B0n3 $p1d#$$ (Undead)

  F-E-Grad3 ??

  Health 611 Mana !@@ Endurance n/a

  System’s glitching worse the deeper we go, Roland thought as he chopped down his fifth Bone Spider of the day.

  The critters were shaped like spiders but made of assorted skeletal bits and pieces, their segmented legs consisting of an unholy arrangement of arm and leg bones, ending in jagged claws. Their heads were made of two or three skulls crudely strung together into a single shape.

  Ugly bastards, and they spat ectoplasmic webbing that burned with cold Undeath energy. Their clawed fingers could punch through Roland’s jacket if they landed a solid hit, and when they targeted his head they rang his helmet like a bell a few times.

  All in all, though, they didn’t last long once he got to swinging or blasting. It was a grind, but a manageable one.

  After his third fight – the bony monstrosities had come at him singly so far – he developed a routine. Shoot them with Executioner’s Gun if he spotted them far enough away, then close in with I’m the Juggernaut and draw his naginata to finish them off with a few Coup de Grace-powered whacks.

  He thought he might have gained a level or two in the Skills he kept using, but notifications had stopped coming. Even his combat log was only producing gibberish.

  His basic stats were still legible, fortunately. So was his Unbound Essence counter. He had discovered that the skeletal spiders gave out forty to fifty Essence apiece when he squeezed them with his will like so many lemons. After juicing his last victim, his total stood at 3,151. With his luck, that would barely cover the cost to repair his Dantian.

  Raven hadn’t mentioned if that Rashid guy expected compensation for his services, but Roland expected there would be a price to pay. There always was.

  “Good thing they aren’t ganging up on me,” he commented. “I might have to put in some extra work.”

  “They are probably solitary hunters, each claiming a section of this tunnel,” Raven said. “They weren’t here the last time I visited.”

  “Do you visit giant towers full of Undead very often?”

  “More often than I like.”

  “Once is my limit, I think.”

  “Now you’re just tempting Fate. And there is trouble ahead.”

  Roland looked ahead. The tunnel had become increasingly littered with fallen blocks from above as whatever energy glue that held the massive stones together faded or was dispelled.

  He wasn’t too worried about cave-ins after an hour went by without him seeing or hearing movement in the ceiling. He was still annoyed by the debris obstructing his vision.

  Despite the obstacles, he spotted something big was moving at what looked like the end of the tunnel. He’d finally reached the exit. All he had to do was kill whatever stood in his way.

  After looking at the moving figure for a bit – it looked like the mother of all Bone Spiders – a stat box stuttered into view next to it, twitching on and off like the neon sight of a low-rent stripper club.

  B0*3 ^011#& (Undead)

  E-C0pp3@

  Health 2,*** Mana $!@@ Endurance n/a

  “Looks like a Boss,” Roland said, peering at it from behind a block.

  “These aren’t System creations,” Raven warned him. “They don’t follow Dungeon rules. That pile of bones will be powerful but will not have a set of ‘boss traits.’ The stats you see are the System’s crude attempt at estimating their power, relying mostly on your senses for analysis.”

  “Well, if the crude attempt is any good, that mountain of bones has something between two thousand and two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine hit points.”

  Activating Analyze produced the sound of hysterical laughter and a long stream of nonsensical letters, numbers and symbols. Instead of detailed information, the Skill gave Roland a rough sense that the creature was highly resistant to all forms of damage and its aura alone could crush and kill those weaker than itself.

  The Bone Whatever was moving back and forth across the mouth of the tunnel. The glimpses of its skeletal frame told Roland its body parts had come from critters the size of elephants or bigger. It was taller than the fourteen-foot-tall opening, since Roland couldn’t see its head as it went past.

  Wish I’d kept some C-4, he thought. Then again, would mundane explosives work in the Dread Lands?

  Everything he had used so far had been System-enhanced. Magic, in other words. He wouldn’t want to trust his life on anything mundane.

  “They wouldn’t,” Raven said when Roland asked him.

  “Thought so, but had to ask. Any ideas? I’m thinking of using the shotgun from here. If it follows me into the tunnel and gets stuck, the job’s good as done. If it doesn’t get stuck, I’ll kite it until its Health is down to about half, then move in for the kill.”

