SECOND CHANCE SWORDSMAN

JAKOB TANNER

CONTENTS

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Chapter 111

Chapter 112

Chapter 113

Chapter 114

Chapter 115

Chapter 116

Chapter 117

Chapter 118

Chapter 119

Chapter 120

Chapter 121

Chapter 122

Chapter 123

Chapter 124

Chapter 125

Chapter 126

Free Bonus Epilogue

Author’s Note

Tower Climber Sample

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Dedicated:

To my mom and dad, who have encouraged and supported me in everything that I’ve done.

Special Thanks to:

Angela Marshall for assistance in too many things to count.

Nik Grantham for letting me be his “most read” author.

Andrew Smith for sage wisdom.

Thanks to my beta readers and their amazing feedback:

Amcn/Arya

Josh Cothran

Ben Graff

Sean Hall

Joshua Hoatland

Denny Johnson

Jeff Patrick

Carol Sherman

Erik Tanner

Lana Turner

This book wouldn’t be what it is today without you guys!

1

Sam stood on the frontlines of the Final Army, the soldiers beside him shivering with fear. Their shoulders trembled. Their teeth chattered. Sam closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He wanted to fight his nerves, be calm. It was tough to stay composed in the face of death.

Sam continued to stand tall and proud, keeping his sword clutched in one hand, staring out across the battlefield.

At the far end, the demon king and his horde were streaming out of a huge portal of darkness.

It was the biggest black gate any of the soldiers in The Final Army had ever seen.

The howling wind echoed across the battlefield, mixing in with the hiss and growls of the monstrous horde growing in front of them.

“We’re all going to die,” said the soldier beside Sam. He started muttering it over and over again. “We’re all going to die. WE’RE ALL GOING—”

Sam clutched the man’s shoulder with one hand and cupped the man’s mouth with the other.

The soldier’s eyes widened, freaking out even more.

“We’re not going to die,” said Sam. “Humanity has formed the greatest army ever known in the entire history of Westria. We will not die in the face of this threat.”

The soldier had stopped shaking, but Sam was still worried the man might start wailing as soon as he removed his hand from his mouth.

“Look,” said Sam. “I’m going to remove my hand, but I don’t want you to start screaming. I’m going to give you something to help with the nerves. It’s called brightweed. The elves used to take it before battle to keep them calm and focused.”

Sam let go of the man’s shoulder and then materialized some leaves from his inventory. He then slowly let go of the man’s mouth and handed them to him.

The man took the leaves and put them in his mouth and began to chew. His face grew noticeably calmer as he ate the leaves.

He nodded at Sam in gratitude.

Of course, Sam knew the leaves weren’t actually real brightweed, but the placebo effect was enough to calm the soldier down. He figured if given the option, it would be better to die with the knowledge that you fought brave and valiantly than to die cowering in fear. Sam saw it as one of his parting gifts to the soldier beside him, one last act of secret kindness. For in Sam’s mind, he had little doubt that their destruction and loss was near inevitable.

Yet it was the hope that a miracle could still happen that kept him going.

A huge horn could suddenly be heard echoing across the battlefield.

That’s the signal, Sam thought.

He straightened and got ready for the battle ahead.

The general in the center of the army shouted, “CHARGE!”

Sam pushed his boots off against the black sand and began running forward. The sound of battle cries and rushing feet echoed all around him.

The demon horde hissed and wailed and then galloped towards them.

The two armies were going to meet in the middle.

Leading the front line of the demon horde was a creature called a demonling. A ghastly crimson monster with a mouth composed of tiny razor sharp teeth that could rip through armor and flesh with ease.

One demonling rushed ahead and leaped right towards Sam, mouth wide open. The monster was fully prepared to dig into Sam and rip his head completely off from his neck.

Sam swung his blade faster than the demonling could move, slicing the monster cleanly in half.

The ichor and ooze of the dead demon splashed onto his face and Sam had to take a second to wipe it off.

More demonlings came his way and he made quick work of them.

All around him, the front line human soldiers were pushing back the demon army’s first wave. Demonling hisses were quickly turning into whimpers. The echoes of their galloping feet were turning into the sounds of their bodies smacking against the ground dead.

Adrenaline surged through Sam as the primal need for survival took over and he entered a state of battle frenzy. His heart pounded against his chest. His throat burned.

Maybe, he began to think. Maybe we can actually win this thing.

Sam continued to move forward, slashing his sword, and ripping through the horde of demonlings with ease.

If we can keep pushing forward, Sam thought, Maybe we can get close enough to the demon king, and if we can slay him…

Sam’s hopeful thoughts were short-lived as higher-level demon soldiers showed up in the second wave of the demon horde’s attack.

Demon soldiers were warriors composed of deep red flesh and fought with mutated arms that functioned like swords or battle axes. They fought with greater sentience and strategy than the blood lusting demonlings.

Sam rushed forward, ducking a demon soldier’s swing of a battle axe, and then jumped up and sliced the demon warrior’s head right off.

He wasted no time, heading towards his next enemy.

There was no time to pause. No time to assess which way the battle was going. Any hesitation meant instant death.

He could hear in the background, the groans and screams of his fellow human soldiers.

Unlike the demonlings, the demon soldiers were definitely putting up a stronger fight against them.

Sam sliced through another group of demon soldiers only to find a massive shadow looming over him.

He looked up.

His eyes widened.

It was a demon giant—a colossal monster—with massive fists and arms with sharp protruding bones.

Sam jumped backwards away from it.

The demon giant swung its arms, killing a dozen human soldiers with utter ease. First from the sheer strength and power of its blow, and if that weren’t enough to kill the human warriors in front of it, the sharp bones along its arm finished the job, stabbing the humans all over.

Sam gasped at the sight of the sheer destruction.

The demon giant wasn’t even one of the demon king’s strongest soldiers and yet they were taking out some of humanity’s best.

Sam took a step backwards, only to knock into something.

He realized before even looking up that he’d been so awe-stricken by the demon giant that he’d lost focus.

And losing focus meant…

Suddenly, looming over him was another demon giant.

Sam had no time to react.

The demon giant swung its fist right into Sam’s side, sending him hurling high up in the air. Sam didn’t notice he was flying above the two clashing armies, as the pain from the attack was so intense, it overtook his entire sense of being.

Seconds later he crashed into the ground, countless bones in his body, snapping and breaking upon impact.

His whole body ached and throbbed with the greatest amount of pain he’d ever felt in his entire life up to that point.

He couldn’t quite understand why he hadn’t died immediately upon impact.

Looking around, he realized he’d landed not quite on the ground of the battlefield but upon a pile of dead human soldiers.

Their bodies had cushioned his fall.

Sam’s vision began to wobble. He could see blood leaking out of his body from different points.

So this it, he thought.

He rolled over and watched as the demon giants ploughed through the human army.

It was the greatest human army ever created in the history of Westria and here it was being demolished within minutes.

Sam realized they never stood a fighting chance against the demon king and his horde.

A swell of anger filled Sam’s dying body.

It’s our own fault, he thought with bitterness.

If humanity had spent more time preparing, maybe things would have gone differently. If the elves were still with them or even the dwarves.

Maybe then, Sam thought wistfully, but even then, who could really say?

The clouds above were gray and full of ash. A sea of dead bodies lay everywhere.

The demons had won.

Sam felt his vision begin to close in on him. He was being enveloped in the darkness of death.

As he was about to take his last breaths of life, something strange happened. A bright light emerged in the clouds above him.

Huh?

The bright light got closer and closer, filling Sam with a sense of warmth.

Is someone casting a massive heal spell?

Answering Sam’s thoughts as if he had spoken them, the light spoke out, “You’ve been chosen, young knight.”

Who is this? Sam thought deliriously.

“I am the last living goddess of this world,” said the light. “I will die along with the rest of Westria, never to return. I have enough power, however, to send you back...”

“Send me back? Back where? Will you be there?”

The goddess paused for a second, sadness filling her voice. “I will not be there, no. I don’t have enough energy or power to explain any more. Just trust me. You’re the only one capable of doing this. Good luck!”

And with that, everything went black.

2

Sam slowly opened his eyes to find a group of wide-eyed children and teenagers looking over him.

There were multiple kids—all scruffy and dressed in dirty rags—surrounding him, wherever it was he had woken up. They were all whispering excitedly.

“Shh, you’ll wake him up.”

“No—look he’s awake already!”

Before Sam could get his bearings and figure out what the heck was going on, the children around him collectively cheered, “Happy Birthday!”

Sam blinked and soon enough found a birthday cake being held up in front of him.

The cake had sixteen lit candles on it and the icing said, “Happy Birthday Sam”. Except there were finger marks in the icing of the cake that suggested the cake had originally said, “Happy Birthday Samantha”.

Was this cake stolen? Sam wondered.

He shook his head as a migraine began to form.

“Blow out the candles,” said a nearby teenage girl. The girl had curly auburn hair, freckles, and large beautiful green eyes. Despite her raggedy clothes, there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that this girl was stunning. “It’s your birthday!”

“My birthday?” Sam said, confused.

He looked down to his palms, perplexed. He couldn’t understand where all his bruises, cuts, and wounds had gone.

“It can’t be my birthday,” he said. “Aren’t I dead?”

The teenage girl’s face went red and she clutched his cloth shirt and pulled it towards her and hissed beneath her breath, “I don’t know what kind of weird dream you just woke up from, Sam, but if you’ve forgotten that around here none of us know when our actual birthdays are—so it’s nice to still celebrate a pretend one. Even if you suddenly think you’re too cool for it, think about the younger ones here.”

The girl gestured with her eyes to the little kids smiling up at Sam.

“Why is Sam acting so weird?” asked one of the little ones.

“He always acts weird,” said another.

“No—look, his eyes are different.”

They all stared at Sam and then gasped, including the teenage girl who had just taken a very authoritative tone with him.

“Sam,” said the bossy girl. “Are you okay?”

The whole room was spinning and he felt like he was going to be sick.

He got up off the bed and stumbled past the kids surrounding him. He caught sight of a mirror and stumbled towards it.

He caught his reflection: shaggy black hair and deep red eyes.

This was how he always looked, why were these kids surprised?

He always had red eyes, at least ever since he unlocked his class—

Suddenly, the moment right before his death on the battlefield came rushing back to him. His conversation with the goddess.

The goddess’ words echoed through his mind.

“I have enough power to send you back.”

He turned, dumbfounded, to the group of kids who were all looking at him with concern.

“What year is it?”

Most of the scraggly kids around him had no idea, but a slightly older teenage boy with round features and short brown hair said, “Um, according to the Royal Westrian Calendar the year is 1766. Specifically, we’re in the month of Septremble, about a week until the start of Fallstime. Why do you ask? Do you think the royal family or the powers that be will change the calendar system? That will surely lead to absolute chaos and mayhem! Can you imagine? We’d all definitely die in such a scenario.”

Sam had stopped listening to the boy after he had told him the year.

It’s not possible, he thought. Have I really gone back in time?

He began to look around the room.

It was a shabby room full of bunk beds and little kids.

I’ve been here before, he realized.

The memories were still flooding back to him.

This is where I grew up!

He then looked up to the kids in front of him. He knew these kids.

The slightly neurotic and paranoid boy was Toby and the bossy girl was Klara.

My best friends, he thought, smiling.

He hadn’t thought about them in such a long time, he had almost completely forgotten about them. Not out of malice or anything, but more from the trauma of having lost them so long ago. So much had happened since he had last seen them. Years, battles, wars, conflict. They had become a blip in the history of pain and suffering that was Sam’s life. They were a hopeful warm reminder of gentler ever-so-slightly happier times, but with that warmth came unwanted agony and frustration. It had caused him too much pain to think about, so he tried his hardest to ignore the memories, to forget his two friends that he had lost as much as he could. It had been the only way for him to move forward.

But now he was back in a new timeline and his friends were still alive.

He approached Toby and put his hands on his face. He squished his hands on Toby’s cheeks.

“Uhh, Sam,” said Toby. “What are you doing? Is there something on my face? Please tell me there isn’t a spider on my face? Did you kill it? Please tell me you killed it? And why are your hands still squishing my face, don’t you know spider venom can leak through the pores and kill you?”

Sam grinned.

This is Toby all right.

He then looked over to Klara, who had a less than pleased expression.

“Were you ever thinking about maybe blowing out your candles, you ungrateful twig! Do you know how difficult it was to procure this cake?”

Sam laughed, knowing full well that “procure” was Klara’s way of saying “steal from some unsuspecting noble family.”

Klara was the queen bee of the orphanage. She gave each of them tasks and goals and, even though, she was always bossing them around and barking orders at them, everyone knew she did it out of a deep love and affection for them all. She knew that it was easy for people in their circumstances to mope and be depressed all day long and the greatest counter to that was having a job to do.

It was also her idea to give everyone in the orphanage a birthday, even if it was a pretend day that they decided upon.

He felt his stomach rumble and realized he had a strong nagging pain.

The pain explained his skinny arms and features.

He was starving.

He had forgotten how awful and underfed his orphan life had been.

He then noticed all the orphans making furtive glances to the cake.

Oh man, he thought. It must be taking immense willpower from everyone to not devour that cake in front of them.

Sam wasted no more time and went ahead and blew out the candles.

Everyone cheered and one kid even said, “Finally! Let’s eat cake!”

Klara quickly cut everyone a piece and Sam sat back down on his bunk bed and tried to eat his slice slowly to really ration it out.

Most of the orphans then turned away from Sam as he began to focus on his thoughts.

Now that he had gotten his bearings and he was dealing with his hunger, he was starting to realize what the intense implications of being back in time were. It was dawning on him the sheer enormity of the task the goddess had placed on him. He could feel the burdensome weight and level of responsibility thrust upon his shoulders.

He could undo the past. He could save everyone, including his orphan friends standing in front of him.

But where did he even begin? Could he really do it all?

He then overhead the orphans nearby say, “He’s really acting weird. Weirder than normal for sure. Maybe it has to do with the red eyes. Should we take him to a healer in the city center?”

Red eyes.

So many things had happened all at once, Sam hadn’t considered the implications of his red eyes weighed against the fact that he was back in time.

If I have red eyes, that must mean…

He called upon his class profile in his retina and was absolutely astounded.

3

Sam couldn’t believe it.

He stared at his profile’s information, floating in his retina.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Tier: Unranked)

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 2

Agility: 3

Endurance: 3

Magic Affinity: 0

First of all, according to his first timeline, he shouldn’t have been able to see his profile in the first place. That was a surprise. The next shock was the fact that he already had his class unlocked. The goddess must have sent him back in time with both his memories and his class. The greatest surprise of all, however, was the fact that he had another class slot open to him.

That was unheard of.

Travelers—the name for those individuals known for having unlocked profiles, classes, and abilities—could only ever have one class. That was because the tutorial dungeon where one unlocked his or her class could never be entered twice.

But because Sam had gone back in time with his class already unlocked, he had created a loophole in the system.

He’d be able to enter a tutorial dungeon—also known as a white gate a second time.

Sam grinned.

In a world where Travelers could only have one class, he’d be the only one with two.

The task the goddess had left before him was truly monumental; but Sam was beginning to realize he might have more than enough tools to face it.

He had to get to work immediately.

With that, he stood up from his bed and ran out of the orphanage to the city streets beyond, not stopping even as his orphan pals yelled after him.

* * *

Sam wandered through the city of Resfall admiring the sunny clear blue sky and the happy looks on so many of the citizens.

He walked through one street that clearly specialized in food that was full of butchers, bakers, and wine makers. A warm smell of fresh bread wafted in the air as Sam walked past.

Everyone is so happy, Sam noticed.

People smiled and said hello to each other.

This was not the Resfall he had grown accustomed to over the last five years. He had known a Resfall oppressed by a tyrant, a city where everyone was suspicious of the other, where taverns were never jolly but only filled with lone drinkers and the odd group whispering in the back. The Resfall he had come to know was one full of betrayal and misery.

But, Sam looked up to the royal keep at the back of the city on the hill that looked over all the rooftops of Resfall and he realized Princess Alice Grace was still alive.

So many people—Klara, Toby, and others—were all still alive.

Just the very thought of it all made Sam filled with joy.

But then a darker thought followed his happiness: everyone is alive for now. They’ll be dead soon, though, if I don’t do something about it.

Sam finally came to a courtyard he had been looking for and sat down by a fountain.

He had to get over how amazed he was about being back in time and focus on the mission the goddess had entrusted him with.

As Toby had told him earlier, the year was 1766. That meant the dungeon gates had been around for over three years now. No historian in his previous timeline had ever been able to pinpoint exactly when the first dungeon gate appeared, but everyone could agree that they first started popping up in the year 1763.

The dungeon gates were large portals that appeared, seemingly at random, all across Westria that led to dungeons in other dimensions. They were incredibly dangerous places and most people who entered a gate never returned alive. For those few who were able to return, they were able to bring back everything they acquired from within, including power, equipment, wealth, and magic.

Those lucky few came to be known as Travelers.

And so, with the arrival of the dungeon gates, a new era of adventuring came to Westria.

Little did everyone know that the gates would ultimately lead to strife, bloodshed, and the demise of their entire world.

It would have been amazing if the goddess sent him back all the way to 1763 when the gates had first appeared, then he could get a real head start over everyone. As it stood now, however, there were some extremely powerful Travelers out there across Westria, who were both good and bad actors on the world stage.

Nevertheless, a lot of terrible events could still be stopped: the elven genocide and the dwarven calamity were two that came instantly to mind.

But those two horrific events were currently still years away.

He had to focus on the terrible series of events that happened in the future that were currently barreling rapidly towards his new present.

There was the assassination of Princess Alice Grace in about ten months time, but even sooner than that world-shaking event, there was the next three months of his own life that he had to change if he hoped to stop anything else.

If today was his sixteenth birthday that meant it was the 23rd of Septremble, meaning he had roughly five weeks before the beginning of Novriel when he and his orphan pals were all forced into a white gate, where none of them but him had survived.

Just thinking about that time in his life made Sam seethe with anger.

We never should have been thrown in that white gate in the first place, he thought.

He considered what the best strategy going forward was.

He couldn’t go to the authorities and warn them about what happened to him and his friends in his original timeline because no one would ever believe him.

He could potentially enter the white gate housed in one of the many courtyards of the Resfall Traveler’s Guild. If he did that, though, it would make it impossible for him to enter the one he would be forced into in a month’s time because at that point he would have unlocked his second class and therefore wouldn’t be able to enter a white gate ever again. There were two major problems with that plan. Firstly, the Traveler’s Guild guarded that specific white gate unbelievably well so he wouldn’t be able to break in. Secondly, he could enter it legally if he somehow was able to get enlisted in their Traveler training academy, which orphans rarely were accepted to. Plus, even if he did get accepted, it would slow down his own development and training plans to the point that he might not be able to stop crucial upcoming events in history.

Another option was simply to gather his orphan pals and run away. The problem with that idea was that they didn’t have anywhere to go. The land outside of Resfall was full of bandits, monsters, and dangerous beasts. Plus, the Spectral Church, which looked after all orphans in the city until they were seventeen, would come after them. The church had connections with the different laborer’s guilds, like the Miner’s Guild and Farmhand’s Guild, and it was an open secret that the church shuffled the orphans in their care into horrible near-slave contracts after they were old enough to leave their care. To the church, runaway orphans were runaway products they had promised to other clientele in the city.

That left only one real feasible option: enter the white gate just like he had in his first life.

Except this time he would be ready for it and he would make sure the other orphans were too.

He had five weeks to train both himself and the others for the task.

But before he started training, he needed a few basic supplies.

And to get a few basic supplies, he needed to get some money.

He checked his pockets and he only had a few measly copper coins.

For an orphan, money was always in short supply, but luckily for Sam, he was rich in ideas.

4

In a dark corner of Resfall was a drinking establishment that went by the name O’Leary’s. It was a sleepy indiscriminate pub that on first glance might strike a passerby as a bit drab and gloomy but otherwise would provoke no further reaction.

Unbeknownst to those more virtuous citizens of Resfall was that beneath O’Leary’s pub was an illegal fighting arena and gambling den—and unlike the bar that sat above it, it was very popular.

The grumpy man behind the bar, however, slammed the door shut right before Sam could enter.

“Aren’t you a little too young to be coming to a place like this?”

“Isn’t a potential upset customer a threat to the smooth running of an illegal establishment as the one housed downstairs?”

The barman let out a sigh and said, “Fair enough, lad. Just don’t come complaining to me when you lose all your money or get tossed in the ring and die.”

“If I’m dead, how would I even be able to complain to you?”

“I don’t want your ghost haunting my dreams, okay, smart guy? Now beat it.”

Sam opened the door and headed down a dark dingy stairwell. He could hear the sounds of shouts and cheers as he went down the steps, followed by the sounds of punches and kicks landing on bare flesh. He eventually arrived in a smoky basement crowded with people surrounding a caged ring where two men were currently fighting one another.

The two fighters were trading blows. Their eyes were puffy and blood was dripping from both of their noses. Despite their injuries, they kept fighting. The winner would only be called when the other was knocked out, or one of them forfeited from the pain.

Underground arena fighting was popular throughout all of Resfall with the more elite fights between powerful Travelers actually being royally sanctioned and mainstream with the public. Fights between powerful Travelers could fill whole stadiums.

But Sam had to take advantage of the closest and most active gambling den at that exact moment and one that would have no scruples of letting a sixteen-year-old orphan placing bets.

Sam approached a portly half-dwarf sitting on a bar stool at the back and offered the man some money on the fight.

The half-dwarf made a face at the boy and then ultimately shrugged. “Coin is coin. If you want to throw it away—well, that’s why we’re here.”

* * *

Reginald’s face was right up against the cage of the fighting arena below O’Leary’s pub. He liked to see the fighters up close, hear their shallow breaths, see the sweat forming on their bodies, and watch the blood glisten on their battered faces.

The only time he didn’t have his face plastered against the arena cage was if he was leaning back to take a sip of his ale or if he was going to place another bet.

The two fighters in the ring had been battering at each other for a while now. They were going blow for blow. One powerful punch would be enough to finish the fight.

“C’mon!” Reginald yelled.

He needed his fighter to win. He had put a lot of coin into this fight.

The fighters were groaning and swaying now. It was almost over.

It was just a matter of who had enough strength to finish it.

Finally, the knockout blow came and Reginald’s face widened against the cage in horror.

He watched the fighter he’d placed a significant amount of money on collapse onto the floor of the arena.

Reginald’s shoulders slumped.

How did this happen?

He knew there was only one solution to his problem. He needed to double down on his next bet.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the half-dwarf bookie paying out coin to a newcomer he’d never seen at the underground arena before. It was some kid with shaggy black hair and weird red eyes.

What does that kid know that I don’t? Reginald grumbled.

Reginald downed his ale and then went to the bar to order another drink and place another bet.

I’ll make my money back for sure, he said to himself.

As the day went on, Reginald grew more and more depressed. His bets kept losing, while that damn new kid kept cleaning up.

Finally, it was the last match before the afternoon break and the final match was going to be a big one.

Felix Firepunch versus Dangerous Darren.

Without question, Felix Firepunch was the better fighter and clear favorite to win. Dangerous Darren didn’t stand a chance.

Reginald went over to the bookie and put a huge amount of coin on Felix Firepunch.

This match and this bet were going to be the saving grace to Reginald’s miserable day of losing.

After he’d placed his bet, he couldn’t help but overhear the young black-haired kid place all of his winnings on Dangerous Darren.

Reginald gasped and turned around to look at the kid.

Is this kid some kind of moron?

He laughed to himself.

Let the kid throw away all his money, see if I care!

With his bet placed and a new drink in hand, Reginald returned to his spot right at the front of the arena to watch the match.

He felt his heart flutter with excitement.

It would be good to make all the money back that he’d lost today. Part of him could already feel the relief it would bring him. The yearning for the relief almost felt better than the relief itself.

Isn’t that always the way, Reginald thought contemplatively. The dream of something good is always more delightful than actual reality, isn’t it?

Soon, the match between Felix Firepunch and Dangerous Darren began.

The two fighters circled one another.

“Go Felix!” shouted Reginald.

But from the start of the match, something was off.

Felix Firepunch wasn’t moving with his normal agile gait.

He seemed sluggish and out of it.

No—it was worse.

The man is drunk!

Dangerous Darren seemed to realize this just at the same time as Reginald and made his move.

Darren rushed in with so much speed and force Felix didn’t see it coming. Darren knocked the man to the ground and started pummeling his face again and again, until the arena referee had to pull him back.

Felix Firepunch was unconscious and knocked out in the ring.

The favorite to win had just lost.

Every person in the arena was shocked and beginning to feel the horrific feeling that came with losing a lot of money in a bet.

The only person smiling in the entire bar was the teenage boy at the back. The one with the shaggy black hair and crimson red eyes.

* * *

Sam grinned as the half-dwarf paid him out.

“Don’t look so smug, lad,” said the bookie. “You win today, you lose for the rest of your life. You shouldn’t be here chasing this feeling, anyway.”

Sam couldn’t help but think the bookie’s advice was actually quite sound and, in some ways, kind.

“Ah,” grumbled the half-dwarf. “If you got the itch for betting, there’s nothing I can say that’s gonna stop you. Enjoy your winnings.”

Sam took the large sack of gold coins and put them in his pocket and headed out of the dingy establishment.

He had remembered in his previous timeline that Felix Firepunch’s loss had been a huge upset throughout the entire city. It had caused an evening of uproarious drinking and wallowing throughout all of Resfall.

What no one knew at the time was that Felix Firepunch’s wife had left him for a younger, handsomer, and wealthier man the night before and so Felix had shown up at O’Leary’s underground arena sleepless and drunk and with zero ability to fight.

Sam had taken full advantage of that knowledge and walked away with more coin to his name than he could have ever imagined, especially at this particular time in his life.

With his new sack of coins, he could now pick himself up a decent set of rudimentary gear.

5

On his way to the merchant district, Sam used some of his new coins to get some food. He went to a pub and forked down a large slice of steak and ale pie.

The salty pastry tasted delicious. It may have been the tastiest meal he’d ever experienced in his entire life.

He had forgotten the constant gnawing hunger he had felt in his younger days.

Was it because he’d been fed more in the years to come or was it that he had experienced even greater traumas in his future?

Sam didn’t want to dwell on it. He had tasks to get to.

He paid for his pie and continued on his way to the merchant district.

As he left the establishment, he overheard a fanatical woman wailing from the pub’s kitchen. “You have to try this new recipe! It’s called bacon and egg ramen! It’s delicious!”

Sam didn’t even want to try and figure out what the woman was talking about and continued on his way.

The next neighborhood was bustling with all sorts of shops: watchmakers, locksmiths, leatherworkers, and carpenters.

Sam walked through the bustling street and arrived at the merchants specializing in goods for Travelers

With the arrival of the dungeon gates in Westria, a whole new economy had sprouted up. Magical crafters, artisans, merchants, and other shops all made in service of selling goods to Travelers. There were also merchants selling things to non-Travelers too that only Travelers might come by, such as healing salves, potions, or rare crafting materials.

He stepped into a weapon shop, a little bell jingling in the air as he did so.

Sam was in awe of all the items on display at the shop. There were powerful swords, glittering armor, and even a few bows with elven enchantments.

He took a quick look at some of the wondrous weaponry and armor only to be blown away by the price tags. There was no way he could afford any of this.

Even still, it was nice to dream, and Sam had never entered the shop with the intention to buy something truly amazing. He just needed whatever weaponry he could get his hands on. Anything to just get started.

“If you’re going to shoplift, I rather you make your attempt already,” said a voice at the front.

Sam turned to the owner of the shop and blinked.

Why does he assume I’m going to shoplift?

Sam then looked down at his raggedy clothes and skinny arms and realized how he came across. No one looking like him would have the money or disposition to buy weapons used by Travelers.

Sam pulled out his sack of gold coins and said, “I want to get your cheapest sword, your cheapest bow, and your cheapest satchel of arrows.”

The shopkeeper briefly looked surprised at Sam’s sack of coins and then came out from behind his station and went over to a small barrel where a bunch of unimpressive weaponry was piled high.

“I can sell you this,” said the shopkeeper, handing him a sword that looked like it had seen better days.

Sam took in the sword and a message came up in his retina.

Brittle Copper Sword (Common) (Tier: Unranked)

Weapons and equipment came in the same grading scale as classes. It went common, uncommon, rare, super rare, mythic, and legendary. They also had tier levels, going from unranked, novice-tier, apprentice-tier, journeyman-tier, adept-tier, and master-tier. The only difference with items compared to classes was that you could get different variations, so you could get the same type of sword in any variation of rarity or tier.

A common brittle sword at apprentice-tier would be stronger than the same type of sword at the unranked tier.

Similarly, a rare brittle copper sword would be stronger than a common brittle copper sword, though both would be weaker than a common iron sword.

Sam smiled at the cheap sword. This will do for now.

“And everything else I requested?” Sam asked the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper then held up a bow for him to see.

Beginner’s Bow (Common) (Tier: Unranked)

“That works for me as well,” said Sam.

The shopkeeper then got him a satchel with twenty arrows and they settled on a price.

Sam thanked the shopkeeper and headed out with some rudimentary gear and a few coins still to spare.

* * *

Two guards stood on the western gate of Resfall.

Together they watched as the sun began its slow descent over the hills and forests beyond. The sky was an orange twilight and the guards watched contentedly as another peaceful shift at the gate was soon coming to an end.

“Look,” one guard nudged the other.

The other guard was enjoying his peaceful contemplation to himself and thought the other guard—an avid birdwatcher—was bugging him about another sighting of a gold-leafed sparrow.

He really didn’t give a rat’s bum about birds and he was sick of humoring his colleague, especially at the end of a long shift.

But it wasn’t a bird his colleague was pointing at.

A young boy around sixteen with shaggy black hair and red eyes was walking through the gates.

Is that kid crazy?, thought the guard. Where’s he going at this hour?

The guard called down to the boy. “Um, excuse me, lad. Where you off to? We’re about to lower the gates in a minute. You won’t be able to come back inside the walls until tomorrow morning.”

The young man shrugged. “That’s okay.”

The guards’ eyes widened.

“I’m not sure you understand. The gate won’t be open and you’ll be stuck out here. All sorts of bad monsters linger out there in the woods. You won’t survive the night.”

The kid shrugged. “Don’t worry about me.”

The two guards looked at each other.

“Go on then, son,” said the other guard. “Your funeral.”

* * *

Sam continued walking forward away from the city and into the nearby woods.

As he moved between the trees of the forest, he reviewed his profile once more.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Unranked)

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 2

Agility: 3

Endurance: 3

Magic Affinity: 0

He frowned at the sight of his single name at the top of his profile. Most people who unlocked a profile got their full name, but since Sam was an orphan, and belonged to no family lineage, he simply just had his first name.

If he were to marry or discover verifiable proof of who his family was, his last name would be updated on his profile.

But seeing as neither of those things was at the top of his to-do list when it came to saving Westria from total apocalypse, he wasn’t going to worry about them.

He was shocked, however, at how low his stats were. That definitely had to do with being a malnourished orphan, but he’d already started to rectify that today and he would continue to do so by eating steady meals going forward.

Even still, Sam was astounded by his stats. He’d forgotten how low a starting point he had began from. According to his stats, he was probably one of the weakest living creatures in all of Westria.

Well, we’ll fix that soon, won’t we?

Each of the four stats were raised in different ways.

To train strength, one must practice attacking and slaying monsters, lifting weights, building muscles, and fighting.

To train agility, one must practice running, jumping, and cardiovascular exercise.

To train endurance, one must practice and survive taking attacks, defending, blocking, and withstanding powerful blows.

To train magic affinity, one must practice casting spells, meditating, mana channeling, and mana cultivation.

The great thing about the first three stats was that you could pretty much train them all fairly consistently just by fighting monsters.

Which pretty much was his plan for the evening.

If he wanted to gain in power quickly, he needed to take advantage of having a class unlocked already, but the class didn’t unlock its first ability until the class ranked up from unranked to novice-tier.

Then, he’d really have a great starting advantage.

To rank up a class, one had to rank up specific stats connected to that class. For the blood knight class, Sam had to raise his strength and endurance stat to 11 to reach novice-tier. Then going forward, it would take 20 more stat points to rank up again at 31. There were gains to be had with some stats—particularly magic affinity—halfway between ranking up to the next tier, but he would worry about that later. Those gains only started coming into effect at the halfway point between novice-tier and apprentice-tier mana affinity.

Sam looked out into the darkness of the forest and grinned.

It was time to start training.

6

Sam started his evening of training with the most difficult task: hunting.

He crept through the woods trying his best to blend in with the bushes and concealing himself from any of his prey. Or, if he was being honest about how weak he was, his predators.

He held his bow with an arrow nocked, ready to get into a firing position as soon as he found a target.

He breathed through his nose to stay quiet.

His stats may have been low, but much of the knowledge and techniques from the last five years wasn’t, and that included his own muscle memory.

He looked up and saw a small bat hanging from a tree.

Perfect, Sam grinned.

He lifted his bow and pulled back the string and arrow. He adjusted his aim and then fired.

The arrow flew across the open spot of woods and punctured the bat.

It was dead before it even had a chance to make a noise.

The creature fell from the tree and splattered on the ground.

Sam hurried over to the dead bat and picked it up and added it to his inventory.

You’ll come in handy later.

He was so happy he had retained his inventory ability from his previous timeline, but even if he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been too hard to reacquire. A class could only be unlocked by going through a tutorial of a white gate, or on some rare occasions, absorbing an ultra rare item known as a class stone. The ability to see one’s profile and gain an inventory, however, could be unlocked simply by entering any type of dungeon gate.

Loads of merchants did exactly this, stepping through the lowest level dungeon gates, only to exit immediately after and never venture into a dangerous dungeon ever again, simply for the power of the inventory.

You couldn’t blame them. The power to store any items or belongings in an immaterial space that could be then conjured into your hands at will was truly an astounding power all on its own.

Sam grinned at his empty hand where the dead bat had previously been before he had stored it away in his inventory.

With one bat killed, he continued to stalk through the woods, hunting down any small beasts that he could handle.

* * *

After killing over twenty bats, Sam began a different stage of his evening’s training.

First, he gathered rocks and sticks and created a fire.

He then began materializing the dead bats and poking sticks through them and letting them grill near the fire.

He left his bats to grill for a long time, while focusing on other things.

After killing the twenty bats, he’d managed to raise each of the top three stats by one, while magic affinity lagged behind at zero.

It was time to start rectifying that discrepancy.

Most humans were not born with mana coursing through their veins, but the sheer act of unlocking a profile and a class created an untapped presence of mana in one’s body.

It was just a matter of tapping into it.

Sam sat cross-legged and focused in on himself.

He mindfully thought about all the parts of his body from his toes to the top of his head. Next, he began to think about his body beneath his skin, the blood cells and organs all working in tandem to keep him alive. Then, focusing right in center of his stomach, just below his chest, he zeroed in on a tiny little white orb of energy floating there.

There was no way to notice this orb of energy if you didn’t know to look for it. It was so minuscule. It would just stay there dormant if you didn’t go looking for it.

Sam sat there meditating for twenty minutes, nourishing the tiny white orb just with his attention to it, and it slowly grew a little bit until some of its energy began to leak away from the orb and out towards the rest of his body.

Sam grinned.

He called up his profile once more and he was very pleased to see his magic affinity stat had gone from zero to one.

In his previous timeline, it had taken him weeks after unlocking his class and surviving the white gate to raise his magic affinity stat that much. It was incredible how much faster his power gains were already.

He returned his focus on nurturing the tiny bit of mana inside of him when he heard a rustling nearby.

He opened his eyes and saw that a trio of wolves were eyeing him up and the feast of barbecue bats he had been cooking for himself.

Sam’s eyes widened and his heartbeat quickened.

He stood up slow and calmly.

He began to walk away from the three approaching wolves.

If he could show to the wolves that he wasn’t a threat, they’d settle on the cooked bats nearby.

Sam needed that to happen for there was no way he could take on all three wolves at once with his current stats.

He slowly walked away and the wolves hurried towards the fire and began tearing into the cooked bat’s flesh.

Sam sighed with relief when this happened, but within seconds of each of the wolves chomping into the dead bats, they looked back up with dripping blood from their teeth, eyeing Sam hungrily.

He materialized his sword from his inventory into his grip.

There was no way he could outrun the wolves if they were going to come after him.

The wolves split apart and started making an effort to surround him.

They growled and got ready to pounce Sam. They barred their teeth, ready to rip him to shreds.

Right as they were about to leap towards him and chew his head off, they each began to shake strangely.

The wolves coughed and spat out blood. Next, they collapsed on the ground.

Sam smirked at the sight of the dying wolves.

They had fallen for his trap.

The blood of the bats he had hunted was venomous to a large percentage of the predators in the forest just west of Resfall.

He walked up to each one of the struggling wolves and lifted up his brittle copper sword and ended each of their lives.

* * *

The following morning, the two guards for the day shift swapped with the night shift guards and took their positions at the western gate of Resfall.

“Hey, did you read that book on bird watching that I lent you?” asked one guard.

The other guard bristled at the question.

I obviously haven’t read that book and don’t plan on doing so, thought the guard irritably to himself. Why does this guy put us both through this torture?

“Hey, do you see that?”

Ugh, here we go again.

But it wasn’t a bird.

Emerging from the forest was the shaggy black-haired kid who’d gone out there the night before.

“I thought that kid would be dead for sure,” said the guard.

But clearly that wasn’t the case. The kid’s clothing was even more ragged than it had been before. He was covered in cuts, bruises, and dirt.

And yet, the kid was alive.

And even more impressive, he seemed to have a smile on his face.

7

Sam returned to Resfall incredibly satisfied with his night of training.

After he slayed the wolves, he decided he could be even more proactive with his trap. He drenched his arrows with the blood of the forest bats, and then went through the forest hunting wolves.

By the time morning came, Sam had increased all three of his top stats to six. He had even managed to raise his magic affinity one more stat to two.

He looked over his profile, happily.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Unranked)

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 6

Agility: 6

Endurance: 6

Magic Affinity: 2

Even he was impressed with his gains from one night of training. He figured the combination of eating more, feeding the mana core in his chest, the general muscle memory and knowledge from his previous life, and plus all the beasts he’d slain last night had led to speedier stat gains than a normal human would typically experience.

Fine by me, Sam grinned.

He didn’t think he could do an exact repeat of what he had done the previous night and still see as good stat gains as he had just experienced. He would need to change up his strategy for sure.

He headed to the market district and sold the wolf pelts and meat to gain some more coins and instantly went to the nearest pub and ordered as big a breakfast as he could get.

He was famished.

After breakfast, he headed back to the merchant’s quarter once more and went ahead and used the majority of his coins to buy an item called a healing salve.

“Kid, I don’t understand why you want this,” said the merchant. “The item has a one time use and you’re clearly not a Traveler. If you think you need one of these for some crazy scheme, I imagine you’ll not live beyond it, even with this healing salve.”

Sam was polite to the man but politely ignored the merchant’s advice and made the exchange.

With that done, he was ready to start training again, though he figured he should give his body a rest first.

He headed back to the orphanage, which was now empty though a piece of paper had been left on his bed.

It said, “Are you alive? - Klara”

He went to a nearby desk and picked up a feather and ink and wrote down “Yes” underneath it. He then placed the note on Klara’s bed, before heading back to his own bunk to catch some much needed shut eye.

* * *

Sam woke up a few hours later, feeling refreshed.

He was surprised to see that none of the other kids had returned to the orphanage.

He figured Klara had probably organized some kind of pickpocket heist or they’d been shuffled along to a mandatory service at the Spectral Church.

Either way, they weren’t around, and Sam figured it was for the better.

He still wasn’t sure how or what he was going to say to Klara and Toby about the fact that he was no longer the Sam they knew and cared for, but a Sam from five years in the future. Oh, and the apocalypse was coming and they’d both be dead in a couple of months.

Sam shook his head just thinking about it.

He’d tell them more soon, but there were a few things he still needed to take care of first.

Sam got up and left the orphanage behind once more in pursuit of his training.

* * *

The next few days Sam spent all his time in the woods, hunting wolves and bats, and any other wild beast he thought he could take on to raise his stats.

He made sure to take breaks and focus on nurturing the mana core inside of him and using that to raise his magic affinity stat. The mana core was instrumental to his early training. Only peak athletes and human warriors reached beyond stat 10 and that took months, if not years, of training to get there.

Since Sam was already beginning to fortify parts of his inner body with mana, it just made all of his other training exponentially faster. Normally, people didn’t cultivate the mana inside of them until after they survived the white gate and normally had stats beyond 10. What Sam was realizing was that cultivating so early was allowing for early stat gains that were unheard of before.

When he wasn’t hunting or cultivating, he’d make sure to take quick breaks to rest and cook some of the wild wolf meat.

Finally, Sam got to a point where he had gotten his top three stats to 9 and magic affinity to 6. He was finding even with all his cultivation, it was taking longer and longer to raise those stats.

He was going to have to start taking on stronger beasts soon, but he really didn’t want to do that until he unlocked his first class ability.

He was ready to finally push himself to the brink.

An hour later, he was back out in the woods, hunting around for wild beasts to fight.

He eventually stumbled upon another trio of wolves.

These wolves looked stronger and deadlier than the previous ones Sam had fought.

The beasts snarled at him and quickly began to circle around him.

Sam held out his arms, “Come and get me, pups.”

The wolves took the invitation and leaped towards Sam with their fangs out.

The first hit came in the shoulder with one wolf digging its sharp teeth into Sam’s flesh. He heard a ripping noise as it dug out part of Sam’s shoulder and ripped it off.

The other wolf dug into his left calf, while the other went for his stomach.

Sam’s vision went blurry and he fell onto the ground. The wolves started tearing into him.

He could feel himself getting closer and closer to death and all the while Sam was counting down.

Three...

Two...

One...

He materialized his copper sword in his hand and stabbed one of the wolves instantly.

Before the other wolves knew what was happening Sam stabbed them as well.

What the wolves didn’t know was that Sam had coated his sword with the blood of the bats he had slain the night before. The bats whose blood was poisonous to the wolves.

The beasts wailed with pain. Their bodies trembled and they soon collapsed on the ground, dead.

Sam didn’t have a moment of relief because he was quickly approaching death himself.

He was bleeding from multiple parts of his body and was going to go unconscious in seconds if he didn’t do something quick.

He materialized the healing salve he had bought earlier and began to rub it all over his injured body.

The ointment began to clear away his wounds, repairing his flesh in a matter of seconds.

He didn’t have enough ointment to fully heal all his cuts and bruises, but he was able to heal the lethal wounds that were about to kill him.

He crawled over to a tree and leaned his head back.

He checked to see if his training strategy had worked.

He grinned when he looked at his stats. Due to putting himself into so close of a near-death experience both his strength and endurance stats had gone up to 11.

His first blood knight ability would now unlock.

8

An official scout of the Resfall Traveler’s Guild rode on horseback through the forest pathway. His blue cloak with a white insignia of two swords crossed was a clear marker of his deep affiliation with the guild.

He was on his regular shift, sweeping across the nearby farmlands just outside the walls of Resfall.

A scout was an important job within the machinations of the Traveler’s Guild. Their job was to keep a lookout for any new dungeon gates that spawned across the countryside and notify the guild immediately.

If the boss monster in the final room of a dungeon gate wasn’t destroyed within thirty days, the monsters inside the gate would be able to exit and enter Westria and start attacking civilians.

It was therefore the responsibility of Traveler’s everywhere to stop such dungeon breaks from happening.

The Resfall Traveler’s Guild took great pride in upholding this responsibility.

The scout was relieved to see that there hadn’t been any new dungeon gate appearances on his sweep. He was looking forward to telling his superiors that there were no threats to the land at that moment.

Except just as he was thirty minutes away from the walls of Resfall, he came across a dungeon gate.

It was a large bright portal of blue energy that was fearsome to look at.

I guess I counted my eggs a little too quickly there, sighed the scout.

He whipped the reins of his horse and started hurrying back to Resfall to notify the guild of a sudden blue dungeon gate appearance.

The scout didn’t notice, but as he was riding away a young man with black shaggy hair and red eyes emerged from the shadows of the trees nearby.

* * *

Sam took in the blue dungeon gate before him.

It was a swirling mass of powerful mana and energy.

To most, it was terrifying to look at. For Sam, all he did was smile.

The dungeon portal was blue, indicating that it was both a regular standard dungeon gate and the weakest of its kind.

Most dungeon gates that appeared out of nowhere were standard gates of varying levels of power. Blue was the weakest, otherwise known as a novice-tier gate, followed by green, yellow, orange, and red. The other type of gate that could appear happened far less often and they were known as irregular dungeon gates, which often followed their own special rules and protocols. The tutorial dungeon gate—the white gate—was one such example.

All of his efforts over the last few days were in preparation for this blue dungeon gate looming before him.

He recalled hearing about the appearance of this gate in his first timeline and how it had been a low priority for the Traveler’s Guild for a couple of days as it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to come out and take out a gate that was so low level and offered very little rewards.

But for someone like Sam, it offered everything he needed there and then.

Without any hesitation, he took a step forward and entered the blue dungeon gate.

Entering a dungeon gate was a very strange feeling. It was simultaneously exhilarating and anti-climactic.

One had no idea what existed beyond the gate until they stepped forth into it and that was incredible.

Yet, there was no breathtaking feeling in the act of entering the gate, you stepped into it and—blip— you were in another dimension, another reality. The world of the dungeon gate.

It felt a bit disconcerting how rapid your reality shifted from one plane to the next.

Luckily, for Sam, this may have been his first dungeon in this timeline, but he’d experienced countless number of dungeons in his previous lifetime.

He looked around and saw that he was in an underground cavern of some kind.

A cavernous realm was one of the most common environments you could find within a dungeon gate. Other environments included grassland, forest, swamp, and the list went on.

He took a step forward, scanning the nearby area with his eyes.

There were no monsters in his immediate vicinity, which was normally the case in a low-tier blue dungeon gate.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the portal still brimming with energy. He could walk back out of the gate now if he wanted too—all regular gates let you leave, unlike a lot of the irregular gates.

Sam continued forward.

The cavern led in only one direction from his entry point. He walked through the tunnel, hearing the echoes of water dripping into puddles.

Eventually, the cavern expanded into a large open area with multiple branching tunnels.

Right as Sam was about to step out he heard a noise.

Sam crouched down to avoid being detected by the incoming enemies.

Stepping out into the open area were two goblin guards.

They were each holding torches and had daggers sheathed at their sides.

The two goblin guards began walking the perimeter of the open area.

Crap.

Goblins could be incredibly dangerous monsters, especially when they were angry. They had a soft spot for torture and cruelty.

Sam began to slowly back crawl further up the tunnel he came from.

He didn’t want to get into a head to head fight with these monsters if he didn’t have to.

Further away and cloaked in nearby shadows, Sam materialized his bow and arrow and got ready for the incoming guards.

The two goblins passed and Sam released his arrow.

It went right through the skull of one of the goblins, knocking the creature’s corpse over.

The other goblin screamed and began running away.

Sam rushed after the goblin guard while dematerializing his bow in his inventory and replacing it with his brittle copper sword in his grip.

Sam knew he couldn’t let the goblin guard get away.

If he did, the guard would alert all the other goblins in the dungeon and they would swarm him in a deadly group that would greatly outnumber him.

Sam caught up with the goblin, punching it in the back of the head.

The goblin fell over, only to roll around with its dagger unsheathed, and narrow eyes full of rage.

Sam kicked the monster’s arm away with his boot and then finished it off with a plunging sword blow to the chest.

When the life faded from the goblin’s eyes and it had let out its last breath, it began to disintegrate into a strange silvery puddle.

Sam’s favorite part about dungeons and fighting monsters was about to happen.

The loot.

9

When dungeon monsters died they didn’t remain as corpses, they disintegrated into a silver puddle that then transformed and left behind whatever loot the monster randomly dropped.

In the case of the goblins Sam had just defeated, they both left behind a few coins, a dagger each, and a mana stone.

He picked up a dagger and inspected it in his profile.

Copper Dagger (Common) (Tier: Apprentice)

Nice, thought Sam.

The other dagger was of the same quality and tier type. They were both probably stronger than his brittle copper sword.

He sheathed both to the side of his waist for easy access.

It was good to have multiple weapons when necessary, but he was keen to find himself a better sword than the one he currently had as that was the weapon type he was most proficient with.

Still, he couldn’t complain about the daggers.

Next, he looked over the mana stones left behind.

The mana stones were another reason that Sam had desperately wanted to start training inside a dungeon gate. Regular wild beasts out in the forest didn’t leave behind something so valuable.

Most dungeon gate monsters dropped mana stones. The mana stones, as their name suggested, were rich in mana. With special techniques, the mana could be drained into a Traveler’s body to improve his or her magic affinity. With some skill, you could even drain the mana to help with the development of another specific stat attribute.

The mana stones were both blue to indicate they were the lowest tier type of mana stone.

Sam sat down on the ground to drain them immediately.

He sat cross-legged and held the mana stone in his grip and closed his eyes.

The white core of mana in his chest had grown larger over the last few days of training and had begun to spread out throughout his body.

Focusing in on the mana in his fingertips, he created a bridge of mana with the stone, and using his own mana gently pulled on the energy from within the stone and drew it deeper inside of himself.

He felt a rush of energy and power surge through him as he did so. A lot of the energy from the stone faded away after a few seconds inside Sam’s body, but some of it stayed and fed into the white core at the center of his chest.

This was all part of the mana cultivation process. Since his body was still so untrained in cultivating, it couldn’t as of yet efficiently retain as much of the mana stone as he would have liked.

Even still, more power was more power.

Sam quickly drained the second mana stone.

He smiled when he saw that his magic affinity stat had gone up by one point to seven.

He then got back up and surveyed the open area of the cavern.

There were four different tunnels going in different directions.

Sam’s plan was to explore all four of them.

Rarely does a Traveler get the opportunity to solo clear a dungeon, and Sam wanted to milk the opportunity for all it was worth.

He randomly chose a path and headed down it. He found a trio of goblins sitting around a bonfire.

From the shadows, he used his bow and arrow to take out one of them. He then rushed forward with his daggers and took on the other two.

The goblins readied themselves to fight.

But it didn’t matter if they may have been technically a little bit stronger than Sam statistically. Sam had years of blade fighting under his belt, muscle memory, knowledge of patterns, and the like.

He dodged the first goblin’s thrust with ease and retaliated with a dagger slice to its neck.

He grabbed the dying goblin by the chest and used his body to throw him into the other one and knock them into the fire.

They disintegrated into mana stones, coins, and both left behind a dagger each.

Sam pocketed the daggers into his inventory and then drained the mana stones for as much energy as he could.

He was disappointed when his magic affinity stat didn’t raise another point, but it was wrong to expect that after having been raised so recently.

He picked up one of the goblin torches and carried it with him back to the open area.

Right before he entered the second tunnel, he wedged the flaming torch into the ground and then materialized his bow and lit his arrow on fire.

This will do some damage, Sam thought.

He then rushed through the cavern to find more goblins and when he did, he unleashed his flaming arrow on one, causing so much chaos with that one attack, he was able to rush in and slice the goblins up before they even knew what happened.

He could feel the difference in the strength of the copper dagger versus his brittle copper sword. The tier rank and general upkeep of the weapons made a huge difference.

With the battle over, he pocketed the loot, drained the mana stones, and continued on his way.

Twenty minutes later, he had finished the goblins in the third tunnel and was extra pleased to see a treasure chest was waiting in the former goblin encampment.

He opened it up and smiled with delight.

Inside was a healing potion and a stamina potion.

Perfect, Sam thought.

He placed both in his inventory and continued on his way through the dungeon.

The fourth tunnel led to another open area with branching tunnels, and on the dungeon went, Sam making sure to clear all the tunnels before moving forward.

After countless amount of goblins and draining of mana stones, Sam’s magic affinity stat finally hit 11.

A rush of energy swirled inside of Sam’s body and the white core inside of him, changed color to blue.

He had gone from having an unranked mana core to a novice-tier core.

With this new rank of mana, he could now better perceive the mana within his body, allowing for greater manipulation and control when cultivating it inside himself.

Furthermore, if he closed his eyes and focused enough he should be able to sense if there were any other mana sources nearby.

This was one of skills available to Traveler’s with a blue mana core. At first it acted like a compass, nudging you in the direction of where other mana users were, but as you cultivated more you could locate people or monsters within a certain radius with greater precision.

He could sense mana coming northward in the dungeon and he moved down the path.

Sam’s sense of the foreign mana grew as he got closer.

It was definitely a significant amount of mana and Sam then realized what he was approaching.

It was none other than the boss room.

10

Sam headed down the passageway, feeling the pulse of mana get more and more intense as he went down the tunnel.

After a few more minutes, he eventually saw the path widen out.

In the center of the room was the boss monster.

It was a large goblin brute captain.

The goblin was much larger than the ones he’d fought earlier in the dungeon. Its muscles were thick and intense.

Just by looking at the monster, Sam could tell that it was a bruiser-type fighter, so it would attack him with powerful punches and kicks.

Okay, Sam thought, psyching himself up. I got this.

He headed down the passage and entered the boss room.

He wished he could have shot arrows at it from afar, but there was a special energy shield around a boss room, and you could only attack a boss monster from inside that energy field.

He pulled out a dagger in both hands and then rushed through the energy field.

The goblin brute captain’s eyes widened as soon as Sam barreled into the room with his daggers drawn.

The goblin brute captain tried to get into a defensive position, but Sam could read the monster’s movements and quickly pivoted his attack.

He slashed one dagger across the monster’s neck with fury. He was going to spin and deal another similarly deadly attack to finish the job for good, but upon his first dagger hitting the goblin captain’s neck, nothing happened.

It was like his dagger had cut against a powerful rock.

Sam immediately leaped back in surprise.

How high is the goblin brute’s endurance stat?

Sam quickly realized the fight wasn’t going to be as easy as he expected, but the silver lining was, he’d finally found a good situation to utilize his novice-tier blood knight ability.

The goblin brute captain was beating his chest now and ripples of energy were emanating off of him. The boss monster was powering itself up.

Sam triggered his blood knight ability. A red ring shot out from him and it encompassed the center of the large boss room, including both Sam and the goblin brute.

Sam then rushed the monster head on.

The goblin brute was ready for Sam this time and pummeled him with a punch to the face, sending Sam hurling backwards.

A sharp pain rippled through Sam’s body, but he shook it off and wobbled back onto his feet.

Over the course of his previous lifetime, he’d suffered way worse. An attack like that one was nothing to him.

Sam rushed the goblin again, only to get pummeled once more.

The goblin brute captain was smiling at his easy triumphs over Sam, not questioning the strangeness of his enemy’s behavior.

Sam continued this for ten more minutes, taking countless punches to his face and chest.

His face was puffed and swollen and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth, but even still, Sam got back up again.

The goblin brute captain was becoming visibly annoyed now that Sam wasn’t giving up.

The monster rushed Sam and the young warrior realized it was time to go back on the offensive.

Sam yelled and rushed the monster head on with both his daggers.

The goblin brute threw such a powerful punch, but when it missed Sam, the monster’s arm crashed into the floor of the cave, creating a rocky crater.

Sam was behind the monster now unleashing slice after slice on the monster’s back, draining the monster of blood until it completely collapsed on the ground.

Sam stood there, catching his breath.

He watched the red ring of his blood knight ability begin to flicker away, now that the goblin brute captain was defeated. That was the power of his newly unlocked blood knight ability: Pain Ring. Within the circle of the Pain Ring, the more a blood knight is hurt, the more damage the blood knight can deal back.

So that was why Sam had forced himself to take all those punches and hits from the brute captain. He was building up the power of his own strikes. Unlike the first time he hit the monster and could barely penetrate the creature’s skin, after accumulating more strength from the Pain Ring, he was able to deliver a truly monstrous series of attacks with his two daggers.

Sam’s vision blurred and he materialized the healing potion he’d found earlier and chugged it. The aches, pains, bruises, and swelling all quickly disappeared when he finished the potion.

He wiped sweat off his brow and looked down to the destroyed dungeon monster, disintegrating down into its loot drop.

The monster left behind a large blue monster stone, more coins, and—to Sam’s wide-eyed glee—a sword.

He picked up the sword and smiled.

Iron Sword (Common) (Tier: Journeyman)

This was a significant find. An iron sword was far from the best sword in the world, but it was a great find for someone with a novice-tier class. In terms of equipment, it would put him far ahead of most people at the same tier as him, maybe excluding a few nobles who had the finances for the very best and rarest equipment.

Sam could tell just by looking at the sword, from its sharpness to its weight that it was better than your average iron sword. It deserved its journeyman-tier title. This was the exact weapon Sam was hoping to find.

He placed all the items in his inventory and looked over his stats with satisfaction.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice-Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice-Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 11

Agility: 10

Endurance: 11

Magic Affinity: 11

For someone who began the week as a starving malnourished orphan, Sam couldn’t help but marvel at the truly incredible gains he had made in such a remarkable amount of time.

11

With the help of some other orphans, Klara pushed multiple tables together in the orphanage to create a proper dinner table.

They then got to work on setting the table in preparation for their own little harvest festival feast.

“What are we having for dinner, Klara?” asked one of the little ones.

Klara barely registered the younger kid’s questions. Her mind was preoccupied on her friend Sam. He’d been acting incredibly weird for the last week. He had always been a bit of a lone wolf, but never to the point that he would disappear for such long periods of time and not tell anyone where he was going.

Klara couldn’t help but think there must be something incredibly wrong going on, but why wouldn’t Sam share it with her or Toby?

Thankfully, she knew he wasn’t dead as he’d written back to her note, but still she wanted answers. The next time she saw him, she was definitely going to bring it up.

Totally lost in her own thoughts, she’d forgotten the little orphan below her, staring up at her wide-eyed.

Klara narrowed her eyes and said, “Nothing for you, if you don’t make your bed, and help out more.”

The little kid immediately stood up with fearful attention and ran away to finish his chores.

Klara smiled at the little boy.

At that exact moment, Toby barged in with another group of orphans holding a large beautifully glazed turkey.

“We didn’t even have to steal it,” said Toby. “A noblewoman was about to have it thrown out due to a fly landing on it. I mean—I can definitely see her perspective, who knows what diseases a fly might be carrying—but nevertheless, a whole turkey!”

Everybody cheered at the sight of it, even Klara grinned happily despite all the things weighing on her mind.

Regardless of whatever is happening with Sam, Klara thought, tonight’s going to be a great harvest time meal. I just hope he’ll show up to enjoy it with us.

* * *

Sam took a quick moment to catch his breath after gathering up all the loot and then began to make his way out of the dungeon.

Now that the dungeon boss was destroyed, the gate would disappear within a few hours. If you were still inside a gate when that happened, you were destroyed along with it.

Just under an hour later, he stepped back into the forest where the dungeon gate had emerged and started making his way back to Resfall.

The sun was still setting so he should be able to make it into the city before the gates were closed. Plus, with the harvest time celebrations happening, there would be more guards on shift to take care of any drunken buffoonery or rioting, so it was quite possible the gates might stay open longer than normal anyway. Not to mention, if you considered the fact that there would be many farmers and merchants coming from outside the city to join the celebrations, no one would want to actively thwart a winemaker from rolling more barrels into the city on a celebratory night like tonight. If anything, the gates would most likely stay open all the way through the evening until dusk the following day.

As he expected, the gate was still open by the time Sam got back to Resfall, so he just happily walked on through.

He ambled through the city, walking past taverns full of people and homes hosting dinner parties. Harvest time was always a wonderful time of year.

It was crazy to think that if Sam hadn’t been sent back from the future, this was going to be one of the last times everyone in Resfall would celebrate harvest time.

He shook the melancholic thoughts from his head, reminding himself that he had been sent back in time for that very reason. All of those dour thoughts and situations could be avoided, he just had to keep working hard and strive to get stronger.

He had to speak to Klara and Toby about what he knew as soon as he could. He would have spoken to them earlier, but the knowledge of the blue dungeon gate was too good an opportunity to pass up and that had taken priority this week.

He eventually arrived back at the orphanage, still mulling over how he’d bring up the impending danger to them all, when everyone cheered as soon as he walked in the door.

“Sam!” everyone yelled.

Klara gave him a concerned look before smiling along with everyone else. “Grab a seat, we’re just about to have turkey!”

“It might be infected with a deadly fly disease though,” Toby mentioned.

Everyone groaned and threw paper napkins at Toby.

“What!? Sam deserved to be warned!”

* * *

After dinner, the orphans cleared away the table, and brought out their own homemade apple bucket contest.

All the orphans lined up while Klara was the game’s host.

“Can you manage to bob your head and pick up an apple out of the water? Step right up and try,” she said.

Toby was third in line, lost in his own swirling thoughts.

If I could just win this apple bobbing contest, maybe Klara will notice me for being more than a nervous loser who can’t catch a break.

Sweat formed on Toby’s forehead as he took in the stakes of the next few minutes.

All of my happiness then comes down to this one game of apple bobbing, and there’s so much that could go wrong. Like, what if I fall over and no one helps me out and then I drown in the bucket and die?

Toby’s heart was racing by the time it was his turn to have a go at bobbing for an apple.

“Alright, Tobes,” said Klara. “You’re up.”

Toby let out a deep breath and then dove into the apple bucket.

He created a big splash, but a few seconds later, he came up with the apple in his mouth.

I did it, he thought. I actually did it!

Everyone cheered around him, including Klara.

But Toby’s happiness was short-lived.

His eyes widened at the sight of a worm poking out of the other side of the apple.

He immediately spat it out and screamed.

“Ahhh!”

He began flailing around the orphanage.

“Is there a worm in my mouth? Do you think it’s infected? Or could it already be in my stomach, eating me alive!”

All the orphans laughed at Toby as he made this spectacle of himself.

He eventually ran out of energy and slumped down on the floor in defeat.

So much for impressing Klara, he sighed.

* * *

Sam laughed at Toby, lying on the floor depressed and exhausted from all of his screaming over the worm in his apple.

Sam was sitting on the floor himself, leaning his head back against the wall.

He was stuffed from the big piece of turkey he had eaten and was happily watching the other orphans play and smile amongst themselves.

He realized he missed this.

Being around people he cared so deeply about.

He hadn’t had that in such a long time. Not since around this exact time in his previous life as well.

After the white gate, he had never been the same. He had become just another Traveler mercenary, a hired hand, a fighter for hire.

He had fought on behalf of his country and his people, so long as they paid him. He followed orders.

And that was it.

Watching the young orphans around him—especially Klara and Toby—he realized, he had missed having people he cared so much about around him.

He missed that feeling.

And as ironic as it was for an orphan to think this—he missed the feeling of having a family.

Sam still wasn’t sure how he was going to bring up the subject of the creeping danger coming for them all in the near future.

He knew he had to work hard and he was determined to do so.

But he realized there and then that the reason he was going to work so diligently went beyond just the responsibility placed on him by the goddess, but it was so that in the end people could one day live their lives happily and peacefully.

With that in mind, he decided he’d let the orphans enjoy this happy moment for a little while longer, before he discussed the serious and grave matters that lay before them.

* * *

Meanwhile, the scout of the Traveler’s Guild returned to the spot of the blue gate just to check on it and make sure it wasn’t exhibiting any irregular or strange activity.

Yet, he was shocked when he arrived at the location he’d marked on his map.

The blue dungeon gate was nowhere in sight.

“How is this possible?” the scout said out loud to no one but himself.

No squads had been assigned to the gate yet.

Could there maybe be a non-guild affiliated Traveler or group of Travelers taking on dungeon gates on their own?

The scout thought back to some words he had exchanged with the guards at the wall.

They mentioned seeing a young man fighting wild beasts in the forest.

There was no way that kid could have taken this gate on by himself.

If he had, though, it would make him a young fighter of incredible potential.

He turned around on his horse and started heading back to Resfall.

He would have to inform the guild to keep an eye out for a young Traveler of immense talent.

12

The party in the orphanage had begun to wind down.

Many of the orphans had returned to their bunk beds and had fallen asleep in food comas from all the pilfered food that had made up their harvest time feast.

Toby had joined Sam, leaning against the wall with him.

Toby turned to Sam.

“Do you think I’ll die from the worm in that apple, Sam?” Toby asked with a sincerity that ignored the fact that he’d asked a variation of the same question more times than Sam could count in the last ten minutes.

“Maybe,” Sam teased. “You never know.”

Toby leaned his head back against the wall with a new spiral of worries enveloping him.

Oh, Toby, Sam thought. You have so much more to worry about than that worm. If only you knew...

Sam glanced across the room, looking for Klara and couldn’t find her anywhere.

He had decided he would speak to Klara tomorrow about what he knew. They needed to start training as soon as possible.

At that very moment, Klara emerged from the bathroom and glared at Sam.

“Sam,” she said. “Will you speak with me in my office?”

Toby shivered at their orphan leader’s words and whispered to Sam, “Good luck, mate.”

“I heard that, Toby,” said Klara in a stern voice.

Toby’s eyes widened with fear.

Sam left his friend to his incessant worrying and followed Klara into her office.

Klara’s office wasn’t actually an office. It was a janitorial closet with brooms, mops, and other domestic supplies.

Still, it was the room where Klara had her private one-on-one conversations with any orphans she thought were struggling, or more likely, she thought deserved a stern talking to.

Klara closed the door behind her and looked at Sam with a serious glare in her eyes.

“Sam—tell me what’s going on?”

Before Sam could even open his mouth to say anything, she continued speaking at him, “You’ve been acting weirder than normal all week, your eyes have somehow magically changed color, and you just don’t seem like yourself. You know, Toby and I had to cover for you all week when the priests and nuns were asking where you were. You know how they can be with runaways.”

They both bristled at Klara’s last words.

“Yeah, I know,” said Sam.

“So what’s going on?”

Sam looked at Klara in her sweet green eyes. She was so strong, not because she was bossy or was stern, but because she put on a brave face so everyone else around her could feel comfortable being afraid. That took real guts.

Sam had told himself he was going to wait until tomorrow to tell Klara about what he knew about the future, but they really didn’t have any time to waste, and the opportunity had now presented itself.

Where did he even begin though?

He didn’t want to come straight out and tell Klara he’s a future version of himself. For one thing, he wasn’t sure if that would make him more or less credible with what he had to tell her. And for another thing, he knew he should keep the source of his future knowledge as secret as possible. If people found out about it, Travelers with telepathic abilities or something similar would be able to harvest his mind, and he could end up creating a second timeline that was even more apocalyptic than his first.

I definitely need to avoid that, Sam shivered to himself.

So what did he tell Klara then?

“So?” said Klara, getting impatient. “What’s going on then?”

Sam stared at her intently. He needed to make Klara feel how serious he was. That he wasn’t joking around.

“You promise not to freak out when I tell you?” said Sam.

“I promise.”

“You promise to not think I’m joking with you?” Sam asked.

“I promise.”

“Okay,” sighed Sam. “I can’t tell you how I know this, but I need you to trust me and believe me when I say this. You, Toby, and many of the orphans here are all in grave danger.”

“What do you—”

“In about a month’s time at the start of Novriel, the Spectral Church is going to make us all enter a white gate.”

Klara’s face paled.

“You can’t be serious—”

“Remember, your promise,” said Sam. “The reason I’ve been away all week was so I could get ahead with my training and gather some resources so I can help the rest of you as well.”

Klara shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t just skip over what you just said to me. How could the Spectral Church do something like that? It’s heinous. And even if it were true, how do you know what they’re going to do in the future?”

Sam’s eyes twitched.

He knew even a small portion of the truth was going to be a difficult pill to swallow. If she could hardly fathom the news he’d just told her, there’s no way she’d believe he was from the future.

“I had a vision in my dreams that warned me,” said Sam, making up a lie on the spot. “I think the vision is what caused my eyes to turn red.”

Klara’s eyes widened at that.

“Look—you don’t even have to believe me, all I want is for you to promise me you’ll help prepare for this awful event and if it doesn’t happen, well you can make fun of me forever. Here’s the thing, though, if my vision happens to be right: the next month’s training will be the only thing that keeps us all alive.”

13

Klara blinked and looked at Sam like he was crazy.

“Hold on a second,” she said and before she could continue, she just shook her head, unable to process everything Sam had just said. “So, you’re saying—”

She just couldn’t articulate the words Sam had just said to her. It all seemed too crazy. Outlandish, even.

She looked at the boy. She admired him. She caught herself thinking about him more than she would like to admit. She found herself frustrated with him that she could look and watch him for whole minutes before he would turn and notice her doing so.

“I need you to trust me,” said Sam. “I’ve never been more serious in my entire life.”

The boy looked her right in the eyes and in that moment Klara knew for sure that he was telling her the truth. That even if the craziness he was saying didn’t match up with his normal level-headed self, the intent in his eyes and manner did.

“Alright,” said Klara. “I believe you. What should we do next?”

“I think we need to bring Toby in.”

* * *

Toby was still sitting on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering if he was more likely to die from a worm eating him from the inside out or from a poison apple.

There was another thought going through his head, though, one that made him more uncomfortable than even his own impending death.

He was wondering what Klara and Sam were talking about behind the closed doors of Klara’s office.

What if they were confessing their love for each other? Together, Sam and Klara will live the perfect life that Toby had always wanted with Klara and he’ll just be the creepy sad uncle who comes over for dinner once a month.

That is my fate, Toby thought, starting at the wall, despondently. But if that is indeed the case, I must honor my friends’ decision and support them in their love, however challenging it may be for me. That is what a good friend would do.

Suddenly, the door to Klara’s office opened.

He expected the two of them to walk out, holding hands, but instead it was just Klara, looking at him sternly.

“Tobes, get in here.”

Toby got up and joined his two friends in the office.

Oh wow, he thought. They knew they were going to break my heart so they wanted to do it in private to save me my own embarrassment.

“What’s going on?” Toby asked.

Klara looked to Sam. “You tell him.”

Sam cleared his throat and said. “There’s no easy way to say this Toby but in a month’s time something really bad is about to happen. We’re all going to be thrown into a white dungeon gate against our will.”

Toby blinked and said, “That’s it.”

Klara and Sam looked at each other. “I mean, yeah, did you hear what I just said?”

A huge feeling of relief surged through Toby.

They’re not in love!, he thought happily. They haven’t gotten engaged! I still have a chance!

* * *

Sam looked at Toby strangely.

His friend who normally worried about every single thing there was to worry about had just heard that he might be sent into a deadly and dangerous magical portal and yet he seemed...overjoyed?

Toby was blushing and smiling to himself. It was definitely not the reaction either Klara or Sam had expected.

When Toby’s fit of joyous delirium finally came to an end, he looked back at Sam.

“Wait, what did you say about a white gate again?”

Klara couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed Toby by the shirt and shook him. “You numbskull, did you not just hear what Sam said? What were you just celebrating in your head right now? Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

Toby blushed all over. “It was nothing. I mean, I’m not sure. I mean—okay, I’m listening now and what you’re saying sounds really bad. Like the worst thing imaginable. Worse than dying from a poison apple.”

“What we need to do now is figure out an action plan,” said Sam.

There was just so much they needed to accomplish in such a short amount of time.

Sam bristled thinking back to his time in the white gate from his previous life. He was not looking forward to reliving the horrors of it, even though he knew it was necessary.

The three of them went over some logistics and agreed to a plan.

“Now, all we have do is tell the others,” said Sam. “Klara—I think you should do it.”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m with you one hundred percent on this, but you’re telling those kids out there what you told me. I can’t be the messenger for this one.”

“Alright then,” said Sam. “Let’s go tell them now.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, the orphans were nudged from their post-feast naps and gathered in a group for an impromptu orphanage meeting.

Klara and Toby stood on, watching as Sam took center stage and began telling the orphans what was going to happen over the next few weeks.

Klara nudged Toby. “He’s amazing, isn’t he?”

Toby shrugged. “Yeah, I mean—well—anyone could do—” Toby wanted to muster some kind of counterargument, but honestly couldn’t in the face of their fellow friend giving such an inspiring speech. “Yeah, you’re right. He kinda is amazing.”

Sam continued speaking to the enraptured audience of orphans.

“We have a month to prepare for our trials in the white gate. It’s not a lot of time, but if we work hard, we might be able to survive. I know you’ll have a lot of questions and I’m going to hand that off to Toby and Klara here. But all I’ll say is this. Get a good night’s sleep. Training begins tomorrow.”

14

In the depths of the grand cathedral of the Spectral Church in Resfall gathered a group of men in hooded robes.

The archbishop stood in the center of the meeting, welcoming all the priests who had managed to join them.

Archbishop Baylen was a very powerful man. He had learned the ways of the Travelers and dungeon gates and had unlocked a powerful class of his own. He kept much of his training secret even from many within the church.

Though, occasionally, the archbishop would snap his fingers and a flicker of bright green and nightmarish mana would emanate around his fingers. Only for a brief second. Just enough time to strike terror in all of those who worked under him.

Only the most trusted and highly valued priests were welcomed into this secret order that was gathering that evening.

Father Irwin always reminded himself of that.

He was special. He was good. He was one of the best.

If only those annoying brats at the orphanage he looked after would stop getting into so much trouble, he might be able to get promoted further.

It was that irritable trio of Sam, Klara, and Toby.

Oh, how he quietly despised those three little wretches.

The archbishop began the meeting.

“Today, we will be discussing what we shall do next with our experiments with the white gate. Our knowledge of its power is only growing deeper, but we must keep experimenting.”

“Great Archbishop Baylen, what do you propose our next move shall be?” asked Father Irwin, eagerly.

“Well—”

* * *

The morning after Sam had told the orphans about the incoming danger of the white gate, he led the orphans out just beyond the walls of the city to begin their training.

Klara had paid off the guards with some of her pickpocketing money so the guards wouldn’t make a fuss about a bunch of orphans running around outside the city walls.

It could get people talking and the last thing they wanted was to bring attention to themselves.

The one advantage the orphans had in this whole scenario was that the Spectral Church didn’t know that they actually knew what was coming.

Once they were gathered in the woods nearby, Sam materialized a large heavy bag from his inventory.

He turned the bag over and dumped out all the contents onto the ground.

All the orphans gasped in amazement.

Daggers, copper swords, and shields all piled out onto the ground.

A lot of it was loot he’d got from the goblins in the blue dungeon gate, but some of it was from selling off that loot and exchanging it for other things.

It was far from the best equipment, most likely closer to the worst equipment, but it was certainly a step up from what they had going into the white gate in Sam’s previous lifetime, which had been absolutely nothing but raggedy clothes and empty hands.

“What are you all staring at me for?” said Sam, grinning. “Go pick up your new equipment. Everyone take one of everything.”

Once the items were distributed Sam began his very first lesson.

He walked them through the basics of swordsmanship. How to hold a sword properly, thrusts, parries, and all sorts of other things.

“It’s okay if you don’t remember this all in the heat of battle,” said Sam. “Hopefully, your muscle memory will begin to come into play at that point; but if in doubt, you see a monster, a good rule of thumb is to just shove the pointy end as deep into the monster as you can.”

The orphans nodded at that, their faces going pale at the idea of actually fighting monsters.

“Okay, everyone get into pairs and practice the exercises I showed you,” said Sam, before walking over to the shade of a tree to take a sip from his water canteen.

He watched the orphans try the techniques, most of them wobbling and struggling to get the footing and handwork correct.

“What do you think?” asked Klara, walking over.

Sam scratched the back of his head nervously.

“We have a long way to go,” said Sam.

At that very moment, Toby swung his sword so incorrectly he fell completely on his face.

Sam then corrected himself, “A really long way to go.”

* * *

“But—” said a shocked member of the Spectral Church council, “that will be more experiment subjects than we’ve ever used before.”

The archbishop grinned. “To learn the secrets of the white gate we’ll need to throw lambs to the slaughter. It’s a small price to pay. If anything we’re cleaning the streets of vermin. We’re doing a public service.”

Father Irwin nodded along eagerly.

The meeting had taken place while walking through an underground tunnel, until the bright haunting lights of the white dungeon gate lay before them.

Father Irwin grinned.

He was in a good mood.

When they had realized they didn’t have enough people, Father Irwin had volunteered the orphans from orphanage-H to be in the next wave to go through their dungeon experiment.

Oh boy, Irwin thought. He couldn’t wait to send those little rodents to their demise.

It would all happen in about a month’s time.

Irwin could not wait.

15

A day later, Sam continued to instruct the orphans.

They were falling over, sweating, and complaining.

The whole lot of them still seemed quite hopeless.

Not only was he worrying about the orphans themselves, he was worrying about their overall strategy. Should Sam be spending so much time training them or would it be better for him to be gaining more power himself?

He didn’t want the orphans to be defenseless but the fact that he had a class already meant he was their best hope for survival.

It was a tough dilemma.

Should he go gain more power for himself or help the collective?

Klara clearly noticed Sam had been lost in thought for a few minutes and came over to him.

“Sam, I know the drills, I can stay and help everyone if you think there’s somewhere else you need to be to help us survive.”

“Yeah, I can help too,” said Toby, chiming in.

“Says the guy who can barely hold his sword upright,” giggled Klara.

“Yeah, but that’s only because I have blisters on my hands,” said Toby. “I’ll be able to do it right soon. I mean—unless blisters can be a cause of death? Can they?”

Sam chuckled. “Fine, I’ll leave you two in charge.”

I’ll go get a little bit more powerful myself.

* * *

Klara watched as Sam disappeared deeper into the woods until he was completely gone.

He had changed so much in the last few days and Klara couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Even the way he walked was different. He didn’t walk with the caution and fear like so many of them in the orphanage did. No, he strode. He marched. He walked with a confidence he didn’t have a few weeks ago.

She couldn’t help but wonder: what changed in him?

She turned back to the group of clumsy orphans trying to do sword drills and exercises.

She grinned. She realized where they had gone wrong.

Sam had been too soft a teacher.

They needed discipline.

“Stop!” she yelled.

All the orphans suddenly stopped what they were doing and stood at attention.

Klara had that kind of effect on people.

“Listen up you knuckleheads,” she shouted. “If you aren’t able to properly do these exercises by the end of the day, I’m going to make sure no one gets supper.”

All the orphans’ eyes widened at that.

There was suddenly a new sense of zeal among the group of kids.

“Alright,” said Klara, “Are we ready to really start training?”

* * *

Sam ran through the woods, eyes focused on avoiding the trees in front of him.

He swerved past obstacles, jumped over thick roots in the ground, and pushed himself to the limit.

Take every opportunity to train, Sam told himself over and over again.

He was focusing the mana in his body closer towards his feet to help push him to improve his agility stat faster.

He eventually arrived in front of a glowing blue gate.

Just where I’d thought you’d be, Sam grinned.

For years after he’d unlocked his class in his first timeline, Sam had spent all of his moments not fighting or training, in the library. He studied the history of the dungeon gates and everything else he could get his hands on. He read over travel logs and even old Traveler’s Guild reports.

The blue dungeon gate in front of him was a smaller portal than normal.

It was shrinking because the guild had already cleared it.

By Sam’s estimation it would still be open for another couple of hours.

He didn’t waste a second and ran into the dungeon gate.

The inside of the gate was another cavern realm, which was fine by Sam.

He started running around the perimeter of the dungeon, sending mana into his feet, as he did so.

He ran laps like this for over two hours until he figured it wasn’t safe to stay in the dungeon any longer and jumped back out into the forest.

Standing in the woods, he caught his breath. He was drenched in sweat from his workout. His heart was still pacing.

He took a moment to look over his stats and grinned.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 11

Agility: 11.2

Endurance: 11

Magic Affinity: 11.2

Just by doing laps in a dungeon, he was able to improve both his agility and magic affinity stats.

It was the density of mana in the dungeon that allowed him to train his stats to such a degree and in such a short amount of time. If he had done the same amount of laps outside of the dungeon, he wouldn’t have seen any increase in his stats.

The stat increase was only 0.2 to the two stats but that was okay. Training stats only got harder the stronger one became and the increases became more incremental.

Sam then decided to look at another part of his Traveler profile. He called up the skill quest menu.

Skill Quests

Pain Ring (Level 2) - Slay 2000 monsters using Pain Ring. 1/2000

Sam grinned. He wasn’t nearly as powerful as he’d like to become, but he was pleased that he could see the pathway that would lead him there beginning to open up in front of him.

All Traveler abilities came with skill quests that increased in difficulty, depending on the ability’s current level as well as what tier the ability was unlocked at. Leveling up a novice-tier ability to level 2 was always the easiest skill quest to complete. They only increased in difficulty from there.

Once you completed a skill quest, the associated ability leveled up and gained an evolution to its power.

So far Sam had only killed that last boss monster with his Pain Ring ability. He would have to step it up if he wanted to reach the next level.

