"Wake up, you bastard! You planning to hibernate till next winter?" growled Art, clearly irritated by Elias's deep sleep.
Woken with all the grace of a kick to the stomach, Elias groaned and muttered, "You're lucky I'm a merciful soul. Under different circumstances, I'd turn you into a nice pork stew and serve you to the Wanderer —with sadistic flair."
Art, already used to his friend's morbid remarks, just sighed in relief to see him awake.
"I'm not trying to nag... but you were like a rock. Not even an earthquake could've woken you."
Elias frowned, curious. "How long did I sleep?"
"Twelve hours. Straight," Art replied, as if he'd counted every second.
The surprise was immediate. Elias never slept that long. Years of night watch, short naps, and constant vigilance had molded his habits. But instead of blaming fatigue, his mind jumped to a darker explanation: the side effects of the necro-ritual he'd performed recently. Something was changing inside him.
In fact, the mana-soaked environment was altering him in real time. Combined with the powers granted by the panel, it was clear his body was adapting to this new world. The ritual from the day before had pushed his capabilities. Still lying down, Elias murmured, "How far can I go in this place?"
Art, ever observant, replied, "Sky's the limit. Maybe you'll even match that Daemon guy."
Elias smirked and stood up, changing the subject. "Let's get moving. The day's going to be shorter today… for some uncontrollable reasons."
Without even looking, he could practically see Art's eyes roll with boredom. Smiling, Elias said, "Ah, life is beautiful."
He gathered his gear into a neat pile and stored it in his inventory.
"We came from the east. Let's keep heading west," Art said, adjusting his backpack.
Elias nodded, his mood calm. They moved with steady steps, alert to their surroundings.
But Elias began to feel uneasy. The day before, they'd been surrounded by the Wanderer. Now, there was only silence. A heavy, clinging silence that seemed to stick to the skin.
"Stay sharp. We might be walking straight into a trap," Elias said aloud.
But nothing happened. And slowly, they both began to relax. Their vigilance slipped without them realizing it.
Their footsteps echoed more in the clearing, and the trees—now taller and denser—made the place feel suffocating. Elias could swear he was hearing his own heartbeat.
Suddenly, the hairs on his arms stood on end. "Art…?" he called, nervous.
He spun around, but saw no one. "What the hell...?"
Spear in hand, Elias felt anxiety build. The silence was absolute. If he let paranoia take over, he'd fall straight into despair's clutches.
Humans are social creatures. They need noise, presence, something to distract them. Alone in that suffocating forest, Elias began talking to himself.
As if challenging the environment, he decided to break the silence with a joke.
He looked at the trees, as if chatting with them: "Two jackasses were sitting in a bar, making the kind of jokes that confuse misogyny with masculinity. Laughing loud, like they were trying to convince themselves they were funny."
He paused, channeling his usual dark humor.
"A third guy walks in, hears one of the jokes, hesitates... and decides to sit with them."
"He doesn't laugh, but he doesn't speak up either. Just sits there, trying to look like part of the group."
"The waiter passes by, glances over and says with disdain, 'Always nice to see a man so secure in his masculinity that he needs validation from two troglodytes.'"
Elias grinned. Even alone, he laughed at his own joke. The tension lifted slightly. His morbid humor was, after all, a pressure valve.
Like flipping a survival switch, his mind clicked back into gear. In that cynical clarity, he recalled a story he'd once read.
During World War II, an Allied squad was freezing in the European woods.
Desperate from the biting cold and out of options, they did something almost innocent: lit a fire.
They knew the risk—German forces could spot them—but they preferred that to dying slowly from the cold.
Later, during interrogation, they learned that German scouts had seen them.
But instead of attacking, the enemy soldiers laughed and moved on. Who, in their right mind, would light a fire in the middle of a clearing? It had to be a trap.
Moral of the story? Sometimes, naivety is mistaken for genius. Or, in wartime, absurdity becomes strategy.
Inspired by the memory, Elias smiled with chaotic glint in his eyes. He decided to do exactly that: create something so stupid it became unpredictable.
He built a circle of firewood, lit a torch, and calmly walked among the trees, setting dry leaves and branches ablaze.
Smoke rose slowly, blending with the thick, heavy air. Elias almost felt giddy.
He liked being erratic. Starting fires, playing with knives, stirring chaos—old childhood habits.
There was something comforting in that controlled destruction. Smiling with nostalgia, he nearly forgot the danger.
Until he felt a presence.
He turned slowly. A few meters away, a skeletal figure was watching him in silence.
