Nameless pressed the blade once more into soil, drawing a shallow trench. The acolyte's body, emptied of use, slid into it with no resistance. No coin, no relic, not even a staff—only empty hands and the stench of wasted doctrine. He covered it quick, dirt smothering ash, until the mound rose no higher than a root.
"Ledger closed. No profit but XP."
He leaned back, watching the soil settle. In truth, there was no haste. The other acolyte would still be pacing toward the spawn, slow, rehearsed. The woods bent with patience; so could he.
Nameless dragged the body a few paces off the road, boots sinking in the loose soil. He drove the sword down, carving a shallow trench, then heaved the corpse in. The acolyte slumped without protest, limbs folding like broken sticks.
He kicked dirt over him until the body vanished. No cairn, no marker—just another patch of earth. He pressed it flat with the heel of his boot.
Still, the act had weight. Every body in the ground bent the ledger a little. "If one day I need to heal without another's hand, alignment will matter. High enough, the temples—if any still stand in this ruin—will open their rites. Strange path for me, but better than bleeding out."
He fastened the mask back into inventory, cloak left bare. Then he moved, quick but noiseless, threading through roots until the second acolyte came into view—halfway down the road, burden light, pace careless.
[Unequipped: Mathis Mask]
Nameless stepped from shadow, voice flat, unhurried:
"The left path was empty. No recruits. I came to aid you."
The acolyte glanced back, lip curling in a smirk too shallow to last.
"Useless, as always. Fine—then keep up."
He turned, dismissive, walking with the gait of one who had never expected ambush from his own. Nameless slid beside him, stride leveled.
He let the question fall like dust:
"The convocation. Do you know why it was called?"
The acolyte snorted, shoulders tight, voice hot with irritation:
"Because that bastard Manis can't stop shoving himself at the center of every circle. Always clawing for the eye of things. Do you know why he joined the Penumbra in the first place? Because he couldn't stand being coadjutor to a priest. Aldric's acolyte—running here so he wouldn't have to play second. Pathetic."
Bitterness broke through, thin and ragged. The man spat to the side, then barked a laugh dry as gravel.
"But no—it isn't about him this time. For once, the world doesn't spin on his mask. It's the novices. They're pouring in like rot, more than ever. Strangers. Foreign tongues, foreign faces. You've seen them yourself these last days. They don't belong here, yet they infest. That's why the convocation. To count them, to shape them, to know how to use them."
Nameless let the words ledger themselves, silent, eyes forward.
He let the words sink, not because he trusted them, but because the ledger required every scrap. Manis—a runaway acolyte of Aldric. Mathis—rebel against Roland's chain. One turned from altar, the other from throne.
"A revolt temporal, a revolt spiritual. As if the world could only birth mutineers."
He let the thought turn in silence, marrow-deep. He began to meditate on the possibilities of the Interregnum, the period in which one must find reasons to live after the end. "The end has already come. What remains is the interval after, where survival is a theology of its own."
His gaze drifted over the road, pale with first light. He smirked faint, voice caught inward:
"Maybe I salted the ground too heavy. Every spawn reeks of bastards. Not one face clean. Though… it isn't as if the world outside was any kinder."
The irony hung in him like smoke. He paced on, beside the acolyte who still muttered to himself, both of them walking as if this ruin were the only script left to read.
The acolyte slowed, words fading into silence. His brow furrowed as if some thought had finally broken through. His gaze flicked sideways, searching Nameless's cloak, his stride faltering.
"I've never seen your face before…"
Nameless caught the turn, the suspicion, the narrowing of eyes. He lifted one hand sharply, pointing past the trees. His voice cracked with sudden urgency:
"Look there!"
The reflex was instant. The acolyte snapped his head upward, eyes wide, searching sky.
Nameless moved with the other hand. Fingers closed, "Sacred Flame" veined across his palm, then struck. He pressed hard against the acolyte's face, fire searing through sockets. The scream split the morning.
(JP − 53 → 41)
[Critical Hit - 150 Damage]
[Status: Blind]
The acolyte collapsed, clawing at his own eyes, stumbling backward until soil caught him. He writhed, hands smeared black with blood and fire.
Nameless drew the sword free, flame already crawling along its edge. With the same burning hand, he heated it further, inebriating steel with judgment.