Sam smiled, knowing that there was a lot of work ahead of him, but also many rewards if he stayed focused on his task.

He looked up to the sky and could see it turning the orange color of twilight as the day was coming to an end.

I better go check on the others, he thought.

* * *

Sam ran through the woods back to the orphans—squeezing in another twenty minutes of agility training.

I hope the others are all right, he thought. I hope I didn’t leave too big a task with Klara and Toby.

When Sam arrived at the training ground, he was stunned.

Toby and Klara were clashing swords.

Even more impressive, Toby was holding his own against her.

“Maybe you aren’t such a numbskull after all,” yelled Klara as she rushed in with a big swing.

Toby dodged it and knocked her over.

Nice work, Tobes, Sam thought to himself.

At that moment, Klara and Toby noticed Sam’s presence.

They all smiled at one another.

They could all feel a powerful charging pulse go through them in that moment.

It was the charge of hope.

16

Father Irwin was perturbed as he stepped out of orphanage-H.

He made a right and headed in the direction of the Spectral Church.

He had an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

He had just visited orphanage-H for his weekly check-in and he was surprised to see how happy the orphans were.

Content, even.

They were normally more malnourished and sluggish.

They couldn’t have looked stronger, could they?

Irwin was troubled by his thoughts.

There’s no way they can know about the white gate, Irwin thought. Even still...

There was one thing he could do.

Just a little something in case there was any truth to his worries.

When he got back to his office, he looked through some of his papers and then made a slight adjustment that would affect the orphans’ well being.

Hopefully, next week, they’ll seem a bit less chipper.

As they should be.

* * *

The orphans’ training continued to steadily improve over the course of the week.

It was all going smoothly until one morning they woke up and found themselves in quite the predicament.

“There’s no food,” cried Toby, holding up an empty sack of oats.

The Spectral Church normally supplied the orphanage with a big sack of oats each week that created enough servings of porridge to feed the orphans for every meal. Just barely as well—where more often than not they received only half of the healthy amount of food each day as they needed.

It was bland and uninspiring but it helped them get through the day.

Sam looked around the orphanage. First at Toby, then Klara, then the others. They all looked healthier and stronger than they ever had in their entire lives.

Father Irwin and the Spectral Church must have noticed as well.

They wanted to make sure Sam and the others were as malnourished as possible before they were sent into the white gate.

“What are we going to do?” said Toby. “We could all be dead of starvation in three days. Unless some of us...” He looked around suspiciously to the other kids and then whispered to Sam, “Resort to cannibalism. Who do you think will betray us first?”

Klara ignored Toby’s panic and looked to Sam. “What do you think we should do? A lack of food is going to slow down our training.”

Sam wracked his brain for a new plan.

Pickpocketing was always an option, but the orphans had long learned there was a limit to stealing. They could only do so much of it before the guards, the priests, and everyone in Resfall came down on them. Stealing had to be done sparingly. They couldn’t thieve their way through all of their meals. It just wasn’t possible.

“I think I’ve got it,” said Sam. “Here’s the plan. The people who need the most training will keep training. While you two oversee that, I’m going to go find us some food.”

* * *

Without any food for breakfast, Toby and Klara led the orphans out to their training ground in the woods.

The first half of the day went alright. Everyone was a bit slow, but they still had energy from their restful night’s sleep and the food they had eaten the day before.

But when the afternoon came and they had eaten nothing for lunch, the group of children began to get weary.

Looking around with dismay, Klara turned to Toby. “Some of the plants out here must be edible.”

“Sure,” said Toby, “but just as many of them are probably poisonous too. Sam told us to not worry, he was going to find us food.”

The group of children returned to the orphanage that night dismayed.

Their training had truly stalled.

After two more days, the situation hit rock bottom.

The younger orphans all complained saying they didn’t want to train the next day.

“Please don’t make us,” they said to Klara and Toby.

Even Toby felt his stomach rumble and the lack of energy.

“Maybe we should just wait for Sam?”

Klara slumped back down on her bed.

Toby went and lay on his bunk.

I’m definitely going to die of starvation, Toby thought. My dead body will be feasted upon by vicious vultures.

How ironic that my dead and starved body will be the food for another creature, he sighed to himself.

Toby looked over to Klara.

He could see the agony she was going through. She wasn’t barking orders at the orphans like she normally did—she didn’t have the energy nor the heart to yell at the extremely underfed kids in front of her.

“Where’s Sam?” asked Klara, looking to Toby. “We haven’t seen him for three days. If things keep going at this rate, we’ll die before we even get thrown into the white gate.”

The situation went from horrific to much worse, when one of the younger boys fainted.

Klara and Toby ran over to him.

“Somebody get him a glass of water,” Klara shouted.

She looked down at the boy. “C’mon, you can survive this. Sam is going to be back any minute.”

“Is he though?” shouted a different boy.

Klara looked at the boy, horrified. “What do you mean? Of course he is!”

“Then why hasn’t he come back yet? I don’t believe he is coming back. He’s left us here to starve.”

Toby, a seasoned paranoiac, had briefly contemplated the same notion that the angry boy was suggesting, but he trusted Sam too much to doubt him for more than a second.

“Sam will come back,” said Toby. “I know he will.”

The angry boy shook his head. “He hasn’t been the same. He’s different. He doesn’t care about us anymore—”

The door suddenly swung open and Sam stepped into the room.

Everyone looked up at the black-haired boy stunned.

He was holding onto a rope leash, leading into the dormitory the strangest creature Toby had ever laid eyes on.

It was a cow with a beautiful golden horn sticking out of the center of its head.

It was the cross between a cow and a unicorn.

A unicow!

“Uhh,” said Klara. “What the heck is that?”

All the orphans stared at Sam with confusion.

The black-haired boy smirked. “It’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

17

Everyone looked at the unicow with amazement.

When the food issue came up a couple of days ago, Sam had to wrack his brain for a solution. He didn’t want to just go hunt some wolf meat and keep them fed for a couple of days. No. He needed to figure out a way of creating a consistent food source, in case they were ever caught in a similar bind again.

That was when he recalled the famous discovery of the unicow in a low-level blue gate dungeon just outside of Resfall. He’d spent the last few days traveling just out from the city and back to retrieve it.

There were probably other solutions he could have turned to, but the unicow would be able to feed them for a long time and gave net benefits as well.

“We’re going to eat that?” asked Toby. “Isn’t it kind of evil to eat a unicorn—or whatever that is—a unicow? Surely we will be destined to live a cursed life if we eat that thing. I’m sure I’ll be cursed!”

“I’m pretty sure you’re already cursed,” laughed Klara.

Sam smirked. “We’re not going to eat it.”

He then grabbed a pint glass from nearby and then crouched down and pulled at the unicow’s udders, squirting out a glass of pale blue milk.

He then stood up with the glass of milk only to find the orphans looking at him with even more horror.

“You’ve been acting super weird recently,” said Klara, at a loss for words. “But milking a unicow definitely tops everything else.”

Sam narrowed his eyes and couldn’t help feeling a brief sense of agitation: these damn orphans, I’m about to save them from starvation and they have the audacity to be embarrassed by me!?

“The properties of unicow milk are rich in protein and other nutrients. Not only that, they help build greater stamina. It even tastes delicious! Look, I’ll show you.”

Sam took a sip and everyone recoiled.

When he didn’t collapse on the ground, they were amazed.

Klara stepped forward. “Okay, I’ll volunteer to be the next taster to see if it’s poison.”

She then blushed. “But, um, Sam. Can you, um, make it for me?”

He realized then that she felt uncomfortable milking the unicow.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Sure, but I won’t forever. Trust me. Once you taste the unicow milk, you guys will all be a lot less hesitant.”

Sam crouched down and refilled his glass. He then got up and handed it to Klara.

Everyone but Sam waited with bated breath as Klara took her first sip of the unicow milk.

After taking a sip, Klara’s whole face suddenly lit up. “Oh man, it tastes really good.”

She turned to Toby. “C’mon, Tobes, try some!”

Toby shook his head, vehemently. “I’d prefer to wait another twenty-four hours to see if you keel over and die from food poisoning first.”

“You’re going to die from starvation before then, so stop being such a picky eater and huge wimp and do what I freaking tell you to do!” barked Klara.

“Yes, ma’am!” said Toby, suddenly standing straight and at attention.

Toby visibly shook and grabbed the pint and, despite appearing as if every fiber of his being was telling him not do it, he took a sip.

After a few seconds, he blinked. “I’m not dead! Hey, I’m not dead everyone! I drank the unicow milk and lived!”

After the first pint of unicow milk was passed around, Sam walked some of the others through how to milk the udders and they started making a big bucket of it.

Afterwards, Sam discussed it over with Klara and Toby. “A pint or two a day will keep us nourished. We won’t need more than that and the unicow can produce that for us with ease.”

“Do we need to keep it fed though?” Toby asked.

Sam shook his head. “It’s a magic beast from a dungeon gate, so no.”

“That’s amazing,” said Toby. “I just assumed everything behind one of those things was designed to absolutely murder you and feast on your brains—never in a million years did I think something so delicious would be hidden by those horrific gates.”

A little girl orphan came up to Sam and tugged on his shirt. “What’s the unicow’s name?”

“That’s a good question,” said Sam. “I’m not sure, what do you guys think.”

Klara crossed her arms and said, “I think we should call it Roxy.”

“Huh?” asked Toby. “Where did that name come from?”

“With that horn she looks totally wicked, like she could be the lead singer in a traveling minstrel band. You know those really cool ones that sometimes come to the harvest festival? Roxy feels like a name a woman like that might have.”

“I like it,” said the little girl orphan.

“Roxy it is,” smiled Sam.

The little girl waddled off to tell the others the unicow’s new name.

“We have one problem, though,” said Klara. “We can’t leave this creature in the middle of our room, otherwise Irwin or one of the other priests or nuns will see it and flip out.”

“You’re right,” Sam said. “I think I have an idea.”

He grabbed a blanket.

“Hey—that’s my blanket!” said Toby.

Sam threw it over the unicow.

“Uhh,” said Klara. “I think they’re still going to notice something hiding under a blanket.”

“My blanket,” added Toby.

“You’re not going to like this Klara,” said Sam, worried about the wrath he might face from the tempestuous girl.

“Oh no, you can’t be serious?” said Klara, as she realized where Sam was leading the unicow.

And that was how Roxy, the magical unicow, moved into the orphanage’s janitorial closet formerly regarded as Klara’s office.

18

With Roxy providing everyone with delicious nourishment, the orphans’ training for the white gate could finally resume.

But as the days passed and Sam watched over the development of all of his orphan pals he came to a realization.

Most of them weren’t going to be powerhouses inside the horrific dungeon gate. Even with the training, the bulk of the white gate will involve Sam, protecting them and trying to escort them through it.

The training had brought everyone’s survivability up so that they wouldn’t be helpless sitting ducks once inside the dungeon, but being able to defend themselves was a far cry from actually being able to fight their way through the tutorial dungeon.

Sam’s conclusion to this realization was that he shouldn’t be the only proficient fighter going into the white gate. It was abundantly clear that this wouldn’t be possible for all the orphans, but if at least a few of them outside of himself could be strong that would be great.

That meant a select few needed a bit of extra-special training.

That was why, the following day, Sam left one of the older orphans in charge, and took Klara and Toby into the woods.

* * *

Sam led the way through the woods, while Klara and Toby walked a few paces behind him.

It was a brisk autumnal morning. The leaves on the trees had turned orange and some of them had begun to litter the ground.

The leaves made crunching sounds as they stepped over them, deeper into the woods.

“Why aren’t we training with the others?” asked Toby, looking around the forest suspiciously. “Why are we in this scary forest? Why aren’t you telling us where we’re going? You’re actually going to murder us, aren’t you? New weird Sam is going to kill us. The unicow milk was a big elaborate con to make us trust you and now bam! Yeah, that’s right—”

Toby’s paranoid rant would have continued had he not been stunned into silence by what appeared in front of them.

Shining out was the blue glowing light of a blue dungeon gate.

“See,” said Klara. “He’s not going to murder us.”

Toby’s face went pale. “Uhh—if he’s going to make me go in there, then he practically is murdering me!”

Sam turned around and faced the two of them.

“Klara, Toby,” he said. “You two are my best friends. You’re also who I believe have the best chance at getting strong enough to help me protect the others when we go into the white gate. You two will be my captains when we’re in the white gate—my second in command. That’s why I need to make sure you two get stronger and are as prepared as possible for the task ahead.”

“And that preparation includes stepping inside a blue dungeon gate?” asked Klara, scepticism lacing her voice.

Toby shook his head.

“This is insane. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.”

Sam looked to Klara.

“Klara, do you feel the same way?”

“It seems a bit crazy, but so is bringing a magical unicow to our dormitory and so much else that’s happened over the last few weeks,” she sighed. “All of which is to say, I trust you enough that if you say we should go in that dungeon, I’ll follow you.”

Sam then looked to Toby. “Klara’s convinced, why aren’t you?”

Toby crossed his arms and didn’t say anything.

“It’s an order, Toby,” said Klara.

The boy shook his head.

Klara gasped. “Are you actually going to defy me? You’ve never done that before.”

Toby didn’t budge. He kept his arms crossed and his eyes shut in an act of defiance.

* * *

Toby waited with his eyes shut.

He listened to Sam and Klara converse, waiting for them to agree with him that Sam’s current plan was ludicrous.

“You’re still willing to come in though, right?” asked Sam.

“Yep. I want to do whatever I can to protect all of us when we get thrown into that white gate.”

They didn’t say anything more, but Toby could hear their footsteps crunch the leaves as they walked towards the blue gate.

Crap, Toby sighed. They’re still going to enter the blue dungeon gate.

He had thought if he refused, maybe they wouldn’t go either. Beyond not wanting to face any scary danger himself, he also didn’t want his friends to be placed in such treacherous circumstances either.

Are those maniacs really going to go in?

Toby sighed. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do next.

* * *

Just as Sam was about to step into the dungeon gate, he heard a scream behind him.

“I hate you two fools!”

It was Toby.

He was screaming and rushing towards them, tears rushing down his face.

“Why are you making me do this!? I hate you so much!”

And with that, Toby—the most worried and fearful of the trio—was the first of them to leap bravely into the blue dungeon gate.

19

Toby stumbled into the world that lay on the other side of the dungeon gate.

He blinked, looked around, and became instantly terrified.

Where the heck am I?

His surroundings appeared like a cavern deep underground.

He started violently shaking his head.

I don’t like this, I don’t like this, I don’t like this.

He placed his hand on his chest, trying to steady his beating heart that had begun to pump rapidly as he felt an attack of anxiety and fear come over him.

He then felt something touch his shoulder from behind him.

“Ahhh! I don’t wanna die!”

He turned around and saw Sam and Klara, smiling behind him.

“Don’t worry, Toby,” Sam said. “We’re all in this together. I promise you, you won’t die.”

* * *

Since the first area inside a blue dungeon gate was normally incredibly safe, Sam took the opportunity to explain a few things to Klara and Toby.

He explained to them how to access their profile and view their stats.

That was one of the benefits of entering a blue gate before tackling a white gate.

You could familiarize yourself with the system granted to Travelers.

Of course, Klara and Toby would have a slightly pared down version of the system. Entering any gate could unlock an ability to view one’s profile, however, many things were not granted to a Traveler until they entered the white gate.

That included the ability to train your magic affinity stat. In fact, magic affinity could only be trained after unlocking a class.

Still, it was good to have Klara and Toby unlock their profile screens, as it would be one less thing to overwhelm them when it came time to face the white gate.

He looked around and took in their surroundings next.

“This looks like a simple cave dungeon setting,” Sam explained to Klara and Toby. “That means we’ll most likely face slimes—”

“Slimes!” yelped Toby.

“Spiders—”

“Spiders!”

“Goblins—”

“Goblins!”

Both of Toby’s hands were firmly smacked on his cheeks as tears rushed down his face in horror.

“Oh, we’re definitely going to die.”

Sam glared at Toby. “We’re not. Stop saying that.”

“If I had a coin for every time I told Toby to stop with his madness,” said Klara, “you know how rich I would be?”

Sam grinned at his two friends.

“Don’t worry, you guys. I’m gonna get us stronger in no time.”

* * *

Further afield in the blue gate, a group of goblins gathered around their encampment in the warm glow of a bonfire.

All of the goblins’ stomachs were rumbling.

They were hungry.

Their appetites yearning for a very specific type of meal.

Human Traveler meat.

The skull and bones of their last feast still lingered around the encampment.

A cocky lone Traveler had entered the dungeon on his own a few days before and the goblins had made quick work of him, eventually roasting him on the fire.

The goblins all looked at the empty roasting stick now, wistfully.

Their nostalgia for human flesh was forcefully interrupted first with the whooshing sounds of arrows flying through the air and then their eventual landing in the encampment.

The arrows went through some goblins’ heads. Other arrows went right through their throats. Blood splattered onto the ground.

Some of the arrows were lit with fire and suddenly the whole goblin encampment was up in flames.

Finally, a well-shot arrow hit a large barrel of alcohol, which obliterated the encampment in a single blast.

* * *

Sam stepped through the ashy remains of the goblin encampment.

The smoke had cleared but the thick stench of it filled his nostrils, along with the smell of blood and death.

Sam picked up the mana stones and pocketed them in his inventory to drain later. It was such a shame that Klara and Toby couldn’t unlock their magic affinity abilities yet otherwise he would have given the cores for them to drain themselves.

At the back of the encampment, they found a beautifully engraved treasure chest.

“Ooh, that looks cool,” said Klara.

“Maybe there will be a teleport scroll so that we could leave this deadly place faster,” said Toby, eagerly.

“Only one way to find out,” said Sam, opening up the treasure chest.

Their eyes widened with glee.

Inside the treasure chest was a large satchel of coins, a red healing potion, and three swords made of a material with a slight glowing blue tint.

What a find, Sam thought, examining the items in the treasure chest.

Mythril Sword (Rare) (Tier: Novice)

Mythril Sword (Rare) (Tier: Novice)

Mythril Sword (Rare) (Tier: Apprentice)

Sam was overjoyed.

For three people who weren’t officially Travelers yet, a mythril sword was incredibly rare and valuable. It was the kind of blade wielded by rich merchants and the captains of low-grade mercenary companies. Even the official Traveler’s Guild sent new recruits into the white gate with less powerful and rare weaponry.

And even though Sam’s current iron sword was a tier higher, the rarity and quality of the mythril blade meant that even at lower tiers it was the better sword.

They talked it over and they all agreed as Sam was the leader and most proficient swordsman of the three of them, that he should take the apprentice-tier mythril sword while Klara and Toby took the slightly inferior versions of the same blade.

Swinging her new sword around with confidence, Klara asked, “So what’s the next plan in here then?”

“Well, let me drain these mana stones and train a bit more,” said Sam. “And then—”

“I don’t like the way you’re grinning,” Toby interrupted.

“And then,” Sam smirked, “we’re going to go face the dungeon boss.”

20

The three friends fought their way through the cavern dungeon, slaying more goblins, nasty spiders, and poisonous bats.

Sam could feel the difference of the mythril blade as it sliced through the large spider flesh. It cut with a faster and smoother grace than the previous iron sword he had been wielding.

He couldn’t believe only a few weeks ago he had been fighting with a brittle copper sword and now he was swinging around a mythril blade in his grip.

By the end of their training session, Sam was happy to hear both Toby and Klara had raised their physical stats—everything other than magic affinity—to seven.

That wasn’t too far away from normal peak human attributes. Stats above ten would be those held by professional fighters and sportsmen.

These types of numbers were fairly decent—actually, really good—for people about to enter a white gate.

Their stats, training, and equipment would far surpass where the Spectral Church was expecting them to be.

Such stats were not held by helpless lambs being led to the slaughter.

Sam then looked over his stats as well.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 11.5

Agility: 11.7

Endurance: 11.4

Magic Affinity: 11.7

He hadn’t made as drastic gains as Klara or Toby but that was to be expected as he was a bit further ahead than they were. The important thing was all of his stats were on the rise and even the smallest differences could mean a lot especially at higher tiers later on.

The good news was with all of his stats over ten, it meant that whatever extra class he unlocked in the white gate, he most likely should hit the requirements to unlock that class’ novice-tier ability straightaway.

Also, as he slowly moved all of his stats closer to 31, it meant he was getting close to unlocking apprentice-tier level abilities as well. That was how it worked. From stats 0 to 11 you were considered unranked. From then on it took 20 stat points to raise your tier level.

He grinned. He was already getting stronger at a pace that far exceeded what he had done in his original timeline.

Don’t worry, goddess, he thought to himself. I won’t fail the mission you’ve imparted to me.

It was his responsibility to get stronger, to save his friends, to save Resfall, to save all of Westria—and he took that responsibility as seriously as possible.

After the three friends took a quick rest, it was finally time for them to face the gate boss.

* * *

Klara walked beside Toby as Sam led the way, taking them closer and closer to the final room of the dungeon.

The home of the dungeon boss.

“There’s still no reason why we can’t turn around right now,” said Toby. “Shall we take it to a vote? All in favor of not fighting an even more horrific monster than the nightmarishly frightening kinds we’ve already encountered today already?”

Klara smirked, while ignoring Toby.

Despite not raising her hand or giving in to Toby’s fears, she felt her heart pumping in her chest. It was taking all of her focus to not grimace and shiver in the frightening dungeon they had entered.

She did it for Toby’s sake as well as her own. She recognized that there was a certain bravery in Toby’s constant chattering of his worries and fears. Some people—herself included—were too scared to admit that they were afraid sometimes.

She admired her friend for that. Not that she’d ever dare tell him that.

Plus, if she admitted she was scared, Toby might lose his head and force them to retreat, which wasn’t what Sam wanted them to do.

As they walked deeper into the dungeon towards the final room, Klara stared at the back of Sam’s head, watching the black tufts of his shaggy hair gently sway as they went further down the cavernous passage.

As she had noticed before, even the way Sam now walked wasn’t the same way he had walked two months ago.

Sam, she wondered. What happened to you? Are you the same Sam we’ve grown up with all this time? The same Sam that I’ve—

She shook her head.

She didn’t want to think about those things.

Not when they were so close to risking their lives.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Toby, turning towards her.

“Nothing,” she said, blushing. Her face went stern. “Stand up straighter, Toby. This is not a time for slouching. We need to be on guard at all times.”

Toby immediately straightened his shoulders. “Yes, ma’am!”

She grinned and then gripped her mythril sword and felt a surge of confidence flow through her.

They finally arrived at the entrance to the final dungeon room.

Before entering, Sam explained the plan to them, and then they stepped into the final room to fight the gate boss.

Slumbering in the center of the final room was a giant three-eyed troll, cuddling a massive club.

“Remember the plan,” said Sam.

Right then before Klara could even blink, the boy rushed forward, leaping into the air with his sword, and shouting, “Let’s do this!”

Sam landed, cutting the troll across its body, and instantly waking it up.

Klara was immediately concerned when she saw Sam’s attack hardly cut through the monster’s flesh at all. The monster clearly was of a much higher caliber than the creatures they had fought along the way to get there.

Furthermore, a strange red ring shot out from around Sam creating a large circle in the center of the boss room.

What’s that? Klara wondered. Is that the troll’s ability? It couldn’t be Sam, could it? When did he learn magic!? That’s incredible!

The monster’s eyes bulged and it kicked Sam, flinging him across the room.

Klara immediately wanted to run over to Sam and help him, but Toby grabbed her arm.

“I want to go over there too,” said Toby. “But we gotta follow Sam’s plan. Faith in his plan is the only reason I haven’t peed my pants yet, so let’s not fall apart yet.”

Klara nodded. Toby was right.

Sam was already on his feet and charging at the troll once more.

Klara and Toby then lifted up their bows and began shooting arrows at the troll, dealing extra damage to the monster while Sam distracted it.

Klara had to stay extra focused as the troll was getting harder to hit as it was filled with more rage and fury and was moving with a chaotic quickness that was difficult to track.

The most worrisome thing was the destructive beat down Sam was taking.

The troll had landed multiple powerful blows on Sam and he looked incredibly worse for wear.

The worst part was it didn’t even seem like Sam was even trying to dodge the attacks.

Toby fired off another arrow and said, “Has Sam gone crazy!? What’s he doing!? He’s going to get himself killed!”

Klara kept firing arrows, but was feeling the tension too.

One thing she noticed, though, was that every time Sam got hit, he’d get up and attack with seemingly significant more damage than he had before.

The cuts Sam was leaving on the troll were getting thicker and deeper.

This only angered the troll more and he attacked Sam with even greater fury.

But then the troll managed to knock Sam right in the head with his club.

The boy went flying backwards, smashing into the walls of the boss room.

The troll then slowly turned towards Klara and Toby.

They both looked to Sam, who was collapsed on the ground, unconscious.

“Uh,” said Toby. “Why is Sam not getting up? That was definitely not part of the plan.”

The troll took a step towards Klara and Toby.

It flared its nostrils. Its three red eyes looked at them with a yearning to kill.

It was at least ten times their size. Even if it’s large club was bigger than either of them. Even with all of their training, it wouldn’t take much for this troll to kill them.

It started running towards them.

“Agh, what are we gonna do,” said Toby, dropping his bow and reaching for his sword.

“C’mon, Tobes,” said Klara. “We either kill this thing or die trying!”

The troll was soon in striking distance. It lifted up its club and Klara and Toby jumped forward to attack.

They had one shot at killing this thing before it killed them.

Their mythril swords bounced off the troll’s flesh and both Klara and Toby stumbled backwards.

The troll then loomed over them, even angrier than it was before.

Our swords didn’t even penetrate its skin, Klara thought with amazement. It made the fact that Sam was able to cut through it an even more incredible feat.

If Sam couldn’t kill this thing, then they didn’t stand a chance.

Right at that moment when the troll was about to slam its club into Toby and completely obliterate him into a bloody pile of smashed up flesh, something incredible happened.

From behind the troll, a mythril blade shining with a beautiful blue hue came shooting down from above the monster’s head, slicing through its body, cutting it completely in half.

21

Toby shivered and kept his eyes shut.

He had accepted his death and was waiting for it to happen, waiting for the supposed light that appeared at the end of a long dark tunnel.

But nothing came.

Still trembling, he opened his eyes and saw the three-eyed troll had been sliced in half, either side of its body falling over, its insides spilling out on the ground.

The monster soon disintegrated into a mana stone and Toby was still trying to get his bearings on the situation.

I guess I’m not dead, he sighed to himself, relieved.

He looked at Sam and said, “What the heck just happened?”

Sam sheathed his sword and explained.

“Let’s just say I have a special ability that gives me more power when I get hurt,” Sam explained. “I let the troll hurt me so much until I was in quite a dangerous position, then used the healing potion to get back to full health, and then rushed the monster when he wasn’t expecting it, allowing me and my trusty new rare mythril sword to get a critical hit!”

Both Klara and Toby gasped.

“Amazing,” they both said.

Toby looked at Sam with awe.

In such a short span of time, his friend had gone from the weird lone wolf of the orphanage to someone with power and composure.

Maybe one day I can be as brave as him, Toby thought to himself. Until then, all I can say is that Sam is truly incredible.

* * *

Sam stepped over and picked up the mana stone and hefty pouch of coins.

He grinned at the weight of the coins.

The trip to the dungeon had been worth it alone, just for how much money they had gained. It would be enough to make sure everyone had decent rudimentary equipment going into the white gate.

But the three-eyed troll had left behind even more exciting treasure.

Sam picked each item one by one.

The first item was a small silver ring.

Ring of Agility (Uncommon) (Tier: Novice)

Sam grinned and put the ring on his finger.

He did some practice swipes with his mythril sword in the air and he could perceive his body moving faster. It wasn’t significantly faster, but even a 0.5% boost or so to his speed could make all the difference in a life or death scenario.

The other item was even more exciting.

At first Sam thought it looked like a crummy copper sword, but when he inspected the blade in his profile, he was pleasantly surprised.

Flame Sword (Rare) (Tier: Journeyman)

As soon as Sam picked up the sword, from the hilt upward the whole blade began to swirl with flames.

He swung the blade and looked at it with awe.

Fantastic, he thought.

On one side of him, he held a sword covered with the flames, the other glowing blue from the rare magical mythril metal.

Note to self, Sam grinned. Dual-wield swords more often.

Sam turned to his two companions, who looked as if they were still getting over the fact that they had just been almost killed by the dungeon’s boss monster, and said, “The dungeon is going to disintegrate in a couple of hours. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

With the extra stat points gained, money earned for better equipment for all the orphans, and some extra powerful items for Sam to help protect them all—the following week’s training went even better than the previous one. The trend even continued into the next week.

As the days passed and Sam watched the orphans run practice drills, he could see they were all growing in confidence.

They were no longer tripping and falling over themselves. They were no longer children pretending to be soldiers; they were becoming warriors in their own right.

I’d be curious to see some of our kids go against nobles receiving pre-white gate training in the Traveler’s Guild, Sam mused.

Unexpectedly, a dark horrible memory shot through Sam, causing him enough pain to lose his sense of balance for a brief second.

The memory was one he’d long suppressed. One that he couldn’t hold onto in his original timeline because it caused him too much anguish.

The memory was the sight of all the orphans in front of him, Klara and Toby included, lying on the ground dead.

Sam shook his head as soon as the memory came up.

I won’t let it happen that way this time, he thought to himself.

He was stronger than he had been in his previous timeline. He had better equipment, stats, and knowledge of what was to come.

He believed they could live through the white gate and whatever the Spectral Church had planned for them.

The day of the white gate wasn’t far off now.

First, there would be the special celebrations on the evening of Hallow’s Haunting, and then a few days later, it would be time to face the white gate.

* * *

Meanwhile, Father Irwin paced the length of his upper floor office in the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral.

He held his hands clasped behind his back as he paced.

Every time he walked by the window, he looked out onto the city of Resfall, the sun was beginning to set, bringing another day to a close.

We’re getting so close, he grinned to himself.

He couldn’t help but daydream about the deaths of the orphans at orphanage-H. With them out of the way, he’d no longer be tied to his charitable duties and would be more able to ruthlessly climb the ladder of the Spectral Church.

He could not wait.

Plus, he’d be more than glad to see the deaths of that loud girl walking around bossing the children all the time, the other one constantly fearing his own demise, and the eerily quiet black-haired boy.

I can’t wait to be rid of them.

Any day now.

He grinned.

22

For as long as anyone can remember, there was a legend of a man named Hallow who in a far distant past was murdered in his sleep.

Not only was he murdered, but he was turned into a ghost, and he now haunts the city of Resfall on the very day of his death.

The last night in the month of Fallstime.

As a celebration, the citizens of Resfall dressed up as different monsters and ghouls and attended feasts, balls, dinner parties, and pubs to celebrate.

Even young children filled the streets of the city in colorful costumes that were normally cuter renditions of much more fearsome monsters of the imagination.

Neighbors would gift such children with toys and treats.

That year, as all years, the city became alight with activity as costumed-revellers filled the streets. Carved pumpkins dotted every doorstep, porch, windowsill, and rooftop—their ghoulish face lit up by burning candles placed inside.

* * *

In a corner of Resfall, one set of nobles was hosting a lavish dinner party for guests.

At the front of the dinner party at the head table was the main event of the feast: a honeyed-glazed hog, stuffed with bacon, caramelized apples, and onions.

The main event wouldn’t be eaten for a while, and the guests were still happily mingling and drinking among themselves.

They didn’t notice the cat-shaped shadows running across the windowsill outside.

The nobles kept chatting, even though, without their noticing, the golden hog disappeared from their table.

* * *

All of orphanage-H cheered their pints of unicow milk with delight as they feasted on the golden hog.

“Operation Eve of Hallow’s Haunting Feast Complete,” said Klara, triumphantly. “And what a smashing success! Well done everyone!”

Klara had organized the heist to nab the golden hog and it couldn’t have gone more perfectly.

All the orphans were dressed up as cats and other animals, except for Toby who just kept a white blanket over his face.

“I can’t take all the scary creatures you’re pretending to be,” said Toby. “Tell me when it’s over.”

Even Roxy was given an orange pointy party hat to wear to join in festivities.

Within a couple of hours, most of the orphans were lying in bed, exhausted and stuffed from all the fun and food.

Sam sat on the floor and leaned against the wall, sipping on a pint of unicow milk.

He smiled at all the orphans nearby.

This never happened in his first life. This sense of determination. This fun.

In his previous timeline, Hallow’s Haunting was just another day of undernourishment and sadness.

All the training had raised the orphan’s spirits. They were a different group from who they were in the previous timeline.

Sam had given them all a goal to work towards.

I hope I’ve not given them false hope, he thought.

Klara and Toby came towards him and sat down on either side of him.

“Who are we sitting beside?” asked Toby, who still had a white sheet covering his face.

“Can you take that damn thing off,” said Klara, snatching the blanket, and pulling it off of Toby.

The boy looked momentarily shocked, but then relaxed when he saw everybody was asleep.

“Why are you hanging out all alone like a sad sap?” asked Klara, nudging Sam. “You’re reminding me of Tobes.”

“Hey!” said Toby. “I was the life of the party!”

Klara rolled her eyes. “Sure you were.”

Sam sighed and then shared what he was thinking with his friends.

“I’m just worried all this training will be for nothing,” he said. “That I might have given everyone false hope.”

Klara smiled and shook her head. “Who cares? Over the last few weeks, I think I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever felt. If things go absolutely horrible in the next few days, if I don’t return from the white gate—I don’t care. I’ve lived a happier and richer life in the last few weeks than I’ve had for most of my life.”

“Agreed,” said Toby. “I’ve never faced so many fears or tasted as many delicious things like unicow milk or that golden hog we had this evening.”

Sam smiled and put his arms around his two friends.

He was so happy to be back in a world where the people he loved and cared for were still alive.

He’d fight to protect this timeline and everyone he held dear within it.

I won’t let you down, Sam thought.

He was making a promise to his friends.

He was making a promise to the world.

But most of all, he was making a promise to himself.

23

A few nights later, all across the city of Resfall, priests of the Spectral Church moved stridently through the rainy streets, carrying magic lamps to light the way for them through the shadows.

Prisoners were awoken from their dungeon cells, handcuffed and then escorted outside into the stormy cobbled streets.

None of the prisoners questioned what was happening to them or put up a fight.

* * *

Father Irwin arrived at orphanage-H, snickering to himself, happy to soon see these orphans thrust into the white gate and removed from this world entirely.

He stepped into the large dormitory.

Silent, he thought. For once.

He started banging the walls and shouted, “Get up you miserable wretches. Time for a little field trip.”

He went up to one bed and dragged a little boy out onto the floor.

“C’mon, now,” he sneered. “Don’t waste my time.”

In about ten minutes, Father Irwin had all the orphans wide awake and in a nice orderly line of pairs.

They seemed less drowsy-eyed than he was expecting. None of them seemed to be yawning either.

They couldn’t have been awake before I arrived, could they?

For a moment, he began to wonder something and then shook his head in firm disbelief.

There is no way in this world they could know I was coming tonight.

He went ahead and shuffled them forward, not noticing the orphans winking at each other, signaling they were ready for the challenge ahead.

* * *

The rain pounded hard on Sam’s head as they stepped out into the rainy nighttime streets of Resfall.

They moved quickly through the dark shadowy streets and alleys.

“Faster, you little wretches,” hissed Father Irwin.

Sam was near the front of the pack of orphans being shepherded through the city. They had planned it that way with Toby and Klara at the back, keeping an eye on everyone.

He breathed in and out, trying to stay calm.

He knew everything that was about to happen.

All of their preparation over the last month and a half had been in service of this evening, of this moment.

They turned a corner and the dark silhouette of the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral came into view.

“Keep moving,” sneered Father Irwin as they got closer and closer.

Once they arrived at the grand cathedral, the doors were wide open with two priests guarding the entrance.

Both were wearing rain soaked ponchos and had stoic faces staring out into the dead of night.

They paid no heed to the children being led through the door.

Sam bristled with anger as he considered them.

They knew what was about to happen, but still, they did nothing.

This whole enterprise of keeping the white gate secret, of sending people in and experimenting on them—it was all a means to acquire more power for the Spectral Church, so that they could be the most powerful Travelers in the city and become the true rulers of Resfall.

And so even these guards wanted a piece of that power too, and were willing to turn a blind eye to what was happening in front of them.

Sam and the other orphans stepped into the cathedral, entering a grandiose room with a high ceiling, pews, and a lectern.

Father Irwin shepherded them to the side and led them into a separate room that had a spiraling staircase lit by hanging torches on the wall.

Sam was impressed with the kids around him. They weren’t shivering or crying or screaming to run away. They showed no fear about the horrific thing about to happen to them.

Sometimes approaching something terrifying was even more frightening than actually facing the thing itself.

Well done everyone, Sam thought.

They arrived at the bottom of the stairs where there were groups of older men and women in rags all formed in a line.

The little girl beside Sam grabbed his hand.

“I’m scared Sam,” she whispered.

Before Sam could say anything, Father Irwin hissed at them, “Be quiet, or you’ll be beaten.”

Father Irwin stared at them sternly. There was venom and bloodlust in his eyes.

Finally, when the priest looked elsewhere, Sam looked down to the girl and mouthed with his lips: “Don’t worry, we’ll be okay. I’ll protect you.”

The fear didn’t completely disappear from the little girl’s face, but it dissipated slightly.

It was the best Sam could hope for the time being.

Soon enough, fear would be running rampant through them all.

It was unavoidable, but they had to stay focused on not letting it get the better of them.

Ahead of them, a man clothed in dirty stained rags said, “What the heck are you doing to us!?”

“Shut up,” said one of the warrior-priests.

The guard went up to him and knocked the scrawny outspoken man in the head with the hilt of his sword.

The man—who looked weak and hungry—collapsed onto the floor.

It’s all happening just like last time, Sam thought, looking around. Almost beat for beat.

The line of people slowly shuffled forward.

Here we go. The last few weeks of training all came down to this moment.

At the end of the long line of malnourished and destitute prisoners lay a great glowing white portal.

The white gate.

24

The line moved forward, pushing Sam and his friends closer and closer towards the looming white gate.

They weren’t far away now.

Only a few more people and soon Sam and his friends would be thrown inside the terrifying tutorial dungeon as well.

The priests were trying to get them all through the gate quickly because the tutorial of the white gate reset itself every two hours. If they took too long getting all of their prisoners inside the white gate, they might end up splitting the group into two separate tutorials, which would harm their overarching plans.

The brightness of the white gate filled the chamber and beat down on them like a malicious sun trying to blind them.

“Next!” yelled one of the priests.

A woman in rags stepped up to the front of the gate.

She stood still.

“Step inside,” said the priest, calmly.

The woman didn’t do anything.

“One more chance or we’ll make—”

At that the woman decided to make an escape.

She jumped away, but the priests were ready for it and nabbed her before she could even get a few yards away from the entrance to the gate.

They were deep underground in the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral.

Even Sam knew that escape was futile.

“HELP!” screamed the woman.

Three priests were holding the woman now.

She was squirming, fighting for her life to escape the clutches of the priests.

Her face was red from screaming, tears rushing down her cheeks.

“Shut up,” said one priest.

“Come on, let’s throw this hag in already,” said another.

The woman was still fighting them, pushing against them, trying to scratch their faces.

Anything that might give her another opportunity to run.

“You can’t do this to us,” she cried. “You can’t do this! It’s not right!”

One priest snickered. “We can’t, can’t we? Just watch us, you dumb hag.”

Sam tried to contain his shudder of hatred for these people. The fact that they actually took some kind of sick enjoyment in forcing pain and misery upon others was truly disgusting.

It was because of people like them that Westria was being destroyed by demonic forces. It was because such people could only see power and they let their thirst for it blind them. When they should have been preparing for a far worse threat, they instead focused on fighting and killing one another for power. Power that would ultimately be futile when their whole world was destroyed.

The priests then carried the woman, still squirming and crying, and tossed her into the white gate where her body completely disappeared into the other side.

The priests took a moment to catch their breath, straighten out their ruffled robes, and then return to their positions and the assembly line of death continued on its way.

“NEXT!”

Sam stepped forward.

He gulped.

His whole body tensed.

It was important for him to go through first. That way he could protect all the orphans as they entered, rather than have them enter on their own.

Better to not waste any more time, he thought and stepped forward.

“STOP!”

Sam halted.

What’s happening? he thought. This didn’t happen in the previous timeline!

One priest walked up and snatched Sam by the rags. He then dragged him over to another priest.

Sam made no effort to fight against the man. With his well-trained stats, he could easily push the man off him, but he didn’t want to reveal that he was stronger than he looked.

“This one looks funny,” said the priest. “What do you reckon?”

The two priests looked down at Sam.

“His eyes are weird.”

Oh crap, Sam thought as he suddenly realized what was happening.

The red eyes—the only physical sign that gave away that he had an unlocked class—weren’t something he had in the previous timeline. His new eye color was significant enough to alter the events of how everything happened.

Crap, crap, crap, Sam thought.

If they didn’t throw him in the white gate, his friends would be left on their own, and would most likely die in there. He needed to be there to protect and help them survive.

He couldn’t have gotten this close to changing the timeline only for it to alter in such a way that he ended up unable to stop anything.

“Is he some kind of halfling?” murmured the priest.

“Who knows? Do you think it will disrupt the experiment?”

Sam’s heart was pounding.

Depending on what the priest said here, he’d potentially fight them and jump into the white gate himself. That was a worst case scenario, as it would cause a lot of problems later on. Mainly, if he fought the priests now and jumped into the white gate against their will, it would mean they’d be waiting for him when he returned. That would screw up a lot of his planning.

Still, he’d take that risk if he had to.

“I think it should be fine,” said the priest. “Throw him in. Let’s get moving.”

Sam stayed as emotionless as possible. He didn’t want to signal the priests in any way that he was relieved. He didn’t want them to have any idea that he actually wanted to go into the white gate.

The priest snatched Sam by his rags and then dragged him up to the white gate.

“All right you little wretch,” said the priest. “Time for your slaughter.”

The man then kicked Sam in the back and sent him shooting through the portal into the dangerous world on the other side.

* * *

Sam stumbled forward, reality instantaneously changing all around him.

His back ached with a subtle pain from the priest kicking him, but he knew he didn’t have the luxury to focus on it.

He looked around and the surroundings were familiar.

A landscape that had haunted him in his nightmares for many years in his previous lifetime.

The tutorial dungeon was a foggy open plain where the grass was as black as charcoal. Broken statues and columns littered the surrounding landscape.

The place was known as The Valley of Ruins.

The people who had been thrown into the gate before him were all huddled nearby.

They’d already appeared to have created small groups among themselves.

A lot of them were looking around fearfully, unsure what to do next.

They all looked at Sam, but when he took a step towards them, they all looked away.

Sam and his friends were the only young people to be thrown into the gate.

The nearby adults all knew the dangers that lay ahead of them all. They had already decided the kids would hold them back, make survival more difficult.

Sam took a deep breath.

He was angered by the selfishness of these people, but he remembered they were terrified for their lives, they weren’t thinking straight.

He couldn’t hold this against them.

Sam could potentially save them all, if they chose to listen to him.

“Hey,” Sam hollered. “Some bad stuff is going to happen really quickly, but once my friends get here, if you follow me, I can help us survive.”

A man in rags stepped forward and said, “Stay away from us, kid. We won’t fall for your little trick. You’re nothing but a street criminal. A rat in an alley. Don’t think we don’t know you won’t betray us as soon as it’s convenient for you.”

All the others stared at Sam with bitterness and discontent and he knew that they all felt the same way.

Sam bristled.

These people were really making saving them a pain in the butt.

Sam wasn’t going to argue with them further as he knew some pretty critical moments were about to happen in the next ten minutes or so.

“Okay,” he said, taking a step away from them. “You can still follow me if you want when things get crazy.”

“Just shut up, kid,” hollered the man, and then the adults turned away from him.

I tried my best, Sam thought. There’ll be one more opportunity to help them, but I need to focus on other things now. I’ve given those grown-ups more time than they deserve.

He turned back to the entrance of the white gate.

His orphan pals had begun to stream through.

Sam materialized the equipment he had purchased with the money from the dungeon runs and started handing it to the orphans: common bronze swords, bronze shields, a basic bow, a satchel of basic arrows, and a healing potion each.

“Here you go,” said Sam. “Don’t worry. I know it’s scary in here, but remember, we planned for this.”

One boy stuck his hand back through the white gate, but nothing happened.

Sam smiled and shook his head. “It’s as I explained, we can’t go back through there. The only way to get back to the world outside is to survive the challenges given to us by the dungeon.”

Unlike the standard dungeon he’d beaten over the last month and a half, a white gate was known as an irregular gate. It followed its own set of rules different from the more common types of dungeon gates. One such difference in rules was that there was no way to leave the white gate other than by surviving the challenges it thrust upon you.

This was the main reason why white gates were considered so dangerous.

Finally, Klara and Toby arrived in the new realm. The last of his orphan regiment.

“Good,” said Sam, handing them their equipment. “We’re all here.”

He had explained to them during their training session how the gate would work and what would happen to them as soon as they entered.

So they all already theoretically understood that they would be unlocking profiles and inventory systems.

Sam gave them a gentle nudge by telling them, “Anything you can’t carry or don’t want on your person put away in your inventory” and they all seemed to figure it out.

As Sam had explained to them earlier, it was merely a mental command that you’d eventually get used to. Simply think—materialize mythril sword—and it would appear in your hand.

It was one of the simple trademark abilities that all Travelers shared. This ability to carry more than an average person was enough to put even the weakest of Travelers on a level far higher than your average roaming bandit in the woods.

Sam kept eyeing up the gate.

He won’t arrive for another few minutes, Sam thought to himself.

“Let’s move a little bit away from the entrance,” Sam said.

He shepherded the group so that they were a good few paces away from the entrance, but on the opposite side from where the group of grown-ups were huddled.

Suddenly, all the orphans in front of them stood up straight.

Across the way, Sam could see a flutter of activity among the grown-up group as well.

A message appeared in Sam’s retina as it had done for everyone else.

First Trial: Survive The Valley of Ruins For Seven Days.

Sam shuddered.

The trial prompt didn’t offer any more information other than the goal to survive for a week. Historians and scholars of the dungeon gates in Sam’s previous timeline went on to theorize that the white gate’s prompts were left purposefully vague as to not offer any benefits to new entrants of the rewards, benefits, or other hidden treasures that could be found within the gate.

Everything—including knowledge of the gate itself—had to be discovered for the new entrant themselves.

Which was why Sam had such an incredible advantage and opportunity that he got to live through this particular white gate for a second time.

Sam could hear murmuring and chats of panic among the grown-up group as they began discussing strategies for survival over the coming days.

Sam sighed.

He knew that for many of them, days were too long a metric to be measuring their lifespan in right now.

Sam knew that some of them shouldn’t be worrying about surviving the next few days, but rather the next few minutes.

It’s all happening, Sam thought. Just like last time.

Sam kept an eye on the gate.

The man he was waiting for hadn’t arrived yet.

No one else had entered the gate since Klara and Toby.

There was only one last person to arrive.

Finally, appearing in front of the white gate’s entrance, was the man Sam had been waiting for.

Sam gritted his teeth as soon as he saw the man.

He clenched his fist with anger.

The man had long silver hair and yellow eyes.

He had a sword strapped on his back.

He looked exactly like the nightmarish image that had been etched into Sam’s mind for such a long time.

Standing in front of them all was the man who in Sam’s previous timeline went on to kill nearly every single person currently huddled at the entrance of the white gate tutorial.

25

Five years ago in Sam’s original timeline, he had stood in the exact same spot within the white gate he was standing in now, but things had gone a lot differently back then.

He didn’t have uncommon equipment or stats above 10. In fact, he didn’t know what any of that was. The first time he was in that white gate, he had no idea what a profile screen was or what journeyman-tier equipment looked like. He knew nothing.

The first time Sam lived through the white gate, he was just a scared teenage boy, frightened along with the rest of his orphan friends.

His heart was racing. His whole body was shivering, from his chattering teeth to his trembling knees. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

He was distraught, confused, terrified.

Why did Father Irwin take them here?

Why had they thrown them into the white gate?

Did they really expect them to survive?

Why throw them all to their deaths so cavalierly?

The answers weren’t clear to Sam at first, but they began to get clearer with the arrival of the silver-haired mercenary who arrived last inside the white gate.

“Who’s that?” whispered Klara.

“Maybe he’s here to protect us,” said Toby.

For a brief second, there was a moment of hope.

And then in a blink of an eye, the man unsheathed his sword and ran towards the grown-ups.

They were too shocked and confused to understand what was happening.

Why would this man attack them?

It didn’t make any sense.

The silver-haired man took advantage of their shock, chopping their limbs off with utter ease.

He was a strikingly powerful warrior.

Within a minute, he had butchered all of the grown-ups.

He turned around with a sick yearning in his eyes and started charging towards the kids.

“Run!” Sam shouted to his friends.

He picked up a rock and started running, but he let his friends and other kids get further ahead.

Sam listened closely to the man coming after them. As his footsteps got closer, Sam stopped and turned around and flung the rock right into the man’s face.

“Aghhh!”

The warrior didn’t expect such a terrified kid to have the guts to attack a man charging at him with a bloody sword.

Well, the silver-haired warrior had clearly underestimated Sam.

With the man distracted, Sam rushed him and tried to peel his fingers from his sword’s grip.

The man kicked Sam with enough strength to send the boy flying backwards.

Sam hit the ground expecting the warrior’s sword to soon be plunged into his chest, but the silver-haired warrior had chosen to go after the other kids first.

Sam picked himself up off the ground and felt his stomach lurch as he saw his friends running away, screaming, only to fall over, butchered by the mercenary’s sword.

His whole body trembled.

He felt nauseous and sick.

Sam watched as the mercenary stood amidst the rivers of blood and carnage he had created and the man began to shake.

Then the man’s cackling laughter echoed across the dungeon realm.

That sack of garbage, Sam thought, he’s actually enjoying himself.

Sam hid behind a statue and watched as the mercenary man eventually turned around and started looking for him.

The man eventually gave up, muttering nearby, “Ah, the monsters will finish the job for me. I’ve done more than enough already.”

With that, the silver-haired mercenary began to traverse deeper into the Valley of Ruins, leaving Sam to his own devices.

Within ten minutes of arriving, the only living humans in the white gate’s tutorial zone’s first trial were the murderous man and Sam.

* * *

A few minutes after the mercenary’s departure, Sam realized he didn’t have the luxury to be depressed. Or scared. Or frightened.

He was alive.

And so long as he was alive, he could still achieve the one and only thing he desperately wanted out of however little life he still had left to live.

He wanted to kill the sick piece of trash warrior who had murdered all of his friends.

The hatred and anger was so intense it fueled him out of his shock and trauma and pushed him to act.

He began to follow the tracks the evil warrior left behind.

Such a trail brought him to an encampment of murdered monsters that the evil warrior had just slaughtered.

There in the encampment Sam found his first sword and other equipment.

He stalked the path of destruction the evil man walked, acquiring more items and knowledge along the way.

He figured out how to access his profile, how to utilize his inventory, and so on.

Sam managed to live and survive in the footsteps of the man he hunted.

He was able to do so all the way to the very last trial.

And at the very bitter end of the white gate’s trial, Sam made his move.

He rushed the unsuspecting warrior and stabbed the man in the back.

He took advantage of the shock as the man keeled over on the ground.

Sam ripped his blade out and stabbed the man again in the head.

It was brutal and horrific and it was all Sam wanted from his life at that point.

He could die afterwards so long as he made this man pay—he honestly didn’t care about anything after that.

* * *

In Sam’s new second timeline, he narrowed his eyes at the silver-haired man.

Unlike in his previous timeline, Sam knew exactly why this man was here.

He had learned the reason why soon after he had killed the man in his first timeline.

The whole reason the Spectral Church had brought him and his orphan pals and all the destitute grown-ups to the white gate was to see what type of classes might be unlocked at the end of the white gate if you were to kill so many people while inside of it.

The class that one unlocked after such a scenario was the one Sam currently had in his profile.

Blood knight.

When Sam had stabbed the man in the back at the end of the trial, all of the man’s kills transferred over to him, in the gate’s calculation of potential classes he could unlock.

“Who’s that?” asked Klara, just as she had done in the original timeline.

Unlike in the original timeline, though, Sam didn’t waste a beat.

In seconds, Sam was behind the man who had murdered every single person still standing at the dungeon’s entrance.

With zero hesitation, Sam ran a knife across the warrior’s neck and slit the evil man’s throat.

26

Klara felt her whole body go cold as she watched Sam kill the strange man with no hesitation whatsoever.

Blood leaked out of the silver-haired man’s throat and he collapsed onto his knees. He reached up to his neck in shock and then blood gurgled out of his mouth, staining his yellow teeth, as he attempted to wail in pain.

He was lying dead in a crimson puddle within seconds.

Sam, she thought. What have you done?

In some ways, Klara felt like she wasn’t just witnessing one murder, but two. First was the silver-haired man who Sam had killed, and the second was any semblance of the Sam she thought she knew.

Toby and the other orphans had all gone pale and turned to her, hoping she might have the answers to what they were seeing in front of them.

They all knew Sam had changed over the last few weeks. That he was different from who he had been before, but none of them had expected him to be such a ruthless cold-blooded killer.

Klara looked at Sam, the boy she called a friend, and tried to understand what was going through his mind.

She could see that Sam looked down at the dead silver-haired man—this man they had seemingly never met before—with a level of seething hatred Klara had never witnessed on her friend’s face or anyone for that matter in her entire lifetime.

How did Sam know this man?

The black-haired boy looked down at the man with such a look of venom you would have thought the man had murdered Sam’s entire family.

What Klara didn’t know was that for Sam, that was exactly how he felt.

* * *

Sam’s heart had been pounding in his chest up until the moment he killed the silver-haired man.

Now, he felt a sense of relief.

But he knew it wouldn’t last long.

It was only the first of many obstacles they’d have to face while in the white gate.

He bent down and added the man’s broadsword to his inventory.

It wasn’t as good as any of his other weapons, but he could give it to one of the older orphans to wield, as it was better than the bronze sword he’d equipped them with.

The man had a healing potion in his bag too, but he really didn’t come with much else.

The man was a skilled and powerful warrior and had entered the gate with confidence.

Once Sam was done taking whatever was of value from the man, he turned to the group of adults who were looking at him with horror.

“As I said before, I know a way for all of us to survive,” said Sam. “Please trust me—”

“Demon child!” one adult yelled.

“Look at his eyes,” said another. “Stay away from us! Don’t come any closer to us!”

“We should kill him before he kills us,” said another.

Sam shook his head.

He couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Please,” he said. “This man here was going to kill all of us. I saved you. Please believe me. We don’t have a lot of time. If we don’t leave here soon, we’re all going to die.”

The group of adults picked up some rocks.

“Those kids have weapons,” said the adults. “They’ll use them against us. We need to kill them before they kill us!”

The grown-ups began to approach them with fear and violence in their eyes.

This was the exact problem with how the dungeon gates operated. A plague that led to so much destruction all across Westria.

They inspired fear, hatred, greed, and a thirst for violence and power.

It was happening just on a smaller scale with these adults who were now coming for Sam and his friends.

He wracked his brain for some way to convince them otherwise when out from the clouds the next threat suddenly arrived.

A black raven appeared in the sky.

Then two. Then three. Then even more until the whole sky was filled with black ravens flying down towards them.

They weren’t ordinary ravens either.

They were red-eyed death ravens.

Here they come, Sam sighed.

Sam started running towards his friends.

A flock of ravens descended much quicker than the rest of the deadly birds and went straight for Toby.

Sam pushed himself and felt himself running faster with the aid of his new ring of agility and made it just in time to slice the dangerous bird in half with his flame sword before it could take a bite out of his friend.

He waved the fiery blade and the descending flock of death ravens retreated.

“Sam...” said Toby. “You killed that man... You saved me...”

“We have a lot to discuss,” said Sam, “but we can do it all later. We need to run. Everyone follow me.”

He rushed ahead and shepherded the orphans away from the descending flock of murderous ravens.

“Kill those kids!” shouted the grown-ups.

I guess we’re not just running from the ravens anymore, sighed Sam.

The death ravens had no preference, though, and began surrounding and tearing into the former prisoners and criminals that the Spectral Church had thrown into the white gate alongside Sam and his friends.

“C’mon,” Sam shouted to his fellow orphans.

The kids rushed forward across the grim foggy landscape.

Sam looked over his shoulder one last time.

He shuddered as the grown-ups were torn apart one-by-one.

I couldn’t save them, he thought. Maybe they were destined for death in the end no matter what?

Sam looked away and ran forward in the direction he sent the other kids, leaving the poor souls who couldn’t escape to their bitter unfortunate end.

27

After running for over thirty minutes, Sam and the others eventually found a hill with a cavern tucked away at the bottom.

They had lost sight of the death ravens after ten minutes, but it took another ten to escape the sounds of their shrieks and the horrible sounds brought on by their carnage.

Standing in front of the cave, Sam looked at his fellow orphans and said, “This cave will be our home base of operations for the rest of the week.”

The orphans—including Klara and Toby—all looked at him with pale, exhausted, and fearful faces.

Okay, morale is dropping, Sam realized. They’ve been through a lot.

They’d already survived far more than they had in his previous timeline.

Sam was now in somewhat less certain territory.

He quickly came up with a plan and started giving directions to everyone.

They needed to start a fire and there were plenty of random sticks and twigs that could be gathered within the safety of their nearby surroundings.

They would have to hunt food in a bit, but Sam himself needed a moment to get his bearings.

After assigning the tasks to everyone, he walked to the very back of the cave.

He lit up the darkness with his flame sword, making sure there were no hidden creatures waiting to attack them.

When the coast was clear, he finally leaned his head against the stone wall of the cavern and sighed.

He slammed a fist on the wall in frustration.

I couldn’t save the others.

He heard the sounds of the other orphans working behind him and that helped dissipate his anger.

I did save my friends, though, he thought with relief.

He took solace in this—that he’d already changed his original timeline significantly.

Of course, unless they all survived the trials of the white gate, it wouldn’t make much of a difference, so they still had their work cut out for them.

Even beyond the white gate, Sam was recognizing the enormity of the task the goddess had asked of him.

It made him think of those grown-ups who’d been eaten alive by those vicious death ravens.

Sam had to get used to the fact that his mission was to stop the apocalypse of all of Westria. It was quite possible he wouldn’t be able to save every individual person.

He would try his best, of course, but he needed to stay focused on his main goal.

He couldn’t lose sight of that.

He’d come back in time to save millions upon millions of lives, not just a handful.

It was a grim uncomfortable thought but Sam realized he had to get used to it.

Besides, there were endless variables to consider. Those grown-ups had mostly been prisoners from the dungeons—who knew what they had done to land themselves in such a situation.

And then there was the fact that they were so quick to turn on him and his friends. First, they didn’t want help, and then they were quick to decide they wanted to attack them. They would have probably left them for dead, if not try and kill him and his friends outright.

Sam bristled.

If he had saved those grown-ups, they might have unlocked classes, and if they behaved in such a way as they had in this scenario, how would they act if given more power.

Sam shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it.

His sympathy for the grown-ups had stemmed from his first timeline when he hadn’t interacted with them at all. He and the orphans had stayed off to one side away from them. They were probably planning to attack them even in that first timeline.

Sam sighed, realizing he had to let go of what had happened.

There was still so much more to focus on.

* * *

After Sam had taken his breather, he returned from the cave to find the group had gathered a good amount of sticks and placed them in a fire pit.

Sam materialized his flame sword and lit the sticks into a nice fire.

The warmth was a good feeling.

He materialized from his inventory a large chicken and skewer and set it up on the fire.

He had purchased as much food and supplies as he could for the trials in the white gate. Even still, they would have to do some hunting in a bit.

But he figured with morale so low, getting everyone fed would help ease the situation.

Thirty minutes later, Sam and the rest of the orphans were sitting around a fire, beneath the shelter of their new cave base, all chomping on their food silently.

They arranged a set of times for people to be on watch duty in case any dangerous creatures showed up and many of the orphans were encouraged to rest and get some sleep.

Soon it was only Sam, Klara, and Toby sitting around the fire.

An uncomfortable silence lingered in the air, only awkwardly broken by the crackle of burning wood in the fire.

Sam tried to meet the gazes of both his friends, but neither one would look at him.

Finally, Sam decided to break the tension. So long as they were in the trials of the white gate, they were going to have to communicate. Holding something back could end up getting them all killed.

“Is there something wrong?” Sam asked.

Both Klara and Toby looked away.

“The fact that you’re not answering and not looking at me suggests that there is,” said Sam.

He was expecting Klara to speak up first, but in fact it was Toby who was the first to say it.

“I can’t believe you killed that man,” said Toby.

There it is, thought Sam.

Suddenly, Toby was shaking. “I thought I knew you. I know you’ve changed over the last month or so, but I thought there was still a tiny morsel of the guy I knew and grew up with, but—”

Toby shook his head, tears forming in his eyes.

“The Sam I knew wouldn’t kill someone so quickly and brutally like that. If he could kill someone that easily—it makes me wonder and, not in an extra paranoid way, but in a serious way—what else he would do without flinching?”

Sam listened and took Toby’s words seriously.

“I agree with everything Tobes just said,” Klara spoke softly, clutching her knees. “The worst part about it was you didn’t even hesitate. You didn’t flinch. Even now, you don’t seem that bothered by it. In fact, Toby and I are more bothered by it than you are.”

Sam nodded, listening to his friends closely, and trying to gather the right words.

For one thing, they were absolutely correct. The Sam they had grown up with wouldn’t have been able to do what he had done. The Sam who could kill another man—especially a man who threatened those he loved—was born after witnessing Klara and Toby’s deaths at the hands of the silver-haired man in his original timeline.

When Sam went onto become a soldier, a warrior, a mercenary in that previous timeline—he soon learned that uncomfortable actions like killing were simply a part of the life of a Traveler.

The Sam who his friends had grown up with had been long lost and forgotten.

The Sam sitting in front of them now wouldn’t even be able to get back to that original person, nor would he want to.

That Sam—happy and content as he may have been—would not be up for the task the goddess had placed upon his shoulders.

Finally, Sam looked to his friends. They were looking at him directly now, waiting for his answer.

“You’re right,” said Sam. “I’m not the Sam you knew a few months ago. I’m a different person now. On that matter, I hope you’ll accept that I can’t say any more. As for that man I killed—what would you say if I told you that man planned on killing us all?”

Toby twitched. “But you don’t know that—”

“I knew about us getting sent into the white gate, didn’t I?”

“But that’s different—”

“Sure,” said Sam. “But tell me what you would have done, if you knew that silver-haired man was going to kill me, Klara, and the rest of the orphans? What would you have done Toby?”

Toby shook his head. “I don’t know—maybe there was a more peaceful solution.”

“And what if there wasn’t?”

“I, um, I’m—” Toby was lost for words.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Sam. “I’m a huge fan of peace. Peace is fantastic. If the nations and races of Westria were all peaceful with one another that would be great. I’d be all for that. Yet, here’s the uncomfortable truth, it only takes one nation to use violence—even the threat of violence—to undo that peace.”

Both Klara and Toby were listening to Sam intently now.

“What that tells us,” Sam continued, “is that peace is something that needs to be protected. The deep irony is that peace cannot be protected by peace.”

“But surely violence will only beget more violence,” said Klara.

“Such a statement sounds nice in a fairy tale or story or out of the mouth of a self-righteous noble,” said Sam, “but what good does such a platitude do when a peaceful nation is invaded by one that’s hungry for war and expansion? Would such an idea as the one you just espoused do anything to protect the peaceful nation?”

Sam stopped speaking and let the harsh truth linger in the air.

“I plan to survive this white gate and I plan on keeping every single one of you alive until then,” said Sam. “What you choose to do after that is up to you, but keep in mind, if we indeed survive, you’ll unlock classes, you’ll be Travelers. The very thing we’re discussing right now will be something you’ll have to grapple with and accept if you choose to take the responsibility a Traveler must carry.”

“I don’t know if I can,” said Toby.

“You don’t have to decide this instant,” said Sam, “but I’ll say this: I’ve already come to terms with it. I accepted it a long time ago. Being a Traveler, being a soldier, being a warrior who protects people brings many benefits. Adventure, treasure, power. But it also comes with its own sacrifices, responsibilities, and burdens. The greatest sacrifice is becoming a person you might never have wanted to become. Someone you wouldn’t wish to see anyone you care about become. Yet, it’s precisely that sacrifice that allows others to live peacefully and innocently. The sacrifice you make saves others from having to make that very same sacrifice. And it’s in that quiet space, you can find solace in the darkest decisions one has to make in the quest to protect others.”

They sat there quietly after that.

Neither Klara nor Toby continued arguing with Sam.

They sat there and began to accept the uncomfortable truth of Sam’s words.

And then in the briefest flicker of moments, Sam could see his friends looking at him once again like they normally did.

Not as someone they were afraid of.

Or mad at because he acted out of character.

No.

They looked at him as they would a friend.

A sibling, even.

Perhaps, even as just another member of their ramshackle homemade family.

28

Thirty minutes later, Toby yawned and stretched his arms.

He figured with Sam and Klara awake at the fire, he might be able to get some sleep.

He was slightly concerned that his racing mind would keep him up, but he figured if there was any moment where he might get some shut-eye over the course of the white gate trials, it would probably be right this instant.

Right as he was about to suggest he might go take a nap in the cave, Sam said, “We need to go hunting.”

Toby’s eyes twitched. “But didn’t you bring supplies?”

“Yeah, but what happens if we get separated,” said Sam. “We need to be prepared for anything.”

“Sam’s right, Tobes,” said Klara. “Let’s go out and do some hunting.”

Sam started moving forward with Klara following behind. Toby looked over his shoulder. “Are we sure we can leave the others behind?”

“Don’t worry,” said Sam. “We’re not going far. They’ll be in sight.”

Toby walked behind his two friends and about fifteen minutes later, they came across a pack of white furred wolves.

There were four of them and they were all gathered around something.

Toby wasn’t sure what they were doing until he realized they were all feeding, chewing on the carcass of another dead creature.

One wolf had to really shake its head and pull to remove the fatty piece of flesh from the dead body on the ground.

Sam materialized both his fiery flame sword and the glowing blue mythril blade and charged at the deadly looking wolves.

The wolves pulled away from their current meal and barred their blood-soaked teeth at the incoming attacker.

They growled and got ready to fight as Sam approached.

Sam raised his blades and two of the wolves leaped towards him, meeting his attack with an attack of their own.

Sam quickly ducked and rolled on the ground, just barely dodging the incoming attack from the wolves, slicing both of his swords as he emerged from the roll. He felt the blade slice across the flesh of the wolves and he heard the sputter of blood spray out from their stomachs before they collapsed on the ground behind him, dead.

Toby would have been more impressed, except the two other wolves from the pack had ignored Sam and were charging directly at Klara and him.

Sam’s eyes widened as he saw what was happening.

“Just as we trained, you two!” he shouted.

Klara materialized her sword and rushed forward, meeting her attacker head on.

The other wolf did not stop its incoming assault on Toby, however.

“What if it has rabies!?” Toby cried.

“It won’t matter if you kill it!” shouted Sam.

The wolf leaped in the air. Toby materialized his sword at the last second and slashed upwards.

Toby breathed hard and kept his eyes shut.

His whole body shivered and trembled.

He was realizing there and then that it was becoming quite a common occurrence for him to be regularly accepting his death and waiting for it to happen.

“It’s all good Tobes,” said Sam. “Open your eyes.”

Toby gently opened his eyes.

He was nervous about what he was maybe going to see.

“You did good,” said Sam. “You slayed the wolf.”

“Yeah, well done, Tobes,” said Klara. “Your first monster kill of the white gate.”

Toby blinked in shock.

He was expecting loads of blood and carnage, but it looked as if the wolf had already disintegrated down into its loot drops.

Left behind were a mana stone, gold coins, and little pieces of meat that could be cooked.

“What’s up with the meat?” Toby said.

“That’s the dungeon gate system for you,” explained Sam. “Sometimes the monsters don’t drop food, but if there’s a special quest or task in the gate—like a survival mission we’re on now—monsters will drop other important goods, like food. Now c’mon, let’s take this back to the camp.”

* * *

Sam was silent the entire walk back to the camp.

He was going through some things in his head.

Toby and Klara have both come so far, he thought to himself. They don’t even realize it.

Their stats were getting higher and their fighting proficiency and confidence was going up as well. They were able to slay those wolves with ease.

Witnessing their improvements while hunting had reassured Sam about what he was planning to do next.

“Are we going to eat that wolf meat then?” asked Toby.

“Are you serious, Tobes?” said Klara, getting red in the face. “You only ate an hour ago. We’d be rationing our food supply even if we weren’t in a white gate.”

“The monster fighting has clearly given me an appetite,” said Toby. “Unless, do you think I have a tape worm? Oh boy, I really hope I don’t have a tapeworm eating me from the inside out.”

Sam listened to Toby and Klara bickering as he unloaded the supplies in his inventory until they were in a nice neat pile in front of his two friends.

Eventually, the boy and girl stopped arguing and looked at Sam with a perplexed expression.

“Uhh, why did you take all the supplies out of your inventory?” asked Toby.

“What’s going on Sam?” said Klara with concern.

“You guys both have inventories now,” said Sam. “I recommend you divide up the supplies between the two of you.”

“Why the change up?” asked Klara. “You’re clearly the strongest of all of us, shouldn’t you be holding onto all the supplies?”

Sam shook his head. “That logic makes sense, only if I’m staying at the camp.”

“No,” said Toby, shaking his head. “I do not like where this is heading—”

“I have faith in you both. You have supplies, you know how to hunt and kill monsters. If you stay here, you should be safe from all the monsters and I know you can deal with the wolves.”

“Where are you going?” asked Klara.

Sam grinned.

He was not going to waste the opportunity he had been given. Very few people had the opportunity to enter a white gate with the knowledge, skills, and weaponry he had at his disposal. He had a unique opportunity to discover more secrets and benefits of the white gate than anybody else in history ever had.

He planned on heading out into the wilds.

29

With his orphan pals safe in their cave shelter with enough food and weapons to defend themselves, Sam turned his focus to gaining more power.

He traveled across the Valley of Ruins, fighting every monster he could find. As he traveled, he made sure to cultivate his internal mana core, sending mana to his feet and elsewhere in his body, making even his traveling across the grim landscape an efficient part of his training.

He eventually came across a large venomous spiderling, occupying a ruined building that was missing a roof. Cobwebs draped the broken and crumbled stone columns.

Sam knew better than to walk into the trap the monster had set up for him.

Instead, he materialized his flame sword and placed the fiery blade onto a single silvery wisp of cobweb.

It only took a gentle touch of Sam’s flame sword to ignite the entire cobweb fortress on fire.

Hisses and screams emanated from inside the fiery ruins and a massive spider suddenly crawled out rapidly from its hiding place.

It charged towards Sam, shooting out thick tendrils of webbing.

Sam sliced the webs with his flame sword, disintegrating them before they could harm him.

He materialized his mythril sword in his other hand and ran towards the large spider.

He charged forward, using his flame sword as a shield from any more projectile attacks from the spider, and when he reached the monster, he stabbed it hard and strong with his mythril blade.

The glowing blue sword punctured a crucial artery and the giant spider was dead within seconds.

Sam stood over the spider’s body as it disintegrated down into a mana stone, some coins, and also left behind a little vial of poison.

Great loot drop, Sam grinned, as he pocketed all the items into his inventory.

He was very pleased with how his training was going so far. He had killed that big spider with ease. Not to mention, Klara and Toby had killed those white-furred wolves very competently as well. Clearly, their preparation and training in the weeks leading up to the white gate was proving worthwhile.

The monsters within the white gate were designed to be fearsome, powerful, and dangerous—but they were truly meant to be opponents for those who had never entered a dungeon gate before and whose stats were below 10.

All the training they had done and equipment they had been able to acquire put them all in a position to really over perform against the common monsters of the white gate.

Most people who entered the white gate merely wanted to survive, whereas instead Sam was now taking the chance to thrive and take advantage of everything the white gate had to offer.

With his most recent kill, he took a moment to rest.

He made a quick fire and roasted some wolf meat from another pack of wolves he’d found and slayed.

After eating, he laid out all of his acquired monster stones and drained them of their mana and added them to his own internal mana core.

When he was done absorbing the mana, he reviewed his stats.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 12.3

Agility: 12.1

Endurance: 11.9

Magic Affinity: 12.2

He grinned. The improvements were small, but gradual gains would ultimately lead to incredible results as his stats climbed higher and higher.

His strength stat had the greatest increase moving a full 0.8 stats from 11.5 to 12.3. That was almost a full stat leap. Sam could feel the difference, just in the ease with which he held and swung his sword and the amount of pressure and strength it required to puncture his blade through a monster’s thickened skin.

Sam chalked it up to the big strength increase as that was the stat most often trained when fighting and killing monsters.

He was pleased that both his agility and magic affinity stats had hit 12 and beyond, getting closer to that magic number of 31 where all stats needed to be to help contribute to unlocking new class-tier abilities.

Endurance was lagging behind, but that was because the monsters he’d fought so far didn’t really require him to use his Pain Ring ability.

It was something to contemplate as he continued to train further. It might be worthwhile to take some hits purposefully, if only to help raise that stat.

He didn’t love that idea though as he didn’t have an easy way of healing himself from his wounds. Yeah, he did have some healing potions, but only a finite amount of them and he didn’t want to recklessly waste them while training. He wanted to hold onto them for boss fights and emergencies.

His endurance stat would still rise just by the very nature of him pushing himself and his other stats higher—and for the time being he’d settle for that.

Sam stood up, determining that his period of rest was now over.

He narrowed his eyes and looked across the grim gray landscape of the Valley of Ruins and marched forward on his training mission.

* * *

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he caught sight of a single death raven.

The monster that had killed the majority of people who had entered the white gate with them.

Sam knew that if you saw one, there was likely to be many more—making them a great monster to slay and farm for loads of monster stones.

He moved closer and eventually found a flock of at least two dozen death ravens.

He materialized his two blades and then rushed towards them to meet them head on.

As soon as he started sprinting towards the large flock of flesh-eating ravens, they all turned and squawked at him.

The monsters did not flinch or fly away from the incoming attacker. No. There were so many more of them than him, they were confident in their sense that the human was the prey and they were the predator.

How wrong they were.

With his increased stats, Sam moved faster than ever before unleashing a large spinning swing with his flame sword.

The fiery blade was enough to create a ripple of chaos in the flock of deadly birds.

Their feathers became alight with flames. The fire was contagious as the crowded flock of birds couldn’t help but accidentally let the fire touch the others.

Within this anarchy Sam continued his sword dance, slicing both his flame sword and glowing blue mythril blade, ripping the monstrous birds to shreds.

Within less than a minute, Sam was surrounded by a collection of monster stones and loot drops.

He had killed every single death raven, except for one that had managed to fly away in retreat.

Exactly as I intended, Sam grinned.

The retreating raven would lead him to the strongest boss monster in the first stage of the tutorial.

30

Sam followed the retreating death raven long and far across the white gate.

He didn’t focus on anything else.

He gave up the opportunity to slay more monsters and raise his stats, staying singularly focused on stalking the death raven to its leader.

Sam followed the lone death raven over a hill to a valley on the other side.

The valley was empty but for a large single tree in the center. The tree was thick and ancient with large roots flowing in and out of the ground near the bottom. The tree’s branches were like old fingers stretching out into the sky. None of the branches had any leaves.

But the branches were holding something up.

A nest.

The lone death raven that Sam had been stalking all across the white gate’s tutorial zone flew across the valley and landed within the thick straw and sticks that composed the large nest at the top of the tree.

Sam crouched down and observed the nest.

As soon as the death raven had landed, it had gone out of sight.

Sam wasn’t sure how many ravens were living within the confines of that nest, but he could imagine quite a significant amount could probably fit in there together.

Suddenly, there was a ruffle of movement from inside the nest.

Perking its head up was an incredibly large and fearsome bird monster.

The Death Raven Queen.

Sam’s eyes twitched at the sight of it right before he grinned to himself.

Exactly the monster I was looking for.

While the exact scenarios, locations, and monsters inside a white gate were always shifting and changing, making it impossible to predict what will happen inside one tutorial to the next—over the years of Sam’s first timeline, scholars had begun to recognize key patterns and repetitions that came up again and again across the different tutorials. It didn’t matter if one white gate sent its new crop of beginner warriors to a fiery planet or a swamp full of poison frogs, some events and creatures showed up no matter the circumstances.

The Death Raven Queen was one such creature.

It was one of the most powerful boss monsters that existed within the white gate. As far as Sam knew, no one had ever managed to slay it.

Many parties had even attempted to enter the white gate with destroying the Death Raven Queen in mind, but without any class abilities it was extremely difficult and all known parties who tried this died in the process.

It would be considered suicide for one Traveler—let alone a sixteen-year-old orphan with no assistance from elsewhere—to be able to do it.

But Sam liked his odds.

He waited for the Death Raven Queen to stop moving around in the nest, returning to her resting position.

Sam then crawled slowly across the valley until he was only a few yards away from the tree and the massive nest of death ravens.

He had managed to get up close without alerting the horde of birds.

Sam then materialized his bow and arrow, and then somewhat awkwardly materialized his flame sword, so he could light a set of three arrows.

He then fired off the arrows right into the raven nest.

Within seconds the nest was ablaze.

Squeals and screams of the death ravens burning alive echoed forth as a flood of ravens shot out from the nest and flew into the sky.

The Death Raven Queen was the first to shoot out into the sky above. It then turned its head down and with an angry wrath started her descent towards Sam.

Sam quickly dematerialized his bow and arrow back into his inventory and picked up his fiery flame sword from the ground and prepared himself to duke it out with the terrifying boss monster.

Before the raven even landed, Sam triggered his Pain Ring ability, marking off a section of the battlefield where he’d increase his power for any of the damage he was about to take.

He then looked up and stared at the Death Raven Queen, inviting the monstrous bird to attack him.

The real skill and effort masked behind the blood knight class was the need for an unflinching ability to accept excruciating pain dead in the eye. Without that kind of mental fortitude, the blood knight’s abilities were next to useless.

And that was why when the Death Raven Queen descended with its claws out, Sam let the creature’s sharp nails dig into his skin and rip out the top layers of his body’s flesh.

It was also why he let the monster push him down on the ground and let it take a horrible bite into his stomach.

Sam gritted his teeth and accepted the pain.

He could feel his body’s shock and stress responses going haywire, only to then be hijacked by his class’ ability—the pain suddenly morphed into something else and he felt a strength and power fill up inside of him.

Time to fight back, Sam thought.

He lifted his legs and kicked the Death Raven Queen, sending it hurtling back up into the sky.

After not fighting back for the first minute of their encounter, the bird hadn’t expected Sam to kick it with such power and force.

The bird came back down and Sam quickly materialized his mythril sword in his other hand and made a quick retaliating slash at the boss monster.

He managed a thin cut across its chest, but that was it.

Sam then took on a fighting stance with both his swords as the Death Raven Queen’s reinforcements had arrived.

The surviving death ravens plunged towards him en masse.

Your funeral, fools, thought Sam.

Sam had multiple gaping flesh wounds and, if he didn’t do something about it, he would die in a matter of minutes.

For any other Traveler, this would mark them as weak and vulnerable.

For Sam, however, it was only a boon.

With his powerful flame sword and mythril blade, Sam cut through the death ravens with utter ease.

Blood and black feathers littered the ground around him.

A few ravens managed to break through his defensive sword swings, but he was surging with so much power, a mere elbow blow was enough to crush the small monster birds’ skulls.

With her reinforcements failing her, the Death Raven Queen came back to attack Sam with a newfound fury.

Sam lifted both swords up to take it on.

Before the boss monster landed its next attack, though, it suddenly jerked spasmodically and fell onto the ground.

Finally, Sam thought to himself. The spider venom has gone through!

Before starting the fight with the boss monster, Sam had coated his mythril sword with the spider venom he had acquired earlier.

He wasn’t sure if the venom would kill the boss monster, but it was an extra insurance policy if he needed it.

The Death Raven Queen was twitching and jerking on the ground.

The spider venom seemed to have had a paralyzing effect on the boss monster.

Sam wasted no time in seizing his newfound advantage.

He went up to the Death Raven Queen and plunged both his swords into the monster, finishing off the terrifying beast in a final devastating blow.

Sam had just slain a boss monster that no one in the entire history of the dungeon gates had ever been able to accomplish before now.

31

Sam didn’t have a moment to rejoice in his victory in the battle as his wounds had finally caught up with him.

