"So you want to go to the hell zone?"
"....hell nah."
—A conversation between two fools watching the third fool… fool around.
***
Zayn arched his head at Raka, whispering humorously, “That’s still just an ant?”
“Just a bigger one,” Raka curtly replied with a tilt of its headlight.
Initial scare aside, it recovered rather quickly, now appearing unfazed. Surely it was pretending! Or perhaps it was simply used to seeing worse things.
Finally understanding its situation, his eyes softened. On the outside, it was the same motorcycle he have had for years, but it changed so much in just a few days.
Hadn’t he, too?
Both of them had evolved beyond themselves to survive this alien world they found themselves in. And there would be no stopping it. In his soul rang a warning of things to come—of things that were only going to get worse.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position, knowing he had no time to waste. The lingering gaze of the Swarm Mother boomeranged in the back of his mind. He had felt it more than once, but where exactly? His brain felt foggy, almost stopping him from recalling.
A soft tune floated in the air, ringing out from Old Gravekeeper. He had equipped his usual “I shall not answer” position—sitting in a closed-off, hunched posture.
Earlier, he had said he couldn’t help.
He couldn’t. Not that he didn’t want to.
At every step, the old man had been nothing but kind to him. Kind for reasons incomprehensible. And even when the Swarm Mother came, he hadn’t left his side. That said a lot about his intent.
So...what exactly had stopped him? The system? The dungeon boss? The beings in the Shattered Abyss? Or was it something else altogether?
Guess he had to find out for himself.
***
Zayn found that class skills had mostly been capped. Only when he understood something vital about the skills would they rank up—not something that could be forced.
As for the sphere of yellow mana… even he wasn’t crazy enough to tinker with it again.
But there was something he could practice all by himself—Bloodmetal. In fact, he was deeply familiar with the conjuration process by now. Calling upon metal in his bloodstream, he summoned it toward his arms. His head turned light as the metal swirled up his veins and capillaries.
His hands hardened like steel. Pushing more metal inside, he tested the limits of his endurance. Bloodmetal poured out of his pores, coating his arms in a hard, metallic shell. The moonlight painted it in a deeper crimson sheen, making his arms look like they were made of red, shimmering metal.
Using his talent alongside Reinforced Strike so many times made it take on the properties of the skill, naturally reinforcing his arms. He admired it for a while before ordering the metal to go up.
It peeled off his skin like a viscous layer of liquid and bundled together into a baseball-sized sphere above his palm. Then it began shifting into a sword. To be fair, it would barely count as a sword—a handheld knife, at most.
Without injury, that's all he could summon right now. A single blade's worth of bloodmetal. Measly compared to the amount of metal he held within his veins.
There was a loophole, however—wounds.
He swiped across his forearm, tearing his flesh open. His blood found more surface area to erupt from, rushing out freely. The scarlet blade elongated until it was as large as a two-foot sword. Then he shaped it to resemble Hollowfang, trying to copy its runes.
The process of it all felt so deeply familiar.
Wasn’t this just CAD? 3D designing?
This was he had done for years for studying, and nearly four years as a job? Designing objects through CAD worked with constraints—dimensions, tolerances, and boundaries. The foundation had to be set; the rules and principles had to be obeyed. Same here.
He couldn’t just say, “Make sword”; it’d turn into a warped, uneven mess. He needed to mentally define the thickness, edge, and balance point for the shape. If he wanted, he could take more intricate considerations: the tensile strength, yield stress, hardness, and fracture points into account.
The more he specified, the better his conjurations turned out.
Any other guy would have taken weeks, perhaps months, just to attune to the many shapes bloodmetal could forge. He’d already done that long before the apocalypse, for years.
Even then, it wasn’t easy.
The sword hovered above his palm, twisting around in the air without needing to touch it. Like a flying sword. Though it couldn’t really fly—more like hover. And the further it went, the weaker his control over the sword became.
Any more than a couple of meters, and he’d end up losing the bloodmetal and would have to eat metal to restore the lost metal.
“But… that’s still a flying sword.” He couldn’t stop a grin from cracking on his face.
All the things he had ever dreamed of were slowly becoming real.
Swords, axes, and hammers; he changed them as he wanted to. Spears were somehow easier, maybe because of Sylvan Spear Arts, though the length of them was a problem. Extending the bloodmetal more than a few meters nearly melted his mind.
His newest stolen skill—‘Blood Tangle’—provided a quick workaround. A blood vine erupted out of his arms, stitched out of two grass strands, then elongated until it was about five meters long. He could control its size and shape, and it was far less taxing on the mind. With bloodmetal, he could even change its density and tensile strength.
The cherry on top was he could turn its end into any weapon he wished and swing it around. Just like the treants.
There was one problem—he really liked to test his limits, and oftentimes, playing with fire only burned one party. Like right now. Not made for such wanton testing, the vine burst and recoiled toward him, like a rubber band that had been stretched too far.
“Ow, ow, ow.” He fell on his back and panted, chest heaving up and down.
The hunger inside him once again grew beyond what he could tolerate.
