
Nameless felt the echo inside his own hand: 5% of the Sword Gift, enough to mark the beginning. He almost smirked. "A glow-up never beats bone-deep. 5% is still ugly."
Nameless let the word "Master" hang bitter in his skull, then crushed it inwardly. "Not for long."
His gaze shifted. Grinblade was grinning wider than usual, grin cut sharp, almost trembling. His body moved with the same cadence, clumsy but infused with something new. Nameless recognised it at once. The boy had caught the spark too.
He looked down at him from the bough, expression taut between contempt and grim amusement. "So. A fellow disciple. Chalk eating chalk."
Nameless returned to Mila, voice flat with command:
"You have one task left. Your payment waits in it."
She tilted her head, wary, though the mischief never left her eyes.
"And that is?"
"You will tempt Thalmeris. They are already thinking to recruit you. Go before they decide how. Offer him an exchange: your healing for his wind. Tell him you will teach him Natural Cure. Demand he teach you Impetuous Wind in return. Do it openly. Let them believe NPCs can trade with players. Let them see hope where there is none."
Her eyes widened, suspicion running across her face. "And why would I—"
Nameless cut her with a glance.
"Because hope is the only coin left in their pockets. And because I require it."
He let the sentence die and silently completed it inside himself: "The first to die, always - hope."
The words fell cold, unadorned. She stiffened, as if the sentence had been spoken against her life, though she could not name why.
He continued, almost softer:
"When he is teaching you, use my staff. Its core can hold elemental knowledge even without points. Five slots, waiting. You will not understand now, but you will see the fruit later."
[Removed: Vein of Sylvie — Very Rare — L5] — Right hand
After thinking for a moment, Nameless gave her another instruction:
"And after you have taught him Natural Cure, tell him you can refine his staff also. Tell him you will raise it to the stature of mine. He never saw you bear one like that before—only a woodland girl. Now you stand with a rod drawn from the grove. He will covet it. Desire is the bait, and he will clasp it gladly."
Mila swallowed, the crooked grin flickering back.
"You don't give lessons, do you? Just orders. Fine. I'll play along. Better me tempting him than them tying me up."
She turned, adjusting her hood, and crossed the clearing.
Mila, biting her lip, sarcastically: "So I'll be the bargaining chip. A sweet, decorated bait for the prophet. How kind of you," she said quietly.
Nameless looked at her from behind and thought:
"Don't fool yourself. A life postponed is not a life saved. It's just currency that's still in circulation."
Thalmeris stood at the edge of the firelight, calm as ever, watching branches rather than faces.
Her voice came bright, warm, just shy of pleading:
"I will teach you Natural Cure. You need it—look at them. But I ask a trade. Your Impetuous Wind for my hands."
Thalmeris blinked once, his eyes faintly narrowing. He measured her not with surprise, but with calculation. His tone was mild, unreadable.
"A fair exchange, on the surface. A spirit bartering with men. Strange… but perhaps the world grows stranger every night."
He looked away, then back again, slow as stone turning.
"Dawn, then. We test it at dawn."
Mila bowed her head, playing the role to its hilt.
"At dawn."
From the treeline Nameless breathed the ledger closed, thought rolling quiet as a tomb. "So be it. The seed is sown. Tomorrow the harvest begins."
Mila walked back from Thalmeris, staff still warm in her palms. She held her head high, but inside she was tumbling.
"Tempt him? Trade skills? What am I, some bait on legs? He tosses orders like stones, never a please, never a thank you. A real gentleman, this one—covered in blood, skull on his face, and thinks he can just tell me when I die. Hah. Still… he saved me. Sort of. And he's clever. Clever men are dangerous, but they're useful too. I'll keep near him. Someone has to keep his head from sinking completely into that grave he carries around."
She glanced once at him in the shadows, high in the trees, still and silent as if the branches themselves obeyed him.
"Meles… liar. I bet that's not even his nick. But fine. If he won't give me honesty, I'll give him charm. Somebody here has to keep things human. Destroyer's a beast, Grinblade's a parasite, and that prophet—ugh, he creeps me out. At least I can make myself needed. That's how you survive men like this. Smile. Heal. Make them think they'd fall apart without you."