He collapsed onto the ground, his vision going blurry.

He was mere seconds away from death.

He materialized a health potion and with his last remaining strength began to awkwardly pour the red liquid into his mouth.

As his vision blurred around him, he could feel the wondrous red liquid flow through his body, patching his open wounds and bringing a renewal of life and energy into him.

His wounds were patched and faded away and suddenly the shock and pain of his near dying disappeared into an almost frustratingly close but ultimately incomprehensible memory like the annoying feeling of déjà vu.

Sam gasped, catching his breath, and then touching his body, making sure it was all there and intact.

His clothing was ripped and ragged and there were still some damp patches of blood on him, but without any open wounds or pain, it felt more like spilled liquid than anything else.

Sam took a deep breath once more and leaned his head back in relief.

I did it, he smiled to himself. I beat the Death Raven Queen.

He looked over and saw that the body of the boss monster hadn’t disintegrated into a mana stone but rather a rare-looking treasure chest.

A prompt suddenly appeared in his retina.

Congratulations! You have completed a secret white gate trial quest: Slay the Death Raven Queen

Reward: Treasure Chest

Sam’s eyes widened at the prompt.

So killing the Death Raven Queen was actually a secret quest!? he thought in amazement.

His whole objective in killing it was merely to get a powerful mana stone in the process and maybe help him towards unlocking an extra special class at the end of the tutorial trial, but this was just as good, if not better.

The dungeon gates were incredible sources of raw power and it was a great boon any time they generated or offered a reward to a Traveler.

Sam got up and full of excitement opened up the treasure chest.

At first his shoulders slumped with disappointment as the treasure chest was near empty, housing only three random scrolls at the bottom.

He then picked one up and his disappointment quickly evaporated.

Holy crap, he thought. This is a soul-bound scroll.

A soul-bound scroll was one of the rarest non-equipment items you could find inside a dungeon. The soul-bound scroll offered a Traveler a choice between two items and then the scroll would transform into the item you chose. The scroll on its own was worth a significant amount of coin and, if Sam wanted, he could fetch a huge price for these three scrolls at the market back in Resfall.

But the opportunity here was far greater than making a large sum of gold.

Whatever items he could gain from these scrolls would make him stronger in the long run, not to mention increase his survivability here in the white gate and increase his chances of unlocking a powerful second class in the process.

Sam knew what he had to do.

He unfurled the soul-bound scroll and took in what items he’d have to decide between.

The scroll read:

Pick one item:

A) Bracers of Expansion (Increases the range of area of effect abilities by 50%)

or

B) Ring of Defense (increases one’s defense and ability to withstand deadly attacks)

Sam nodded and scratched his chin as he thought the decision over.

Such scrolls usually made the decision difficult, but in this case Sam felt pretty confident with what was the most optimal item choice.

The ring of defense sounded cool and Sam could see it having some value in certain situations, but being able to withstand powerful attacks actually worked against his blood knight’s abilities. If the word had been “endurance” rather than “defense” it might have made the decision more difficult, as endurance didn’t necessarily mean greater ability to withstand attacks, but rather a stronger fortitude and ability to keep going despite how much damage you’d taken. It was a subtle but important difference.

The bracers of expansion, on the other hand, sounded perfect. It would benefit him straightaway allowing him greater flexibility with his Pain Ring ability. If his ability were 50% more expansive, he could retreat and run around more without being so concerned about making sure he was in the area of effect when taking damage against his enemies.

This was crucial because letting himself be hit outside of the Pain Ring was the kind of fatal error he could never afford to make.

With his decision made, Sam looked at the scroll and consciously selected option-A. As soon as he did so, the scroll burst into a cloud of smoke and powerful silver bracers appeared on either side of Sam’s wrists.

Brilliant, he grinned.

He quickly tested out the item, dematerializing it into his inventory and then rematerializing them. Because the item was a soul-bound item, he could never sell it or gift the item to anyone else, which meant that when he rematerialized it, the bracers didn’t simply emerge in his hands, but rather materialized where they were supposed to be on his wrists.

Sam grinned and with greedy excitement picked up the second scroll from the treasure chest.

What goodies will I get in this one!

He unfurled the scroll and took in his second choice.

Pick one item:

A) Ring of Strength (+5 increase to strength attribute)

or

B) Ring of Numbing (Reduce pain sensation by 40%)

Sam looked the items over and contemplated his choice.

This was a slightly more difficult choice than the first scroll.

The ring of strength would give him a nice boost to his overall power which was always good. It would mean that when he hit stat 16 in strength, he could actually have 21 strength, which would be good at deceiving certain opponents. The artificial stat boost would not let him unlock class abilities faster, though. He would still have to reach an intrinsic level of 31 strength stat to push through and unlock his next blood knight ability.

The other benefit from the ring of strength was rather far-off, but it meant at the upper echelons of power when it became very difficult to raise your stats, those extra points could mean a huge difference.

The other option was the Ring of Numbing which also had a huge number of benefits as well.

Unlike the ring of defense in the previous scroll, this item complemented his blood knight abilities incredibly well.

The ring’s ability essentially meant that it reduced his sensation of pain by 40%, but crucially, it didn’t reduce the amount of damage he took. Therefore, with the Ring of Numbing, he could mentally take more pain and suffer through more agonizing attacks, which would ultimately mean he could use his blood knight ability for longer and harder, even while taking the same or more amounts of damage.

Sam contemplated the choice.

Ultimately, he came down to the Ring of Numbing. The ring of strength was good, but there were so many ways to increase one’s strength be it items, weapons, increasing one’s stats—where there really wasn’t a way of decreasing your pain threshold beyond finding an item like the Ring of Numbing.

So with that, he consciously chose option-B, and once again, the scroll exploded into a cloud of smoke and a new ring materialized on his finger.

Awesome, he grinned.

He then turned to the treasure chest and pulled out the third and final scroll.

Unfurling the scroll, Sam read over his options.

Pick one item:

A) Necklace of Agility (+10 increase to agility attribute)

or

B) Necklace of Healing (Increase Health Regeneration by 50%)

The choice between these two items was the most difficult choice he had made so far.

The necklace of agility was interesting and suffered the same cons as the ring of strength he had briefly considered with the previous scroll. The only difference was +10 stat increase was much more significant than +5. The former stat increase meant that you’d always be operating with stats a full half-tier above where you should be normally.

That was an incredible boon and agility was really crucial to his fighting style.

However, the ring of agility suffered from similar cons to the ring of strength.

There were plenty of other ways of improving one’s agility, whereas an ability to improve one’s health regeneration was a much rarer ability to acquire.

In fact, as soon as Sam had seen the necklace of healing option, his heart had begun to race with excitement.

It was the exact type of item he’d been wanting to acquire since he started his training in this new timeline.

An item that improved his health regeneration would allow him to take damage in a fight, increase his power from his Pain Ring ability while mitigating his own risk of dying as he healed himself instantly on the spot.

He was pretty positive he wouldn’t lose his bonus power and damage acquired by his Pain Ring ability, simply from being healed mid-fight. The ability was simpler than that: he took damage, his power went up. Even if he was healed a little bit, that extra power from the initial damage remained so long as he stayed within the Pain Ring. All of which meant, the necklace of healing could extend the amount of damage he took overall in a fight with much less risk while increasing his overall damage output.

In short, the necklace of healing was a truly incredible find.

Sam made his choice and a beautiful and simple silver necklace formed around his neck.

With the three new powerful items at his disposal, Sam spent the rest of the week training and slaying monsters, taking advantage of his new perks.

He could take on a greater number of monsters by pulling them into his Pain Ring with the power of the bracers of expansion. Then he could take more damage due to the Ring of Numbing and increase his damage output, which he then increased even higher with the regenerative power of his necklace of healing.

By the end of the trial’s week, Sam had increased all of his stats to 14 each.

His plan had always been to maximize his gains while in the white gate and so far he was already exceeding his own expectations.

He was feeling more and more confident for the next stage of the trial.

Bring it on, he thought.

He couldn’t wait to leverage his advantages further and increase his gains even more.

32

Toby plunged his sword into a weakened wolf monster.

The boy kept his eyes closed as he dealt the killing blow.

He tried to ignore the uncomfortable sounds of flesh being ripped apart and the splashes of spurting blood raining down on the ground.

By the time he opened his eyes the wolf had disintegrated down to a mana stone and a few slabs of meat.

He picked up the mana stone and looked at it, cautiously.

Sam had told them all to hold onto as many mana stones as they could find—that they would come in hand later on.

He dematerialized the mana stone into his inventory and then picked up the slabs of meat.

A part of him, especially early on in the week, thought there was no way such random meat could be at all safe to eat and that such food would lead to them all dying of food poisoning but he’d since gotten over those reservations. Or, at least, somewhat.

Toby then turned around and started heading back to the camp.

There were only a few more hours left in the first white gate trial.

He figured it would be good for everyone to eat something before wherever the white gate sent them next.

“Any sign of Sam?” Toby asked as he got back to the home base.

Klara was overseeing a group of orphans doing an exercise obstacle course.

“Give me twenty more push-ups!” shouted Klara, before turning to Toby.

“No, and the trial is almost over,” she said with concern.

“You don’t think he left us here,” said Toby, eyes widening with terror. “Or that he could have died out there? I know he’s different and stronger and whatever, but what if he encountered those flock of death ravens who killed all those grown-ups!?”

“No,” said Klara, shaking her head. “He’ll definitely come back.”

She quickly turned her head and barked at the exercising orphans, “Did I say you could stop!? That’s another fifteen push-ups each!”

The orphans groaned and then continued to work.

With the orphans’ faces turned back to the ground and no longer facing her, Klara smiled at them full of maternal love.

She turned back to Toby. “Sam is coming back. If he died out there, I’ll go find his body and kill him again myself.”

Toby’s mind was overwhelmed with haunting images of Klara dragging Sam’s dead corpse around when something appeared in the distance.

A figure.

Clothing, torn and ragged, but significantly stronger looking, it was Sam.

Toby’s eyes widened with awe as he saw his friend had acquired new items: a silver necklace hanging from his neck, bracers on either arm, and a new ring on his hand.

Everyone cheered, including the kids who were exercising.

Klara whistled loudly. “That’s another ten push-ups for thinking you could stop!”

* * *

A few hours later, the group had packed up their camp and stood together, waiting for the first trial of the white gate to come to an end.

Sam looked at the group of orphans with pride.

They were stronger and more confident than they had been at the start of the week.

He could still see the fear in their eyes, the tremble in their legs, and the shivering of their teeth.

But it was a different kind of fear than it was before.

A softer kind of fear.

It was no longer a fear of utter hopelessness, but rather a fear shared among young warriors ready to face a challenging and dangerous situation.

Sam called that kind of fear, bravery.

The timer on the trial of the white gate ticked down. They were seconds away now.

“Don’t worry everyone,” said Sam. “We got thi—”

Blip.

In less than a second, the group was no longer standing in the ominous world of the Valley of the Ruins but had seemingly teleported somewhere else.

They were now standing in the front room of what appeared to be a fancy nobleman’s mansion.

Old gilded furniture and framed paintings of historical figures adorned the walls.

Before any of them had time to truly take in the strange new room, a message appeared in their prompt:

White Gate Trial -- Stage 2 - The Dungeon of Madness

Escape the Dungeon within 72 hours

A large high-pitched shriek went off and everyone turned in shock.

They all sighed with relief, though, when they realized the babyish yelp had emanated from none other than Toby, who was cowering in fear behind Klara.

“Will you let go of me,” muttered Klara, trying to shake the paranoiac off her.

“We’re in somewhere called the Dungeon of Madness,” Toby cried. “We’re all going to lose our minds and kill each other.”

“You’re right, I might actually kill you Tobes,” grumbled Klara. “You’re freaking everyone else out.”

Toby stood up straight and looked at everyone suspiciously. “Which one of you has already turned evil?” He then paused. “What if I’ve gone crazy and don’t even realize it?”

“Don’t worry—that already happened years ago,” laughed Sam.

A nervous chuckle spread across the group and Toby calmed down enough for Sam to explain to them what they had to do next.

“Just follow me,” said Sam. “We’ll get out of this creepy place soon enough.”

Sam led the way to the front of the room and entered a large dining room.

The room seemed fairly innocuous until the last orphan stepped into the room and the door slammed shut on its own accord.

Red glowing eyes formed in the furniture around them and soon enough they had teeth and long saliva drenched tongues.

“Ahhhhhhh!” screamed Toby. “We’re in a room full of mimics!”

“Weapons out everyone,” shouted Sam.

The black-haired boy whipped out his fiery flame sword and started swinging at the furniture.

He jumped around the room, utilizing acrobatic skills he’d learned in his past life, landing hits on each of the pieces of furniture.

His goal was to set the mimics ablaze.

He wanted the monsters to run around in a manic frenzy, too distracted to attack his friends.

After hitting them all with the flame sword, he went right at them.

If these monsters want to pretend they’re furniture, then let’s light ’em up!

He swung his sword, continuing to light as much of the room on fire as he could.

The mimics screamed in pain and horror as they were burnt alive.

The whole room was covered in flames.

Sam felt the heat push against his skin.

“We escaped the monsters only to get burnt alive,” said Toby, futilely yanking at the door they had come in through.

Sam ignored the worried faces and headed over to a nearby wall and stabbed his blade into it.

The sword went right through creating a plaster hole. Sam knocked it all the way, revealing a secret passage that led downstairs.

He looked back at the room ablaze and the fearful orphans.

“C’mon,” he said. “Follow me.”

33

Sam led the way down the secret spiral staircase.

It got colder, darker, and quieter the further they went down.

Sam held his flame sword above his head, using it as a torch to light the way forward.

He could hear the fearful breaths of the kids behind him as they descended deeper into the unknown.

Sam did not share this feeling, however. He’d gone down this passage in his previous life and so far it was as he remembered it.

At the bottom of the stairwell they stepped out into a sewer passageway.

The stench of excrement immediately filled their nostrils, making many of the orphans gag. The stink was so intense it almost felt palpable in the air as if the smell could assault your taste buds as well as your nostrils.

Sounds of water echoed across the underground tunnel from the gentle movement of the sewer water moving towards its destination to the drips of a leak hidden further within the depths of the labyrinthine passage.

Such noises were immediately displaced with the more alarming echo of something scurrying in the distance.

There was a distinctively inhuman nature to whatever was moving in the unknown distance of the sewer passageway.

The sounds got louder and louder until they could more than just hear the rapid footsteps but the heavy breathing of a wild carnivorous beast.

Emerging around the corner of the sewer passage the creature finally appeared.

It was a scraggly rat monster that was roughly the same size of a large dog.

The creature hissed as it got closer and leapt towards Sam, fangs and claws out.

“Arghh!” shouted Sam as he sliced his flame sword outward, cutting the rat monster in half.

The monster’s flesh and guts collapsed on the ground before disintegrating down to a mana stone.

Sam picked it up and started walking further down the sewer passage.

“I think I preferred the room full of homicidal furniture to this creepy place,” sighed Klara.

“I just hope we don’t run into any more of those rat things,” said Toby.

“Don’t worry,” said Sam and then he grinned somewhat menacingly. “We will.”

As Sam led the way through the murky sewers, he explained to his friends how to kill the rat creatures.

“They really aren’t hard to kill,” said Sam. “They have a very low defense overall and even less so at their weakest point, which is their stomach. They’re repulsive and frightening which is their greatest advantage, but if you can get over that, they really aren’t difficult to fight. Shh. Do you hear that? Some are coming right now, any volunteers—”

Klara took a step forward, clutching her mythril sword confidently.

“Klara,” Toby cried. “What are you doing? Are you going to get yourself killed? Those rat creatures breath has probably enough poison fumes to suffocate you to death. This is crazy—”

“Shut it, Toby,” said Klara, her nerves fraying as she waited for the rat creatures to get closer. “You’re going to have to learn how to fight these things as well. We can’t rely on Sam for everything.”

The scurrying steps of the rats got closer and closer, the sounds of their dirty claws scratching against the cobblestone sewer floor got louder as they approached.

“Remember, what I told you,” said Sam. “Let it leap at you and slice and they’ll be dead before they even touch you.”

Klara gulped.

The rat creatures turned the corner and came into view.

There were two of them. Their eyes glowing red in the darkness.

They rushed towards them.

Klara stood out waiting for them to come.

They galloped forward and then they leaped up to tear her face to bits.

“Now!” shouted Sam.

Klara grunted and slashed upwards, slitting one rat creature stomach open and then the next.

They quickly toppled onto the ground and disintegrated into mana stones and a few coins.

Sam gestured to Klara to pick them up. “Those are yours.”

Klara grinned and picked up her loot and pocketed them into her inventory.

“Trust me,” said Sam. “Right now you guys don’t care about those mana stones because you can’t train your magic affinity yet. But just you wait: soon we’ll be arguing over the portion of stones we each get from a dungeon gate run.”

The group of orphans nervously laughed.

Sam realized then it was the probably first time he’d spoken about life after the white gate. A future where they were all alive. It still seemed so distant, but they were making strides towards that, so he didn’t see why it couldn’t be possible.

But the other orphans’ nervousness was an important reminder: they could worry about the future later, right now they had to focus on the now.

They continued traveling through the sewers for a good couple of hours. Sam knew they were making good time in the second trial and wanted to focus on taking the opportunity to train himself as well as the other orphans.

Sam found a corridor where they were able to set up a bottleneck where only one or two rat creatures could come at them at a time. This coupled with some left over wolf meat as bait and they had a steady supply of monsters to slay.

By the end of the hours of training, all the orphans had fought against the rat creatures gaining some valuable in-person experience fighting terrifying monsters, but more importantly many of them raised a lot of their stats over 10.

It was incredible.

Even Sam had managed to raise his stats up by a few decimal points. He grinned as he looked at his stat profile once more.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 14.5

Agility: 14.2

Endurance: 14.1

Magic Affinity: 14.2

Sam grinned. He was happy with his progress. Once his stats hit 15, he’d only have another 16 more points needed to rank up to the next class tier of his blood knight ability.

Just thinking about hitting apprentice-tier was enough to get him excited; but he also knew that was a bit far off, and there were other gains that would probably be achieved first.

He was excited to see where he was with leveling his Pain Ring ability. He checked his status on that front in the special skill quest prompt of his profile.

Skill Quests

Pain Ring (Level 2) - Slay 2000 monsters using Pain Ring. 455/2000

He was almost 25% towards completing the quest and unlocking the next evolution of the Pain Ring ability. He was astounded by this. In his first timeline, it took him almost two years to unlock the skill, and yet now he was on course to unlocking it in a few more months.

Incredible, Sam thought.

In his first life, he had been an above average Traveler, but not one of the greats that people told stories about.

Sam couldn’t help but think he was well on his way to becoming one of those famous and mythic Travelers himself.

34

After another twenty fours of traveling and training through the sewers, they came to a large doorway protected by a massive rodent monster known as the rat mother.

The rat mother was gigantic. She lay rolled over with tons of tiny rat creatures feeding on her milk. They scurried and fought with each other for a taste of their mother’s nectar.

“Yuck,” said Toby.

“I agree,” said Klara, scrunching her nose.

“We take out this group of monsters and go through that gate,” said Sam, “and we’ll have made it to the safety zone of this stage.”

He looked back and saw the other orphans were all keeping their distance.

The feeding rat creatures and their mother were quite terrifying and revolting at the same time. It wasn’t even like the rats needed to eat, as monsters didn’t go hungry in the same way as most living beings from outside the dungeon gates did. The rat mother’s milk, however, was dense in mana and would help the rat creatures grow in strength and power. That was why the little rats fed from their mother with such unrestrained ardor.

Just witnessing the nature of things inside the white gate was enough to scar you for life.

“Alright, they still don’t know we’re here,” whispered Sam. “So let’s take advantage of that.”

Sam explained the plan to Klara and the girl quickly organized the group of orphans into a line with their bows nocked and ready to fire.

Sam materialized his flame sword and lit each of the orphans’ arrows on fire.

Then Sam gave the signal and the group of children launched their attack.

The flaming arrows flew from their hiding place and into the open area where the large group of rat creatures were huddled.

The arrows landed killing some baby rat creatures along with puncturing burning holes into the rat mother.

Their fur charred and some of them were covered in flames and were nothing but blackened corpses within seconds. A few seconds after that they were nothing but mana stones rolling on the ground.

The remaining rat creatures along with the monstrous rat mother scurried away in multiple directions.

The sneak attack sent chaos through the entire group of rat creatures, which was what Sam was hoping for when devising this plan.

The group of orphans charged into the room as the rat creatures scattered and began slicing them up with ease.

The greatest advantage the rat creature horde had over Sam and his group was their sheer numbers, but by creating chaos in their ranks, he was able to undo that handicap, putting them in a situation where Sam and his pals could quickly pick off the rat creatures one by one rather than being overwhelmed by them all at once.

The plan was working even better than Sam had expected. The damage from the flaming arrows was truly astounding and demonstrated that all of his training for both himself and the others was truly paying off.

In his first timeline, he remembered watching the silver-haired mercenary, who had killed all his friends, struggle to take down all those monsters on his own, and had to take great pains to deal devastating flesh wounds to the rat mother.

The fact that even the weakest members of Sam’s party were harming such a tough creature in the white gate just showed how magnificent their stat gains had been.

Even still, the fight wasn’t finished.

The group picked off many of the weaker rat creatures, but the rat mother was still alive and she was not happy.

The rat mother was hissing and swaying and hungering for the deaths of all of those who had caused the destruction of her offspring.

She lifted up her clawed hand. One hit from her arm would be enough to kill any of the orphans.

For what the rat creatures lacked in defense, they made up in strength and attack power. This was why it was crucial to always slay them quickly.

The rat mother’s claw was swinging downward right towards Toby.

The paranoid boy’s body became paralyzed and still with the fright at the descending claws of destruction coming towards him.

But something happened before the claws could sink their way into Toby’s flesh and kill the boy instantaneously.

Instead, as Toby’s eyes widened with the fear of death, the boy witnessed a fiery blade appear behind the rat mother and slice down at the shoulder, cleanly removing the attacking arm from the body that controlled it.

Blood spurted out from the open shoulder where the rat mother’s arm used to be.

Sam hadn’t had a chance yet to take any damage in this fight, so he wasn’t gaining much extra power from his Pain Ring ability, so he had to push with all of his strength and might both his mythril and flame sword into the stomach of the rat mother, to really puncture and deal a devastating blow.

He ripped the blades out and stabbed the creature again and it was with the second attack that life truly faded from the rat mother’s eyes and the horrifying creature disintegrated down into a mana stone.

Sam sighed and wiped sweat off his brow.

Klara turned to Toby, “Aren’t you happy we trained against the rat creatures now?”

“Since we’ve entered the white gate, I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that I’m going to have to rethink the metrics of how I measure happiness,” sighed Toby. “Mainly, that it seems happiness is achievable by a much lower bar than before. As in, yes Klara, I’m happy we trained and I’m happy for not being eaten alive. Though, whether the rat creatures breath venomous poison gas which is going to leave us all dying on the ground any minute now is yet to be seen.”

Klara rolled her eyes and turned to Sam.

“You said, the final room is just this way?” she asked.

“Yep,” said Sam. “Let’s gather our stuff and continue forward.”

They gathered all the loot drops and moved their way into the final chamber of the second trial.

The final room was mainly just a waiting area.

It was a large cavernous room with a small pond in the middle of it. The cavern had very high ceilings and with different entrances to tunnels and passages. All different routes from within the second trial that led to this room.

This was the safest room in the entire trial and they could wait out their time here until the trial ended and they were teleported to the third and final trial of the white gate.

They set up a base camp and quickly started a fire.

“Everyone rest up,” said Klara.

“Wow,” said Toby. “Even when you’re telling people to relax you’re barking orders.”

“Do you want me to make you do push-ups?” grinned Klara.

“I’ll focus on your first order of relaxing, ma’am,” said Toby.

“Damn straight,” she grinned.

As the others relaxed, Sam paced the waiting area and contemplated the next steps to his plan.

He was happy to see he’d gained thirty more kills to his Pain Ring skill quest after the fight with the rat mother and her brood. While he hadn’t gotten a chance to really take advantage of the ability’s actual benefits, it looked like, so long as he triggered it and was slaying monsters within the ability’s area of effect, he was able to claim the kill towards the class quest.

Sam then turned towards the pond in the center of the waiting room.

This whole time he’d been in a rush to get to this pond. Back in his first timeline, he had heard about an experience a different set of Travelers had faced while in the white gate, and it involved their being a secret boss hidden at the bottom of a well. Every white gate tutorial was slightly different, so he couldn’t necessarily guarantee that it would be the case here. But ever since hearing that fact in his first timeline, he always wondered about this specific room he had come to when he’d first gone through the white gate.

He had long questioned if there was an opportunity hidden in this random pond in the waiting area.

Had both him and the silver-haired mercenary missed out on an opportunity in their first pass-through?

He wasn’t going to let himself pass up the opportunity to find out in this second lifetime.

No way.

He dematerialized his shirt and walked up to the pond.

“Um, Sam,” said Toby. “What are you doing? I hope you’re not about to do what I think you’re doing. Please don’t tell me you’re going to—”

Before Toby could even finish his sentence, Sam had leaped into the air, diving forward into the depths of the pond.

35

The water was freezing cold and sent ripples of shock through Sam’s body within an instant of him hitting the water.

He fought through the shock and pain and just kept swimming deeper and deeper into the pond.

As he had expected, the pond went a lot deeper than it immediately seemed from the surface.

A small dark chasm lay at the center of the pond, inviting him to swim even further.

A strong athletic human being could survive for around two minutes under water. Given that his stats put him just above a strong athletic human being, Sam gave himself four minutes before he would suffocate to death.

He tried to keep track of the seconds as he swam deeper and deeper into the dark tunnel.

By the time he was at the two-minute mark, he began to get dismayed.

If he didn’t turn around now, he would be risking his life.

And so far he couldn’t seem to see anything that could be remotely advantageous to him.

No secret treasure chest.

No secret boss.

Nothing.

Should I start swimming back up? Sam wondered to himself.

Even though he knew he should, he felt compelled to keep swimming deeper.

There must be something here, he thought. The white gate wouldn’t generate these unknown depths for no reason whatsoever.

Sam reminded himself that this was his second go-round of the white gate, meaning he had to take every advantage and opportunity he could find in this place—and that meant swimming deeper, even if it was a risk.

As he swam deeper into the ice cold chasm, he materialized his mythril blade.

The glowing blue sword lit up the underwater tunnel and revealed a hole in the passage a few yards below him.

His eyes widened and he swam towards the hole.

He felt his vision going blurry. He felt his body beginning to demand oxygen.

He had thirty seconds left.

He swam through the hole and saw that the hole then led upward and he could see light.

Fifteen more seconds.

Sam swam upwards faster and faster.

Ten more seconds.

He was so close to the surface, but every time he thought he was going to break through, there was still another few yards to swim upward.

Five seconds.

Sam swam with all of his strength.

Three seconds.

Two seconds.

Sam’s head splashed out of the water and instantly gasped for air. He was hyperventilating. His whole body violently sucking in air.

He was in a strange tunnel and saw a patch of dry dirt and so he climbed out of the cold water and rolled on his back.

Holy crap, he thought, his whole body still gasping for air. He felt his lungs burn with severe pain from so much time spent underwater.

After catching his breath for a few more minutes, Sam got onto his feet and looked at the tunnel ahead of him.

He grinned.

He didn’t know what awaited him at the end of the tunnel, but he knew that—as he had predicted—there was something secret down here, and whatever it was, it was sure to bring him some great rewards.

The walls of the tunnel were coated with a strange green moss and dried coral.

I have to keep that in mind, Sam thought, looking around. If water filled in this tunnel, I’d be in a very difficult position to get back, especially if that remains the case the deeper I go down this passage.

Sam decided that was a problem he could worry about later and continued bravely down the path.

As he went down the long tunnel, he made sure to cultivate his mana core across his body. Just because he wasn’t fighting any monster, didn’t mean he should waste the opportunity to raise his stats.

Plus, cultivating one’s core while walking was a meditative and rewarding practice on its own, making the tedium of walking down a long tunnel that much more enjoyable.

He also was cultivating his mana so that he could keep his mana sense operating.

He had a feeling he was on the verge of discovering a secret boss much like the Death Raven Queen and so wanted to be on the lookout for that. Plus, keeping his mana sense on protected him from any nasty and dangerous surprises.

After twenty minutes of walking down the strange tunnel, his head throbbed with pain and Sam collapsed on the ground.

A huge migraine pounded against his forehead.

His eyes twitched as he realized what was happening.

His mana sense had detected something in the distance. Something with a significantly higher amount of mana than him that it literally caused him pain to have his senses interact with it.

Holy crap, Sam thought, gasping from the shock at the piercing mind attack he’d just experienced.

Getting his bearings, Sam started moving towards the powerful presence.

Looks like I found the secret boss.

36

Eventually, the strange underground tunnel opened into a large circular chamber.

As soon as Sam was even a few yards from entering the circular room, a figure from inside spoke with a sinister voice: “Who dares to disturb my presence!?”

The figure who spoke was crouching down, curled in a ball in the center of the room.

Just hearing the creature speak was enough to put Sam on edge. He was already a bit nervous about taking this monster on from the sheer level of mana power it was exhibiting. The fact that it talked meant it was a far more intelligent boss monster than anything he’d faced so far in this second timeline.

Also, any opportunity for a sneak attack was out the window. Even before the creature spoke, it must have recognized Sam’s presence with its own mana sense.

Sam began mentally preparing himself for a truly challenging battle.

The creature began to unpeel itself from its crouched position, revealing what an utterly strange monstrosity it really was.

The secret boss monster had an almost humanoid shape with two legs and two arms, but beyond that it was inhuman looking. From the chest up to its head, it was all composed of bulbous warts that Sam assumed was a strange fungi-like substance.

The most terrifying thing about the creature, though, was its hands. The fingers stretched out into long sharp deadly claws that had a metallic-like texture to them.

Upon seeing those claws, there was no doubt in Sam’s mind that whatever the powerful substance those claws were made of would cut deeply and leave a mark.

Also—the claws shone a light on whom exactly this monster was. Sam had read about the creature in his extensive research in his first timeline.

This monster was known as the Rakeling.

“It’s been a long time since someone has visited me down here,” said the Rakeling. “I’m going to enjoy toying with you.”

Sam cracked his neck and then rushed into battle. He had no time for trash-talk.

As he charged towards the Rakeling, he triggered Pain Ring. A glowing red circle shot out and took over most of the boss room’s chamber.

Under normal circumstances, the area of effect of his ability shouldn’t be that big, but thanks to the help of bracers of expansion, he was able to do so.

Next, he materialized both his mythril sword and flame sword in each of his hands.

He jumped to deal a spinning attack towards the Rakeling, hitting it with his mythril sword first and following up as he spun with his flame sword.

The Rakeling responded by raising its long steel claws, blocking Sam’s attack with ease.

Sam quickly digested the information he’d gathered from the opening attack: the claws are the most powerful and defensive part of the boss monster’s body. Defeating him will require getting around the monster’s blocks and landing a powerful blow on its body.

The Rakeling wasted no time coming in with a counter attack, swiping in one set of claws with the other arm already in the wings to come in for a second attack.

The Rakeling clearly wanted to thrash Sam into shredded bits of flesh.

Sam blocked the first attack with his mythril sword and twisted himself in such a way that the Rakeling’s second attack landed, but only just grazed the side of his body.

Even with his Ring of Numbing, the attack burned and seared into Sam’s flesh.

“Foolish boy,” hissed the Rakeling. “Can’t even properly defend yourself from my attacks!”

Sam kept himself from grinning.

The Rakeling was the true fool. Not only was the monster arrogant enough, but it was happy to say out loud how unaware it was of Sam’s overarching strategy.

Perfect, Sam thought.

The two opponents continued to trade blows.

Sam made sure to not let every attack go through so the Rakeling wouldn’t catch onto his strategy.

With the help of his necklace of healing he could recover from the Rakeling’s powerful attacks before taking any more significant damage.

Still, as they traded blows back and forth, Sam accumulated damage which the Pain Ring ability then converted into new strength and power.

Sam was even beginning to sense that his attacks were gaining so much strength it was even hurting the powerful claws of the Rakeling.

As soon as that happened, he knew it was time to begin the final stage of the battle.

Sam jumped backwards, retreating from the back-to-back trading of the blows with the secret boss monster.

The Rakeling snickered. “You coward! Are you finally realizing you can’t defeat me? I can sense you’re nothing but a novice-tier weakling. I’ve fought stronger Travelers than you before. Just face it. There’s no way you can destroy me. The numbers just aren’t in your favor.”

Sam let the arrogant boss monster prattle on.

Perhaps it’s all an intimidation tactic on its part, Sam wondered.

Either way, he readied himself to finish the Rakeling.

First, he dematerialized both his swords into his inventory.

Then, Sam rushed the boss monster with only his bare fists.

“You truly are the biggest fool,” said the Rakeling. “You’re going to take me on with just your fists?”

As Sam ran towards him, he materialized his two copper daggers that he’d looted off the goblins during his early training in the standard blue dungeon gate.

He then whipped them both at the Rakeling.

Sam was immediately putting the boss monster into a difficult position.

He either blocked the incoming projectiles, but left himself open for another attack with Sam’s swords.

Or, he took a minor hit from the incoming copper daggers.

Either way, Sam had put the Rakeling in a lose-lose situation.

“Who’s the fool now?” shouted Sam, as he rushed forward materializing, both his blades.

The Rakeling squirmed and ultimately twisted its body to take the blow from the copper daggers with its shoulder, keeping its claws ready to block Sam’s incoming sword strikes.

Except something happened that the Rakeling wasn’t expecting.

The lousy copper daggers dug deep into its flesh and cracked its bones.

“Arghhhh!”

The Rakeling was suddenly screaming and overcome with pain.

“How did the weakest crummiest of weapons from a little puny pipsqueak like you, do this!?”

Sam didn’t waste time answering the monster’s question, but the answer was obvious in his head.

While they were trading blows, Sam was accumulating more and more power with his Pain Ring ability to the point that even with his weakest weapons, he would be able to deal significant damage to the Rakeling.

Someone with Sam’s base stats shouldn’t be able to defeat a monster of the Rakeling’s power. The creature was at least a tier higher than him in terms of raw base stats and power, but that was the sheer beauty of an ability like Pain Ring. It could push the user to heights of power beyond his normal tier limit, meaning he could best foes who underestimated him.

Which clearly the Rakeling had.

As it squirmed in pain from the devastating attack from the copper daggers, it left itself wide open.

With Sam’s swords on either side of him, he sliced each of his powerful blades in the opposite direction, cutting the Rakeling’s upper half of its body down from its legs.

The Rakeling screamed in pain, no longer able to maneuver itself.

Sam ran around it and then plunged his two swords into its undefended back.

Then to finish it off, Sam sliced his flame sword right across the weird bulbous mass of warts the Rakeling called a head, cutting it off cleanly from the neck.

37

Sam caught his breath as the Rakeling’s fallen corpse disintegrated into a puddle of nothing.

His heart was pounding and adrenaline was surging all through his body.

He was relieved the battle was over.

Sam was only one misstep away from dying. The power of the Rakeling’s claws was fearsome and he only had to trip or stumble and those claws could have obliterated him and killed him faster than his necklace of healing could regenerate.

Luckily for Sam, the monster’s own hubris led him to be defeated. Though, of course, Sam did have a hand in manipulating the monster to think he was so much more powerful than he truly was.

Sam knew that great Travelers were not great because they were lucky, but rather, they were lucky because they were great. Only those who know how to create fortuitous circumstances for themselves can ever become masters of luck and truly acquire the title of greatness.

Sam’s breath was finally steadying when a new prompt appeared in his retina.

Secret Quest Completed! Slay the Rakeling!

Reward: Soul Bound Treasure Chest

Suddenly, out of thin air appeared a richly engraved and beautiful treasure chest.

Sam’s eyes widened with excitement.

The chest was different from the treasure chest that appeared after he had slayed the Death Raven Queen. It was a soul-bound chest, meaning the item inside would be determined by whoever opened it.

If Klara opened the chest, the item would be different. As would be the case, if Toby opened the chest as well.

Scholars of the dungeon gate system theorized that soul-bound chests were created as an incentive for Travelers to fight and slay monsters that might not necessarily drop the kind of loot one might hope to find. Soul-bound chests allowed for a bit of randomness and good fortune to be had no matter the type of monster a Traveler slayed.

It also made the dynamics of loot stealing more complex. If someone other than Sam were to open the newly appeared chest, they might not be given as great a reward as they wouldn’t have done anything to contribute to the slaying of the Rakeling. So, if you were hoping to steal the loot of another Traveler, it would be best to let them open the soul-bound chest first before doing so.

Of course, Sam recalled from his first timeline a whole group of Travelers dying from not escaping a dungeon after killing the boss in time due to a botched loot-steal and one Traveler refusing to open their soul-bound chest.

Luckily for me it’s just me and the chest, Sam grinned.

He approached the large magnificent looking treasure chest. He unclasped the clips and pushed the top of the treasure chest open.

He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, and stared down with awe at the reward he had been given for defeating the Rakeling.

It was a sword made of finely finished dark steel. The blade had ribbed edges that looked like the frightening teeth of a shark.

Sam picked the sword up from the hilt with reverence and read the weapon’s prompt in his retina screen.

Berzerker sword (Super Rare) (Tier: Adept)

Special ability: Can regularly send enemies when hit into an unthinking hostile frenzy.

Sam was totally blown away by the sword. This was the kind of weapon wielded by some of the best Travelers he knew in his previous lifetime. This was an incredible blade.

For Sam to acquire something like this at his tier was really a testament to how much his preparation, planning, and training had allowed him to leverage the odds in his favor.

Other Travelers would be aghast if they saw him with this sword. They would think at first that Sam had killed the true owner of the blade—of course, that would quickly prove itself to not make any sense whatsoever. There was no way a novice-tier Traveler would ever be able to slay a Traveler who wielded a blade as magnificent and deadly as the berzerker sword.

It would be truly a puzzling, if not awe-inspiring, sight.

But as Sam held the powerful blade in his grip, he didn’t care what people thought of him.

He gave the blade a couple of swings and he felt the intensity of the way the blade cut through the air. He could feel the sharpness, the speed. It was on a far superior level to his mythril blade and flame sword.

Sam grinned and dematerialized the berzerker sword into his inventory.

He started backtracking through the tunnel going through the route he had taken.

He couldn’t help but hope he was getting closer to the kind of Traveler that the goddess who had sent him back in time believed he could become.

38

Klara kept her hands on her hips and eyed the orphans like a hawk.

She had them all doing chores, cleaning all their camping equipment and supplies.

“No one stops until all of our stuff has a sparkle,” she yelled.

“But we don’t even have proper soap and cleaning supplies,” moaned Toby.

“Well then, you better scrub harder,” said Klara with intense apathy.

“We’re probably endangering ourselves by using this pond water. It’s probably infected with tons of diseases.”

“Ah, you see, Tobes,” said Klara, suddenly gleefully. “You’re confusing me with someone who cares. Now, back to work!”

“She truly is a beautiful power-hungry demoness,” Toby muttered to himself.

Klara didn’t quite catch what he had said and asked, “What was that?”

Toby’s shoulders jumped and his voice squeaked. “Nothing! I didn’t say anything. Definitely nothing about you.”

Klara smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

Klara oversaw the working orphans and when they weren’t looking, hid her grin to herself. When they first arrived at the camp, she had let the orphans slack off as she figured everyone needed a break; but soon after, one by one they either began to cry or have panic attacks or freak out. All for perfectly understandable reasons, no doubt. They were living inside the white gate where death lingered around every corner. That was enough reason to cry—but also in its own strange way, to not cry. They had to stay level-headed if they were going to survive in here.

And so after the third orphan started crying, Klara came to the conclusion, that having a relaxing break was the exact opposite of what everyone needed.

What all the kids needed was a distraction and Klara could think of no better distraction than chores.

As she oversaw the kids working, she couldn’t help but look at the pond.

Sam, she thought. Where are you? When are you coming back?

He had been gone for quite a while.

What happens if he wasn’t back in this waiting area when the trial ended?

She checked the timer and saw there was only an hour or so left until they all moved on to the third and final trial of the white gate.

She really didn’t want to go forward without the guy who had kept them all alive so far.

She eyed the time and thought to herself: C’mon, Sam. Get back to us soon.

* * *

Sam exited the secret boss chamber, formerly occupied by the Rakeling, and back into the tunnel from which he came.

Right as he stepped back into the tunnel, the whole underground began to shake.

I do not like that, Sam thought.

He didn’t want to be buried alive underground. Then he’d be truly screwed.

He began to notice water rising at his feet.

Oh man—that’s not good either.

Sam began sprinting as hard as he could down the passage.

His heart pounded against his chest. His throat burned.

He sent mana into his feet to give them extra strength and power with each push off the ground.

He was halfway back to the tunnel’s entrance when the water reached as high as his upper chest.

Sam swam forward in the tunnel, keeping his head above water, so he could keep breathing for as long as possible.

His biggest concern was being fully submerged for far longer than he had breathing capacity.

He had barely survived his initial underwater descent. How could he survive that same journey with significantly extra distance attached?

I didn’t defeat the Rakeling and acquire the berzerker sword just do die before getting to ever use it, he grumbled to himself.

He kept swimming forward, until eventually the water rose so high in the tunnel, he had to take his last breath before committing to the long journey back to the surface.

* * *

Klara still had the kids cleaning the camp equipment, though she noticed even their diligence and fear of her as orphan leader was beginning to collapse.

All of them were making furtive glances to the center of the pond where Sam had disappeared hours ago.

Toby got up from cleaning their tent poles and cautiously approached Klara.

He looked like he had something he wanted to say, but he was keeping a very cautious distance from her.

“Why are you acting weird?” Klara grumbled.

“If I come closer, you promise not to yell or smack me in any way,” said Toby.

“When have I ever done that?”

“You’re right,” said Toby. “You are the epitome of calm and tranquility

—”

“Alright, enough,” said Klara. “Get over here.”

Toby moseyed over and spoke quietly so the other kids couldn’t hear.

“What are we going to do about the fact that Sam isn’t here?” Toby said.

Klara shuddered. It was the thought on all of their minds. She had been avoiding saying it out loud. As if declaring the situation vocally would only make the problem worse.

“If he’s not here, we go on without him,” said Klara. “What else is there to be done?”

Toby let out a long sigh. “I guess you’re right. I mean our stats are over ten. We have pretty good equipment. Maybe we can actually survive.”

Toby said this loud enough so that the other kids could hear.

Klara was impressed. He was proving himself to be a better leader than she had ever given him credit for.

“You really believe that?” asked Klara.

She noticed Toby’s legs trembling and the large gulp he took before he spoke—all of which revealed his real feelings. Nevertheless, the boy said, “Yes. Yes I do.”

With only minutes left before the second trial ended, Klara gave new orders to all the orphans to start packing everything up.

Once finished they would form a line of pairs and stand at attention.

Klara could see the fear on their faces. They had all been scared this entire time in the white gate, but she could see the sense of hopelessness and dread returning.

There was no way they would survive the third trial with that attitude.

“We’re approaching the third trial,” said Klara. “We’ve made it this far and I believe we’ll make it to the very end. We have to stay focused and work together. I know we can—”

At that very moment, a splash echoed behind her.

Thank the goddess, Klara sighed to herself.

She already knew who was behind her before she turned around as she could see the relief and happiness on all the orphans’ faces.

She looked over her shoulder and there was Sam pulling himself out from the water and back onto dry ground.

As the black-haired boy with sharp red eyes breathed heavily in and out, he couldn’t help but smile between breaths.

“Are you guys going somewhere without me?”

39

Sam didn’t immediately stand up when he emerged from the pond.

He felt his lungs burning. His whole body ached from the treacherous underwater swim he’d just gone through.

He was just so happy to be out of the water and breathing on dry land again.

Before he could say anything beyond the first few words he’d said to the group, Toby was suddenly crouching down in front of him, tears in his eyes, clasping him in a tight hug.

“Thank the goddess, you’re alive.”

“Tobes,” Sam said, patting his friend on the back. “It’s good to see you too.”

Toby let go and wiped his eyes.

“I was trying to keep a brave face and act all stoic and Sam-like, you know? But man it was so hard. I just had so many different variables running through my head, all of which leading to all of our gruesome deaths and I was trying to be all like a bad-boy and cool like you, Sam, but holy moly, is it hard. I have newfound respect for you, Sam. Not that I didn’t have plenty of it before, but now I have even more. How do you do it without your brain exploding?”

Sam laughed.

It was refreshing to be back in Toby’s company.

“How about we get into it at another time?” Sam smiled.

He then stood up and looked over his pals.

Klara smiled at him as did all the other kids.

“I’d just like to point out,” said Klara, “that we’re all happy to see you. I know it must feel a bit underwhelming after your bromantic reunion with Tobes.”

Sam chuckled. “I’m happy to see all of you.”

After the fight with the Rakeling and the horrific underwater race back to the surface, all Sam wanted to do was sit around and chat with his friends, but they didn’t have a lot of time.

Standing in the waiting area, they would be teleported to the final stage of the trial any minute now.

“Alright,” said Sam. “Any minute now, we will be sent to the third and final trial location of the white gate. Before that happens, I just want to say I’m proud of each and every one of you. I’m proud of you for getting this far, for getting as powerful as you’ve all become. Weaker adventurers than us have survived the white gate—though we shouldn’t forget that many stronger than us have also died in here too. As you’ve come to know, the white gate is not a forgiving place. Nevertheless, we should all be proud of how far we’ve come and I believe we can make it to the very end.”

The fear and hopelessness had completely disappeared from all his companions’ faces.

Their eyes were tear-stricken with inspiration and steely determination.

“We couldn’t have done this without you, Sam,” said Klara.

Then each and everyone of the kids said their own individual thanks to Sam.

“I thought we were all gonna die when those ravens showed up,” said one little girl. “But then you took us to safety.”

“I never thought I’d be able to actually wield a sword,” said another boy. “I didn’t think I had a chance to become a hero, someone like you, Sam. But seeing you, I think, maybe I can.”

One by one, the thanks and gratitude kept pouring in.

“Thanks again, Sam,” said Klara.

“Yeah, Sam, thank you,” said Toby.

Sam didn’t know what to say.

He wiped away the tears forming in his eyes.

We haven’t even survived the final trial yet, you dummies, he thought quietly to himself.

Even still, he couldn’t help but feel overjoyed.

He was so happy that unlike in his first life, he didn’t have to live through the horrors of the white gate without his best friends at his side.

40

The timer for the second trial in the white gate finally reached zero and instantaneously Sam and the group of orphans disappeared from the waiting room.

They immediately reappeared on the cliff face of a new treacherous location.

“Hmm, it’s not as I expected,” said Klara.

“What?” said Sam.

This was then followed by a massive shrill shriek.

“There it is,” grinned Klara, looking at the screaming and panicked Toby.

All the kids around them looked frightened and Sam couldn’t blame them.

They had teleported right onto a narrow cliff which they could easily fall off of with one wrong step. A fact that was made worse by the heavy winds surrounding the area.

The clouds were thick and stormy with thunder roaring far in the distance.

At the bottom of the cliff, which looked awfully far away, were crashing waves.

In the opposite direction of the cliff face was a large castle keep.

There really was only one direction the trial was pointing them in.

As Sam took a step towards the castle, a message appeared in his retina.

White Gate Trial -- Stage 3 -- The Boss Palace

Fight your way to the boss and escape within 24 hours

“Make sure to watch your step and keep your balance,” said Sam, leading the way.

The walkway towards the castle was terrifyingly narrow. It wasn’t impossible, but it required focus and nerves of steel.

“Keep your arms out in front of you and walk with determination,” said Sam. “Hesitation will lead you to wobble.”

Sam had it slightly easier than the others in terms of walking the narrow path as he could send mana to his feet, which grounded them and added an extra bit of weight there.

Sending mana to the soles of his feet helped him stay balanced and focused.

Even still, if he took a moment to look down, his stomach lurched.

The sheer uncomfortableness of the narrow passage was enough to send anyone off balance.

Sam gulped and stayed focused on moving forward.

If he maintained his pace and confidence that would boost morale and keep everyone else behind him focused as well.

After a few more minutes of walking on the edge of death, the passage thankfully opened up to a large outdoor staircase that led to the entrance of the haunted castle that loomed over them in the distance.

As they moved up the staircase, Sam explained to the others what awaited them inside.

“It comes down to the basic three things you might encounter in a dungeon gate,” said Sam. “Monsters. Traps. Danger.”

None of the orphans gasped at that, they just nodded their heads taking in the facts. Not even Toby made a fuss. It was proof of how much they’d grown while inside the white gate.

Sam couldn’t believe they were on the final stretch of surviving the white gate.

He knew he had survived once before, but in his first timeline he had only managed to stay alive by the silver-haired mercenary mowing down everything that lay in front of him. So not only had he survived the first two trials with his own strength and fighting ability, but he also had protected a group of very new and initially quite reluctant fighters.

I’ve got us this far, Sam thought. I know I can get us to the end.

Even though, he was telling himself that, he knew that as close as they were to the end, they still had quite a lot of dangers they still needed to survive.

They arrived at the front entrance of the keep and Sam opened the doors wide.

As soon as they stepped inside, as Sam had expected, multiple vicious howls wailed and echoed throughout the castle.

“Here they come,” said Sam, materializing his large and fearsome berzerker sword.

Running toward them were three violent hounds. They were no normal hounds, however. They were bloodhounds. Vicious demonic dogs composed of deep red crimson flesh. Their teeth were sharp and could easily rip through flesh and bone.

Sam triggered Pain Ring and rushed at the two attacking hounds.

He rushed towards them and swung his sword, trying to make sure he hit all three at least once with his new powerful blade.

The blade cut through the demonic dogs’ flesh, spurting out blood, and, just as his special ability promised, their faces twitched and they lost control of themselves and rushed towards Sam with an even greater uncontrollable frenzy.

The dogs were no longer thinking clearly and left themselves open easily for a counterattack and within seconds, they were all sliced in half, and disintegrating into mana stones and coins.

Sam grinned down at his new berzerker sword. He could feel the power and speed when slicing it through the air, and even more so when chopping the demon dogs to bits.

Plus, the special ability came in handy in so many ways. One, it worked as a defensive and crowd control mechanism to keep violent monsters from attacking his weaker allies. Two, it also had a great offensive component in that the frenzied monster lost mental acuity and control, leaving it more vulnerable to easier and more powerful strikes.

He picked up the mana stones and coins before turning around and seeing an awkward look on all of his allies’ faces.

“What?” asked Sam, looking over his shoulder to where he’d just been focusing on, thinking they were being attacked a second time.

No one was there.

Then, he realized they were looking at him with a weird expression.

“Uh, Sam, where the heck did you get that?” said Klara. “It looks like the kind of sword that would be wielded by a demon?”

Sam smiled and nodded his head. They didn’t have time to properly catch up when he got back from the secret boss’ lair. So, this was the first time they were seeing his epic and fearsome new weapon he’d acquired after defeating the Rakeling.

He looked down at it and smiled. Then back up at Klara.

“What you might call an “evil person’s sword”, I would refer to as, a ‘devastatingly cool blade.’”

Toby turned to Klara and said, “Sometimes I wonder who’s the real monster in this place: the things we’re fighting, or Sam himself.”

41

Sam led the group through the large castle, slowly leading them in the direction of the great hall at the very back of the building.

That was where the final boss chamber of the white gate lay. The final monstrosity they would have to fight until they could return home to Resfall and escape this horrible place.

“We better hurry and get this over with,” said Toby. “The clock is ticking ever downward.”

Right as Toby said that, Sam spun on his feet and turned around to face them all. He had a smirk on his face.

“I don’t like that face,” said Toby. “I 100% do not like that face. That face is the face of a person about to tell me I’ll have to fight horrific rat creatures over and over for the next little bit, isn’t it?”

Sam grinned. “Don’t worry, Tobes. There are no rat creatures in here, but yes, we do need to train a bit more before we face the final boss.”

Klara crossed her arms. “You’ve gotten us this far, Sam, so if you say we should do this, I’ll do it. But are you not worried about the timer at all?”

Sam shook his head. “The time pressure in this trial is nothing but a red herring. The trial wants you to focus on ploughing through and getting to the end. It ignores that there’s some great training opportunities here. The monsters drop very potent mana stones amongst other things. So shall we get started on our training?”

They were in a bit of a catch-22: fight more scary monsters or go fight one big horrific monster. Sam didn’t mind, but he could see that the kids were beginning to hunger for home and escaping the white gate.

Just a little longer you guys, Sam thought. I promise.

Sam led them to their training grounds, which was a large cathedral-like building where new monsters regularly spawned and materialized, giving the group constant monsters to fight and train against.

Sam walked the group through the best ways to slay bloodhounds like the ones they’d seen when they had first entered the castle. Along with ghoul bats and the occasional spiderling.

For the next few hours, the group tagged in and out, taking turns slaying the monsters that showed up in the room.

Sam was amazed at how easily the berzerker sword ripped through the creatures flesh; but it wasn’t all down to the sword either. His stats were far ahead of what they were at this point in time than in his previous timeline and he also brought all of his swordsmanship experience from his first life back with him as well.

After a few hours, Sam led them away from the training grounds, and gave them an hour to rest before the final boss battle.

During that time, Sam sat down and focused on draining all the mana stones he’d collected over the course of the white gate.

He took them out one by one and focused on pulling the mana out of them and into his mana core. It was a soothing and meditative practice. Sam always enjoyed draining mana stones even in his previous life. There was something wondrous and calming about mingling the energy from the outside world and bringing it into your own body and then harnessing it to improve yourself and make you stronger.

He’d consumed more than half of his mana stones by the time the hour of rest was up and he felt his core burning and glowing with a greater light inside of him than ever before.

He could sense that he’d managed to raise his magic affinity stat to 21 through the draining of all the mana stones.

In doing so he’d pushed his magic affinity through the first threshold of novice-tier stage one, and into novice-tier stage two.

He felt the difference in the way his core throbbed inside him with more power and zeal. The biggest difference was his own enhanced mana sense and control. He could now sense the mana of monsters further away than he could before. Even more critically, though, at novice-tier stage two, he could wax and wane the zeal with which his own mana core throbbed. He could push himself and make his core throb with intense power or he could pull it back and make it seem weaker than it truly was.

This was a crucial development in his magic affinity as he could now conceal his mana presence from enemies if he needed to.

It wouldn’t make a huge difference while they were still in the white gate, but it was a necessary stealth and diplomatic power when dealing with enemies in the outside world.

Still, Sam was getting ahead of himself. They still needed to defeat the boss monster at the end and that was definitely not going to be a cakewalk.

Sam took a moment to review his stats from their most recent training one last time before he started properly preparing everyone for the final battle in the white gate.

He opened up his profile and took in his stats.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: (open slot available)

Strength: 16.1

Agility: 15.9

Endurance: 15.8

Magic Affinity: 21.1

Sam grinned at all his gains. If he survived the rest of the trial, he would be returning to Resfall close to the physical peak of what a non-Traveler human could ever hope to achieve in terms of strength, muscle, and overall body health.

The last thing he looked at was the state of his Pain Ring skill quest.

Skill Quests

Pain Ring (Level 2) - Slay 2000 monsters using Pain Ring. 533/2000

They were modest gains, but Sam was just pleased to see the skill ticking along. He looked forward to unlocking the ability’s evolution.

But it wasn’t necessary for now.

Having gone over his stats, Sam stood up and addressed the orphans.

“Alright, the final battle of the white gate awaits,” said Sam.

He then went into detail about the final boss which was an elemental golem. It was a fearsomely powerful creature that alternated between different elements and would be able to obliterate most of them with a single punch.

“We’re lucky, though,” Sam explained. “With the help of my flame sword, all we’ll need to do is to survive and dodge the monster until it goes into ice mode and then I can attack it, using its current elemental weakness.”

He then went through instructions for everyone else and then finally began leading them through the castle to the final boss room of the white gate.

Sam kept his berzerker sword at the ready to take on any monsters that came up on their way.

There were only a few and Sam could always detect them with his mana sense. Furthermore, his new sword and higher strength stat meant he was able to slice the monsters down with absolute ease.

The gates were designed to be extremely difficult for non-Travelers with stats normally under ten. Sam’s preparation and extra class allowed him to use that to full advantage and unlock more items and equipment that allowed him to gain even more power.

Sam had truly exceeded the difficulty level of the nightmarish world of the white gate—which was truly saying something.

Sam stopped walking as they approached a long staircase that led down to a large room.

The final boss chamber of the white gate.

If they survived the fight with the horrible creature inside—the elemental golem—they’ll have successfully made it through the trials of the white gate.

“Alright you guys,” said Sam. “There’s the boss room. Are we ready?”

Everyone shouted, “Let’s do this,” behind him.

“Good,” said Sam.

He led the group down to the boss room.

“Remember, do just as we planned,” said Sam.

As soon as they stepped into the boss chamber, a pink energy gate formed around the stairwell from which they came, blocking them from retreating.

Strange, Sam thought. That didn’t happen in my first timeline.

Then the floor at their feet began to rumble.

“Where’s the elemental golem?” asked Toby.

This isn’t how it happened last time, Sam thought, looking around with concern.

Sam’s mana sense told him something huge and powerful was coming towards them from underground.

It was definitely not the elemental golem.

It was clearly something much more deadly and powerful.

The unexpected had happened in the final room of the white gate.

Something Sam hadn’t prepared for.

The timeline had changed.

42

Sam’s heart pounded in his chest.

The entire floor of the boss chamber rumbled and shook.

He looked over his shoulder to the pink energy shield blocking the way they came in.

There was no escape for them.

They would have to fight whatever new boss the white gate had sent their way.

“Sam, what’s happening!?” said Klara.

The girl was holding the younger orphans back, trying to shield them from whatever unknown danger was about to emerge upon them.

“Everyone stay back,” said Sam. “We’re no longer fighting the elemental golem. We’re going to have to make a new strategy on the fly once we know what we’re actually facing. Right now, just be careful of where you stand, the monster is emerging from the floor below.”

Sweat formed on Sam’s brow.

How the heck did this happen!?

The white gate must have changed or altered the boss of this room due to the difference in events that conspired from Sam’s previous lifetime.

The destruction of the Death Raven Queen, the Rakeling, even the survival of all of them was a change from the previous timeline and clearly the dungeon had altered the circumstances to match those changes.

And, if the dungeon had altered things, it could only mean one thing.

The dungeon had raised the difficulty level on the final boss.

Crap, Sam thought.

Sam’s mana sense began to overwhelm him. The boss monster was getting close.

A second later, a gigantic worm with sharp bones all over its body broke through the floor and suddenly loomed over Sam and his group of friends.

Sam recognized the monster from his extensive research of dungeon bestiaries in his first timeline.

It was none other than a Bone Fiend.

It was a terrifying and monstrous worm with outer flesh composed of sharp bones from its defeated enemies. Its insides were an assembly line of sharp teeth that could easily rip an unranked Traveler with low endurance.

Sam materialized his berzerker sword.

The time for being surprised was over.

If he wanted to survive and save his friends, he had to get to work.

“Focus everyone. We’ve lost our original method of victory, but the same principals apply!”

Sam rushed forward towards the looming monster, triggering Pain Ring as he did so.

The ring of red energy shot out from his person and encompassed a large portion of the boss chamber.

He then rushed to the Bone Fiend’s side and slashed his berzerker sword at the monster.

The creature flinched and Sam managed to make a minor cut with his sword attack, but it was fairly pitiful.

The creature was clearly a tier above them in terms of power.

If Sam hoped to finish the monster off, he was going to have to take some significant damage to enhance his overall attack power.

He slashed the creature again with his berzerker sword and started to run rings around the Bone Fiend as it dove to attack him.

The berzerker sword’s special ability wasn’t a guarantee. Sam reckoned it was even less of a guarantee against a boss monster. He wanted to make sure he really drew the Bone Fiend’s ire and attention onto himself and away from his friends before he started purposefully taking damage from it.

Sam ran circles around the bone fiend, slashing it again and again.

He hadn’t planned on using his new novice-tier stage 2 mana manipulation, but it proved to be amazingly useful in confusing the Bone Fiend.

One second he was moving one way and he’d flare his mana core, only to diminish it as he jumped back, all while the Bone Fiend would already be smashing its destructive mouth to the wrong spot.

After a few more slashes and dodges, Sam felt comfortable that the Bone Fiend was solely focused on him and he started allowing more hits to go through.

He let the bone pincers stab at his stomach, back, then rib cage.

Even with his Ring of Numbing, the pain was intense. Sam winced as he took in the harmful attacks and tried to then calm himself from the shock, knowing the necklace of regeneration would soothe the pain relatively quickly.

Even still, it was horrifically intense pain. The Bone Fiend was a nightmarish and powerful boss monster.

Sam didn’t want to imagine what the blows would have felt like if he didn’t have the Ring of Numbing. If the pain was this bad, it would have been debilitating without the rare accessory.

As he purposely took the blows from the awful creature, he every so often made sure to take a swing at it with his berzerker sword.

Each time he tested it and accumulated more damage towards his power output, he could feel his blade slicing deeper and deeper into the Bone Fiend’s flesh.

Sam calculated it would only have to be another few minutes of taking damage before his increased power within the Pain Ring would push him into a position to finish the boss monster off.

And Sam was totally fine with that, so long as he kept his companions out of harm’s way, which so far he’d managed to do successfully.

It was at that moment, however, that the ground of the boss chamber began to shake once more.

Oh no, Sam thought. What’s about to happen now!?

An explosion of rocks erupted on the opposite side of the chamber from where Sam was fighting the Bone Fiend.

Two more bone protruding tentacles shot out from the ground and loomed over the boss chamber.

The two new tentacles whipped their ferocious mouths right in the direction of Klara and Toby.

43

Sam’s eyes widened with terror.

He suddenly raised his sword to block the incoming attack from the Bone Fiend.

Klara! Sam’s heart ached with concern. Toby!

He hadn’t fought this hard to see his friends die this close to the end of the white gate.

He kicked the Bone Fiend back before turning around and rushing across the boss chamber to save his friends.

As soon as he got in range, Sam wasted no time.

He leaped in the air and swung his berzerker sword with all of his might.

The accumulated power from all the damage he’d taken so far within the Pain Ring pulsed and throbbed throughout his body. He felt his muscles engorging and swelling with a level of power he hadn’t felt before. That plus a heightened amount of rage and passion led him to swinging his blade with extreme might.

Sam’s sword swing cut through the tentacles like butter.

The powerful mini-arm of the Bone Fiend squirmed and writhed in pain from losing a portion of itself.

Sam needed more insurance than that and sliced it a good four more times until the tentacle was nothing but little bits of wobbling flesh on the ground of the boss chamber.

The tentacles were clearly weaker than the Bone Fiend’s main form at the center of the room. As life drained from the little cut-up pieces of tentacles, one piece of flesh managed to spit out a bit of green acid onto Sam’s arm.

The acid burned at Sam’s flesh, but was quickly healed from the power of the necklace of healing.

Interesting, Sam thought as he absorbed the potential implications of the Bone Fiend having the ability to form acid from inside itself.

He quickly turned to assist Klara and Toby, but the two of them had managed to destroy the other tentacle on their own.

“Doesn’t look like we need rescuing this time, does it?” smirked Klara.

Toby shivered beside her, gripping his bloodied sword tightly. He looked at Sam dead in the eye. “Seriously, I am always happy to be rescued.”

Sam nodded. “You two protect the others. It’s time we finish this.”

Sam rushed back to fight the Bone Fiend at the center of the room.

* * *

Klara kept her sword gripped and held it at the ready for any more tentacles to emerge from the ground.

She was guarding the left of the huddled group of kids, while Toby guarded the right side.

She desperately wanted to ask Sam if there was anything more she could do to help. She hated that her friend was risking his life while they stayed safe at the sidelines.

C’mon, Sam, she thought, watching the black-haired boy rush the gigantic and horrific worm head on.

Sam materialized his flame sword in his other hand and went all out with his two powerful swords, swiping the Bone Fiend.

Left, right, up, down.

Sam attacked the monster from every direction possible.

From what Klara could gather, the attacks were doing more damage than ever before, thanks to Sam’s special ability. He was finally dealing large cuts that had the boss monster leaking blood.

The Bone Fiend writhed with pain and let out a horrific sounding shriek.

Then moving with a lightning quickness that the monster had never displayed before, it smashed its mouth right into the ground where Sam stood, encompassing his entire body.

“Sam!” Klara cried.

The Bone Fiend ripped its mouth out from the ground and all that remained of Sam was a patch of blood on the ground.

Sam was nowhere to be found.

“Uh, Klara,” said Toby. “Where the heck did Sam go?”

The other orphans were all huddled in balls, too frightened to watch the ensuing battle.

Klara gulped. “I don’t know.”

She felt her vision going blurry.

Is Sam really gone? Is it just up to us to take out that thing?

Klara’s stomach lurched. She felt she was going to throw up.

Is all hope lost?

The Bone Fiend disappeared underground.

The floor below them suddenly began to rumble.

“Oh crap,” said Toby. “It’s definitely coming for us now.”

A white noise pierced through Klara’s mind at that moment and she suddenly was experiencing time more slowly.

It was a moment of clarity amidst her overwhelming sense of shock and panic.

Suddenly, the piercing sound disappeared and Klara knew exactly what to do.

“Everyone stand up and get your swords ready,” said Klara. “This is not a drill. This is the real thing. We’re going to avenge our friend Sam, even if it’s the last thing we do. We all owe him that, don’t we!?”

The kids blinked with terror, like they couldn’t believe they were actually going to fight the Bone Fiend, and then as if Klara’s word unlocked something in their brains, a steely determination overtook their faces.

“Yeah, screw that stupid monster!” said one girl.

“It ate Sam,” said a boy. “We need to kill it for that!”

“Good,” said Klara. She pointed ahead of them. “The worm will most likely pop out from there so that it’s in snatching distance of us all. Let’s surround it and we’ll all attack it with our blades as soon as it pops out.”

The kids all rushed into formation and waited for the emergence of the bone fiend.

The rumbling below their feet shook and got louder and intense until the giant disgusting worm monster shot out from the ground, breaking the floor and leaving a rubble of stone in its midst.

“NOW!” shouted Klara.

The kids wasted no time and the whole group of them—including both Klara and Toby—swung forward with their swords.

Most of the orphans’ attacks barely did any damage and their swords almost bounced off the Bone Fiend.

Klara’s sword made a cut but it was nothing more than an irritating slice similar to a paper cut.

She then noticed the gaping flesh wounds left behind by Sam.

“Aim for the already open wounds!” Klara shouted.

She pulled back her blade and then thrust it forward with all of her strength.

Her sword went right into the flesh wound and the Bone Fiend suddenly wailed with pain.

The monster shook and swung its body, knocking Klara and Toby and a bunch of kids back against the wall.

A huge amount of pain ripped through Klara’s body. She desperately wanted to get up, but every time she tried to push herself her body was unable to stand.

The Bone Fiend had hurt her too badly.

The giant monster shadowed over her paralyzed body.

It was preparing to lunge towards her and eat her just like it had eaten Sam.

Is this really it? she wondered. Is this how I die?

The Bone Fiend lunged towards her.

Klara closed her eyes and accepted her fate.

She felt the hot breath of the Bone Fiend breathing down on her about to snatch her body and tear it to shreds when abruptly the monster lurched sideways.

It writhed on the ground in pain.

Suddenly, bursting out at the side of the Bone Fiend was a black sword with ribbed edges.

This was followed by the emergence of another sword covered in flames.

Klara’s eyes widened.

No way, she thought. Sam couldn’t have—

The Bone Fiend suddenly split in two as the swords carved the monster into bits from the inside out.

Emerging from the bloodied destroyed carapace of the Bone Fiend was none other than the black-haired boy with frightening red eyes who Klara had thought had died only a few minutes before.

44

Klara blinked in shock at the sight of Sam emerging from the inside remains of the Bone Fiend.

If she could rub her eyes to check that she wasn’t dreaming she would have, but she was still paralyzed from the pain from the Bone Fiend knock that had sent her flying across the boss chamber a few moments before.

She couldn’t believe Sam was alive. Not only that, but that he had destroyed the Bone Fiend.

They had defeated the final boss of the white gate.

Amazing, Klara thought. How the heck did Sam manage all that?

Sam rushed over to Klara and materialized a red healing potion.

“How did you not die?” Klara groaned.

“Shh, drink this first while I explain,” said Sam, helping her take a sip of the healing potion.

“After the smaller tentacle spat acid onto me, I came to the realization that the inside of the Bone Fiend was incredibly acidic. I also knew that my necklace of healing regenerated at a faster pace than the damage from the acid, which meant I could let myself get swallowed by the Bone Fiend. I could rapidly absorb tons of extra damage without dying, which would give me enough strength to then destroy the monster from the inside out.”

“Incredible,” said Klara.

A few moments after sipping on the health potion, Klara felt herself able to move a bit more.

“Help me with the others,” said Sam.

They moved over to the others, offering healing potions, and tending to whatever injuries any of them had.

Toby slowly moved over to Klara.

“Sam’s amazing, isn’t he?” said Klara with awe.

Toby looked at the boy and then back at her.

“Yeah, he really is,” said Toby. “But you know what? You’re amazing too, Klara. For a minute there, after Sam died, I thought we were goners and then you were able to inspire me and the rest of the orphans into thinking: maybe, not. Maybe we can do this without Sam’s help.”

Klara smiled. “Thanks Tobes. I mean we still needed Sam’s help in the end, but I appreciate you saying that.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Klara,” said Toby. “Not all of us can be mysterious badass black-haired dudes with wolfish red eyes who disappear at will and reemerge with nightmarish-looking swords now, can we?”

Klara laughed. “No, we can’t all be like that, you’re right.”

“Exactly,” said Toby. “It’s good to remember that for every hero in a storybook, there’s normally countless helping hands who assisted them along the way and—if you ask me—those people are more important than the hero himself.”

“Alright, alright, alright,” said Klara. “I get it. You want some recognition along with Sam, is that it, Tobes?”

Toby blushed. “No, that’s not what I was trying to say at all. I was trying to say—”

Toby was cut off by the sudden emergence of a large purple portal in the center of the room.

A prompt then appeared in all of their visions.

Congratulations! You have completed The White Gate Trial! Step through the purple portal to unlock your class and return to the outside world!

“I’m guessing you guys all see the prompt,” said Sam. “Well done, everyone, we did it. We survived the white gate.”

Everyone cheered.

“There’s only one more thing we have to do before we can all go home,” said Sam. “And it’s a big one. Beyond that portal there is the class-choosing zone. After you choose your class, you’ll be taken back to the entrance of the white gate. Does everyone understand?”

Klara nodded along with everyone else.

“Great,” said Sam. “I look forward to seeing you guys on the other side.”

With that, Sam turned away from them and stepped into the portal and disappeared.

* * *

Toby watched his friend disappear through the portal with amazement.

He couldn’t believe it.

They had really fought their way to the end of the white gate.

Beyond that portal, they would get classes. They’d actually be Travelers. People with magic powers.

Soldiers.

Warriors.

Heroes.

I never envisioned something like this happening to me, Toby thought. Becoming someone who could protect others.

He still couldn’t believe it.

He watched as the other kids streamed through the portal and entered the class-choosing zone.

Klara helped escort the younger ones through until it was just him and her left in the boss chamber.

“C’mon, Tobes,” said Klara. “In you get.”

Toby blushed and said, “Ladies first.”

Klara blushed herself. “You fight a bunch of scary monsters and suddenly you’re a charmer now, Tobes?”

“What can I say?” said Toby.

Is now the time I tell her how I feel...? he wondered to himself. I was so close a few minutes ago before the portal and congratulatory prompt appeared. You know what, screw it, now is a better time than any. I’m going to tell Klara how much I—

“But I know exactly what you’re doing,” said Klara. “You’re trying to get out of going into this portal on your own. C’mon, now, get in there or I’ll drag you!”

Toby sighed with relief.

They had gone through so much already.

He could save confessing his love for another occasion.

With that, Toby mustered up the courage and stepped through the portal.

45

Sam stepped out onto the other side of the portal, emerging into the class-choosing zone.

The class-choosing zone was a weird place.

The ground was misty. The sky was full of sparkling stars, the kind of night sky you only saw on the clearest of summer nights.

Sam sighed with relief.

I made it back here, he thought.

Even up until now, he wasn’t sure if after stepping through the purple portal whether he would emerge at the entrance to the white gate once more.

He wasn’t sure if the system would truly let him take a second class.

But now that he was here in the class-choosing zone, he knew that he truly would be able to do so.

That brought him a brief sense of relief, but it was short-lived.

Now that he knew for certain that he would be able to choose a second class, he recognized that a majorly important decision lay before him now.

A few yards away were three stone statues.

Just like last time, Sam thought.

This was how the class-choosing zone worked. If you managed to survive the trials of the white gate, you came here, and were given an option of three class choices, represented by the statues placed in front of you.

The class choices were determined by your achievements while in the white gate. Most people normally got a choice of the three most common classes: warrior, wizard, and ranger.

As Sam approached the three statues, he could already see that none of them were classes he recognized.

The first statue was of a man crouching down with two daggers, his face hidden by a cloak.

A prompt appeared in Sam’s retina as he took in the first statue.

For your calculated and cunning efforts in defeating your enemies, the white gate awards you with the class option of Assassin (rare).

Assassin’s abilities specialize in the art of stealth, poison making, and the art of killing without anyone noticing.

Sam read the prompt over carefully.

A rare class was nothing to slouch at. He imagined it was for his quick kill of the silver-haired mercenary and his tracking of the lone Death Raven to the Death Raven Queen’s nest that were all contributing factors towards this class option.

He was definitely intrigued by the class. He especially liked the poison-making ability. Multiple times in this timeline already he had survived battles due to having the right type of poison or venom to destroy particular monsters. A class that could leverage that advantage more sounded particularly good.

He then moved onto the middle statue, which was a figure of a glorious-looking knight with an impressive sword and shield. The statue even had stone ripples of energy swirling around the bottom of the figure to indicate the magical energy the figure wielded.

He then read the associated prompt with this statue.

For your valiant and self-sacrificing efforts in protecting the lives of others, the white gate awards you with the class option of Holy Knight (mythic).

Holy Knight’s abilities specialize in protecting yourself and others in the midst of battle and calling upon the power of light to defeat your enemies.

Sam’s eyes widened with amazement at the class prompt.

A mythic class!?

He couldn’t believe it. He’d never even heard of the holy knight class before, and he knew from his past life’s experience that there were very few Travelers with mythic-level classes.

In his first timeline, he was considered special for having a super-rare class like blood knight. The idea of getting a mythic-level class sounded amazing.

The class sounded incredibly interesting and it was clearly the white gate awarding him for all of his efforts for protecting his friends.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment looking at the class. He definitely didn’t want to pass up a mythic-level class, but it really didn’t seem like it was the kind of class that would gel with his blood knight class.

While he frustratingly couldn’t see the abilities of the holy knight class, it definitely seemed like it would work counter to his blood knight abilities. He didn’t need energy shields protecting him in the middle of battle—the whole point of his blood knight class was to take damage to increase his own power.

Sam couldn’t believe he was actually coming face to face with one of the rarest types of classes and being underwhelmed by the choice.

Before he rejected it outright completely, he decided he wanted to know what all of his options were first. He then turned his attention to the third and final statue.

The third statue showed a warrior holding a sword in one hand dripping with blood. There were actual droplets to represent the warrior’s blood-soaked sword. But, it was more than just an artistic flourish on the part of the statue. The statue was communicating something beyond mere raw power. A swirl of energy from the blood carried over into the statue’s other hand where the figure looked to be creating a magical flame of some kind fueled by the blood itself.

In his previous life, Sam had studied extensively the notes acquired by scholars of the different classes and associated statues found in the white gate class-choosing zone and never had he come across the description of the powerful-looking statue looming before him.

With awe and reverence, he took in the class prompt in his retina.

For your unique efforts in wreaking chaos, havoc, and destruction across the three trials, the white gate awards you the class option of Death Lord (Legendary).

Death Lord’s abilities rely on leveraging the destruction and chaos you’ve created in battle to further your advantage against your enemies.

Sam stood there, stunned.

There had been a handful of famous Travelers with mythic classes over the years in Sam’s previous timeline—not a lot, but a few. It was still an extremely rare class to find. No more than a handful in the entire population of all of Westria. But never in all of his research or experience had Sam heard about someone unlocking a legendary class.

Legendary.

It was a league all on its own.

Such rarity would mean the class would promise abilities and powers far outside the range of what normal classes had to offer.

Sam couldn’t believe his good fortune.

He felt himself yearning to select death lord straightaway, but he reviewed his options once more.

Assassin—cool, but it was a class known amongst Travelers and many people had developed counters against its abilities. Plus, the idea of staying stealthy and out of battle went against the natural inclinations of his blood knight class.

Holy knight—similar issues to Assassin insofar that the abilities ran counter to his first class. The whole brilliancy of being able to unlock two classes was to then be able to have their abilities complement each other.

Rather disappointingly, if Sam were to pick either two of his first options, he’d have two classes that worked against each other.

It would be a total waste of his golden opportunity.

But then there was the third and final choice.

Death lord.

A legendary class.

In many ways, it was a no-brainer. It was the best option of the three. It was the highest rarity, so he’d be a fool to pass up such an opportunity. But what gave Sam even more confidence was that the abilities sounded like they would complement his blood knight powers.

He considered the words of the prompt once more: “Death lord’s abilities rely on leveraging the destruction and chaos you’ve created in battle to further your advantage against your enemies.”

It sounded like the death lord class benefited from getting up close and personal in a battle—just like his blood knight class.

In many ways, the two classes felt like the perfect match.

And, maybe it wasn’t so much of a coincidence, but rather the white gate recognizing all the feats of Sam’s accomplishments and use of the blood knight class while in the trials that led to it offering such a class as a reward.

Sam did not have the answers to why the dungeon gate system acted the way it did, all he knew was that death lord was clearly the best option in front of him.

Without another moment’s hesitation, Sam selected death lord, and unlocked his second class.

46

In the furthest depths of the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral was a quiet hallway that housed the magnificent and powerful white gate.

The hall was much quieter than it had been a few weeks earlier when the large group of people had been gathered up and sent through into the deadly trials of the irregular tutorial dungeon.

Now Declan, a lesser Traveler priest, stood on guard with three others in the quiet tunnel, waiting for the silver-haired mercenary to return from the tutorial with a powerful new class.

The randomness of the time dilation within the dungeon gate was proving to be quite tedious and annoying. How much longer would they have to wait?

From what Declan understood, the whole point of the current experiment was to see what types of classes were unlocked depending on how many fellow humans you killed when in the tutorial.

The powers that be had theorized that the white gate itself did not make any moral judgments on one’s behavior and merely awarded classes most appropriate to one’s actions while inside the gate.

The archbishop of the Spectral Church wanted to create an army of Traveler priests with the best classes possible.

The whole point of the current experiment was to see what kind of class was unlocked by someone who displayed absolutely ruthless behavior.

With his common warrior class, Declan couldn’t help but be jealous of the silver-haired mercenary.

What does that guy have that I don’t?, he thought as he leaned against the wall and stared at the bright lights of the white gate.

“Hey, Declan,” said his colleague. “Wanna join us for a game of cards?”

Declan shrugged. “I dunno. How much longer do you think we’ll be down here anyway? The mercenary should be through the trial soon enough.”

“Ah, I give it another few—”

The conversation was cut short by the emergence of a figure in front of the white gate.

He’s back, Declan thought. What kind of class did he unlock after killing all those people—

Declan’s jaw dropped. His eyes widened.

The figure that emerged from the white gate was not the silver-haired mercenary they had been expecting, but rather a kid with black hair and creepy red eyes.

“Who the heck are you?”

“Me?” smirked the kid. “I’m your worst nightmare.”

“What the—”

Declan’s colleagues all stood up and materialized their weapons. One of them even started ringing the alarm bells. Reinforcements would be here in minutes to apprehend this kid if they didn’t do so beforehand.

Still, Declan was worried.

This kid survived the white gate, meaning he either was able to avoid the silver-haired mercenary the entire time or had dealt with the man himself.

Declan shook the worry from his head.

Even if the kid had managed to survive and unlock an uncommon class, Declan was still a very high novice-tier Traveler, close to ranking up and hitting apprentice-tier.

The same could be said for all of his guard colleagues.

There was no way this kid had the power to overtake them.

“Orders are to kill anyone besides the silver-haired mercenary on sight,” said Declan. “Let’s kill this kid!”