  “Your plan seems sensible enough, grasshopper, except for two things. The most devastating single attack in your arsenal is Descending Righteous Wrath, and the enclosed space will not allow you to leap high enough to deliver it. And I will not be able to assume my greater form and use my own heavy attack in here.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that.”

  The Naginatajutsu Feat was the closest thing to a finisher he had. With a Strength of fifty and Skill of six, he could output three hundred and fifty-two points of base damage. Land a crit and that could go up to anywhere between two and six times as much, depending on a bunch of factors only the System could compute.

  But even at the low end, the Feat could kill that faux boss in three or four crits, depending on how damage-resistant it was. His next-best move, Coup de Grace, did less than half that damage.

  “Okay, fighting inside the tunnel will be Plan B. It might not even want to follow us there anyway.”

  “You grow wiser with every passing second, grasshopper.”

  “Wise enough to recognize smoke when it blows up my arse. Think you can sneak out without that thing noticing you? Maybe do some recon, give me an idea of the battlespace outside?”

  “I will be but the shadow of a forgotten memory. None shall see me.”

  “You’re a poet and I don’t care.”

  “That didn’t rhyme,” Raven said before taking wing, headed for the exit.

  Neither did yours, Roland said telepathically.

  He tried to see through Raven’s eyes, but the Familiar ability didn’t seem to be working in this place.

  Critics critique ‘cause they can’t create, Raven replied. I am outside, and what you’ve seen of this thing is but the tip of the iceberg.

  What’s the terrain like?

  Ruinous. In the sense that beyond the exit lie the ruins of what once was a prosperous Greek town from the times of Pericles. Oh, dear. Things have rather gone to pot while I was way.

  People live here?

  Shades, but yes, there were Shades aplenty during my last visit. Some calamity destroyed the settlement. The ghostly town has become a true ghost town, inhabited only by the Undead.

  Roland hoped that Rashid hadn’t been living in that village, or a simple ‘find the guy with the question mark over his head’ quest was going to turn into an ‘explore the whole level looking for question-mark guy’ quest and he would lose his freaking mind.

  Stay on mission, he told himself before turning to Raven. Okay, can you distract the Boss so I can come out and play?

  Consider it done.

  The big boss had just stepped out of sight when Roland heard a genuine supersonic crack, followed by something like the clatter of bones, turned up to about two hundred decibels. The sound of the crash was enough to rupture Roland’s inhumanly-tough eardrums and require fifty-six Vital Energy to undo the damage. Normal people would have been killed just by the sound of Raven’s death dive.

  He couldn’t imagine anything being at ground zero of that and surviving, but as soon as his hearing returned, a loud Godzilla-like shriek threatened to burst his eardrums all over again. The Boss was alive and not happy with Raven.

  Roland ran through the discarded blocks scattered around the exit and found himself in what looked like a massive cavern more than something inside an artificial structure. The ceiling – if there was one – was hidden by the pervading gloom. The strange, omnipresent light that filled Dread Lands was at work there, painting everything in shades of gray and purple but fading to black within a thousand feet.

  In that light, Roland saw the Bone Boss – what was left of it – in all its abominable glory.

  It had been at least twenty feet tall and longer than a city bus, a bulky skeleton built with the bones of a dozen gigantic specimens, including some humanoid types that must be giants, Yeti, or something along those lines. The main body was supported by eight mismatching legs protruding from a ribcage made of overlapping bones that armored the thing like a biological battleship.

  Its skull might have belonged to a T-Rex, long and full of predatorial teeth. Its bony arms were humanoid and clawed, and elephant tusks protruded from all over its surface, ready to gore anyone that approached them.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  At least, that was what Roland imagined the thing had originally looked, based on the parts that were left in one piece after Raven dive-bombed it.

  His bird friend was flapping away, its bigger-than-pterodactyl form beginning to shrink. Roland suspected that going full Rodan cost Raven more Mana (or whatever magic juice he used) than he could afford after a short while. The bird had shot his bolt.

  And it had been devastating.

  Raven had struck the monster on one of its sides, caving in its rib cage. The leg closest to the impact point had snapped off as if the thick giant bone was an Olive Garden’s breadstick. There was a hole on that side big enough to fit an infantry platoon.

