The priest was dead. The notifications hung in David’s vision, impersonal and bright. The immediate, screaming need to act was gone, leaving a hollowed-out silence in his head. A void where other things could get in. His voice stayed flat. The storm raged behind the mask, while the group saw only calm.

  Beneath the surface, his chest tightened, lungs burning, heartbeat slamming. Sweat poured, hands shook, fingers clawed at his skin. Panic roared, threatening to consume him. He forced himself upright, clawing control back, each second a brutal effort.

  No. Not here.

  His breath hitched. Just once. A tight, sharp spasm in his newly regrown chest. The image of the black beam tearing through him flashed behind his eyes—not the pain, which was just data, but the void, the instant of nothing. It rang with a different, older nothing. A silence from a room on Earth. He shoved it down. Hard.

  Calm Mind.

  He activated the skill. It was both a wave of serenity and a deliberate, internal slam of a vault door. The rising static in his nerves, the tremble wanting to start in his hands, the hollow ache—all of it was bundled up and locked into a steel box marked Later. The box was already overstuffed. One more thing wouldn’t make a difference. His breathing evened out. His hands stayed still.

  Calm down.

  David buried everything deep. Emotions were locked behind walls of pragmatism and habit, dead inside by choice. Survival filled the void. It kept him moving, kept him focused, gave him a mission, and distracted him from the weight of what he could not face. Thinking about Earth, grief—or anything more complex than mere survival—was a trap. He avoided it deliberately. His outward demeanor was flat, shallow, and almost performative. The others took it for composure. It was a lie.

  He looked at the dead priest. The victory felt thin. Stupid, even.

  So what if he’d won?

  He’d let it shoot him. He’d stood there and taken the hit. The plan had worked. He’d known it would. Even without Mara, he could have funneled the healing into keeping his brain oxygenated, his new heart sparking. As long as he could regrow a heart within four seconds? He wouldn’t die. He’d already regrown all of the skin on his body in less time and that was much more mass than a small, tiny heart. He’d calculated the angles. He’d walked into the line of fire because he was curious. Because he wanted to see what would happen.

  He would have survived. His contingencies ensured that.

  But it still left a gap, and in that gap was stupidity. What if another creature had come? What if it killed the others? What if it could negate his healing? His energy? What if it sucked out the heat?

  He’d gotten flashy. Greedy. He’d wanted the information, the upgrade, the new weapon. He’d let the thrill of testing a theory override the base rule: don’t be the primary target.

  You’re losing focus, he thought, the critique clinical. The objective isn’t to collect powers. It’s to get home. Getting evaporated, even if you can stitch yourself back together, doesn’t advance that.

  David decided in that moment, that unless he was absolutely left with no choice? Unless there was no other way to win? He would never rely on his regeneration as a crutch.

  He turned to look at his latest tutor.

  The priest's corpse didn't get any prettier. Mara went through the motions, her face set in a tight line of concentration that looked a lot like distaste. The air around the body grew cold, then thick. A few of the others watched; most didn't. They were busy looting the imps or just staring into the middle distance, trying to process the fact that their universe had just been downgraded to a digestive tract.

  A low, sucking groan came from the body. It twitched. Then, slowly, the remains of the priest lifted off the ground. The tattered, deep red and black robes billowed out beneath it, obscuring the ruin of its lower half. It hung in the air, a floating shape wrapped in ragged cloth. It looked exactly like one of those cheap Halloween ghosts, if the ghost had been drawn by someone who'd seen some real shit. Its head lolled, the eye socket David had ruined now just a dark, empty hole. It didn't breathe.

  Mara let out a controlled breath. "It's up. Level nine, like I said. It's got the basics. Flight. A weak shield. Its beam attack is… diminished. And it's dumb. It follows simple commands. That's it."

  David looked at the floating, ragged torso. It cast a weird, shifting shadow on the churned-up ground. "Good enough. It'll make a decent scout. High-ground advantage. It can spot trouble before it's on top of us."

  "Fine," Mara said, her voice flat. "I'll keep it about fifty yards ahead and twenty feet up. It'll give us some warning if something big moves in the trees."

  David nodded. He looked at the thing again—a Level 17 threat reduced to a floating sentry with a discount laser. The system could demote you just as fast as it could kill you.

  Rhea stood nearby, her expression focused. Floating in the air beside her were the three weapons they’d taken from the priest: the golden sword, the double-bladed axe, and the jagged spear. They hovered, turning slowly, as if suspended by invisible strings.

  Theo eyed the floating axe, his grip tightening on his greatsword. He took a step forward, his free hand reaching out. “We need every weapon we can get. Let me just—”

  “No,” David said. His voice wasn’t loud, but it cut. Theo’s hand stopped.