They rushed the boy.

Somewhat alarmingly the kid didn’t seem to be afraid of them in the slightest.

He materialized a sword in either hand.

One was an impressive magic blade with conjured fire swirling up and down the edge of the sword.

The other was a sword unlike anything Declan had ever seen. It was composed of the darkest black steel and had ribbed edges that looked like the teeth of dragons. It was one of the most fearsome blades Declan’s eyes had ever laid upon in his entire life.

What did the kid do that he unlocked such a powerful blade!?

Declan shook his head and stayed focused on the ensuing battle.

It doesn’t matter, Declan thought. After we kill him, I have to make sure I get my hands on that sword.

As Declan and his colleagues got close to the boy, the young man triggered an ability.

A red circle shot out from the boy and marked the area.

“What kind of move is that?” asked one of the guards.

“Doesn’t matter,” shouted Declan. “Kill him!”

The black-haired boy moved with an intense quickness, managing to dodge the guards’ opening attacks and landing quick slices on all of them.

Declan felt blood rush up his throat after feeling the sharp-ribbed edges of the boy’s sword cut across his flesh.

Such accuracy to his swordsmanship, Declan thought. Such speed. He’s far more powerful and accomplished than a novice-tier Traveler.

This kid is not normal.

He fights like someone far older and more powerful than a kid of his age. He should be a squirming beginner Traveler afraid of his own movement and abilities.

Footsteps echoed down the hall.

Thank the goddess, Declan thought. The reinforcements are here.

The area outside the white gate filled with Traveler priests armed and ready to slay the boy.

“Face it, kid,” said Declan, who was leaking tons of blood from his body. “Even if you kill me, you won’t be able to beat all of us. You’re done.”

Declan saw one of his original colleagues keel over from the boy’s sword slash, collapsing into a puddle of his own blood.

The whole area was getting drenched in red.

The Traveler-priests wasted no time and rushed the kid all at once.

It was at that moment, the kid unleashed an ability that none of them had ever seen before.

The blood on the ground suddenly erupted into flames.

The fire was not normal fire, but a magical flame with a deep red hue.

It spread all over the room. Wherever there was spilled blood, the horrible flame emerged.

The robes of the murderous Traveler-priests were caught in the flames, completely covering multiple men in the fiery swirl, charring and roasting them into nothing but burnt ash.

If the Blood Flame didn’t destroy the Traveler-priests, the black-haired boy made sure his swords finished the job.

47

Sam caught his breath as he took in the charred remains of all the Traveler-priests who had just tried to kill him.

The evil men had given him the perfect opportunity to try out the unlocked novice-tier ability of his new class, death lord.

The new ability was called Blood Flame.

It was an area of effect ability that could turn spilled blood into flames.

It was the perfect ability to complement his blood knight powers. The skills of his original class forced him to get up close and personal with his attacks and Blood Flame benefited from such a fighting style. The new power also mitigated the risks involved with such a dangerous approach to combat. Blood Flame was an excellent wide-range attack spell that covered Sam’s blind spots when taking damage to increase his Pain Ring ability.

It was incredible.

He took a moment to review his new status profile since emerging from the white gate.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks.

Class: Death Lord (Legendary) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Blood Flame (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Morph all spilled blood in a nearby radius into a powerful magical fire.

Strength: 16.2

Agility: 16.1

Endurance: 15.9

Magic Affinity: 21.2

Sam couldn’t help but grin.

He was the only Traveler in all of Westria with two classes. Not only that, he was the only Traveler with a legendary class.

He still wasn’t a match for the demon king of the black gate or some of the most famous Travelers in Westrian history from his previous timeline, but what he lacked in their power, he more than exceeded his future opponents in potential.

“What the heck happened here?”

Sam turned around to see Toby, Klara, and the rest of the orphans had all emerged from the white gate.

They were looking at the destruction in front of them with shock and confusion.

Sam looked at all the blood, ash, and dead priests and said, “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I doubt it,” said Toby. “You entered the class-choosing zone—what—maybe a minute before the rest of us. Doesn’t sound like a long story to me? Don’t tell me you unlocked a class with a deadly disease that you can cough onto people. You didn’t did you? I don’t know if we could stay friends if you had a class like that.”

Klara punched Toby in the arm.

“Ow! Why did you do that?”

“Because that’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Klara said.

Sam scratched the back of his head nervously. “We can catch up on all of our classes later. The most important thing now is we need to get out of here.”

Sam had been so focused on surviving the white gate. He hadn’t really fully considered the immediate after effects.

They still needed to escape the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral.

Luckily, Sam had probably cleared more than half of the priests on guard duty that night.

They pushed ahead down the tunnel they had come from and quietly tiptoed up the spiral staircase.

They emerged on the ground floor to find no priests present.

It was as Sam had thought. When the alarm went off, they had all come down to the bottom level to face him.

“The coast is clear you guys,” whispered Sam, and they ran across the ground floor of the cathedral, past the glowing candles and statues of angels and empty pews and out the front doors into the dark shadowy streets of Resfall.

Sam rushed down the street only for Klara to call after him.

“Sam, where are we going to go?” hissed Klara. “We can’t go back to the orphanage.”

Sam’s heart was pounding.

Who would have thought the moments after surviving the white gate would prove to be such a challenge?

But they definitely were.

The Spectral Church would soon be filling the streets with their members and mercenaries to hunt them down.

Nowhere was safe.

“I have an idea,” said Toby.

Sam listened and nodded to the boy’s idea. It was a good one.

They hurried through the streets, eventually turning down an alleyway. At the very end of the alley was a barely noticeable hole filled with dried hay.

Sam pulled the hay out from the hole, revealing a small passage. Everyone entered with Sam following and refilling the hole with hay.

Once he’d done that he turned around and materialized his flame sword to add light to the dark room.

They were currently in an old hideout that they had previously used when a pickpocketing scheme went badly and they couldn’t make it back to the orphanage safely.

He walked over and lit a few candles nearby and then dematerialized his flame sword into his inventory.

He then sat down and leaned the back of his head against the wall.

The other kids looked worried and scared.

He could tell they wanted him to tell them that everything was going to be okay. That he had a plan. That he knew how everything was going to go and he knew how to avoid all the upcoming danger.

But, as his heart beat in his chest, Sam realized that that was no longer the case.

He recognized—that beyond all the little things he had already done—he’d truly now created his first major divergence from his original timeline.

He had changed history as the goddess had instructed him to.

He took comfort in the fact that he still knew so much of the future history about to unfold, but he also now had to grapple with the fact that the further on this mission he went, the more unknowns he would create, and the future knowledge that he was able to leverage for his benefit would become more and more uncertain.

As he looked up to the dark ceiling of their little alleyway hideout, Sam contemplated how much more chaos and destruction still lay ahead of them all, and hoped that his first few decisions in this new timeline were all for the better.

48

The sounds of shivering teeth echoed throughout the orphans’ hideout.

They were all huddled close together near Sam’s flame sword, trying to stay warm.

Even for a hideout, hidden in a deserted alley in a forgotten part of the city, a cold wintry draft still passed through.

Sam held his knees together to stay warm. He knocked his forehead against his kneecap, thinking to himself.

This won’t do, he thought. We can’t stay here for much longer.

They’d spent the last few hours here resting, trying to come up with a plan, and discovering no solutions, only more problems and obstacles.

Sam had quickly realized as soon as he had felt the first whiff of the frosty draft outside that more time had passed since they were in the white gate than he had realized. It was no longer the month of Novriel, but the beginning of Wintersmid, the last month of the year.

Hence, it was getting colder. Frost crystallized on the rooftops, walls, and individual cobbles of the street.

Sam wasn’t sure if this was a divergence from his original timeline or not. He winced thinking back to the painful memories of his previous lifetime. When he’d exited the white gate then, he had been so stunned, the priests of the Spectral Church had swept him away to do further experiments on him. He didn’t go outside again for some time after that. So, he had no idea how much time had passed between entering the white gate and leaving it in his previous timeline.

He did know that the time difference between entering a white gate and leaving it could be quite irregular. You could live three weeks in the white gate trials only to return to the outside world and only a minute had passed—or an hour, a week, a month, or even longer. It was outside of your control.

Sam’s teeth chattered uncontrollably. He tried to swirl the mana inside of himself and that brought him a bit of warmth but not much.

He realized that if they didn’t starve to death in this hideout, they were certainly going to freeze. And, if they left to go somewhere warmer, the Spectral Church would find them and have authority over them to legally do whatever it is they wanted with them.

Sam and his friends needed more than safety. They needed a more official form of protection.

* * *

At the top of the Resfall Traveler’s Guild building sat the guildmaster, Edgar Redfield, in his office, looking over some papers while trying to ignore a nagging pain in his back.

He could see from his office window that the moon and stars were out and a flurry of snow was beginning to fall.

The cold outside made him grateful to be indoors in the comforts of his office and in the warmth of their mana-heating devices along with the cozy glow of a nearby candle.

The office was filled with bookshelves and old tomes covering everything from the history of Westria to the merchant’s guild of the southern kingdom of Opali. There was one set of books Edgar occasionally looked at, written by the same mysterious scribe. They went by the titles of Arcane Guild Land, The Ballad of the Drunk Cat Shade, and The Legendary Tower Ascender. The scribe was a bit crazy, kept going on about something called “the Tannerverse”.

He sighed and placed the papers down.

I didn’t become guildmaster so I could be bogged down in administrative work, he grumbled in his head.

The guild’s finances were an even bigger pain in the neck than the actual pain in his neck.

He suddenly hit a breaking point.

He paused.

His eyes furtively glanced to the door and back.

Everyone’s left for the evening already, Edgar thought.

He calmly reached to the bottom drawer of his desk and slid the compartment open. Peeking out was a book with scantily clad women on the cover and the title: The Brilliant Buxom Ladies Of Westria, Volume 8.

He was about to reach for the book when there was a sudden knock on his door.

Whoever was behind it didn’t even wait for Edgar’s answer, and just pushed the door open.

It was his assistant and she looked worried.

“I—uhh—I—was just finishing up!” said the guildmaster, furiously slamming the bottom drawer of the desk. “And—I—actually don’t answer to you, I’m the guildmaster!”

“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt your important work—”

“That’s right, very important work,” said the guildmaster. “Very important!”

“Something strange has happened downstairs,” the assistant explained.

“Strange?” Edgar huffed. “Could this not be dealt by someone else?”

He felt the pain in his left shoulder throb and ache violently.

It’s all going wrong, he thought. I was supposed to have a nice calm evening.

“You’re the only remaining member of senior command in the building right now, sir.”

Edgar shook his head in dismay and stood up from behind his desk.

“Take me to the strange occurrence then,” he sighed.

As he followed behind his assistant, they went down the stairs of the guild hall to the front foyer.

There huddled in the middle was a large group of children.

What the heck is this? Edgar grumbled in his head.

This better not be some creepy Caroling choir that goes door-to-door and makes you listen to them sing and then demands you pay for the pleasure of sitting through the torture.

As Edgar got closer, however, he could see that the children were not the kind of well-fed spoiled children of nobles who’d come up with the shamelessly mercantile scheme of coming to him and making him listen to them sing.

No. These kids were different.

They were street kids.

He could tell by their ragged clothes, the bruises on their arms, and the curious mix of both fierceness and fear swirling in their eyes.

Edgar still wasn’t sure what exactly the situation he was walking into was.

The kids looked as if they needed a helping hand, but the laws in the city specifically put charity to the poor and destitute in the hands of the Spectral Church—not that he trusted any of those fanatics. Even if he were to give a meal to these kids—which he’d gladly do—if the Spectral Church found out the Traveler’s Guild housed a group of street orphans, they could make quite the headache for him.

But then things got even weirder.

Right as Edgar was about to speak with the kids, one emerged at the front of the pack.

It was a boy around sixteen years old. He had shaggy black hair and strange red eyes unlike any Edgar had ever seen before.

The black-haired boy was clearly the leader of the group.

The first thing out of the boy’s mouth was not: hello or we’re hungry or can we have some coin or can we have a warm place to sleep tonight or any of the things Edgar imagined the boy saying.

No.

Instead, the boy said something Edgar would never have been able to predict in a million years.

“We’d all like to officially join the Traveler’s Guild.”

49

Edgar Redfield’s eyes twitched with disbelief at the young man’s words.

If the boy wasn’t staring at him with such seriousness, he might have even laughed—but he judged it was better not to.

Still, Edgar thought to himself, what the boy is asking for is absolutely preposterous.

These kids wouldn’t be able to afford the entry fee into their recruiting program and even if Redfield was feeling generous, he couldn’t sponsor all of them. That would be the exact kind of thing that would ruffle the feathers of the archbishop of the Spectral Church.

“I’m sorry,” Edgar began, “but you can’t just barge in here and become members of the Traveler’s Guild. That’s not how it works. There are rules and procedures. You must train before you can enter the white gate—”

“What if I were to tell you we all just survived the white gate already?”

Edgar’s eyes narrowed at the black-haired boy who had just interrupted him.

Either the boy was speaking falsehoods and underestimating Edgar’s intelligence, or he was speaking an unbelievable truth with multiple grave and troubling implications.

The majority of these kids did not look ready to tackle a white gate, let alone endure one and live to talk about it.

The guild’s own recruits trained for over a year before being sent into the white gate. Plus, their own recruits were normally children of nobles, merchants—people with the funding to enter a white gate properly prepared.

And many of those soldiers still didn’t make it back from the white gate alive.

These street kids did not look the part.

Then, there was the most troubling implication of them all, if Edgar was to believe that these kids had indeed survived the white gate, he had to then ask: what white gate did they go through?

The Traveler’s Guild housed a white gate that they sent all their recruits through when they were trained and ready for it.

It was the only known white gate in all of Resfall.

Could a white gate have spawned outside the city recently and it had gone undetected on any of the guild’s scouting trips?

Edgar shook his head.

He concluded that the most likely scenario was that these kids were lying. They were miscreants. This was an elaborate con. It was probably this same group of children behind the mysterious great golden hog theft that became the rumor all about town following The Eve of Hallow’s Haunting a few months back.

“If you were to tell me you all had just survived the white gate,” sighed Edgar Redfield, “I’d tell you, you’re lying. Now excuse me, I have work—”

“Wait,” said the black-haired boy.

He sounded a bit less confident this time.

He seemed more desperate than he initially appeared.

The boy gulped, before speaking. “Travelers can sense other Traveler’s power, can’t they? Why not use yours?”

Edgar narrowed his eyes at the boy.

He seems to know more than he lets on. He’s aware of mana sense.

The guildmaster triggered his own mana sense, expecting to find nothing, only for his eyes to widen.

All the children had the faintest, tiniest, throbs of mana emanating from them.

Unbelievable, gasped Redfield. They have tiny little mana cores.

The children’s mana levels were right where they should normally be for a group of people who had just survived the white gate.

Edgar then focused on the black-haired boy in front of him.

The boy’s mana levels were close to the others but had the slightest hint to being stronger.

The boy couldn’t possibly be concealing his mana sense from me, Edgar thought with surprise. Could this boy be so skilled to dampen his own mana core to make him seem less powerful than he really is.

They had novice-tier guild members with two stars to their names who weren’t clever enough to do that or could do it as skilfully as the boy in front of him was doing.

Impressive, Redfield thought.

Still, he wasn’t sure what the best choice of action was here. There was something not right about all of this. Edgar could feel it. To accept these kids would be to let the guild accept whatever not-goodness he was currently feeling in his gut.

“One moment,” said Edgar.

He then walked to the side with his assistant until they were out of earshot of the kids.

“What should we do?” asked Edgar.

“I don’t know,” said the assistant. “You’re the guildmaster.”

“Yes, and you’re my assistant,” hissed Edgar. “You’re supposed to assist me in all things, like this decision. Is there any protocol we can draw upon?”

The assistant paused and thought for a moment before she spoke up.

“It’s an odd situation. They’re not our recruits. If they were and they’d just survived the white gate, the paperwork would already be worked out and they’d be official Travelers. Since they’ve unlocked their powers far outside of our jurisdiction or knowledge, they’re similar to a foreign Traveler from another nation wishing to join our guild. In which case, we have a special test they could undergo. You know the one.”

Edgar nodded to his assistant’s words.

The test she was suggesting wasn’t a bad idea. It would give them more knowledge of these kids’ abilities, plus it would buy them a bit more time to figure out how these kids came to acquire these abilities.

Edgar walked back to the group of kids and said, “Okay, I’m starting to believe what you’ve told me. Still, we have protocols at the Traveler’s Guild and we can’t just accept you so easily. You’ll have to undergo a series of tests—”

“We don’t have time,” said the black-haired boy. “I thought if someone survived a white gate, they automatically became a Traveler.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” said Edgar.

“How about I do the test on behalf of all of us?” asked the boy. “You can sense that we’re not lying to you. But my companions are tired and frail and—”

“Fine,” said Edgar. “Only you have to take the test.”

The guildmaster didn’t have a problem with this as the black-haired boy was the one he was most curious to see display his powers.

* * *

Sam’s heart and mind was racing.

He followed the guildmaster and his assistant down a hall and into a special room.

The guildmaster was older—maybe mid-fifties or even early sixties. He was balding and had a long gray beard. His shoulders were broad and he exuded a confidence, strength, and wisdom that could only be gained through living many decades of life.

Klara, Toby, and his friends walked cautiously behind him.

Sam wasn’t too worried about the guild’s test for him, but was more concerned with how much of his powers he wanted to display.

From all that he remembered in his previous timeline, Edgar Redfield had been a fearsome and powerful Traveler, who had died in the build up to the elven genocide. He was an incredible fighter and one of the few Travelers famous for having a mythic rarity class.

From what Sam had been able to gather in his research in his first timeline was that the guildmaster had nothing to do with the assassination of Princess Alice Grace, but of course, Sam did not know that for sure, meaning until he could figure that out, he didn’t want the powerful figure to know more about Sam than he needed to.

That meant—whatever the test might bring, he should avoid using his new death lord abilities and probably use a weapon other than his berzerker sword.

Sam was juggling all the above thoughts along with the other more immediately pressing problem: the Spectral Church was definitely sending its minions all across the city to look for them. The only way they could stay protected long term from the Spectral Church was if they became official Travelers and did so quickly. Very quickly.

Everyone but Sam stepped into a separate partition where they could observe Sam taking the test.

* * *

Edgar gave his assistant the go-ahead to initiate the test.

The assistant fiddled with some machinery and then suddenly a ripple of mana spread across the floorboards of the testing area.

Emerging at the opposite end of the room were three creatures in the shape of goblins composed out of the mana.

This was one of their training rooms where Traveler’s could create artificial monsters to fight and test out new moves, abilities, and strategies.

It didn’t beat the real thing, but it was good for sharpening one’s muscle memory and general battle instincts.

“As soon as you move the battle will begin,” said the assistant to the boy in the testing area.

The boy nodded and materialized a glowing blue mythril sword.

The guildmaster smirked.

Now that’s unexpected, Edgar thought to himself. You don’t normally see a mythril blade in the hands of a novice-tier Traveler, let alone one who looks as impoverished as that boy.

The boy rushed forward.

Edgar crossed his arms.

Let’s see what the kid can—

The three artificial goblins were destroyed within seconds.

Impossible!

Edgar turned to his assistant, whispering, “Did you turn up the difficulty like I had asked?”

He had the feeling that the boy was talented ever since he caught wind of him concealing his mana. Before the test had started, he had told the assistant to raise the difficulty level to a place that even a highly skilled novice-tier Traveler close to ranking up to apprentice-tier would still struggle.

“I did,” said the assistant.

Edgar turned back to the young man in the training area below.

Some of his best novice-tier Travelers, maybe even apprentice-tier Travelers, would have struggled in that match-up, and this kid managed to defeat the powerful goblins within seconds!?

The guildmaster looked at the boy, amazed.

How has this kid unlocked such an impressive level of power?

50

Edgar Redfield looked at the black-haired boy with amazement.

For someone to be fighting at a level like what had just been displayed only hours after leaving a white gate was beyond remarkable.

It was unheard of.

Even the most prodigious Travelers who Edgar had ever had the pleasure of mentoring in the guild, had not displayed that level of battle prowess so early in their careers.

Edgar’s amazement only continued to grow with regards to the black-haired boy and his pals, but even still, the uncomfortable feeling he had from the start hadn’t gone away.

He still couldn’t understand how these kids unlocked Traveler abilities, and how this one particular young man had become so strong already.

Edgar wasn’t sure he wanted to make any of these kids official Travelers until he got to the bottom of that mystery.

He was about to question them more seriously when a powerful knock echoed from far across the building back at the front door.

Everyone but Edgar jumped with shock at the sound.

They shouldn’t have been able to hear a normal knock from where they were in the building, but someone had clearly imbued their fist with enough mana to make their knock heard all across the building.

Edgar’s eyes narrowed.

First, the arrival of these weird kids, then, a powerful knock at the door of the guild hall in the middle of the night, Edgar mused. This doesn’t feel right at all.

“All of you wait here,” said the guildmaster. “Don’t you dare leave this room.”

The guildmaster left his assistant and the strange kids in the testing room and headed back to the front of the guild hall.

He placed his hand on the front door and paused.

He triggered mana sense.

He could feel a huge force of power emanating from beyond the door.

All of which meant it was no surprise when he opened it to find the archbishop of the Spectral Church standing in front of him along with twenty Traveler-priests behind him.

And so the night gets weirder and weirder, Edgar mused, eyeing up the archbishop and his cronies.

“Good evening, Guildmaster Redfield,” said the archbishop. “How odd of you to be answering the door at this hour?”

Edgar smirked.

The slimy creep, Redfield thought. I’ve always despised you.

“I could point out how odd it is for you to be knocking on my guild’s door so late at night,” said Edgar calmly, “but then that would make me lose sight of the great pleasure it is to see you.”

Redfield narrowed his eyes, making sure that the archbishop understood how much he still despised the man even if he was using pleasant words to greet him.

“We won’t trouble you for long,” said the archbishop. “We’re just wondering if you could assist us with a small dilemma we’re having. It seems an entire group of orphans has disappeared on us. We’re hard at work trying to locate them and make sure they’re out of harm’s way. You haven’t seen a large group of children at all, have you? Or had any reports of any sightings?”

Edgar frowned, pretending as if he had not encountered anything that evening that would prove helpful to the Spectral Church in the slightest.

Still, this was an opportunity for Edgar to gather more information about the strange kids who had arrived at his guild only thirty minutes before.

“I’ve not seen any,” said Edgar. “But I’ll keep my eye out for you. Any particular features that I should keep a lookout for?”

The archbishop nodded. “Yes. There’s one boy in particular who seems to be leading the pack. He’s got black-hair and red eyes. He’s the most dangerous of the group.”

Edgar concealed his smile.

So, the church is indeed searching for the exact same kids currently in the guild’s testing room.

“Well, it is truly unfortunate you haven’t seen them,” said the archbishop. “Do you mind if we take a step into the premises?”

Edgar crossed his arms. “That won’t be necessary. Most of the guild is asleep. Maybe you can come back again tomorrow, if you’d like?”

The archbishop’s mouth twitched as it tried to fight off scowling at the guildmaster.

“Very well,” said the archbishop. “We’ll wish you good night.”

The archbishop and his cronies turned around to leave and head out into the cold nighttime city.

Just as Edgar was about to close the door and breathe a sigh of relief, the archbishop spun on his heels.

“One last thing, guildmaster,” said the archbishop.

Edgar’s stomach lurched at the sight of the man smirking.

What does he know that I don’t know? Edgar thought.

“Do you mind explaining why my mana sense can pick up a large group of novice-tier mana users in the back of your guild hall,” said the archbishop. “There is clearly a group of people who aren’t asleep as you previously suggested.”

Crap, Edgar thought. Most of those kids clearly have no idea how to manipulate their mana cores.

“If it turns out you’re hiding the kids we’re looking for, guildmaster,” said the archbishop, “that could cause a lot of difficulties for the Traveler’s Guild. You wouldn’t want to upset the uneasy truce currently held between the church and the guild.”

Edgar bristled.

Outside of the Volsungar royal family, the Spectral Church and the Traveler’s Guild were the two most powerful institutions in both the city itself and the country at large. Before the arrival of the dungeon gates, Archbishop Baylen was without a doubt the second most powerful man in Resfall. However, that all changed when the dungeon gates arrived.

The emergence of the dungeon gates created large scale political upheaval and strife all across Westria, as different nations and races evolved to suit their newly changing world.

With the best soldiers in his army, the former king of Volsungar created the Traveler’s Guild to train and recruit more powerful fighters, who could enter the dungeon gates to gain power and protect them all.

From the guild’s inception, it had always been in tension with the Spectral Church, who had believed they should have had total control of training Travelers.

In the end, the Spectral Church was the only other institution outside of the royal army and the Traveler’s Guild to be allowed the privileges of training and preparing soldiers to become Travelers.

The merchant’s or different craftsman’s guilds were not allowed such privileges.

The Traveler’s Guild therefore had to offer their white gate to the Spectral Church once a month for their own trained regiments to enter—and the church was allowed to entice any new novice-tier Travelers to join their institution instead.

All of this had been decreed about a year after the arrival of the dungeon gates by the late King of Volsungar, Victor Grace as a means of stopping an all out civil war among the different factions of Resfall.

And yet, even still, here we are with the threat of bloodshed percolating so close to the surface of reality, Edgar thought.

The guildmaster stared at the archbishop dead in the eye and pieced together a few mysteries that had cropped up over the course of that cold Wintersmid evening.

The archbishop was aware of the children and knew they had unlocked Traveler abilities, which was why he even thought to search for them with his mana sense.

But how could the archbishop be aware of children who had unlocked Traveler abilities when none of them went through the white gate that was controlled by the Traveler’s Guild?

There was only one explanation.

The archbishop and the Spectral Church knew of another white gate.

One they were clearly keeping secret from the guild, the royal family, and everyone else.

While Edgar couldn’t prove it there and then, he was confident in his deductions.

“And how is it exactly that these children came to be with Traveler abilities?” asked Edgar.

The archbishop no longer hid his scowl.

The powerful figure took a step back.

“That is not the issue in question,” said the archbishop, regaining his composure. “The issue in question is those orphans belong to the jurisdiction of the Spectral Church. You don’t have the authority to keep them inside your guild hall. Now return them at once.”

Redfield shook his head and smirked.

I can’t believe I’m actually about to do this, he thought. This is not how I saw my evening going.

“Sorry, Baylen,” said Edgar. “The kids are no longer your responsibility, for as of this evening, they have all officially become Travelers in the Traveler’s Guild.”

51

The archbishop scowled at the guildmaster even more furiously than he had a few moments before.

“You’ve made me very angry, Edgar,” said the archbishop. “I won’t forget this.”

With that, the powerful priest turned and walked back into the city with his small regiment of acolytes behind him.

Edgar watched the antagonist late night visitors disappear into the throng of city streets and then returned back inside the guild hall, closing the door behind him.

He leaned his head against the shut door and sighed.

As if tensions with the Spectral Church weren’t thorny enough already.

He returned to the testing room and found his assistant and the strange kids all looking at him with concern.

“Why the long faces?” asked Edgar. “You’re all official Travelers now.”

The kids were silent, momentarily shocked, before they suddenly cheered with excitement.

They all looked excited except for the black-haired kid, who looked to be sighing with relief.

He’s clever that one, Edgar thought. He knew that the Spectral Church was looking for them and the only way to escape their clutches was to become official Travelers. That was why he was in such a rush with the initial test. He knew that he didn’t have long.

“I’m sure you all have questions,” said Edgar, “but they’ll have to wait until the morning.”

He turned to his assistant and gave her orders to get the kids some food and prepare a dorm for all of them.

“Lead them all to the dining hall,” said Edgar.

As they left, Edgar pointed to the black-haired boy.

“You there,” he said. “I’d like a word.”

Suddenly, it was just Edgar and the young man in the testing room, alone.

“You don’t need me to tell you who was at the door just now, do you?” said Edgar.

The young man stared at Edgar and didn’t say anything.

“I’ve just done you a pretty big favor,” said Edgar. “Some gratitude would be nice. Answers as well.”

“What do you wanna know?” said the young man.

“First off, what’s your name?”

“Sam.”

Edgar had already pieced together that they were all orphans. He wouldn’t quiz the kid on his lack of a surname.

“Alright, Sam, nice to meet you. My name is Edgar.”

“I know.”

The guildmaster grinned. “Where did you unlock your Traveler abilities?”

“In the white gate.”

“Which white gate is this,” said Edgar. “It wasn’t the one housed in our guild.”

The boy hesitated for a moment, as if he knew the information he had was explosive. That it could cause great strife throughout the city.

The kid was smart enough, however, to see that Edgar already had a pretty good idea of the situation.

“It’s a secret one,” said Sam. “Hidden at the bottom of the grand cathedral of the Spectral Church.”

“Those slimeballs,” grumbled Edgar. “Do you know how long they’ve had the gate in their control?”

Sam shook his head.

“Did they prepare you for going into the white gate?”

Sam shook his head.

“Do you have any idea why they’d send you and your fellow orphans into a dangerous white gate?”

The boy clenched his fists and a brief swell of anger showed up on his face before he took a deep breath.

“They wanted to find out what kind of classes someone could unlock if they murdered a countless number of people in the tutorial of the white gate,” the boy explained.

Edgar’s eyebrows raised at that. His stomach lurched.

“That might be the most despicable thing I’ve ever heard,” said the guildmaster.

“Do you not believe me?” asked the boy.

“Oh, I think it’s despicable because I don’t doubt you for a second,” said the guildmaster, reiterating his stance on the matter.

The guildmaster felt a swell of anger rise in him.

Throwing innocent people into a white gate as an experiment, Edgar thought to himself. I can’t think of a more abominable and grotesque action.

Edgar grew more and more sick just thinking about it.

“Now that you know,” said the boy. “What are you going to do about it?”

“If I could, I’d go burn the cathedral to the ground with all the senior members of the Spectral Church roasting inside,” said Edgar. “But hating your enemy is not always enough to defeat them. So, I’ll go meditate, cultivate my mana, train myself, get stronger—prepare for the day when I get the opportunity to topple such a horrific institution sucking life force out of Volsungar.”

The boy nodded.

“Are you satisfied with that answer?”

The boy nodded again.

“Can I rely on you to behave the same way?”

Sam nodded his head once more.

This young man only gets more and more interesting, Redfield thought. At his age if I were in his shoes, I’d be rushing to break the bones of every member of the Spectral Church. This young man’s lack of hot bloodedness suggests a wisdom far beyond his years.

Edgar then gestured for the young man to run along.

“If you head out that way and turn right, you won’t miss the dining hall,” said Edgar. “I’m sure your friends are wondering what happened to you.”

Sam nodded and walked out of the testing room.

Edgar watched the boy go and then sighed.

This is bad, the guildmaster thought to himself. The Spectral Church has always had such a vicious hunger for power and now that they had their own secret white gate that they could use to train people, they’d be able to create a whole army of powerful Traveler-priests.

This will have to be investigated further, Edgar thought. Unfortunately, there’s only one thing that is still achievable this evening.

Rest.

* * *

Sam found his friends sitting in a large dining hall, devouring huge pieces of bread along with large bowls of soup.

Sam smiled at the big bowl and piece of bread clearly waiting for him and sat down right in front of it.

“What did that old guy want?” asked Klara.

“Uhh, Klara, that was the guildmaster of the guild,” said Toby. “Please don’t get us kicked out of here after we’ve barely joined. Can they do that? Do you know, Sam? I really don’t want to be thrown back out into the streets to die of hypothermia and have my body feasted upon by street rats.”

“Some of us are still eating,” grumbled Klara, nudging Toby in the ribs. “Guildmaster, that’s cool. Maybe I can be that some day.”

Sam grinned. “You’re a long way from being guildmaster, Klara. Edgar Redfield is a master-tier Traveler. He’s one of the strongest Travelers in the entire country, if not all of Westria.”

“Whoa...” said Klara.

“Whoa is right,” said Sam, ripping his bread in half and dipping it into the soup and then taking a bite.

The first bite was a delicious jolt to the senses.

He hadn’t had food this good in a long time.

“This is incredible,” said Sam.

The entire table groaned with delight. “We know.”

After the orphans had eaten a second and, for some of them, even a third bowl of soup, a guild assistant then escorted them all to a large dormitory where they would be sleeping for the foreseeable future.

“Alright, that’s about it,” said the guild assistant. “I’ll leave you all now to it. Tomorrow you’ll be walked through the basics of what it means to be a member of the Traveler’s Guild. Until then, good night.”

Klara, Toby, and Sam waited for the guild member to close the door before they turned to one another.

52

The three friends all looked to each other eagerly.

Sam had a feeling of what was on their minds.

They’d been in such a hurry after exiting the white gate, first escaping the clutches of the Spectral Church, then finding their hideout and then, finally, seeking membership with the Traveler’s Guild that they never had a chance to share with each other what classes they had unlocked while in the class-choosing zone.

“You go first, Tobes,” said Klara.

Toby let out a sigh. “I’m sure it’s not as cool as any of the ones you got. I got a choice of three common classes: wizard, ranger, and warrior. And so I obviously went for—”

“Wizard for sure,” Klara interrupted.

“How did you know!?”

“Something about wielding magical spells that could hurt monsters from afar—emphasis on afar—seems like it would appeal to you, Tobes,” Klara said.

Toby blushed. “Well, you’re right. I chose wizard. I can’t believe I’m a Traveler now to be honest. That we’re all Travelers. I haven’t even tried my novice-tier ability yet, I’m not even sure if I could at the moment.”

Sam nodded, listening closely to his friend.

Wizard was a good class pick for Toby, though, it had some initial start-up challenges. Mainly, that for most Travelers exiting the white gate, their magic affinity was still super low and that was a most important stat for those with the wizard class.

Sam explained all this to Toby and said he would teach him how to absorb mana stones before they went to bed that evening.

Toby could get to work on raising his magic affinity stat straightaway.

“Amazing, thank you, Sam,” said Toby. “But enough about me. Klara—what did you pick?”

“Like you Tobes, I got the three same common options,” Klara explained. “I picked warrior because I want to fight my enemies up close and personal!”

“Whoa,” said Toby. “Amazing! So brave.”

Sam grinned. Of the common class options, Sam was glad to hear Klara picked warrior. That was definitely the right class for her.

He was not surprised that Klara and Toby hadn’t unlocked any uncommon or rare classes. They had survived and fought valiantly in the white gate, but you really had to do something out of the ordinary to unlock the better classes.

Sam wondered whether he should have worked harder to have helped them unlock other classes while they were in the gate, but he shook his head at the thought. His priority had been survival for his friends and they had just barely achieved that.

Plus, despite what others might argue, the common Traveler classes were quite powerful especially early on in a Traveler’s career. The abilities usually held a lot of raw power in them that was handy and easy to use, unlike, say, his blood knight’s Pain Ring ability. The latter was an ability that could be exploited for incredible gains, but the trade off was a lack of an immediate and easy to use power as well as high level of risk to achieve the significant power-ups. So, in many cases, the common classes were a great choice for many aspiring Travelers.

The common classes’ biggest downside had more to do against other Travelers as the common classes ability set was generally well known. This meant there were less opportunities for surprising knowledgeable opponents. That said, there were ways to customize the common classes and develop them in interesting and unique ways.

Sam grinned as he imagined the different ways Klara and Toby could progress with their new Traveler abilities. Of course, it would have to be up to them, and he would have to let them figure it out for themselves. The thing that brought Sam the most happiness was simply the fact that Toby and Klara were here with him—alive. They could make the worst choices with their classes if they wanted, he didn’t mind. He was just happy that they were here with him now.

“Um, hellooooo to Sam,” said Klara, waving her hands in front of Sam to get his attention.

Sam snapped out of his spiraling thoughts of the different class builds his friends could pursue and returned to the conversation.

“You haven’t shared what class you unlocked,” said Toby. “Now spill.”

Sam paused.

He wasn’t sure how much information he wanted to divulge to either Klara or Toby. He had already kept secret to them the fact that he was from the future, sent back in time by the goddess to save Westria from total annihilation. He figured he would continue to keep that close to his chest.

But he couldn’t keep everything secret from his friends or they would grow to mistrust him. So, he figured, it was okay to tell them about his newly unlocked class.

“Okay, I’ll tell you my class,” said Sam. “But you have to promise to keep it an absolute secret from everyone else. The other orphans, the other guild members. Even if the guildmaster asks you, you have to lie and say you don’t know, got it?”

“This sounds like dangerous information,” said Toby. “Maybe, we don’t even want to know! Some knowledge is dangerous enough to get people killed!”

Klara nudged Toby. “Shut it, we want to know!”

Sam looked them both with a serious expression.

“I unlocked a class called death lord.”

Toby and Klara stared at Sam in stunned silence.

The first to break the quiet was Toby clutching onto Klara’s shoulders and shaking her.

“See! This is the exact type of information that will definitely get us killed!”

“Let go of me you neurotic maniac,” Klara hissed. She pushed Toby away from her and, after a moment to settle down, Klara returned to the conversation at hand.

“Sam—just to make sure we’re on the same page here,” said Klara. “You agree that the class death lord sounds—how do I put this—evil as heck!?”

“Yep, definitely evil villain vibes with a class name like that,” Toby chimed in.

Sam nodded. “This is part of the reason why I don’t want to advertise it. From what I understand, it’s a fairly unique class.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Klara. “What’s the rarity for it?”

Sam gulped. “Legendary.”

The stunned silence returned once again.

Tears began to flood from Toby’s eyes and roll down his pudgy cheeks.

“I wish we had never asked you about your class. We’re definitely going to die just for knowing you.”

53

The next day, Sam and the rest of the orphans woke up early and moseyed their way down to the dining hall where for breakfast there was a table full of hot food: eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, baked beans, and more.

“You mean,” said one of the younger orphans, “we can take as much as we like?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen this much food on offer in my entire life,” said Toby. His eyes narrowed and looked at the food and then over his shoulder. “Suspicious, isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t know a good thing even if it was standing in front of you, would ya, Tobes?” said Klara, loading up her plate with an extra stack of hash browns.

“Yeah, I would,” he said. “I’d just wait for someone else to eat the good thing first to make sure it wasn’t poison. Look, Sam’s already finished his first plate and he looks all right, so I’m good to go.”

Toby sat down to eat his food and Klara couldn’t help but notice the other orphans were all being quite hesitant with the food on offer.

“Attention!” said Klara, scaring the younger orphans to stand up straight. “The guild has generously offered us this food, so I make it an order that we eat as much of it to each of our heart’s and stomach’s content.”

The kids all nodded and then started loading up their plates like their lives depended on it.

They ate, drank coffee, and generally relaxed when a guild assistant turned up at the dining hall, sweat on her forehead and her cheeks rosy as if she’d been running around the entire guild building looking for them all.

“What are you all doing?” panted the assistant. “Your commencement ceremony is happening in twenty minutes!?”

The assistant practically pulled the kids out of their chair and shuffled them back up to their dormitory where the assistant had given them each a pile of new clothes on the end of their beds.

“C’mon, get dressed,” said the assistant.

The clothing was plain and of good quality: socks, trousers, undershirts, and tunics.

But the most exciting garment of them all was the official Traveler’s Guild cloak each of them had been gifted. The cloak was made of fine high-quality material. It was a dark shade of royal blue with a white insignia of two swords etched on the back of it.

All the kids were excited after putting on their new clothes and cloak.

Sam couldn’t help but be pretty excited by it as well. In his first timeline, he’d been swept up into being a member of the Traveler-priests in the Spectral Church and then a Traveler mercenary. He’d worked alongside the Traveler’s Guild before but he’d never been an official member. He’d never been someone who had donned the official blue cloak.

Now, he would be.

He smiled at his reflection in a nearby mirror.

The blue cloak looked good on him.

Once they were all fully dressed, the assistant escorted them downstairs to the courtyard of the Traveler’s Guild.

A small podium had been erected and a few mana-powered balloons, floated in the air, glowing.

It was a magical and wondrous sight.

Edgar Redfield, the guildmaster, smiled at the group of kids as they came out into the courtyard. Standing behind him were his assistants and a few other senior members of the guild.

The assistant shuffled Sam and everyone else into a single file towards the podium.

“We are gathered here today for a very special occasion,” Guildmaster Redfield began. “We have had a sudden and surprising windfall of talented new recruits...”

* * *

Traveler’s Guild General, Olivia Reeves, strode into the guild hall and was surprised to find it completely quiet.

There was no assistant or anyone to greet them.

No one’s even guarding the entrance, Olivia thought. What the heck is going on?

“Where is everybody?”

“Maybe they’re on their lunch break,” said her squad member, Brock Skidmore.

“They take their lunches in shifts,” sighed her other colleague, Curtis Ashgrove. “You’d know that if you paid any attention whatsoever.”

“I believe I was paying attention when I chopped that lizard naga swordsman’s head off before it killed you,” said Brock, crossing his arms.

“My spell was precisely 1.5 seconds from going off and on the basis of the aerodynamic speed by which his spear was heading towards me, he was going to hit me within 1.8 seconds, so I assure you, I did not need your assistance, I was fine, thank-you-very-much.”

“You two, shush,” said Olivia as she took another step into the hall.

She could hear the guildmaster speaking as if he was giving a speech.

She eventually could see a crowd had gathered out in the courtyard of the guild hall.

It looked like a graduation ceremony for new recruits.

Last I checked the guild hadn’t sent any new recruits into the white gate in a couple of weeks, Olivia thought to herself.

She looked at the kids going up one by one, getting their official Traveler’s pins on their chest.

Who the heck are these kids? she thought.

Most of them look too young to be sent into the white gate and the few kids that did look old enough, she didn’t recognize a single one of them.

Olivia crossed her arms as she watched the scene unfold.

She knew there was something off or strange about this ceremony, but she couldn’t exactly say why.

* * *

It was finally Sam’s turn to step up to the podium.

He walked up and Guildmaster Redfield grinned at him and then materialized a blue pin badge and placed it on his chest.

The badge indicated that he was an official Traveler’s Guild member. The blue color denoted the color of his internal mana, which was also the color associated with the tier of his class: novice-tier.

After getting his pin badge and shaking hands with the guildmaster, Sam walked off the podium and joined the other kids.

“Let’s offer a big congratulations to the newest members of the Resfall Traveler’s Guild,” said Guildmaster Redfield.

Everyone in the courtyard cheered.

Sam couldn’t help but notice a group of three Travelers who were watching the ceremony from a distance.

The woman had an orange pin badge denoting she was of one of the highest tier groups a Traveler could ascend to. She was an adept-tier Traveler. The only person higher that Sam knew was the guildmaster, who had a red badge to denote his master-tier status.

The two men behind her each had yellow badges to denote their journeyman-tiers.

One was a tall elegant-looking elf with the wizard class, who was known as Curtis Ashgrove.

The other man was a stocky dwarf with the warrior class known as Brock Skidmore.

It took a moment for him to place them and then he remembered who they were from his previous timeline. The three of them had been on the battlefield in his original timeline fighting against the demon king and his hordes exiting through the black gates.

He remembered that even them—some of the strongest Travelers in the Final Army—didn’t last very long against the demon threat.

Seeing the three of them alive now made him both happy and melancholic.

All three of them were valiant fighters, but it hammered home just how far Sam had to go in preparation for the upcoming apocalypse that was just under five years away.

He didn’t just have to catch up to Olivia Reeves and her colleagues. He had to surpass them.

Beyond the variation in color, the other major difference between the pin badges that Sam and his friends had just acquired and the badges of the other guild members was that their badges were empty, whereas the other members had an assortment of stars on them.

Redfield began to explain exactly that.

“Now that you’re officially Travelers, you’ll now begin doing missions and assignments on behalf of the guild. Some of these missions will be assigned, others will be optional and up to you based on the missions listed on the mission board inside. All of your missions and assignments will be determined based on your tier. That said, there’s a huge gulf between a beginner novice-tier Traveler and one who is close to ranking up to apprentice-tier. To keep track of these differences, the guild also has the star system. You’ll notice right now your badges are blank. You are considered zero-star Travelers. As you take on more and more missions, you’ll acquire more stars, up to three for your tier-group. Missions assigned to a three-star novice-tier Traveler will be the highest level of mission you can go on until you’ve ranked up to apprentice-tier. That’s if you ever rank up. Many Travelers never go far beyond where you are now. For some, they just don’t have the willpower, strength, or fortitude to ascend to the higher tiers of power. But the more frequent reason Travelers don’t reach the next tier of power is because they die before they’re ever able to. I say this not to scare you, but to warn you, and prepare you for the great responsibility that being a Traveler means. I believe in each and every one of you. That is all for now. Good luck.”

Everyone cheered and clapped.

Redfield was about to step up off the podium when Sam raised his hand.

The guildmaster turned and looked at him funny.

They were now preparing to have a post-ceremony lunch that the guildmaster was clearly in an eager rush to get to.

“This isn’t the time for questio—”

Sam cut the guildmaster off, shocking everyone in the courtyard.

Even more shocking was what he said next.

“How soon can we start?”

54

Over the next week, Sam and the others settled into the life and work of being official Travelers.

Despite their glamorous new blue cloaks and pin badges, they never got close to a single dungeon gate.

To Sam’s chagrin, the week was spent doing odd jobs for the guild, cleaning up the bathrooms, standing guard at the front entrance, and helping out local Resfall citizens with minor problems.

Over the course of the last few days, they saved three cats that had got stuck in trees and solved the mystery of the missing beer barrel (the pub workers were drinking it).

Both Klara and Toby managed to gain some tutelage for their respective new classes with the members of Olivia Reeves’ squad.

Brock Skidmore—famous in Sam’s previous timeline as one of the greatest fighters to ever wield a war hammer—gave Klara some good warrior exercises and drills, showing her the best ways to use her first unlocked ability.

Similarly, Curtis Ashgrove—whose feats of lightning magic in Sam’s first life became known all across Westria—gave Toby good wizard practice exercises, walking the boy through how to cultivate his magic affinity and the different pathways someone with the wizard class could take.

The most eventful part of the week for Sam, however, was their unofficial assignment: Operation Rescue Roxy, The Unicow.

Sam, Klara, and Toby were all aware that they’d left Roxy behind, but they didn’t know the best way to get her back.

Certainly, when they had first exited the white gate, returning to the orphanage was the last thing they had wanted to do.

Even on the evening when Sam and his two friends went to get Roxy, fear filled their hearts.

“What if they’re waiting for us,” said Toby, as they hid behind some bushes in a park near their old orphanage. “They could snatch us up and lock us away.”

“We can’t leave Roxy behind,” said Klara. “She’s a part of our crew.’

“You’re just saying that because you’re addicted to unicow milk.”

Klara turned and looked to Toby with a serious gaze. “Are you telling me, you’re not? Don’t you think the Traveler’s Guild porridge and muesli would be so much better with a splash of delicious unicow milk?”

Toby sighed. “I can’t believe I’m risking my life for milk.”

The trio of friends stalked through the shadows of the night and made their way to their former home.

Peeking through the windows, they found that their dormitory was empty. The Spectral Church had yet to replace them with new orphans.

They climbed through the window and then tiptoed to Klara’s former office.

Sam kept guard at the back in case there were any Traveler-priests waiting in the shadows to attack them.

“Please be here, please be here, please be here,” whispered Klara over and over again as she turned the doorknob to her former office and pulled the door open.

They stood their stunned.

It was too dark to see anything.

“Roxy?” said Klara. “Are you there?”

Sam materialized his flame sword so they could get a bit more light to see the contents of the room.

He swung it around and to his dismay, Roxy was no longer there.

“They must have taken her away,” said Toby, wiping a tear from his eye. “What do you think they’ll do with her?”

Sam’s face was downcast. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

They started heading to the door when a strange noise came out of nowhere.

“Did you hear that?” hissed Klara.

“Ghosts!?” whispered Toby.

“No,” said Klara. “Be quiet.

They stood still and waited for the noise again.

This time the noise was a lot louder.

“Mooooo.”

“Roxy!” they all cheered.

They ran back to Klara’s former office and looked again more closely, Roxy emerged from a pile of extra blankets, cloths, and sheets.

They all hugged the unicow.

“Roxy!” cried Toby. “I’m so happy to see you’re all right.”

Sam hugged Roxy tightly as well.

In his first life, he’d never had a chance of owning a pet.

Roxy was his first.

And, he really could see what all the fuss was about.

* * *

Carrying Roxy out, though, proved to be more challenging than they were expecting.

Klara and Toby climbed out the window while Sam lifted Roxy to squeeze her through.

It should have been simple enough, but the unicow kept kicking Sam in the face every time he tried to lift her.

“C’mon, Roxy,” said Sam. “We need to get out of here.”

Eventually, after a few more tries, Sam was able to get Roxy to calm down and get their unicow friend out the window.

Soon, the three friends were heading down the cobbled paths of Resfall, dragging a large unicow with them.

The group’s next biggest obstacles were the assistants and clerks at the front of the Traveler’s Guild Hall.

“What the heck is that!?”

“It’s a unicow,” Sam explained.

“You’re not bringing that in here, are you?”

The clerks all groaned.

“This is the problem with you Travelers,” said one of the head clerks. “Always inviting trouble.”

It took some pleading, but eventually the clerks accepted Roxy the unicow and they found a little home for her with the horses in the stable, though she was given her own stable for her own comfort.

Finally, it could truly be said that all the members of Orphanage-H had now officially come to live at the Resfall Traveler’s Guild Hall.

55

At the end of their first week of being official Traveler’s, Sam and his friends sat around the dining hall to discuss how things were going so far.

“It’s great,” said Toby. “We haven’t had to fight a single monster or enter a dungeon gate at all. If I knew being a Traveler was like this, I would have signed up ages ago.”

“That is one hundred percent a lie,” said Klara. “You would never in a million years sign up on your own accord. Not to mention as orphans under the authority of the Spectral Church—we wouldn’t have been allowed.”

“Well, I’m here now,” said Toby, lifting a pint of unicow milk. “And I’m loving it!”

Sam was a lot less happy than how their first week had gone compared to Toby.

They needed to start doing real assignments. Assignments that would help them get stronger and gain more stars in the guild.

Sam was realizing he had a short window of opportunity to train before he really needed to focus on stopping the first major historically catastrophic event from his first timeline: the assassination of Princess Alice Grace.

Thankfully, it was still only Wintersmid. The new year would start next month in Janar, and then he still had a few months until the time of the assassination which happened at the Spring Festival at the beginning of Mai.

In summary, he still had about five months to prepare.

It should be enough to get the preparations he needed in place and to reach a level of strength to stop the horrible event that completely changed the history of Westria for the worse.

Sam couldn’t help but wonder what the world would look like if Princess Alice Grace had not been killed and had properly ascended the throne of Resfall to rule the Volsungar kingdom.

What does that world even look like? Sam wondered.

He wasn’t sure of the details but he knew it was a world that was a better and happier place than the timeline he had lived through and he couldn’t wait to discover what it might actually be like to live in.

He decided there and then as he was sitting at the dining table with Klara and Toby that he was ready to step up his own training.

And so, later that night, after they’d all gone to bed in their dormitory, Sam got up and gathered his things and went to head out into the night.

“Where are you going?” whispered a voice.

Sam had made it to the door.

He thought everyone had fallen asleep already and that he’d been quiet enough to not wake anyone up.

He turned around and saw it was Klara.

She was sitting up on her bed and rubbing her eyes.

“If you’re going off to face danger, let me come with you,” said Klara.

Sam sighed.

He was worried something like this might happen.

Both Klara and Toby were dear to his heart, and he had spent his first few months in this new timeline training both himself and also them and the other orphans as well.

He’d held their hands for long enough.

He had helped his friends survive the white gate.

They now had Traveler abilities and the means to get stronger themselves.

He had to now trust that they could rely on themselves to do so.

“Not tonight,” said Sam. “Tonight—I must train on my own.”

He looked at Klara with dead seriousness and she nodded her head in understanding.

With that, the girl went back to bed and Sam closed the door to the dormitory behind him.

Sam headed down the stairs of the guild hall towards the area where the Traveler mission board was kept.

He looked over the section that kept all the novice-tier assignments.

He glanced at what was available to novice-tier Traveler with zero stars in the guild.

There was an assignment that involved helping a nearby baker bake some cookies for the destitute. Or another one that involved helping an elderly man go for a walk in the afternoon during the week to help him stay fit and healthy.

Sam frowned at the available assignments.

Some of these missions are so basic it doesn’t even matter if you’re a Traveler or not, Sam thought.

He decided to glance over to some of the other assignments on the mission board, just beyond his current level.

His eyes widened at one mission in particular.

It was a three-star novice-tier mission that required a minimum of four Travelers and at least one apprentice-tier Traveler as well.

It was a simple mission to clear a standard blue dungeon gate. The reason it had extra requirements was because it was discovered a bit later and so there were only a few more days until it could potentially result in a dungeon break, meaning the guild wanted whoever was going to take the mission on to clear it straightaway on the first try.

But Sam’s eyes widened at more than just the prospect of an effective and challenging training mission.

He was suddenly recalling a minor disaster from his first timeline. Minor only in that it didn’t send the world towards its doom like the assassination of Princess Alice Grace, but definitely not minor in the scale of its dead body count.

How could I have forgotten, he thought.

This wasn’t a mission to take lightly.

More than that, he had to get to work on clearing it straightaway.

Sam didn’t sign out the mission or anything—the clerks would never allow him to.

He just took in the relevant info and then headed out into the night to take on the challenge.

* * *

The blue dungeon gate was located about two hours outside of the city near the town of Lighthold.

Sam got there by foot, sending mana into his feet to make sure he ran faster.

It was the most efficient way to travel.

Sending mana into his feet made him move faster, but it also helped train his agility stat along with his magic affinity stat.

Sam didn’t want to waste any time not maximizing his gains.

When he arrived just outside the dungeon gate, he took a moment to catch his breath.

He stared at the blue dungeon gate.

The large glowing portal lit up the entire darkened nighttime forest, adding a blue hue to everything nearby.

The silhouettes of the rooftops of the town of Lighthold were dark shadows in the distance. The homes to so many innocent people. All of whom would die if Sam didn’t get to work.

Sam was eager to enter the dungeon gate.

This was going to be his first dungeon gate since he had survived the white gate for the second time. His stats were higher. He had more abilities now. More weaponry and equipment.

He had cleared the blue dungeon gates before entering the white gate in this new timeline. He couldn’t wait to see what the difference was now that he was even more powerful.

With that sense of keen excitement, Sam stepped into the blue dungeon gate.

He immediately appeared in a large field of bright green grass with a blue sky overhead.

Sam immediately took on a defensive stance and looked around.

It was a grassland dungeon world, which was a little bit more difficult than a cavern dungeon world. In a cavern, you had a bit of breathing room upon entering the dungeon, as usually there weren’t any monsters coming to attack from behind you, whereas in a grassland dungeon, monsters might attack you from any direction.

Usually that wasn’t the case—as a blue dungeon was typically on the easier end of dungeons—but it was still a greater possibility in a grassland dungeon compared to a cavern dungeon.

Sam was just about to relax when the ground at his feet began to rumble.

Here they come, Sam thought.

Sam quickly materialized his deadly berzerker sword and got ready to take on the approaching threat.

Bursting out from the ground nearby was a group of ant-like creatures with sharp sickle-like metal claws for hands.

Let the training begin, Sam thought and rushed at them with his sword.

He triggered his Pain Ring ability.

A red circle shot out from him and took on a large circular radius that encompassed both him and his attackers.

He swung his berzerker sword and chopped one of the humanoid ant-like warriors in half. Green goo shot out from its body.

Sam was pleased.

His increased strength and equipment was clearly paying off.

He didn’t even have to rely on taking damage to increase his strength with the power of the Pain Ring ability—he just had the stat advantage over his current opponents.

He sliced up the other opponents with just as much ease.

But, he didn’t have a chance to relax as more ant-warriors showed up.

Maybe they’re weak individually, but they have strength in their absurd numbers, Sam thought to himself.

As five more ant-warriors emerged out of the ground, Sam took in the corpses of the monsters he’d already killed.

Most of them had disintegrated into mana stones, but some of the green goo still drenched the grass nearby.

Sam grinned.

It was an opportunity to test out his new death lord ability.

As the newly arrived ant warriors charged at him he triggered Blood Flame.

The green goo suddenly erupted into a huge amount of crimson red flames, roasting the ant warriors alive in seconds. More than that, the ant warriors seemed to react much more negatively to the Blood Flame compared to other monsters. Many of their limbs exploded from mere contact with the magic fire.

After destroying the wave of warriors, Sam waited for more enemies to arrive, but after sixty seconds, he finally took a moment to relax.

He gathered up the mana stones left behind by the ant creatures and contemplated everything he’d learned from the fight with them.

He was incredibly pleased to discover that his death lord’s Blood Flame ability did not rely purely on conventional red blood from humans, but seemingly any lifeblood or liquid that coursed through a creature would trigger the ability.

Even more fascinating was how the ants reacted to Blood Flame differently to other monsters.

Sam thought this fact had the potential to be something truly powerful and exploitable in this dungeon.

He materialized an empty health potion from his inventory and filled the glass tube with as much of the remaining green goo as he could find.

He had managed to gather about half of the potion with the green blood of the ant-warriors.

Sam looked around and contemplated what he should do next.

Grassland dungeons were often massive zones and usually had a large amount of monsters, which made them a great location for training.

He knew from his previous timeline that thousands of ant warriors lived in this dungeon.

Hordes of them had gone on to ravage the nearby town of Lighthold in an event known as the Winstermid Massacre.

Sam was determined to stop it and reap all the gains from doing so.

56

Sam triggered his mana sense to see if he could gather any information.

His eyes widened as soon as he did so.

Sam’s mana sense instantly made him feel in much more danger than he had been feeling before.

Even though Sam couldn’t see any monsters in front of him, his mana sense suggested that he was surrounded by a large number of monsters.

He bristled at the knowledge, instantly feeling a bit uncomfortable and twitchy.

He looked at the mounds of dirt and grass left behind by the ant warriors.

There must be countless numbers of them burrowed underground, Sam realized.

A grin began to creep onto his face.

This is a training gold mine.

He walked over to the mounds of dirt to study where the ants had come from.

They were quite shallow tunnels in the dirt.

The ants were smart enough to make sure when they came above ground to attack they didn’t immediately leave themselves open for a counter-attack on their home base.

But the intelligence of the ant warrior’s strategy only went so far. Or, at the very least, it avoided the immediate threat of a counterattack. The mounds of dirt would still eventually lead to somewhere.

As Sam began to follow the mounds of dirt left behind by the ant warriors that he had destroyed. He started to think maybe the ant warriors’ strategy was to kill their opponent before they even had a chance to follow the mounds back to their base.

I better get ready then.

As Sam followed the dirt trail left behind by his former attackers, another wave of ants came his way. This time they sent ten of them.

Sam wasted no time.

First, he triggered Pain Ring. Not because he planned to take advantage of the ability itself, but more because he wanted to collect more kills towards leveling it.

Then, because he wanted to keep moving towards the ants’ home base, he materialized the glass vial of ant blood. He threw the glass right into the middle of the battlefield, smashing it to bits, and creating a scattershot of green blood right near the current incoming ant warriors, and then triggered Blood Flame.

Sam was cleaning up and collecting mana stones and more green blood less than a minute after the fight started.

He fought about four more waves by the time he arrived at the end of the mounds and found a proper entrance to the ant colony.

Guarding the entrance way was over a hundred ant warriors, while worker ants seemed to be carrying resources found across the grassland world and bringing them down into the ant colony.

Sam had expected to meet more resistance right at the entrance to the ant colony.

There were too many ant warriors spread apart to use his previous strategy of smashing a glass of blood on the ground effectively.

So, Sam went back to basics.

With his berzerker sword in one hand and his fiery flame sword in the other, Sam rushed the small army of ant warriors head on.

He triggered Pain Ring and started the long haul battle.

It was one hundred ant warriors against one.

Most people would bet on the ants just by the sheer enormity of their force.

But, as Sam had already discovered they were weak individually and for every attack that did land on him, cutting into his flesh, it only made him stronger.

He was a whirlwind of destruction as the ants surrounded him.

After Sam reckoned he’d massacred a third of them, he triggered Blood Flame now that they’d all gathered in one location around him.

Suddenly, the crimson red flames surrounded him. The shrill screaming wails of the ant warriors filled his ear drums.

Soon, he was surrounded by his Blood Flames in every direction.

As he stood surrounded by the flames, Sam was glad to see the flames didn’t seem to harm him at all.

On his way to the entrance to the ant colony, he made sure to test more cautiously whether the Blood Flame had harmed him and was glad to see it hadn’t, but a cautious experiment felt a lot different from being completely surrounded by vicious red fire and not being harmed in the slightest.

Sam left the mana stones behind and gathered as much green blood as he could into vials, downing a few health potions in the process just to have empty bottles.

With his offensive materials gathered, he stepped up to the entrance to the ant colony and was very pleased to see it was a long deep tunnel down.

Perfect, Sam thought.

He triggered Pain Ring and then lobbed his collected vial of blood down into the ant tunnel.

He waited until he heard the glass smash and then triggered Blood Flame.

He was just preparing to throw in another one of the blood vials when the whole ground beneath him shook.

Brief snippets of pain cried out only to be snuffed out very quickly.

What’s happening down there, Sam wondered.

His answer came in the form of a notification on his profile screen.

Congratulations Pain Ring has leveled up!

Sam blinked in absolute shock.

Wait, what!?

57

The last Sam had checked the Pain Ring had needed well over another 1,400 kills to level up.

How did he achieve it so fast?

He quickly surmised that when he tossed in his vial of blood and triggered Blood Flame in the colony, he had delivered a level of damage far greater than he was expecting.

The only way it could have possibly worked was if it had extended the blood far faster and quicker than he had expected.

The Blood Flame’s explosive effect on the ant warrior’s bodies must have created a ripple effect throughout the entire colony down below.

That sure makes my life easier, Sam smirked.

He then went onto look at his new stat gains and the evolution of his Pain Ring ability.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.

Class: Death Lord (Legendary) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Blood Flame (Novice Tier) (Level 1) – Morph all spilled blood in a nearby radius into a powerful magical fire.

Strength: 18.9

Agility: 18.4

Endurance: 18.1

Magic Affinity: 21.8

Skill Quests

Pain Ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 0/3000

Blood Flame (Level 2) – Seek the enlightenment of the Blood Flame. 2/3

Sam took in a breath of excitement.

There was so much to take in on his new stat profile, which he was very pleased about.

His plan to move forward on his training was proving to be a great success so far.

All of his stats had made gains, which was important, as he wasn’t sure which stats needed to hit 31 to rank up death lord. It could have been the same two stats as blood knight, or the other stats, or maybe death lord required all of the stats to reach the 31 stat threshold in order for it to rank up to apprentice-tier.

Either way, the only way he could find out was to keep raising all of his stats, which he looked to be doing.

The top three stats were catching up to his magic affinity stat, though he hadn’t taken the time to drain all the monster stones he had acquired in the dungeon yet, so that stat was due a nice boost at a later time.

The best new development in his profile was the evolution of his Pain Ring ability. It had taken him over a year to acquire this ability in his first timeline, so he was very pleased with the pace of his current progression.

He looked over the words of the evolution with excitement.

Pain Ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.

The ability was the same as it had been before, with a now added bonus. More than just increasing in strength as he took damage, he also increased his battle awareness.

Battle awareness was a difficult to describe enhancement, but it was a powerful upgrade. It was hard to describe exactly how it worked, but from his experience in his previous timeline, Sam knew that essentially it worked as follows: as he took on more damage, he gained a greater understanding of an enemy’s weak point.

It was an incredible evolution to the ability and Sam couldn’t wait to start utilizing it.

Now that he had leveled up the ability, he could also see what the skill quest for the next level was.

Pain Ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 0/3000

The number of monsters necessary to kill to level up the power was only 1,000 more than the previous one, which made the skill quest deceptively seem like only a minor increase in difficulty.

But that was far from the case.

He’d have to utilize battle awareness to get the kill, meaning he’d have to get more harmed in the process for him to claim the kill towards the skill quest. Going from level 1 to level 2 with Pain Ring, it didn’t even matter if Sam utilized the skill so long as he slayed monsters within the ring itself.

This would require a bit more work.

Sam was also glad to see he had made some headway on leveling up the Blood Flame skill as well.

He quickly surmised that what the system meant by “seeking the enlightenment of the Blood Flame” was the discovering of how Blood Flame could cause different types of effects depending on the type of monster you were fighting.

So, clearly to level the skill further would require him to keep roasting more monsters alive with the special flame.

Fine by me, Sam thought.

Sam walked over to the entrance to the ant colony and considered the best way to go down and collect the mana stones, when the ground at his feet began to tremble.

What’s going on?

Sam thought he had slayed all the ants.

Nearby, the ground burst open and a gigantic ant emerged.

It was glowing yellow with mana all around it.

Sam’s eyes twitched.

It was the dungeon’s boss monster.

The ant queen.

And even worse than that, it had drained all the mana stones of the dead ant warriors into itself, massively increasing its stats, power, and sheer size in an instant.

58

Sam stood in awe of the gigantic ant queen.

The size of the monster defied comprehension.

It was as big as a building.

Worse was the power level of the mana emanating off the creature. Yellow flames surrounded the ant queen, suggesting that she’d somehow rapidly drained the cores of her ant followers and had ascended up to a monster at journeyman-tier levels of power.

This is not good, Sam thought.

The ant queen was so large it could barely be contained in his vision.

It was mind boggling how large the ant queen was.

Sam’s eyes twitched, just trying to come up with a strategy to take the monster out.

He rushed forward.

The ant queen swiped its massive metal scythe-like hands towards him.

Sam triggered Pain Ring and let the massive sickle-like arms graze his back.

Sam involuntarily groaned between gritted teeth as the powerful boss monster’s attack wreaked havoc on his body.

He collapsed on the ground and quickly rolled away as the ant queen came in with a second attack that would have sliced him right in half had it landed.

The initial pain that had coursed through Sam’s body lessened, thanks to his necklace of healing, and he felt his Pain Ring convert the damage into a new power inside himself.

He looked around to see if he had developed any battle awareness of the queen’s weak points, but it looked as if he hadn’t taken enough damage yet.

Sam didn’t care and retaliated with his new bonus strength, slashing at the front leg of the ant queen with his berzerker sword.

He cut through part of the flesh of its front leg.

It wasn’t much of an attack—more like a scratch than anything else.

Which made sense as the ant queen was now a whole two tiers above Sam.

But the good news was: a scratch still revealed blood, some of which had managed to fall onto the grass.

And blood, even a drop, was all Sam needed to trigger Blood Flame.

A bright red flame of fire began to glow around the ant queen’s front leg, mixing in with a red flame from Sam’s own blood from the ant queen’s initial attack.

The Blood Flame ability finally broke through and caused some sort of significant pain on the ant queen as it suddenly shrieked and wailed.

Sam’s red blood caused the giant ant’s skin and flesh to explode, creating more blood, which only fueled Sam’s death lord ability more.

The ant queen recoiled until its whole front leg collapsed forward.

Exactly what I was hoping for, thought Sam.

The ant queen was as big as a building and Sam had devised a strategy to take her down based on that. By taking out the front leg, he now was making the ant queen less mobile and off balance.

Sam should have the upper hand now.

He started running across the massive grassland battlefield towards the ant queen’s back legs.

If he can take one of those out, the boss monster would be immobile.

The ant queen saw what he was doing and hissed.

Large globules of yellow acid shot out front the ant queen’s mouth.

Sam kept retreating, as it wasn’t worth taking the damage without his Pain Ring on.

He needed to trigger the ability so that the power’s radius was closer to the actual object he was trying to harm.

He imbued mana into his feet and pushed himself so that he ran faster, outrunning the giant yellow bombs of acid flying towards him.

His heart was racing.

He arrived at the ant queen’s back foot and triggered his Pain Ring ability.

Now it’s time to take some damage, Sam thought.

The ant queen knew Sam was coming at it from the back and so slammed its chitinous insectoid knee right into Sam’s chest and slammed him into the ground.

The ant queen imbued yellow journeyman-tier mana into its knee making it incredibly powerful.

Sam gasped for breath as the knee lodged into his chest, it was pushing against his lungs and limiting his ability to acquire more oxygen.

The ant queen was either going to squash him to death or suffocate him. It just depended on what happened first.

Sam manipulated the mana inside of him and centered it onto his chest to increase his defense against the ant queen’s knee trying to dig its way through to his flesh.

Pain coursed through his entire body.

The only thing numbing the pain was his loss of oxygen and his sense of reality. His vision was going blurry.

Sam knew he was less than a minute before death.

Just a little bit longer, he said to himself.

He had thirty more seconds to live.

Just a little bit more, he thought as his vision blackened all around him.

Right as he was about to lose consciousness and die, Sam lifted up his arms and finally pushed back.

Strength and power overwhelmed Sam’s body as the accumulated damage from the ant queen’s attack surged through his body, lending unparalleled levels of reserved power into his arms and hands as he pushed the giant ant queen’s knee away from him.

He gasped for breath and rolled out from the monster’s paralyzing knee.

He was quickly back on his feet and reaching for his berzerker sword.

He swung it at the ant queen’s legs.

Only five minutes before Sam could only hope to barely scratch the monster. Since, though, Sam had accumulated so much power via Pain Ring that one slice of his berzerker sword cut the ant queen’s leg in half.

The monster toppled to its side, releasing a horrific shrill wail in the process.

You’re mine now, thought Sam.

He decided he would keep attacking from his current position to utilize all the extra power he was gaining from the Pain Ring. If he attacked the other leg, he would be outside of the ability’s radius, and back to his normal power.

And his normal levels of power were not enough to take down the ant queen.

Sam started swiping viciously at the fallen side of the ant queen.

He triggered Blood Flame creating massive amounts of crimson flames that roasted the side of the ant queen.

Sam thought he was close to finishing the ant queen off when something awful happened.

At the ant queen’s front where it was missing an arm—a huge burst of liquid shot forth, followed by a brand new arm with a metallic sharp sickle for a handle.

Sam’s shoulders sank at the sight of the monster’s ability to regenerate.

That’s going to be a problem, he thought.

His vision then went fuzzy for a moment and the ant queen’s head glowed red.

Sam understood what was happening.

He’d finally taken enough damage to utilize the new second level of his Pain Ring ability.

Battle awareness.

The head was the ant queen’s weak point.

Sam rushed to the collapsed back of the ant queen where he had most recently sliced off its leg.

I need to climb up onto the monster before it regenerates its back leg!

Sam wasted no time, scaling the back of the ant queen, until he was balancing himself on its back.

He started running up the large creature, heading towards its head.

The ant queen tried to shake him off, but Sam sent mana into his feet to help him stay balanced on the strange surface.

He managed to get to the head.

He lifted up his berzerker sword and plunged it down into the ant queen’s break.

Clink!

The sword bounced off the ant queen’s head.

But, this is supposed to be its weak point.

Then, Sam realized what had happened: he was no longer in the area of effect of his Pain Ring ability and so no longer had the added power bonus to his attacks.

Crap.

Sam looked around and quickly realized his plan wasn’t completely out the window.

The red circle that marked his Pain Ring was still there on the ground.

He just would have to manage to get the ant queen’s head inside the radius of that circle.

But how?

Easy, Sam thought.

He triggered Blood Flame, creating a new eruption of explosive flames all across the battlefield.

The ant queen wailed and shook and trembled.

It was recoiling from the pain, writhing and moving spasmodically.

Sam focused on staying balanced on top of the monster’s head as it flailed around.

He knew he might only have one shot before he was flung from the top of the ant queen’s head and onto the ground.

Sam might not get another chance after that.

He gripped his berzerker sword tightly, paying close attention to the direction the ant queen’s flailing head was moving.

It was finally heading in the direction of where his Pain Ring radius marker was.

Sam lifted his berzerker sword getting ready to land the blow.

Three.

Two.

One—

59

Sam plunged his berzerker sword with all of his might downward right into the ant queen’s head.

Unlike his first attack at the monster’s weak point, he now had all the added power and strength accumulated from his near death experience with the ant queen.

And being near death only added to the accumulated power to his Pain Ring ability.

Sam’s powerful sword broke through the chitinous top layer of the ant queen’s skin and punctured the skull and brain of the nightmarish monster, right in its weakest and most vulnerable point.

As Sam pushed the sword deeper and deeper into the ant queen’s brain, twisting it and grinding the blade into the horrific monster’s mind center, Sam triggered Blood Flame once more, literally sending the entire monster’s head on fire.

The monster cried out and collapsed onto the ground, creating a massive earthquake across the grassland dungeon.

The ant queen had been destroyed.

* * *

A few minutes later, Sam was sitting on the ground of the grassland dungeon world, looking at the charred grass that created a comparable shape to the mighty ant queen he’d just fought.

He took a moment to catch his breath.

He’d have to exit the dungeon gate shortly now that the boss had been destroyed.

The massacre of Lighthold had been a devastating moment in the history of Volsungar with the attack of the ants.

Sam had stopped it before it even happened.

He took it in.

Just that morning, he had saved thousands of lives who would have died horrifically later that day.

Thank you, goddess, he thought to himself. Thank you for sending me back and letting me help so many people.

* * *

General Olivia Reeves led a squad of Travelers through the woods.

She had her two right hand captains with her, Brock Skidmore and Curtis Ashgrove, as well as their two protégés, the new recruits Klara and Toby.

Clearing a standard blue dungeon gate was a bit below their level, but it was a slight emergency as it had been discovered late.

Plus, it’s a good learning experience for the new recruits, Olivia thought to herself.

She did find herself yawning as they went through the cold snowy woods, though.

She couldn’t help but yearn for the comfortable warmth of her bed, especially out in the thankless cold of the forest.

“I say we clear the dungeon as fast as we can,” said Curtis. “I’d like to get back to the guild library and continue my research on the differences between old and new magic.”

“Boring,” yawned Brock. “Let’s take our time and relish the battle. I’d never rush back to a bloody library in a million years.”

“Yes, because you’re a foolish barbarian of a man,” said Curtis, irritably.

“You say barbarian like it’s a bad thing,” spat Brock.

Olivia ignored the bickering, which she hoped the two younger wide-eyed Travelers would learn to do as well.

Otherwise, it would be a long journey to the blue dungeon gate.

An hour or so later, they arrived at the blue dungeon gate.

Olivia turned around to go over the instructions for the gate, but before she went into her normal pre-dungeon gate entry spiel, Curtis had his hand raised as if he had something important to say.

“Yes, Curtis?”

“There’s something off about this dungeon gate,” Curtis said.

“Looks like any other dungeon gate I’ve ever seen,” grumbled Brock.

Curtis gave Brock a snide eye. “Of course, you’d say that. If you look closely, however, you can see that the gate is beginning to shrink. It’s about a half a yard smaller in diameter.”

“Wouldn’t that mean someone’s cleared the gate already?” said Toby.

“Very good, Toby,” said Curtis. “That is my conclusion exactly.”

Olivia narrowed her eyes and looked at the gate.

How could it be cleared already?

Her answer arrived a moment later, when the other notable new recruit—the strange black-haired boy with red eyes known as Sam—stepped out from the dungeon gate all by himself.

Impossible, Olivia thought. There’s no way this novice-tier Traveler with zero stars could have cleared this dungeon on his own.

It was simply unheard of.

Olivia was full of both amazement and rage.

* * *

Guildmaster Redfield sat gleefully in the chair behind his desk with one hand holding a fork and another holding a knife. He had a large white napkin flowing out from beneath his shirt collar.

He had finally decided to take a break from going over the guild’s finances and eat his lunch.

His assistant had run down stairs to the dining hall and brought back a full plate of roast chicken and vegetables and it looked absolutely scrumptious.

No way will I make the mistake of taking my lunch break in the actual dining hall again, Guildmaster Redfield mused. Too much opportunity for distraction or gossip. It takes away from the enjoyment of the meal.

“Thank you,” he said to his assistant as she placed the meal down in front of him. “Please close the door on the way out.”

He wanted to enjoy his meal in the peace of his own company.

He cut a piece of chicken that was dripping with gravy and was about to take his first bite when General Oliva Reeves kicked open his door and dragged their most promising new recruit, Sam, behind her.

“Guildmaster,” said Olivia, cheeks red and clearly angry. “This young man must be disciplined. He has broken the codes of the guild. We cannot allow this behavior to stand.”

The guildmaster put down his fork and knife and narrowed his eyes at the two guild members intruding on his lunch with a level of wrath few had ever seen.

Redfield knew Olivia Reeves was a brilliant general and Traveler, one of the best members of the guild without a doubt.

If she was bringing a problem to him, it was serious.

But what could Sam have done to upset her so much?

He looked down at his lunch forlornly, knowing it was going to be room temperature or, even worse, cold by the time he dug into it and sighed.

“Can you elaborate General Reeves?” said the guildmaster. “What exactly happened?”

“The new recruit pursued an assignment far outside his station,” said Olivia. “He took on a three star novice-tier mission, knowing full well that was completely against the rules, seeing as he has zero stars.”

Redfield blinked in surprise.

The black-haired boy kept his arms crossed with his normal stoic expression that revealed nothing.

Is the kid bored?

Is he upset that he’s in trouble?

Redfield found it troubling that a sixteen-year-old boy could be so emotionally blank.

It’s disconcerting, Redfield thought. Maybe even a little creepy?

He shook his thoughts away and looked up to the general.

“We keep the rules in place so that ambitious young Travelers don’t get themselves killed,” said Redfield. “Yet, the boy in question is very much still alive. Did you stop him before he entered the gate? Did he endanger others?”

Olivia sighed and seemed to deflate a little bit at the guildmaster’s questions.

“Erm, no,” said Olivia. “He actually managed to do the assignment on his own.”

A grin crept onto the old man’s face.

This kid really is full of surprises, Redfield thought to himself.

“You mean to say,” said Redfield, “the young man cleared a blue dungeon gate all on his own?”

“Yes, sir,” said Olivia. “But as you can see—”

“And you want me to discipline him?” asked the guildmaster.

“Sir, the rules are in place for a—”

The guildmaster held up his hand to say he had heard enough.

He pulled out his drawer and pulled out three gold stars.

He then stood up and walked over to the young man.

He then turned to the general and said, “For the young man to achieve such an accomplishment, he deserves to be upgraded a full three stars—considering that he achieved a mission far above what anyone in the guild would have expected from a Traveler of his level.”

The guildmaster placed the three gold stars onto the young man’s shiny blue Traveler pin badge.

Olivia’s face reddened and she began to protest. “But—”

“But, you’re right,” said the guildmaster. “Rules are rules. So for breaking the guild’s rules, I will dock the young man one star.”

Redfield then removed one of the stars he just added to the young man.

Sam couldn’t help but grin at the guildmaster.

The young man had entered the office expecting to be chastised and was pleased to see he was being rewarded for his accomplishments.

Olivia threw her arms up in the air, shook her head, and stormed out of the office.

Redfield then returned to behind his desk.

“She’s a stickler for the rules,” he sighed. “But don’t worry she means well. It might be worth picking up some cider from the northern quarter. It’s her favorite. Might ease any lingering tension between you two.”

Sam nodded.

“Now, please,” said Redfield, picking up his knife and fork. “Leave me to my lunch.”

60

A day after the incident with the three-star mission, Sam patched things up with General Olivia Reeves by offering her a bottle of cider from the city’s northern quarter like the guildmaster had recommended.

When Sam had approached the general in the dining hall and handed her the bottle, both of Olivia’s squad members, Curtis and Brock shared a look.

“Uh oh, looks like someone else has found out about Olivia’s secret weakness for drink.”

The general glared at her two squad mates. “Don’t be spreading rumors about me to the new recruits.”

“Of course not,” said Curtis and Brock at the same time, sharing a look with one another.

Olivia smiled at the drink and then looked to Sam. “Thank you for this, and I know I didn’t say it at the time, but well done with the blue gate. We need more Travelers like you.”

Sam blushed and then returned to his friends.

He had never known Olivia Reeves in his previous timeline, but to be given such a compliment by a renowned Traveler was a great honor.

* * *

The next few weeks passed without much incident.

Sam took advantage of his new two-star status and did a couple of group dungeon gate runs with others and a few other missions on his own.

He made sure to not egregiously break any more rules—as he figured, he’d save breaking the rules for when he really needed to do so.

And so the days passed: Sam would do his two-star missions during the day and then come back and catch-up with Klara and Toby who were still getting used to their new lives as Travelers and would share notes on everything they had all learned.

Many of the other orphans who Sam had saved in the white gate were really far too young to take on Traveler missions and so were officially named Travelers only in theory as to avoid trouble with the Spectral Church. Instead, the younger ones took classes and lessons throughout the day.