Snacking on some metal, he gazed at the moon.
It would have been a good scenic meal, if not for Raka and Coffin. Every time he bit on the metal, they cringed and recoiled perfectly in sync. He snorted and ate with even more gusto, drawing their ire.
He ate more anyway.
What could they do? Bite him?!
***
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Out from his storage ring, Zayn brought out a black gourd. Silver sigils of unimaginable complexity gleamed on its body. Wisps of mana coiled around its thin neck, orbiting around it.
The Sage’s Gourd (Rare) has finished brewing the wine!
Out of the options offered in the second objective—Defeat Stone Golem II—he’d chosen the gourd. Other than this, he got the option to choose an armor. He passed; because his blood ate away at any armour and metal anyways. Anything metal was most likely to turn non functional after two fights.
The Sage’s Gourd (Rare): Drawing on the mana of the world, the gourd changes water into spirit wine. Every sip of the wine speeds up spirit, health, and mana recovery, though it is advised not to drink too much at once.
Turning water into wine? He only knew one guy famous for that trick—and the man had been dead for almost two thousand years.
That made him the second, which was… not great news for his future prospects.
Right as he opened the lid, a delectable aroma wafted out, bringing life to his nasal and taste receptors. They had long grown tired of smelling burnt air. He peeked inside and saw mana sizzling within the slightly red wine. Bringing a cup out, he sipped on it, feeling his headache instantly alleviate.
“This is good!”
Suddenly, his eyes flashed with an idea. He poured two cups of the spirit wine and sat close to Gravekeeper, waiting for him to break out of his trancelike state.
For the last couple of hours, Old Grave had kept tugging away his Y-shaped andolin, playing the same song. Zayn had it memorized by now, capable of telling what each beat in particular was conveying, and what it would shift to next. Yearning, complaint toward oneself, toward the world, toward fate—helplessness veering into regret.
Zayn felt his throat turn bitter even with the spirit wine. Before long, he finally opened his mouth. No matter how impolite that might be, he didn’t have all night to wait.
“Sir Gravekeeper!”
Gravekeeper finally woke out of his trance; fingers halting. Then he 'gazed' at Zayn, eyes still closed. He wore on that same practised smile—not quite happy, though. Rubbing the andolin with love, he sighed. “Apologies. Ever since the day she left me, I have been trying to complete her final song,"
Final song?
“But I keep missing something. A final ingredient. Without it, the song remains incomplete.”
Hmm? Was the song missing something? Zayn didn’t understand, but he was no Beethoven. To a layman like him, music either sounded good or bad; catching the intricacies was as difficult as ascending the heavens.
He hastily raised the cup in his hand. “I had so much of your food, so you wouldn’t refuse this small toast, right?”
The old man shook his head. “I am incapable of answering your questions.”
“I know. I wouldn’t make things difficult for you,” Zayn hurriedly explained as he raised his cup. “I just ask Old Gravekeeper to help me with this one thing.”
Only then did he take the cup of wine. Eyes closed still, he sipped on the drink and pointed at him to continue.
“Could you… teach me what fire is?” Zayn explained quickly. “I need it for my class quest.”
He opened the quest screen again, wondering if the old man could see.
Class Quest (IV) — Understand one
Reward: New buff ‘Bloodburn’ unlocked!
Right now, the only way for him to get a quick power-up was this. Also, he generally liked fire, a point of fascination for him ever since he watched The Last Airbender. Fireball, breath of fire, fire sword— all those cool things; he wanted to be able to do that by himself.
Needless to say, he’d tried everything.
Stared into the bonfire until everything else darkened. He’d even muttered all the theories of combustion aloud, hoping the system would recognize his understanding of fire. It took him a while to realize the “understanding” meant by the system was something else altogether.
The old man smiled and pointed toward the bonfire that burned above the sand. “This fire—what feeling do you get from it?”
Zayn paused, taking a good look at the fire. It flickered warmly, dancing to the soft cadence of the wind.
It felt like sunlight slipping through frosted windows in winter, like the first sip of coffee when the world left him shattered, like the rising sun he’d seen earlier in the day. He answered, “It feels so… warm and soft.”
Old Grave nodded. “That is my love for her.”
Then he raised his hand once more and waved.
Rustle
The fire shifted, changing into an aura of destruction. It roared like a living beast. Everything heated up, and soon the air thrummed with so much heat that it warped vision. Flickering tongues of flame erupted in spirals into thick, acrid smoke.
This…
This fire was the guillotine seething for blood. A volcano waiting to erupt. A tempest of rage and anger. Zayn stared at it in awe, feeling the awesome, destructive power beneath. He knew exactly what it was. “This is… wrath.”
The old man nodded. “Before her, my fire had been one of vengeance.” Then, with another wave, the fire changed again, showing different aspects each time. “Fire is a lot of things. For some, it is hate, a weapon of destruction. Others see it as regeneration, a beacon of hope. Its aspects are as vast as sand in this desert.”