Her fingers brushed the staff, the pulse of the new core still faint in it, like a second heartbeat.
"At dawn, he said. Fine. I'll be there. And when they look at me, I'll make them believe. If they think I'm a guardian spirit, then I'll be one. Better that than being the next corpse in one of his neat little holes."
She forced a smile to her lips, not for them, not even for Nameless, but for herself.
"If I'm going to die first, then I'll make sure they remember me."
The night was deep, and the clearing lay under a sky without stars. The fire had sunk to embers, red eyes in ash. The others slept scattered—some slumped, some twitching, some dreaming as if their blood still ran hot with battle.
Nameless prowled the canopy, each branch a rung in silence. The hour was his. The world at midnight bent closer to thought, the fevered hush of the grove becoming a cloak.
He drew the breath inward, slow, the staff cold in his grip.
"Dawn is for fools," he thought. "The true work belongs to the hours no clock keeps. It is said the innocent die at dawn—yet here, in this pit of thieves, no such creature breathes. Good. No innocence, no debt. Only the guilty remain, and guilt pays well."
The sentence lodged in him like iron. He allowed himself a thin, sardonic curve of the lips, then moved downward, toward the bulk of Destroyer snoring alone by the fire's husk.
Grinblade leaned close to Thalmeris, voice low but quivering with triumph.
"I felt it today. The spark. Five percent—my first piece of it. The Gift is mine now, even if only a shard."
Thalmeris's eyes narrowed, unreadable, yet not without a shadow of regret.
"So it begins. But without Nightveil we are half-blind. If he had lived, the blade and the bow could have ended our brute together. Now the count is thinner. Fewer hands, fewer choices. Whether we carry him or cut him loose—this will decide what follows."
Grinblade smirked, but it carried no joy. "Then let him believe. The longer he swings, the faster he burns. His wrath feeds me now."
Their voices tangled in dispute, the night folding around them. On the far edge of the clearing, Destroyer slept apart, bulk slumped by the embers, snores heavy as felled timber. Nameless moved then—silent from the trees, crossing shadows until he stood above the brute.
Both hands clamped down upon the sleeper's mouth. The spell whispered through his bones.
[Doubt]
[Critical Hit — 276 Damage]
[Status: Confused]
(IP − 242 → 218)
Destroyer convulsed awake, eyes wild, lips torn, jaw half-ruined. Blood poured down his chest in ropes. No cry came—his voice was shackled, his mouth unmade. He staggered upright, clutching the great sword like a crutch, teeth gnashing red.
Nameless's voice came low, almost amused:
"No one beyond your road, Destroyer."
The brute reeled, searching shadows, confused, enraged, striking at phantoms. He swung King's Wrath into a tree, splitting bark, his blade wedged useless in the trunk.
Nameless stepped behind him once more, hands pressed to the skull, unleashing the second blow.
[Doubt]
[Fatal Hit — 376 Damage]
(IP − 218 → 194)
[XP Gained: Kill — Destroyer (L5)]
[XP +870]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +6]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 121/10,000]
The body shook, then sagged, blood leaking from eyes, ears, mouth, as if the head itself had been emptied.
Nameless lingered over the ruin of him. The thought carved itself in silence:
"The brute who worshipped his own flesh has been profaned by it. He made his chest an altar, called his sword a god, mistook rage for divinity. Now mute, sword pinned in wood, body collapsing upon itself—his creed consumed him. The matter he adored offered no sanctuary. Wrath without measure is only silence."
[Stored: Berserk Shortsword — Steel — L5]
Special:
• Blood Hunger
• +15% damage on berserk skills.
He weighed the steel in his palm, the grain still wet, breath still clinging to it."Berserk Shortsword. Aptly named. The rule is simple enough: Blood Hunger. It fattens itself with every kill, cares nothing for alignment. Rage is its diet, death its seasoning. A farmer's blade, really—swings, harvests, repeats. It grows because blood is the one currency everyone pays in. No law, no creed, just appetite. Berserk skills are just the system's joke: encouragement for tantrums. Spend Breath, scream louder, and the steel thanks you with harder cuts. Efficiency by waste. Useful now, though it stinks of its master's creed."