Sam grinned at the sight of the young kids, learning and living happy lives.

It was so much better than the education of the streets that they used to live by: pick pocketing, running, hiding, and learning to live with a constant gnawing hunger in your belly.

Seeing their young happy faces brought a small joy to Sam and was a continual reminder of why he was working so hard to train and get more powerful.

* * *

Eventually, the last week of the month came, which was a time of great festivities throughout Resfall and Westria at large.

Hearthmas—was the season of gift giving and cheer.

The snow-capped roofs of the large city were brought to life with glowing mana bulbs that changed color from red to green; snow-men were magically animated for the amusement of young children, and the smell of mulled wine and cider wafted throughout the streets.

Sam woke up on the morning of Hearthmas to find his dorm room completely empty.

Where is everyone? he thought as he rubbed his eyes. Did everyone already wake up?

He was normally one of the first people up in the morning, so he was surprised to see that everyone else had already awoken.

He pushed himself out of his bed and, in his pyjamas, stepped out into the hall to see if he could find what happened to everyone.

It was quiet even out in the hall.

He went down to the front foyer and no one seemed to be around.

He eventually heard a noise behind a door. When he cracked it open he found everyone in the guild from Travelers to the assistants to the guildmaster himself in a cozy common room with a crackling fire nearby.

As soon as Sam entered and the crowd noticed, everyone cheered and said, “Merry Hearthmas!”

Sam was overwhelmed by the celebratory joyousness filling the room.

Everyone had mugs of hot cocoa or eggnog, and by the blushes of some of the older Travelers in the room, some of those mugs even had another extra intoxicating ingredient.

In the center of the room were Toby and Klara and the rest of the orphans.

They were sitting near the fire on the floor, sipping on hot cocoa.

“Finally, he’s here,” said one of the younger ones. “We haven’t been allowed to open our presents until everyone arrived!”

Sam blinked. “Presents?”

The guildmaster chuckled, “Most of the younger recruits have gone to visit their families. For many of us, though, the guild is our family, and it’s been quite a while since we’ve had so many young ones under our roof so we felt it necessary to really properly celebrate Hearthmas this year!”

An assistant handed Sam a mug of hot cocoa and he went to sit beside his friends by the cozy crackling fire.

Sam was still in shock as the presents were distributed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d celebrated Hearthmas. It was probably a long time ago in his first timeline, the year before the white gate, and that was just another depressing day in the month of Wintersmid where he and the other orphans struggled to stay warm and ration the porridge the Spectral Church had provided.

A year after that, all of his friends were dead, and he’d been under the testing and experiments of the Spectral Church.

As the years went by, he came to live a life of a lonely mercenary and soldier.

He didn’t have anyone really to celebrate with.

Until now.

He smiled as Klara handed him a nicely wrapped box.

She quickly whispered to him. “You need to convince Tobes that the boxes won’t have pranks inside. He’s going to make us all look ungrateful.”

Sam looked over to Toby, who was shaking his present suspiciously, and then placing his ear against it.

Sam just laughed at his friend and went to open his gift.

“He’ll be less paranoid once we open ours,” said Sam.

Sam unwrapped his present and he smiled at the knitted wool scarf.

He instantly put it on around his neck as did the other kids with their scarves.

Sam could overhear Curtis Ashgrove speaking to Brock Skidmore, “I didn’t expect them to be so overjoyed by a mere scarf.”

The guildmaster shook his head. “Of course, you wouldn’t. But to them—kids who have never received presents their entire lives—a mere scarf can feel like the entire world.”

After they had all unwrapped their presents, the guild’s chefs and cooks said breakfast was ready and everyone was allowed to grab a plate of food and return to the cozy common room.

Everyone drank more coffee, eggnog, and hot cocoa as they stuffed their faces with bacon and eggs and toast.

The day continued on leisurely like this leading into the evening where a glorious feast was cooked up and the merriment only continued from there.

The older Travelers were no longer hiding the level of alcohol they were consuming, moving on from spiked hot cocoa to large glasses of red wine.

Sam, Klara, and Toby watched on with intrigue as they saw the regularly stern and uptight Olivia Reeves turn quite strange as she drank more.

“I just don’t know why we don’t dance more in the guild,” she said, slurring her words. “We should be allowed to express ourselves with our dance moves! That would be enough to take down a dungeon gate—” Olivia gulped. “It’s the truth, trust me.”

“Uhh, Olivia,” said Brock, grabbing her arm. “Maybe it’s time for bed—”

“No! We’re going to have a breakdance competition right now and you’re all going to see that I have master-tier dance moves!”

Curtis spoke up. “I think Brock is right, it might be time for bed, Olivia. He is wrong about one thing, however. I’ll be the one escorting you up to your room, as we can’t trust this wild man to do anything untoward.”

“Untoward!?” Brock said, aghast, while noticeably blushing at the same time. “If anyone’s untoward it’s you, smarty-pants. You ooze untowardness!”

“Why does it not surprise me that you’d use ‘smarty-pants’ as an insult?” scoffed Curtis. “Mocking my intelligence only highlights your own stupidity!”

“Oh yeah—well, I’ll shove my stupid fist in your stupid face!”

The two men’s fighting was interrupted by Olivia, now on the ground, flopping on her belly.

“Pay attention,” she yelled. “I’m your general and you will be amazed by my master-tier dance move: the floppy eel!”

Sam, Klara, and Toby, who were all watching this from afar all, gave each other an awkward look.

“This got weird really quickly,” said Sam.

“Those two are definitely both in love with her,” said Klara. “It’s crazy that she doesn’t seem to notice in the slightest.”

Toby blushed as he looked at Klara.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Crazy.”

Soon enough, the guildmaster got involved, competing against Olivia for who was the best at doing the floppy-eel dance move and the evening only got wackier from there.

The merriment continued late into the night and slowly people peeled off to their respective rooms and dormitories to go to sleep.

Sam smiled at it all.

He really felt like he was living in a dream.

His first life had been the life of a mercenary: full of death and misery.

It was as if as he worked towards changing history, his life only increased in joyousness and happiness.

That night as Sam lay in bed, he had a warm feeling in his heart.

While he knew that most feelings and moments had a fleeting nature to them, he hung onto the happiness he currently felt, knowing it would fuel and push him harder towards his goal.

As he drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but smile at the thought of what a wonderful day had just passed.

61

Following Hearthmas were a few more quiet days, until it was Yearsend, and then the week of celebrating that had begun finally came to a close.

The morning after the Yearsend celebrations, Sam was the first to get up.

For most, the first day of the new year, the first of Janar, was a quiet day of resting after too much frolicking and merriment from the night before.

Not for Sam.

Sam was up bright and early.

He had big plans for the year ahead and wanted to get started right away.

First step of his big day was coffee and breakfast.

He headed down to the guild dining hall and found Brock and Curtis sipping on coffees.

“Oh, I’m surprised to see you two up so early,” said Sam. “The last I saw you two, you were competing over who could drink more—”

“I won,” said Brock, sternly.

“No, I did,” said Curtis.

“I think last night you called it a tie and then went onto hug each other and talk about how much you actually love and appreciate one another.”

“Never happened,” said Curtis.

“Yeah, not in a million years.”

Sam chuckled. “You must have forgotten when you fell asleep then.”

They both answered at the same time: “We haven’t gone to sleep yet.”

They both then looked at each other viciously and sipped on their coffee.

“Don’t tell me you two are competing to see who can stay up the longest,” said Sam.

Dark bags hung under Brock’s eyes. “Just a little friendly competition among comrades.”

Sam left the two of them to their weird ritual of codependent friendship and went over to the breakfast buffet to load up on food.

He sat at a table on his own near one of the windows of the dining hall and looked out to the gentle flakes of snow falling and blanketing over the city of Resfall.

In the distance, he could see the shadowy silhouette of the royal keep in the distance.

The home to the royal family of Volsungar.

Or, at the very least, the last surviving member of that family.

Princess Alice Grace.

With the holidays over, Sam knew it was time to get serious about stopping the upcoming assassination attempt on the princess.

It was of the utmost importance.

He could significantly change the timeline and stop a lot of needless bloodshed.

Hundreds of thousands lives could be saved.

The regime that came to power after the princess’ assassination was one of great cruelty and terror. A regime who’s thirst for power worked only to hamper all of Westria when it came to fighting the demon king and the horde of demons from the black gate.

Sam didn’t believe stopping the assassination would immediately result in Westria being able to beat back the demon king, but it would be a significant step forward in Sam’s attempt to alter the outcome of history and stop the obliteration of all of Westria.

Sam reviewed his options on stopping the assassination plot.

He could simply warn the princess, but he doubted she would believe him.

He could maybe go to Redfield, but Sam didn’t want to play his hand too early. Redfield might lose his temper and do something that only sped up the very events he was trying to stop.

The more he thought about it all, the more thorny the situation became.

He certainly had a strong idea of who the assassin of Princess Alice Grace was, but he wasn’t one hundred percent certain, either.

He also knew that there were multiple benefactors to her death, so that the assassination plot was more complicated behind the scenes than was ever known to the general public.

The key thing, Sam realized, was the assassination of the princess brought so much momentous change with it that Sam was pretty certain there must have been multiple back-up plans had the assassination not gone as smoothly as originally intended.

Which was precisely why Sam wanted to exercise some caution before tipping his hand.

He didn’t want to set off any dominoes without figuring out what the major players behind the assassination were up to.

Sam realized that he needed to get closer to the princess to get a better grasp of the players involved in the assassination.

As Sam took the last remaining sip of his coffee, he came to the conclusion that the best way to do that would be to attend the Royal Winter Ball in a month’s time.

He knew that members of the Traveler’s Guild were often invited, so Sam finished his breakfast and went to visit Guildmaster Redfield to discuss the matter further.

Sam found the guildmaster snoring on his desk in his office.

“Sir—”

“What—what’s going on, I’m awake,” gasped the guildmaster in surprise. His eyebrows suddenly furrowed. “No, I wasn’t awake. I was having a wonderful dream where I didn’t have any back pain. Why have you interrupted the briefest moment of bliss I’ve felt in years, young man?”

Sam gulped. He didn’t want to waste the guildmaster’s time, so he got straight to the point.

“I’d like to attend this year’s Royal Winter Ball,” Sam declared.

Redfield’s whole face crinkled with shock, dismay, and utter frustration that he was woken up so that he could hear such a preposterous request.

The guildmaster crossed his arms and shook his head: “Absolutely not.”

62

Sam couldn’t believe it.

He knew he was asking for a bit of leeway on the rules, but he didn’t expect to get such swift and authoritative push back from Redfield.

“Only more senior members of the Traveler’s Guild attend the Winter Ball,” said Redfield. “It is a heightened political and diplomatic event. Having such junior members of the guild there could potentially make us look incredibly weak, not to mention, what if you end up doing or saying the wrong thing at the ball? You seem to have a penchant for upsetting people. The balance of power in Resfall is in constant renegotiation and the Winter Ball presents an opportunity for many to gain and lose power. For all of its frivolous pomp and circumstances, it is not an event the guild takes lightly.”

Sam listened to the guildmaster closely.

He understood where Redfield was coming from, but he also knew he had to convince him somehow to let him attend.

“Guildmaster,” said Sam. “You were shocked when my friends and I arrived at the steps of your guild. You admit that for all your knowledge, there are many things going on in Resfall that you might be in the dark about.”

Redfield sighed and grumbled irritably: “My influence only goes so far. What’s your point?”

Sam chose his next few words very carefully.

“It’s my belief that there is significant danger afoot,” he explained. “If you let me come to the Royal Winter Ball, I’ll be able to better figure out what’s going on. I know things about the Spectral Church that you aren’t privy to. Let me help you in ways you don’t know.”

The guildmaster leaned back in his seat. He stared at the boy.

“Those are big claims, young man,” said Redfield. “How can I trust anything you say? Especially since you seem to be so clearly holding back on specifics.”

“Have I not proven myself over the last month?” asked Sam. “Have I not shown that I can do more than most?”

Redfield crossed his arms and let out a loud exhale through his nose.

“Alright,” said Redfield. “I’ll let you come—I’ll even let your two friends come—but on one condition. You need to get yourself your third star.”

“Great—”

“I’m not finished,” said the guildmaster. “There’s only one way I’m going to let you get that third star. You need to do a special mission for me. Off-the-books.”

It was Sam’s turn to be caught off guard.

Here he had thought he was the one keeping secrets from Redfield, but how much stuff did Redfield know that went far beyond Sam’s knowledge from his previous lifetime. What things could the guildmaster know that maybe never made it into the books and scrolls that Sam had so intensely researched in his original timeline.

It vindicated Sam’s own decision to keep his cards close to his chest.

“What’s the mission?” Sam finally asked.

“There’s a town a few days travel from Resfall. Creekdale. There’s been reports of monster attacks in the town square at night. We’ve tried to investigate it, but it hasn’t resulted in much. There are no dungeon gates remotely nearby so it can’t be a mana leak or a dungeon break. There’s something uniquely strange going on.”

Sam was about to ask why the need for secrecy but the guildmaster cut him off.

“Just like you’re asking me to do something without all the details, I would like you to offer me the same courtesy.”

Sam smirked and then nodded his head.

Strange mission or not, he was now one step closer to getting to the Royal Winter Ball and proceeding with his mission to stop the assassination of Princess Alice Grace.

* * *

Sam spent the rest of the morning, running around Resfall, searching for last-minute supplies for his mission.

He wanted to get started straightaway.

The only problem was that the majority of shops were shut on the first of Janar and so it was tough finding places that were open on such a cold miserable day when almost everyone was sleeping off their sins from the night before.

He managed to find a few places that were still open for business and was able to stock up on supplies.

After that, he returned to the guild and found Toby and Klara still sleeping in their respective beds.

He shook them both awake and told them he was heading off and would be gone for a couple of days, maybe a week. He told them he looked forward to seeing them again when he got back.

They both nodded and offered drowsy goodbyes before lying back down and falling asleep.

With his goodbyes done, he went down to the stables to borrow a horse for the journey.

As he waited for the stable-master to bring him a horse, he found Roxy in one of the stables, mooing happily on a big bed of hay.

“Happy New Year, Roxy,” said Sam.

The stable master returned with a brown steed and Sam got on top of the horse.

The steed was powerful and firm and well behaved.

I like this horse, Sam thought to himself.

With that, he trotted out of the guild and towards the city gate, towards the strange mission the guildmaster had assigned to him.

63

Sam traveled for half a day getting a quarter of the way to his destination before he decided to rest at a small village pub for the evening.

He had debated whether he should travel all through the night, but he figured it would be safer for both him and the horse if they rested for the evening.

The pub was nothing out of the ordinary, but Sam didn’t mind. He enjoyed the simple warmth of the establishment, especially after his day of traveling through the bitter frosty winds.

For dinner, he had roast chicken and mashed potatoes.

He had requested the pub draw him a bath and that was what he did before bed.

Relaxing in the hot warmth of the bathwater, he could reflect and mentally prepare himself for the following day.

He then had a good night’s sleep on the comfortable bed and woke up early the next morning to continue his journey towards the town of Creekdale.

* * *

Sam and his horse companion traveled at a good pace.

While the steed trotted along, Sam focused on manipulating the mana in his core.

There was no reason why he shouldn’t be training as he traveled. It was the most efficient use of his time.

By the end of the second day of traveling, he knew he’d arrive at Creekdale before dinner time the following day.

He rested at another inn that evening and, as he enjoyed his warm savoury meal, a conversation nearby caught his attention.

“Stay away from Creekdale,” said one man who was sitting with a group of traveling merchants. “The people there are unfriendly.”

“I’ve heard reports of monsters nearby,” said another.

“Why then has the bloody Traveler’s Guild not dealt with it yet,” cried another.

The conversation went quiet when the group of people noticed Sam’s blue cloak.

Sam was practically finished with his dinner by that point so stood up and headed up to his room.

It wasn’t his place to fight with people’s opinions about the Traveler’s Guild. They did a lot of good for the world, but the guild also couldn’t miraculously solve every problem either. All Sam could do was help and be the best Traveler he could be.

In his room, he found a hot bath had been poured for him as he had requested, and so he soaked in the soothing water for a while before getting out and resting for the night.

* * *

Sam got up bright and early the next day and continued his ride towards the town of Creekdale.

The ground grew more rocky and pebbly and he eventually had to get off his horse and help walk it through the rough terrain.

He walked along a small stream, which he understood would help lead him to Creekdale.

As he was moving through the forested area, Sam suddenly heard a rustling sound.

Sam triggered his mana sense and his eyes widened.

Three mana sources were rapidly getting closer to him and his horse.

He smacked the reins of the horse. He wanted it to get out of there before it got swept up in the incoming danger.

The horse neighed and galloped off.

Sam materialized his berzerker sword right as a massive bear and two cubs emerged from the woods.

Blue mana flames covered the bear’s entire body and even leaked out of its eyes.

The cubs had a similar look to them as well.

Mana leak, Sam realized.

These were normal wild beasts that had been corrupted by the excessive mana floating in the nearby environment.

The bears wailed in a frenzy and swiped at everything around them.

They were just roving masses of destruction until someone took them out of their misery.

Sam rushed forward, he sliced one of the cubs, and with blood dripping from his sword he spun around to distribute it.

He then triggered Blood Flame, which burned through the mana-corrupted beasts.

The attack was enough to take out the cubs, but the large mother bear was now only in more of a frenzy.

It swiped its claws and Sam quickly leapt out of the way.

The claws landed into a large rock, cutting it in two.

Whoa, Sam thought. The mana corruption has really taken hold of this bear, adding a significant amount of power to its attacks.

He rushed forward straight into another claw attack from the mother bear.

The mana-corrupted bear swiped down and Sam dodged it, this time maneuvering around the beast.

He raised his berzerker sword and sliced down, ripping through its flesh and cutting the beast in half.

The bear may have been enhanced by mana but it was still just an animal and Sam’s stats far outclassed it.

Then, with the power of an adept-tier level weapon, the corrupted bear didn’t stand a chance.

Sam caught his breath as he took in the remains of the dead bears.

The conversation he overheard at the inn the other night came back to him.

There were rumors of monster attacks in Creekdale. Could it all be corrupted beasts? Though, from what the guildmaster said, there were no nearby dungeon gates causing the mana leak.

He took a moment to inspect their bodies to see if he could find anything more, but it was a standard mana leak from what he could tell.

Though, the bear did have an increased level of power that felt somewhat beyond a typical level of enhancement from average mana corruption.

Sam thought it over.

He couldn’t come to any definite conclusions. He’d have to get to Creekdale and check out what was going on there.

At the very least, the rumors of monster attacks were confirmed to be partially true. Only partially, as the bears weren’t technically monsters. That said, it made sense that average citizens wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a monster and a mana-corrupted animal.

The bears were proof that something strange was definitely in the area.

After filling up a few vials of bear blood to be used with his Blood Flame ability later, Sam’s horse returned from the woods.

“You came back,” Sam smiled. “That’s a good boy.”

He materialized some horse treats and fed the animal before continuing their journey towards the town.

A few hours later, Sam came out of the woods and saw some windmills and rooftops in the distance.

He had finally arrived at the destination of his mission.

64

It was late afternoon when Sam arrived in the town of Creekdale.

The town was quiet when Sam strolled in.

Sam didn’t make much of the fact that there weren’t many people around as it was still the middle of winter, so it would only be light for another hour or so.

There were a few townsfolk in the streets, but they were moving in a hurry and whenever he approached them, they only sped up.

Sam saw a pub nearby and went over to it, tying up the horse on a post outside.

He stepped in and the pub was completely empty.

A barkeep was polishing some glasses.

“Sorry, we’re closed,” said the barkeep.

A pub closing early at the end of the workday? Things were only getting weirder in this town.

“I heard there were monsters—”

“Shh,” said the barman. “I don’t want any trouble. If you don’t ask any questions, you still might be able to get a room at the inn. Please, leave now.”

Sam didn’t argue with the man and so returned to the wintry streets.

What is up with this place?

He did as the bartender had suggested and found the town’s one and only inn and arranged to stay the night and for the horse to stay in the stables.

The woman running the inn was quite sheepish and Sam didn’t push any questions on her.

He requested his meal be brought up to him, and after dinner, he stayed by the window watching the main street of the town.

Once he knew for sure that the innkeeper wouldn’t be coming up to bother him again, he opened up the window and the winter air immediately flew into the room, adding a sharp chill to his surroundings.

Sam then climbed out of the window and up to the inn’s roof.

He sat down on the slated tiles near the chimney and watched the shadows of the street.

He swirled the mana inside of himself to generate heat that kept his body warm even in the dead cold of an early Janar night.

The way the townsfolk had behaved suggested to him they expected the monsters to be coming. That would be the only explanation for why they were so unfriendly and in a hurry to get inside.

If Sam’s hunch was true, he predicted monsters would eventually emerge in the streets of the town.

His hunch was proved correct after an hour and half of waiting in the cold night when a piercing scream echoed through the otherwise silent town.

Sam stood up immediately and ran to the edge of the inn’s roof and leaped down to the main street below.

He sent mana into his feet, which helped cushion his landing.

He then rushed in the direction of the scream.

Turning a corner, he found a young woman surrounded by a pack of wolves all covered in blue flames.

More mana-corrupted beasts, I see.

Sam materialized his berzerker sword and got straight to work.

He tried to slice each and every one of the wolves. Not to kill them, but simply to get his berzerker sword’s ability to trigger, so that the wolves would turn their focus onto him rather than the woman.

They all growled and jumped towards him.

Sam materialized his flame sword in the other hand and made quick work of the attacking wolves, as they each leapt at him. Some of them Sam cut in half, two of them he decapitated. It all came down to the angle by which they attacked him.

Soon enough, it was just him, the innocent woman, and an empty street full of dead wolves.

“You’re safe now,” he said. “Do you know where they came from?”

The woman screamed once more and ran out into the dead of night.

He didn’t chase after her.

So much for a thank you, Sam thought.

He looked around at the now empty streets of the town, even more perplexed than he had been before.

What the heck is going on here?

Sam turned to the dead wolves.

None of their bodies disintegrated down into mana stones.

He knew it already, but it was extra confirmation that the town wasn’t being attacked by monsters, but animals significantly corrupted by mana leak.

But things weren’t adding up.

All the information Sam had gathered so far wasn’t sitting right with him.

He thought about the way the townsfolk had all been in a hurry to get home before it got dark. He thought about how unfriendly everyone had been.

The townsfolk were acting as if they knew dangerous creatures were going to come out at night. As if the creatures were following a pattern.

Yet, the only creatures Sam had so far seen were mana-corrupted animals.

Such beasts were wild. They didn’t follow any rules or patterns.

Unless, Sam wondered to himself, another power is manipulating them.

At that moment, Sam heard a rustling noise a street over.

He lessened his own mana as to avoid being noticed and crept towards where he heard the noise.

Except the street over was empty and the noise had disappeared.

Sam looked to the end of the street and saw a well, sitting there with nothing around it.

His eyes narrowed.

He went to investigate the well and still he couldn’t see any creatures of any kind.

He triggered his mana sense and he got nothing.

No creatures on his radar.

Sam looked down the well.

He had a gut feeling and so he decided to follow it.

He jumped down the town well and descended to find out whatever it was that lay below.

65

Sam landed on the bottom of the well in a shallow puddle.

He materialized his flame sword to get a better look at his surroundings.

The flaming blade crackled and burned brightly in front of him, illuminating the moss-covered bricks and a passage that presumably was where the water was meant to come from.

Dripping water echoed in the distance.

Sam went deeper into the shadowy sewer and discovered at the end of the hall, the passage split in two.

One passage looked as if it would lead to the well’s water source, while the other passage had an artificial construction to it.

At first glance, the passage was a mound of sand, but as Sam peered deeper he could see tiles had been laid down further on.

He triggered his mana sense.

Nothing.

He took a step forward down the strange passage, finding a doorway with a golden knob and a shining rune on it.

Sam crossed his arms and contemplated.

Is this a trap door? Or an alarm? What the heck is this rune doing?

Sam deliberated and decided that he didn’t care if the door was an alarm or not—if it brought someone down here who understood the strange mana leak situation going on in Creekdale, all the better. The thing that Sam didn’t like was the possibility of getting his head blown off just from opening the door.

He came up with a compromise.

He put his flame sword back into his inventory and materialized one of the vials of blood he’d picked up.

He walked back a few steps and whipped the glass vial of blood at the door.

The glass shattered and an explosion of blood spread out across the doorway.

The shining rune didn’t react. Nothing happened.

Sam then triggered his Blood Flame ability and the door in front of him began to burn to the ground.

As far as he could tell, no alarms or anything went off.

I guess I could have used my flame sword, he thought. But that would have been less cautious than my method, which kept me some distance from the potentially booby-trapped door.

Sam was happy the passageway was clear, but he was still perplexed.

What the heck was that rune doing if it wasn’t an alarm and wasn’t a trap?

Sam then heard a rustling deeper down the newly opened passage.

Wait.

Sam triggered his mana sense.

The room ahead of him was bursting with some kind of mana-influenced entity.

Sam smirked, finally realizing what the door’s rune had been doing.

The rune was blocking the ability to perceive whatever was being hidden down here by mana sense.

Tricky, Sam thought as he stepped forward into the new passage.

The rustling sound only got louder as Sam went deeper into this new passage. The sound of claws scratching against metal filled the passage. The deeper Sam went the scratching-sound began to be accompanied by cries, whimpers, and hisses of wild beasts.

The passage widened out and revealed a large laboratory of some kind.

Large cages were lined up, each one housing a wolf or a bear or a hawk or some kind of animal he’d never seen before. They all were covered in blue flames, the signature sign of mana leak.

What the heck is all of this!?

Sam kept his hands free, ready to materialize his blades at a moment’s notice.

Adding to the cacophony of strange noises in the lab was the distinct noise of laughter.

Human laughter.

At the front of the lab, hunched over a desk, was a man in a white lab coat. His body and shoulders shivered as he laughed manically.

“I always knew someone would come for me eventually, but you’re too late. My findings have already been passed on!”

The man spun around, holding a large silver orb.

Sam blinked.

Is that a dungeon orb? Sam gulped.

In Sam’s previous timeline, one thing that perplexed countless number of scholars, theorists, and scientists was the seemingly random nature of the dungeon gates. How come they emerged where they did and when they did. While many came up with bold and interesting theories, the true answers to those questions remained just as mysterious up until the time of Westria’s total destruction in Sam’s original lifetime.

Many scholars asked these questions simply out of sheer curiosity and a strong desire for learning. There were others, however, that asked the question for a very specific reason. If you could know where a dungeon gate was going to pop up, you could get there before other Travelers and reap the rewards yourself. Even better, would be the power to create your own gate to a dungeon world whenever you pleased.

It was such questions and experiments with the gates that led to the catastrophic Dwarven cataclysm.

Sam had not realized in his previous timeline that similarly dangerous experiments were happening in Volsungar and worse than that, they had actually succeeded at their goals.

The power of dungeon orbs had been known even in his previous timeline for far longer than Sam had ever realized.

This is not good—

Before Sam could even think through implications of what he was seeing, the strange manic scientist in front of him, threw and smashed the dungeon orb right on the ground in front of him.

The orb created a blast of energy, bright light, and smoke.

Sam jumped back.

He scanned the room to see where the scientist had gone.

Suddenly, a mana-corrupted hawk was flying right at Sam.

Sam materialized his berzerker sword and sliced the creature in half.

There was a stampede of growls and hisses as the cages one by one swung open and mana-corrupted creatures filled the room.

It looked like if Sam wanted more answers, he was going to have to fight his way through these mana-corrupted beasts to get them.

66

A group of mana-corrupted wolves leapt towards him and Sam slashed his berzerker sword upward, slicing them in half with ease.

Their bodies flopped onto the ground, blood and entrails leaking out onto the floor, drenching their fur red.

As more mana-corrupted beasts came at him, he triggered Blood Flame, destroying a whole other group of monsters.

The Blood Flame was good as more than just a damage-dealing spell, it also created a shield and barrier in the makeshift arena of the battle.

The mana-corrupted beasts were now manoeuvring around the flames—giving Sam better control and ability to manipulate where they went.

Through the placement of the Blood Flames, Sam was controlling the battlefield.

The scientist was rushing towards the door to escape.

I can’t let him get away, Sam thought.

Somewhere deep down within the frenzied minds of the mana-corrupted beasts, they were clearly thinking the same thing.

A mana-corrupted hawk sliced the back of the scientist, toppling him over.

Oh crap, Sam thought. I don’t want him to die!

Sam rushed towards the scientist and made quick work of the mana-corrupted hawk and then turned back around to face the incoming beasts.

The mana-corrupted animals were far lower in stats compared to Sam and so he was making quick and easy work of them, but there were so many they still had the potential to overwhelm him.

A large bear rushed at him and stood up on its haunches to swipe him with its claws.

Sam was faster than the mana-frenzied bear, however.

He thrust his sharp berzerker sword forward, causing it to stumble backwards.

The scientist cackled on the ground. “You won’t be able to stop them all, fool!”

They were overwhelming him.

Sam at first didn’t think he needed to use Pain Ring, but decided better to get it going, in case he really needed it.

Wolves, bears, and hawks descended on him en masse.

Sam sliced them to bits and triggered Blood Flame.

But the monsters just kept pouring through the flames.

“How many bloody monsters did you experiment on?”

“Enough to kill you,” said the scientist on the ground.

As Sam sliced the unending horde of monsters, a prompt suddenly appeared in his retina.

Congratulations! Blood Flame has leveled up!

This might be helpful, Sam thought.

A smile crept on his tired face as he read the evolution of his death lord class’s Blood Flame ability.

Oh yeah.

Sam sliced the incoming monsters and then triggered the evolved Blood Flame ability.

First, the crimson flames filled the laboratory, roasting many more mana-corrupted beasts, but then Sam felt with his empty palm the ability to manipulate the crimson flames in front of him.

It was very similar to higher-tiered mana manipulation.

He couldn’t do much to alter the flames. The only thing he could do was draw the Blood Flame into the palm of his hand, where he could form a large crimson ball.

He then pushed the ball forward and the Blood Flame projectile flew across the room and obliterated the head of another vicious bear galloping towards him.

Sam grinned.

With this power any doubts about winning the fight disappeared.

He sliced the incoming mana-corrupted beasts with his sword, while shooting down the ones further afield in the large laboratory.

The ranged attack was also great against the attacking fliers like the mana-corrupted hawk.

There was a greater bonus to the new ranged power, as well.

He could trigger Blood Flame once more, creating the devastating flames far beyond him.

Within minutes, all the experimental mutant animals were destroyed.

He immediately turned his attention to the scientist on the ground.

He materialized a healing potion.

“Drink this,” said Sam.

But as he put the potion towards the man’s lips, he moved his head to dodge it.

“You can’t save me,” spat the scientist. “As soon as you found this lab, I was a dead man. They won’t keep me alive. I’ve served my purpose.”

“Who are you working for?”

The scientist grinned a blood-stained smile and offered no answers.

Sam’s heart raced. They didn’t have time to waste. If this man was going to refuse to be healed, he only had minutes—maybe seconds to live.

“Why are you experimenting on these animals?” Sam asked. “How did you develop your own dungeon orb!?”

The dying scientist shook his head and chuckled.

“I’m not the only one working on these experiments,” laughed the scientist, as blood gurgled up from his mouth. “There are others! Watch out!”

“But what about—”

With that, the scientist’s eyes took on a faded hue and Sam realized the man was dead.

He wouldn’t get any more answers, certainly not from a corpse.

67

Sam stared at the dead scientist in disbelief.

He got up and investigated the rest of the lab.

After thirty minutes of searching, he couldn’t find any worthwhile evidence of what had gone on down here in the laboratory.

Sam sighed.

He didn’t like what he had discovered here.

Experiments.

Dungeon orbs.

This was bad.

He looked to the ground where the scientist had smashed the dungeon orb. No artificial dungeon gate had appeared in that moment. Of course not. To unleash an artificial gate required intense amounts of mana—normally from more than one person.

From what Sam had gathered looking around, the scientist and perhaps others that he had been working with, had indeed created an artificial gate that they kept hidden and then used to corrupt animals in the surrounding area to create extremely dangerous and hostile creatures.

Then, the experimenters set the mana-corrupted animals loose on the town, probably to observe how much damage the animals could dish out, and how much they could be controlled by other means of mana manipulation.

Bad, bad, bad, Sam thought, shaking his head. The implications of this are not good at all.

He’d have to go tell Guildmaster Redfield about it at once.

Sam walked out of the laboratory and headed back the way he came.

He’d jumped down that well in search of answers.

He’d found his answer to where the mana-corrupted monsters had come from.

He hadn’t expected, however, to discover more uneasy and haunting questions.

* * *

The sky was a pinky orange as the sun was just starting its morning rise.

Sam headed back to the inn. He didn’t see anyone on his way.

Perhaps the townsfolk were still sleeping, or still fearful of leaving their homes for the day.

When Sam got back to the inn, he settled his affairs and got his horse from the stables.

“Before I head back to Resfall,” said Sam to the innkeeper, “I just wanted to let you know that the creatures will no longer be haunting your town. There was no haunting or any of the superstitious activity you guys came to believe. You don’t have to believe me, but wait and see tonight. I made sure that none will emerge.”

The innkeeper crossed her arms and scowled, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Sam shrugged and then headed on his way.

Five minutes later, he was at the edge of the town and contemplating the best route back to Resfall when he heard shouting from the way he had come.

“Wait!”

Sam turned around.

He couldn’t believe.

A crowd of people were coming towards him led by a woman.

It was the woman from the night before.

“I told everyone how you saved me last night,” said the woman.

She approached Sam and held out a candle.

“This candle will help you cultivate your mana more,” said the woman. “My husband and I are candlemakers and that is one of our specialties.”

Sam was overwhelmed by the gift.

Such a candle was very expensive, used mainly by Travelers of noble birth.

It was a truly generous gift.

“This is too much,” said Sam.

The woman shook her head. “You saved my life. That candle is nothing compared to that.”

Sam blushed and nodded in thanks to the woman.

Then, the entire town erupted in a huge cheer.

“Thank you for saving our town!”

Sam looked at the crowd of townsfolk. He recognized so many of the faces that had once been full of fear and superstition who were now full of cheerful, warm, and happy faces.

Even the innkeeper who’d scowled at him only a few minutes before was grinning and clapping her hands in praise of Sam.

Sam wiped a tear from his eyes and thanked the townsfolk, before mounting his horse and riding back to his home in Resfall.

* * *

A few days later, Guildmaster Redfield was barking at the masseuse that was rubbing his shoulders as he sat behind his desk in his office.

“You’re only making my back feel worse,” he grumbled.

“Well, if you laid down like I asked—”

“I have a whole guild to run! I don’t have time to lie down and have you rub your palms into my back. It sounds like a colossal waste of time if you ask me—”

His assistants had gotten so fed up with his grumpy demeanor they had gone off and hired this masseuse without his permission, hoping it would make him less cranky.

Sadly, the masseuse had only made the old man grumpier.

“Be gone!” shouted Redfield. “I’ve had enough of this charade.”

The masseuse did not protest and quickly hurried out the door of the guildmaster’s office.

Redfield then leaned back in his chair and sighed.

Finally, I can relax without that annoying woman hovering over me.

He looked out the window of his office at the midday sun.

It had been over a week since he had sent Sam on that unofficial mission.

Did I give the young man too hard a task, Redfield wondered. If it were an official mission it probably would have been a one-star journeyman level mission.

So, it was a quite a stretch to send the kid on his own.

But there was something in the kid’s eyes.

He was strong. Thoughtful. Powerful.

If the kid came across a danger that was too much for him, he was smart enough to retreat and look for assistance.

There was something about the boy. He was wiser beyond his years.

Another Traveler his age would be more aggressive, more narrow-minded in his pursuits.

The guildmaster referred to such behavior as the stupidity of youth.

Yet, for whatever reason, the young man didn’t possess the ailment that plagued so many others his age.

Still, Redfield thought. I hope I didn’t put too much pressure on the young man.

He stood up and looked out the window, grinning at what he saw.

The young black-haired boy sat on his horse, trotting along towards the guild.

Why did I even feel a moment’s concern, Redfield thought. This kid really is something else.

68

After Sam had returned from Creekdale, he filled in the guildmaster on the details of his mission and how it went.

He walked Redfield through the experiments and the scientist’s use of artificial dungeon orbs.

The guildmaster only had more questions after what Sam had told him.

Sam wasn’t sure how much about artificial dungeon orbs he should go into.

The discovery of artificial dungeon orbs would have a big impact on Westria—one that brought opportunities, technological innovation—but also hundreds of thousands of deaths.

It was not something to take lightly.

“So, they created dungeon gates out of thin air?” asked the guildmaster.

Sam had a slight understanding of how the process worked, but figured he didn’t need to get into it with the guildmaster now. The important thing was simply to explain the dire implications behind it.

“I’m not sure,” said Sam in answer to the guildmaster’s question. “All I know is that it has the power to easily corrupt animals and create a widespread mana leak. The list of devious and dangerous ways an artificial dungeon orb could be used is very long. The implications of all this is incredibly dire.”

“Who do you think might be behind it?”

“The scientist said there were others working on similar experiments and that he’d shared his findings with others. I don’t know who, though.”

“Do you think it might link to the Spectral Church?”

Sam crossed his arms. “Possibly.”

He couldn’t say for certain, but Sam knew that there must have been a back-up plan if the assassination of Princess Alice Grace hadn’t gone smoothly.

Something involving artificial dungeon orbs might very well be a part of that back-up plan.

The post-mission meeting soon came to a close and Sam got up to leave.

“Have you already forgotten your reward?”

“The winter ball isn’t for another month or so,” said Sam.

“I can’t have a two-star novice-tier Traveler being the front man for the newly created Young Travelers of the Future Brigade attending the Royal Winter Ball,” said the guildmaster.

Redfield then pulled out his drawer and walked over to Sam and placed a third star on his Traveler’s badge.

“Three stars just has a better ring to it,” smiled Redfield. “Doesn’t it?”

* * *

Before Sam went to bed that night, he lit the special mana-cultivation candle. He figured he’d share it with Klara and Toby and the other orphans, so that they could all improve their magic affinity together while they slept at night.

* * *

The next day, Sam was ready to get to work on a new mission and keep training, only to find more than half the guild lounging around the common room.

Brock and Klara were playing some kind of slap game with their hands, while Curtis and Toby were playing chess.

Even Guildmaster Redfield was sitting in the common room reading a book with his not atypical curmudgeonly face, scowling down at the pages of the book as if they were directly insulting him.

At that very moment, General Olivia Reeves walked into the common room and looked as aghast as Sam was.

“What’s going on?” they both asked.

“We’re taking a day off,” shrugged Curtis, moving one of his chess pieces.

“But what about the dungeon gates and the missions?”

“There’s plenty of people working today,” said the guildmaster. “People similar to you two.”

“What the heck does that mean!?” balked Sam and Olivia.

“Workaholics,” they all answered in response.

Olivia and Sam turned to one another in shock.

“Can you believe this?” said Olivia.

“No,” said Sam. “Should we maybe do a mission toge—”

“I’ll show all of these lousy Travelers that I can be the best non-workaholic person there is!”

Sam rubbed the back of his head and laughed nervously. “That wasn’t what I was expecting you to say—”

“C’mon, everyone,” shouted Olivia. “We’re going to Hilly Valleys.”

* * *

Hilly Valleys was a small village a couple of hours outside of Resfall, known for its large hills. It was a popular winter vacation spot for the nobles of Volsungar.

Despite trying to prove her supposed non-workaholism, Olivia managed to hire a large horse-drawn carriage and organize a big group to take a trip all within the hour of her declaration to prove she was the least addicted to work within the group.

When they arrived at Hilly Valleys, they rented toboggans and went sledding down the largest hill in the valley.

“I don’t know about this, you guys,” said Toby as they dragged their sleds to the edge of the hill. “What is this hill called again?”

Olivia turned and looked at the boy with a sinister expression. “Killer Hill.”

“Why would any of us voluntarily visit somewhere called Killer Hill?”

“Cause it’s fun you goof!” shouted Klara pushing Toby onto a toboggan and heading down the steep snowy hill.

“Ahhhhhhh!” screamed Toby, tears rushing out of his eyes.

“Weeeeeee,” Klara exclaimed with glee.

Olivia turned to the rest of them and said, “Race?”

And without a moments hesitation they all shouted in agreement and pushed forward with their toboggans, rushing to the bottom of the hill.

At the bottom, they ended up working together to make a snow fort, only for the guildmaster to betray them all and start a snowball fight.

This then turned into a more organized game of snowball capture the flag.

With the guildmaster as referee, the two teams faced off against one another.

Team-1 was Klara, Olivia, and Toby.

Team-2 was Sam, Curtis, and Brock.

Sam’s team ended up losing because Curtis and Brock couldn’t agree on a strategy.

By the end of the day, the group was laughing and giggling at all the fun they had.

Before returning home, they had a hearty meal at a pub nearby in the warmth and comfort of a fireplace.

They got back into their large carriage and returned to the guild late in the evening.

As everyone fell asleep and rested on the carriage ride home, Sam watched as Resfall and the royal keep came back into view.

The day off had been good.

He felt refreshed.

Starting tomorrow, he could start preparing for The Royal Winter Ball.

69

A week later, the last month of winter finally arrived.

Febriaire.

Rather than a gentle warming into spring, Febriaire was winter’s last bite on Resfall. The streets were mostly empty but for patches of thick ice as frost crystallized its grip on every door knob, windowsill, roof, and statue.

There was no escaping the cold of Febriaire.

Even the hope of spring just around the corner didn’t do much to warm people’s hearts.

There was one thing, though, that brought a level of excitement that the cold weather could never diminish.

That was the Royal Winter Ball and the holiday that came with it.

The holiday known as Lovespell Day.

Edgar Redfield was standing in his office, looking out the window, and shuddered just thinking about the approaching holiday.

Just beyond his door, he could hear the rushing of footsteps, the sounds of whispers, and the giggles of delight.

My gosh, he grumbled to himself. The whole week of gushing love letters and gossip has begun then, has it?

He couldn’t wait for the week to be over.

For Redfield, the guild had much bigger issues to attend to than who was in love with whom.

* * *

A few days before the ball, Sam and Toby went shopping for suits.

As Sam led the way along the cold wintry streets of the noble district, both boys looked on with awe.

Neither Sam nor Toby had ever walked down these streets as a Traveler or as a person attending a noble event. They’d only scurried through here at night in the hopes to help Klara and the others find food or to pickpocket a noble’s coin pouch.

Even Sam in his previous lifetime had not spent much time in the noble district.

A mercenary could make a decent living, but they were a bit too rough for a posh place like this.

Plus, the noble district wasn’t really the same after the assassination of Princess Alice Grace. The rulers that took over changed Resfall into a much less friendly and welcoming place.

As Sam thought back to what the noble district became in his previous timeline, he shuddered.

It was an even less affable place than it was now.

They walked by heated lamps that Toby immediately commented on.

“Wait, so nobles don’t even suffer the cold as badly as us common folk?”

“Nope,” said Sam. “Also, we’re almost at the tailors, maybe keep that kind of talk hush-hush while we’re there. Rich folk generally don’t like being made to feel bad about the poor.”

“Speaking about the poor,” said Toby, “can we really afford suits from a place in the noble district?”

“Guildmaster Redfield made it a condition of our attendance at the ball that we must go here for our suits,” said Sam. “But, also, Toby, maybe you haven’t realized? We’re definitely not poor any more. Those mana stones don’t sell for cheap.”

Toby blinked. “Me—not poor?”

“I know, it’s hard to believe,” said Sam. “Now, c’mon, let’s go try on some suits.”

The boutique tailor in the noble district that Guildmaster Redfield had sent them to was a small building housing a very plush set of rooms with beautiful decor and furniture.

The two boys were brought coffee and delicious cookies as the tailor measured them and offered different types of fabric they might wish to wear.

“It’s for the Royal Winter Ball,” said Sam to the tailor. “So black tie is what we need.”

“Perfect,” said the tailor, heading into another room to gather more materials.

Standing side by side, Toby gulped and pressed his fingers nervously together. His mouth moved like he was talking to himself, but no comprehensible sounds came out.

“What is it, Tobes?”

“Well, Sam, I wanted to get your opinion on something,” said Toby. “But you have to promise to keep it an absolute secret? You can’t tell anyone. If you did it would be the greatest betrayal of trust Westria has ever known.”

“Okay, a bit of an exaggeration,” grinned Sam. “But shoot: what’s on your mind?”

Toby’s lips trembled and he struggled to speak. He looked like he was going to throw up.

He finally shouted out the words: “Do you think I should ask Klara to the dance?”

Sam laughed. He had thought the nature of Toby’s question might be something like this.

“Don’t laugh!” cried Toby and then looked over his shoulder. “Rats! I didn’t swear the tailors to secrecy. Do you think they’ll go tell Klara what I told you?”

Sam shook his head. “They have no idea who she is and I doubt they care. I’m sure they hear loads of more interesting noble gossip than what you just said. Plus, they have a reputation to uphold. If anything that was said within these walls leaked out, that would damage their business.”

Toby sighed with relief. “Phew.”

“As for your original question,” said Sam. “The Royal Ball is not the kind of ball where you bring a date.”

Toby’s eyes fell to his feet, dejected.

“But,” said Sam.

Toby’s eyes widened with hope once more.

“You should definitely ask Klara to dance at the ball for sure.”

“Okay, next question: how exactly do I do that?”

“At the ball,” said Sam, “you say: ‘Hey Klara, wanna dance?’”

Toby threw his hands up in the air.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Hey,” grinned Sam. “You won’t know unless you try.”

* * *

Meanwhile, a few streets over, General Olivia Reeves and Klara were shopping for dresses to wear for The Royal Winter Ball.

Olivia Reeves went through the racks of dresses, “No, no, no, definitely not, no.”

Klara just looked around the clothing shop in amazement.

She marveled at the fact that this was her life now: fighting monsters in dungeons, then shopping for dresses so that she could attend a royal ball.

Only a few months ago, Klara didn’t even know what feeling full after a meal felt like.

“Yes,” said Olivia, pulling out a gorgeous dark green dress. She turned to Klara and shoved it towards her. “This will be perfect for you. Go try it on.”

As Klara went behind the large curtain drapes of the dressing room, she heard Olivia sigh.

“What is it, general?” asked Klara, as she got undressed and stepped into the gown the superior Traveler had recommended for her.

“I’m just thinking about how much I love Febriaire,” she sighed.

Klara’s ears perked up at this.

The General didn’t really let down her guard often. She was always barking orders and making commands. She had a way of being stern even when drinking with her colleagues.

Klara admired her for that—even saw herself in Olivia a lot of the time.

“Are you a big fan of Lovespell Day?” Klara asked, waiting behind the curtains to hear how the general replied.

“If you tell anyone I said this,” said Olivia, “then I’ll kill you. Don’t doubt me for a second. But yes—I do love Lovespell Day.”

“I’ve never really properly celebrated it before,” Klara admitted.

It was one of those holidays that seemed frivolous back in the orphanage. Due to the annual Royal Ball, the holiday didn’t even result in big noble feasts for them to steal from—which were the most important aspect of a holiday for Klara back then.

A holiday was merely an exploitable moment for more food.

Except that was never the case for Lovespell Day. You couldn’t satiate your stomach on love.

“You’re in for a treat then,” said Olivia on the other side of the curtains.

Klara thought back to Hearthmas and how Brock and Curtis flirted with her so vehemently despite her own seemingly obliviousness.

“Do you have many suitors?” asked Klara.

There was pause and Klara worried she’d pushed their conversation too far.

“Yes and no,” Olivia finally answered. “This comes back to why I love Lovespell Day. It also serves as a good reminder. We’re living in both a golden and dangerous age with the advent of the dungeon gates. We’re Travelers first, right? That is our responsibility and our duty. That responsibility can be hard and it weighs on every Traveler—man or lady—differently. It’s nice on Lovespell Day that, at least for an evening, us rugged Travelers, can enjoy just being ladies that are admired. It’s a nice change for a night.”

Klara nodded at Olivia’s words.

She understood what the general was saying.

There were a great many privileges to being a Traveler, but the classic life of marriage, children, a dog—a family—was not one of them.

Such a life was typically a door that closed when one became a Traveler.

It didn’t bother Klara too much, though. She was too young to be considering such things anyway. Plus, she couldn’t have even dreamed of such a life before she became a Traveler. Why would she get upset about a lost opportunity she had never hoped for in the past?

Klara sighed and took a step out into the main chambers of the clothing shop.

Olivia’s dark eyes widened at the sight of her.

“What is it?” asked Klara.

The general grinned. “People are going to struggle to take their eyes off of you. Who knows—you might even upset the princess.”

70

Finally, the night of the ball came, and all the Travelers who were attending gathered in the front hall of the guild, all dressed up in their formal attire.

Despite perfect tailoring, Toby couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable in the suit he was wearing.

It cost more than the total amount of coins he had pickpocketed as an orphan over the course of his entire life.

“Where’s Klara?” Toby asked Sam.

“Look,” said his black-haired friend.

Toby looked to the stairs and his eyes widened and his stomach flipped as he saw Klara walk down the stairs.

Her auburn hair was held up with bangs framing her face. She was wearing a beautiful dark green dress that matched her eyes. She had on gold earrings and a simple pendant hanging around her neck.

Sam put his hand on Toby and whispered in his ear. “Whoa, you might be competing with a few other nobles for that dance tonight, Tobes.”

“Hey, you guys,” said Klara approaching them. “You look great.”

“So do you,” said Sam, cheerfully.

Toby’s eyes just kept fluttering and he couldn’t get words out.

“Yeah, you look...you know...what’s the...word?”

Klara blinked at him. Her cheeks blushed. “Is it that hard to say something nice, Tobes?”

“No, I didn’t mean to—”

Their conversation was cut short by the arrival of General Olivia Reeves coming down the stairs.

She was wearing an elegant dark silver gown and her normally tied up bun was loosened, letting her long black hair fall down.

Near the orphan trio stood Brock and Curtis, smiling, yet muttering to each other.

“I’ll kill you before I let you have the woman of my dreams,” hissed Brock.

“Don’t worry, I’ll poison you first, you numbskull,” Curtis replied.

All chatter slowed down when Guildmaster Redfield in a black tuxedo stepped in from the cold.

“Our carriages are here,” said the guildmaster. “Remember: we’re not going to the ball tonight to have fun. This is a mission. A highly consequential one. The standing of the guild and the balance of power in Resfall can all change on a night like tonight. It could cost us our jobs. Maybe even our lives.”

And on that cheerful note, the group left the guild and entered the large carriage that would take them to the Royal Winter Ball.

* * *

Meanwhile, across the city of Resfall, high up in the royal keep, sat Princess Alice Grace in front of her dressing table, getting ready for the Royal Winter Ball that would soon begin in the great hall, just a few floors below her.

She was sitting in front of her mirror, putting on her earrings, just fiddling with the last bits of that night’s outfit.

She’d already put on earrings and taken them off and switched them for another pair.

She was struggling to put this new pair in, accidentally poking the wrong part of her ear.

“Ow,” she said aloud, followed by another, “Ow.”

Alice had to get everything just right. She had to live up to the standards of a royal woman, first set by her great grandmother, who was considered one of the greatest queens Volsungar had ever seen.

“Focus, princess,” said a voice behind her. “We can’t have you greeting everyone with blood running down yours ears, can we?”

Alice looked over her shoulder at an older woman wearing a demure black dress that covered her shoulders and had a white button at the top. The woman had a short bob of gray silver hair.

This was Alice’s personal handmaiden, Mildred Cross, hand-selected by her father, the former king, when she was just a baby.

She frowned at the older woman.

She wasn’t ready for the ball yet. She was nervous.

Also, while she liked Mildred quite a bit, she did feel slightly jealous of other noble girls who had a handmaiden closer to their age.

Mildred wasn’t much for gossip. Really, she wasn’t much for talking, either.

Mildred mostly liked to stand quietly and say nothing.

“Are you not nervous in anyway, Mildred?” asked Alice.

“No, why would I be nervous for an event that involves a group of people standing around, acting in accordance with their social status, and then occasionally dancing in a predetermined pattern? As far as I can see, there are absolutely no changing variables for the evening ahead.”

Alice made a face.

Now, she felt like a total goof for feeling nervous. Of course, she was the princess and there would be a lot more eyes on her than there would be on Mildred. So what did the handmaiden know!?

“I’m guessing you don’t believe in destiny then, Mildred?”

The older handmaiden paused.

“Destiny is merely an organizing principle to explain what cannot be explained,” said Mildred.

“The way you see things, I feel like tonight will be quite boring for you, no?”

“Perhaps,” said Mildred. “I misspoke a moment ago. There is one changing variable tonight.”

Alice’s eyes widened at that statement. “Really, what is it?”

“I rather not say.”

“You have to,” said Alice. “As princess, I demand it.”

The older woman looked Alice directly in the eye.

Alice had seen this look from Mildred before. A look that suggested there was more beneath the woman’s stony exterior than met the eye.

“The one changing variable tonight,” said the handmaiden, “is you, princess.”

“Me,” gasped Alice. “But why—”

“There is no more time,” said Mildred, eyeing the setting sun outside. “It’s time you made your entrance. Remember, Princess. Hold your dress up. Don’t trip.”

* * *

Sam looked out the window of the carriage as it arrived at the front entrance to the royal keep.

Glowing magical mana bulbs were floating in the air and a beautiful red carpet had been laid out across the steps.

Guards stood at attention at the bottom of the steps, while royal staff was offering assistance to any of the guests where they could.

“I can’t believe we’re this close to the keep,” said Klara.

Sam turned to her and grinned. “We’re about to get even closer.”

The group from the Traveler’s Guild exited their carriage and made their way up the steps and entered the royal banquet hall.

The beautiful room was lit up with candles and glowing chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Light pink mana bulbs floated across the high ceiling like little mischievous pixies celebrating Lovespell Day by using their magic to make people fall in love.

While the others looked around in awe, Sam was taking in the room. The large circular tables adorned across it, the royal dining table at the front for everyone to see. The dancing area nearby.

In Sam’s first timeline, there had been a terrible attack at this ball. One person in particular had been grievously harmed and that was Princess Alice Grace’s personal handmaiden, Mildred Cross.

The wounds eventually led to her death a few weeks later. Many scholars in Sam’s previous timeline came to believe that maybe Princess Alice’s assassination may have been thwarted had the handmaiden survived.

Beyond knowledge of the attack and the particular person who was injured that was all Sam had to go off of. While knowledge of the attack was widespread, the details were kept out of the public record as to not harm the morale of the kingdom.

As the group of Travelers picked up hors d’oeuvres from passing waiters and helped themselves to glasses of punch, Sam assessed the room, trying to piece together where the most dangerous points of attack could come from.

As Sam was mentally preparing himself and taking everything in, his thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a tall pale-skinned man with a long brown ponytail.

Sam shuddered.

It was the royal court advisor, Clarence Erdstrom.

The main culprit behind Princess Alice Grace’s assassination.

71

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he felt anger bubble up inside him as he stared at the royal court advisor.

It was never proved, but the court advisor was the person who most clearly gained from the teenage princess’ death.

He became the acting head of the Volsungar Kingdom, turning the society into an authoritarian military state obsessed with using the dungeon gate system to gain more and more power to take over all of Westria.

Resfall under Clarence Erdstrom’s rule featured daily executions of traitors and weaklings. Their bodies hung up in public spaces to remind and instil fear in all of the citizens.

Every person in the kingdom walked around in terror of being accused of traitorous behavior and so in turn accused others in fear of being accused first.

There was no doubt Resfall and the kingdom at large had a lot of problems and issues, but no one who lived to see the changes in Sam’s previous timeline would ever want to return to that world with Clarence Erdstrom in power.

The court advisor moved towards the group of fancily dressed nobles and began to mingle.

Sam felt every fiber of his being compelling him to get closer to the man.

If he killed Clarence here and now, he could potentially stop so much horror and pain that would be inflicted on the kingdom.

Of course, Sam hesitated. Clarence wasn’t the only person who gained power from the death of Princess Alice Grace and killing him here and now would send any other accomplices back into the shadows.

I still don’t know who Clarence is working with, Sam thought frustratedly.

The most obvious guess was the Spectral Church, but the institution didn’t fare well under Clarence’s villainous leadership in Sam’s first timeline. That didn’t prove, though, they weren’t involved in a secret deal and then had a falling out after the assassination of the princess. But Sam didn’t want to make any major decisions on mere guesswork; he wanted to find actual proof of their secret and treasonous alliance.

Even though the rational part of his brain told him to hold back, Sam couldn’t help but move towards Clarence.

Perhaps it was his anger moving him forward.

When he got close enough to Clarence, he suddenly felt a power source of energy push him back.

Sam used his mana sense and his eyes widened in shock.

Clarence Erdstrom was no slouch. He was emanating a powerful level of energy that would keep anyone from getting close enough to harm him.

Sam wasn’t sure if it was a specific spell, rare item ability, or just very advanced mana manipulation—but whatever it was, Sam knew that even if he wanted to destroy Clarence Erdstrom here and now, he was not capable of doing so.

Sam took a deep breath and let his anger subside. He recognized the situation as a reminder of why he needed to keep training and growing stronger.

Even though he was gaining power and strength and impressing those around him, he still had not yet caught up to his current most important enemies.

Sam backed off and returned to his group of colleagues, who were bombarding one servant, eagerly taking little sausages with toothpicks.

“Stop harassing the poor lady,” barked Edgar. “You’re making the Traveler’s Guild look like a bunch of heathens.”

All of the Travelers except the guildmaster gulped down their food with the awkward look of children who had just been scolded.

“What were you doing heading over that way?” asked Toby. “By the way—”

Toby pulled him to the side and whispered: “There’s some really fancy noble-looking dudes at this thing—do you really think they’re all going to zero in on Klara?”

Before Sam could even answer, a huge procession of royal staff entered the hall and an older well-dressed gentleman announced, “The princess will join us now.”

The entire room fell into hushed silence, excitedly waiting for the arrival of the princess.

After a moment of bated breath, Princess Alice Grace stepped into the hall.

Sam’s heart immediately started racing.

This young woman didn’t know him. She’d never heard of him, but in the background he was doing everything he could to stop her future murder.

But Sam’s heart was racing for another reason.

He had never met the princess in his previous lifetime, but he had heard stories of her beauty.

He was realizing how wrong those stories were.

They did not do Princess Alice’s beauty justice.

She had wavy blonde hair and big gorgeous blue eyes. She had a cute nose and a smile that could inspire hours upon hours of daydreaming.

She wore a peach-colored dress with thin straps.

She looked like something out of a painting or a storybook.

She was the embodiment of elegance.

Her bright blue eyes locked onto Sam’s and he felt an intense fluttering feeling in his chest.

She’s not looking at me? Sam thought in disbelief. She couldn’t be, could she?

Before Sam could even process the thoughts rushing through his head, the princess suddenly tripped on her dress and went flying towards the floor.

72

Mildred Cross placed her hand on her forehead.

I told the Princess one thing and she couldn’t even do that!

The princess cried as she fell towards the floor about to land on her face in front of the most influential people in the entire kingdom.

“Ahhhhhh!”

Without calling any attention to her speed of movement, Mildred was in front of the princess faster than the crowd of nobles could even gasp.

The handmaiden caught the princess before she hit the floor, and had her back on her feet before an even more embarrassing scenario could ensue.

Under her breath, Mildred said, “What happened Princess? I told you not to trip.”

“Easier said then done,” whispered Alice. “There are far too many frills on the bottom of this dress. It’s practically an obstacle course in and of itself.”

“Is that really it?” smirked Mildred. “I noticed your eye flicker into the crowd for a moment.”

“There was this boy—”

“A handsome boy?” said Mildred, knowingly. “Another noble perhaps?”

The princess crossed her arms and huffed.

“He’s certainly not handsome. If he hadn’t been gawking at me like he had, maybe I wouldn’t have tripped and embarrassed myself. I don’t even know why you’re inquiring. You’re not one normally for gossip.”

Mildred’s face went serious. She may have exposed more of her emotional self to the princess then she had intended, but it was important to know who Alice was looking at.

“Who is it?”

The princess eyes a young man across the hall. It was an older teenage boy with shaggy black hair and striking red eyes.

“A Traveler, huh? You need to be careful with them.”

“I don’t need to be careful about anything,” huffed Alice. “Because that boy means absolutely nothing to me beyond irritated annoyance at his impolite gawking behavior.”

“Alright, well everyone is looking at us now,” said the handmaiden. “Better to continue on with the ceremonies so we can move on from your disastrous entrance.”

“Disastrous! Now you’ve made me more nervous,” hissed Alice.

“Just keep going,” said Mildred. “It’s time you welcomed and thanked everyone for coming.”

* * *

After a brief moment of fear with the Princess tripping, the Royal Winter Ball continued without incident.

They all sat down for a wonderful dinner, which was then followed by a string quartet playing lively songs to commence the dancing portion of the evening.

Toby stood by himself and chugged another glass of punch.

Klara had left to use the bathroom and Sam seemed preoccupied with something else.

“Uh, what are you doing?” said Brock, approaching Toby.

“I need liquid courage,” said Toby.

“But there’s no alcohol in there,” said the dwarf, “Though, if that’s what you’re after?”

Brock opened up his blazer to surreptitiously show the top of a silver flask. “I find that in these types of situations, it’s always better to drink hype-juice rather than hate-o-rade.”

“No,” said Toby. “Alcohol will add too many variables to how something which should be so simple, could go so very very wrong.”

“What’s the matter, lad?”

“I need to ask someone to dance.”

“Ah, I see” said the Brock, looking across the dance hall to Olivia and Curtis slow dancing.

“Are you sad that Curtis is dancing with Olivia?” asked Toby.

“Nah,” said Brock. “He may be winning the battle right now, but the war is far from over.”

“Really?”

“Well, I danced with her last year and he didn’t,” said Brock. “So, in my book, we’re tied for that glorious woman’s affection.”

The dwarf sighed. “But enough about me. You better make your move before someone else does. Just be happy there aren’t any more conniving know-it-all elves at this ball.”

Toby sighed. “You’re right.”

“Just remember, lad, when it comes to courage, you just need to strike!”

At that moment, Toby saw Klara return from the washroom and cast her eye across the dance floor.

She definitely wants to dance! Toby thought, his heart fluttering.

He started to move across the great hall towards his childhood friend.

It felt like time slowed as he got closer and closer to her.

This is it, he thought. This is the moment I ask her to dance and I tell her how I feel.

It was just seconds away. A life of love and happiness existed on the other side of this moment.

“What is it, Tobes? Have you finally thought of something nice to say? Or are you still blubbering weirdly?” said Klara, blinking at him with her beautiful green eyes. “I take that back, actually. I know how you feel. I feel a bit nervous here amidst all these nobles and glamour.”

Toby didn’t say anything.

“Are you all right, Tobes?”

Toby’s lips trembled. “Yeah...um...well...how...about..we...I...don’t...know...danc—”

At that exact moment, the large windows of the banquet hall shattered as three attackers intruded on the Royal Winter Ball, swinging in from the cold wintry night.

73

Edgar Redfield immediately stood up, alert and ready for battle, as the glass shattered and the three intruders landed in the center of the banquet hall.

The nobles scattered to the edges of the room, screaming in terror.

“Protect the princess at all costs!” shouted the guildmaster.

The three attackers wore light armor with cloaked hoods to conceal their identities.

All three of them materialized large scimitars and rushed into the crowd, adding to the chaos they had already created with their glass-shattering entrance.

This is bad, Redfield thought, rushing into the fight.

But nevertheless, he smirked to himself, an opportunity for the guild.

* * *

Sam materialized his berzerker sword and rushed to one of the attackers.

Finally, Sam thought to himself as he ran to engage in the battle. I’ve been waiting for this!

The cloaked attacker swung his scimitars right at Sam’s head.

Sam spun on his feet and knocked an elbow blow right into the attacker’s face.

The attacker went stumbling back.

Sam narrowed his eyes and went for a precision slice as he slashed his powerful berzerker sword.

The novice-tier Traveler’s attack cut through the intruder and had him falling to his knees in pain.

Sam knocked him out with the touch of his sword.

He figured it was better to keep these killers alive to extort more information from them.

Sam went on to take the other two that were fighting with the other Travelers.

“Leave them alive,” he shouted. “We need to know who is behind this!”

* * *

Mildred Cross scanned the battlefield.

The Travelers had pushed forward and were making quick work of the attackers.

A circle of the Travelers had formed around the princess.

Something doesn’t feel right, thought the handmaiden as she looked around the area.

The Travelers in attendance were faring too easily on such a momentous attack.

Mildred quickly considered everything she knew about the attackers so far.

They made a bold entrance, she thought. Too bold.

It must be a distraction.

Her heart raced as she tried to figure out what the attackers were trying to draw their attention away from.

That’s when she saw the faintest movement on a chandelier high above.

Mildred’s eyes narrowed and that’s when she saw the fourth hooded attacker.

The attacker leapt from the chandelier and came hurtling down with his knife drawn right towards Princess Alice.

Oh no!

Mildred could tell she wouldn’t be able to get the princess out of the way in time. There was only one thing she could do in time to stop it.

Her mind instantly saw Alice’s old father. The now dead king.

This is why you hired me, she thought. The reason I’m here.

Mildred moved with intense speed and leapt in such a way that her whole body protected the area above the princess, defending her from the incoming attack.

Mildred braced herself for the intensity of the attacker’s blow.

The assassin’s knife was seconds away from puncturing her flesh and leaving a devastating and deadly wound.

If she didn’t die tonight, it would only be a matter of time that such an injury eventually killed her.

She closed her eyes, accepting her fate.

She would rather die protecting someone she cared for, then seeing that same person be harmed.

But then, at the very moment that the dagger should have plunged into Mildred’s stomach, a huge crimson red blast shot across the banquet hall and into the stomach of the descending assassin.

The bright ball of magic knocked the assassin across the room, smashing him into a nearby wall, where the body slid to the ground with a gaping hole from the blast’s power.

Mildred then collapsed onto the ground, her shoulder absorbing the bulk of her pain.

She quickly got her bearings and looked around to see who had unleashed that powerful magic blast.

Mildred had never seen anything like it before.

It wasn’t quite fire magic or any other type of elemental magic she’d seen in the past.

She looked and saw the young man with shaggy black hair and crimson red eyes.

The one that had caught Alice’s eye earlier.

Who is this boy, she thought to herself. How can such a young and low-tier Traveler wield such fearsome power?

74

Sam panted, catching his breath from the battle.

He was surprised by how much adrenaline was coursing through him, despite the fact that he knew the attack was coming beforehand.

He scanned the room and everyone’s faces were filled with a mixture of fear, surprise, and shock.

The most terrified of the group were the nobles who had hidden underneath the tables.

“Is the attack over?” asked a rich older woman.

“How could this happen?” said another. “Volsungar is the strongest kingdom of them all, is it not!?”

Now that any sense of immediate danger was gone, the nobles felt free to vocalize their outrage.

Royal guards turned over the fallen bodies of the attackers, removing their armor to find out more about them.

“They have Opali crests beneath their armor,” said one of the guards.

Opali was the human kingdom to the south of Volsungar, across the Southern Seas.

Clarence strode forward, his face full of anger.

Black smoke swirled around his hands as he grabbed the unconscious body of the attacker and triggered his shadow spike attack, finishing him off.

“What are you doing?” shouted Sam. “These attackers should be questioned.”

“Pah,” shouted the court advisor. “Why am I not surprised to see such cowardice coming from the Traveler’s Guild? An attack on our country should be punished as soon as it occurs.”

Sam scowled at the man.

It was total nonsense what the court advisor was saying. Sam knew it. Even the court advisor knew it. The man was a cunning political operative. He’d never choose wrath over information. Unless, he knew what information the attackers already held.

Before Sam could do anything about it, Clarence had destroyed all the remaining attackers, putting them to death.

“We don’t know for sure whether this is Opali or someone orchestrating an attack to look like Opali,” said Sam.

The room erupted into debate.

The nobles were shouting over top of one another. Same with the royal guards. Even the other Travelers present were fighting over the other voices to have their opinion heard.

Clarence smirked at Sam before spinning away on his feet and leaving the room.

Within a few minutes, things calmed down, Princess Alice Grace assured everyone that she was indeed okay, thanked them all for coming, and called for the Royal Winter Ball to an early close.

* * *

A few hours later, Edgar Redfield sat in his office, musing over the night that had just passed.

He looked down to the drawers of his desk, deciding which of his vices he wanted to pursue that evening.

He went for the middle drawer and pulled out a bottle of the finest dwarven whiskey money could buy.

He then pulled out a glass, then paused and pulled out a second glass.

“I know you’re there, Mildred,” said Edgar. “You might as well come in.”

The window outside suddenly opened and slipping in from the shadowy winter night almost like a silent ghost was none other than the royal handmaiden, Mildred Cross.

“We’re a bit old to be sneaking into each other’s rooms, aren’t we, Mildred?”

“You wish I was sneaking in, you dirty old man,” said Mildred. “I never made my presence a secret. I let you detect my mana straightaway.”

“I did wonder why you did that,” said Redfield, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. He then looked up to her, “You like a drink?”

“Sorry Edgar, but I know better than to let you plow me with drinks,” she said.

“What other ways could one plow?”

Mildred’s cheeks blushed, before her face went completely stern. “I’m not staying long, Edgar. I want you to tell me about that new recruit of yours. The one with the black hair and red eyes.”

Edgar chuckled. “He’s an impressive, young man, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know if ‘impressive’ is the word I’d use,” said Mildred. “He looks like a demon. That sword he wields. What is that? Are you sure he’s one of the good guys?”

Edgar slammed his glass down.

He recalled the night he first met the young man in question. He led a group of children through the dead of night being chased by some of the most powerful forces in all of Resfall.

He recalled the determination that had been on the boy’s face.

His moral sense of right and wrong.

The heroism only a true warrior—one who has faced many hard decisions—was clear as day across the young man’s face.

It was especially clear to Edgar on the night he first met Sam and was reinforced with every subsequent dealings he had with the young man.

“I don’t doubt that young man’s loyalty to the guild or the overall good of the kingdom for a second,” said the guildmaster. “And neither should you.”

Mildred nodded. “Well, ‘impressive’ certainly describes the boy’s ability to win over a cranky old grump like you, that’s for sure.”

She then walked over to the window from which she came.

“Anymore questions Mildre—”

But the handmaiden had already disappeared into the night before she even heard the end of Edgar’s question.

Edgar finished off his glass of whiskey and thought over the interaction he’d just had with Mildred Cross.

He couldn’t help but get the feeling that, despite what he had said to her, she didn’t believe a single word out of his mouth.

75

The following day, Sam woke up bright and early.

Everyone was sleeping in after the eventful night of the Royal Winter Ball. Many of them believed they had earned themselves a break.

Sam did not feel the same way at all.

If anything, after the events of the Royal Winter Ball, he felt more inspired than ever to continue raising his stats, finding better equipment, and leveling up his abilities.

He had a quick breakfast on his own in the dining hall. He then downed a mug of coffee as he shoveled scrambled eggs, bacon, and potato wedges into his mouth.

He probably would have eaten slower if there was any one there to witness him, but seeing as he was on his own, he figured he could eat ravenously without upsetting anyone’s sense of impropriety.

Even thinking in that way caused Sam a brief moment of pause.

I think even the little bit of time hanging out with those nobles last night is rubbing off on me, he thought. And not in a good way.

Following his breakfast, he went by the mission board to see what was available for novice-tier Travelers with three stars and under.

A new mission had come in from a newly spotted blue dungeon gate that had appeared outside the city.

He put his name down for the mission with one of the clerks and then headed off to start his day.

The streets of Resfall were quiet that morning as Sam walked towards the city’s eastern gate.

The few people he did see were all yawning with bags under their eyes.

It looked as if the whole city had taken the night off to celebrate Lovespell and the Royal Winter Ball—even if many of them weren’t invited, they had chosen to celebrate the occasion at home or with others.

Sam smiled at a few passersby and continued towards the gate.

The sky was clear and, for brief moments, Sam would catch a whiff of spring in the air, only for seconds later to feel the wind pick up and remember it was still very much winter and would continue to be so for at least another few weeks.

He was about five minutes from the gate when he got the peculiar sense of someone tracking him.

He triggered his mana sense and didn’t pick up anything.

That didn’t put Sam at ease.

He could tell he was being followed. He could also tell that whoever was following him was also a decent practitioner of mana manipulation.

Sam moved around the corner, trying to shake the tail of whoever was following him.

Except when he went around the corner, he had no idea what happened, but somebody was there waiting for him, and knocked him out cold.

* * *

Sam’s vision was blurry and his head hurt.

He felt groggy like he was waking up from a bad dream. Only when he was a little more awake, did he realize that he wasn’t waking up from a bad dream, but rather a bad day.

He had been abducted.

Kidnapped.

He tried to move and instantly discovered his arms were tied behind a chair in a thick powerful knot.

Crap, he thought.

From the looks of things, he was underground somewhere, most likely in a forgotten passage in one of the many sewers of Resfall.

In the distance was the echo of dripping water and scurrying mice.

This is bad, Sam thought.

He racked his brain to figure out who would try to kidnap him, and why now.

The prime suspect would have been the Spectral Church. Sam had completely upended their experiment with the white gate and left dozens of their Traveler-priests for dead in their secret underground headquarters.

Except none of his current surroundings had the air of the Spectral Church.

It made no sense for the Spectral Church to take him to the sewers when they had their own hidden passages beneath their cathedrals.

So if it wasn’t the Spectral Church: who was it?

Could it be whoever was behind the attack last night at the Royal Winter Ball?

Clarence Erdstrom and his associates?

It must be.

Sam was mentally kicking himself. Had he displayed too much power at the Royal Ball last night?

Had he painted a target on his back?

Two shadowy figures emerged just ahead of him, concealed in the darkness.

“Who are you!?” shouted Sam. “Let me go!”

In a muffled, strangely artificial-sounding voice, someone spoke: “What do you know about the attack last night at the Royal Winter Ball?”

Sam’s eyebrows furrowed.

What an odd question, he thought.

Even still, the question made him pause. Did he reveal what he believed happened or did he stick to the current story going around the royal keep?

“There were four intruders who tried to assassinate the princess, answered Sam. Many in the keep believe it to have been orchestrated by the southern human kingdom of Opali.”

“What do you think? Do you think it was Opali?”

Sam paused.

This whole abduction and interrogation was getting stranger and stranger.

Why would the people behind the attack want to know what Sam thought? Unless they were trying to figure out how much he knew already. Fair enough. Those hoping to overthrow the social order of the kingdom wanted to be thorough. That made sense.

The two shadowy figures in front of him started arguing.

“You’re not asking the right questions,” said the other one, reaching for whatever device the first one was using to distort their voices.

“Why were you gawking at me unless you were trying to kill me, you red-eyed weirdo!?”

Sam now understood who was interrogating him.

But in many ways he was only now more confused.

“Princess Alice?” Sam asked, hesitantly to the two shadowy figures in front of him.

“No,” said the figure. “That’s not me. What makes you say that?”

“You just referred to yourself as the target of the assassination,” said Sam.

“You have given our identities away,” sighed the other figure. “We might as well reveal ourselves.”

Stepping out from the shadows were Sam’s two kidnappers—the last people he’d ever have guessed that would abduct and interrogate him in a sewer.

Princess Alice Grace and her handmaiden, Mildred Cross.

76

The two kidnappers stared at Sam with serious expressions.

Sam couldn’t believe it.

Why the heck would the princess want to kidnap me?

He couldn’t help but feel a bit underappreciated since these were the exact two people he had rescued the night before.

They returned the favor by kidnapping him and interrogating him!?

“I’m sorry,” said Sam. “Why have you kidnapped me?”

“You don’t get to ask questions,” said the princess.

“I just feel you two are being a bit ungrateful considering last night I saved the both of you,” he said.

“Saved me!? You caused me to nearly trip and embarrass myself in front of the whole kingdom with your annoying scrutinizing staring!”

Sam could not believe the words he was hearing coming out of the princess’ mouth.

Is she really more concerned about having almost tripped at the ball over the attempted assassination?

He stared at the princess in disbelief. For a brief second, he couldn’t help but notice how pretty the princess was, even how cute she looked in her irritation—but then he shook his head.

I don’t care how beautiful the princess is, he grumbled, especially when she’s this annoying.

“Princess,” said Mildred. “As we spoke beforehand, we haven’t gathered here today to discuss the tripping incident.”

The handmaiden then turned to face Sam directly.

“Of everyone there last night, you seemed the most prepared for an attack. Don’t think I didn’t notice you. You were calm from the beginning to the end of the whole incident. You never looked surprised. You see why that might be suspicious?”

Sam was growing irritated. In all of his calculations and considering the different variables, he never thought saving Mildred Cross would then lead to her interrogating him in a grimy underground sewer.

“A Traveler is trained to prepare for all situations,” said Sam.

“Normally, a novice-tier Traveler doesn’t display such characteristics as immaculately as you did last night,” said Mildred.

Sam sighed. “Can you elaborate on why you’re suspicious of me?”

Mildred crossed her arms. “Last night, three people came in through the windows to attack the princess. Those three people were merely a distraction to allow the fourth killer to jump down from a hidden spot in the ceiling. How do we know the fourth attacker was not a distraction from something else? Perhaps a strange Traveler—who’s record is nowhere on the books of the Traveler’s Guild prior to his official Traveler status—and who wanted to create a means of entering the good graces of the princess and the nobles at large.”

For the first time since the interrogation began, Sam grinned.

He had known the stories of Mildred Cross from his previous lifetime. That she was a thorough and cunning fighter. That beneath her somewhat plain exterior was a truly strategic and tactical fighter.

“I see,” said Sam. “You can believe me or not, but that was not my plan. I see why you might consider me suspicious—given that you don’t know me, I wield a pretty monstrous looking sword, blah blah blah. But you seem to be ignoring the most fundamental question about the attack last night. How did the fourth assassin get on the wall?”

Mildred crossed her arms.

“You’re not actually listening to this rubbish,” said the princess. “This boy is clearly a scoundrel!”

“Shh,” said Mildred. “I take your point young man. The fourth attacker could have been a Traveler with some kind of ability to move through walls, no?”

“You’re right,” said Sam. “But we’ll never know because someone killed them all last night before we could interrogate them.”

The older woman smirked. “You think Clarence is behind this.”

“If not him,” said Sam. “Certainly someone on the inside.”

“Clarence was a trusted advisor to my father,” said Alice. “He wouldn’t betray us. I find that very hard to believe.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Sam. “But Clarence rose to power in your father’s circle due to incredible political and diplomatic advice. He’s a keen strategist with an eye for gaining power. He’s the kind of man who feeds off power and control. His appetite for it is insatiable.”

“That is the most outrageo—”

“I trust him,” said Mildred, cutting the princess off.

The princess looked to her handmaiden in shock. “Mildred, you can’t be serious?”

Mildred walked up behind Sam and untied the knots.

“If you follow the passage that way and turn left, then right, you’ll find an exit to the city’s surface,” Mildred explained.

Princess Alice blushed. “Okay, well if Mildred says you’re okay, than I believe her. So you’ve gotten off being put in a dungeon for now. Just know we have our eye on you. I plan on being a great queen of the kingdom when I have my official coronation in a few months time. I can’t have people wrecking my kingdom from the inside out.”

Sam nodded.

He didn’t want to argue with them any more.

They had reached an understanding—and in many ways, they had helped him further his goals more than he had initially suspected.

He had turned their suspicion and attention in the direction of Clarence Erdstrom, which was exactly where it should be.

The future assassination attempt on the princess’ life was crumbling in multiple directions.

Exactly as Sam had intended.

“Until next time,” said Mildred.

“I hope not,” said Sam.

“Likewise,” huffed the princess.

The kidnappers and Sam headed off in the opposite directions. Sam followed the handmaiden’s instructions on getting back to the city’s surface.

As he went through the dark passage, he couldn’t help but think that the historians in his previous timeline had really omitted a lot about the princess, like how she was annoying, spoiled, and obsessed with not embarrassing herself while maybe possibly being the clumsiest person he had ever met.

She is strikingly pretty, though, he sighed to himself.

He shook his head.

Just another example of how one’s eyes can play tricks on you, he thought.

Despite finding the beautiful princess incredibly irritating, he knew that it was best for the world at large for him to save her.

Still, after interacting with her today, he couldn’t help but second-guess himself.

77

In the evening following Lovespell’s Day and the Royal Winter Ball, there was a flatness in the air. All the excitement that had been bubbling throughout the guild had suddenly evaporated, leaving a dull feeling amongst the Travelers.