  Screeching like a stuck pig, the monster looked after the departing bird. Even better, its Health bar was still glitchy but was down to three digits and the first number from the left read seven; the other two were random symbols, but Roland didn’t care if it was seven-oh-one or seven-ninety-nine. Raven had dropped the Boss’ Health by two-thirds.

  Time for him to do his part.

  Roland ran full tilt down the slope leading down from the hole in the wall, naginata in hand, and leaped when he was halfway to the bottom.

  His running high jump didn’t carry him a mile forward like, say, the Hulk, but it still got him higher and further than any non-flying animal on his home planet. His trajectory looked like it would take him over the monster, but he’d accounted for that. At the top of his arc, he activated his Feat.

  Descending Righteous Wrath!

  His trajectory changed as if he had a rocket strapped to his back. He swung the naginata as he came down like something righteous and wrathful, glowing with enough auric energy to add a touch of Super Saiyan to the combo.

  No matter how powerful, a naginata just wasn’t large enough to match the massive damage Raven’s mini-Kaiju form had delivered. Anyplace where physics worked as advertised, the naginata blade would have traveled through the monster like a bullet. It would have made a relatively tiny entry hole and ripped out of Rolands hands as he splatted against the monster’s back and made a smaller and shallower hole.

  Instead, all the physical and mystical energy contained in the attack was delivered as a vaguely blade-shaped shock front, taller than Roland, that cut through the monster’s spine like a fireman’s axe chopping into a wedding cake. Bone splinters exploded in every direction as Roland rode the blow all the way to the ground. As he landed, the remains of the monster fell around him like the inevitable conclusion of a game of Jenga.

  He normally could see how much damage a hit generated, usually as a set of red numbers floating from the point of impact, their size determined by their total amount. This time, a huge red quartet of random symbols flashed past. Since there were four of them, he’d done at least a thousand points, which was the most damage he’d inflicted on a target with a single hit.

  Probably missed out on an Achievement, he grumbled as he made his way through the bony remains.

  Raven alighted in front of him. “Not too shabby, grasshopper. And now we eat!”

  Eat? Roland had time to wonder before Raven began to pull Essence from the massive remains.

  Oh, yeah. Eat.

  He could tell Raven was absorbing a bigger share of the energy gathered around the bones, but the bird deserved it. Roland couldn’t have one-shot it by himself. Thanks to Raven, they hadn’t seen what kind of attacks the monstrosity could deliver. Like a well-planned military op, it had been less of a fight than an execution.

  Roland walked away a hundred and sixty-seven Essence richer.

  Unbound Essence: 3,318

  At least the counter still works.

  Without any new monsters to kill, Roland took a good look at the inside of the tower.

  The tower’s wall ran in a seemingly straight line for miles in both directions until it disappeared into the distance. Roland couldn’t see the ceiling; it had to be at least several hundred feet up. Maybe thousands.

  The area around the entrance looked like ordinary dirt rather than the ground-up bones filling the plain outside. He could see maybe half a mile in any direction before everything became hazy, so he had no idea how big an area lay inside the tower. Maybe it was even bigger on the inside.

  A walled town had stood a couple hundred yards away from the torn hole. Roland could see that the wall’s foundations had been made by lining up the black stone blocks and building a dry moat around them. The palisade above the blocks had been made of long bones instead of wood, tied together with some kind of cables that most likely came from the guts or ligaments of some monster.

  Figuring having an indestructible brick the size of a small house might have its uses, Roland tried to drop one of the smaller ones in his inventory. He’d felt something like an electric shock, his Mana and Endurance had dropped by a good fifty points each, and the block had remained where it was.

  Nice try, grasshopper. SSS-Grade items will not fit in your F-Grade dimensional hole.

  Shrugging, Roland moved on.

  Only a few bone ‘logs’ remained standing; the palisade had been basically razed down to the indestructible blocks many years ago. Houses had been burned down or toppled by either violence or the passage of time. The ruins of a temple looked a lot like pictures he had seen of the Parthenon.

  There were no signs of life, ghostly or otherwise.