He stepped over the fallen body, one boot pinning the acolyte's hands to the ground. No doubt. No counterstrike. Only panic and blindness.
The blade fell vertical, carving down through chest, ribs cracking under its path. The acolyte jerked once, tried to twist, but Nameless pressed harder, holding him in place with weight of foot.
Steel rose and fell again. Sacred Flame hissed through flesh, each stroke cutting deeper until the body's resistance slackened, movements stuttering into silence.
The forest watched without voice. Only the hiss of fire on bone remained.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (L8)]
[XP +800]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +5]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 22/10,000]
Nameless pulled the sword free, wiping ash from its edge, then stepped back, letting the body cool into stillness.
He searched the corpse, finding nothing but blood stiffened on cloth and ash clinging to skin. He dragged the body aside, drove the blade down, and cut another trench shallow. The acolyte slid in soundless, limbs folding with no protest. Dirt followed, quick and plain, until the mound rose no higher than a root. He pressed it flat beneath his heel.
"Another little shift in alignment," he muttered, low enough for the soil alone to hear.
He straightened, drew the screen.
Emperor, Level 11.
After distributing the points in the same places as usual:
INT 37 · WIS 32 · STR 22 · PER 16 · DEX 4 · CON 8 · STA 6 · WIL 9 · CHA 1 · PRV 4
Status:
HP: 245
IP: 281
Breath: 89
Justice Points: 100
Skill Points: 4 (held)
Armor Total: 323
He tilted the mask in his hand, thought cutting clean. "I'll press his vanity. One plan, not two."
The slope still smoked faint where dawn broke across its edge. Nameless crossed back fast, cloak wrapped close, boots soundless in the undergrowth. He climbed the rise until the cave's mouth opened again below, black scar against stone.
This time he fastened the mask back into place, bone pale, purple shadow still hidden in the folds of the cloak. Outwardly, Penumbra entire.
He crouched low on the ridge, breath thin, watching the hollow with Perfect Sight. "Manis the careerist. Listener already, hungry for ascent. I'll feed that hunger until it devours itself—and in the bite, I'll take what I need."
Hours passed like stone eroding, the hollow moving in small rhythms of cough and mutter. Nameless had not shifted from his perch. He knew Manis would never touch the world outside—Penumbra vanity always delegated, never dirtied. What was beneath them was always for others to bear.
By late afternoon the pattern broke. The watcher and the torch-bearer left together, searching for novices who would never return. They drifted into the trees, steps careless, armor loose, as though evening could not betray them.
Nameless stayed above, face hidden by branches. The moment bent. His hand rose.
"Doubt."
(IP − 281 → 257)
The strike landed clean.
[Critical Hit — 190 Damage]
[Status Inflicted: Confused]
The watcher screamed, hands clutching his skull, blood gouting from the hole that opened behind his ear. He collapsed, rolling into roots, voice breaking into noise.
The torch-bearer staggered with him, aura already flickering low. Two caught in one breath. Perfect.
Nameless dropped from the brush, cloak purple, voice cracking in urgent command:
"Run! Run! We've angered a great sage—move, before he kills us all!"
The torch-bearer, wide-eyed and witless, believed at once. He rushed to the watcher, lifting him under the arm, trying to drag him to his feet. Their panic bent them together.
Nameless stepped closer, staff in hand. Sacred Flame coiled along the wood, burning silent until it bled white-gold.
(JP − 100 → 88)
Then he drove it point-blank into the watcher's side, where flesh pressed against the torch-bearer hand's.
"So this is your function," he thought, iron biting his voice. "A torch-bearer—to burn."
[Critical Hit — 200 Damage]
[Fatal Damage — 270 Damage]
The watcher died at once, skull caving inward, body slack as the fire consumed his ribs. The torch-bearer shrieked as his own hands caught flame, fire racing up his arms. He stumbled back, screaming, flailing, blind with pain.
Nameless drew the sword, steel singing as it drank the fire. The torch-bearer raised his burning arms to shield himself. Nameless struck through them, one stroke clean, cutting limbs from shoulder to elbow, driving the same arc down into his chest.
[Breath: 54/89]
[Fatal Damage — 70 Damage]
The body folded in half, the scream breaking short. He dropped in ash, limbs blackened, mouth wide with nothing left to say.