Nameless turned the blade in his hand, steel still wet, catching no moonlight. "Blood is our common heritage," he thought, "it binds all alike—no good, no evil, no neutrality spared."
He buried Destroyer in the grave already marked for him, one among the row he had dug in foresight. But not before dragging the corpse across the clearing, then lifting it on his shoulders, leaving a crooked trail of blood into the trees. "Let them follow the ghost where it leads."
The soil closed over the brute's body. "The path now is autodidact. My 'master' has taught his last." The earth took the rest.
He looked at the bully and thought, "S-rank Sword Gift... It's never enough to just be handsome."
Nameless lingered a moment, eyes on the mound. "Strength—so proud of itself—always rots first. Flesh stiffens, wood hardens, and both are fit only for burial. It is the pliant that endures, the weak that bends and lives. He mistook his stiffness for power. He mistook his greenness for ripeness."
Hours later, when the embers were only dust, Thalmeris and Grinblade returned. The clearing was half-shrouded in mist, the smell of iron still sharp. Destroyer was gone. Only blood remained, spattered, then dragged, then lost among the trees.
Grinblade froze, eyes wide, a laugh caught in his throat. "This… this isn't funny. He wouldn't just vanish. He's too heavy to vanish. He'd roar, curse, stomp—anything but… this." His voice cracked, the man who lived by masks now finding none to wear.
Thalmeris crouched, fingers brushing the soil darkened with blood. His tone was low, measured, almost detached. "No footprints leading back. No sign of a fight here. He was taken, or he wandered into teeth." His gaze lingered on the line of dragged blood. "Either way, his wrath ended without witness. For a man like him, that is the deepest cut."
Grinblade shook his head, forcing a crooked smile that rang hollow. "Don't say that. Don't you dare. He'll come back. He always comes back. He'll… he'll have some story, some scar to flash, laugh in our faces. He—he has to."
Thalmeris looked up at him, eyes grey as ash-water. "Hope is noise. Accept the silence. He is gone."
Grinblade spat to the side, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, trembling. "If he's gone, then what are we? A prophet and a clown? That's not a guild—it's a funeral march."
Thalmeris rose, cloak falling still around him. "Perhaps. But remember— we no longer need to worry about getting rid of him. The road has already made the choice for us."
Grinblade's grin returned, crooked, forced, pain showing at its edges. "Then we'll replace him. We'll make the boy-king vanish twice. That's the joke. That's the plan."
Thalmeris only gave a faint nod, unreadable. "Then so it begins."
The morning came slow, raw, and painful—like light dragged over bruises. Dew clung heavy, and the mist made the clearing feel more tomb than refuge. The Children of Fire roused without joy, nerves frayed thin.
Thalmeris stepped forward, robes still damp from the night, and bowed his head slightly toward the girl. His voice, as ever, calm and edged with the weight of a prophet speaking riddles:
"Courtesy demands the gift pass first to the daughters of the grove. A spirit of the wood must breathe her due."
He extended his staff, its end tracing a circle in the air. His tone grew sharp, more command than lecture.
"Wind is not tamed by petition. It breaks itself first, then strikes. To summon it, you must will its contradiction—movement that rends, motion that denies itself until nothing remains but the rush. Impetuous Wind: not calm, not patient. The sudden. The breaker of lines."
He drew in a deep breath, held it until his chest shook, then released with violence. His staff cut forward, diagonal, and the word left his mouth like a lash:
"Impetus."
Air convulsed. The trees groaned as if bark had been flayed from them. Dust ripped up in spirals, grass flattened in circles, and a crow's carcass, left from the night before, was flung into the air and dashed against a trunk, broken anew.
The prompt came, clear and cold:
[Thalmeris offers to teach you: Impetuous Wind.]
[Cost: 2 Skill Points, or store within staff. Slots: 5/5 available.]
The gale faded, and silence pressed in its wake. Thalmeris lowered the staff, his eyes cutting sidelong toward her, unreadable.
Mila's eyes widened. She knew she had no points left. Her hand brushed the staff's grain, tilting it just enough to catch the residual aura. The Heartwood drank quietly, siphoning the imprint into itself.
[Stored: Impetuous Wind — Forest Core Slot 1/5]
She made her face a mask, blank, solemn, as if she were tracing the lesson inward. Outwardly she only nodded, lips pressed as if in grave comprehension.