Where its eyes should be, blue flames flickered intensely. Elias felt the weight of its stare.
Smiling, he broke the ice: "Hey there, bony. Upset about the state of your house?"
The answer was a roar. "You will regret what you did to my father's fief, you bastard!"
"Aw, come on. Anger's bad for your bones," Elias quipped without missing a beat.
The skeletal figure ignored the mockery and began reciting an incantation. The once-twisted trees returned to their natural state. The landscape changed in seconds.
Then Elias saw it: further ahead, Art's body lay sprawled on the ground, completely unconscious.
"You bastard! What did you do to him?!" Elias shouted, stepping forward, eyes wide with rage.
But the skeleton was unmoved. Its voice was like the creaking of ancient doors:
"If you hadn't set the forest on fire, I would've given you a quick death. But for defiling the Third Ring of Abbot Vaelish's fief, I condemn you to eternal suffering."
The blue flames in its sockets flickered with scorn.
"You could've been dreaming sweetly, like him. But no, you had to rebel. Had to be insolent."
Elias didn't wait for the sermon to continue.
"Wake up, you bastard! Don't you want to go home?!" he screamed, trying to reach Art with his voice, to drag him back to consciousness by sheer force of will. His tone was desperation tinged with fury.
He knew it was probably useless, but he had to try everything before turning to violence. His sharp eyes scanned the area. The silence, broken only by the crackle of still-burning brush, was thick as a wall.
He knew. A fight was inevitable.
And when it finally came—when the skeletal figure stepped back and the mist parted, revealing a horde of Wanderer slowly marching behind him—Elias found himself smiling.
A thin, crooked, almost imperceptible smile.
"Am I enjoying this adrenaline?" he muttered, tightening his grip on the spear.
Even without skin to show expression, Elias could swear the skeleton was smirking. It turned away confidently, as if victory was assured, and vanished into the trees.
Elias didn't waste a second.
He ran to Art's side, knelt, and slapped his face—once, twice—trying to shake him awake.
"Wake up, idiot!"
Nothing.
With no other option, Elias summoned the glowing panel before him. He frantically searched through the items granted by the Elder. Was there anything useful?
"Come on, come on… something, anything…"
Then he found something strange: Aphrodisiac Ants.
"What the hell…?" he muttered, frowning.
Not the time for questions. He grabbed one without a second thought, shoved it into Art's mouth, and forced him to swallow.
"You'll thank me later… or kill me. One of the two."
He kept digging through the inventory and, to his mix of surprise and frustration, found a small vial labeled: Antidote for Mental Illusions.
Elias snorted, torn between laughter and despair.
"Seriously? This was here the whole time?!" he yelled, popping the cap off with his teeth.
Without ceremony, he poured it down Art's throat. It stank, but Art swallowed—even unconscious.
"Wake up, you jackass!" Elias shouted, giving him one last slap with renewed force.
Art's eyes suddenly flew open, glowing bright. He gasped like a drowning man surfacing and screamed:
"NO! Where are the beauty models?!"
Elias blinked in silence, staring at him.
"…What?"
"The Panicats… there were three… and one of them was half-dragon, half-woman…" Art babbled, still dazed.
"Forget the Panicats! Look ahead, you moron!" Elias roared, dragging him upright and pointing toward the approaching horde of Wanderer, now just meters away.
Art blinked several times, finally snapping back to reality.
"Oh… great. Back to hell."
"Welcome to your watch shift."
Without wasting time, Elias stood and helped Art to his feet. They were surrounded—the clearing, now scorched by fire, made the perfect stage for the massacre approaching.
"Got a plan?" Art asked, wobbling but already drawing his daggers.
"Yeah," Elias replied, still smiling. "We kill as many as we can… and then run like the demons we should've been avoiding."
"Sounds like a terrible plan."
"Then it's perfect for us."
The tension thickened with every step of the horde. The Wanderer—twisted by necromancy—had empty eyes and curved claws. Some still wore tatters of human clothing, remnants of past lives. Others came naked, marked only by death.
Elias took position, spear at the ready. Art stood beside him, taking deep breaths, his humor slowly returning.
"How many do you think there are?" Art asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Enough to test our patience."
"But not our stubbornness, right?"
"Never."
Then the first Wanderer lunged.
Elias reacted with lethal precision, driving the spear through its skull and twisting it to bring the creature down. Art slipped between two enemies with swift, surgical strikes.
Chaos had arrived.
But for some reason, Elias didn't feel fear. On the contrary—it was as if his very blood danced in harmony with the fight.
And deep down, a voice whispered:
"More. I want more."