“I feel a bit disappointed,” said Klara as they sat down for dinner in the dining hall. “After all that, no one even asked me to dance.”

“I—” Toby said, before looking down to his feet in nervousness and defeat.

The moment was no longer right.

Across the dining hall sat Curtis and Brock, bickering as usual.

Curtis was lording over Brock the fact that he had danced with General Reeves and the other did not.

“See? We know where her feelings lie now,” said Curtis. “Face the facts, you imbecile.”

“What facts? She danced with me at the previous winter ball, so as far as I see it, we’re tied.”

“That was a pity dance,” said Curtis. “Look how much shorter you are then her. She wants someone a little bit taller.”

“Height means nothing if you’re a twig that can be snapped in half.”

Their bickering quieted down, just as Olivia sat down to join them.

“What are you two arguing about?”

Both Travelers blushed and looked away.

“Just what our...um…favorite vegetable is,” explained Curtis.

“That’s right, I like potatoes,” said Brock. “But Curtis here likes broccoli.”

Olivia looked at the two of them with a tired confusion on her face.

She shook her head and focused on her meal.

“What an odd conversation,” she said as she took a bite into her food. “Though, I guess I do prefer potatoes over broccoli.”

The two men suddenly shared a look at that statement.

Curtis scowling while a knowing glint of glee sparkled in Brock’s eyes.

* * *

Sam had eaten dinner earlier than everyone else and was now resting in the dormitory away from the dining hall.

He had lost a day of training due to the incident with Princess Alice Grace and Mildred Cross.

He would have to make up for lost time tomorrow.

The thing that he was ruminating on, however, was the sheer power Clarence Erdstrom had displayed on the night of the Royal Winter Ball.

The man was a strong Traveler. Whether that meant he had unlocked his class and skills through the white gate or through the class stones as so many nobles had done he wasn’t sure. Either way, he had cultivated his new power and had clearly become a force to be reckoned with.

If Sam was going to stop him from succeeding at his plans to take over the royal throne, he’d have to keep training.

The Spring Festival was getting closer and closer. It was only a few months away in the month of Mai—at the tail end of spring—when the days grew significantly warmer but the nights were still brisk and cool.

I won’t let you down goddess, Sam said to himself as he rolled over and tried to get some sleep.

I won’t let you down.

* * *

Edgar Redfield stared out the window of his office and sighed.

Ever since Mildred had visited his office, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

It’s been a long time since we chatted so frankly, hasn’t it, Mildred?

He lifted a glass and took a sip of whiskey.

He thought he could see the tiniest first buds of leaves growing on the branches of a tree.

Thank the goddess, Lovespell’s Day is done for another year.

78

Soon the month of Marshke arrived and the spring season was ushered into the city of Resfall.

Birds chirped with glee as they sat on leafy branches, while bees buzzed and drew pollen from the newly blossomed flowers.

The days began to grow warmer and a friendly optimism swept through the air.

In a shadowy long-forgotten bar, Sam exchanged some coins with a strange man with an eyepatch and a moustache.

It was a simple exchange.

Sam was giving the man money to gather more intel on Clarence Erdstrom.

Under different circumstances, Sam would have done the spying and detective work himself, but he wanted to maximize his training, and he figured someone could do the more labor-intensive part of the spying for him, while he went off to get stronger.

With his clandestine arrangement forged, Sam returned to the Traveler’s Guild before the majority of Travelers had even awoken and managed to finish their breakfast and get started for the day.

Having eaten before he had set off to hire the private spy to gather information on Clarence Erdstrom, Sam skipped greeting anybody in the dining hall and went straight to the guild’s mission board.

He looked through the different three-star novice-tier missions available and nothing caught his eye. Even taking a quick glance at the one-star apprentice-tier one-star missions there wasn’t anything that felt like it would lead to an optimal use of his training time.

There was a dungeon gate he was planning on entering the following month but he wanted to find something worthwhile before then.

He was about to start scouring the two-star apprentice-tier missions—guild rules be damned—when a sudden commotion interrupted his contemplation.

A scout burst through the front entrance of the guild. His face was red and he was panting. He’d clearly rushed in from his scouting mission.

“A new blue gate has appeared!” said the scout, between large panting breaths.

The guild clerks and assistants all got to work, adding the new details of the gate to the ledger.

At that same moment, Klara and Toby came strolling towards the mission board area.

“Hey! There you are,” said Klara. “We have a day off from our training with Brock and Curtis. Did you maybe want to go on a few missions with us?”

Sam didn’t want to disappoint his friends, but at the same time he was deeply concerned they’d slow him down.

“Yeah,” said Toby. “It would be cool to show off some of our new skills to you.”

They both looked at Sam with excitement.

He could tell that they were still amazed and grateful from their fighting together in the white gate and they wanted to show him what they’d done with the classes they had unlocked.

Sam considered it.

There were no super optimal dungeon gates to clear at the moment, and he might need extra hands in his preparations for whatever was going to happen at the upcoming Spring Festival. It would be worthwhile to know what abilities and skills Klara and Toby had unlocked, even some good combo strategies for the three of them.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” said Sam. “I just heard that there’s a new blue dungeon gate that we can go tackle.”

* * *

A few hours later, Sam and his friends arrived outside the blue dungeon gate that had only just recently been discovered by the Traveler scout earlier that day.

Both Klara and Toby stood on either side of Sam as they faced the looming glow of the blue dungeon gate.

Sam grinned. In this new life, he was always happier when spending time with the friends he’d lost so early on in his career as a Traveler in his first timeline.

He was also impressed with their development. They had changed and grown since their time in the white gate.

Sam recalled their first blue dungeon gate together. How he had to lead them there, how they were so hesitant to enter.

Now, they stood on either side of him, not as fearful orphans scared of what happened next, but as fellow Travelers.

Equals.

Compatriots.

“Ready?” said Sam.

Toby gulped back whatever paranoid possibility he wanted to vocalize and nodded his head with a steely determination.

“Heck, yeah,” answered Klara.

The three friends then walked forward in lockstep and entered the blue dungeon gate together.

79

Sam looked around the dungeon world, taking in his new surroundings.

Even after entering countless dungeon gates across not just one, but two timelines, Sam still couldn’t get over the wondrousness and magic of the dungeon gate system.

One second he was in one world, one reality, and instantaneously he was in another.

Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever get over the novelty, the magic, and the sheer otherworldliness of the dungeon gate system.

They had left the early days of Marshke with its flower buds and its first hints of warmth for something much bolder.

They had entered a world of bright blue skies, a sweltering sun, sand dunes, and canyons.

Ah nice, thought Sam. A desert canyon realm.

“Wow,” said Klara. “All my life in the orphanage I never thought I’d get to see the desert lands of Westria.”

“Is this technically even considered Westria any more?” said Toby. “If so, could we expect one of the nomadic orc tribes to attack us and feast on our flesh? Because that would be beyond terrible. I’m too young to be an orc’s supper.”

“Relax, Tobes,” said Sam. “This isn’t Westria. Little is known about how the dungeon gate system works or where it takes us when we step through them. But I can say pretty confidently it doesn’t teleport us to another part of Westria. No, this is another reality separate from ours. Why and how they’ve become connected via the gates is a mystery to not only myself but to many others.”

“In short, Tobes,” said Klara. “You won’t be an orc’s supper. Not in here at least. That said, you might get eaten by whatever is approaching us right now. Incoming guys!”

The sand nearby vibrated as some kind of subterranean monster headed towards the three young Travelers.

Sam got ready to take out the creature, materializing his berzerker sword.

A great cloud of sand shot forward as the monster burst from underground revealing itself.

It was a giant black scorpion with powerful pincers and an extremely durable chitinous outer layer.

Sam triggered Pain Ring and rushed towards it.

Except before he could attack the monster, Klara was ahead of him, thrusting her spear forward, creating a powerful force of bright energy.

The scorpion toppled over onto its back, exposing its weaker side, its legs scurrying as it tried to get back upright.

Sam’s eyes widened at this.

Incredible, he thought.

Brock had taught Klara well.

She was utilizing the first unlocked ability of the warrior class. The ability was known simply as, “Attack Burst.” It was an astonishingly powerful attack that turned a warrior’s weapon attack into a heightened energy-filled blast.

A sword or axe-wielding Traveler would create an energy slash with the Attack Burst ability , but because Klara had chosen a spear as her weapon of choice, it took on the appearance more of a forward energy beam than slash.

The ability was simple, powerful, and easy to use. It was why among the common classes, warrior was the most popular.

It was the ability’s own strengths that were also its own weakness. It was a straight forward, blunt, and powerful ability—but it very much had a ceiling to its strength, which was its main downfall.

A novice-tier Attack Burst was always going to be beaten by an apprentice-tier version of the same attack.

One could not make the same argument for an ability like Sam’s Pain Ring, for instance.

While, on the face of it, a less informed person would have been excused to believe the warrior’s novice-tier ability was better than Sam’s blood knight ability and, if wielded in less capable hands, they would be right.

But what Sam lost in raw power and ease of use with his Pain Ring ability, he more than gained in terms of the ability’s unlimited potential for growth in power during battle.

Nevertheless, Sam was blown away by Klara’s use of her spear and seamless use of the Attack Burst ability to knock the attacking scorpion monster on its back.

He was impressed and excited.

Klara had set him up to finish the monster off and he rushed forward.

Except, when he got in range to plunge his sword into the monster’s weak point, a huge Water Blast knocked the scorpion forward and off the ledge of the canyon towards its demise.

Both Sam and Klara turned around towards Toby stunned.

The pudgy boy was in a fighting stance holding his magic wizard’s staff in one hand and his magic conjuring manipulating hand in the other.

“It’s not just Klara who has learned some new moves,” he grinned.

Clearly, thought Sam full of pride for his old friend.

Just like what Brock had done with Klara, so too had Curtis clearly taught Toby well. The boy had learned how to draw mana with his wizard staff and then how to manipulate it with his spell-weaving hand. Plus, he’d committed to an element, as well.

Water was a very interesting element to wield. It was less flashy than fire or earth elemental wielding, but it had some incredible potential that only got better over time.

Plus, Toby’s ability to create a powerful swirling water ball of power was fearsome on its own.

“Holy smokes, Tobes,” said Klara. “That was amazing.”

Toby blushed.

“You did knock it far away from us, though,” said Klara. “We’ve definitely lost out on the mana stone on that one.”

Toby laughed nervously. “Sorry about that. My bad.”

“No need to apologize,” said Sam. “You guys have come a long way and I have a feeling with your new moves we’ll be able to grind through a lot more monsters.”

With that, the three friends set off on their desert monster hunt.

* * *

The trio spent the next couple of hours scouring the desert terrain, destroying every minor monster they could find.

They fought more scorpions, bugs, snakes, and a tricky monster known as an oasis fox.

By the end of it, they had gathered a countless number of monster stones and managed to raise their stats.

Sam looked over his profile with glee.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.

Class: Death Lord (Legendary) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Blood Flame (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Morph all spilled blood in a nearby radius into a powerful magical fire. Can also create Blood Flame projectiles in hand from spilled blood.

Strength: 22.8

Agility: 21.7

Endurance: 20.2

Magic Affinity: 23.8

Skill Quests

Pain ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 0/3000

Blood Flame (Level 3) – Seek the enlightenment of the Blood Flame. 2/10

All of Sam’s stats were over twenty now and he couldn’t be happier.

With his strength over twenty, he was now stronger than a normal peak performing human athlete. He was entering the new realms of power known only to Travelers. He had only just surpassed peak human power, but that gap would only grow larger and larger over time now.

When he started this new journey in this second timeline, he probably wouldn’t have been able to beat any of the fighters he had bet on to earn cash when he first traveled back in time. Now, he’d be able to take them all on at once.

With his agility stat over twenty, such foes wouldn’t be able to perceive his attacks in time, and if they did manage to land a hit on him, with his endurance just breaking twenty now, he’d barely even feel it.

He was most pleased with his magic affinity stat. Now at 23.8 he was getting closer and closer to apprentice-tier magic affinity. His mana and its core would change color from blue to green and his body would then be able to handle more advanced forms of mana manipulation.

He could not wait.

He was pleased with his progression and glad he had decided to train with his friends.

Once they were finished resting, draining mana stones, and going over their stats, the trio agreed there was only one thing left to do in the dungeon world.

Take on the boss.

80

The difficulty with a desert canyon dungeon world was that it was such a vast territory to cover that it made it harder to locate the boss area.

In a cavern realm, there was a fairly linear map one had to travel to find it, whereas with a desert canyon realm things weren’t so simple.

There wasn’t a direct beginning and end point to a realm like the one they currently occupied.

After a few more hours of searching, they realized the boss area was actually in the center of the map at the bottom of the large canyon.

“Doesn’t it feel a bit like we’re walking into a trap?” asked Toby, fearfully.

“You’d say that if there was a trap or not,” sighed Klara, looking up towards the canyon cliffs that now shadowed over them. “You’re just being paranoid.”

“One day my so-called ‘paranoia’ will be proven to be actually a reasonable level of caution,” said Toby.

“Look,” said Sam, cutting his two friends off.

A wave of drifting sand swirled nearby and flickering near the bottom of it was a purple line of energy.

“We’ve found it,” said Sam. “The boss room.”

The trio made a quick plan, materialized their weapons, and then stepped into the boss area.

As soon as they entered, a large rattling sound echoed around them.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” said Toby, shivering.

“Shh,” said Klara. “You’re not supposed to like it, you goof. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a boss room.”

The rattling sound came from a large bone site that looked like the fossilized remains of a dragon. The bones were clattering against each other, gathering energy somehow.

Suddenly, a swirl of sand and magic infused with the bones, and a giant sand dragon came alive right in front of the trio.

The newly resurrected sand dragon had fearsome glowing red eyes and let out a powerful wailing scream right in front of the trio. The shrill blast of noise was so powerful it created a gust of wind and sent all of their hair flowing backwards as if they were facing straight onto a torrential storm.

“We could just leave, couldn’t we?” suggested Toby, wiping sand dragon saliva residue off his face. “Like there’s nothing stopping us from turning around and running. I’d feel much more comfortable coming back here with Guildmaster Redfield and some of the others. In fact, why don’t they just come back here without us? I like that plan! I vote for that plan! Let’s all raise our hands in favor of Operation-Get-The-Heck-Out-Of-Here.”

The only answer Toby received to his own raised hand was the fearless charge forward by Klara and Sam.

“Stick to the plan, Tobes,” shouted Klara. “My vote goes for Operation-Shut-The-Heck-Up-And-Help-Us-Beat-This-Boss!”

Sam rushed forward triggering Pain Ring. A red circle shot out from him, taking over a large radius of the boss area.

“Attack the monster on the side,” said Sam, commanding Klara. “I need to take the hits to power up.”

Klara nodded with determination and peeled off from their forward charge.

Sam rushed up to the sand dragon and leaped forward, swinging his berzerker sword.

The sand drake craned its neck and blocked the attack.

A little bit of damage went through but not much.

Thankfully, the berzerker sword’s special ability triggered and the sand drake locked onto Sam with an intense hateful and violent frenzy.

The creature now had tunnel vision and wanted to kill only Sam, forgetting about his two other companions.

It was perfect timing for the sword’s ability to trigger, as right after Sam had slashed at the sand drake, Klara had unleashed a powerful blow with her new Attack Burst ability.

A bright flash of powerful light and energy smashed into the sand drake’s side, dealing a significant amount of damage, which in any other circumstances would have the sand drake turn its sole attention on her, but thanks to Sam’s special sword ability, the sand drake stayed focused on him.

The other added benefit to Klara’s attack was that it managed to puncture through the sand drake’s reincarnated flesh, spilling blood on the ground.

Perfect, thought Sam.

He turned around and started retreating.

Toby, who swung a massive water ball at the sand drake, looked shocked to see Sam retreating.

“Why are you running towards me!?”

“Watch,” Sam grinned.

As the sand dragon came rushing after Sam, the young black-haired Traveler triggered his level 2 Blood Flame ability.

He drew upon the spilled blood and created a large ball of Blood Flame in his free hand. He then whipped the powerful magic projectile in the direction of the sand dragon? that was mindlessly chasing after him across the boss area.

“We’ve got it locked in now,” said Sam. “Let’s whittle it away.”

They continued in lockstep like this for a good ten minutes: Klara stabbing the dragon in the side as Sam and Toby threw magic projectiles at it, all while the sand dragon chased after Sam.

“Why isn’t it dying?” grumbled Klara as she stabbed the sand dragon in frustration.

Sam was confused as well. Even if their attacks weren’t a perfect match up for how powerful the boss creature was, they had dealt enough of them that they should have had an effect, but the sand dragon looked as strong as it had from the start of the battle, despite dripping blood all over the place.

“Okay, change of tactic,” shouted Sam, rushing forward.

He ran headlong into the vicious dragon.

The dragon shot its head out wanting to rip Sam to pieces. Sam leapt forward swerving his shoulder in the direction of the monster’s teeth.

He tried to reinforce that portion of his body with mana from his mana core as he braced himself to take the deadly attack.

The sand dragon’s teeth pierced into him and Sam winced with pain.

But the hurt didn’t last too long.

The Pain Ring transformed the horrible suffering entering his body into a newfound sense of power.

Sam pushed himself free from the sand dragon, rolling back onto the desert ground.

He got up on his feet and felt the new power swirling through him.

This is good, he thought. But not enough.

He spent the next minute slashing at the sand dragon with his newfound power and it was definitely making a dent in the monster.

But even then, Sam knew they were missing something.

Sheer power wouldn’t be enough to destroy this boss.

They need to figure out its weak point.

That was why a minute after allowing the dragon to take a horrific bite out of him, Sam was rushing forward to let it take another.

He jumped towards the monster with his other less mangled shoulder as the sand dragon slashed its sharp bony claws against him.

A sharp ridge of blood and flesh ripped through Sam and he screamed out in pain.

“Sam!” shouted his companions.

Sam’s heart raced and his vision swirled as his body was filled with unbelievable suffering.

The horrific feeling didn’t last long as his necklace of healing began to patch his bleeding body back together.

As he swayed back onto his feet, Sam’s vision was changing.

The advanced evolution of his Pain Ring ability was finally taking effect.

The sand dragon’s mouth was glowing, specifically at the end of either side.

Sam recalled how in his very first attack the sand dragon had protected his face.

“I’ve figured out its weak point,” shouted Sam.

He retreated for thirty seconds, returning back to their earlier formation as he explained the strategy of how they were going to finally finish this blasted boss monster.

They quickly formed a new position.

Toby drew as much energy, mana, and power as he could to create a massive floating water ball and hurled it towards the sand dragon.

The boss monster ducked its head, only for Klara to come right at him with her Attack Burst spear thrust.

The sand dragon swerved from it only for its eyes to widen with absolute shock as Sam swung in for a massive blow right in its weak spot.

Using all of his accumulated power from his Pain Ring ability, Sam slashed the berzerker sword through the back of the sand dragon’s lips.

The battle awareness from the Pain Ring hadn’t lied to him about the boss monster’s weak point.

Sam’s berzerker sword cleanly cut through the back of the monster’s lips, cutting the creature in half.

Sam landed the finishing blow.

81

Sam caught his breath and wiped sweat off his brow as he stood over the fallen remains of the sand dragon.

The boss monster soon disintegrated down into a large mana stone and treasure chest.

They all gasped at the sight of the mana stone.

It was a different color from many that they had seen before. It was a green mana stone. An apprentice-tier mana stone.

“That must really help with raising your magic affinity,” Klara said. “I want it. Can I have it?”

This was always the problem with taking on dungeons in a group.

How the heck did you split the loot!?

Sam grinned and said, “Let’s see what’s in the treasure chest before we say who gets what.”

In the end, the treasure chest held great new items for both Toby and Klara.

Klara got a new apprentice-tier mythril spear with a magical engraving and Toby got a journeyman-tier elven wooden wizard’s staff.

“Ooh, the spear comes with a special ability,” said Klara.

“Tell me more,” said Sam.

“I’m going to keep it as a surprise for now,” she grinned.

“Alright, I guess that means I get the mana stone,” Sam chuckled, picking up the green stone and vanishing it into his inventory.

With the loot sorted, they headed back to the dungeon gate entrance, satisfied with a good day’s work.

* * *

A few nights later, Clarence Erdstrom strode through the streets of Resfall.

He rarely left the keep nowadays in fear of attracting suspicion, but he needed to have a word with his fellow associates.

He kept a hood up and furtively looked around the city streets with suspicion.

Someone had followed him a few nights earlier, but he was now prepared for any nighttime stalkers this time.

If anyone chose to follow him, they were going to suffer for it.

Clarence moved quickly through the streets, sticking to the shadows, moving through alleys and forgotten sections of the city.

His body was filled with frustration.

He’d been planning the attack on the Royal Winter Ball for months. While he hadn’t expected to finish off the princess, he was hoping to get that damn handmaiden out of way.

Now, his entire plan was disordered.

He needed to rethink everything.

The problem, however, was that he couldn’t quite figure out why his initial plan at the ball had failed.

He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt almost as if people were prepared for the attack to happen.

But how would that have even been possible?

Was there a mole among his associates?

Clarence shook his head.

He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t come up with a better explanation for why his plans weren’t working out properly.

It will be good to speak with my allies tonight, Clarence thought as he picked up his pace, striding through the night.

Unbeknownst to Clarence, however, a new shadowy figure stalked him.

For anyone observing, they would have caught the subtlest glint of red from the shadow following in Clarence’s footsteps.

* * *

Sam made sure to keep himself a good distance away from Clarence.

He made sure to conceal his mana and not draw suspicion to himself, which mainly meant staying out of sight and keeping his movements gentle and quiet.

He tiptoed quickly across the slated rooftops of Resfall beneath the night sky, following Clarence.

It was mostly a cloudy night, which made it darker and helped Sam with his nocturnal stalking.

There was the occasional patch of moonlight that would poke through an opening in the drifting clouds, so Sam made sure to be slow and cautious at such crucial moments.

Sam had known to follow Clarence that night after meeting up with the spy he had hired and learned more about the court advisor’s comings and goings over the last few days.

According to the spy, Clarence Erdstrom rarely left the royal keep, and only ever did so under the cover of night.

What are you up to Clarence, Sam wondered as he tracked the court advisor through the city streets. Who are you working with?

If Sam hoped to stop the assassination of Princess Alice Grace at the upcoming Spring Festival in a few months time, he had to figure out who Clarence was working with.

There was no way they would try to assassinate the princess without a plan-B.

That meant that even if Sam stopped the initial assassination, there was a back-up plan he had to worry about and prepare for.

The Princess’ life was at stake.

The fate of everyone who lived in Resfall was at stake.

The demise of Westria and all of its people was pretty much guaranteed if Sam didn’t stop whatever monstrous plans were being formed for the upcoming Spring Festival.

Sam slowed down his movement as Clarence suddenly stopped.

Sam crouched and hid behind a chimney and poked his head out to see what the court advisor did next.

The man entered a building.

Sam waited for a second and then just beyond the top floor window, he saw Clarence re-emerge.

Another man emerged from the shadows of the room.

The man had clearly been waiting for Clarence.

Sam crept a bit closer to get a better look at who the strange man was.

The clouds drifted and a patch of moonlight shone through the dark night onto the room Sam was spying on.

His eyes widened as he saw who Clarence had met with.

So, it’s as I expected, Sam thought. But now I have proof.

Meeting with Clarence Erdstrom was none other than the head of the Spectral Church, Archbishop Baylen.

82

Sam watched the two powerful figures continue with their clandestine meeting.

The royal court advisor and the highest member of the Spectral Church.

Sam crept a little bit closer.

If only I could hear what’s being discussed in there, thought Sam.

To be fair, Sam could piece together the larger points. They were clearly working together towards assassinating Princess Alice Grace.

But Sam wanted to know more of the particulars.

I bet it connects back to the experiments I found in Creekdale, Sam thought.

Sam realized he needed to know more. He started looking around for ways to jump from the roof and get closer to the archbishop and the court advisor, so he could eavesdrop more effectively.

He looked across the shadowy night, trying to figure out a way to proceed.

He needed to get closer.

The lives of so many depended on him figuring out the greater details of the powerful men’s plans.

Sam took in the narrow street that separated the roof from the one where the meeting was taking place.

On the one hand, it wasn’t too big a gap and Sam should easily be able to make it across.

But there were two problems.

The first problem—and Sam lurched even thinking about it—if he screwed up the jump, it was a long fall to the cobblestones. Even with his higher stats, he’d be worried about taking a serious injury, especially if he didn’t land correctly.

The second problem was even if he landed, he’d create a lot of noise, which Sam definitely didn’t want to do.

One of his greatest advantages in this timeline was that no one knew about his extensive knowledge of the future.

He needed to protect that advantage at all costs.

Sam saw the solution to his predicament and didn’t hesitate as soon as it became clear to him.

He sent mana to his feet, creating a level of calm balance in them that allowed him to make his movements as quiet as the night.

He then hurried a few rooftops over where he could make the jump and not disturb the secret meeting he wanted to spy on.

He took a deep breath, ran down the slated roof and jumped off it at the last moment, catching his breath as he landed on his feet.

In any other circumstances, he would have wanted to take a breather and soak in the relief for making the big jump, but he didn’t have time to waste.

He crept back to the room where the meeting was being held and slid down to the edge of the room just near the window.

He placed his ear against the roof and he could just barely make out the conversation.

“...So the plan will be ready just in time for the Spring Festival...” said a voice, which Sam easily recognized as Clarence Erdstrom.

“...And what if things don’t go as you suspect them to, much like what happened the other night,” said a different voice, clearly the archbishop.

“That’s where you come in,” said Clarence. “I presume the artificial dungeon experiments are going well.”

“They are,” said the archbishop.

“Well, we’ll have an army of corrupted magic beasts and actual monsters to help us take the throne by brute force in the event killing that silly princess is made difficult.”

“Let’s hope for the sake of so many in this city that it doesn’t come to that,” said the archbishop. “The streets will flow with blood if we do that.”

Clarence replied, “The blood of the innocent is nothing but the ink of history, my good friend. We’re almost there. Just another month or so. Until then, I bid you goodnight.”

The two men said goodbye and the meeting came to a close.

Sam stayed concealed in the shadows, making sure to hide his mana.

He felt an anger swell in him. He wished he could have smashed through the glass and finished off the two evil plotters there and then.

But he could feel the powerful pulse of Clarence’s mana even through the roof.

I’m not ready, yet, Sam sighed. But I will be soon.

The two men went off into the night and a few minutes later Sam stood up to head back to the Traveler’s Guild.

The final training and preparation had to start now if they were going to save the princess from the assassination and the entire city at large.

Sam took a step in the direction of the guild when suddenly flashing through the night was a silver dagger aimed right at his head.

83

A few minutes earlier, an assassination squad of Traveler-priests took position across a series of rooftops in a forgotten quarter of the city.

The second-in-command of the squad was Gregor Regus, an apprentice-tier Traveler-priest with the assassin class.

Even without the class he unlocked from the white gate a few years ago, Gregor had always been a killer. It was simply what he loved to do.

He unsheathed his silver dagger as he eyed up the shadows of their target a few rooftops away.

The target—whoever he was—hadn’t noticed them in the night. They had taken great pains to conceal their mana and keep a greater distance from the target than they normally would when tracking someone.

Normally, keeping such a distance would have been extremely difficult, but because they knew the court advisor’s route beforehand, they could take a more hands-off approach to tracking their prey.

Gregor’s silver dagger glinted beneath the starlight.

It was time to incapacitate the target and discover who exactly had been tracking the court advisor.

It will be my pleasure, Gregor thought as he pulled his hand back and then threw his silver dagger out into the night towards the person hiding in the shadows of the rooftop nearby.

* * *

Sam ducked at the last second, managing to dodge the incoming dagger attack.

The silver dagger punctured the roof behind him, cracking one of the roof tiles into dust, which Sam couldn’t help but think was what would have happened to his skull and brain had the dagger landed where it was supposed to.

Sam scrambled from his rooftop position and took shelter behind a large brick chimney.

He triggered his mana sense to see where the attack was coming from.

He didn’t pick up anything, telling him he was dealing with a professional and, most likely, proficient assassin.

Sam quickly pieced together what must have happened.

Clarence must have spotted one of the trackers that Sam had hired a few nights earlier. The court advisor had then responded by having himself followed by hidden guards to keep an eye out for any unwanted stalkers in the night.

Sam had managed to keep himself quite concealed over the course of the evening, so he came to the conclusion his best course of action was to get out of there as swiftly as possible.

Sometimes there were moments when it was best to fight, and other moments when you needed to know it was time to run.

Sam jumped off the roof and descended into the shadows of the street.

As he fell through the air, he sent mana into his feet, which helped cushion his landing as his boots met the cobblestones of the dark alleyway.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was pushing forward into the darkness.

He needed to escape.

He couldn’t let these hunters know who he was. If they found out his identity, it would put his ability to save the princess, the city, and even the entire world at jeopardy.

His heart began to pound as he rushed forward.

He kept his ears alert, as he knew the assassin was good at concealing his mana leak.

Sam turned a corner only to find three Traveler-priests rushing towards him.

Aw crap, Sam thought, realizing that there was more than one killer coming after him.

The three Traveler-priests rushing towards him all got a good look at his face.

Looks like I might have to change my original plan.

* * *

Gregor, along with his other assassin colleagues, moved quickly to surround the target.

The target was clearly under such duress he had lost control of his mana leak and now they could all see where he was going.

The fool is about to head into a dead-end, Gregor grinned.

It was important to Gregor that he finished off the target. He needed to redeem himself after his initial dagger attack had failed him.

As the other Traveler-priests ran straight towards the target, Gregor figured he’d creep up to the side.

He spotted the target.

His eyes widened with shock when he saw a black-haired boy with red eyes.

He was nothing but a mere teenager.

Doesn’t matter, Gregor thought. I can’t wait to kill him.

Gregor pulled out another two daggers and silently fell into the alleyway, right behind the boy.

The idiotic child doesn’t even notice me, snickered Gregor to himself.

Finally, Gregor went for the kill, but out of nowhere the boy materialized a horrifying powerful sword with ridged edges that looked like the teeth of some terrifying magic beast.

The blade materialized and went right through Gregor’s chest.

“You think I didn’t notice you,” said the boy as Gregor collapsed onto the ground.

Seven other Traveler-priests were now standing in the front of the alleyway to take the boy on.

The boy left Gregor to his demise and turned to face the others.

“I tried to avoid fighting but you wouldn’t let me go,” the boy explained.

The black-haired boy cracked his neck.

“Now, you will pay the price.”

84

Sam gripped his berzerker sword tightly and materialized his fiery flame sword in his other hand.

As the three Traveler-priest warriors rushed at him, Sam immediately triggered Pain Ring.

A ring of red energy shot forth from Sam’s chest, surrounding the alleyway.

The Traveler-priests used their warrior Attack Bursts to deliver a devastating blow.

Sam swerved to take the hits in the least vulnerable areas of his body. He winced with both agony and satisfaction as he felt the pain morph into added power and strength throughout himself.

“Kill him!” shouted one of the Traveler-priests. “He’s clearly only novice-tier if such basic hits are going through.”

Due to the chaos of the battle, the attackers didn’t see Sam smirk.

Another accidental perk of the Pain Ring ability, Sam thought, it lulls your enemy into thinking you’re weaker than you are.

With Sam’s newly gained strength, he took on the three incoming attackers, while the four wizards in the back flung elemental projectiles of fire and lightning.

Sam swung his flame sword upward, clashing with the battle axe of one of the Traveler-priests. He thrust his berzerker sword forward puncturing through one of the Traveler-priest’s armor and feeling the crunch of his sword rip through flesh and bone.

The axe-wielding Traveler-priest cried out in agony, his body going limp. Gripping onto the handle of the berzerker sword that was still wedged inside the dying man, Sam immediately pivoted the nearly dead attacker’s body and used it as a shield to block a particularly large incoming fireball.

The now-dead Traveler-priest was covered in flames. Sam swung his sword flinging the flying body in the direction of the magic users.

When the fiery body smashed into the ground, Sam triggered his Blood Flame ability, adding two types of flame to attack the wizards.

That will keep them distracted for the time being, Sam thought.

The two close-ranged warriors came at him, one wielding a sword, and another a spear.

The swordsman went for a bold slash towards Sam’s neck, trying to separate his head from it.

Sam ducked only to come face to face with the spearman’s deadly thrust.

He jumped backwards, retreating slightly.

The two warriors worked so well together, he was going to have to separate them if he wanted to finish them off.

Glancing just beyond the warriors, he saw the wizards were still dealing with the Blood Flame, but it would dampen in another minute or so.

He’d have to finish these warriors before then.

The two warriors rushed at Sam once more.

Sam dematerialized his fiery flame sword in one hand and then triggered the level 2 evolution of Blood Flame, drawing spilled blood from the ground into the palm of his hand, turning it into a powerful crimson ball of magic.

“He may only be novice-tier,” said the attacking swordsman, “but he has some strange class I’ve never seen before. Be careful.”

“He’s nothing but a weak little kid,” sneered the spearman. “Let’s kill him!”

The spearman rushed forward and Sam whipped his Blood Flame projectile in his direction.

Rather than shooting the Blood Flame ball right at the spearman, Sam targeted the ground where he was going.

This forced the spearman to leap backwards, throwing off the coordination with the swordsman.

As soon as their formation was off, Sam rushed forward and slashed his berzerker sword towards the swordsman’s head.

The swordsman blocked.

Sam materialized his flame sword once more in his free hand and thrust it forward.

The evil swordsman smirked and grabbed hold of the fiery blade with his gauntlet hand.

Sam’s eyes widened.

“I won’t fall for the same trick as my stupid colleague,” said the swordsman.

They were now deadlocked.

Worse, the Blood Flame had cleared up and the spearman was rushing full speed ahead.

Crap, thought Sam. What am I going to do?

In a millisecond, he caught sight of the swordsman grimacing from the pain of clutching the flame sword. Sam’s eyes followed along and saw blood dripping through the metal gauntlets protecting the warrior.

As soon as the drops of blood hit the cobblestones of the alley—only mere seconds before the spearman was about to thrust the pointed blade right through Sam’s skull—Sam triggered Blood Flame once more.

The swordsman and spearman erupted in flames as Sam leapt backwards and watched his enemy’s bodies flail as they burned alive.

Sam didn’t have time to catch his breath as the four magical projectiles were suddenly hurled across the alley once more.

Looks like the wizards are back on my case, Sam thought, as he swerved to dodge the attacks.

He thought he had managed to avoid being hit when a lightning blast knocked him in the side and pushed him against a wall.

Sam’s body shook spasmodically from the lightning attack coursing through him.

He saw the wizard preparing to make a cautious movement towards him while he was still down on the ground.

Sam quickly got back on his feet.

His vision changed slightly and he noticed that all the wizards’ hands were glowing with a faint red color.

The level 2 passive ability from his Pain Ring was now coming into fruition. Sam had taken enough damage to now perceive his attacker’s weakest points.

It made sense that the wizards’ weakest point would be their hands. They needed it to cast spells—without them, they were done for. Unlike a warrior or more direct-fighting classes, wizards didn’t have naturally high-defensive capabilities as they didn’t normally have to train their endurance stat as much.

Two of the wizards had leapt up to the rooftops on either side of the alley.

They had created a formation where he could only attack one of them at a time.

Sam dematerialized his weapons, freeing up his hands.

“The boy is crazy,” shouted one wizard. “He disarms in the heat of battle!?”

Sam ignored the wizard and rushed towards the magic users still facing him on the street level.

Sam rushed forward as lightning bolts and fireballs descended from the wizards above into the alleyway below, exploding right behind him.

As Sam sprinted forward, he drew large Blood Flame balls into either one of his hands, flinging them up at the wizards.

He did the same thing once more with the wizards right in front of him, except this time, he whipped the magic projectile with a little more particularity.

He threw the Blood Flame balls right at the wizard’s fingers.

The wizard’s eyes widened with fear, leaping back, and losing their composure over the battlefield.

Sam then materialized his berzerker sword when he got up close to the two ground level wizards and swung it with both his hands.

The blade ripped through their cloaks with ease, leaving behind two mangled corpses, separated in half.

It didn’t matter what tier the wizards were, the combination of Sam’s increased strength from the Pain Ring and the wizard’s own lack of endurance stat meant that Sam could cut through them with ease.

The two wizards above shivered in fear and turned to run, which was the biggest mistake they had made that night.

Sam materialized his throwing daggers and threw them at the wizards.

Both daggers hit their mark, right in the back of the wizards’ skulls.

When you retreat, Sam thought to himself, you expose yourself even more to the enemy.

The bodies of the dead wizards above slumped forward and fell off their respective rooftops, collapsing onto the ground below.

The fight was over and only carnage remained.

85

Sam looked over the remains of the battle.

Dead Traveler-priests were strewn all across the alleyway.

Do I just leave someone else to come upon this destruction? Sam wondered.

If Sam hid the bodies that might cause more alarm within the ranks of the Traveler-priests and those plotting the assassination of Princess Alice Grace.

On the other hand, though, there might be more of them coming as back-up.

Sam decided it was better to take advantage of the opportunity to escape now with his identity still concealed.

He stepped over the dead bodies and into the shadows of the night.

Just under thirty minutes later, he was back at the Traveler’s Guild.

He immediately headed up the stairs towards the guildmaster’s office.

He had to tell the guildmaster that a fight had broken out between an official Traveler’s Guild member and the Spectral Church’s soldiers. That was too big of a political crisis to ignore.

As Sam approached the guildmaster’s door, he saw light glowing beneath it, so he knew the man was awake.

He knocked on the door.

“Erm, who’s knocking at this hour.”

“It’s Sam.”

“Just a minute,” croaked the man. There was a shuffling behind the door until eventually he said, “Come in.”

The old man’s cheeks were flush and he was sitting behind his desk.

“I’m surprised to see you’re up this late,” said the guildmaster.

“I’d say the same to you,” Sam replied. “What were you up to just now?”

“Nothing. Just reading some pamphlets—I mean, documents. You know what, it doesn’t matter. What do you want?”

The redness in the guildmaster’s cheeks faded away as he took in the seriousness of Sam’s gaze.

Sam then told the man about the fight that had just occurred.

“Will this lead to a public clash between the Traveler’s Guild and the Spectral Church?” asked Sam.

Redfield shook his head. “The Spectral Church won’t want this coming out. They wouldn’t want a defeat to be known so publicly throughout the city. Still, if there are bad actors in Resfall working on something, they’ll know they now have a strong opponent coming after them.”

Sam nodded at the guildmaster’s words.

Redfield stared at Sam for a long time, and then finally said, “You still haven’t explained why you were out so late this evening. I haven’t pressed you on whatever secrets you so clearly wish to keep to yourself, but if the city is in danger, I think it’s time you let me know whatever it is your holding back.”

Sam knew this moment was coming.

From the second he had stepped into the office that night, he knew this was where the conversation was ultimately going to lead.

He knew he had to choose his words wisely here.

“I will share with you information I believe to be true,” said Sam. “But if I do, you have to promise me you won’t act on it without my consent.”

Redfield crossed his arms. “Seeing as I’m the guildmaster that seems a bit—”

“Take it or leave it,” said Sam. “You’re right to think people are in danger, but we’re all currently walking on a knife’s edge and the wrong move will cause more deaths than you realize. We need to be precise and calculated in our actions. Only if you can promise me that, can I share what I believe might happen.”

Redfield looked at Sam for a long time. “Ever since you arrived on that cold fateful night in Wintersmid, I knew there was something strange about you. I’ll accept your terms. Now please, share with me what you can.”

Sam gulped and then began to tell the guildmaster about the upcoming assassination attempt of Princess Alice Grace.

He shared everything he knew, including all the bad actors he believed to be involved. He shared everything except for the fact that the goddess had sent him back in time from five years in the future.

When Sam was finished Redfield was very quiet.

The old man had his arms crossed and he was deep in thought.

“Why don’t we act now?”

“Because if we do, some of the bad actors involved will escape and then they can plot a new plan that we have no idea of whatsoever,” said Sam. “Right now, we can take advantage of the fact that we know what they’re going to do and can draw them out. Once we do that, we can finish these enemies off for good.”

Redfield let out a long sigh.

“Alright,” he said. “Then we’re going to have to start preparing as soon as possible.”

Redfield pulled out a drawer from behind his desk and took out a glass of whiskey and poured himself one.

“Would you like a glass?” asked Redfield. “You seem older beyond your years?”

Sam paused.

Could Redfield somehow know that he was from the future? That he was really a twenty-one-year old in a sixteen-year-old body?

“Ah, better not,” laughed Redfield. “You don’t mind if I drink, though?”

“Not at all,” said Sam, breathing a sigh of relief.

From that point on, Sam and the guildmaster began preparing for the Spring Festival where someone was going to attempt to assassinate the princess.

There was still one more month until the Spring Festival.

That would be enough time to train more Travelers and put contingency plans in place.

It was also enough time for Sam to do the final piece of training he wanted before the assassination attempt.

There was a special piece of rare equipment he wanted to acquire before the upcoming Spring Festival.

Even if he had wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to acquire the rare equipment until now.

Sam grinned as he thought about it.

The arrival of another irregular gate was fast approaching.

86

A few days later, Sam woke up to the sounds of high-pitched shrieks.

At first, Sam thought he was having a nightmare involving a banshee.

Then he realized the screams were coming from nearby and that he wasn’t dreaming.

It wasn’t a banshee screaming, it was Toby.

“I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!”

Sam immediately jumped out of bed.

Has the Spectral Church launched an attack on the guild hall? Or has there been a sudden dungeon break!?

“Toby—what’s happening?” Sam asked, full of concern.

Puffy-eyed and red in the face, Toby began to explain the situation. “There’s a new type of pollen in the air that suffocates you from the inside out. I took a big foolish whiff of that exact contagious flower yesterday in one of the city’s gardens.”

Sam’s heart immediately began to calm down. He looked out the window and saw buds of leaves returning to the trees and a bright clear blue sky day.

It was the 1st of Aspril.

“Have you forgotten what day it is?”

Toby blinked. “What do you mean?”

Sam grinned and shook his head in disbelief that Toby had been duped so well. To be fair, he was a bit of an easy target.

The 1st of Aspril was also known as Aspril Trick’s day. Centuries ago, there was a court jester who always pulled elaborate pranks on the nobility on the 1st of Aspril. As time went on, the tradition took hold and it became a celebratory day of trickery and pranks throughout Volsungar and Westria at large.

Suddenly, Klara who had been deadly silent nearby burst out laughing.

Wiping a mirthful tear from her eye, Klara said, “Ah, Toby, you’re cute when you’re stressed.”

Toby blushed. “Cute—?”

“Did I say cute, I meant ridiculous,” chuckled Klara, who was also blushing at that point. “Another Aspril Trick’s Day joke for you.”

Both Toby and Klara went silent and looked down to their feet.

Sam wasn’t sure why they were both so awkwardly silent, but what he did know, was that today was going to be an incredibly important day of training, one that he was eager to get started with.

“Well, Tobes,” said Sam. “I appreciated your shrieks, they were a good alarm clock. Shall we get breakfast?”

The Traveler’s Guild dining hall that morning was full of mayhem.

Many of the younger Travelers were laughing and screaming as pranks and tricks erupted constantly across the dining hall from fart cushions to small firecrackers.

Sam ignored it all and went straight to the food station, first pouring himself a mug of coffee, and then loading his plate up with scrambled eggs and sausages.

As he took his tray to sit down, Sam couldn’t help but notice Curtis pour a splash of prune juice into Brock’s coffee when the dwarf wasn’t looking.

Uh oh, Sam thought. A lot of pranks can be laughed at, but to mess with a man’s coffee first thing in the morning. This will be bad!

Sam began munching on his breakfast in trepidation of Brock’s reaction.

The dwarf admired all the tricks going on around him and then picked up his mug to take a sip.

He spat it out instantly, sputtering it all over his breakfast, wrecking his food in the process.

Curtis snickered with glee.

Brock wasted no time, standing up and walking over to his elf wizard colleague.

The dwarf materialized a piece of rope and began tying it around the elf’s chair.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing!?” squirmed Curtis. “This isn’t even a trick, you numbskull! This is purely brute force bullying!”

“That’ll show you to put your prune juice in my coffee!”

Everyone laughed as the dwarf and elf bickered with each other.

Sam continued to eat, not wanting to get caught up in any more pranks.

He had a big day ahead of him.

Once Sam was finished eating, he wished everyone a good day, and headed off to the mission board.

He saw a group of Travelers as eager as him, looking at the available missions on offer.

They were a group of three-star novice-tier Travelers just like him.

They glanced over at Sam, nonchalantly. They knew him as a rising star in the guild, but that was it.

Sam, on the other hand, knew that in his previous timeline, all four of the Travelers would be dead by the end of the day.

He looked over at a large warrior in the group. He had a massive broad sword strapped to his back.

The man had a soft kind face.

It was hard to believe he would be the one to kill his entire party later that day.

“Hey! What’s the big idea?” said a feisty wizard girl nearby. “Stop staring at us, you weirdo.”

Sam shook his head and apologized.

He looked at the mission that the four Travelers were eyeing up.

“Hey! This is ours,” said the wizard girl once more.

Sam nodded and then headed out of the room.

“What a strange guy,” said the wizard girl. “He didn’t even pick a mission.”

Sam didn’t have to.

He was going to beat the group to the mission they were about to embark on.

In the previous timeline, Aspril Trick’s Day in the year of 1767 of the Royal Westrian Calendar became the start of a terrible moment in the history of the Volsungar country.

The tragedy became less well known over the years of Sam’s original lifetime, as it was completely overshadowed by the assassination of Princess Alice Grace a few weeks later—but it was a tragedy nevertheless, and it only added to the chaos in the build up to the brutal killing of the princess.

Sam shook his head as he walked out the door of the guild hall.

He wanted to live in a world where both tragic incidents didn’t occur.

He strode forward with determination.

He was going to save that group of Traveler’s lives and many more by what he was about to do.

Sam marched forward, heading off to complete the final piece of training before the upcoming Spring Festival.

87

Half a day’s travel outside of Resfall was the small hamlet of Lembrokeshire. It was mostly farmland. As Sam arrived and took in the scenery, he couldn’t help but wince at the memory of this idyllic place covered in flames.

The tragedy of Lembrokeshire left hundreds dead and more wounded. All because of an irregular gate.

From where Sam stood up on a hill, he could already make out the glowing blue contours of a nearby dungeon gate.

He bristled at the sight of it.

Anyone looking at it would have thought it was nothing more than your average low-level dungeon gate.

Only Sam knew it was anything but.

Sam took a step down the hill towards the dangerous dungeon portal.

As he headed towards the recently formed dungeon gate, he saw farm folk hurrying away from it.

I must look insane to them, Sam mused. I’m the only one heading in the direction of the gate rather than away from it.

An old farmer with a large family was hurrying up the same trail as Sam. When they crossed paths, the farmer said, “Thank goodness one of you Traveler’s is here to help. Don’t you have others? I’m not sure one will be enough to take that thing on.”

Sam nodded. “Thank you for the warning, sir.”

The farmer held out his hand and said, “No, we’re the ones who should be thanking you.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” said Sam. “You guys should head to the nearest town and seek shelter there. That would be your best bet. If you see any Travelers on your way, let them know that I’ve entered the gate already.”

With that, Sam strode off in a hurry towards the gate.

The farmer and his family just stood there stunned as they watched him go.

“But wait, young man, are you really going to go in on your own!?”

Sam was too focused on stopping the upcoming tragedy to reply.

Thirty minutes later, Sam was standing in front of the blue dungeon gate.

The portal to a dangerous other world loomed over him, beckoning him forward.

Sam closed his eyes, taking in a brief moment of respite and calm, before setting off on the large task in front of him.

Let’s do this, he thought, and marched right into the blue dungeon gate.

The environment changed instantly.

He went from the cool spring air of the Volsungar countryside into a pulsing hot environment of a volcanic landscape.

A strange sound echoed behind him.

Sam turned around to see the blue dungeon gate he had just entered was changing color.

It shifted from blue to green.

And right after it did that, the gate shrunk until it disappeared entirely.

This was not normal. A dungeon gate did not change color once inside. A standard dungeon gate did not close, trapping whoever entered it inside.

It was a special type of irregular dungeon gate known as a trap gate.

Not only did the difficulty of the gate increase by an entire tier, but one’s ability to exit the gate had been taken away.

In Sam’s first timeline, the group of Travelers he’d recently seen at the guild right before leaving on this mission had entered the gate and only one out of the four came back alive.

It was the warrior he had seen earlier. The man had exited the trap gate and revealed himself to be a rogue Traveler and went on to massacre everyone in the surrounding area, destroying all the lives, homes, and farmland that he could.

No one ever got to the bottom of why the young man had gone insane or whether he’d been holding back a murderous craving for a long time.

One thing was for certain, though, the young man had left the trap gate with a new powerful set of soul-bound silver armor.

It was one of the reasons why Sam had come here today.

He wanted that armor.

Sam turned away from where the dungeon gate had been and took in his new surroundings.

He was in a volcanic and mountainous terrain.

The ground was black rock with rivulets of lava running through them.

The trap gate did not let him have a moment’s respite, however, as before Sam could fully get his bearings, bursting out from the black ground were three goblins with glowing orange skin.

Magma goblins.

The newly arrived monsters rushed towards Sam, who materialized his berzerker sword along with his mythril blade.

Sam figured his fiery flame sword might be of less effective use against monsters who lived in a regularly volcanic environment.

The magma goblins were all wielding shiny blades and they descended on him en masse.

Sam triggered his Pain Ring ability. A red circle shot forth from his body, marking the battlefield.

Each of the magma goblins managed to get a hit on Sam and he winced with pain as their daggers stabbed into his flesh.

The pain subsided as his blood knight ability converted that suffering into increased power coursing through his body.

As he prepared to retaliate, he felt the wounds close shut as his necklace of healing worked to patch up the damage.

Sam thrust his mythril blade towards the attacking monsters and they all leapt out of the way.

Sam grinned.

He had them on the back foot. He was now dictating the terms of the battlefield. The key to many combat victories was having control over the environment.

He quickly dematerialized his mythril blade into his inventory, and materialized his set of throwing daggers.

He whipped them at the magma goblins, forcing them all to jump closer together right in front of him.

As they did that, Sam had already leapt in the air—pretty much as soon as he had thrown the daggers—and was now descending towards them with an epic swing of his berzerker sword, his enemies’ eyes widening fearfully as death came raining down upon them.

88

Sam’s berzerker sword crunched through the magma goblins’ ashy flesh.

He had expected all three of them to collapse on the ground and disintegrate into monster stones, but when he landed on his feet and ripped his berzerker sword from their mutilated flesh, they were very much still alive.

They were wobbling and disoriented—near death, for sure—but alive enough to retaliate.

The three of them came swinging at Sam with their daggers.

Sam kicked one with his foot, sending it tumbling backwards.

He then made quick work of the other two. They were both half-blinded by blood dripping down their face that it didn’t take long to overwhelm them and leave a critical attack of his sword right through their necks.

With only the final magma goblin to focus on, Sam was able to overpower it with ease and destroy it within seconds.

Sam stood over the carnage, breathing heavily. His fast beating heart slowly began to ease in intensity as the seconds passed and no new attackers emerged.

Sam picked up the newly acquired mana stones and contemplated the fight.

He could sense the difference in power from the green dungeon gate compared to the blue dungeon gate already. The magma goblins must have been lesser monsters in this environment as Sam had made fairly quick work of them. That said, he hadn’t crushed them with as much ease as he had initially anticipated and their dagger attacks had felt more painful than anything he’d faced in a blue dungeon gate in quite a while.

Sam didn’t mind, however. If he wanted to increase his stats and powers, he’d have to fight increasingly more powerful monsters.

He welcomed the increasing difficulty of the irregular trap gate.

He wiped sweat off his brow and turned back to where the dungeon gate entrance had been.

The only way to survive and beat back an irregular dungeon gate like the trap gate was to beat the boss who lingered inside. That would be the only way for the dungeon gate to reappear and offer him an exit back into his world.

But before he went looking for the boss, Sam wanted to do some training.

He stepped forth into the volcanic landscape, ready to fight some more monsters.

Over the next couple of hours, Sam fought hordes of magma goblins, fire elementals, ash pixies, and sentient boulders, which were bizarre boulders with arms and legs that would attack Sam by rolling down hills from above in an attempt to smash him to death.

Sam had encountered variations of this type of monster in his previous timeline and knew their blind spots and weaknesses and exploited them mercilessly.

After hours of fighting and hunting down monsters, Sam eventually took a moment to catch his breath, eat some food he’d brought with him in his inventory, and work on draining all the mana stones he’d acquired so far from his time inside the irregular dungeon.

When he was finished draining his newly acquired monster stones, he reviewed his new stat gains from his training.

Sam

Class: Blood Knight (Super Rare) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Pain ring (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Mark part of the battlefield as yours. Within that circle, the more you are hurt, the more powerful your attacks. Battle awareness also now increases as you take more damage.

Class: Death Lord (Legendary) (Rank: Novice Tier)

Ability: Blood Flame (Novice Tier) (Level 2) – Morph all spilled blood in a nearby radius into a powerful magical fire. Can also create Blood Flame projectiles in hand from spilled blood.

Strength: 23.7

Agility: 22.9

Endurance: 21.1

Magic Affinity: 24.9

Skill Quests

Pain ring (Level 3) – Destroy 3,000 monsters with the aid of battle awareness. 120/3000

Blood Flame (Level 3) – Seek the enlightenment of the Blood Flame. 2/10

Sam grinned at the increases to his stats. They weren’t dramatic—most of his stats had gone up by about one full point—but that was good for only an hour’s work. As he got closer to ranking up and going from novice-tier to apprentice-tier, raising his stats would only become a greater and greater challenge, so every step forward was a welcome one.

He was ever so slightly disappointed with his development on leveling up Pain Ring to level 3, but that had been a somewhat conscious choice. The skill quest demanded he destroy monsters with battle awareness, which only happened after he’d hit a certain threshold of pain during an individual battle. He had made the choice when training to focus more on the quantity of creatures slain rather than the quality of how he slayed them. In short, he was killing the monsters faster than they were able to deal damage to him that would have triggered his battle awareness.

Still, Sam wondered if he could maybe find a better balance so that the quest was moving forward at a bit of a faster rate than where it was at now.

After reviewing everything once more, Sam triggered his mana sense to see if he could detect any more monsters in the vicinity.

He sighed.

It was as he suspected.

He’d cleared the dungeon of the lesser monsters.

There was only one more thing left to do then.

The main reason—outside of stopping a horrific tragedy—why he’d come to this gate to train for.

Irregular gates were much more likelier to have powerful unique bosses that would drop valuable treasure.

Sam was desperate to acquire that prize for himself.

Meaning it was time to fight the irregular gate’s boss monster.

89

The search for the dungeon boss was easier than Sam had initially anticipated.

The problem with an open area dungeon world was that there was no linear path towards the boss, which made searching for them more difficult.

In the case of the current dungeon Sam was in, he made the judgment call that the large volcanic mountain that loomed at the center of the dungeon was most likely where the boss resided.

It took Sam an hour to get to the foot of the mountain and then a few more hours climbing up the ashy rock, getting closer and closer to the volcanic center of the dungeon.

His body was drenched in sweat as he carried himself further and further up the large rocky mountain, until eventually he reached the precipice.

He stood over a cliff and looked down into the fiery lava-filled depths of the volcano.

His eyes winced and he took a step back.

The heat was on a whole other level. It had been like placing his head right over a pot of boiling water. The entire skin on his face prickled and hardened? from the sheer intensity of the heat.

Sam used his mana sense to see if he was right about where the boss was. A huge throb of mana emanated forth from right inside the volcano.

Sam was at a loss.

He could see where the boss was situated, but he didn’t see how he could get to wherever it was located if it was surrounded by hot flowing lava that would melt through his skin and bones at a mere touch.

What kind of creature can possibly live in such a hot environment? Sam wondered with fear.

At that moment, a bright red tentacle shot forth from the pool of lava and into the sky.

The tentacle loomed over Sam.

The young Traveler’s eyes widened at the sight of the strange tentacle.

What the—

Sam jumped back down the steep ridge of the volcanic mountain as the strange red tentacle came hurtling down towards him.

Sam didn’t want to waste any time and got straight to work fighting the boss.

He wasn’t going to wait for the boss’ full entrance.

Sam triggered Pain Ring, marking the battlefield with the red circle of his blood knight ability.

At the same time, he materialized his berzerker sword and rushed forward, swinging the giant nightmarish blade at the tentacle.

The attack landed, creating a burst of blood from the tentacle, as the berzerker sword’s ridges stabbed through the tentacle and pinned it to the ground.

The tentacle pulled away, ripping itself free, even at the expense of destroying its flesh, and then immediately recoiled back into the pool of magma.

Sam readied himself for the boss monster’s next move. He braced himself for a retaliation but was also worrying that he may have accidentally scared the boss monster into too defensive a position.

After a few seconds silence, the boss monster finally retaliated.

Suddenly, over ten tentacles shot out from the pool of lava and into the sky.

They all then fell towards the different ridges.

There’s too many too attack, Sam thought, looking at all the tentacles.

The tentacles then dug into the ground, propelling the main body of the boss monster out from the pool of lava and onto the mountain ridge in full view of Sam.

His eyes widened at the grotesque terrifying sight of the boss monster.

The boss monster was none other than a giant Magma Octopus.

It had a countless number of tentacles beyond just the ones that had helped prop it up. It had two large bright blue eyes that stood in strong contrast to its bright red skin.

Sam rushed forward to attack the nearest tentacle.

He swung forward, but with even greater speed the boss monster swung a tentacle at him, slashing at his body as if its own tentacle were a sword to slash enemies with.

Sam jumped to dodge the attack, only to be smacked in the back by another tentacle coming in from the opposite direction.

Sam went flying, his body crashing into the ridge of the black stone mountain.

His back and body ached with pain and the worst part was the frustration that all of the suffering was out of the marked part of the battlefield of his Pain Ring ability.

Sam got up as quickly as he could and rushed towards the Pain Ring.

While the bulk of damage wouldn’t contribute to extra strength, some of the lingering pain could still be converted if he could make it back to the Pain Ring before his necklace of healing worked to undo the damage.

As Sam sprinted back to the Pain Ring, the magma octopus started shooting massive fireballs from its mouth at him.

“Two can play at that game, jerk!” shouted Sam as he landed back in the Pain Ring and triggered the second level of his novice-tier death lord ability.

The blood from the magma octopus’ first tentacle was still festering on the ground and Sam drew from it to create a ball of Blood Flame in the palm of his hand.

He then whipped it right at the magma octopus.

The boss monster was quick and swiped it away with one of its tentacles.

Crap, thought Sam.

He decided he had to change up his strategy.

He was currently basing his battle position from where he set his Pain Ring at the start of the battle, but it was no longer an optimal position.

He had to start over.

Right as another meteoric fireball came towards him, he dove out of the way and started rushing around the circumference of the black stone volcanic summit.

A trail of explosive flame blasts followed behind him as he sprinted forward. He felt the heat of the blasts on his back along with the burst of disintegrated black stone falling onto him.

The black dust that sprinkled on his back with each flame blast was a constant reminder of what would happen to him if he took a direct hit from one of those blasts himself. It was a reminder that made him only run faster.

Finally, he got on the opposite end of the volcanic summit, facing the back of the octopus and a swarm of its tentacles.

Perfect, Sam thought.

He rushed forward and triggered Pain Ring. He lost all of his power gains from the previous ring, but his positioning was far superior than it had been before.

He triggered the ability as close as he possibly could to the boss monster, before it pushed him back with its tentacles.

The pain hurt but Sam felt it convert into power throughout his body.

He then rushed forward and materialized his mythril blade alongside his berzerker sword.

It’s time to litter this battlefield with blood.

He started slashing like a barbarian as the tentacles came at him.

One tentacle wrapped itself around his stomach, trying to suffocate him.

Sam squirmed and fought to get free.

The lack of oxygen was causing his body to shut down, but the pain was converting into strength as well.

Sam felt his vision going blacker and blacker.

Just a few more seconds now, he squirmed.

The tentacle clutching Sam lifted him up in the air.

Oh no, Sam realized what the magma octopus was about to do.

It was going to drop him right into the pit of lava.

Too bad my strategy is coming to fruition before yours, dumb monster, Sam thought.

Right as he was about to fall unconscious from the bind the octopus had him in, Sam triggered the level 1 version of Blood Flame. This erupted a powerful and deadly flame in the area right near the back of the magma octopus and its countless tentacles. It was a fire that even the magma octopus’ body could not endure.

In fact, the Blood Flame was incredibly powerful against the magma octopus.

The tentacle wrapped around Sam let go of him. It squirmed and recoiled as the entire monster was in deep agony, leaving Sam to his own devices high above in the air.

Sam squirmed as he began falling.

He gripped his berzerker sword as he fell towards the top of the magma octopus, newfound power surging through him from his most recent near-death experience by suffocation.

His berzerker sword landed right into the top of the magma’s octopus’ head and effortlessly drilled forward through its skull and brain.

90

Sam was surrounded by dark hot flesh and raging tendrils of his conjured Blood Flame until the boss monster disintegrated around him, leaving him on the ridge of the volcanic mountain in front of a large green monster stone and a large treasure chest.

Holy smokes, Sam thought as he caught his breath.

He still felt the sinking feeling in his stomach, though, from when he thought he was about to be dropped directly into the deadly pit of lava.

That was close, he thought as he panted and felt his chest heave.

But that was the nature of his blood knight class. High risk, followed by high rewards.

Sam picked up the green mana stone and dematerialized it into his inventory and then walked up to the big treasure chest.

He grinned.

This was an important part of why he had entered the trap gate.

He could have easily stopped the tragedy of Lembrokeshire by letting the group of Travelers in and slaying the rogue Traveler when he came back and began his massacre of terror.

But he needed to come in here to gather the powerful gear that lay inside.

Gear that hopefully existed within this treasure chest.

Sam walked up to it and the chest opened, revealing a glowing item scroll.

Sam was both elated and frustrated.

An item scroll undoubtedly meant an agonizingly difficult choice. It was also a unique type of item scroll known as an “illuminated item scroll” which was different from the item scrolls he’d so far encountered. An illuminated item scroll was not a scroll that specifically catered to the Traveler who found it, but rather offered the same items to whoever found the scroll. To make up for this, the items were normally even more powerful and rarer than in a regular item scroll.

He unfurled the scroll and took in the words of what items he could choose from.

Silver Dragon Armor Set (Adept Tier) (Mythic)

Composed from the remains of the ancient and powerful silver dragon, this heavy armor absorbs damage and pain and allows for redistribution into different parts of the body. Also can hold damage that can be unleashed later. Armor cannot be removed if damage is being held.

The inside of the armor is lined with tiny teeth of the silver dragon that constantly draw blood upon the user. This set of ancient armor has killed many of those who have chosen to wear it.

or

The True Sword of Strength (Master Tier) (Mythic)

An ancient and powerful blade, adds +20 to base strength power.

Sam’s eyes widened as he looked over both items.

They were both incredible.

He was simultaneously full of excitement as well as agony, knowing that he could only have one of them.

The silver dragon armor set was perfect for his blood knight class. Being able to absorb pain and redistribute it later meant he could walk into a fight and upon using Pain Ring, immediately raise his power levels. Beyond that, the silver teeth would mean that as soon as he triggered Pain Ring, his power level would be on the rise.

It was perfect.

But the true sword of strength was also appealing. It would raise the power level of its user by a full tier with zero extra conditions. That could have incredible advantages fighting opponents who would underestimate him or were a tier higher than him.

Plus, the sword’s power could be more meaningful long term. While in his current timeline, no one had surpassed master-tier, but Sam knew there were tiers higher than that. Wherever the ceiling of strength was, this sword promised an extra tier of power on top of that.

It was truly incredible.

Sam stood there, stumped.

He read over the item’s description once more and deliberated.

When he came to his choice, he sighed.

I really wish I could have both, Sam thought.

He made his decision.

The item scroll burst into smoke and in front of him was the beautiful set of silver dragon armor.

Sam’s eyes widened at the sight of it.

It was the most beautiful and incredible armor set he had ever seen in his entire life.

It was also terrifying as he saw the insides of the tiny bits of dragon teeth.

The armor almost looked alive. A monster in and of itself.

Sam couldn’t wait to equip it to his body.

While he was disappointed to not have the true sword of strength, he made the decision that the silver dragon armor was in fact the more optimal choice.

While the armor didn’t have the simple raw power of the sword, it had the potential and scalability to add more than +20 base power when necessary and for that Sam deemed it the better of the two options.

He was slightly concerned about the silver dragon teeth and didn’t want to be another dead body left behind by the powerful set of armor. He figured, though, his necklace of healing would offset it and if it wasn’t enough, he had enough coins in his inventory to buy a few more rings of healing to balance things out in his favor.

Sam then began to equip the new mythic armor set he’d just acquired.

He winced with pain as the silver dragon armor chest plate covered his body and little dragon teeth sunk into his flesh.

It stung but his ring of numbing helped ease the pain, followed by his necklace of healing, but the pain never fully went away. It was a constant, so long as he kept the armor equipped it would be. But Sam was more than happy to carry the burden of extra pain if it made him stronger and more capable of helping his friends and saving the innocent.

After putting the full silver dragon armor set on, he had to sit down, and meditate with the rhythm of the dragon teeth sinking in and out of his body. He had to get used to the near constant pain the armor was causing him.

His eyes twitched as he focused in on each stinging dragon’s tooth sinking into his flesh again and again. If he didn’t have the ring of numbing and the necklace of healing, this armor would have surely killed him within a minute.

With the near constant stinging sensation, he was beginning to regret his choice of not choosing the true sword of strength, but after five minutes of sitting with the pain, Sam began to grow more used to the rhythm of the silver dragon teeth’s bites and slowly the pain while there became less overwhelmingly noticeable.

I can live with this, Sam grinned. The rewards will be worth it.

He was also extra pleased that it seemed the powerful armor could be worn overtop of his bracers of expansion, so he didn’t lose out on that item’s ability either.

Sam then began to ponder other things.

Could it have been the pain of this armor that had led the young rogue warrior Traveler to go on the murder spree back in his previous timeline?

Or, perhaps if the pain overwhelmed and killed whoever wore it, did the armor then possess the wearer?

Something isn’t adding up, Sam thought.

It was at that moment that Sam noticed far in the distance where he had come from, no gate had re-emerged

But I beat the boss, Sam thought. What the heck is going on?

A loud horrible screech then echoed from the sky above.

Sam looked up and his eyes widened.

It looked as if the irregular trap gate had more than one trick up its sleeve.

91

Sam couldn’t believe it.

The trap dungeon was throwing an entirely second boss at him.

Now that’s a trick I wasn’t expecting, Sam thought.

The new boss descended from the skies above. It had the look of an angel, if angels were composed of hot ember and ash. Its eyes burned with hot glowing fire.

Sam gulped and prepared himself for another battle.

It will be good to test the increased power from the silver dragon armor, he thought.

The magma angel threw out two fireballs towards Sam, which he immediately jumped backwards to avoid.

When the fireballs exploded into the ground, they transformed into mini-lava golems.

A boss that can spawn minions, Sam thought. That’s much trickier than the previous magma octopus boss.

Sam triggered Pain Ring.

For the first time since acquiring the Pain Ring skill, he felt its benefits straightaway.

The gnawing teeth from the silver dragon set quickly began to convert into raw power into his body immediately and it didn’t abate in the slightest.

His power just kept increasing, second by second, as his body constantly took in more damage and pain.

The magma golems rushed towards him.

Sam slashed his berzerker sword at an incoming golem and straightaway felt the sword slash through the creature like it was nothing but butter.

The second golem was destroyed with an equal amount of ease.

These were apprentice-tier level monsters, a full tier above him, and yet he was making quick work of them as his strength levels kept rising from the pain converted into raw power via the silver dragon armor set.

Sam quickly drew upon the disintegrated flesh of the magma golems, creating a ball of Blood Flame in his palm before whipping it up at the magma angel lording over him.

The angel dodged the attack with ease, simply flying out of the way.

“Come fight me down here, you coward!” Sam yelled at the boss monster.

The boss ignored Sam’s taunt and whipped a few more fireballs towards him.

Sam took this opportunity to test his new armor in other ways.

He ran forward and leapt in front of the incoming fireball to take the hit head on.

As soon as the flame ball hit his chest, he could feel his silver dragon armor absorb the pain. He didn’t feel any of it, or rather, he sensed the pain almost like how he sensed his own mana flowing through him.

The silver dragon armor created a separation between the pain and himself. The damage became an abstraction. He understood that the damage he’d taken in the chest could be distribute elsewhere. He could put all the damage in his right leg if he wanted. Or his left arm. Or, as he explored across his entire body, dissipating the impact of a powerful attack.

This is incredible, Sam thought as he took in the sheer magnitude of his new equipment’s power.

More than that, he didn’t have to release pain in the armor straightaway. He could hold onto it at the cost of not being able to remove the armor until he did so. There was also the danger and risk that the pain could be accumulated and could reach a point that it could kill him outright if he let enough of it gather inside the silver dragon armor.

He decided to keep the pain at bay and trigger it as soon as the magma angel swooped in, using the fresh burst of pain to power a deadly attack.

“Just come at me,” Sam said, gritting his teeth at the deadly boss monster. “I dare you.”

But then the magma did something Sam wasn’t expecting.

In fact, Sam wasn’t even sure if it was the magma angel doing it.

A huge reverberation went through Sam’s body and he suddenly collapsed onto his knees.

Something strange and peculiar was happening.

He tried to stand up, but he couldn’t.

He tried to look up, but he couldn’t.

He had somehow lost control of his body.

Your body will become mine you fool, said a voice inside Sam’s mind.

Who’s that, Sam replied between gritted teeth as he struggled to move his body from the disadvantageous position it had fallen into.

I am the angel of this realm and you will be the surrogate by which I exit this dungeon, hissed the voice in his mind.

As the overwhelming psychic pain overtook Sam’s body, a whole bunch of things clicked together.

The warrior who massacred Lembrokeshire hadn’t been a rogue Traveler after all. He had been possessed by a boss monster from the dungeon. The very boss monster Sam was currently fighting.

Sam felt his vision go blurry as the magma angel used its telepathic assault to destroy him from inside out.

I cannot wait to cause destruction using your body you arrogant fool, laughed the magma angel inside Sam’s mind.

Everything around him began to go black.

Is this really it...?

No, he thought.

I refuse!

Then something snapped in Sam’s mind and he pushed back against the magma angel’s psychic assault.

The Pain Ring did not just convert physical pain into strength, but mental pain as well.

He pushed back with all of his might and felt the magma angel’s presence disappear from his body and mind.

More than that, Sam pushed the magma angel with such telepathic force, it knocked him unconscious floating above the volcano.

The boss monster began to fall.

In seconds, the creature would splash into the molten lava at the center.

But that didn’t satisfy Sam in the slightest.

For a fire-based creature, the molten lava was not a guarantee of the creature’s death.

Sam wasn’t sure what to do.

If he leapt to attack the falling magma angel, he’d be outside of his Pain Ring and losing his incredible newfound strength.

He then had an idea.

He ran towards the edge of the volcano and sent a huge amount of his mana into his feet, pushing himself off the ledge and hurtling high into the air.

Then, as he came into close proximity to the falling magma angel, he triggered a new Pain Ring once more and then unleashed the extra damage from the fireball that had hit him earlier.

“ARGHHHHH,” Sam screamed as he took in the pain and swung his berzerker sword with all of his might as he moved through the air.

He felt his power surge as his blade cut right through the neck of the magma angel and lobbed off its head.

92

A huge force of Travelers had gathered outside the fiery glow of the green apprentice-tier gate in Lembrokeshire.

Edgar Redfield stood overlooking it, preparing for whatever horrific danger might come out.

As soon as reports came in that a dungeon gate had suddenly changed tier after a Traveler had gone inside, the guildmaster knew something was wrong.

Plus, none of them could enter the gate since it had changed color.

Redfield figured the gate’s exit had probably completely disappeared on the other side.

Even though the gate formerly looked like a standard blue dungeon gate and now had the appearance of a standard green dungeon gate, it was clearly far from standard. This was without a doubt, a new type of irregular dungeon gate.

Redfield had never witnessed or heard of a dungeon gate behaving in such a manner.

Worse, this strange dungeon gate had gobbled up one of their best new recruits.

The black-haired and red-eyed orphan, Sam.

The boy had incredible potential, but Redfield struggled to see how a novice-tier Traveler would be able to survive and take on a dungeon gate a whole tier level above him.

The situation had a devastating dungeon break written all over it.

That was why Redfield had gathered a huge squad of Travelers to guard the green dungeon gate.

If the gate was going to break open and release hordes of deadly monsters to kill them, they’d be ready to nip the disaster in the bud as soon as possible.

Still, Edgar Redfield hoped that the young boy inside could survive.

He struggled to see how it would be possible, but he hoped nevertheless.

An assistant came up to the guildmaster.

“Guildmaster Redfield, sir,” said the assistant. “Our scanners are picking up a strong force of mana coming from inside the gate.”

Redfield’s eyes narrowed at the glowing green fire of the apprentice-tier dungeon gate.

“Get ready everyone,” said the guildmaster. “The monster’s are coming. Let’s make quick work of them.”

Everyone raised their weapons in preparation for a massive scale attack on the first horde of monsters.

“The mana source will exit in three...two...one...”

Everyone gasped with shock.

Emerging from the green apprentice-tier dungeon gate wasn’t a horde of monsters, but a single person.

A black-haired boy with crimson red eyes.

Redfield let out a sigh of relief.

The kid actually made it out, grinned Redfield to himself. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

* * *

Later that night when Sam returned to the Resfall Traveler’s Guild, everyone was in awe of his newly acquired armor.

“It’s so shiny,” said Klara.

“Does it really have teeth biting into you?” shivered Toby. “That sounds...awful.”

“No, it’s totally unbelievably brave, selfless, and warrior-ific,” said Brock. “I very much approve.”

“I hate to agree with the brute,” said Curtis, looking at the silver armor closely, “But you’ll have to let me study this armor later. It is truly one of a kind.”

There was one group of Travelers who were not impressed with Sam’s new equipment and that was the group who were originally meant to enter the irregular gate that day.

They had their arms crossed and stared with hostility at Sam from across the dining hall.

“Ah, they’re just jealous,” said Olivia. “They think that armor should be theirs. Same with the glory that’s being heaped onto you, young man. I’ll make sure they get a good mission with some extra rewards to soothe any saltiness they have towards you.”

“Thanks,” said Sam, looking over at the group of Travelers staring at him venomously.

He’d take the group’s antagonistic looks any day over what he knew happened in his previous timeline.

He had saved their lives and countless others.

If he had to suffer the brunt of some ill feeling among colleagues, he was more than happy to take it.

After dinner, Sam and Guildmaster Redfield had a private meeting in his office.

The preparations for the upcoming Spring Festival were well under way.

Sam could feel it over the coming days.

An intense seriousness was permeating the guild hall.

Everyone was training extra hard.

Military drills were being practiced.

Many Travelers had no idea what was about to happen, but they were smart enough to know something big was on the horizon.

93

The calendar turned to the month of Mai and on one particular morning, the citizens of Resfall were up bright and early along with the clear blue sky and the warm glow of the sun.

The day of the Spring Festival had finally arrived.

Many citizens and volunteers had stayed up the night before, setting up colorful bunting across all the streets of the city that led directly to the central city square where the main festival grounds were held.

The laughter of children echoed through the streets, while the adults couldn’t help but wear big smiles on their faces.

It was hard not to be happy on such a beautiful day and on such a celebratory occasion like the Spring Festival.

Even the more destitute citizens of Resfall felt more cheerful on a day like today.

The general consensus was that you couldn’t get a day better than the one they had currently woken up to.

Only a select few throughout the city knew to think otherwise.

* * *

The royal carriage stopped at a quiet street near the central square.

Mildred, the princess’ handmaiden, looked out to the shadows of the building nearby, making sure there was nothing dangerous nearby.

She then gave a subtle nod to the three guards stationed with her and the princess to step out of the carriage.

Mildred was next and she held her hand out to help the princess exit the vehicle without any hiccups.

After being the princess’ handmaiden for many years, Mildred knew to keep an eye out for potential mishaps.

The princess had a very curious way of taking the most benign of circumstances and creating accidental chaos around her.

That was why as they walked through the quiet cordoned-off streets towards the royal tent, where they would sit and overlook the day’s festivities, Mildred made sure to subtly kick any nearby rocks or pebbles that stood in the princess’ path.

It took very little to cause the princess to trip over herself.

“You don’t have to do that you know,” huffed Alice. “I can perfectly see those rocks for my… ahh—”

A small street mouse had managed to appear right in the front of the princess’ footpath, causing her to wobble.

Mildred had already pulled out her hairpin to rid the street of the rodent, but Alice regained her balance and grabbed hold of her handmaiden.

“Let the cute mouse go, Mildred,” said Alice. “He’s probably just as excited as we all are.”

“As you desire,” said Mildred. “Though, I wouldn’t use the word excited to describe my feelings for today.”

“What would be more appropriate then, Mildred?”

“I don’t know. Something like, I am prepared to tolerate today,” the handmaiden grumbled.

“You’re no fun,” said Alice, as they continued forward.

Mildred kept her eyes peeled at all the buildings nearby.

She didn’t care if the princess thought she was fun or not. Her duty was to protect her at all costs. This duty meant that she was regularly on edge, constantly preparing herself for the worst-case scenario, but recent events had made her even more alert.

Despite the beautiful day Mildred and everyone else had woken up to, she still felt a sense of worry and concern.

A few nights earlier, she had received a message from Guildmaster Redfield, telling her to be on guard.

Something big was about to happen.

Mildred mentally prepared herself for whatever Redfield’s warning might entail.

I’m sure we’ll find out what that is soon enough, she sighed and continued escorting the princess to her assigned location.

* * *

Guildmaster Redfield stepped into Resfall’s central city square with a stern and focused expression on his face.

He had two journeyman-tier Travelers at his side and had stationed many more Travelers all across the central square.

Every actively working Traveler in the guild was on duty today.

Redfield had made sure of it.

Between the colorful bunting, jugglers, market stalls, lute-playing bards, and fairground rides of the Spring Festival you would find a Traveler with his or her signature blue cloak, metal badge, and adorned stars standing guard nearby.

Across the grounds, he watched Mildred and Princess Alice Grace take their seats on a raised platform.

They were soon joined by a few other nobles, including the court advisor Clarence Erdstrom and then the Archbishop Baylen of the Spectral Church.

Both high-ranking members of the Volsungar Royal Court were smiling with glee.

Redfield bristled at the sight.

Seeing his enemy’s happiness did not bring the old guildmaster any joy.

He reminded himself that his guild was prepared for a multitude of scenarios.

We’re ready, he kept telling himself as he stared at Clarence and Baylen.

Do your worst, he thought, because we’re ready to hit back as soon as you even try.

* * *

Sam stepped into the central square from one corner and took in the celebratory joy on display across the Spring Festival.

He saw the princess sit down at her raised platform, overlooking the fun being had by the citizens of Resfall.

It’s all happening just like last time, Sam thought quietly to himself.

The clear blue sky.

The sunshine.

The cheer.

Sam couldn’t help but marvel at how it all had been so similar in his previous timeline.

But he took solace in the fact that the day was already different than it had been in his first life.

For one, his friends Klara and Toby were here in the crowd, ready for whatever happened next.

Sam took it all in.

He knew where he had to go from here.

He knew what he had to do next.

He knew that so much of the future history of Westria would be determined in the next few hours.

The princess would either be killed and the course would be set much like Sam’s first timeline towards a future that would result in the end of the world in a few years time.

Or a new direction could be set where maybe—just maybe—the citizens of Westria stood a fighting chance against the demon king and the black gates.

The events of today would set the course for the world of tomorrow.

94

The assassin, Pit Pierson, entered Resfall through the eastern gate, keeping the hood of his black cloak raised.

Entering the city was easier than expected.

The hustle and bustle of the Spring Festival brought a level of chaos and excitement throughout the city so it was easy for Pit to evade the security checks as the guards were simply too overworked.

He passed by excited and smiling citizens all eager to join the celebrations of the Spring Festival.

Pit noticed the citizens ignored him or avoided looking in his direction.

He would have thought he’d stick out like a sore thumb amidst the multi-colored bunting decorations and bright sunny day with his dour black cloak.

But everyone wanted to celebrate so they avoided looking at him.