Thalmeris studied her with a flicker of surprise. No tremor in her limbs, no pallor, no collapse into the brief "coma" every player endured when binding a new skill. She stood serene, unbroken. To him, it could mean only one thing: she was no player. She was a spirit—an NPC—an entity written into the marrow of the forest.
His eyes lowered, unreadable. "So it is true. She learn as nature learns—without pain."
Mila held the mask firm, though inside her thoughts tumbled and her smile threatened to break through.
Grinblade stood at the clearing's edge, lounging into his vigil like it was theatre, waiting for Thalmeris to return from whatever ritual the "spirit" on the other side was weaving. He whistled, restless, idly tracing the hilt of his blade with a thumb.
Then a stone clattered from the opposite brush. He jerked, shoulders tight, bow crooked in hand. "What—" His teeth bared in a grin too quick, too thin. Defence masked as banter.
The brush parted. Nameless stepped out, bone mask catching the pale light, hollow sockets fixed and silent. No sound. No gesture. He moved forward as though the trees themselves had birthed him.
Grinblade's grin wavered, then came back crooked. "So the forest finally coughed up a ghost, eh? Took you long enough." His words came quick, jester's shield.
Nameless did not answer. His gait was even, slow, inexorable.
Grinblade's mind sparked fast—Is he a swordsman? A rogue? Caster? His hands twitched, half-ready for any of them, though none fit. The figure was an enigma, all silence and inevitability.
Then Nameless ran. Swift, sudden, blade-hand angled right, shoulder set like a man about to draw steel. Grinblade mirrored, shifting into stance—parry to the right, strike to the left. He had the angle, or so he thought.
But the cut came otherwise. Nameless's arc broke from the left, horizontal and brutal, steel whistling clean. The Berserk Shortsword—Destroyer's own—sliced across his torso. Flesh parted, blood ran.
[Critical Hit — 70 Damage]
[Breath: 54/84]
Grinblade staggered back, wide-eyed. Recognition struck harder than the blade. Destroyer's sword. His master's death was here, carried by this masked carrion.
Nameless paused only to let the weight of it settle. His voice, low, like a judge murmuring sentence:
"Every crossroad hides a blade. You chose wrong."
Grinblade gasped, blood pouring from the wound. Still grinning, though the smile shook, broke. He lifted his weapon to brace again.
Nameless came on. This time the feint was reversed—sword raised high to the left, baiting the same mistake. Grinblade set his defence to meet it. The blade froze mid-air, hung like an unfinished thought.
Nameless moved otherwise. He slipped close, hand clamping Grinblade's jaw. Fingers sank into mouth, pried it wide. His word landed like iron:
"Doubt."
[Fatal Hit — 250 Damage]
(IP − 242 → 218)
[XP Gained: Kill — Grinblade (L5)]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency +6]
[Intellectual Attack Proficiency 127/10,000]
[XP +800]
The sound was sickly: teeth crushed, jaw split, the grin shattered into chalk-dust. Grinblade crumpled, mouth broken, laughter ground into silence.
Nameless let the body fall.
"The bifid smile is ended."
Blood spread into the soil, a red ledger closed.
Thalmeris hands lowered, green light fading.
"My thanks," he said, voice steady as ever, though the hollows beneath his eyes were deeper.
The gale subsided, dust falling flat again. Mila stepped forward, voice soft as a secret shared: "Your wind is strong, but your staff holds it poorly. I can raise it higher—make it as mine, tempered with the grove. If you let me, I will refine it for you."
Thalmeris's eyes widened, breath catching. His thought raced like a player stumbling on hidden loot: "A reward… one I never even imagined. To have my staff elevated, not only power but permanence."
After a moment of silence, he agreed:
"Of course—why would a spirit not grant such a boon?"
He lifted the staff toward her, almost eager, voice breaking with relief:
"Yes. Take it. Do what you say. If this is offered, I will not refuse."
Mila inclined her head, masking irony with solemnity:
"At night, then. You shall see it renewed."
He passed his staff to her, temporary master of his strength. She cradled it like an heirloom and said nothing.