  “Why not? We’re just leaving them floating?”

  “They’re cursed,” David said. “Probably scream if you pick them up, or turn your hand into a tentacle. Only Rhea and Mia can move them telekinetically without touching them. For now, that’s the rule. Nobody touches them.”

  Theo frowned, his jaw working. “It’s a risk. But we’re swimming in risk. What if the curse is just a lie? A scare tactic?”

  Corbin shifted his weight, his hand resting on his holster. “He’s right, Theo. We don’t know. Until we do, we treat them like live grenades. You don’t hug a grenade to see if it’s friendly.”

  Theo let out a hard breath and lowered his hand, stepping back.

  David scanned the darkening tree line. “We need guinea pigs—something to test them on. Let's look for some hobs—” He paused, reconsidering. “Actually, no. Scratch that. A hob could survive a bad curse and get stronger. Let’s find a level one imp. The weakest one we can find. We let the weapon touch it—telekinetically—and see what the curse does. If the imp goes on a roid-rage rampage, we kill it easily. Be ready to kill it quick.” He looked back at Rhea and Mia. “For now, you two just float them. Don’t get curious.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  David moved a little away, then held his right hand out, palm up, still facing away from the group. He focused. He drew a thread of the laser’s heat energy, feeling its familiar, dense burn in his chest. Simultaneously, he pulled a strand of his own demonic power from the well inside him. He pushed both into the shimmering, fifteen-inch-thick demonic field that clung to his skin.

  In his palm, where the energies met, a small flame sparked to life. It was orange for a fraction of a second, then the demonic energy wove through it like a corrosive dye. The color deepened, draining to a matte, light-eating black. It wasn’t a shadow. It was a hole in the world about the size of a golf ball, hovering just above his skin.

  He experimented. He nudged the blend in his mind, increasing the demonic flow. The black deepened, and the flame shrank, becoming denser, a tiny, searing coal. He pulled back on the demonic energy, letting more heat in. The flame expanded, licking out like a black tongue, its edges wavering. It didn’t hurt him. The energy field seemed to insulate him from its effect. But he could feel the heat radiating from it through his Energy Affinity. It wasn't normal heat. It was a weird, invasive, hyper-focused burn that felt like it wanted to unravel what it touched, not just char it.

  Way hotter than regular fire. Insanely hot and weird.

  He tried to shape it. He willed it to stretch into a thin blade. It elongated reluctantly, a wobbling black ribbon that bled chaotic heat. He tried to compress it into a tiny, dense point. It shivered, fighting the compression, wanting to expand and consume. The control was slippery, mental, and it ate energy fast. He could feel a tangible drain with each adjustment, like wading through thick mud.

  Moving it through the air within his field was easier. He willed the black flame to drift away from his palm, guiding it through the haze of his demonic energy. It obeyed, floating like a malevolent soap bubble a foot away. So long as it was inside the field, he could steer it.

  He tried to shoot it.

  He envisioned a bolt. He compressed the flame into a dense, thumb-sized pellet of black fire and then, with a mental shove, attempted to eject it from his field.

  The moment the black flame passed the outer boundary of his demonic energy, the connection snapped. He felt it sever like a cut string. The flame was just a physical object now, a projectile of insane heat with no guidance.

  But its momentum held.

  It shot forward in a streaking line of darkness and hit the churned-up dirt ten yards away.

  There was no fiery explosion. Instead, there was a soft whump, and the impact site instantly vitrified. A patch of soil about the size of a dinner plate turned into a bubbling, glassy slag, glowing faintly red from within before quickly crusting over into a dull, black obsidian-like scar.

  [Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 5 ? Demonic Energy Mastery Lvl 6]

  No new skill? Hmm… maybe I haven't gotten it completely right yet.

  David watched the smoke rise from the patch. Okay. So it shoots. It just goes where you point it and you can’t steer it mid-flight. And it turns dirt into glass.

  Maybe with practice, he could refine the bolt. Make it faster. Make it so the connection didn't break so cleanly, so he could maybe nudge it. But for now, it was a single-shot, straight-line weapon that cost a lot of energy and made a mess.

  He let the demonic field around his hand relax. The residual heat in the air dissipated. He made a mental note: Black flame ammo. Inefficient. High collateral. Practice later.