They didn’t want to catch whatever gloomy feeling emanated from him.

Not on a special day like today.

Oh, it will be special all right, Pit smirked to himself.

He looked up at the mid-morning sun and realized he had to quicken his pace.

He pulled out a piece of paper with the coordinates of where he was meant to go.

He hurried forward through the streets.

He eventually arrived at an abandoned terraced house.

Pit pushed the creaky door open and stepped into the dusty debris of the uninhabited home.

He walked up the staircase to the top floor where he found a room with a hole in the wall, which allowed him to enter the building next door.

The entire row of buildings was in serious disrepair.

He soon found a small room with a window that overlooked the central square of the city, placing him exactly in the line of sight of Princess Alice Grace.

The assassin had arrived at his coordinates.

* * *

Sam moved through the streets with quick determination.

As he strode forward, he couldn’t help but remember this same day in his previous timeline.

The day when so much changed.

He gulped just thinking about it.

In his previous timeline, the princess had stood up to give her customary traditional toast to officially begin the celebration.

Just as Alice had opened her mouth, but before she had said anything, a magic bullet went through her throat, marking the beginning of the terror that would take over Resfall.

Sam remembered the screams that had echoed forth.

The bloody hole that formed through the princess’ neck as her pale dead body flopped forward.

I can’t let it happen again, he thought as he moved forward through the streets.

* * *

Mildred’s eyes darted across the festival from the raised platform she sat on.

The princess smiled out to the citizens below, while also fidgeting in her seat.

“Is there anything wrong?” asked Alice, leaning over. “You seem more tense than usual. Which is saying something because you can normally be—how do I put it?—quite tense.”

“I’m fine,” muttered Mildred, her eyes darting all over.

She was looking for clues, some kind of sign, of something wrong.

But she couldn’t see any threats across the festival grounds.

The odd man or woman who’d had too much mead before noon were being handled by guards or low-tier Travelers.

A few drunk and disorderly people were to be expected.

Redfield wouldn’t have warned her if that was all he had meant.

I’m ready Edgar to do my duty, she thought to herself. But I can’t do it until I know what is happening or about to happen.

Princess Alice let out a sigh of relief.

She was nervous.

This was her first Spring Festival toast she would be giving since her father, the king, had passed away.

“You can do this,” said Mildred to the young teenage girl. “I know you can.”

The princess built up her confidence and stood up.

As soon as she stood up, the crowd quickly went silent across the central square.

All the festival attendees were giving their attention and respect to the young princess for she was about to give the traditional royal toast.

* * *

Pit quietly opened the window of the abandoned room.

No one noticed or cared.

The crowd’s entire attention and focus was now on the princess.

Let the real show begin, he grinned to himself.

He knelt in position and triggered his class ability.

Suddenly, a magical sniper rifle composed of shining blue mana formed in his hands.

It was an extremely rare ability that very few people possessed.

It was a special class he had unlocked in the white gate long ago. He had earned it from killing people and monsters from far away with a bow and arrow.

The rare class was known as sniper.

He positioned his sniper rifle on the windowsill.

He closed one eye and aimed at the young princess’ throat.

He watched as she raised her glass.

She was about to open her mouth and give a speech.

The assassin’s finger moved towards the trigger of his magic sniper rifle.

In less than a second, the princess would be dead.

95

The assassin Pit Pierson was milliseconds away from pulling the trigger of his magic sniper rifle when he heard a noise behind him. The sound jolted him from his intense concentration.

He turned around. Nothing was there.

He sighed with relief as he took in the empty room around him.

Why would anyone else be here?

Fears of being double-crossed began to enter his mind.

He’d already been paid handsomely for the first half of this job and he was looking forward to even more when the mission was complete.

He took his position once more.

The princess had started her speech.

It doesn’t matter, he thought, my bullet will be the perfect interruption to whatever nonsense she’s spouting.

But before he could pull the trigger, there was another noise.

This time the noise was louder and closer to him.

He could make out the sounds of footsteps.

He turned around to see a young black-haired boy with red eyes emerge from the shadows of the dilapidated room.

The young man rushed towards Pit with a massive terrifying sword raised.

Then Pit saw nothing at all, but utter blackness.

* * *

Mildred smiled for the first time that day as she watched the princess give her speech to the large crowd of onlookers.

She was proud of the young princess.

The young teenager was facing her fears, taking responsibility of her royal duties.

It gave Mildred confidence that Alice would grow into a fine queen of the Volsungar nation.

“Let the festivities begin!” said Alice.

The crowd responded with a deafening cheer that echoed and reverberated across the entire city.

The princess sat back down and Mildred felt a flutter of relief.

She couldn’t exactly say why she felt a sense of relief, but she did.

Her concern for the rest of the day’s events hadn’t evaporated, but she felt better somehow, as if danger had been avoided.

The handmaiden couldn’t help but notice the court advisor Clarence looked visibly annoyed.

* * *

Edgar Redfield eyed the celebrating crowd.

He was waiting for a moment of chaos, but it had yet to happen.

Had Sam succeeded at his goal?

The guildmaster shook his head.

It didn’t matter. They still had to stay alert.

As the strange young orphan had explained to him, the first part of the mission was thwarting their enemies’ original plan, the second part of their mission would be to defend and stop their enemies’ back-up plan.

If the boy had succeeded, though, Redfield assumed the back-up plan would have commenced almost immediately.

What are Clarence and the archbishop waiting for? Edgar wondered.

It made the guildmaster fearful that Sam had maybe not been as successful in his plan as the old man had hoped.

* * *

Sam caught his breath, standing over the dead body of the assassin.

The novice-tier Traveler couldn’t believe such a squirmy little man had been so consequential in his previous timeline.

Sam was relieved the killer was dead now, though.

The last thirty minutes had been intensely pressurized.

Days before the festival, he had scouted out where the assassin was going to be based on his memories from the first lifetime he had lived through.

He had been able to track the bullet to this narrow abandoned, inconspicuous, and forgotten building.

They could have had someone stationed in the building, but Sam had wanted their enemies to follow through with their plan at least until the last second.

He didn’t want to tip them off how prepared they were any more than he had to.

Sam looked out the window to the Spring Festival in full swing.

People were dancing.

The cheer that had been so quickly evaporated in his previous timeline was allowed to continue for a bit longer.

The day’s events had now taken a massive divergence from Sam’s original life.

They had succeeded at their initial mission.

Stage one of the plan was complete.

96

Clarence Erdstrom tried to contain the fury reverberating throughout his body.

He attempted a grin as he looked over to the princess, congratulating her for making such a fabulous speech.

I thought I would be done pretending, he thought to himself, irritably. Why is this little wench of a princess still alive?

Across the table on the raised platform, the archbishop lifted his glass and nodded towards the court advisor, his co-conspirator.

Beneath the archbishop’s false grin anger and frustration raged.

He was wondering the exact same thing as Clarence.

The court advisor turned and looked out across the central square, beyond the market tents, the bunting, and the dancing citizens to a narrow forgotten building and the dark shadowy window.

What happened beyond the darkness of that window, Clarence thought to himself as he gritted his teeth.

It all seemed impossible to him.

They had covered their tracks, they had been cautious in their preparations.

Did the information of their plan leak out somehow?

Clarence took a sip of his drink.

He tried to cool his anger.

It wasn’t as if they didn’t have a back-up plan.

* * *

Alice leaned back in her seat and gave a theatrical sigh of relief.

“It’s a lot of pressure being the royal host to a party,” she said. “The whole fun of the day hinges on your ability to get everyone excited. It’s silly, I know, but my gosh, is it stressful.”

Mildred gave her the side-eye. “We all have our duty, your highness.”

The girl blinked. “Sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t complain. My duty is not as hard as others—”

Mildred shrugged. “Be careful with your words, princess. Perhaps your duty is not as laborious as others, but it isn’t easy being a symbol of power, hope, and nobility. You carry a greater burden than you realize.”

Alice blushed at her handmaiden’s words.

She straightened herself on her chair, getting up from the slumped position she had momentarily found herself in.

She smiled out at all the happy citizens celebrating all around her.

In that moment, Alice couldn’t help but think about her great grandmother.

Maybe, Alice thought to herself, I could lead this nation after all.

* * *

Redfield kept his arms crossed as he watched the Spring Festival unfold.

His stomach was twisting in knots.

He made sure to not stare, but as his eyes moved across the festival, they always returned to two people.

Clarence Erdstrom.

Archbishop Baylen.

We foiled their initial plan, Edgar thought. What are they waiting for now?

He wished he could just arrest them that instant.

But, he had discussed it over with Sam and they had agreed they couldn’t.

The court advisor, and especially the archbishop, had their loyal supporters, such actions would be perceived as a brazen power grab by the Traveler’s Guild and so they had to wait for the two of them to show their true colors.

The citizens of Resfall wanted a balance of power between the different institutions of the city. If Edgar attacked before anything were to actually happen, it would make them appear like the very insurrectionists they were trying to stop.

Redfield hated that they had to do that.

He hated it more than his chronic back pain which was saying something.

Redfield scanned the crowd.

He couldn’t see any evil agents. There were hardly any Traveler-priests present.

He couldn’t fathom what their enemy’s back-up plan could be.

Nevertheless, they had prepared for the worst.

He just hated waiting for the worst thing imaginable to actually occur.

* * *

Clarence took one last sip of his champagne and placed his glass down emphatically.

He looked out to the shadowy window where the assassin had been planning to strike from.

I can hold out hope no longer, the court advisor thought to himself.

He had hoped that maybe the assassin had been held up at the gates or been interrupted by some strange occurrence—but he should have acted by now.

There was no reason the princess was still alive a few seats over from him right now other than the assassination attempt had been thwarted.

It looked as if they were going to have to initiate their back-up plan.

Clarence turned towards the archbishop and nodded his head.

The court advisor kept his hands hidden beneath the table and snapped his fingers when no one was looking.

An explosion of shadow magic burst across the city square.

I didn’t want it to be like this, Clarence thought, but I see no other way.

Let the hostile takeover begin.

97

With the snap of Clarence’s fingers, wisps of black shadow exploded across the central square.

The citizens all gasped at the sight of the burst of black smoke, not immediately recognizing the danger, but believing it to be part of the festivities.

But when the wisps of black smoke transformed into strange crawling monsters with glowing red eyes and drooling hunger for living flesh they realized this was far from pre-planned festivities.

“AHHHHHHH!”

The whole festival erupted with screams.

Clarence grinned at their terror.

Nothing will stop me from taking over the throne of Resfall for myself.

He quickly quelled his grin and screamed with terror.

He was planning ahead for when he had taken over.

He’d make it look like he had nothing to do with this attack.

He had nothing to do with the shadow crawler monsters rushing towards the princess a few seats over from him. Nothing at all.

* * *

Alice watched terror unfold in astonished disbelief.

Monsters had suddenly appeared in every direction.

They were sickly and repulsive and composed of black shadows.

They were worse than any monster she had ever witnessed in a nightmare.

They were truly horrific.

A Traveler sliced one in half, spluttering black blood across the white tents of the festival in a truly grotesque fashion.

Worse, some of the shadow crawlers were rushing up towards her on the raised platform.

Oh no, she thought. What am I going to do?

As the shadow monsters climbed, one galloped across the festival and leaped, flinging itself right towards Alice.

It opened its massive jaws wide as it got closer and closer to the princess, revealing its large nightmarish molars that would surely chomp through her flesh with absolute ease.

But before it could land its attack, her handmaiden Mildred had stood in front of her, appearing with such speed it felt like she’d teleported right in front of her.

The handmaiden pulled out a hairpin from the back of her head, revealing it to be actually a very slim knife.

With speed and grace, Mildred swiped it upwards slicing the drooling shadow monster in half.

The creature collapsed into a puddle of black ichor.

“Stand back, princess,” said the handmaiden sternly.

Mildred made quick work of the three shadow crawlers that had tried to climb up the raised platform, obliterating them with quick precise strikes.

Alice blinked with shock.

She always knew her handmaiden had some tricks up her sleeve, she didn’t realize how powerful the old woman actually was.

“Don’t worry, princess,” said Mildred, preparing to fight an onslaught of shadow monsters. “My duty is to protect you and I will fight until I die to make sure I live up to that duty.”

* * *

“Travelers—protect the innocent!” shouted Redfield.

The festival grounds had turned into a chaotic battlefield of vicious shadow monsters and terrified civilians.

He rushed up to one horrible shadow monsters and imbuing his master-tier level mana into his fists, obliterated the lesser monster in a single punch.

He looked around and saw the Travelers of his guild all take on the monsters with a similar zeal.

The other Travelers were organized—some slaying the shadow monsters, while others herded the innocent civilians out of danger, clearing up the square of bystanders who could get hurt accidentally in the carnage.

He felt a flutter of pride as he saw all the Travelers—many of whom he had mentored—work so harmoniously together to protect the citizens of Resfall.

His eyes narrowed at the sight of Clarence.

The court advisor had been hiding the true level of his abilities for a long time. He must have been secretly training his powers out of sight for many years now.

He must have been adept-tier at least, if not higher, with the ability to summon so many monsters with ease.

Even if no one was directly pointing at the court advisor as the instigator of these shadow monsters sudden appearance—people would believe Redfield now if he told them Clarence was the culprit.

It was time to finally remove him as a threat.

Redfield rushed forward, imbuing mana into his feet to propel him with great speed, he then jumped in the air and with the gift of flight he’d gained from having master-tier magic affinity, he flew towards the court advisor with his fist raised.

Special mana imbued around his fist, different from the punch he’d dealt on the lesser shadow creature seconds before.

This was an attack he only displayed in moments of great portent.

He was using one of the abilities of his mythic class that he rarely displayed.

He threw out his fist of spirit energy gathering around his clenched hand. The bright somewhat transparent energy turned into a powerful fist of destruction as it met the flesh of Clarence Erdstrom’s face.

The court advisor’s head exploded.

But it wasn’t an explosion of flesh and blood.

The court advisor burst into a cloud of black smoke.

What!?

A doppelgänger!?

Redfield looked around.

Before he could even attack the archbishop, he too burst into a cloud of smoke.

Redfield gritted his teeth in rage.

* * *

All across the central square, Travelers unleashed their class skills and fought the horde of shadow monsters that Clarence Erdstrom had so viciously summoned to attack them with.

Magical projectiles flew in every direction, exploding with destructive violence.

Black blood from the shadow creatures coated the ground and mixed with the red blood from wounded Travelers.

“Push forward Travelers and take back the square!” bellowed Redfield for everyone to hear.

The battle for Resfall had begun.

98

Sam leapt out from where the assassin had previously perched his magic sniper rifle and landed four stories below in the town square.

He made sure to imbue his feet with mana to protect him from taking damage from the long fall.

He ran up to a trio of shadow crawlers and triggered Pain Ring.

A red ring of magic burst forth from his chest and created the limits of his battlefield.

The silver dragon armor dug into his flesh, causing him pain and raising his strength second by second.

He materialized his berzerker sword as he swung his hand upward, the grip of the blade materializing and slicing through the unsuspecting shadow crawler within seconds.

The creature dripped black shadow blood and Sam wasted no time triggering his death lord ability, Blood Flame.

The blood of the shadow creature ignited into a burst of bright red flame, burning the two remaining shadow creatures alive.

They hissed and squealed as their bodies roasted and then they suddenly burst into nothingness.

Sam assessed the town square and quickly rushed to his next target.

Their enemies had revealed their back-up plan and it was as Sam had expected.

A more direct hostile takeover.

Sam and Guildmaster Redfield had prepared themselves for such a scenario, but preparation was a lot different from execution.

They now had to fight their way through their enemy’s minions.

First, they had to reclaim the central square, and from there take out the rest of the insurgency.

Sam pushed ahead, gripping the hilt of his berzerker sword tightly.

His heart raced as he slashed through another shadow crawler.

He was trying to simultaneously assess the battlefield while also making sure his allies were okay.

Through the throngs of chaos, he made out Klara and Toby together, fighting alongside Olivia.

Meanwhile, Curtis and Brock were on the opposite end of square taking on a horde of shadow crawlers all on their own.

They were all in this together.

They were pushing back the shadow crawlers and showing them who was boss.

Thankfully, many of the citizens and bystanders had been shepherded into nearby buildings and temporary shelter, so the Travelers could fight the invading monster unimpeded.

Things are in our favor, Sam thought, gripping his berzerker sword.

At that exact moment, however, all the shadow crawlers let out a scream of rage and began to fight with greater fury.

The shadow crawlers pushed back against the group of Travelers in the square. Their attacks were suddenly fiercer and bolder.

One particularly nasty shadow crawler dodged the sword swings of a group of young novice-tier Travelers.

It jumped forward opening its horrific jaws preparing to rip off one of the young Traveler’s heads and swallow it down. Then, it readied itself to feast on another.

“Stay away from them!” yelled Sam, rushing forward.

He slashed his berzerker sword into the back of the monster.

He felt the ridges of his blade shallowly dig into the creature’s strange monstrous flesh—harmful, but not enough to kill it.

Sam would need more power to kill it. This particular shadow crawler must have been at high apprentice-tier levels of power.

Thankfully, his sword’s special ability triggered. The large grotesque being from the shadow realm turned around with a frenzied anger and hunger for Sam’s death.

Exactly what I wanted, Sam grinned as the large shadow crawler galloped towards him like a feral beast.

Sam leaped backwards, retreating from the incoming beast.

The shadow crawler was drooling, leaving a trail of nightmarish saliva on the ground, as it chased after Sam.

It was clearly angered by Sam’s retreat.

If the monster could speak it would have called Sam a coward.

But Sam wasn’t a coward; he was just leading the beast back into his Pain Ring, where his power had already increased.

As the monster jumped forward to attack him, level two of Sam’s Pain Ring ability triggered, and Sam could suddenly make out the creature’s weak point.

It wasn’t the head. Or the heart.

It was the creature’s back, the spine just below the neck area.

He just had to get behind the creature to deal the fatal blow.

This wasn’t too difficult thanks to his berzerker sword’s special ability.

Because the powerful shadow crawler was attacking in a frenzied hostile state, it was very easy to predict the monster’s movements.

Like for instance, the creature was currently flinging forward rapidly in an attempt to tackle Sam and chomp on his skull and brains.

Sam quickly spun on the balls of his feet and easily sidestepped the creature’s attack.

As the monster crash landed on the ground below, he stabbed it right in the back of his neck where his Pain Ring had indicated was the weak point.

The shadow crawler collapsed on the ground, dead.

Sam then turned around and shouted to his colleagues: “The shadow crawler’s weak point is in its upper back just below the neck!”

Toby and Klara nodded their heads nearby. They knew to take Sam’s word for such things.

Suddenly, a blast of water flung across the former festival grounds right into the back of another shadow crawler sending it to the ground in a weakened state.

Klara then followed up Toby’s first hit with her Attack Burst ability, sending her spear right into the weak point, killing the shadow crawler.

Anyone who may have ignored Sam’s advice was now fully convinced.

If three novice-tier Travelers were able to take out the shadow crawler threat with such grace, so could they.

Soon enough, the Travelers had reclaimed the festival grounds from Clarence’s summoned minions.

Sam ran to a nearby building, sending mana into his feet. He jumped onto a window ledge and quickly scaled the building.

He wanted to get a better view of the city. Maybe get a sign of where the plotting archbishop and the court advisor had disappeared to.

His heart sank as he looked out to the city beyond the central square where they had been fighting.

The whole city was overrun with monsters.

Not just shadow creatures either.

There were monsters from beyond the dungeon gates.

Sam shook his head.

It all comes back to what he’d discovered in that lab near Creekdale.

The insurgents had clearly amassed an army of monsters from their experiments with artificial dungeons along with powerful animals corrupted from mana leak. Alongside the deadly creatures there was also a huge force of Traveler-priests.

The treasonous actors were now going to use that army to take over the city.

Sam’s heart raced as he took in the full implications of the insurrectionist’s back-up plan.

And then he grinned, knowing he’d outmaneuvered his enemies once more.

99

Three weeks prior to the Spring Festival, Sam and Guildmaster Redfield began having regular meetings in preparation for the upcoming festival and the chaos Sam had claimed would be unleashed there.

“I know for a fact the princess’ life is in danger,” Sam explained. “But beyond that it is my belief that the whole city is in danger. Our enemies’ ultimate goal has less to do with killing the princess and more to do with seizing control of Resfall.”

“I see where you’re going,” said Redfield. “There are even more brutal ways of gaining control over the city beyond murdering the princess.”

“Exactly,” said Sam. “We must prepare for a city-wide fight against an army of mercenaries, monsters, and Traveler-priests.”

“Don’t worry,” said Guildmaster Redfield. “We’ll be prepared.”

* * *

Sam looked out to the city of Resfall.

Smoke, fire, and screams emanated from below the rooftops across the capital of Volsungar.

Remnants of the clear blue sky and shining sun were still there—but Sam could already tell the air and sky would soon be covered in smoke and ash.

The sounds of battle echoed across the city.

The Traveler-priests and monsters on their side were pushing through.

Sam clenched his fists.

Any minute now, he thought to himself.

* * *

The Traveler-priest known as Father Teyo rushed through the streets with glee.

He could hear the screams of terrified children, the cries of babies, and the tears of families in terror.

The day had finally arrived, he thought to himself. The day when the Spectral Church took control of this blasted city.

A new age is dawning, Teyo thought. The time of the annoying Travelers was coming to an end. The rise of the Traveler-priests was upon them!

Teyo saw a lone Traveler in the streets, wounded and retreating. His blue cloak tattered and stained with blood.

Easy prey, the Traveler-priest thought to himself.

He conjured another fireball in his hands and readied himself to whip it at the weakened and defenseless Traveler.

Right as he was about to kill the Traveler, Teyo felt a sharp pain.

He looked down to see a silver blade sticking through his stomach.

Wha—?

A sharp ripping pain coursed through his body as the blade of the sword was pulled out.

What’s going on?

Father Teyo couldn’t understand. They had worked on this plan for months. All the fighters should have been focused around the festival grounds, not here in the middle of a random neighborhood.

As Teyo collapsed on the ground and his vision blurred, he witnessed multiple blue cloaks step out from the houses around them.

Impossible, Father Teyo thought, they knew we were coming.

The last thing Father Teyo heard before dying was a massive horn echoing across the entire city.

The Traveler’s Guild reinforcements had arrived.

* * *

Father Fernando crouched in the shadows at the bottom of a long tunnel beneath a sewer grate.

From the darkness he hid in, he looked upwards to the shards of sunlight poking down towards him.

He had been told to wait here until he heard the fighting begin.

Finally, Fernando could hear with satisfaction the sounds of magical explosions and the screams of terrified citizens from up above.

He’d received the final signal.

The flare had gone up.

It was time to act.

It was time to take this city and make it theirs.

He turned from his crouched position and went over to a cage full of dread bats. Large vampiric bats who could rip through the flesh of most non-Travelers with utter ease. Once released from the cage, they would leave a mess of chaos and carnage behind them.

I can’t wait, Fernando grinned.

Right as the Traveler-priest was about to open up the cage with his right hand, a glint of silver appeared from the shadows out of nowhere, swinging downward, sending Fernando’s right arm onto the ground, where it then rolled into the nearby sewer water.

“Won’t be opening anything with that arm any time soon,” said a voice from the darkness.

Fernando’s eyes bulged with shock as pain writhed through his entire body, shooting up from where his arm had been.

He swung his left arm to retaliate, but he soon found that arm was no longer connected to his other shoulder either.

The attacks are coming at me too quickly!

Blood was leaking out of either side of him now and his vision was going blurry.

He felt a kick knock him to the ground.

Finally, he could see multiple blue cloaks of the Travelers who had attacked him.

“So, you knew I’d be here, huh?” Fernando said, smiling with blood as he slowly died on the floor of the sewer. “Even if you were that prepared, there’s too many of us for you to catch us all. Stopping me will do nothing.”

One Traveler lifted up his sword like an executioner above Fernando’s dying body and said with calm stoic confidence, “We plan on capturing and killing all you scumbags. Too bad you won’t be there to see me prove you wrong.”

And with that, the Traveler plunged his sword into Father Fernando’s back, ending the man’s life in an instant.

* * *

Sam grinned as he saw his plan come into fruition.

All across the city of Resfall, Travelers stepped out from their hidden positions. Some had been hiding underground, others in abandoned buildings.

Guildmaster Redfield had quietly requested recruits for a big dungeon gate mission a few weeks prior, drawing loads of extra Travelers from the different guild posts throughout the country.

If the monsters and Traveler-priests thought they could easily overrun the city, they were about to be very disappointed.

100

Edgar stood on the raised platform, fighting off shadow crawlers with his spirit druid claws.

“You warned me something big was going to happen, Edgar,” said Mildred. “I didn’t know you meant this big.”

The two esteemed fighters stood on either side of the royal princess, protecting her from powerful attacks.

Edgar’s heart raced as he felt his skin get hot and sweaty. He was consumed with anger.

He thought venomously about the scheming and traitorous archbishop and court advisor.

I’ll destroy them both with my own hands, he thought to himself.

He hadn’t felt this angry in a long time.

He hated the treasonous villains more than his chronic back pain or Hearthmas carollers or jesters who handed out pamphlets for their comedy shows on the street.

And, I really hate those jesters, Edgar thought between gritted teeth.

He prepared himself to jump off the raised platform and penetrate deeper into the battle.

“Edgar!” shouted Mildred. “Where are you going?”

The guildmaster turned to the handmaiden.

“Get the princess to safety, protect her at all costs!”

“Like, I don’t know that already,” said Mildred, slicing a minor shadow crawler with her hairpin. “I’m not some lackey of your guild. I don’t take orders from you—”

“I mean, protecting my life does sound like a good idea, though, doesn’t it?” piped the princess.

Edgar smirked. “See you at the end of this.”

Mildred sighed and looked at him in a way that she hadn’t in many years. “Be safe, Edgar.”

“You too.”

With that, they flung themselves into the battle.

* * *

Sam turned in the opposite direction to look further into the city.

The grand cathedral and the royal keep were much further and deeper within the capital.

The leaders of the insurgency had most likely headed to those power centers of the city to regroup and commence whatever other dastardly plans they had in store.

We have to go after them immediately, Sam thought.

But before Sam could even formulate a short-term plan, the roof he was standing on exploded.

A giant shadow monster the size of ten shadow crawlers combined lumbered through the streets.

It had a massive fist and its punch had destroyed the rooftop Sam had been standing on.

He got his bearings as he fell through the air and managed to land on his hands and feet, properly imbued with mana to help cushion his fall.

“Sam!” shouted both Toby and Klara, rushing to his side.

“What is that thing?” gasped Klara.

“I have no idea,” said Toby. “But I don’t like it. It looks like it can kill us. Did you see what it just did to that roof?”

“Now is not the time to get scared, Tobes,” shouted Sam, as he brushed off debris from his fall, and rushed to take the monster on.

Sam and Klara also rushed forward to take the epic monster on too, but then a bright angelic light appeared above them, followed by a less tranquil battle cry.

“DIE YOU FOUL BEAST!”

It was the guildmaster falling from high above with his fingers interlocked into a hammer shape.

Powerful mana unlike Sam had ever seen rippled around his fists.

That’s the special mana, Sam realized with awe, of the mythic spirit druid class!

Edgar screamed as his powerful blow crashed through the skull and body of the giant shadow bruiser and obliterated the monster seconds later.

Everyone was blown away by the extent of the guildmaster’s power.

As he stood up and brushed some dirt off his arms, he said, “Don’t act so impressed. I am the bloody guildmaster after all.”

Even in Sam’s previous lifetime, Guildmaster Redfield had been known for his enormous strength and the mythic rarity of his class, but he was known for rarely displaying his class’ power and abilities, relying more on his martial fighting abilities and mana manipulation.

For him to be using his class abilities so openly was a sign that he was worried about the outcome of the overarching battle they were in.

Edgar marched towards them and whistled for all the nearby Travelers to come closer.

They had cleared the festival grounds while other squads of Travelers were taking on distant monsters invading all the different parts of the city.

“Alright,” said the guildmaster, looking particularly at Sam. “We have a few moments to make a plan, what’s next?”

* * *

Clarence stood on the balcony just outside the great throne room of the royal keep, grinning at the chaos and destruction happening across the city.

Smoke and flames swirled out from the rooftops and grounds of the streets.

Metal clashed with metal.

Magic exploded into magic.

Screams of terror echoed into the sky.

I caused all of this, Clarence grinned at his handiwork. Out of all this chaos a new leader will rise and it will be me. The throne will be mine.

He then materialized a powerful orb from his inventory.

They hadn’t planned on unleashing this power today.

If only that little stupid princess had been assassinated like we had originally planned, Clarence thought with a scowl.

It didn’t matter.

They had this orb.

It was the ultimate back-up plan and Clarence had now deemed it necessary.

He channeled his mana into the orb.

The orb glowed with power, the energy so intense it blew Clarence’s hair back like a stormy gust of wind.

The orb’s power became so overwhelming that Clarence had to throw it out into the air off the balcony, but that still didn’t stop the rippling intensity of the artificial dungeon orb.

The orb flew through the air until it suddenly stood motionless in the sky and then started to expand.

Yes, grinned Clarence, it’s working!

His eyes widened at the sight of their brilliant creation.

* * *

Sam and everyone around him paled at what they were seeing happening in the sky.

In the air just above the royal keep was an expanding orb of clear energy.

“Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is,” said Toby. “If it is, then the likelihood of me surviving this battle has just dropped significantly. Mind you, it wasn’t very high to begin with, but—”

Klara nudged him in the ribs.

Toby’s paranoid ramblings were certainly not helpful for morale.

Sam gulped.

His greatest fears were coming true.

Clarence Erdstrom had just unleashed a new type of irregular dungeon gate.

It was a clear-colored dungeon gate, also known in his previous timeline, as an artificial dungeon gate.

Dungeon gate scientists, like the one Sam had found in Creekdale, had figured out a way of creating a portal to a dungeon world on their own, reverse engineering the process of the dungeon gates random appearances.

In Sam’s previous timeline when Clarence ruled over Resfall, he forced his enemies into different artificial gates as a form of torture and execution.

Sam bristled at the memory.

He then explained to his allies what they were all currently witnessing.

“What’s the big deal?” said Olivia. “We destroy Clarence and the archbishop and then we clear the dungeon. Easy-peasy.”

“I wish it was so simple,” Sam explained. “If the artificial dungeon was like a standard dungeon gate we would have enough time to do as you explained, but the clear dungeon gate is unique in that it only takes an hour for the dungeon break to occur.”

Everyone gaped at Sam’s words.

“The likelihood of my survival just decreased by—”

Klara nudged Toby to shut it.

But the paranoid young wizard Traveler was not wrong in his assessment.

They now only had an hour to stop Clarence, the archbishop, and the deadly dungeon gate hovering above them in the sky.

101

Chaos swirled around them.

Everyone was looking at Sam for directions, even the guildmaster.

“Okay,” said Sam. “We need to split in—”

“You should never split the party,” gasped Toby. “Everybody knows that!”

“In this case we have to,” Sam explained. “Clarence and the archbishop are both channeling their mana into the dungeon orb. This all works in our favor. You see, artificial dungeons have one major weakness. The mana coursing through the original orb relies on a large amount of mana from others, so if you destroy the people whose mana are powering the artificial dungeon, the dungeon gate will be destroyed.”

“Alright, that settles it then,” said Edgar. “We need to split up.”

“Here’s what I propose,” said Sam. “Edgar and I will take on Clarence, while you three take on the archbishop.”

Olivia and Klara nodded with determination. Toby gave more of an exasperated “I-guess-I’ll-go-off-and-die-if-you-say-so”-esque shrug.

The three of them then hurried off in the direction of the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral.

Edgar and Sam hurried in the direction of the royal keep.

When Olivia and her squad were out of sight, Edgar looked to Sam.

“You kept our part of the plan secret, huh?” said the guildmaster.

“I didn’t want to worry them,” said Sam.

Sam and Edgar had discussed a variation of this scenario in their planning and preparation in the lead up to the Spring Festival.

From his knowledge in his previous timeline, Sam knew that Clarence had a very powerful shadow shield ability. It would take a lot of time and a high level of magic affinity to break through. A level of mana control Sam had yet to achieve, though Edgar had it in spades.

While Edgar focused on breaking the shield, Sam could help sway the tide of both this battle and history itself, before reconvening with him to take down Clarence together.

“Go on ahead,” said Sam. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Edgar. “I hope I’ll get to destroy him before you even arrive.”

Edgar then jumped in the air and hovered above Sam.

This was the awesome power unlocked with master-tier mana manipulation: flight.

Edgar waved and said, “See you in a bit,” before zooming off through the air towards the royal keep.

* * *

Olivia strode forward with the two young novice-tier Travelers behind her.

She wished it was Curtis and Brock, but they were stationed elsewhere in the city.

I hope those two goofballs are okay, she thought to herself as she moved forward. They easily fell apart without her as an organizing force.

Olivia sighed and accepted that she would have to make due with the two young recruits.

It was just a bit nerve-wracking was all. She could rely on her two squad members to do what was necessary, whereas with these two, she felt a greater responsibility for their well-being.

When they turned the corner, they spotted a large trio of trolls heading in the direction of the grand cathedral.

“Alright, team,” said Olivia. “Let’s make quick work of these monsters. We don’t have any time to waste.”

She triggered the level 1 version of her paladin class’ novice-tier ability: divine inspiration. The ability added an exuberance and courageousness to all nearby allies, which resulted in greater damage from their attacks.

She quickly glanced to both Klara and Toby and could see the new feeling of greater power and excitement filling inside them.

“Let’s gooooo!” she yelled.

Olivia charged forward, drawing her sword.

She slashed two of the trolls at their legs, toppling them over.

The one still standing swung its club at Klara, only for it to collapse backwards as Klara unleashed a powerful warrior class Attack Burst with her spear, right into the monster’s stomach.

Behind her, Toby threw out an extra powerful Water Blast right into one of the other trolls so it knocked into the other, completely disorienting them.

It was enough for Olivia to reorient herself and finish them off.

The three trolls disintegrated into mana stones and she turned to the two young Travelers behind her.

She was impressed.

“You’re giving Brock and Curtis a run for their money,” she grinned. “Now c’mon, let’s go.”

They hurried forward towards their destination.

They had fifty-five minutes left before the dungeon gate in the sky unleashed another wave of monsters upon the city.

* * *

Edgar flew above the rooftops of the city.

He witnessed the battles of monsters, Travelers, and Traveler-priests.

He wished he could go down and help all his allies and guild members.

But they each had their own part to play and he knew what his role was.

He landed on the balcony of the castle only to find he couldn’t move any further into the palace.

A shadow shield was blocking him.

Just as Sam had predicted.

Do you really think you can hide behind this, Clarence?

Edgar stretched out his arms and began channeling his spirit druid mana into the shadow shield.

“Hide all you want, Clarence,” shouted Edgar as he pummeled more of his master-tier mana into the shadow shield. “I’m coming for you.”

102

Across the city, Brock was doing what he loved most: fighting and destroying monsters with his big and heavy war hammer.

A small regiment of goblins rushed towards him and he obliterated them with a single smash of his hammer.

Nothing remained but green goblin blood staining the cobblestone streets before disintegrating into mana stones.

“Piece of cake,” laughed Brock as he rushed forward at a new enemy that had emerged.

His instructions from Olivia at the start of the day had been simple. Protect the innocent and destroy any threats to the well-being of Resfall.

Brock was certainly succeeding at the latter. In fact, he knew no better way to protect the innocent than killing anything that threatened them.

A group of boulder golems emerged and Brock quickly headed towards them.

Even before getting close to them, he swung his hammer on the ground and unleashed special apprentice-tier warrior ability, specific for hammer specialists.

The ability was known as shockwave.

A ripple of energy shot forward from his blast and knocked the boulder golems on either side.

By the time the boulder golems had regained their bearings, Brock had already smashed half of them into nothing but pebbly dust.

The journeyman-tier dwarf warrior was looking around for his next target when a horrific shriek echoed from the skies above.

Four harpies descended through the sky towards him. Their skin was fleshy and disgusting and they had narrow slanted white irises for eyes. They flew towards him with inhuman finger-like claws ready to scratch and dig through his skin.

“Argh,” he groaned. “I hate fliers!”

He searched for cover. If he could get the harpies fighting on the ground, he’d be able to use his hammer against them. It would be harder to land a strike if they were swirling in the air just above him.

Unfortunately, he was in the middle of a wide boulevard and there was no immediate direct cover.

Retreating would only result in his death.

He then took in his surroundings and came up with a new plan.

He moved a few yards away and as the harpies came closer towards him, he lifted his war hammer with both his hands and smashed it into the ground, unleashing his shockwave ability again.

The ripple of energy went forth across the ground but the harpies paid it no heed. They were in the air—a land attack was no threat to them.

Except Brock had been clever in the way he’d smashed his hammer. The shockwave he created had managed to pick up a piece of debris and shoot it forward across the formerly broken ground Brock had already created in his previous fight with the rock golems. In so doing, Brock had created a powerful projectile rock that smashed right into one of the harpies, leaving a gaping hole in its chest.

Blood and guts splattered everywhere as the harpy plunged to the ground dead.

“Bull’s eye,” cheered Brock.

But he wasn’t out of the woods yet, as the three remaining harpies were now much closer to him.

He swiped his hammer in a wide arc but the three harpies easily dodged the attack.

Brock was beginning to panic.

His war hammer was no good against these blasted harpies.

It was too slow and there were too many of them.

He then decided to do something risky.

He dematerialized his war hammer back into his inventory. He snatched his hand out and clutched onto an arm of one of the harpies.

He pulled it forward and it tried to rip its claws through the flesh of Brock’s arm.

“They didn’t give dwarf’s burly fists for nothing,” he shouted as he imbued mana into his right fist and smashed it through the head of the trapped harpy.

The harpy disintegrated in his hands and Brock turned to fight the remaining two.

But he had lost sight of them and that was when he felt a pain in his left shoulder.

“Aghhhhh!” he screamed in pain, collapsing on his knees.

The harpies were stronger than he was expecting. They must have been on his tier-level or had at least a comparable level of strength stat.

The pain was overwhelming.

That was when another hot strike hit his other shoulder.

Brock’s eyes watered as he tried to resist the intensity of the pain, but that only made him squint and lose focus.

He swiped the air with his fists, trying to grab hold of another harpy.

There’s only two left, Brock, he commented to himself, you’re not going to let your whole dwarven race down by being destroyed by a couple of nasty harpies, are ya?

He swiped the air once more, but now that he’d lost focus and the pain had slowed down his movements, the harpies were leveraging their air advantage, along with the fact that it was two against one.

Another painful scratch ripped into his back and Brock found it a struggle to hold himself up.

They’re too bloody fast, he thought. I can’t keep up with them.

The harpies were moving so fast around him, he was continuing to lose focus.

Is this really it?

Just as Brock was about to pass out, a sound of crackling electricity filled the air.

One of the harpies screamed out as a burst of lightning magic shot through its chest. It was bright purple and blue lightning magic in the shape of powerful interlocking chains with a massive hook at the end of it.

The lightning hook first emerged through the front of one of the harpy’s stomach. It’s eyes bulged as it took in the newly formed hole in its stomach and then coughed out blood.

Then, the lightning chain hook pulled back and flung the harpy into a nearby building, destroying it instantly upon impact.

Wha—

Brock couldn’t believe his eyes.

Across the street was his colleague Curtis, wielding his special lightning chain ability, spinning it in the air, before throwing out the hook with such precision that it wrapped around the final harpy’s neck.

In milliseconds, the harpy was vibrating from the intense shock of electricity, and milliseconds later, the vibrating electric hook had cleanly removed the harpy’s head from its neck.

Curtis ran over and materialized a healing potion and poured it into Brock’s mouth.

As soon as the healing potion cleared up Brock’s wounds, the dwarf got up and shoved Curtis away.

“Thank you, Curtis,” he spat the words, hating his own gratitude to his colleague.

“You’re welcome,” smirked the wizard class Traveler.

“Oh, don’t look at me so smugly, elf.”

103

The royal handmaiden Mildred held onto the princess’ wrist tightly, as she led the two of them through the dangerous battle-torn streets of Resfall.

Mildred’s whole purpose in life since she had accepted the role of taking care of the princess was to protect her at all costs.

The stability of the country depended on the princess staying alive. If she were to die, chaos would reign, and arrogant slimes like Clarence or Archbishop Baylen would try and take hold of power—just as they were doing now.

Even if they lost the city into today’s fight, if the princess survived, so did hope for all of Resfall and Volsungar at large.

Mildred felt that responsibility as she tugged the princess forward.

“This way,” whispered the handmaiden, as she saw a trio of Traveler-priests lock eyes onto them.

They turned a corner.

Mildred’s heart raced.

She kicked down a nearby door of an old abandoned building and shuffled the princess up the stairs.

“C’mon,” said Mildred as they hurried up the stairwell.

The handmaiden’s mana sense could see the three Traveler-priests coming after them.

The archbishop probably had special squads whose sole purpose in the fight right now was to find and kill the two of them.

The three Traveler-priests were not going to let them go.

Not without a fight at the very least.

Mildred and Alice were on the top floor.

“What are we going to do, Mildred?’ cried the princess.

“Get behind that shelf over there,” commanded Mildred.

The princess did as she was told and Mildred then walked over to a nearby wooden table, flipped it over and then shoved it right in the doorway blocking the entrance.

Mildred then hid by the entrance to the room and held her breath.

She continued to track the three men hunting them down with her mana sense, following their movements as they came up the stairs.

She closed her eyes, counting the seconds to their arrival.

They were getting closer and closer.

Three...

Two...

One...

The killers were moving so fast that the first member of the group got shoved over the table as they all crashed into each other.

Clutching her hairpin, Mildred moved her hand out with lightning quickness, stabbing one Traveler-priest and then the other in the center of their foreheads.

She left the fallen over one for last, stabbing him through the throat.

She pulled her hairpin out from the dead attacker, and wiped the blood off of it with her shirt.

Fools, she thought to herself.

The biggest mistake anyone who’d been through the white gate and survived could make was that they thought they were somehow invincible, that their new powers were a guarantee of victory.

So many Travelers over relied on their abilities, forgoing common sense and good strategy.

The princess nearby shivered and made a gasping sound.

“You....you...killed...them...with...such...ease,” she shivered.

“That is my job, your grace,” said Mildred, whose eyes darted to the nearby window. “Duck!”

The glass windows shattered as two more Traveler-priests kicked the windows down and swung into the room from outside.

Mildred smirked.

So, the first set of attackers weren’t so foolish after all, she thought. They were smart enough to call for back-up and tell them where they were going.

No matter—I’ll make quick work of these two as well.

From her mana sense, Mildred gathered that these two priests were journeyman-tier Travelers with high mana capacity, which meant only one thing.

They could wield magic.

One priest lifted up her arm and conjured a vine whip out of the air while the other conjured an axe composed of fire.

The vine whip woman rushed Mildred while the flame axe went for the princess.

Mildred moved with lightning quickness.

At adept-tier she was faster than either of the two Traveler-priests by a long shot.

She tripped the flame axe wielder and he slammed into the ground.

She then focused in on the man with her hairpin. She started stabbing him at random points across his body and his flame axe suddenly flickered out of existence.

“What have you done to my weapon?” gasped the evil Traveler-priest. “Why can’t I conjure it?”

Mildred picked him up by the head and then kicked him out the window to his death.

She turned to the vine whip priest who suddenly looked horrified.

“What did you do to my partner!?” she yelled. “I’ll kill you!”

Mildred sidestepped the woman Traveler-priestess and landed the same strikes on her back as she had on her partner’s. The grass specialist wizard’s vine whip disappeared just like her partner’s flame axe.

“Wha—”

“It’s my ninja ability: channel sight,” explained Mildred. “I can see your mana points and I can disrupt them so your abilities don’t work. I don’t mind telling you as you’re about to—”

Mildred finished the Traveler-priest off with another smooth attack to the forehead with her hairpin going right through the brain of the enemy.

The princess looked at her handmaiden with horror, not realizing the violence Mildred was truly capable of.

Mildred cleaned up the blood from her hairpin once more with a patch of cloth from her humble dress.

Then, as if to assuage the princess of her newfound horror, the older woman turned to Alice and bowed.

“I am merely fulfilling my duty, your grace.”

104

Sam sprinted through the city streets towards the royal keep.

He held both his berzerker sword and fiery flame sword out in either hand, as he hurried forward.

His heart raced. His throat burned.

While he was entirely focused on his end destination, Sam did stop to help in the battle wherever he could.

If a slash saved a Traveler, killed a monster, or weakened one so that an ally could finish it off—all the better.

Sam was a roving one-man army of destruction, spinning his swords and erupting his Blood Flame ability wherever he could.

He wanted to do as much damage to his enemies as possible, all while still moving forward.

Eventually, Sam arrived in a small square where a Traveler-priestess was cackling over a pile of dead bodies.

Sam’s eyes narrowed as he took in the woman.

Eliza Shanklewood.

Exactly who I was hoping to find, he grinned.

* * *

Olivia sliced a rock golem in half, clearing the way for her group to head forward through the battle-swept streets of Resfall.

They still had another few monster-filled streets to get through until they were in sight of the grand cathedral, but they were making headway.

We just need to keep pushing forward, the adept-tier Traveler thought to herself. We can’t slow down now.

“How are we doing everyone?” asked Olivia as she ran forward with the two novice-tier Travelers at her side.

They were doing a good job keeping up with her. They showed more promise than she had expected of them when she had first met them. They’d grow up to be fine Travelers, if they survived today. She could hear it in their breathing that they were not used to this level of frenetic uncertainty in their lives, this level of risk in battle.

“Get used to it, kids,” she smirked? as she slashed through another set of weak goblins blocking the way. “This is the life of a Traveler!”

She swerved around a corner only to find a shadow bruiser wreaking havoc on a nearby building.

The shadow monster punched a fist through the bottom of the building, collapsing it to the ground.

Olivia was running as fast as she could to dodge the falling building and pushed herself to get on the other side of the street before the building collapsed and blocked the road.

Just as she reached the other side, she heard the shudder of the building and the shattering of glass as the building smashed into the ground.

She turned around to make sure her two companions were all right.

Unfortunately, there was only one of them behind her.

The young girl Klara was looking up at her and panting.

“Where’s your friend?”

The girl was so out of breath and so focused on not getting crushed by the building that she’d temporarily lost sight of her companion.

“Toby!?” she yelled.

“I’m okay,” hollered a voice on the other side of the fallen building.

Klara turned to Olivia. “What are we going to do?”

“Go on without me,” shouted Toby from the other side. “I’ll catch up with you. Good luck!”

Olivia slashed the shadow bruiser at the legs and then stabbed it in the eyes.

The creature collapsed on the ground and the adept-tier Traveler turned to Klara.

“We don’t have time to wait for him,” said Olivia. “If he catches up, great. If not, it’s you and me against the archbishop. Now c’mon!”

* * *

Eliza Shanklewood had long black dreadlocks, pale skin, and wore black eyeliner and deep black lipstick.

Sam bristled at the sight of her.

“What’s this?” she hissed. “A little novice-tier Traveler all on his own?”

Sam smirked.

Eliza Shanklewood seemed to think that it was Sam who had accidentally come upon her, rather than the other way around.

In his first timeline, the horrific woman had gone on to become Clarence’s second-in-command during his reign of terror. She was his main executioner, killing thousands of innocent people.

She had also been a key part of Clarence’s ultimate betrayal of his alliance with the Spectral Church. She had fed him secret information that the church had been withholding from him for pretty much the entirety of the treasonous alliance.

And, maybe worst of all, was Sam’s personal connection to the woman.

Eliza Shanklewood had also been one of the torturers and experimenters who had made Sam’s initial life after the white gate horrible.

Sam triggered Pain Ring and rushed towards her.

“You foolish boy!” hissed the Traveler-priestess as she unleashed her class ability.

Her right arm mutated into a fleshy spear and then stretched out in Sam’s direction.

Sam ducked and ran alongside the deadly stretched out arm.

Eliza mutated her left arm and shot that towards Sam as well.

Sam leapt over the second attack and ran in a circle with the awful woman’s mutated spear arms chasing after him.

“Stop running, you coward,” said Eliza.

Sam dodged, flipped, ran, and retreated from the woman’s deadly spear hands for another minute.

He was biding his time.

Letting the teeth from his silver dragon armor chew into him, the agony raised his power from his Pain Ring ability by the second.

“You want me to stop running?” said Sam.

He was suddenly no longer retreating but going straight for the woman.

Sam jumped and swirled in the air, dodging right between the flowing hostile tendrils of the woman’s spear arms, and unleashed both of his swords right across her face, slashing her entire head into quarters.

The woman’s quartered face, collapsed onto the ground like chopped meat from the butcher shop. The woman now looked like she belonged in an experimental painting: a portrait of a fragmented head with half her crooked smile resting over her forehead and eyes. Blood leaked everywhere across the jumbled horrific mess.

Nice to see you again, Eliza, Sam thought. Glad it was for the last time.

Sam would have loved to stay and relish his vengeance, but he looked to the royal keep, knowing he had to catch up with Edgar.

Even still, he was glad that within the chaos of this horrific day, he was able to destroy a nightmarishly evil woman and rid her from history once and for all.

Within this single fight in the larger battle for Resfall, many future lives were now saved.

Sam then started hurrying towards the keep.

They only had thirty-five minutes left to stop the upcoming dungeon break from wreaking havoc and killing them all.

105

Curtis spun his lightning chain hook and threw it at enemy after enemy.

Be it monster or Traveler-priest, he was happy to destroy any enemy of Resfall.

He was running a tally in his head against Brock of how many monsters he’d slain so that when they saw Olivia at the end of this, she’d recognize him as the superior suitor to Brock and confess her undying love for him and utter disgust for the dwarf, Brock.

The daydream was incredibly motivating for Curtis as he swung his lighting chain hook of destruction all over the streets, slaying monsters and rescuing others with ease.

Out of nowhere came a gang of five green lizard-skin naga spearman.

They hissed and rushed towards him.

Curtis flung out his lightning chain hook and swiped it in the wide arc.

The naga all leaped high in the air, dodging the slash of Curtis’ lightning hook.

Crap, Curtis thought. They’re gaining on me. I won’t be able to deal with them all if they get too close.

With his free left hand he clawed the air and triggered his apprentice-tier wizard ability.

One of the most incredible things about the wizard class was despite its common rarity, it had a powerful amount of customization.

At journeyman-tier a wizard unlocked a powerful elemental weapon conjuring ability, as displayed by Curtis’ lightning chain hook. But the customization happened even before hitting the middle Traveler tier. At apprentice-tier, a wizard class user developed a unique elemental ability.

And it was the unique elemental ability that was about to save Curtis’ butt.

His left hand sparkled with blue and purple electricity and then Curtis threw out a ball of lightning at one of the incoming naga spearman.

Except the lightning ball was no ordinary lightning ball.

Before it collided with the naga, it expanded and transformed into a cage with powerful bars made of lightning.

Suddenly, the cage had captured the central naga spearman. The lizard-man’s body trembled spasmodically as paralyzing lightning coursed through it from inside Curtis’ lightning cage.

The other naga were still heading for him, though, so no time to waste.

Curtis then used the level 2 evolution of the ability, slamming the cage up and down, creating lightning bursts across the whole area.

The attack managed to stun and trip the other Naga.

I got you now, Curtis grinned.

He then triggered the level 3 evolution of his lightning cage ability.

The cage that held the central naga spearman suddenly shattered into a countless number of glass-like shards of lightning that went in every direction.

The lightning shards rained down on the squad of naga spearman, slicing and cutting them to death.

Within seconds, the five of them were nothing but mana stones on the ground.

Curtis wiped the sweat off his forehead.

Glad that’s over with.

He then turned to find Brock, but amid all the fighting, the dwarf had disappeared.

I better go find him before he gets nearly killed by harpies again, Curtis thought.

Curtis figured Brock couldn’t have gone far, except when he decided to turn around and search for his dwarf companion, he came face to face with a rock ogre.

It was a large ogre monster but instead of normal green or grayish skin, the monster’s body was composed of stone.

Curtis grimaced at the sight of the horrific creature.

He wasted no time spinning his lightning hook and then shooting it out towards the monster.

The rock ogre grabbed hold of the hook and shattered it.

What!?

Curtis was shocked.

The creature was immune to lightning magic.

Now, that’s a big problem, Curtis thought.

He still had a few options at his disposal as he conjured raw mana and threw out a blast of basic mana.

The rock ogre swiped it away as if Curtis’ magic was nothing more than an annoying bug.

The monster stepped forward, towering over Curtis.

Curtis started creeping backwards.

What do I do, he thought. It’s completely immune to all magical attacks.

As the rock ogre got closer and closer, Curtis looked around for his companion Brock.

He sure could use the dwarf’s physical fighting prowess right now.

It was at that exact moment that he heard a voice from above.

“The horror show will be over soon, Curtis,” said a voice. “Just say dwarves are superior to elves.”

“I would never say such a thing you foolish numbskull,” hissed Curtis. “Are you really going to hold my opinion hostage as my life is on the line?”

“You tell me,” said Brock. “Are you willing to risk your life on it?”

“This is ridiculous,” said Brock. “Fine—dwarves are better than elves, are you happy you immature—”

“I thought so!” yelled the dwarf.

The dwarf then unleashed level 2 of his journeyman-tier warrior ability. The simply titled, yet incredibly powerful move known as ‘Forward Charge.’

At this level the ability allowed a warrior to thrust himself forward with incredible speed and unleash a devastating attack with their weapon. At level 2, the forward charge could become a forward leap for even greater destruction.

Unleashing this ability, Brock emerged from the roof of a building and jumped off it, swinging his war hammer and imbuing it with mana as it crashed down onto the skull of the rock ogre and obliterated it upon impact.

The dwarf’s hammer attack then smashed into the ground, leaving a small crater.

Brock yanked his hammer out of the ground and grinned at Curtis.

“Consider us even,” huffed the dwarf.

106

Toby’s eyes widened and he gasped at the sight of the demolished building in front of him.

I’m all alone in this monster-infested city, he shivered at the thought, as the countless ways he might be killed any moment now rushed through his head.

Then, from beyond the demolished wall, he heard someone scream.

It was a shriek of terror; not unlike the many times he thought he’d been infected with dirty water disease or woke up thinking his blanket had suffocated him—except this wasn’t his shriek of terror, it was someone else’s.

And Toby recognized the voice.

It was someone really important to him.

It was Klara.

Toby gulped.

His friend was in trouble. He needed to help her.

He had to get back to Klara and Olivia immediately.

I won’t let them get hurt, he thought. I need to help them now!

His confidence and determination, however, disintegrated as he turned around to the smashed building and took in the smoke and blood-filled streets and the army of monsters roaming in front of him.

Toby trembled.

The monsters probably won’t even notice me, he said to himself. Yeah, that sounds right—I’m just a little novice-tier wizard Traveler, they’d want a challenge, they would never see me as easy, delicious, and succulent flesh to be preyed upon—oh boy, who am I kidding? They’ll definitely think that!

Toby’s eyes filled with tears as he rushed forward into the battle torn streets.

He figured he could try and run and outmaneuver the monsters and, if so, he’d be able to catch up with Klara and Olivia and help them with whatever danger they were currently facing in no time at all.

He got to the first street corner and turned, managing to not draw the attention of a group of monsters that were in a fight with a squad of other Travelers.

They got their mission, Toby thought, I got mine.

He kept running.

As he ran, he tried to tell himself positive affirmations. He had been told that they supposedly could be of great help to someone as anxious and paranoid as him.

I am a strong, confident, and independent man who can both protect himself and others, he said to himself while tears fell from his eyes as he swallowed back the terror of all the monsters around him.

It was at that moment that a group of goblins started to charge after him, except two strange-looking men interrupted them.

They were bare knuckle boxers who went toe-to-toe with the goblin warriors.

Who the heck are those guys? They’re not even Travelers!

Toby was amazed at their fearlessness.

The two human civilians punched and destroyed the goblins until they were nothing but mana stones.

“Uhh, who are you guys?” said Toby, aghast.

The two men looked over to Toby.

“The name is Dangerous Darren,” smiled one of the men.

“And my name is Felix Firepunch!” said the other.

“You may have heard of us,” said Dangerous Darren. “I guess you could say we’re minor celebrities in the illegal underground fighting circuit of Resfall.”

“Don’t be humble, Darren,” said Felix. “We’re definitely major celebrities!”

Toby didn’t know what to say to these two strange men.

They were beginning to creep him out just as much, if not more, than the monsters they were all meant to be fighting.

“You see, late last year, my wife left me for another man,” said Felix, wiping a tear from his eye.

“Um, I didn’t ask you about—”

“And, the thing I learned from that experience,” said Felix, ignoring Toby’s protestations, “was that despite my incredible muscular appearance and devilishly handsome good looks, I still harbored a deep sense of insecurity. And that was when I realized I had to team up with my long-time rival Dangerous Darren and show the world that you can be a strong and courageous fighter even without having the magical aptitude of a Traveler.”

“That’s right! Dangerous Fire Brigade assemble!” shouted Darren, letting out a whistle.

A group of burly young boys and girls stepped out from a nearby alleyway with their fists raised to fight.

“We’re not going to let the Traveler’s Guild hog all the glory,” said Felix. “We plan on protecting this city just as much you.”

Toby didn’t want to correct them and tell them they were speaking to the wimpiest and most fearful Traveler in the entirety of the Resfall Traveler’s Guild.

But more than that, Toby was profoundly moved by this group of citizens.

They had no magic abilities and yet they fought these monsters with an unbridled fearlessness.

How could Toby let fear control him so much when, unlike this group, he actually had the power to truly fight back and make an impact?

He couldn’t abide by such restrictions any longer.

Toby wiped tears from his eyes and said, “Thank you for sharing your inspirational story. You’ve made me realize I need to fight with as much courage as all of you! See you all at the end of this!”

Toby rushed off on his own only to come face to face with a group of growling and snarling ember wolves.

“Ahhh!” shrieked Toby.

He shivered at the sight of the vicious and monstrous wolves.

The wolves snarled at him and took a step towards him.

“Please don’t eat me,” cried Toby.

The wolves all pounced towards him and that was when Toby snapped out of his fear.

He shook his head.

Screw that, he thought. They should be afraid of me!

He gripped his wizard staff and clenched his fist and conjured a massive torrent of water and then pushed it out, knocking back the two ember wolves closest to him.

“I refuse to be afraid of you,” shouted Toby. “Especially because I can manipulate the very element that you’re weakest against!”

There were still three more ember wolves rushing from the side towards him.

Toby leaped back and clawed the air with his fingers as he manipulated the mana in and outside of himself to create powerful particles of water that came together in a swirling mass of hostile energy.

He shot the Water Blast out at the incoming wolves and knocked them back.

The wolves were hurled backwards by the force of the magic projectile, one smashing into the wall, and instantly disintegrating down into a mana stone.

A few other ember wolves lay weakened on the ground, their formerly orange-glowing skin looked like the surface of a wet damp log.

Toby had completely doused the ember from the ember wolves’ skin and it looked to be suffocating the monsters, almost like what would happen if you sealed shut the gills of a fish.

The ember wolves whimpered and they all slowly disintegrated around him.

Toby wanted to pick up the mana stones but left them behind because he knew he had to help Klara, so he kept pushing forward.

As he ran, his eyes filled with tears.

He was worrying about Klara.

He didn’t want her to die.

He didn’t want her to even get a little bit hurt.

There was so much he still hadn’t said to her about how he felt, about the life he dreamed they might one day have if they weren’t killed by the thousands of possible ways one could be killed before then.

There was so much he wanted to say to her and hadn’t yet.

She can’t die, he thought as tears welled up in his eyes, she just can’t!

He kept sprinting forward.

His heart raced.

His throat burned.

C’mon, Klara, hang in there!

107

Towering over both Olivia and Klara was a monster unlike either of them had ever seen before.

The monster was a giant that stood upright like a human, but had the fur and face of a tiger. It had yellow eyes, whiskers, and an angry face.

It also wielded a giant axe.

“Any ideas on how to fight this thing?” asked Klara.

Olivia gripped her sword and gritted her teeth and said, “Yeah—up close and personal. C’mon!”

Klara’s heart skipped a beat as Olivia charged forward.

She’s expecting me to run up close to that thing as well, she panicked. That thing can squash us with its foot!

But she didn’t let her fears get the better of her and she followed Olivia’s orders rushing towards the axe-wielding tiger giant.

As she ran forward, she felt the effects of Olivia’s paladin ability, her divine inspiration. She was now using a higher level of the ability than she had used before. Not only did she feel a rush of power surge through her, but she could see a light blue coating surround her as divine mana created a protective shield around her.

“Attack its legs!” shouted Olivia.

The two Travelers rushed towards the giant’s left foot.

Olivia slashed her sword, ripping a large gaping wound on the calf of the giant monster. Blood, fur, and flesh exploded everywhere. The crimson liquid stained the fur of the tiger’s giant leg.

Klara followed up with an Attack Burst, sending a powerful burst of energy into her spear thrust, going right through the open wound Olivia had made.

“Excellent work,” said Olivia, as she unleashed another slash attack.

The monster wailed and lifted its foot to squash the two of them like bugs.

“Move!” Olivia commanded.

They jumped out of the way and missed the powerful stomp attack of the giant.

“Again!” Olivia shouted.

They moved back in again towards the giant’s legs and Olivia thrust her blade into the open wound and jerked the blade inside, ripping through the flesh and bone until the giant could no longer keep balance on both feet and collapsed on his knees.

“We almost have this,” shouted Olivia.

Olivia ran towards the giant to climb its back when the tiger blinked its cat-like eyes and suddenly Olivia froze.

“Erghhh,” groaned Olivia. Her head and neck squirmed but the rest of her body was frozen in place. “That monster’s blink is a paralyzing ability. Don’t look it in the eye, Klara.”

Klara gripped her spear, unsure what to do next.

She had been following Olivia’s lead, she didn’t know how to take this giant monster down on her own.

Worse, the power of divine inspiration had disrupted the monster’s paralyzing ability, meaning all the stat gains and boosts disappeared along with the protective divine mana shield previously coating her skin.

“Klara—watch out!”

Klara’s thoughts were interrupted by the giant’s axe coming right down towards her.

She rolled out of the way as the axe smashed into the city streets, sending rocks and debris flying from the impact.

The tiger giant then did something Klara wasn’t expecting.

Right as Klara was getting back on her feet, the tiger giant let go of its axe and swiped its paw towards her.

Despite its giant size, the monster was fast and agile, and suddenly Klara found herself clutched in the grip of the tiger giant.

She squirmed, trying to push herself out from the monster’s grip.

“Let me go, you monster loser!” she shouted, smashing her fists onto the creature’s paw to no avail.

Soon the tiger giant lifted Klara in the air.

Her hair fell forward and her stomach lurched as the tiger giant held Klara upside down, dangling it over its wide mouth ready to drop her in.

She kept fighting and squirming.

This can’t be it, she thought. This can’t be how I die. There must be a way to escape. Someone must be nearby.

Sam.

Guildmaster Redfield.

Or even Olivia’s two ridiculous lovestruck colleagues.

“HELP!” cried Klara.

The tiger giant released Klara from its grip, letting her fall into its mouth and down its throat.

Except, before Klara entered the monster’s mouth, a giant water ball knocked her in the air sending her flying away from the tiger giant’s jaws.

Klara flew through the air, disoriented, and she soon found herself falling back towards the cobblestone street.

It looked as if she’d luckily dodged the bowels of the tiger giant only to become a pile of blood-splattered flesh on the ground.

But right as she was about to splat right on the ground, she found herself caught in the arms of a man.

No, it wasn’t a man. More a boy.

She looked up and couldn’t believe it.

It was her childhood friend.

Toby, she thought, looking up at the boy with wonder, is that really you?

Toby held Klara in his arms and stared at the tiger giant with rage.

“Stay away from my friends!” he yelled, as for once in his life he truly showed no fear.

108

Mildred made sure Princess Alice stayed hidden in the corner of their hideout.

The handmaiden clung silently to the wall across from Alice, ready for any attackers who tried to step into the room directly.

Mildred focused on her mana sense, along with keeping an eye on the nearby windows.

In an ideal world, Mildred wouldn’t have picked this room as their hideout, but she was improvising with the hand they had been dealt.

The handmaiden decided it was better to stay hidden than to attempt to find somewhere safer.

If they stayed where they were, the higher the likelihood that they wouldn’t attract any more unwanted attention.

All they had to do now was wait out the battle and hope Edgar and the other Travelers were able to stop this bloody coup from going any further than it already had.

C’mon, Edgar, she thought. You can do this, you irritating old coot.

Her hopes of a tedious and boring wait for the battle to be over were dashed when suddenly she picked up in her mana sense a group of incoming hostile enemies.

She stepped behind a bookcase and triggered her level 1 version of her ninja class’ novice-tier ability: stealth-walk.

Under the guise of shadows, her whole body could become invisible.

Not a trace of her could be seen.

So, when the first new wave of Traveler-priests entered through the front door of their hideout, they didn’t see the knives coming until they were through their throats.

Three more Traveler-priests swung in through the windows.

I see, Mildred thought. They’re going to come at us from both sides this time.

They’re wising up.

The three Traveler-priests were classic warrior classes. If Mildred had to guess, she would say they were probably apprentice-tier. Definitely not higher than that.

One was wielding a sword. Another wielded an axe in both hands. And the third had a flail.

She threw out another wave of knives at the new attackers.

It gave away her hiding spot, forcing her to move and lose her invisibility, but she had to keep the warriors attention on her and away from the princess.

The three warriors rushed after her, knocking furniture out of the way or just smashing through it with their powerful weaponry.

She materialized two more daggers from her inventory and then threw them towards her attackers, while triggering journeyman-tier ninja ability: mirage blades.

The two daggers suddenly turned into three more, meaning to the warriors it looked like eight daggers were now coming at them.

And, effectively, it was true. Even though the majority of the daggers were mirages, these were illusionary projectiles that were deadlier than the real thing.

The blades smashed through the warrior’s armor and flesh, causing the warriors to trip and stumble.

Mildred smirked.

One rule about facing a ninja, lads, Mildred thought to herself. Never stumble.

In a second, Mildred was behind them, shoving her hairpin in the back of their heads with the speed of a manic orchestra conductor.

Mildred assumed that was all of them, until another wave appeared.

Damn, word must have gotten out somehow that the princess is here, Mildred thought. Otherwise, why were so many enemies descending upon them?

Mildred rolled up her sleeves and readied herself to keep fighting.

She could take on low-tier goons all day.

It was at that exact moment when an orb came flying in from the front hall.

Mildred’s eyes widened.

Uh oh.

The orb exploded into a massive ray of light, blinding Mildred.

Even with her eyes closed and using her mana sense, the disorienting flash grenade had done its damage on her.

She’d been temporarily crippled.

By the time she could see and would have been able to move properly again, two warriors were holding her on the ground.

A man nearby snickered, “You like my little trinket, huh?”

Mildred grimaced. The man clearly had the uncommon class known as engineer. The class allowed the user to create weird items of mana. She was great at fighting standard warriors or mages, but squirmy little tinkerers with the engineer class had always been tricky for her, especially if they caught her by surprise.

Two other warriors started to approach Princess Alice who was cowering in the corner.

The two warriors snickered, “Time to kill the weak little princess.”

Mildred squirmed, but she couldn’t escape their grip.

I can’t fail the princess, Mildred thought. I must do something.

Alice shivered in the corner as the two men approached her.

The men laughed. “There’s nothing you can do, can you? You’re helpless.”

It was at that point that something triggered inside of Alice.

She stopped shivering. Her shoulders straightened. Her face went red.

Her skin began to take on a fiery hue. Even the princess’ normally blonde hair suddenly went a deep crimson red.

Oh boy, Mildred thought as she watched what was about to happen.

The former king, Alice’s father, hadn’t just hired Mildred to be a handmaiden to protect Alice from potential enemies, but it was to protect the girl from herself.

Alice had been given a powerful mythic class from a class stone with some very unique properties. The class had a latency period to it that made it uncontrollable and existed deep and far away from one’s conscious mind.

The special stone had given the girl a powerful mythic rarity class known simply as Phoenix.

As fire began to swirl around Princess Alice Grace, the girl screamed, “I AM NOT HELPLESS!”

The princess grabbed the head of the approaching warrior and roasted him alive, until he collapsed into ash within a few seconds.

The other warrior cowered and stepped back.

The princess thrust her hand forward shooting out a swirl of fire that sent his flaming corpse out the window.

The girl screamed and created torrents of fire all around her. The gushing flames shot the remaining nearby enemies through the roof of the building and out to their deaths on the pavement nearby.

109

Sam sliced off the head of a drake warrior and kicked its body out of the way. He kept moving forward.

The royal keep was now in view.

He was almost there.

He was running down the street when a trio of Traveler-priests stepped out from an alleyway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” snickered the leader.

“Get out of my way,” said Sam. “You can still change sides. Be on the right side of history.”

“Foolish boy,” laughed the Traveler-priest. “We are on the right side!”

They rushed towards him to fight and Sam grimaced.

He didn’t have time for a drawn-out fight with Traveler-priests.

He only had twenty minutes to stop the explosive and destructive dungeon break of the artificial gate.

* * *

Toby helped Klara onto her feet.

She blushed and smiled at him. “Thanks, Tobes.”

“Uh, don’t mention it,” said Toby, blushing. “But I think, uhh, we need to deal with this horrible monster nearby before we do anything else.”

“You think?” said Olivia, sarcastically.

“Why aren’t you helping us?” asked Toby. “Is this some kind of demented training exercise?”

“No, I’ve been paralyzed!” yelled Olivia, angrily. “Don’t look that thing in the eye. It has a blink ability that can paralyze you!”

Toby shivered.

That sounded rough.

The monster was clearly at least apprentice-tier in its stats, meaning Klara and him both were going to struggle to slay it on their own.

They definitely needed Olivia’s help.

The real question was—how could they undo Olivia’s paralysis?

“I have an idea,” said Toby. “Klara—distract him for me.”

Klara nodded and rushed forward to the creature’s non-wounded leg and unleashed a powerful Attack Burst into its flesh.

The tiger giant’s focus returned to Klara and it snatched its claws towards her.

Klara managed to side step and deal another painful spear thrust into its leg.

The monster wailed.

At that point, Toby conjured another water ball and whipped it towards the tiger giant, knocking him right in the eyelid.

The creature reached for its eye in pain, its eyes fluttering and blinking from the irritation.

He turned to Olivia, “Try moving now.”

Olivia stepped forward and was stunned.

She smirked. “Curtis has been training you well.”

Olivia then jumped forward and shouted, “Holy slash!”

A bright white light of energy formed as Olivia slashed diagonally across the tiger giant.

It all happened within seconds.

Olivia landed on her feet as the tiger giant that had been cut into halves slid off balance and collapsed on the ground dead.

Both Klara and Toby looked at the adept-tier Traveler in stunned amazement.

The power at higher tiers is truly astounding, Toby thought to himself.

“No more wasting time,” said Olivia. “Time to move out. We’re almost there.”

They hurried down the street and within a few minutes they were outside the grand cathedral of the Spectral Church.

It was time to take on the archbishop.

* * *

Sam ducked his head as an ice blast came hurtling his way.

He triggered Pain Ring, marking the battlefield, encompassing the three Traveler-priests within it.

His silver dragon armor continued to eat in and out of his flesh in a symbiotic relationship with his necklace of healing. The silver dragon armor tore into his flesh hungrily and the necklace of healing restored his body, offering an endless snack to the excruciating armor.

The trade-off meant that the silver dragon armor filled him with pain that was then converted into strength and raw power.

“You can’t defeat us wimp,” said the Traveler-priests. “You’re nothing but a novice-tier Traveler.”

Sam ignored the men’s taunts, knowing he was about to prove them wrong.

He rushed forward and materialized his berzerker sword, stabbing one Traveler priest right in the stomach.

A burst of blood shot forth onto the ground.

“But how—” gurgled the Traveler priest. “My defense stat should make it too difficult for you to harm me—”

Sam didn’t care to answer the man’s question, slashing his sword upward.

He didn’t have time to converse with people who wanted to contribute to the ultimate demise of Westria and everyone who lived in it.

With the first dead Traveler-priest on the ground, Sam rushed forward and then triggered Blood Flame.

The other two Traveler-priests roasted alive as he ran towards the royal keep.

He arrived at the entrance a short time later and walked up the steps, readying himself for the final battle ahead.

He only had fifteen more minutes to finish the battle and save the city from utter destruction.

110

Edgar screamed as he pummeled excessive amounts of spirit druid mana into the shadow shield.

He could feel the shield’s power draining and weakening.

Edgar roared as he gave one final push of mana into his enemy’s powerful shield ability.

Suddenly, the energy shield burst into a cloud of smoke. Black wisps blew away in the breeze and within moments, if you hadn’t been there beforehand, you would never have been able to guess that a shadow shield had once occupied the space.

Edgar caught his breath and wiped sweat off his forehead.

It had taken the guildmaster forty-five minutes to break the shield, which felt like a colossal waste of his time considering elsewhere people were fighting for their lives. But he was the only one with the master-tier magic affinity capable of breaking such a powerful shield in as quick a time as he had done.

Edgar simply shook his head and stepped forward into the throne room.

He caught sight of Clarence straightaway.

Edgar narrowed his eyes in anger as he took in the court advisor sitting casually on the throne.

“You insult the royal family of Resfall and everything our nation stands for by sitting on that throne,” shouted Edgar. “How could you betray your own people like this?”

Clarence laughed. “Are you really so foolish, Edgar? Do you really think you’ll be able to appeal to my feelings after everything I’ve already done? After I’ve tried to murder the princess and have staged a monstrous takeover of the city?”

Edgar growled. “You really are a piece of garbage. You’re a parasite and scourge on the innocent people of Resfall.”

“There you go again,” said Clarence. “You waste all of our time. Resfall, Volsungar, honor, valor—these are all mere words. Words meant to control and enslave people. Call this place whatever you want, but it will soon be I who recreates it to suit my vision.”

“Your vision,” said Edgar, anger lacing his words. “Who gave you the right to make such a choice for so many innocent people!? And besides, what do you think is going to happen, you think you and the archbishop are really going to be able to work together so cozily once you no longer have a common enemy?”

“Don’t you worry about that,” sneered Clarence. “I have plans for them.”

Edgar had heard enough.

He had to stop this horrible man. Destroying him would eliminate the artificial dungeon from exploding forth over the city.

There was no more time for talk.

Edgar assumed a battle position and conjured his spirit druid claws.

More than that, he triggered level 2 of his apprentice-tier ability: conjure spirit flame skin.

The angelic clear mana, with the faintest hint of a pink hue, began to cover Edgar’s entire body.

The level 1 version of this ability had been purely protective, a defensive shield against attacks, but at level 2, it allowed Edgar to channel the spirit mana into his attacks and movements, increasing his stats exponentially.

Edgar rushed forward and Clarence snapped his fingers and three swirls of shadows emerged between the two powerful Travelers and three shadow minions materialized.

“Stop hiding behind your minions, you coward!” shouted Edgar as he rushed forward to take on the shadow minions as quickly as possible.

The shadow minions galloped towards him and Edgar elongated his claws making them massive and slashed right through them.

They were obliterated straightaway.

Clarence scowled and snapped his fingers again, summoning two shadow bruisers that took up massive amounts of the throne room, their heads reaching close to the top of the ceiling.

Clarence shouted, “Destroy him!”

One shadow bruiser threw a punch right where Edgar was standing, but the master-tier Traveler dodged it with ease, just as he anticipated the second shadow bruiser punching where they thought he was going to go.

The punches were powerful and created massive shaking tremors across the entire throne hall.

The blasts of the attacks created large crater-like holes in the floor.

Edgar jumped and flew up to meet the shadow bruisers face to face.

They threw out their large wispy black hands trying to snatch him within their dark evil tendrils and grip, but Edgar moved with a speed that confounded them.

He flew between their heads and began to spin in the same spot, creating a whirlwind of blades with his spirit druid claws, ripping shreds through the shadow bruisers’ heads.

They burst into dust and crumpled onto the floor.

Edgar looked down at the sneering Clarence.

“You won’t be able to hide from me forever,” shouted Edgar as he soared down to meet Clarence head on, pulling back one of his clawed fists ready to strike and stab him right through his smug evil face.

111

The front door of the Spectral Church’s Grand Cathedral loomed over Toby and his two companions, Klara and Olivia.

Toby gulped just looking at the entrance to the horrible building.

I can’t believe we’re actually back here, he thought.

I can’t believe we’ve returned here voluntarily.

Toby bristled just thinking about the memory.

He could feel the sneers and laughter of the malicious Traveler-priests, who took them there against their will, who shoved them through the nightmarish portal of the white gate.

“Toby!”

Toby snapped out of his dark memory to see Klara, looking at him sternly.

“C’mon,” she said. “We don’t have any time to waste.”

Toby nodded, and tried to shake the traumatic memory away as they took a step into the large grandiose building.

* * *

Olivia led the way into the Spectral Church’s grand cathedral.

She was slightly perplexed that there had been no guards stationed at the entrance.

Were all the Traveler-priests out fighting and causing havoc in the rest of the city?

But if their leader had come here to hide out and orchestrate things from the sidelines, wouldn’t it make sense to have a few guards on deck?

It was at that moment that she noticed a pale foot poking out from one of the nearby pews.

It wasn’t any type of foot.

It was the foot of a corpse.

Suddenly, the corpse lifted itself up, followed by other seemingly dead people.

“Don’t tell me,” said Toby, shaking his head with tears in his eyes. “Are those zombies!?”

A horde of them rushed towards them. Olivia lifted her sword and triggered her apprentice-tier paladin ability: divine blade.

The silver sword gripped in her hand suddenly took on a bright blue hue of divine energy.

Olivia slashed her sword at the first incoming zombie, chopping its head straight off.

She triggered divine inspiration, boosting her allies’abilities as well.

“C’mon, we need to fight through this horde as quickly as possible,” said Olivia, stabbing the zombie right through the center of its forehead with her divine blade.

Just as she slashed another incoming horde of vicious zombies, she felt the young girl Klara right beside her, gripping her spear.

She thrust her spear upward towards the zombies’ brains with grace and precision, obliterating them before they could get close enough to harm her.

Over their shoulders, Toby threw out Water Blasts, knocking the zombie hordes back and keeping them at bay.

But even as the three of them got into a rhythm of ultimate zombie destruction, the archbishop had clearly left the whole church filled with undead monsters, and the horde appeared to be unabating.

Worse, flying down from the ceiling were more than just undead zombies, but zombie hawks.

The deadly and vicious birds had black feathers and glowing green eyes.

“Incoming,” screamed Toby, as he hurled powerful blasts of water at the birds to keep them back.

Klara roared as she triggered her Attack Burst spell, sending an explosion of powerful energy forward in the direction of the incoming zombie hawks.

But there were too many of them.

The zombie hawks began to descend towards them and surround them in a huge flock.

This is getting annoying, Olivia thought.

She triggered the level 3 evolution of her divine blade and thrust it forward to the sky.

Multiple bright blue swords of divine energy surrounded the adept-tier Traveler and shot upward in the sky.

The sharp deadly projectiles flew upwards cutting through the undead flesh of the birds. The divine blades ended up killing many of the nightmarish birds, stabbing them right through their small heads and brains.

For those who weren’t killed by the multiple divine blades, their bodies were deformed enough with a wing being cut off, sending them hurtling to the ground where Klara finished them off with an executing plunge of her spear.

This is taking too long, thought Olivia.

She spun on her feet, manipulating her divine blades to do so in a destructive whirlwind.

Within seconds, the zombie horde was nothing but destroyed flesh rendered into obliterated dust.

Finished with her attack, Olivia took in Klara and Toby, who were both staring at her aghast.

“I’ve never wanted to be adept-tier so badly,” said Klara.

“Me too,” replied Toby.

Olivia grinned.

“C’mon,” said the adept-tier Traveler. “The archbishop must be hiding in the rooftop pavilion.”

* * *

A few minutes and another few zombie hordes later, Toby and his allies had fought their way to the top of the grand cathedral.

They stood in front of a large doorway.

It was the entrance to the archbishop’s chambers.

Toby was still in shock and awe that this was really happening.

Only six months had gone by since he’d officially become a novice-tier Traveler and now he was preparing to fight one of the strongest Travelers in the city.

This is madness, Toby thought.

“Get ready you two,” said Olivia, taking a step forward towards the doors. “Prepare yourselves for the most difficult Traveler battle you’ve ever encountered.”

112

Archbishop Baylen stood at the far end of his chambers, grinning to himself.