When he turned, expecting Grinblade's crooked grin, there was only air. No footprints, no sign—just absence. His brow furrowed. He muttered a spell for tracking, but the brush lay mute. Then the screen pulsed cold before him:
[Guild Dissolved: Children of Fire. Minimum members not met.]
The words struck harder than any blade. He had been in trance—coma of learning—while she pressed the healing rite into him. In that hollow, his comrades had vanished. Grinblade, gone. Destroyer, silent. Nightveil, already carrion.
His chest tightened, though his face stayed blank. A thought folded through him, soft as ash: "So this is what loyalty weighs—noise, bravado, laughter… gone. And me left counting ghosts. He went ahead, or he was taken. I already know which."
A sound behind him. A shadow.
Nameless stepped out.
Thalmeris turned slow, the faintest flinch betraying recognition. "So it was you."
Nameless's tone was almost gentle, almost amused.
"You played angel too long, Thalmeris. One spell. One wind. And you trusted the rest to brutes and clowns. Now the brutes rot, the clown is dust, and the angel has no wings."
The half-sylvie drew a ragged breath, hands tightening over nothing—staffless, stripped. "A prophet is never armed, only heard."
Nameless tilted the blade—Destroyer's blade, still thick with dried gore.
"And prophets without listeners are nothing but fodder."
Steel lunged. Thalmeris raised his arms to shield, but Nameless's feint bit left when his guard went right, then low when he braced high. He gasped as the edge raked his side, scrambling back.
[Crtical Hit — 90 Damage]
[Breath: 32/84]
"The sword… still bloodied. Not even cleaned. He means to show me this,"thought Thalmeris.
He tried to rally thought: "Wind. Only wind. That is my lever." He joined both hands, pulling air like rope, and flung himself backwards with a burst. "Impetuous Wind!" The gale shoved him away, staggered, and he sprinted, robes whipping, toward the clearing. Toward the spirit.
Nameless followed, not hurried, not slow. Cat and mouse—but the cat already knew the ending.
The clearing opened before them. Mila froze where she stood, eyes darting between them. Thalmeris's voice cracked for the first time:
"Spirit—aid me! He is more than I can—"
She shook her head, stiff, words hard. "I cannot go against him."
Thalmeris faltered, breath catching. "She felled a faun… and yet she says this? Then he… he is worse than that beast." Confusion ran to despair.
Nameless's voice slid flat as iron: "Climb. Watch from the tree. Appreciate the ground."
She obeyed, silent, slipping into the branches, leaving him alone.
Steel caught Thalmeris against the trunk, blow after blow. He tried to parry with bare hands, robes shredded, blood running. The brute rhythm of cuts drove him back until bark pressed at his spine.
[Normal Hit — 30 Damage]
[Breath: 20/84]
Missed
[Breath: 15/84]
[Normal Hit — 40 Damage]
[Breath: 8/84]
Thalmeris summoned air with a cry, both hands lifted, weaving a blade of wind to drive the strike away. He thought Nameless would come right, but the steel came left. The current met the sword like prayer gone wrong—palms closing as if to part it, only to find themselves split upon its edge. The shriek that tore from him was raw, disbelief carried in pain.
[Critical Hit — 70 Damage]
[Breath: 1/84]
Nameless surged forward, seized the backs of those hands, and pressed them down, locking his enemy's flesh tighter against the steel meant to sever it. He heaved, thrusting the blade straight through the chest, dragging the body until the hilt crashed against bark. The sword buried itself in the trunk, wood and bone pinned as one, the sage crucified upon a dead tree.
The life left him in a rush. Fingers slackened, yet the last outpouring of power still discharged, channeled whole into the blade that held him. As with Balin, as with the faun, the final exhalation was not scattered but poured into the metal. Nameless stepped back, Perfect Sight open, watching the collapse of Thalmeris's aura—IP folding into blood, blood into the sword, like a reactor in its death-throes, like a nightingale breaking itself upon the thorn, like a black swan's last cry
Blood ran bright. And then Nameless whispered a word he had never spoken before:
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 65 → 53)
Light burst. Golden fire raced from the palms outward, eating cloth, flesh, hair. Thalmeris screamed, body convulsing against the trunk. Nameless spoke again.
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 53 → 41)
The blaze deepened, licking his arms, consuming rib and muscle.