  Then he found a relatively flat rock and sat. The group was taking a breather, checking gear and treating minor scrapes, as Chloe raced from person to person performing various acts of healing. He tuned them out and focused inward, on the demonic energy field that clung to him like a second skin. He pushed it out, expanding it from the default fifteen inches to a thin, ten-foot haze around him. It felt like stretching a muscle he hadn’t known he had. Then he pulled it back in, contracting it tight until it was a hard, shimmering shell just twenty inches off his skin. If he stretched his arms out, the edges shifted, stretching too. Always twenty inches. His first course of action would be to expand it to feet, as soon as possible. David practiced. Expand. Contract. Control. Rotate.

  A small, furry weight landed in his lap. He looked down. It was Mia’s adopted Scottish Fold, the one that had latched onto the imp. The cat, purring like a broken engine, was kneading its paws directly into the concentrated demonic energy field hugging his legs.

  Huh.

  He let the field expand again, gently. The cat’s ears twitched, and it stepped forward, following the retreating energy, then head-butted the shimmering air. When David contracted the field back, the cat pressed its whole face against the denser energy, whiskers vibrating, and flopped over onto its side in his lap, utterly content.

  “You have terrible taste in ambiance,” David told it, his voice low. He extended a finger, controlling the output to sheath it in the thinnest layer of the field, and scratched under its chin. The purring intensified. It likes the texture. Or the frequency. Like a cosmic heating pad.

  He gave the cat another scratch. “Don’t get used to it. The free petting zoo closes at sundown.” The cat just blinked its large, round eyes at him, completely unconcerned with theories or the end of the world.

  Mia watched David and her cat from a few feet away, head tilted, eyebrows knitted in a look that was neither confusion nor clarity—but someone seeing two familiar things interact in an unfamiliar way. She said nothing, only looked at them funny.

  Hey don't judge me, your new pet thinks I'm a personal anti-anxiety field made of hell-stuff, David thought, perhaps the cat knew something he didn't. Or maybe it just missed its real kidnapped owner and found David's energy field comforting.

  David saw the cat and knew its real owner was an eleven-year-old girl. The thought arrived, fully formed: What happened to her? It brought with it a cold, specific dread.

  He didn't let it. He’d made it a rule, a long time ago, to starve those thoughts. On Earth, it had been a management strategy. Here, it was a survival protocol. Letting that question breathe meant picturing scenarios that served no function except to drain focus and poison resolve. So he acknowledged the thought, noted its potential for damage, and let it dissolve. He focused on the immediate texture of the cat’s fur under his fingers and the consistent, low-grade threat of the surrounding forest.

  He did this because the alternative was a gateway to other, heavier thoughts—thoughts that could cause hesitation at a critical moment, and hesitation here was just a slower, more complicated form of death.

  Jamie and Theo stood a little apart from the main group, their voices low but animated. They were picking apart the priest’s words about other dungeons, other realms.

  “So there are other dungeons,” Theo said, his tone hushed. “That means other people. Other people from… from home, maybe? Spread out.”

  “The quest,” Jamie said, his eyes widening slightly. “The one for surviving a month. The reward is ‘Access to Dungeon Forum.’ A forum. That’s like… a chat room. A message board. If other survivors have that…”

  “We could talk to them,” Theo finished, a flicker of something that wasn’t despair crossing his face. “We wouldn’t be alone in here. We could get information. Real information.”

  Corbin, who had been listening while checking his weapon, looked over. “A forum? What’s a forum?”

  Before Jamie could launch into an explanation, Rhea spoke, her tone analytical. “What about a store? A forum implies communication. A store would imply trade. A standardized system of exchange. Do the quests mention a store?”

  “The monthly one doesn’t,” Jamie confirmed. “Just the forum.”

  Harris frowned. “A standardized system. What would they use for currency here?”

  David listened, turning the flesh-golem raisins in his pocket. He looked at the floating priest remnant, then at the twisted landscape. “A store,” he said. “In a magical hell. Wonder what the shelves look like. ‘Get your ten-foot pole here. Five souls.’” He paused. “Course, the only currency that’s ever been mentioned around here is us. So maybe the price is a finger. Or a memory.”

  The group fell silent for a moment, considering the potential economics.

  David looked from the devastation to the eerie, floating undead priest's Casper-like torso, back to the worn faces of the group. "We could head back to the crash site, try to fortify," he said, his tone analytical. "But the Legion, the ogre, whatever else is in this forest… they're not going anywhere. They'll come to us. Our list of problems just gets a line added to it every hour we stand still." He paused, scanning their reactions. "I suggest we keep moving. Get ahead of the problems. Even if it's just by a mile." He was mildly surprised when, after a beat, he saw a series of grim nods from Corbin and Evans, a resigned shrug from Harris, and no immediate objection from anyone else. The general agreement was total, and born of pure, exhausted logic.

  The group walked and they hunted.