  “Tell me that Rashid guy didn’t live here.”

  “He did not, but he visited the Shades of the town on occasion. He was prized as a healer, ironically enough.”

  “Why ironically? And why would ghosts need a healer?”

  “Ironically because he once was the Old Man of the Mountain of the Hashashin, the Order that gave many languages the word ‘assassin.’ And Shades aren’t ghosts; in places like the Dread Lands, they can be wounded and killed. A healer is highly regarded here.”

  Roland looked at the silent ruins. “Let’s hope he’s still home.”

  * * *

  Rashid was home, but it took a while to get to him.

  The Pale Horse got put through its paces. Roland rode past the ruins, following a dry riverbed infested by skeletal snakes that dispersed when Raven scared them away. The bird grew to its monster size and made a predatory noise that made Roland’s aura thrum like a tuning fork despite not being his target.

  A few Desolate Reaver bands chased after them, but their mounts couldn’t keep up with either bird or bike. In the distance, they spotted the raiders’ camps, collections of tents and yurts filled with Undead.

  And here and there, they drove through gatherings of Shades.

  It was easy to tell the difference. Shades had fully human bodies. They bore the clothes and items of dozens of different cultures. Many were leading normal lives, tending phantom crops while men in armor stood watch against raiders or monsters. Others appeared to spend their time in meditation. And a few punished themselves or each other through brutal acts of torture.

  Raven told Roland not to intervene, and he rode on. None of this was his problem, and he wanted to get the hell out of this place as soon as possible, never to return.

  Roland drove past distant atrocities, glancing at them to make sure they didn’t present a danger before moving on. He couldn’t save everyone, and something told him that the affairs of the dead weren’t his purview. His Affinity involved those who were still alive – until he ended them.

  After what seemed like days, they reached a set of flat-topped mountains. One of them had been turned into a fortress city, gates and houses carved straight onto the mountain face.

  “New Petra,” Raven said. “If the Ground Floor has a capital, this is the place.”

  Shades lived there. Grim-faced men with the appearance and gear of African warriors (Masai, maybe, or Zulus? Roland didn’t ask) met them at the gate. Raven spoke to them and they stood aside, letting the newcomers enter.

  Inside was a bustling market, Shades from hundreds of eras and nationalities mingled together. Near-naked Egyptians sold flint weapons to Victorian Era gentlemen while Aztecs in feathery regalia walked by. The chaotic city soon had Roland’s head spinning.

  This place is almost too much to take in. And this is all outside the System.

  He couldn’t bring out status boxes anymore; his System interface had all but died before reaching the city. All he could access was his character sheet; even the status bar that normally floated on the left corner of his field of vision had vanished. Despite that, he felt invigorated by a constant influx of Mana that was at least as dense as the meditation cells he’d used at the Chapel.

  Many Shades seemed to be going through the motions, as if they were playing a part, actors in a play about their former lives. Others seemed to be more alive than many people back in the real world.

  And here and there, he spotted Shades of cultivators. He could tell what they were by their auras, dense and bright. He didn’t know how one could be dead and still have active Dantians, but maybe there was no rule against that even under the System.

  Raven guided him through the throngs of the dead. They walked up carved sets of stairs leading to upper levels where the rich and powerful dwelt, guarded by a growing number of cultivators. Cultivation seemed to be the main source of power in the city, although he spotted people with clearly magical abilities who lacked the cultivator’s aura signatures.

  He had a million questions, but Raven led them as quickly as he could, saying only that staying here too long might attract the wrong kind of attention.

  “Why?”

  Because we both bear the mark of the System. Many hate it. All Systems have detractors.

  It’s always something, Roland grumbled mentally while he followed the bird’s directions.

  Furthermore, you are a Reaper. Many here were delivered to this place by someone like you. Hard feelings remain.

  Finally, they reached a mountain within the mountain. The place stood out like a town or sub-city of its own. Terraced farms rounded the mountain; the path treaded through the farmlands. Guards standing on watchtowers watched their ascent carefully but without interfering.

  This is New Alamut. The Old Man’s Mountain, Raven told him.

  I get the feeling that I’m supposed to be impressed, Roland replied.

  Only if you had discernment and good sense.