He stood up, and the bonfire extinguished as he left his final words, “Look within yourself. Feel the fire. Only you can answer what your fire is.”
“Within me?” He muttered, his eyes clouding in confusion as he stared at where the fire used to be.
What was his fire?
***
In the Abyss, a man sat atop a throne of stone. He had been shattered over and over, remade from the remnants of his hopes and willpower. Brittle enough that a touch would crumble him.
Warning! Unusual development has been detected in the narrative!
A blaring noise awakened him. He opened his weary eyes once more with great difficulty. He’d never been awakened in such short intervals. “Is he dead?”
Negative. Unusual development has been detected in the narrative. Do you wish to check?
He squinted and proceeded to check. His pair of abyssal eyes shrank as he observed the happenings. All was fairly normal until the contestant went to his house. Then he found it hard to maintain his stoic expression, watching his life’s work get torn apart piece by piece.
“Does he not know that any of my statues are more valuable than the things he took?”
It appeared the contestant didn’t have enough storage space to take the statues along. He fully intended to take everything, including the tiles on the wall, if he had sufficient space to take them.
The sculptor squinted at the absurdity of the situation. Even among the contestants, who had dared to take things from his house? Unless they feared nor gods neither demons, nobody would be so wanton.
Only, this one didn’t even know. A blind child feared no storm. And where wisdom was absent, ignorance masqueraded as bravery.
But the real surprise came when the contestant went inside the chamber. His eyes widened, his body shook; he pushed himself into an upright sitting position. “He absorbed it? How could… he have absorbed it by himself?”
He carries an inheritance of a powerful being from Pre-Shattering. His feat, [Undying Cockroach], is causing extreme changes to his physiology.
“He was brought here right after the apocalypse. How could he harbor a legacy feat from someone before The Shattering?”
The man went silent and watched the rest with prudent eyes, his expression unchanging from then on. He snorted when Swarm Mother herself rose from the ground to save him. Of course, she would.
He rose upright on his throne, fully awakened and awake after a long…long time. For this, he had waited an insurmountable number of years. And finally, fate seemed to smile upon him again.
He asked, “What’s his name?”
***
After ruminating over it for an hour, Zayn slumped in despair.
Well, he felt like he understood what Gravekeeper meant, partially, but actually putting it into action was two different things.
How was he supposed to find this fire within him? How should he feel it?
He watched at the burning skies.
Dawn felt closer than ever before. He rose and watched at the golden skies, at the retreating moon.
Yes—retreating. The moon pulled back into the sky as a golden hue burned the sky true, as though the light was cleansing the world.
As the first ray touched the desert, lush greenery rose from the ground. White-barked, monolithic trees that almost reached the golden sky—captivating enough to take anyone’s breath away.
Yet, something about it all felt wrong now, like a puzzle that had been solved in the opposite manner.
He licked his lips. What he was going to do frayed his nerves. This could be a terrible idea; he could get in serious trouble. But there was no stopping the thought once it began.
‘I see you now’ active!
As the mana connected to his blood, the golden hue turned void black. Even the lush greenery monotonous to watch. Though nothing changed other than that. The trees and roots spurted out normally. Whatever magic the system had cast, his skill couldn’t decipher it.
Zayn huffed, unsure whether it was relief or disappointment he felt.
Then he side-eyed Raka.
With each passing second, its physical body phased out of existence. His heart ached, but there was nothing he could do. He made an attempt not to look, but the harder one tried not to do something, the harder it became not to actually do it.
At this moment, all his existence wished that it hadn’t been taken. He wished it could stay. But nothing ever went the way he wanted, not on Earth, and not on Eldera, so he forced a laugh on his face.
“Don’t worry! You’ll see your favorite Gravekeeper again when it's night.”
As soon as he said that, Raka vanished. And where it went, Zayn caught something—a string of mana—black, filthy, and rotten.
‘I see you now’ detects an immense corruption in mana! Untethering!
The rotten strips of mana latched onto his blood, revealing the truth.
Like chess pieces, all of reality fell. Torn apart, ripped to reveal the ugly truth beyond. He caught a glimpse of an absolute ruin.
The ground turned fractured, black ichor running underneath. The rot stretched afar across the horizon. Laden with burnt trees, teetering on the verge of destruction. Their ashen bodies were covered with tumorous lumps that throbbed and shifted like...closed eyelids.
Sensing his gaze, one of the tumors snapped open. A maddened gaze zeroed in on him. And then, the vile and repulsive mana latched onto his blood with even more intensity.
Corruption: Curse ‘??’ has inflicted your blood.
Verdant skin erupted by itself, drawing on his charges fiercely. Heart thudding, he stared at his arm in panic, which had blackened from the touch of corrupted mana.
Some of it stuck to his blood.
Driven by primal instinct, he closed the wound, cutting his connection with the vile, repulsive mana.
Right as his skill ended, everything returned to the fake greenery.
He huffed, staring at the white-barked forest, its pretty leaves and serene swamps.
He was back. To the green forest with no life. To the forest of false trees. To the roaring wind and its hollow peace.