The forest held still. Two bodies smoldered, one limp in silence, the other still twitching as the flames licked what was left of him.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (Lv.10)]
[XP +1000]
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (Lv.7)]
[XP +650]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency +8]
[Sacred Attack Proficiency 30/10,000]
Nameless pulled the sword free, wiping fire off its edge, the irony still lingering: "Even lies serve function, when lit from the right angle."
He did not waste the hour digging. He dragged both corpses into the fire that still smoldered, Sacred Flame gnawing slow, deliberate. Flesh hissed, limbs cracked, smoke curled into the canopy like incense. Alignment bent upward all the same. No mound, no marker—only dissolution.
"Time is the only coin now. Before dusk turns, he must not sink into one of his extremes. I must give him the opposite—hope. Funereal, painful, but hope all the same. That is what will break him open."
He turned, cloak trailing ash, and cut across the slope. No more circling, no more brush. He walked straight to the mouth of the cave, that throat of twisted words and borrowed vanity, as if it were his to close.
The mask was already on his face. He made no attempt to veil his tread. He let the sound of boots announce him, slow, steady, each step carried like a rite.
At the threshold he stopped. He did not bow. He did not speak. He only stood, bone mask tilted down, watching.
Manis waited within, framed by shadow, half-white and half-black gleam on his visage. His gaze fastened on Nameless with suspicion sharpened to a needle-point—then eased. A flicker passed across his features, brief but clear: an old concern, recently born, now vanishing.
The squadron had not perished entire.
There was still one left.
Nameless raised his left hand, and in it swung the head of Balin. The skin still clung damp, eyes glazed, mouth slack with the memory of one last scream.
His voice carried, sonorous, filling the hollow as though it were stone-script:
"I took my time, but I came. This one thought he could bar my climb. He went to the well too thirsty."
The head rocked between his fingers, and Manis stared, the half-white, half-black mask tilting. For a moment, even his poise cracked—something like awe, something like dread flickering.
Nameless pressed on, tone grave, iron weight behind each word:
"The execution was by the book—just as the higher orders prescribe. You know the doctrine: among disciples, the one who surpasses his master alone prevails."
He pointed directly at the mask with one finger, voice steady and cruel:
"If you do not recall me, then look here—this is Mathis's face."
The irony cut sharper than steel: not the flesh beneath, but the mask itself—Mathis's skull worn as visage, truth paraded as falsehood, remembrance turned into mockery.
For a breath, silence reigned. Then Manis broke it—laughter bursting out, sharp, erratic. It echoed down the throat of the cave, triumphant, fevered. He clapped one hand against the wall, mask gleaming as he bent forward, his voice half-choked in delight.
"Ahead of schedule! You—so fast, so cunning! The disciple is no longer in shadow. You cut him down and came to me. Oh, yes—this is proof enough! The climb burns in you!"
He spread his arms as if embracing invisible applause, the laughter swelling again.
Nameless did not smile. His voice dropped heavy, words cutting like stone:
"I came for the next secret."
He lowered Balin's head back into the dark of his inventory. The hollow flickered with silence again, all but Manis's ragged breath.
The second secret, the second skill, Nameless thought. "Concealment."
The most capital gift possible for his present state. Nothing could matter more than the future, and nothing was more urgent to Nameless than the freedom to reach it.
Concealment, as the name already whispered, was wholly passive. It granted nothing loud, no vision like Perfect Sight, no fire or blade. Its weight lay elsewhere: the freedom not to exist before eyes too avid, the privilege of absence.
Nameless spoke the thought aloud, voice low, almost confessional:
"I need his mist, to vanish from the visible world into the kingdom of the unseen."
He smirked thin, words biting the air like iron filings:
"I do not want to be troubled by the future."
He knew what was coming. Sooner or later, players would grow accustomed to crafting their own inspections—skills to probe levels, to weigh aura, to unmask power. Prudence had always been one of the oldest cores. In a world like that, such vigilance would be the only law: to know who walked beside you, to know whose blade cut behind.
Nameless meant to arrive first. Long before the scoreboard, both public and private, he would be veiled. Hidden by the Penumbra's special gift: Concealment, the masking of aura and level, a veil thick enough to smother all but the highest sight.
