Unwan sank down slowly. Though the wound in his abdomen flared with every movement, the pain was, for now just within the limits of his endurance. He reached for his grimoire and pried it open. A faint, ghostly luminescence bled from the pages, casting just enough light to make the runes legible. He had intended to study the creature he had just slain, but a sudden change on the very first page caught his eye.
Spiritual Energy: [101/1000]
'Just as I thought. Soul fragments are converted into spiritual energy here. Good.'
'But have you considered that your physical state might not change in return?'
'Perhaps. But there is no absolute rule stating that it must or will happen that way.'
Unwan looked toward where he estimated the creature's carcass lay, his gaze piercing the gloom.
'I wonder... what was its name?'
'Why do you care about a name? It's dead. It's over. It is of no use to you now. Why search for it?'
'Can't I simply know the name of my opponent?'
Unwan flipped forward two pages. At the very top, two short lines of text sat waiting. Fortunately, they didn't look overly complex. He pulled out a small runic dictionary and began the meticulous work of translation. Slowly, the runes shifted into words:
The Slain:
[Dormant Beast — Darkness Slave.]
Though the creature's body lay mere inches from him, Unwan still couldn't see it clearly. The darkness was an absolute wall. He had a lighter, but it was too clumsy to hold while moving, and the grimoire's glow was too feeble to reach into the corners of the place. He needed a torch, or at least a sturdy branch he could turn into one.
But to find one, he would have to step further into the blackness. Unwan sighed, hesitating for a moment. He began to sweep the grimoire across the immediate area to inspect his surroundings, and what he saw froze him in place.
He found himself staring directly at the body of the Darkness Slave. It was a grotesque, unsettling sight. The creature was hauntingly humanoid, yet its skin was so impossibly thin and translucent that the skeletal structure beneath was bared to the world. It didn't even look like skin; it looked like a desperate membrane stretched tight just to keep the bones from rattling apart.
And then there were the arms. Unwan examined them closely. One arm followed a standard human skeletal structure, yet it was terrifying to behold. The palm was detached from the skin and stained a pitch, abyssal black. Surprisingly, no other part of the beast shared that void-like color.
'I wish I could have seen this earlier. How can a body even function like this? I expected a hulking beast with bulging muscles, but this... if I had known it was this frail, I would have aimed for the joints or the gaps between the bones.'
'What brilliant tactical insight. Do you really think no one else would have thought of that?
'No one asked for your opinion.'
'I don't need permission to speak.'
The creature's second arm was a blade. From the elbow down, the bone fused into a long, dark-black blade that extended past where a hand should be. Now Unwan understood why his hand had been sliced open when he tried to grab it, and how it had managed to wound his stomach so effortlessly. The blade was deep black, and even the bone it was fused to was stained with that same darkness.
'Why is it black? Is it some kind of corruption?'
'How should I know? Perhaps it's magic, or something else entirely.'
Unwan turned his gaze toward the severed head. Its mouth hung open, revealing a maw crowded with needle-sharp teeth. Its eyes were like twin pits of ink. Had it stayed in one piece, it might have looked somewhat human, but there was one more chilling detail: two antlers sprouted from its skull, long, sharp, and radiating a sense of primal danger. If it had been a simple skeleton, it might not have been so frightening, but covered in that sickly, papery skin, it was a horror made flesh.
A fluid seeped from the severed parts of the body. It wasn't red; it had no color at all. It was transparent blood. Perhaps that was why the skeleton was so visible through the flesh. A bitter, pungent odor rose from the liquid.
Unwan stared at the fallen foe, feeling a strange mix of exhaustion and a misplaced sense of pity. Even though it was a Night creature, even though it had tried to kill him and caused him immense pain, a part of him felt... sorry.
'Damn it... can one really feel pity for a Night creature? For such a cruel and horrific monster? How pure must my heart be, or how twisted is your conscience?'
'It's enough to have a conscience as clean as yours,'
He let out a low, dry chuckle.
'But I wonder, is there anyone else with a conscience as "clean" as mine?'
'To be honest, to be as merciful as you, one must either be a idiot or someone who is simply waiting for death.'
'And yet, I wouldn't hesitate to kill you.'
'We shall see.'
After finishing his inspection of the Dormant Beast, Unwan stood up and began to think. He desperately needed a torch. He had a lighter, but no wood or flammable material. He scanned the area, but there was nothing but the oppressive dark. Only a living boy, a dim lighting grimoire, a dead monster, and its severed head.
Then, a twisted, desperate idea took root in his mind. A grim smile flickered across his face in the shadows as he approached the corpse. He knelt down and gripped the creature's ordinary arm firmly.
— Forgive me, brat. I'm afraid I must bring torment even to your remains.
With a sharp, violent tug, he wrenched the arm from the socket. Colorless blood sprayed into the darkness, but since it was invisible, it hardly mattered.