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 41 → 29)
Again. And again. The prophet became pyre. The tree behind him caught, crown flaring like a torch. Flame gilded the clearing in pastoral splendour, devouring shadow and silence alike.
By the time his voice failed, Thalmeris was only fire.
He murmured, voice breaking at the edge:
"So. Children of Fire… nothing but ash."
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +6]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 6/10,000]
[XP Gained: Kill — Thalmeris (L5)]
[XP +750]
Nameless stepped back, leaving the Berserk sword buried through the chest of the living torch. He watched unblinking, as the sage's last dregs of aura—what remained of his Impetuous Wind—bled outward, green and fevered, seeping into the steel. Blood crusted on the blade, lacing with that double current until the weapon itself began to drink.
"The brute was green," Nameless thought, irony curling sharp, "but with this green blood I can ripen his craft. Verdancy made ripe by fire." His smile thinned. "Fan or not, you were a lunatic."
He pressed down, twisting the hilt, making certain the transference sealed. For the third time he had repeated the method—Balin, the faun, now Thalmeris. Not an accident anymore, but a calculus.
A third fire rose then, mingling with what leaked of Thalmeris: sacred, aureate, intellect burning clean. The Berserk blade shifted, alignment tilting, as if the world itself marked the ledger. What had been only rage was now sanctified and sharpened.
[Weapon Transformed]
Berserk Shortsword — Steel — Lvl 5
Renamed: Blessed Shortsword
Special:
Blood Hunger (Removed)
+15% damage on berserk skills (Removed).
Hunger for Justice (Added)
Intellect-Touched (Added)
+15% damage against evil alignment (Added).
[Stored: Blessed Shortsword — Steel — Lvl 5]
The hilt was still hot when he turned it, sacred and intellect braided into the edge."Now it answers differently. Blood Hunger—removed. No more gluttony for its own sake. Hunger for Justice—a narrower appetite. It grows only on kills that bear weight: evil alignment, or the necessity of self-defense. Less fertile, but cleaner. Economy with a ledger."
"Intellect-Touched—the true game changer. The blade no longer swings alone. It can be wrapped in intellectual or sacred skills, cloaked in thought the way others cloak steel in flame. Every Doubt, every sacred calculation, can now run through its edge. Scaling shifts from tantrum to mind."
He smirked inwardly: "I baptized the brute's toy, and now it reads books instead of screaming. A finer education than its last master ever managed."
Mila clambered down from the tree she had fled when its branches caught the golden blaze. She stood to one side, half in awe, half aghast, her face lit by the ebbing light. She said nothing.
Nameless waited until the flames thinned to embers, until Thalmeris lay like a reed pressed flat upon the earth. The body had not burned clean. Flesh remained, organs intact. As he expected. Neutral. "Not like Mathis," he thought. "That one turned skull in an instant. Thalmeris was no murderer. He carried no tally of his own. Once the guild fell, so did its stain. Alone, he reverted to neutral. And neutrals do not burn entire."
The plan had worked.
Nameless did not linger. He bent, seized the sword, and with no more ceremony than a butcher at work, sawed through the half-sylvie's neck. Bone cracked, sinew parted, blood still green and faintly luminous. He lifted the head once, then set it aside. "I cannot abide waste," he muttered.
[Stored: (Misc) Thalmeris Head 1x]
Mila flinched, silent, eyes wide, watching her "disciple" shorn in an instant.
Nameless turned his mask toward her, voice flat. "You already have your reward." Then, sharper, iron cutting: "Now return my staff. Yes, you are impetuous, my dear—I am not. Pass it here."
She blinked at the cruelty of the jest, bewildered that he could joke in the midst of such desecration. But she obeyed. Whatever she thought she deserved, this was not the hour to refuse.
[Equipped: Vein of Sylvie — Very Rare — L5] — Right hand
Nameless took it back, weighing the familiar grain. "Keep what remains of him. Take his staff. With your Sylvie blood you can fuse it with your own. Two starter branches become one greater rod. The merge will grant a higher core—able to store up to two elemental skills at once. Think of it as a reservoir: you capture the ability, even if you lack the points to wield it yet. That is what you gain."