He stepped forward, the trance of possibilities fading as the cavern's weight reclaimed him. Manis lifted his hands, drawing shapes in the air, each line curving with studied grace. It was theatre—ornament layered over emptiness. Nameless watched, thought flat: "The Penumbra holds no exact formula. So long as nothing is taken, anything may be added. Showmanship is doctrine enough."
The hands moved again, slower now, pivoting between the mask's halves—first brushing the pallor of white, then grazing the black, as if choosing, as if testing which shade would claim primacy. The gesture circled back and forth, not resolution but pendulum.
"An actor, through and through," Nameless thought. "Every movement a pose. An irony staged, a providence crooked."
The voice came at last, solemn, doubled by the hollow:
"Concealment," he intoned. "The skin of all things, the veil stretched tight between light and shadow. To see is always to consume; to be unseen is to endure. What hides is never counted, never parted—only feared. Cloaked not in one, not in the other, but in the silence between, you will walk as neither. For power hates the luminous, yet loves to dwell in darkness—rooting there, multiplying unseen, feeding on the blind."
The words carried weight like stone lowered into water, spreading rings outward in the gloom.
"And this showman knows nothing of darkness—he shines, all luminescent pomp, never noticing the glow betrays him," Nameless thought.
Nameless fixed him with Perfect Sight, gaze sharpened into ledger lines. This one is so lost in my theatre, he never even thought to measure me. He parades his craft, but I will not commit his mistake.
He let the Sight linger. Manis's aura curled outward, then inward, folds of vapor gathering close as if spun into a second skin. A mist that clothed him not on the surface, but in the marrow of himself—hidden at the heart, withdrawn to the deepest recess. Nameless named it silently: a shell within, a ghost's garment stitched to bone.
When the trance broke, he felt colder, as though even the residue of light had been sheared away. Nameless smirked faint, iron in thought: Still visible to my eye. Even the frailest veil is veil enough. A performance, but artful. I am almost charmed by the professor.
The screen cut in, silent as fate:
[Manis offers to teach you: Concealment.]
[Cost: 4 Skill Points. Accept?]
Nameless did not hesitate. He bent inward, into the place where choices live. The ridge, the fire, the hollow—all slipped loose, the world hanging on absent hooks.
He dropped, not slow, not dream-heavy, but in a dark clarity: a suspension that stripped the weight of flesh. Breath shortened, then shortened again, until the act of inhaling felt foreign, unnecessary. He pared himself down.
Aura was not armor but limb—fragile, delicate, yet his own. He bent to it, folded it inward, layer on layer, until what once radiated became whisper. The mist pressed against him, then over him, then into him. Darkness surrounded, swallowed, hushed, almost devouring. Voices seemed to hover at its edge, murmurs without tongue.
He sank deeper, until the air thinned into something heavy, like water above a trench. Then he pulled one breath, single and complete, as if plunging to the seabed of a black ocean.
When the breath released, the hollow returned. Soil beneath. Stone above. Manis watching, still poised in theatre. Nameless stood the same, yet not the same—his aura closed, unseen.
[Skill Learned: Concealment (Level I)]
[Skill Points: 4 → 0]
Manis had not stood idle while Nameless slipped into trance. His eyes burned now with the unmistakable gleam of Perfect Sight, irises rimmed like coals that refused to die. Nameless marked the change at once: his own aura, laced with new Concealment, now mirrored Manis's almost exactly. A disciple wearing the same light as his master—that alone was insult enough.
"A mountain does not crave shadows when it can cast them at will," Nameless thought. "But here he is, trembling at the sight of a reflection."
He let his hand drift to sword-hilt, the other closing around the staff, then spoke with deliberate cruelty, voice thin with mockery:
"If you flinched, tell me—was it at the white or the black? Or is the mirror itself enough to wound you?"
The irony cut deep: a man who preached halves and balance, undone by envy at his own likeness.
Nameless knew what had to be done. "He must be taught what it means to wield both—sword and staff, flame and shadow. The fool has yet to learn it."
Before distance could vanish, the staff snapped outward.
"Doubt."
(IP − 281 → 233)
The strike raked across Manis's left leg, a rasping touch more than a blow, yet enough to tear balance from him.
[Critical Damage — 70 Damage]
[Status: Crippled]
Nameless measured instantly. "Resistance high—he bleeds, but less than he should. Still, the ledger turns."