  The massive fortress that stood near the top was admittedly impressive. Tall walls protected it, some carved into the mountain, others rising above it. Roland wouldn’t want to invade the place even with a battalion of infantry in support.

  Beyond the sights, however, the place had an oppressive aura of its own. Or maybe it was Rashid’s aura that permeated the place. Either way, Roland felt watched, an unexpected guest that was examined carefully. If the fortress’ owner decided he wasn’t welcome, the aura would kill him without much effort.

  That was where they found Rashid ad-Din Sinan.

  * * *

  “That Rashid guy was something else,” Roland told his friends sometime later. “Out of the whole Dread Lands, him and his lady friend were... It’s hard to find the words. Like you’d think gods are like. More powerful than anybody I’ve seen, but not full of it.”

  Cousin Bob nodded as Roland spoke, almost like the words were a catchy tune. “I still can’t believe fixing your Dantian was that easy.”

  “Well, it really wasn’t. He and his Korean friend spent days examining me before doing the treatment. The weird thing was, once they knew how to fix it, it wasn’t as tough as Trixie or Raven thought.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t hurt,” Wendy told him. She was snuggled up against Barton of all people.

  Roland still couldn’t believe they had breezed through the Dungeon and then waited for him to come back so he would get credit for killing the final Boss.

  Dahlia grinned at him, an unspoken promise in her eyes. He grinned back.

  Things were finally okay.

  “It did hurt, but man, compared to the crap I’ve been through, it was nothing. At the end, the guy sort of slapped me on the gut, and bang! My Dantian began to grow back. It burned like a mother, but after two hours, it was good as new.”

  “Ain’t that something,” Bob commented. “I’m just glad you’re back, Rolls.”

  “How about the other thing?” Barton asked. “The Pattern that got destroyed.”

  “Oh yeah,” Roland said. “Yeah, the Pattern was a bit tougher. You see, uh, let’s me start from the beginning...”

  How did I get my Pattern fixed? It’s all kind of muddled all of a sudden.

  Thinking about the Pattern sent a shiver down his back. That was followed by growing panic.

  This isn’t right.

  “Rolls?” Bob was saying, but his words became fainter by the second.

  Roland’s eyes couldn’t focus. He tried to stand up, and that was when the pain hit him. Blinding, overwhelming pain.

  “... his will is too strong,” someone was saying. A woman. “Even Golden Hash and Ochre Lotus aren’t enough to keep him under, and a stronger dose might kill him.”

  It felt like someone was ripping out his guts with red-hot hooks. He screamed.

  Another voice. Male. “We have to put him under. If he keeps fighting I can’t finish implanting the Core Shell.”

  “Roland. Listen to me.”

  That was Raven. Had the bird betrayed him? What was going on?

  “Raven. It hurts.”

  He couldn’t open his eyes, but he somehow knew the bird was looking right at him.

  “You have to let go, Roland. Go back into the illusion. They need to keep you under so they can fix the damage. Otherwise, what’s left of the old Pattern will fight them, and the backlash could kill you.”

  A spasm of pure agony left him unable to speak for what could be an eternity, or just a few seconds.

  “I’m dying,” he said. Somehow, he knew that. If anyone should know when death was at hand, it’d be him.

  Raven cawed, an exasperated sound.

  “You are in the Dread Lands, Roland. Here, death is just a state of mind. Let go, so that Rashid and Baridegi can keep working on you.”

  His instinct was to fight whatever was happening, but the agony ripping through him with every breath told him the battle was lost. He could die now, or he could find out if the bird was lying to him, once and for all.

  “I trust you, Raven,” he said at last, and let go.

  The pain was gone. Roland touched his middle Dantian, the source of all his problems. It was fine again. He was with his friends, they had conquered the Dungeon, and he’d spaced out for a minute.

  “Rolls?” Barton asked again.

  “Forget about the Pattern,” he told his friends. “It’s a long, boring story.”

  “Yes, Captain Death,” Dahlia said, and everyone laughed.

  Roland laughed along, feeling better than he’d had in years. He’d had a weird episode – PTSD could be like that – but everything was okay again.

  There was a faint sound of someone screaming – the voice sounded oddly familiar – but he ignored it.