He spoke no more. The fire smouldered. The clearing smelled of marrow and smoke.
Mila's lips curved faintly as she weighed the staves. "So that's why he had me do it. He really does think ahead. My hands, my blood. I'm part of this conspiracy now."
Nameless stood over the row, the spade leaning like a staff. The graves lay oval, perfect, their mouths mute and expectant. Holes not for seed but for ends, prefigurations of a cycle that would not yet close. The earth turned, patient, promised a return that was not now. The air was sour with blood, iron in the dew, the dawn half-choked by smoke where the tree still smouldered.
He thought, dry as law: "Cut the serpent before it poisons the vine." Procedural economy, as jurists would phrase it. Emperor in name only, he had nonetheless decreed his first policy of state, circumscribed to this nation of brush and briar: the safety of its perimeter secured by shovel and fire.
The scene about him was tenebrous, sanguine. Graves oval and exact as coins pressed from a single die. To one side, the forest bent inward, branches clawing, fevered like a desert without sand, a grove that stifled its own breath. To the other, the carrion of Nightveil still whispered absence, the unburied witness to what was consumed.
By his feet lay the head of Thalmeris. The prophet's crown, severed, face lifted as though yet seeking sky. Nameless looked upon it and the thought ran cold: "The head of John the Baptist." Thalmeris had been forerunner, opener of ways, but never heir to them. His task was to mark the path, not to walk it. Like the Baptist who preached repentance, his words pointed to a kingdom not of this soil, and for it he was slain. His head severed not for treason, but for idolatry: to raise devotion where no polity wished it. The head cut, because the head points heavenward.
"Do not worry, Thalmeris," Nameless mused inwardly, eyes flat upon the severed face. "Your ideal will be fulfilled. Not by you, but by other hands. Successors, harsher than your own."
He smirked, sardonic, recalling their strange cohesion. "Interesting, how perfectly they united against me. More perfect than most governments ever muster." Unity always comes clearest at the brink of death. That was the paradox: the problem of every ruler is peace. Peace breeds whispers, corrodes hierarchy, presumes that the leader can wage war against himself—an impossible command. So it is easier to make war outward, to drown internal fracture in shared blood. As Herod made peace with Pilate at the price of an innocent, so too they sealed their cracks with a covenant against him.
He looked once more at the graves, each round mouth owing itself to the last. Verification of sequence, not hope of continuance. Cause and effect carved into soil. He pressed the spade down, steel flashing as it struck stone. Fire sparked briefly from the rock. The light died, and he moved on.
Nameless stood before the row, earth closed but not yet sealed. He lifted the blade once more, the new blade, and whispered fire into it. Sacred Flame spilled out—not to consume, but to cover. A thin sheet of yellow flame rolled over each mound, one by one, until the clearing glowed like a field of lanterns buried in soil. Montanum's rite, he thought, though no priest remained to chant it. He gave them burial by fire, and fire by burial.
(JP − 29 → 17)
The sword pulsed faintly in his hand, still carrying the last breath of Thalmeris. There was a strange joy in it, a tone not his own—like the swan's cry, too beautiful for mourning, too final for despair. A note that was both ending and offering, a gash in the world that shone like a promise. The man had sung once before he fell, and the echo had bled into steel.
Nameless tilted the weapon, watching how the new light clung to it, intellect folded into flame. "Some flames die, some flames divide themselves to light another," he thought. "Even chalk, spent to dust, leaves its mark." Destroyer had gone like that—burnt out in rage, gifting the ledger its raw lines. Thalmeris was different: he had not raged, but sung, and the song had turned the Berserk blade into something else entirely.
He smirked faintly at the irony. "The melancholic sage, born to air, finished in fire. The temper of his race bled through—their genius, their suffering, their gift of turning silence into prophecy. He mistook himself for prophet, but at least he was given a prophet's death: a voice rising into flame."
Nameless let the thought close like a ledger. He lowered the sword, its light quiet now. "The road is cleared. The graves are sealed. Their swan-song feeds the steel. And for a time, the way will be clean."
Nameless let the silence fall over the row. "Each cut was ledger, not passion; each burial, procedure, not grief. Nothing personal—only the cost of keeping the road clear. For a while, at least, the way will be clean", he thought.