The apostate lurched, mask jerking as he steadied himself. Theatrical to the last, he spread his arms wide even in pain, cloak dragging through ash.
"Darkness!"
The word fell like iron, and at once the cavern drowned in black. Not shadow, but suffocation—every stone, every line of sight devoured. The air itself seemed to choke.
Nameless did not panic. He had expected this; the gap was already accounted for. In silence he drew the blade with his left, flame veining its length. He pressed a torching palm to the log he had planted days before—bark hissed, resin spat, Sacred Flame rose clean. With one sweep he rolled it into the hollow's far side.
(JP − 88 → 76)
The blaze erupted opposite him, scattering the black just enough. Manis's fury cracked the silence.
"So it was you!" he roared, mask gleaming white-black, voice breaking into rage. "Verminous fraud, carrion-cleric! You lit the holy fire against us—you desecrated my rite!"
His tone burned with the venom of one once priest, now actor, for whom every stage demanded applause—and for whom exposure was a mortal insult.
Nameless used the distraction as ledger demands—fire rolled to one side, fury drawn after it. He advanced the other way, moving behind its glow, already certain that Manis, drunk on his own rage, would hunt the illusion of prey.
The Listener lunged for the log, mask glaring, one hand clutching the ember as though to strangle fire itself. "Doubt!" he spat, and the wood shattered in his grip, fragments bursting, sparks scattering. In his blind fury he had destroyed nothing but tinder.
Nameless was already there.
[Breath: 48/89]
He moved behind him, silent, his path already cut. Manis knelt amid the ashes of his own gesture, panting, one knee bent, cloak smoldering at the hem.
The blade arced low, then rose with clean intent. A feint gave way to truth—steel cutting through the line of his neck, biting deep.
Nameless pressed both hands to the hilt, voice falling with the stroke:
[Breath: 28/89]
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 76 → 64)
The steel glowed, heat veining bright. He drove deeper.
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 64 → 52)
The cavern shuddered as light multiplied, cutting through the black.
"Sacred Flame."
(JP − 52 → 40)
The third invocation seared the dark away. The sword blazed white-gold, not weapon but brand, a fire that judged as it burned.
Manis's mask tilted upward, eyes wide, half-white half-black fissuring under heat. His scream broke short, choked by fire as the blade drove inward, flames erupting from his chest. Darkness shrank back from the cavern walls, devoured by light.
His body twisted once, then began to dissolve—flesh collapsing inward, bones collapsing to ash, until only fragments fell, scattering like burnt parchment.
One side had prevailed.
[XP Gained: Kill — Human (Lv.15 Listener)]
[XP +9400]
Nameless pulled the sword free, now incandescent, its glow still humming in his grip. He stood above the ruin, watching the last embers of Manis die.
Manis was gone.
The body writhed still, turning from side to side, flames gnawing at what remained. Nameless stepped close, removing the mask from his own face as he bent. Manis's head lolled, nearly severed, neck charred, the last twitching breath rattling through him. At his throat glimmered the brooch—black and white, cut for him alone, the mark of a Listener.
"Out of the binary, into the deeper circle," Nameless thought, cold clarity sharpening the words, "Going straight ahead, directly upward. Linear."
He reached down, tearing the mask from Manis's face. Beneath, the features twisted in irony, lips curled bitterly even in death, as though mocking his own undoing. Nameless did not linger. His eyes swept the corpse before fire claimed it, searching for what would not burn.
[Bifurcate Visage - Uncommon - Lv. 8 - Stored]
Then he saw it—the left hand clenched around a glint. Flame licked it, light catching in quick, bright sparks. An instant later, Nameless had it between his fingers, swift as a shadow cutting through wind. A ring, gleaming despite the fire.
He turned it in his palm, and for a breath even his composure cracked.
"So this explains your climb… I thought to find gold, but found diamond."
[Apprentice's Ring — Rare — Lv.10 - Stored]
+1 Skill Point per Level Up
He almost smiled. Almost. Breath quickened, eyes brightened faintly—the closest he had come to something like euphoria.
"Maturation has begun."
Then he pressed his boot to the corpse, shoving it deeper into the blaze. Flames licked across what had not yet burned, left and right joining, halves fused in fire. Black and white consumed together, until nothing remained but ash—and confusion drifting like smoke.