He was looking out his window to the chaos that he had helped orchestrate.

It’s beautiful, he thought.

He stared out to the artificial dungeon gate growing in the sky, looming over the city. It was growing with his and Clarence’s combined mana.

Only ten more minutes now and the city would truly be under their control.

He then heard the doors to his chambers open behind him.

What annoyance is this!?

He turned around and scowled at the sight of three measly Travelers, interrupting his moment of rejoicing.

“How dare you intrude upon me,” he said, conjuring nightmarishly green lightning from the palms of his hands.

Let me take care of these meddlesome flies!

* * *

Olivia gripped the blade of her sword, readying for the battle against the archbishop.

Her eyes narrowed at the sight of the sinister man.

She felt anger swell up inside of her as she thought of all the pain and suffering the archbishop had caused so many of her loved ones along with countless other innocent people.

This man is a menace, Olivia thought, it’s time we remove this parasite from our city.

Nightmarish green lightning emanated from the palms of each of the archbishop’s hands and he whipped the lightning towards them.

Olivia’s eyes narrowed. She could actually stop the archbishop from summoning more undead monsters.

She snapped out her left arm and hand and triggered her paladin’s level 3 journeyman-tier ability: spell cancel.

An explosive burst erupted around the archbishop’s palm. The ghoulish green magic had taken on a blue hue before exploding into deadly shards of divine magic.

The old man scowled in pain as he shook his hand, removing the painful divine shards.

Olivia’s spell cancel ability was best used to stop deadly area of effect spells like meteor storm or lightning strike. It was outside of the ability’s current parameters to cancel any spell that was considered a conditional spell rather than a hostile spell. Such conditional spells would be anything like stun, paralysis, or poison-based abilities.

Olivia hadn’t been sure if the ability would have worked to stop a summoning attack before it even happened, but it looks like it could.

She’d leverage that power to the best of her ability now then.

The archbishop smirked. He stretched out his hands and began a necromantic summoning spell from both his hands.

The clever jerk, Olivia thought, gritting her teeth. I’ll only be able to stop one of the spells.

She triggered spell-cancel once more, but it was futile. The archbishop created a large group of over a dozen undead creatures.

The group included quite a few skeleton warriors, an undead shaman, a few necrowolves, and other horrible monsters.

The monsters rushed towards them and in that moment, the archbishop was free to summon as many more fiendish monsters as he wanted, free from having to worry about Olivia’s spell cancel as she’d have to deal with all of his monstrous minions now.

Crud, Olivia thought to herself.

She triggered spell-cancel once more to see if it would undo the summoned monsters, but it was no use. Once summoned, the creatures were no longer considered a ‘hostile spell’ by the spell-cancel ability.

Makes sense, Olivia grumbled in her mind with irritation.

“Alright, here’s the plan,” said Olivia to Klara and Toby. “We need to fight through these waves of monsters. I’m going to try my best to get through the waves and take on the archbishop. You get rid of the distractions and, if needed, come in to back me up.”

“Got it!” said Klara and Toby with determination.

“Before I go, though, let me give you both one last boon.”

Olivia reached into the air and triggered her divine inspiration ability, this time she’d give them every advantage possible, using the level 3 version of the spell, granting them a boon to fight harder, a defensive coating of divine mana over their bodies, and finally the level 3 perk: a small extra bit of luck.

As the two young Travelers began to glow from the coating of divine mana surrounding them, Toby looked at Olivia and said, “How are you going to get through this initial wave though?”

Olivia smirked. “Just watch me.”

The adept-tier paladin triggered her level 2 version of her apprentice-tier ability: divine blade.

At level 2, the magical conjured blade could be stretched, enlarged, and generally mutated to do what she needed to do.

In this case, Olivia enlarged her divine blade and stretched it out, forging a path of carnage and obliterated flesh to help her move forward.

As she rushed ahead and the undead horde surrounded her once more, she lifted her divine blade to the sky and unleashed her paladin class’ adept-tier ability: pillar of light.

A huge obelisk of bright white light emerged, knocking back all the surrounding undead monsters, and harming any that attempted to get close to her or the pillar of light.

Olivia then triggered her level 3 spell-cancel, obliterating her own hostile attack spell to create a massive blade of deadly shards of divine magic.

Magical glass shot out in every direction, ripping through the flesh and skulls of the undead, killing many and injuring more.

By the time Olivia’s spell was over, she had crossed the divide between the undead horde and the archbishop.

She looked over the horde and back to Klara and Toby.

“Remember, you two stay back and handle the lesser monsters,” shouted Olivia. “Leave the archbishop to me.”

113

The archbishop rushed forward and met the adept-tier Traveler woman head on.

He conjured magical necromantic daggers composed of green ghoulish energy in either hand.

His necromantic daggers clashed with the steel of her silver paladin’s blade.

“You have so little power,” sneered the archbishop.

At adept-tier the woman could clearly hold her own against his powerful undead monsters, but against him directly, she was still no match.

He lifted his arm and shot a wave of powerful energy into her chest, which sent the woman hurtling into the nearby wall.

“Face it, you little wench,” hissed the archbishop. “You can’t defeat me. You’re not strong enough. I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill your puny little friends over there too and I’ll smile while doing it.”

The archbishop grinned as he watched the Traveler woman struggle on the ground, barely able to pick herself up.

“You’re an absolute piece of trash,” said the woman as she wobbled back onto her feet.

The woman screamed and rushed to attack the archbishop once more.

A stubborn little fly, isn’t she? thought the powerful Spectral Church leader. But a stubborn fly only gets squashed faster than the rest.

* * *

Klara thrust her spear into the chest of a corpse knight.

She then held the corpse up, only to smash it into the ground.

She ripped her spear free and then thrust it back into the undead creature’s head.

The glowing red eyes faded away after that final attack and Klara ripped her spear free to keep the battle going.

Toby hung behind her, flinging hostile water attacks for extra support.

As they made their way through the small regiment of undead monsters, Klara would glance over to Olivia, fighting against the archbishop.

Klara couldn’t help feeling concerned for the adept-tier traveler going head to head with the archbishop.

Hang in there, Olivia, thought Klara as she stabbed another undead warrior. If we clear these lesser monsters for you, we can come in and help you!

* * *

Olivia triggered level 3 of her divine blade, sending multiple blasts of sharp sword-like divine energy right in the archbishop’s direction.

The man ducked as the powerful energy smashed into the wall behind him.

Olivia, however, didn’t let her onslaught abate.

Using level 2 of her divine blade, she gripped her sword and thrust it forward, elongating the divine mana and power right to where the archbishop had crouched.

In seconds, this should all be over after the sword obliterated the pathetic man’s head.

The archbishop rolled to the left, narrowly dodging the attack.

Olivia narrowed her eyes, assessing the man.

He was old but agile. While his class abilities clearly suited summoning monsters to do his bidding, he still had plenty of one-on-one powers and fighting prowess to match it.

Over the course of the last few years, no one was in denial that the archbishop had a Traveler class and was most likely extremely powerful—but to have trained this hard and gained this much power while keeping knowledge of such gains so secret from the rest of Resfall was truly a feat on its own.

Olivia took in the archbishop’s movement once more, beginning to understand his power set and movement patterns more and more.

I think I got it, she realized.

She rushed forward with her blade and the archbishop met her halfway with his dual-wielding necromantic daggers.

He lifted his arms to block and defend, but Olivia had only been feinting.

She sidestepped the archbishop, managing to get around him, she then imbued her blade with all of her mana and sliced downward, chopping the archbishop’s right arm off.

The archbishop screamed in horrific pain as blood burst out all over Olivia’s face from her incredible attack.

She kicked the archbishop’s arm so hard it smashed through a window and fell out into the streets.

That should do it, Olivia grinned.

She realized that so much of the archbishop’s power stemmed from his hands and arm.

By removing one arm, she’d cut his power in at least half.

“Looks like you’re the one about to be defeated,” smirked Olivia.

* * *

The archbishop’s eyes bulged as pain erupted throughout his body.

“My...my...”

His vision wobbled.

My arm...it’s gone...

Anger and pain swirled around the inside of his body and he realized he couldn’t waste any more time.

He needed to finish this battle as soon as possible and tend to his wounded arm.

Otherwise, he might actually lose this thing.

“You stupid little fly,” hissed the archbishop as he thrust his arm forward, sending a powerful burst of green nightmarish necromantic energy right into Olivia’s body.

He was able to lift her up and smash her spasmodic shivering body again and again on the ground until she was nothing but battered, bruised, and silent like a corpse.

114

Klara was in the middle of stabbing the brains out of an undead priestess when she saw the archbishop’s necromantic flames take total control of Olivia and knock her out completely.

The adept-tier Traveler lay pale and unconscious on the ground.

“Olivia!” Klara cried.

She looked over to Toby whose face was now going white with shock.

“Klara,” said Toby. “What the heck are we going to do? Olivia was our trump card, our saving grace, our ticket out of here, our only guarantee of survival, our only hope in this entire—”

“Now is not the time to spiral, Tobes,” said Klara.

The young novice-tier Traveler with the warrior class, quickly dispatched with the final zombie warrior, leaving the archbishop as the only remaining enemy to fight.

Even with his arm bleeding profusely, the archbishop managed to laugh at the sight of Klara and Toby.

“What are you going to do?” he laughed. “Your only hope of defeating me is dead on the floor over there. You’re just two novice-tier Travelers, there’s no way you’ll be able to beat me. Face it. You’ve lost.”

“Shut up,” said Klara.

She quickly turned to Toby. “C’mon, Tobes. We got this. Follow my lead.”

* * *

Toby blinked as Klara sprinted forward with her spear at the ready to confront the archbishop.

His heart pounded.

His eyes widened with fear.

Is Klara freaking crazy!? he panicked. She’s going to get herself killed fighting so boldly.

He took a deep breath.

I have to protect her, he thought. I’d rather be dead than live in a world without her.

Over the course of their battle with the zombie horde, Toby had leveled up his novice-tier water manipulation ability.

It was time to test out the new evolution of the skill.

Toby conjured all the mana in his body and created a powerful gushing force of water from his two palms.

“Tsunami Blast!” he screamed as he unleashed the wickedly powerful magical attack on the archbishop.

The old master-tier Traveler snickered as the attack hit him head on.

The archbishop wobbled on his feet and had to take a step back as the hostile water pounded against him.

With his free hand, the archbishop sent out a flicker of ghoulish lightning that smashed into Toby and flung him against the nearby wall.

The boy slumped over.

He wasn’t getting up.

* * *

Klara’s eyes welled up.

“Toby!”

Her friend couldn’t be dead.

Not yet.

They still had so much to do. So much to see. So many things to experience.

She pushed forward, despite a huge part of her trying to make her stop.

A small anxious voice in her head that she tried to ignore day in and day out finally gnawed inside of her, hissing: if everyone is dead, who are you going to protect? You failed everyone. Sam, Olivia, Toby, and all the kids at Orphanage-H. You weren’t strong enough to save them. To help them. They’re now all dead because of you. There’s no need to keep pretending that you’re so tough and strong anymore. No one to perform your fake courage around. Face it. Give up. Admit it. You’re scared, weak, and alone and can’t save anyone.

Klara shook her head violently, still rushing at the archbishop.

NO, she thought to herself. I’m not giving up. I’M NEVER GIVING UP!

Klara gripped her spear tight as she sprinted forward.

If she was going to survive this fight, if she was going to have any semblance of saving Toby and Olivia and defeating the horrible man in front of her, it all came down to one powerful hit.

That was all she could hope to manage to do before the archbishop crushed her, like he’d crushed everyone else in this fight.

Under normal circumstances, there was no way a novice-tier Traveler could have the hopes of penetrating through the defenses of a master-tier Traveler.

But Olivia had left her an opening.

Klara charged and then unleashed a powerful Attack Burst from her spear.

The spear went head on towards the archbishop.

“Pah! Such a puny attack won’t hurt me head on, you fool!”

That was when Klara snickered and revealed a powerful special ability that came with her new apprentice-tier mythril spear that she had gotten in the blue dungeon alongside Sam and Toby.

“Twist!” she yelled.

And the energy of her ranged Attack Burst suddenly swerved and then swerved again, no longer heading directly at the archbishop, but at an angle.

Her Attack Burst blasted right through the hole in the archbishop’s arm, chest, bone, heart, and out the other side.

The archbishop coughed up blood as his eyes bulged in shock

Klara screamed as she dug the spear attack in even further, “That’s for the crap childhood, you piece of garbage.”

115

Across the city at the royal keep, Edgar rushed forward to attack Clarence.

The plan was simple: to rip the court advisor to shreds with the guildmaster’s powerful spirit druid claws.

“Die!” screamed Edgar slashing forward

Clarence jumped backwards dodging the attack.

He’s fast and slippery, Edgar noted.

Edgar realized he needed to step it up a notch. He had mainly been using his novice-tier and apprentice-tier and a portion of his journeyman-tier spirit druid abilities, but it was time to stop holding back.

When Edgar had first started his journey as a Traveler, he’d been disappointed with his first two abilities. He didn’t understand the point of them. What he didn’t realize was that the power to imbue spirit mana and to conjure spirit flame skin were all preparing him for his journeyman-tier ability: run in spirit werewolf transformation.

For the majority of the battle, he’d already been using the level 4 version of the ability, which was to mutate and use isolated aspects of the spirit werewolf transformation, but Edgar realized if he was going to take down Clarence he was going to need to unleash the level 5 version of the skill, total transformation mastery.

He triggered the ability and felt the angelic spirit mana spiral around him, integrating with his skin and body. He grew in height, his muscles bulged, and his whole face snarled, shifting into a growling angry wolf with narrow eyes and even sharper teeth.

With hugely enhanced speed and power, Edgar rushed forward.

He was in front of Clarence in less than a second.

The court advisor had no time to escape.

Clarence smirked right as the spirit druid claws ripped through his flesh. Except blood and guts did not burst from the open wounds, but rather black shadowy wisps as the man disappeared into smoke in front of Edgar.

“Looking for someone?”

Edgar spun around to see the court advisor behind him, coming in with a shadow magic pincer attack of his own.

Edgar leaped forward and gritted his teeth.

Clarence has some kind of shadow blink ability then, Edgar mused. That’s a problem, but how long can he keep such a cowardly strategy up for?

Edgar rushed at Clarence with even greater speed.

He slashed and Clarence would shadow blink in retreat.

Except now that Edgar knew that Clarence could shadow blink, Edgar’s years of fighting prowess meant he knew where to attack next—he could anticipate Clarence’s moves.

Clarence shadow blinked again and again until he finally teleported to the other end of the throne room and conjured two new elite shadow warriors in front of him and rushed towards Edgar.

The guildmaster galloped towards the four shadow warriors. He slashed one to death, sending it hurtling right towards a window, shattering the glass and sending it out into the sky. He grabbed another by the neck and ripped its head off with his spirit werewolf mouth and spat it out on the ground.

“Enough of your tricks,” shouted the guildmaster.

I need to finish this, Edgar thought.

He morphed out of his spirit werewolf form. He then breathed out a whistle, triggering his master-tier ability.

The air from his mouth took on the same angelic mana that formed around his fists and slowly a large gryphon appeared composed entirely of spirit mana.

Edgar quickly jumped onto his new summon and charged at Clarence with so much speed, the court advisor did not have the opportunity to shadow blink.

Edgar gripped the man’s neck and then spiraled high into the air with his spirit gryphon, blasting through the roof of the palace and high into the sky.

They went so high and then the gryphon swerved heading back down to the throne room.

“You won’t survive the impact when we land, you fool,” said Edgar. “It was nice knowing you.”

The gryphon dove straight back down through the air with Clarence positioned to take all the impact.

The three of them slammed back into the throne room, creating a massive crater of marble and concrete.

Edgar’s spirit gryphon flickered away and he stood up to take in his defeated enemy.

The smoke began to clear and Edgar took in the court advisor’s body.

Clarence’s teeth were coated in crimson blood and he smiled and laughed at Edgar.

The man began to flicker into smoke.

No, Edgar thought. Not another doppleganger.

Before Edgar had time to react a powerful master-tier shadow spear went right through his stomach.

116

Edgar eyes bulged as he stared down to the shadow spear that had just ripped through his stomach.

Blood began to leak and drip from the hole the shadow spear had created.

“You conniving little scoundrel,” hissed Edgar as his body filled with pain.

The court advisor had always been a canny strategist and tactician and he had outsmarted Edgar in this fight.

Edgar had to accept that.

More than that, he needed to lessen the extent of Clarence’s victory.

He had to turn this man’s victory into a sacrifice, a trade-off, a compromise that will leave him weakened for his next battle.

That was the only way to salvage any kind of victory from the jaws of defeat.

Edgar reached down and clutched the shadow spear wedged into his body and held it tightly, creating large bloody gashes in his palm as he did so.

“So long as you hold this attack inside me,” said Edgar. “You can’t move and I know where the real you is.”

With Edgar’s other hand, he then reached out behind him, and stretched out his spirit druid claws and slashed the area in front of him.

The court advisor screamed in agony as Edgar finally hit the real version of the scumbag traitor.

* * *

Clarence squirmed, trying to escape the guildmaster’s attack.

But escape was futile so long as the guildmaster kept clutching onto Clarence’s deadly shadow spear.

Edgar Redfield truly is a madman, Clarence thought. How much pain and damage is he enduring by clutching onto that shadow spear to hold me in place?

The man’s spirit claws slashed through his robes and created four large gashes in the court advisor’s body. They looked like large crimson tracks running across his chest.

The pain was unbelievable.

The guildmaster’s strength was undeniable.

Clarence had no doubt that the man’s title as the leader of the Traveler’s Guild was truly deserved.

The court advisor then sensed that Edgar’s power was waning and he felt the man’s hold on his shadow spear loosen.

Clarence wasted no time, ripping it free and leaving the gaping hole in Edgar’s stomach.

The guildmaster coughed out blood and collapsed onto the floor.

The man would be dead in a few more seconds.

Clarence grinned, knowing that his final plans were coming to fruition.

Only a few more minutes now and the artificial dungeon would break and there would truly be no hope for Resfall after that.

Then, suddenly Clarence heard footsteps.

Someone else was coming.

Who’s this? Clarence scowled to himself.

* * *

Edgar felt the blood draining from his body.

His cheek lay hard against the stone floor.

He was struggling to keep his eyes open.

Is this really the end for me?

Even at his age, Edgar couldn’t help but think that there was still so much he’d like to do.

There were so many at the guild who he cared for that still needed his guidance and training.

Olivia.

Curtis.

Brock.

Toby.

Klara.

The young talented orphan Traveler prodigy, Sam.

And, then there was Mildred. So much between them still remained unsaid.

There was only one positive to death Edgar thought and that would be the freedom from his chronic back pain.

Maybe—just maybe—that will make dying worth it, he grumbled to himself as his vision began to fade around him.

Then, in the distance he made out a figure of someone stepping into the throne room.

A black-haired boy with crimson red eyes.

Sam, he thought. You made it.

Edgar grinned.

He was happy to know he could die with a little bit of hope still left in the world.

* * *

Clarence’s attention was fully on the newest intruder.

The boy had shaggy black hair and strange red eyes.

He wore rare and powerful-looking silver armor.

He’d seen this kid before.

He’d thwarted his first assassination attempt of the princess back at the winter ball.

“Do you really think you can defeat me after your precious guildmaster failed to?” sneered Clarence.

The insolent young man had the audacity to smirk at him.

“Let’s find out,” he said.

With the entire fate of the city of Resfall on the line, the final fight truly began.

117

Sam materialized his berzerker sword, readying himself for his upcoming battle with the deadly master-tier shadowmancer.

The court advisor stood across the throne hall from him, waiting for Sam to make the first move.

Makes sense, Sam figured. He has no incentive to defeat me immediately. He just needs to run down the clock for when the artificial dungeon gate breaks.

Sam had a plan to defeat the evil court advisor. The only thing he had to do before he initiated that plan was figure out whether or not the Clarence in front of him was a shadow doppelgänger or not.

On the one hand, he had four bloody gashes ripped across his chest, but he could easily make a new doppelgänger that captured those new features he developed in his battle against Edgar.

The best way to figure out if that was indeed the real Clarence was to land a direct hit.

Better get to work then.

Sam rushed forward.

He materialized a glass vial in his hand and whipped it on the ground near Clarence.

“I didn’t even have to dodge that, you fool,” cackled Clarence.

You’re the real fool, Sam thought as he triggered his death lord class’ Blood Flame ability.

Red flames erupted and Clarence leapt away.

Sam triggered Blood Flame once again, now utilizing the puddle of blood dripping out from Edgar’s dying body.

As Sam expected, Clarence retreated backwards in the only direction he could, the point on the battlefield Sam had been orchestrating him to get to from the very beginning of the fight.

Sam was there waiting for him.

“Wait, what?” hissed Clarence.

Sam slashed up on his back, just grazing the man before Clarence could trigger his shadow blink and escape.

Sam’s eyes narrowed at the man in the distance and saw a small cut form where his sword slash had been.

Sam grinned.

Looks like you’re the real one then, he thought to himself.

Stage one of his plan was now complete.

Now it was time for stage two.

It was Sam’s only hope for surviving and eking out a victory against such a superior foe.

* * *

Clarence whipped his hand forward and conjured three shadow wolves to distract the boy.

The wolves didn’t hesitate to rush towards the young Traveler with the intent to destroy and feast upon his corpse.

The kid is better than I thought, Clarence mused. Still, he’s no match for me. The wolves should be able to finish him off.

But then a bright red marker burst out from the boy’s chest, creating a large circle in the throne room.

The boy then kicked the shadow wolves off of him and began slicing them in half, one-by-one.

What is that ability he’s just triggered, Clarence wondered. I’ve never seen such a class before, same with the strange blood magic. The boy would have made a good ally if he hadn’t chosen to fight me with such dedication. Insolence must be punished with death.

The boy finished fighting the shadow wolves and ran towards Clarence with his fearsome sword raised.

Clarence summoned his shadow spear and raised it defensively.

The boy’s sword crashed into the shadow spear, clanging off one another before both of them retaliated with a follow-up attack.

On the fifth time they clashed like this, the boy came out of nowhere materializing a flame sword, manifesting right towards Clarence’s undefended stomach.

Clarence’s eyes widened in shock.

He shadow blinked behind the boy.

“It was nice playing with you, young man,” said Clarence. “But enough is enough. Goodbye.”

Clarence then stabbed the boy in the back, between his armored plates, dealing a devastating wound.

The boy writhed on the floor with an immense amount of pain.

He would be dead in a matter of seconds.

118

Three weeks ago, as Sam and Edgar prepared for the large battle looming over them, Sam explained the intricate powers and abilities of his newly acquired silver dragon armor.

“It can absorb pain,” Sam explained, “And can redistribute it to mitigate pain. It can even hold pain back for a later period of time.”

After that Sam explained how he wanted Edgar to help him.

In a private training room, Sam and Edgar faced each other.

“You want me to do what now!?” balked the guildmaster.

“I want you to cause me the most amount of pain possible,” explained Sam. “The pain can bring me to the brink of death, but it must not kill me.”

The guildmaster looked at Sam as if the boy was crazy, but understanding the special abilities of the silver dragon armor, he could understand what Sam was trying to do.

“Okay, I can send hostile mana into your body, causing mana overload. It won’t kill you, but it will make your body feel like you’re exploding from the inside. It’s the main method rogue Travelers use for torturing people. My master-tier Traveler mana will overwhelm your body and make you feel as if you’re experiencing ten thousand deaths all at once. Are you okay with that?”

That was when Sam smirked.

“More than okay,” the young man explained. “I want you to cause me mana overload every day for the next three weeks.”

“But that’s insa—”

“You said it wouldn’t kill me, right?” asked Sam.

“Yeah, but—”

“No, buts, just do it.”

And so, the days passed, and every day the guildmaster would send an overwhelming load of hostile mana into the boy.

It always shocked the guildmaster when the young man didn’t even flinch. It was because he wasn’t experiencing any of the pain in that moment, it was all going into reserves for later.

Finally, on the day before the Spring Festival, after sending another massive wave of hostile master-tier mana into the young man’s silver dragon armor, the guildmaster asked, “But when it comes time to unleash this pain on yourself, you’re going to be incapacitated for at least a minute. Your enemy will know you’re up to something.”

Sam smiled.

“Not unless I make my enemy think he caused the damage himself,” said Sam.

“It’s a big risk,” sighed the guildmaster. “The whole plan will hinge on that.”

Sam smiled once more. “It’s a risk, I’m willing to take.”

* * *

Clarence grinned as he watched the boy spasm on the ground, his pool of blood growing larger and larger.

“You’re dead foolish boy,” he spat. “Resfall is mine.”

Clarence walked away from the dying boy and towards the balcony of the throne room.

The artificial dungeon would break in just under a minute.

His plan was complete.

He had succeeded in his hostile takeover.

With the guildmaster and the kid dead on the floor, truly no one could stop him now.

But just as Clarence was basking in his success, he heard a shuffling sound behind him.

He turned around and his eyes bulged in shock.

“What’s this!?”

Wobbling, the kid was getting up off the ground.

“How are you still alive?”

Sam smirked.

This is impossible!

The boy should be dead!

* * *

Sam grinned as he took in Clarence’s shocked face.

As Clarence asked him once more how the heck he was still alive, Sam thought quietly to himself: it wasn’t your attack that hurt me, you fool.

Three weeks of mana overload had been the greatest pain Sam had ever suffered in his entire life.

The minute he’d spent on the floor had felt like almost a year of intense torture—every millisecond splitting off into tiny micro temporal units of agony and suffering.

From the moment he had triggered the silver dragon’s ability to unleash the pain on him to when he finally came back to his senses as the pain began to subside felt like an eternity.

It was such an overwhelming amount of suffering and agony that Sam felt as if he was waking up from a nightmare to end all nightmares when he finally came back to his senses.

He was briefly disoriented, forgetting where he was and what he was doing.

But only for a second.

Then the pain and suffering began to morph and fill Sam’s body with an immense amount of power.

Power that kept surging and surging, filling every muscle and atom of his body.

The intensity and rush of power going through Sam gave him a glow beneath his skin from all the mana filling inside him.

The pain was not only filling him with strength, but at level 2 Pain Ring, he could see Clarence’s weak point with utter ease.

The shadowmancer was clever and had formed parts of his body with shadow armor, but he could see through all of that to where he was weakest.

It was the third scar Edgar had left from the bottom. It glowed out to Sam in his vision, like a big easy target to aim for.

Sam rushed forward with increased lightning speed and slashed his berzerker sword right into Clarence’s open wound.

Sam was wielding so much power, his strength was temporarily beyond even master-tier.

The power was so great that upon impact, Clarence exploded into dust.

119

Mildred lay crouched, holding the body of the princess she had sworn to protect.

She was unconscious, but still breathing.

“C’mon, princess, wake up,” said Mildred, looking down at the girl beneath the sky in the top floor building that no longer had a roof after Alice’s eruption of phoenix magic.

After the girl had destroyed their attackers, Mildred had gotten close enough and with her ninja’s channel sight ability was able to block Alice’s mana channels and disable her phoenix transformation.

Mildred looked out across the city and began to smile.

At that exact same moment, the princess came back to consciousness.

“Mildred, what’s going on?” she said. “Are we still under attack? We must arrest whoever destroyed the roof of this building.”

“Erm, princess,” said Mildred, awkwardly. “You may have been the one to do that.”

“Oh,” said the princess, blushing.

“Look, ” said Mildred.

Princess Alice Grace looked across the city with amazement.

Mildred’s face was soft as she looked outward.

She knew something had clearly changed, but she wasn’t sure what.

She saw the artificial dungeon gate had faded away.

The clouds were disappearing, and the sun was returning to shine down on all of them.

The monsters in the nearby streets were fading away as well.

The princess turned to her handmaiden.

“Could it really be...?”

* * *

Felix Firepunch, Dangerous Darren, and The Dangerous Fire Brigade all punched the air in victory as the monsters around them began to fade away and disappear.

“The Dangerous Fire Brigade saves the day yet again!” they cheered.

Surviving Travelers looked at the group with a quizzical expression.

Citizens who were hiding nearby also chose to stay hidden rather than interact with the deranged group of citizen fighters.

Felix Firepunch wiped a tear from his eye and said, “I can’t believe it—”

* * *

Brock and Curtis both raced to destroy a goblin chieftain when it flickered out of existence before either one of them could slay it.

“You stole my kill!” shouted Brock. “I call foul. You monstrous elf—what did you do to that poor goblin chieftain I was about to split in half with my hammer?”

“I’m sorry, can you explain who I should have sympathy for: the goblin chieftain or your axe?” balked Curtis.

“Neither,” huffed the dwarf. “You should have sympathy for me!”

“You goof, look,” said Curtis.

The monsters in the streets were all fading away, flickering into nothingness.

“The monsters,” said Curtis, amazed. “They’re disappearing.”

Brock rubbed his eyes. “Does that mean...?”

* * *

Klara was rushing back and forth between Olivia and Toby, trying to heal them both.

As she knelt beside Toby, pouring red liquid of a healing potion into his mouth, his eyes began to open.

He swallowed the healing liquid down and looked around.

“Klara,” he asked, softly. “What happened?”

The sun began to poke through the windows of the archbishop’s chamber.

Klara turned to the window and looked out to the middle of the sky. She could see that the artificial dungeon gate had disappeared, replaced by a bright clear blue sky.

She smiled and sighed with relief.

They really did it.

* * *

Edgar’s vision went in and out as his consciousness wavered.

He looked over at Sam standing as the disintegrated dust of the former court advisor swirled around the boy.

The power leaking out of the boy was incredible.

He smiled at the young man whose cunning strategy had led to their victory.

Unbelievable, Edgar thought. The young man’s prowess is truly beyond words.

* * *

As the monsters faded away, the clouds disappeared and let in the blue sky and shining sun, and the citizens of Resfall began to poke their heads out from their hiding places and shelters of refuge.

People cheered in joyous relief.

The hostile takeover of Resfall and the assassination of Princess Alice Grace had finally and truly been averted.

120

The days following the failed assassination of Princess Alice Grace were one of hope and optimism.

With the devastating crisis averted, the citizens of Resfall rallied together to help rebuild from the damage the city had sustained during the attack.

Everyone worked as a team, everyone working for free and without cost.

Healers tended to the wounded.

Builders helped repair damaged buildings.

Cooks and food stalls gave out free meals to everyone in the square.

There was a strong sense of unity among the citizens.

They had survived a deadly ordeal through their united perseverance and so they would continue that unity as they rebuilt after such a cataclysmic attack on their home.

There was a sense of change and hope that swept through the whole city like a joyous breeze on a beautiful spring day.

The Spectral Church was stripped of its power to train and conscript Travelers. The secret white gate hidden beneath its grand cathedral became official property of the Traveler’s Guild, creating a new sense of order and balance to the city.

The Traveler’s Guild and the Spectral Church would no longer be institutions that were in tension with one another. They were now set up to work harmoniously together.

Remaining Traveler-priests were rounded up and arrested, while those who were part of the church but not involved in the violence were promoted into new positions of power.

The Spectral Church would return to its original duties that it had always been known for and what had helped it garner such a great reputation in the past. It would take up its work as a charitable organization for social good.

As the city rebuilt and reconceptualized how it functioned and worked together, an even greater cause for hope came in the form of Princess Alice Grace’s upcoming coronation...

* * *

“It’s official,” said the princess as she paced across her bedroom. “I’M FREAKING OUT, MILDRED.”

The handmaiden strode over to the princess and grabbed her by the shoulder. “Take a deep breath, Princess. Inhale. Exhale.”

The princess inhaled and then somehow started choking on the air and having a coughing fit.

“See, Mildred,” cried Alice. “I can’t even breathe without messing it up. How will I ever be queen?”

Alice had been getting more and more stressed and panicky about her coronation as the big day got closer and closer. It was going to happen any minute now and she felt like she was going to throw up. Then even the thought of throwing up made her freak out about getting puke all over her dress. It was a vicious cycle.

“There is no denying you have a certain habit of—”

“Messing things up?” said the princess. “Just say it, Mildred. I know that’s what you were going to say.”

“Yes, of messing things up,” said the handmaiden. “But everyone makes mistakes. The true mark of a great queen is how they step up to the occasion when they do mess up and showing empathy and restraint when others make mistakes around you.”

“So, it’s okay for a queen to make mistakes?” asked Alice as she wiped a tear from her eye.

“Of course,” smiled the handmaiden. “You’re all the better for it even. The people can relate to you because of it and that makes them love and respect you as their leader.”

“Thanks, Mildred,” said Alice. “You really know just what to say.”

“I’m only saying what your grandmother would have told you had she still been alive to see you now,” smiled the handmaiden. “I know she would have been so proud of you. All of your family would have. Your mom. Your dad. Now, c’mon, it’s time that you follow in their footsteps. The ceremony is about to begin.”

Mildred took Alice’s hand and escorted her down through the palace from her chambers to the throne hall where the entire nobility, merchants, and guild leaders were standing at attention waiting for her to enter.

The young man with shaggy black hair and red eyes who she felt was incredibly insufferable and annoying was standing in the crowd alongside the guildmaster of the Traveler’s Guild.

The black-haired boy smiled at her as she stepped out into the hall.

She blushed and looked away in a huff.

She sat down and the grandiose coronation ceremony began.

Alice Grace was soon crowned queen of all of Volsungar.

No one even noticed the small rip in her dress that she had accidentally made when almost tripping on her way down from her bedchambers to the throne room.

121

Following the queen’s coronation there was a massive celebratory feast and party.

With the Spring Festival having been such a disaster, the coronation day became the big celebration that everyone had been wanting for the last few months.

Magical lights were strewn all across the city streets, creating a beautiful and wondrous atmosphere.

The city was filled with the smells of grilled meat and other scrumptious delicacies.

Just as a huge celebration happened out in the city streets, so too was the palace and the royal gardens done up to mark the occasion.

A band played in the beautiful garden while the hundreds of guest sat at their tables eating and drinking the finest meats, cheeses, fruits, wines, and ales to their utter hearts’ content.

Without a doubt, the members of the Traveler’s Guild—the group with the least amount of people trained in the art of table manners—ate the most shamelessly.

A constant regiment of wait staff cleared the plates away as the group of magical fighters gobbled up the tasty food like they were enjoying the last meal they were ever going to have and wanted to make it count.

Nobles and merchants at neighboring tables first looked on with fascination and then slight repulsion, before smiling with inspiration and ordering a second helping for themselves.

After dinner came dessert.

Out came a quadruple decker white cake with glistening strawberries and fluffy vanilla icing, followed by a large chocolate cake dripping with salted caramel glaze.

“Are they trying to kill us?” gasped Toby as he dug into his two slices of cake. “They keep serving us delicious food. I don’t have the room for all of this!”

He almost fainted when the wait staff brought out apple pies and an assortment of different ice cream flavors.

“I must eat all of that,” sighed Toby. “Even if I don’t survive. I must eat that ice cream and pie.”

With dessert over, the band kicked it up a notch and the different groups of people started dancing.

On top of that with the eating portion of the evening over, the drinking portion started in earnest.

As Brock went up to pour himself another glass of ale, he accidentally knocked shoulders with a priest of the Spectral Church.

“Aye—watch where you’re going!?” barked Brock.

The priest sneered at Brock and said, “I’d say the same to you!”

Everyone nearby suddenly froze.

A simmering tension could be felt across the party.

Would the newfound peace and order between the rival institutions crumble so quickly? Was the strife that had plagued the city for years not truly gone?

Then Brock smirked.

“You know there’s a dwarfish saying,” said Brock, “that if you bump into someone on your way to get a drink, you buy the person you bumped into a drink, as well. So what are you having?”

The priest blinked and then smiled, “An ale, please.”

“Good man, that’s what I’m having too,” said Brock.

And then everyone laughed and cheered.

For the first time in many years, the different institutions of power in Resfall were truly in harmony.

122

Forty minutes later, Brock approached Curtis and threw down two shots of dwarven whiskey.

“We never settled our bet out on the battlefield,” said Brock. “Meaning, we must settle it here. Honor will be decided by who can drink the most amount of whiskey shots.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” said Curtis, before cracking a grin. “You’re on.”

Everyone at the nearby table gasped.

“But—dwarven whiskey is known to be extra powerful. It’s been used to put raging giants to sleep.”

“I’m not afraid,” glared Brock. “Are you elf?”

“Just line up the shots already,” said Curtis. “I’m looking forward to defeating you once and for all.”

And so began the epic dwarven whiskey shot debacle.

After the first three shots, the competition got even fiercer.

Both Curtis and Brock’s cheeks were flushed red, but neither one looked as if they had had enough.

Ten shots later, their bodies were both shaking.

“Another!” they both declared.

The wait staff shivered, “That was our only bottle of dwarven whiskey, we ran out.”

Both Brock and Curtis stared venomously at the waiter.

Then Brock turned to his elf companion, “I guess we’ll have to keep calling it a tie for now.”

“That’s fine by me,” said Curtis, who looked like he might fall off the table.

Brock put his hand on Curtis’ shoulder and said, “You know, Curtis, I don’t say this enough, but I want you to know, I love and respect you, elf.”

Tears formed in Curtis’ eyes and he swatted the dwarfs hand away before giving him a big hug.

“No, I love and respect you!” said Curtis back.

With tears in his eyes, Brock said, “Why can’t we say this to each other more often?”

“I don’t know,” said Curtis. “We’re foolish, so foolish. You’re my best friend, I want every one to know!”

“You’re my best friend too,” sobbed the dwarf.

As the two pals admitted to each other their undying platonic love for one another, their captain Olivia Reeves walked by in a beautiful red dress.

They both turned, awed by their captain’s stunning attractiveness.

Both tried to get her attention but she was already out of earshot, heading across the party to talk with somebody else.

No longer hugging, Brock said, “Alright, how about for this evening we call a peace treaty on Olivia. Neither one of us will fight over her tonight. Deal?”

“Deal,” said Curtis.

“Shall we continue our contest then?” said Brock. “We can switch from whiskey shots to pints of ale?”

“Sounds excellent,” said Curtis.

The new contest began and the two friends started chugging down beers, each with their own secret plan to ask their captain Olivia to dance as soon as the other passed out from drinking too much.

123

Mildred sat proudly beside Queen Alice at the high table of the young girl’s royal coronation party.

The day had been a huge success.

Alice was now queen and with the celebrations of her royal coronation underway, the most recent horrors that had engulfed the city could be replaced with now fonder happier memories.

“How are you feeling, my lady?” asked Mildred, sipping a cup of tea.

“Wonderful,” said Alice.

The former princess was beaming.

She looked radiant and composed.

The two women looked out to the group of people dancing in front of the live minstrel band.

“Do you plan to dance with anyone tonight?” Mildred asked.

The queen shook her head.

“I am queen now, I must be diplomatic with who I show my affections to.”

“Certainly,” said Mildred. “So I’m guessing you won’t dance even with a young shaggy black-haired boy who saved you and the city?”

Queen Alice’s face went a deep red and she shook her head vehemently.

“I have rewarded him with the privilege of our council should he ever seek it in future times of great danger. At best, we are colleagues, nothing more.”

Mildred gave the young girl a knowing look. “Your words say one thing, while your face says another,” said Mildred.

The new queen crossed her arms and said, “I have no idea what you are talking about. Besides—I think someone is after your hand to dance, Mildred.”

Approaching their table was Guildmaster Redfield.

“He’s coming,” whispered the queen, gleefully. “What will you say if he asks you to dance?”

“I will politely decline,” said Mildred.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” giggled Alice. “You spent every day beside him while he was at the healer’s wing after the Battle of Resfall.”

“Quiet,” said the handmaiden, just before the guildmaster was standing beside them. “He doesn’t know that. He was unconscious the entire time.”

Edgar smiled at Mildred and bowed.

“Beautiful Mildred—can I have the pleasure of a dance?”

Mildred, who was very good at not showing any emotion, for the first time in many years, blushed.

* * *

Edgar took Mildred’s hand and walked her out to the dance floor.

The handmaiden wrapped her arms around the older man’s neck as he placed his hands on her waist and they danced slowly to the music.

There was a comfortable familiarity in the way they held each other, mixed with a sense of melancholy.

It was both familiar and yet distant like a fading memory.

Edgar smiled at Mildred, whose cheeks didn’t stop blushing.

“Don’t get any ideas,” said Mildred.

“I wasn’t.”

“I know you,” said Mildred. “You definitely were. You always have ideas.”

“After seeing the light that awaits one at the brink of death, I have learned to cherish being in the present, rather than chase the promise of the future.”

“Nice little speech,” grinned Mildred. “But I don’t buy it for a second.”

“Seriously, Mildred,” said Edgar. “We haven’t been like this in so long. I am like a man in the desert dying from dehydration, and so I can cherish even the tiniest morsel of water.”

“Well, if you keep it up with such romantic metaphors, who knows where the night will take us,” said Mildred.

Edgar smiled wistfully and then his mind turned to other things.

“The dungeon gates—I don’t know what they mean for us, for the world,” said Edgar. “I fear dark times are coming our way.”

Mildred stepped a bit closer and rested her head on Edgar’s shoulder as they danced.

“Let’s just enjoy this moment of respite,” said Mildred softly. “You know as well as me that we get so precious few of them across a lifetime.”

124

Klara looked around the royal coronation at a loss of who to speak with or what to do.

Every noble who made eye contact only made her bristle with disappointment.

Where the heck is he?

All she wanted was to spend the night with her best friend, Toby. She realized after fighting together during the battle of Resfall, she never wanted to be far from him ever again.

More than that, she felt herself admiring her friend more and more as she thought about him. She had always thought she was the braver one, pushing away her fears, not letting anyone see them or knowing that they were even there; but there was something deeply courageous the way Toby didn’t shy away from his fears. Occasionally annoying, yes, but somehow special too.

I wish I could be more like you, Tobes, she thought quietly to herself. Now, where the heck are you!?

She asked the others in the guild whether they’d seen him, but Toby had seemingly disappeared from the party.

Did he go back to the guild for an early night?

Or did he, and she felt a flutter of sadness in her stomach, just not want to spend more time with me?

* * *

As the royal coronation party progressed, Toby found himself in a position he was quite familiar with.

He was hiding and terrified.

He stood behind a fountain of red wine, furtively glancing over at Klara who was standing alone near the dance floor.

She clearly wants someone to ask her, he thought. Why shouldn’t it be me?

The question seemed simple enough but Toby’s brain was good at cataloguing potential disaster.

He could ask her and she’d beat him up for ever considering the idea of them dancing together.

He could ask her and she could tell him that she was actually waiting for one of the noble guys who was attending to ask her and then Toby would subsequently die from the most severe form of heartache ever witnessed in all of Westria.

He could ask her and the universe recognizing that it was such an absurd idea that someone like him could ever dance with someone as amazing as her that he would accidentally rip open the space-time continuum and cause the entire universe to implode on itself.

All of those things might happen, he thought. Or we might just dance and it might be really nice.

He gulped, struggling to believe there might be any hint of truth in the latter.

He took a sip of water and thought of the words Brock had said to him at the winter ball all those months back.

Drink hype juice, not hate-o-rade, and do what you gotta do fella.

He chugged back the glass of water, wiped the sweat off his brow, and started walking across the garden party towards Klara who was standing all alone.

The walk across the party may have been the longest walk of Toby’s entire life.

He felt every step he took. Every beat of his palpitating heart.

He was practically hyperventilating by the time he was standing in front of her.

“Hey Klara,” he said, his voice cracking as he spoke. “Do you maybe...wanna..sort of...it’s not a big deal or anything...but you know...dance? With me?”

Klara smiled.

“Yeah, Tobes. I’d love to.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to. Not a big deal or anything. I don’t want to put pressure on you, or mess with our friendship or whatever. Totally understand if you’re waiting for a noble—”

Toby’s fear had taken over and he’d been rambling and it took a moment for his thoughts to catch up with his voice.

Wait, he paused. She said yes!

“Tobes?” Klara looked up at him with her gorgeous green eyes.

If his heart had been beating rapidly before, it was going even faster now.

Oh man, I was so worried about asking her to dance, I’d never considered what would happen afterwards. I don’t know how to dance!

Klara took Toby’s hand and they walked out to the dance floor.

Once they started dancing, Toby felt himself calming down as they swayed to the slow gentle rhythms of the band’s soft romantic song.

As the music continued, they moved closer and closer together as they danced.

If Toby’s hands started on Klara’s waist, they were soon on her lower back. If Klara started the dance holding onto Toby’s shoulders, they were soon wrapped around his neck with her head resting on his chest.

As the song came to a close, Klara pulled away and kissed Toby on the cheek.

She whispered, “You’re the bravest guy I know, Tobes.”

Toby’s whole face blushed.

In that moment, he was the happiest young man in all of Westria.

125

Sam sat alone at his table at the Royal Coronation party.

He was happy just sitting there.

After the most recent events, he was happy to take a quiet tranquil break.

He smiled at the sight of his friends Toby and Klara holding hands as they went for a walk following their dance.

I’m happy for them, he thought.

In the distance, he saw the new queen surrounded by noble gentlemen all trying to impress her and get her to dance.

For a second, his eyes locked onto hers and he felt a strange feeling in his stomach.

The queen herself blushed and looked away.

Should I maybe go and—

He shook away the thought.

Alice Grace was now the freaking Queen of all of Volsungar.

Who knew what mayhem Sam could cause in the ripple of time and history if he pursued her romantically?

Not that he even necessarily wanted to.

For one thing, he was a few years older than her.

Though only by a few.

And, then there was the fact that she was incredibly annoying.

Sam had forgotten about that for a second.

He crossed his arms, contentedly.

That’s right, he thought. The Queen is no good for you. Plus, you have other things to worry about anyway.

He sighed with a wistful smile and looked at her once more. She was preoccupied with the nobles surrounding her now.

She is pretty, though.

Sam had figured he had had enough partying for that evening and stood up to go when he saw two nearby gentleman who were staring at him oddly.

“There he is,” whispered one of them. “Let’s go talk to him.”

They were both wearing the finest suits, yet looked a bit scraggly and uncomfortable, like they weren’t quite used to wearing such fine materials.

Sam looked at them oddly and then walked towards them. “Um, do I know you two?”

The two men looked to each other nervously and then one of them began speaking, “You probably don’t remember us, but we wanted to come say hello to you and say thank you. You changed our lives.”

Sam smiled. He had no idea what these two were talking about. He assumed they were just thanking him for his contributions during the battle of Resfall.

“No problem at all,” said Sam. “Just doing my job.”

“See—he doesn’t remember us,” said the other guard.

“We met just under a year ago now, at the end of Septremble last year,” said one of them. “You probably don’t recognize us as we’re dressed a bit differently, but we were on guard duty one night when you decided to go out into the woods and fight against monsters with your crummy equipment. We thought you were a dead man. A goner. When you showed up the following morning, more determined than ever—I don’t know, something sparked inside of me and then later my friend here as well. See, I realized I wasn’t living my truth. I may have been a mere guard, but my passion was for birds and bird-watching.”

“And boring the heck out of me about it,” chimed in the other.

“Well, I decided, I was going to retire from being a guard and use whatever resources I had to create a book to help people get better at bird-watching—”

“And I wasn’t going to just let him abandon me on guard duty, so I quit alongside him! To support him in his annoying birdwatching habit!”

“And together,” they smiled, “we created the book and it was a huge bestseller. We’re now opening a shop to sell bird-watching equipment.”

Sam looked at the two men aghast. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” said one of the former guards. “We just wanted to let you know how much you changed our lives. Thanks again.”

The two men then walked away and Sam stood there, stunned.

Since being sent back to this new timeline, Sam had been so focused on stopping the big events from his past that he hadn’t really considered some of the smaller details.

The threads of time were truly rich, complicated, and mysterious.

He was realizing as much as he could influence some of the bigger dominoes of fate, there would still be a ripple effect that would expand outward and influence so many different people beyond Sam’s own ultimate goals.

It wasn’t just the major differences in the timelines that could alter people’s lives, but the small changes as well.

Watching the two former guards walk away into the garden, presumably to look at more birds, Sam couldn’t help but smile.

126

The following day, the entire Traveler’s Guild was in shambles.

Brock and Curtis had fallen asleep in the front hallway.

Food was strewn all about from the late-night snacking provided by the dining hall.

Some Travelers were even sitting around still drinking, having stayed awake the whole night, never making it to bed.

Even Roxy the unicow was snoring louder than usual in her stable having stayed up late at the celebrations as well.

The only person bright-eyed and awake was Sam.

He got up first thing, had a quick bite to eat in the dining hall along with a large cup of coffee, and then stepping over Curtis and Brock’s drunken sleeping bodies, he moseyed over to the mission board.

He was very pleased with how many terrible cataclysmically awful things he’d stopped from happening so far.

He’d saved his friends and survived the white gate.

He’d stopped the assassination of Alice Grace and the hostile takeover of Resfall.

Not to mention all the more smaller benevolent changes as well.

Sam was pleased, but he also knew his job was far from done.

In just under three more months, he’ll have been back in time for a year now. Meaning, they had just barely over four more years to prepare for the apocalypse brimming on the horizon.

And before that, there was still the dwarven cataclysm and the elven genocide to worry about.

He went to the mission board, picked up an assignment and headed out of the guild towards the city gates.

He had a lot more work to do.

* * *

Edgar Redfield had fallen asleep at his desk and had been woken up by the sound of movement in the guild hall below.

“Who’s causing that ruckus,” he grumbled out loud as he rubbed his eyes to wake up.

He heard the guild hall door slam shut and then walked over to his window to see who was causing so much noise at such an early hour after such a big celebration the night before.

He smiled as he saw the shaggy black-haired boy run off towards the city gates on a new assignment.

Why am I not surprised?

The kid was something else.

He was pure potential.

It was like he knew what was going to happen a second before it actually happened.

Maybe whatever dark things were still approaching on the horizon—this kid might be their one and only hope.

* * *

Meanwhile, a similar sentiment to Edgar Redfield’s, was being composed in a deep forgotten and obscure basement of Resfall’s ancient libraries.

A forgotten historian was writing upon a scroll the events that had just passed.

He wrote about a young man with black hair and crimson red eyes.

A hero of incredible potential.

A Traveler who seemed to be writing history with his own blade.

A savior who fought as if he could actually see the future.

The historian dipped his feather into its pot of ink and finished the end of the scroll, writing the words, “...and so concludes merely the beginning of this chronicle, this history of the Second Chance Swordsman.”

Want more Second Chance Swordsman? Check out the FREE bonus epilogue!

If you’re curious to hear about what Sam and his friends get up to a few days after the events of book 1, you gotta read the free bonus epilogue. It’s exclusively available as a bonus to subscribers of my newsletter.

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Author’s Note

Thank you for reading my book from start to finish! I hope you enjoyed Sam’s adventure. If you did, please consider leaving a review. As an indie author, reviews go a long way to achieving success, so please leave one if you can!

If you’re not sure what to read next while I’m still writing Second Chance Swordsman 2, maybe check out my two other series, Tower Climber or Arcane Kingdom Online. Both are complete series with loads of LitRPG/GameLit/Progression Fantasy goodness.

If you’re interested, check out a free sample of Tower Climber on the next page…

Thanks again for reading and see you soon!

-Jakob Tanner

www.jakobtanner.com

Tower Climber (Book 1) (Preview)

Chapter 1

Max watched the clock as the hour hand struck three. The school bell rang and students pushed their seats out from their desks. Idle chatter surrounded him, but he ignored it all. It was time to leave and he didn’t have a second to waste.

He lifted his wrists off the armrests of his wheelchair and slowly moved himself out from his desk. Even the simple gesture of rolling his wheels to move backwards was enough to make him wince with pain.

The other students in the classroom paid no attention to him. Some were gossiping in the corner, while others were enquiring about extra credit assignments with the teacher.

Max was grateful for their lack of concern. As a person with a disability, people generally only interacted with him in one of two ways: he was either willfully ignored or pitied. He’d take being invisible over pitied any day of the week.

Max exited into the hall. He looked cautiously up and down the corridor. It was flooded with students, gathering their stuff and hanging out by the lockers. He saw no sign of Seth and his pals.

Maybe today’s my lucky day, he thought.

Max’s own locker was only around the corner, but he knew to take the long way round.

He pushed himself forward, rolling the wheels of his chair. He winced with every push. The bruises on his arm ached every time he moved them.

He turned the corner into a near empty hall, when a voice snarled behind him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Max shuddered.

It was Seth.

“Where you going Maxie-pad? Your locker is the other way.”

The other students in the hall quickly gathered their stuff. They knew just as much as Max did: Seth was trouble.

He had been suspended more times than anyone else in the history of the school and the only reason he wasn’t expelled was because his dad worked for the mayor’s office.

Even still, some of the nearby students hesitated. They didn’t want to pick a fight with Seth, but it was clear on their faces that they thought bullying a kid in a wheelchair was perhaps a step too far.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Max, mustering a smile for the nearby students. “You can leave. It’s all fine here.”

They weren’t going to be able to help him, Max figured, so he’d rather them walk away scot-free than let them get a target on their back like he had.

The students nodded and hurried away.

Max still hadn’t even turned around to face Seth.

Maybe if I ignore him, he’ll leave me alone, Max thought.

He pushed himself forward down the hall.

Two shadows emerged. Two of Seth’s goons stepped into the hall at the other end.

“What? You thought you could just ignore me, Max? Run away? Oh that’s right—you can’t, can you?”

Seth’s goons snickered at the dumb joke.

Max looked around the hall. There wasn’t a teacher in sight. Even if there was—they’d be no help to him. They’d ignore them, not wanting to get in trouble with a powerful man like Seth’s father.

Max took a second to assess the situation. He knew the best form of self-defense for a wheelchair user was to get the heck out of there. To not fight at all.

Escape was no longer an option though.

He’d try negotiation.

Max spun around on his wheelchair to face Seth.

The tall boy stood with his arms crossed and a patronizing smirk stretched across his face.

“What do you want?” said Max, keeping his voice calm.

“What do I want?” snickered Seth, taking a step towards him. “What—are you some kind of hostage negotiator now, Max?”

The boy took another step towards him, the clap of his shoes echoing across the hall.

“You know exactly what I want,” snarled the boy. “I want to see you cry and whimper on the ground like the little bitch that you are.”

“Tell him, Seth,” said the goons behind Max.

He could tell by their voices that they were coming towards him now as well.

Negotiation was out the window then.

With all his strength, he angled and swerved his wheelchair to maneuver around Seth, but the boy just jumped in front of him.

“There’s no getting away from your daily treatment,” snickered Seth. “Maybe it will help you walk again.”

The boy grabbed Max by his shaggy red hair and yanked him off of his wheelchair and threw his body to the ground.

They kicked him and stomped on him as he lay there helplessly on the ground.

“Take your treatment,” they laughed.

Max closed his tear-strewn eyes and let the beating take over.

They wouldn’t stop until they thought he couldn’t take any more. The best thing he could do now was let them have their sick sadistic fun and hopefully it would all be over a little bit sooner.

Then something different happened.

The kicks stopped.

A hand caressed his leg, slipping inside the right pocket of his jeans.

They’d never done this before. What were they doing?

The hand pulled out Max’s wallet.

“We’ll be taking this as a souvenir,” said Seth.

Max’s shoulders straightened at those words. He was no longer passively taking the beating, but very much alert.

They can’t take my wallet, he thought.

Elle’s note is in there.

The bullies walked away, leaving Max on the floor with his aching bruised body and tears.

“Should we go shoot some pool?” said one of the goons.

“Maybe the arcade?”

Their malicious beating of Max from mere seconds ago was already a far away memory to them.

“Agh—what the—”

Max clutched onto Seth’s leg and dug his nails into his calf.

“Give...me...my...wallet...back...” said Max.

Max had dragged his pained body across the hall to catch up with Seth and his gang. He wouldn’t let go until he got his wallet back. Until he made sure his letter from Elle was safe and secure.

“Ugh,” said Seth, repulsed, trying to shake Max off his leg. “What are you doing? Get off me you psycho cripple!”

Max didn’t let go.

“GIVE ME MY WALLET BACK!”

Seth looked down at the boy with drool and blood leaking out of his mouth. He pulled the wallet out of his own pocket, drained it of the few measly bucks that were in there, and then tossed it down the hall.

“There you go, psycho cripple,” said Seth. “It’s all yours.”

Max let go of Seth’s leg, only for the boy to give him another walloping kick to the gut. Pain coursed through his whole body.

“Next time,” said Seth. “Stay down.”

The bullies walked away.

Max slowly dragged himself across the empty school hallway.

He pulled himself towards his black leather wallet on the ground and clasped it with relief.

The late afternoon sun shone through a nearby window. The city and its skyscrapers stood stoic and apathetic to the life that swirled around them. So too did the tower at the center of the city, shooting out beyond the clouds and as far as the eye could see.

The tower.

How was it possible that something so wondrous existed within a world full of such cruelty?

Max opened up his wallet and pulled out a piece of worn parchment paper.

He looked over the words. The penmanship. The flourish of each letter.

This note—which he had mysteriously received a year ago—was the only thing in his life that gave him hope.

He read the words once more.

Max,

Don’t forget your promise. Find me in the tower.

Elle

Chapter 2

Max had already gotten back on his wheelchair and was wiping the blood off his face, when Sarah rushed into the hallway.

The girl had black hair that she kept in a long braided ponytail and large rimless glasses.

“Max!” she cried. “What happened? I was waiting at our meeting spot?”

Sarah and Max lived together at the same group home for orphans and so walked home together every day after school.

The girl was fourteen, two years younger than Max. She would have been his sister’s age if she was still around.

Max appreciated Sarah’s kindness towards him, but he knew that her association with him was causing her trouble within the social circles of her year. For someone kind like Sarah to suffer because of him was the last thing he wanted. So he devised the meeting spot: a corner a few blocks from the school where they’d meet after school, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the student body.

“I got held up,” said Max.

Sarah’s eyes watered. “Seth again?”

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

He lifted his arms to roll himself forward. A sharp pain ached across his whole body. Max grimaced from the hurting bruises all over his body.

“Here let me get that,” said Sarah, going around him and taking the handles behind Max’s wheelchair to push him forward. “And before you protest, all the other students have gone home now. So you can’t worry about me.”

She beamed a smile down towards him and Max craned his neck back with a groan.

“Fine,” said Max. “You win today, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to make this a regular thing.”

“You realize your wheelchair has these handles for a reason, right?”

“A design flaw, if you ask me,” Max joked as they left the school.

It was a sunny day, so they took the long way home along the canal.

The city of Zestiris lay before them: the tall skyscrapers, the giant wall that separated the outer-rim and the tower-zone, and, of course, the always looming mysterious tower at the center of it all.

“I just don’t understand why you chased after them,” said Sarah after Max had relayed the whole story of the incident with Seth. “Like, you didn’t have that much money on you. You don’t have a credit card or something hard to replace. Would it have been so bad to lose your wallet, save yourself from that final blow to the stomach?”

Sarah had a point. It had been stupid to fight back, but then he thought of Elle’s note. It was the only thing that connected the two of them. The only proof of her existence.

Until that note had randomly appeared in his locker twelve months earlier, Max had assumed his sister had died in the same car crash from ten years ago that had killed his parents and left him with two immobile legs.

“I couldn’t leave Elle’s note behind,” said Max.

“Oh,” said Sarah.

Sarah’s realization hung between them, anchoring the conversation into silence.

She was the only one Max had ever told about the note. The only person he remotely trusted out of everyone he knew. Even still, he could tell Sarah struggled to believe him. She wanted to believe him, but she struggled to.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” she said. “But how do you know that note wasn’t a prank?”

“I don’t,” said Max, staring at the looming tower beyond the wall. “But here are the facts. Our lockers don’t have any slits in them. So the only way someone could sneak a note into one of them was if they had my lock combination—which, as far as I know, nobody does—or they snuck it in when I had it opened, but surely I would’ve noticed in that case?”

“So how did it end up there then?” asked Sarah. “Magic?”

“Why is it so hard to believe a note magically appeared in my locker,” said Max. “When every day we’re confronted by a freaking tower that appeared out of nowhere?”

This was the curious and frustrating question that every citizen of Zestiris who lived in the outer-rim had to confront day after day. How did one go about their daily life—full of all of its mundane activities—while unexplainable magic loomed over them and stared them right in the face in the form of a tower that had appeared out of thin air?

The tower had first appeared forty years ago in 2045. It emerged in the middle of nowhere on the northeastern coast of the United States, between Concord, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts.

A decade later, a city with walls and rules had been erected around the tower, and that city came to be known as Zestiris.

The reasons for the tower’s appearance remained a mystery to this day.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” said Sarah, pushing him along. “But how are you going to find your sister in the tower? Even people in the outer-rim can’t enter the tower-zone?”

“You mean most people,” said Max. “Some people can enter. The mayor. Politicians. Scholars. Archaeologists. People do get access to the tower. So that’s my goal. Study as hard as I can so I can get a job like that and get my way one step closer to the tower.”

“But what about all the monsters that exist in the tower-zone and the tower itself?” said Sarah. “Only climbers who can wield magic can survive in such a dangerous area. That’s why they have the walls in the first place.”

Two walls surrounded the city of Zestiris. There was the wall that surrounded the tower-zone and its inhabitants and then a greater second wall that encompassed both the tower-zone and the outer-rim.

“I’m not afraid of any of that,” said Max. “If Elle needs my help. I’ll go wherever I have to.”

Sarah went quiet behind him.

“That’s amazing, Max, really,” she said. “I wish I had a goal like that. A dream to pursue. All I think about is growing up and getting out of our orphanage. Away from Mr. Grimes.”

“Is he still looking at you weirdly?” said Max.

Sarah shuddered behind him. “He never stops.”

Their conversation soon moved onto lighter topics such as homework and random gossip from the students in Sarah’s year. Fifteen minutes later, they arrived back at the orphanage.

Sarah sighed. “Home sweet home.”

They were back in the foyer of the orphanage for less than thirty seconds when a horrible voice emerged.

“Look who’s come home? Useless,” said the voice.

That was Mr. Grime’s nickname for Max. Useless.

The group home manager appeared in the hallway. He was a slimy man with nostrils full of prickly nose hairs.

Mr. Grimes resented Max because his disability meant more paperwork and regulations to follow for the running of the group home.

The man came over and grabbed Max by the arm. He squeezed down right on Max’s bruises. The boy winced in pain.

“I received a phone call from your school today. You were bringing up the tower in class!? Talking about outer-rim citizens entering the tower-zone!?”

Max shrugged. He had asked a question during history class. He hadn’t thought it was a big deal.

“Are you crazy? If you weren’t in high school, the government would arrest you for that kind of talk.”

“I guess I’m lucky that I’m in high school then,” said Max. “Why aren’t we allowed to talk about the tower? It’s right in front of all of us. It’s crazy that we don’t talk about it.”

“Useless, Useless, Useless,” said Mr. Grimes, wiping his sweaty forehead with an already damp handkerchief. “I can’t talk to you any more. There’s work for you in the kitchen. Go.”

Max turned to wave goodbye to Sarah and made his way to the kitchen. When he got there, he found loads of dirty pots and pans to wash.

Mr. Grimes always gave Max work to do. “You have to work for your privilege to live here,” he always said.

There was no arguing with him. Mr. Grimes had power over his whole life. He could send him back to one of the larger orphanages, which were even more horrible. Or make a false claim of assault and have him sent to a juvenile center, which was no worse than a jail for teenagers.

So Max had to do Mr. Grimes’ bidding, unless he wanted to trade his crappy life for an even crappier one.

Max sighed and got to work on the dishes.

Two hours later when he finished all the chores, he could hear stomping sounds in another part of the group home.

“Sarah...” slurred a voice.

Uh oh.

It was Mr. Grimes. He was drunk and stumbling around the group home.

All the residents knew to avoid Mr. Grimes when he got intoxicated like this, and Max probably would have done the same, if it weren’t for the fact that the man was slurring the name of his only friend.

Max made his way to the end of one hall to get a better idea of what Mr. Grimes was up to.

The older sweaty man was leaning against a door, knocking against it.

It was the door to Sarah’s room.

“Sarah...” slurred Mr. Grimes. “I need to speak with you...”

Max did not like what he was seeing.

He accepted the blackmail Mr. Grimes lorded over him and the horrible tasks he made him do. A pile of dirty dishes was not something worth fighting over, but what if the group home manager made a similar threat to Sarah? But instead of dishes, he forced her to do something far worse...

Max had to stop this before it went even further.

“Hey!” he said, rolling into the hallway. “Leave Sarah alone!”

Mr. Grimes’ tilted his head slowly towards Max. His eyes were bloodshot. His whole face was slimy with sweat.

“Are you speaking to me, Useless?” slurred Mr. Grimes.

This was it. Max was distracting him. He needed to lure him away from Sarah’s door.

“That’s right,” said Max.

Mr. Grimes snickered and then did something Max wasn’t expecting.

The man simply ignored him.

He returned to the door, knocking on it.

“Come out, Sarah...”

So the man was just going to ignore him. He’d have to distract him further.

Max made his way so that he was right beside the man. He lifted his arms and grabbed Mr. Grimes’ wrist.

“Leave her alone,” said Max.

“What’s this...” said Mr. Grimes, continuing to slur his words. “Assault? I guess I’ll just have to send you to juvenile hall.”

Max gulped. If protecting Sarah meant going to a juvenile center, so be it.

“You’ll have a record though, Useless,” said Mr. Grimes. “And you know what that means? No way in hell would you ever get documents to enter the tower-zone.”

He laughed, spit flying into Max’s face.

If he couldn’t enter the tower-zone, he’d never be able to find his sister. He’d never be able to fulfill the promise he made to her.

“Now remove your hand from my wrist, Useless,” spat Mr. Grimes.

Max ignored him. He just kept thinking about never seeing his sister again. Failing at his promise.

“Let go of me,” shouted Mr. Grimes. “Can you not hear me? Are you an idiot and a cripple?”

Max wasn’t hearing the man. He saw his sister in his mind. They were much younger, playing in a field.

“As your big brother,” he had said. “I promise to always protect you.”

SMACK!

Mr. Grimes slapped Max across the face.

The pain scorched across his cheek.

“If you send me to a juvenile center,” said Max. “I’ll tell everyone about you. All the evil things you’ve done. You’ll be finished. And guess what—you won’t be able to do anything about it. Make me do the dishes? Clean the showers? You won’t be able to make me do anything because I’ll be far away.”

The man perked up at that.

“Don’t you threaten me, Useless,” said Mr. Grimes. “I’ll take you at your word.”

“Leave me and my friend alone and you got a deal,” said Max.

“Nope,” smiled Mr. Grimes. “You’re a loose end now and do you know what I do to loose ends? I snip them away.”

Mr. Grimes reached out and grabbed Max by the hair and slammed his head against the wall.

Max blacked out.

* * *

Max woke up in darkness.

He lifted up his hand and felt a metal surface above him.

Where am I?

He heard the thrum of a car engine. The crackle of a wheel rolling over a stone.

Was he in the trunk of a car?

The car came to a stop and the engine cut out.

He heard a murmur of voices.

What the heck was going on?

The last thing Max remembered was yelling at Mr. Grimes before the man hit him. Had he blacked out after that? So it seemed logical that the only place he could be was in the back of Mr. Grimes’ car.

But what was he planning on doing with him?

Max pushed himself so his ear was against the metal surface. He could make out the voices outside.

“Remember that favor you owe me,” said Mr. Grimes.

“You couldn’t have picked better timing,” said the other voice. “A monster wave has just started. The kid will get torn apart. No evidence, no problem.”

Mr. Grimes popped open the trunk and grinned maliciously at Max.

“Wake up, Useless,” said Mr. Grimes.

The group manager turned to the other figure. It was a soldier, but the uniform he was wearing wasn’t a normal military outfit.

He must be a tower-zone guard. What was he doing interacting with Mr. Grimes?

The two men picked Max up by either side.

“Let me go,” said Max, squirming between them. “Where are you taking me!?”

They carried him over to a gateway.

Mr. Grimes snickered. “You wanted to enter the tower-zone so badly, well, here you go, Useless.”

With that, they swung him forward into the dangerous world beyond the wall.

Chapter 3

Max watched as a metal door slid shut in front of him.

His whole body ached. For the second time that day he could taste blood in his mouth. He spat it out, then coughed.

Holy smokes.

They’d just thrown him beyond the wall. He was no longer in the outer-rim of Zestiris, but the tower-zone. Since receiving his sister’s mysterious letter a year ago, all he had wanted was to enter the tower-zone.

But never like this.

And what had that guard meant when he said, monster wave? That didn’t sound good.

Max blinked. He had to make a plan and make one fast.

He tilted his head and took in his surroundings.

He was on a paved road. Across the street was a park—lots of green trees, grass, benches, and lampposts.

Okay new plan, thought Max. Get off this road. Head to the park. Find someone to help him and then go get Mr. Grimes arrested.

Max dragged himself forward across the road. His whole body ached as he did so. He gritted his teeth and winced at the pain.

He stretched his arms and chest then dragged his lower body forward.

He gasped in exhaustion when he finally got his body fully on the grass of the park.

He looked around and contemplated screaming for help. No one was in sight though and he needed to conserve his energy.

He was slightly perplexed by the park he was in. It was like any normal park in the outer-rim. He wasn’t expecting something so, normal.

KABOOM!

A massive force of energy rippled across the park and shot Max’s hair back.

What the heck was that?

It sounded like an explosion from deeper in the city. No wonder no one was around in the park. It sounded like there was a city wide emergency going on.

Max had to rethink his plan. He would have to drag himself through this park and get to the nearest tower-zone police station.

He dragged himself forward.

His body slid across the grass, his clothing getting tainted and damp with dirt.

Rustle, rustle.

Max stopped.

What was that?

Were there animals in this park? Could that be someone walking their dog?

Max’s heart suddenly started racing.

“HELP!” he screamed.

He pulled himself forward faster than before, hoping to get the attention of the dog walker.

He dragged himself across the grass. Stretch, pull, stretch, pull. Repeat.

He got closer to the rustling sound and then through the shadows of the trees, he saw glowing red eyes. Angry eyes. Demonic eyes. Eyes that did not belong to a dog or even the most zealous of dog walkers.

Words from before echoed in his mind.

A monster wave just started.

Could that thing in the distance be...a monster?

Okay, Max thought. New plan 2.0: get the heck away from whatever monstrous creature is stalking the park right now ASAP.

He pivoted around on the ground and started dragging himself back the way he came.

Stretch, pull, stretch, pull, stretch pull.

The monster was still moving behind Max. He could even hear the hissing breath of the unknown creature.

Max ran through every type of monster he’d ever read about: trolls, ogres, demons, orcs. The faces of angry mythological monsters helped him drag himself across the ground even faster than he had before.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

The monster was moving faster now.

Based on what he was hearing, Max didn’t think the monster was coming from directly behind him any more. The monster was changing its direction. It was going to sneak attack him.

Or was it toying with him?

How vindictive were monsters?

There was no way he could escape a monster that was hunting him. He looked around. There were a few fallen branches. Maybe he could use those as a weapon?

Who was he kidding?

There was no way he could fight back against a monster.

If he couldn’t escape, he needed to try and hide.

He turned around and that was when he came face to face with the glowing red eyes.

Stepping out from the shadows was an eight-foot tall minotaur with dark brown fur, horns, and massive clawed hands.

The monster stared at Max as it stepped out of the shadows.

Its eyes glowed with bloodlust.

Chapter 4

Max trembled with fear.

He crawled backwards, hoping to get away from the monstrous minotaur looming over him.

The minotaur hissed and made more incomprehensible noises.

Max had no idea what to do next. His body and mind were telling him to get away, but he was dragging himself around like a snail—no way he’d be able to escape a fully-grown minotaur.

But fighting it was an even worse option.

“Please...leave...me...alone,” said Max, as he pulled himself backwards away from the monster.

The minotaur hissed and exhaled through his nose like a bull gearing up to charge.

More explosions echoed from deeper in the tower-zone.

Every blast and ripple of energy from afar was a message to Max. One simple message. No one was coming to help him.

The minotaur flared its nostrils once more.

“Please...” said Max.

The minotaur’s body began to glow with a yellow aura around it.

The monster then cocked its clawed fist back and then shot it forward at Max.

This was it...

There was no way he would survive a powerful hit from a minotaur...

He blinked.

His heart was still beating.

He was alive.

He didn’t even feel any pain.

He then opened his eyes and almost threw up at the horror.

The monster had torn through the flesh of his legs. Broken bones poked out from his bloodied skin.

And yet he wasn’t feeling anything because neurologically he had no response to anything below his waist.

It was like a messed-up form of invincibility, thought Max. Not really though, as he still stood a pretty good chance of dying from blood loss or shock.

The minotaur huffed and paced around him.

Why didn’t it just rip me to shreds as fast as it could? Max thought to himself. The creature wasn’t expecting an opponent to not fight back. It kept expecting me to come back at it with something. It was going to kill me with caution.

Max trembled and dragged himself backwards, leaving a trail of blood.

The world around him was becoming blurry as he moved.

“HELP!” he screamed once more.

If he didn’t get help, he was dead. No doubt about it.

The minotaur stepped forward. It inhaled and exhaled deeply, readying itself in the same way it had attacked last time.

Its body began to glow yellow again and it cocked back its fist.

“Someone! Please! Help!” screamed Max with his last remaining energy.

Max didn’t see himself surviving another blow from the minotaur’s powerful smash attack.

The minotaur threw down its fist towards Max, before suddenly jerking back in pain.

A bright blade of energy appeared by the creature’s shoulder and ripped out a piece of its flesh.

The minotaur wailed in pain.

“What...the...” gasped Max.

That energy blade—where had it come from? It had saved him.

A blurry figure laid a bruising punch into the minotaur’s back and sent it hurling across the park.

Max was at a loss for words. He looked up to see the figure who had just damaged the minotaur so easily.

It was a woman. About twice his age. Early thirties.

She had long black hair and wore a dark green leather jacket over a black t-shirt and jeans. She had a ruby badge pinned to her jacket with the letter B on it.

Max looked up to her surprised.

Was this the power of a citizen of the tower-zone?

* * *

Sakura Sato held up her arms in a fighting stance and took in the situation.

The minotaur groaned and was picking itself up off the ground. Behind her was the kid with the torn up legs.

“Are you some kind of idiot?” she asked, not even turning around to face the boy, keeping her eyes focused on the minotaur. “What are you doing out in the middle of a monster wave? You should know better.”

“I...uhh...”

The boy was too shocked to reply properly.

There was something fishy about all of this, Sakura thought. A minotaur—most likely a copper or silver-ranked monster—had broken through their defensive line and had almost made it to the wall of the tower-zone? Something wasn’t adding up here.

She shook her head. She would piece the reasons behind this debacle later. She needed to focus on the fight.

The minotaur was back on its feet now, glaring at her.

She pounded her fists together, hyping herself up. “Alright, tough guy, your little jaunt through our city is over.”

Based on the fact that she was able to send the monster flying with a single punch, Sakura figured she was higher ranked than this monster or, at the very least, it just had a very low endurance stat. Either way, there was no way the defense climbers would have allowed for any monster higher ranked than silver to make it this far.

RARGH!!

The minotaur charged at her.

The kid behind her screamed.

Oh crap, thought Sakura. The dumb teenager behind me. Now I understand the rules of this fight. This kid is my handicap.

“Get out of the way, kid!” she yelled over her shoulder.

Sakura had to rethink her strategy on the fly. She stretched out her hand and triggered her slice skill.

A bright golden shard of energy stretched out before her.

The minotaur kept charging towards her, roaring with all of its might.

One hit should do it, thought Sakura.

She stretched out her arm and, as if she was manipulating the bright shard of energy in front of her, the shard stretched out further as well.

The shard of energy grew in length at such speed and velocity it had become a deadly projectile like a throwing spear.

The bright shard of energy dug into the minotaur’s chest.

The minotaur screamed in pain.

Sakura waited for the creature to fall to the ground, but it didn’t. Any moment now there should be a big gaping hole of blood and flesh in the minotaur’s stomach.

The glowing energy shard of her slice move dissipated in the air, revealing a large bloodied wound on the minotaur, but no hole through the flesh from one end to the other.

Impossible!

Her slice ability had broken through the monster’s hide and wounded it a little, but nowhere near as much as she was expecting. The ability should have easily torn through the monster’s flesh.

Unless...

A red aura surrounded the minotaur’s body as it glared at Sakura once more.

ROAR!!!!

The monster let out a massive howling roar.

“Get back,” Sakura shouted to the kid.

The kid was severely wounded, thought Sakura. He needed medical attention pronto. She needed to finish the battle as quickly as possible.

There was one major problem though: this monster was higher ranked than silver. Gold, possibly? Maybe even ruby rank? If the latter, that meant this creature and Sakura were evenly ranked. It might even be more powerful than her. She had screwed up big time by underestimating this creature.

The howl created a ripple of swirling energy, picking up dirt and pebbles. Sakura held up her arms to keep the dirt from getting in her eyes.

The minotaur kept screaming. The swirl of energy got more and more intense, until the ground was trembling. Trees were swaying.

CRACK!

A group of trees fell and piled onto Sakura, pinning her down to the ground.

I need to get out of this bind, thought Sakura.

She readied her slice move to break through the tree trunks piling on top of her.

But before she could, the minotaur rushed her and with its clawed hands shoved the fallen tree trunks right against her body.

Her future was looking bleak.

Death by crushed trees or death by suffocation. As her airflow started to cut off, she joked cynically to herself: take your pick, Sakura. Take your pick.

Chapter 5

Max caught his breath behind a nearby tree. He focused on inhaling and exhaling.

Remain calm, he thought as his mind drifted and his visions swayed from the blood loss. The fight will be over soon and I’ll be given medical attention then.

He peeked his head out to check on the battle between the impressive climber lady and the deadly minotaur.

“Oh crap,” he gasped.

The minotaur had bested the climber lady. She was pinned to the ground underneath a pile of tree trunks.

Any normal human would have been crushed and killed by that many trunks falling on them. The fact that she was even still alive was impressive.

The climber lady squirmed and cried out, but her gasps were feeble and weak due to the minotaur pushing the trunks against her lungs.

The minotaur snarled as it held the trunks over the woman, deadly focused on ending her life.

“...Hrlg...”

The woman was in bad shape. Max had to do something to help her.

But what?

What could he do?

“HEY OVER HERE!!”

He yelled at the minotaur, hoping to get its attention. But it was so focused on killing the woman, it ignored him.

Crap.

What else could he do, but distract the creature?

He was weak, he realized.

Voices echoed in his head. Painful quotations he didn’t want to hear.

Psycho-Cripple.

Weakling.

Useless.

Max wiped tears from his eyes.

He started dragging himself across the mud once more.

Stretch, pull, stretch, pull.

The climber lady squirmed and groaned beneath the fallen tree trunks.

The voices in Max’s head got louder. Mr. Grimes. Seth. Everyone who didn’t believe in him. Who thought he was too weak to do anything, too pitiful to even acknowledge his existence.

He kept dragging himself across the ground and his bloody immobile legs behind him.

He was halfway across the ground towards the minotaur.

The woman kept squirming. She didn’t have much longer to live.

Psycho-cripple.

Weakling.

Useless.

The words became a mantra in his head, a marching drum, propelling Max forward.

He wouldn’t let those who didn’t care for him bring him down anymore. If he died here, fine. He didn’t care anymore. But he wasn’t going to sit there and bleed to death while someone who actually tried to help him died for her actions.

A powerful rage swirled in his body, energizing him. His heart beat rapidly as he dragged himself forward.

The adrenaline pulsed through his veins. He suddenly felt unshackled. His mind clear. His determination fierce.

He got to the foot of the minotaur.

The woman was barely making any noise now.

It was now or never.

If yelling at this monster wouldn’t distract it from its murderous intent, maybe something physical might do the trick.

Max lifted up his right arm. He clenched his fingers into a fist.

One punch. That was all he had. Hopefully, it would be enough to distract the monster for even a moment. Enough time for the woman to catch her breath. Maybe even free herself.

He held his fist up and suddenly a yellow glow surrounded his arm and hand similar to when the minotaur had attacked him.

What’s this?

He didn’t dwell on it. There was no time.

He slammed his glowing fist into the minotaur’s leg.

“ARGGGHHH!!”

The minotaur shot across the park. The creature flew with such force in the air, it smashed through trees, breaking down the trunks.

With the lower half of his body limp and still bleeding out on the ground, Max stared at his fist. The yellow energy still burning off it.

The minotaur was stunned across the park.

I...

Max couldn’t believe it.

I...did...that?

(Continue Tower Climber by clicking the image or link below to see more!)

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