The clearing was a furnace of sound and blood, but when the warlock's corpse hit the ground, the battle cracked apart.
The goblins shrieked as if their throats had been slit all at once. Their eyes, once lit with that pale, unnatural light, flickered dull. Weapons clattered from clawed hands, formations broke. Some scattered into the treeline, fleeing with ragged howls. Others fell to their knees, shuddering as though their strings had been cut.
Bren was the first to sense it. He heaved himself upright, blood matting his beard, and raised his sword. "Drive them!" he bellowed, the command cutting across the chaos like a blade.
The villagers surged. Spears stabbed into retreating backs, arrows chased the ones who tried to run. It wasn't discipline that carried them forward, but desperation released, a fury born from fear. The rout turned merciless.
Arin staggered forward with them, the weight of his shield dragging at his arm, his spear slick with blood. Each step felt half his own and half borrowed from the strength still burning inside him, the strength that had flared when the system's words etched themselves across his vision. His body moved, but his mind lagged behind, like he was caught in the shadow of what he had just done.
A goblin darted from the side, cleaver raised. Arin turned too slow—but the blow glanced off his shield, his spear lunging almost on instinct. The point found the creature's gut. It folded with a wheeze, and he shoved it aside. Another foe down, another heartbeat bought.
But the fight was no longer battle. It was slaughter.
The goblins had no leader now, no warlock binding them into something greater than themselves. Without that will, they were only scavengers again—mangy, stunted things that clawed and wailed until steel put them down.
Arin forced his breath steady and pushed through the crush, the clearing filling with bodies. The villagers' ragged cries rang louder than steel, not triumphant but raw, edged with grief and vengeance both.
And then, as suddenly as it began, the killing ebbed. The last goblins fled screaming into the dark of the trees, leaving only their dead behind. The hollow stank of smoke, iron, and fear.
Arin lowered his shield, his arm trembling too hard to hold it steady any longer. His chest heaved, every breath scraping his ribs. The spear felt heavy in his grip, as if it had doubled its weight since the first thrust. He planted it in the dirt, leaning against it, and tried to understand what had just happened.
The warlock was dead. The warband broken. Emberstead had survived the night.
But the ground beneath his boots was littered with corpses, and the silence that followed was worse than the fight itself.
The silence did not last.
A woman's sob broke it first, sharp and raw, carrying across the clearing. Then another voice, hoarse, calling a name that did not answer. The villagers scattered among the dead, shields and spears slipping from weary hands as they fell to their knees beside still bodies.
Elira stood at the edge of the hollow, her sword dangling loosely in her grip, face pale beneath her grime. She did not weep, but her jaw clenched hard enough that her teeth might crack. She was already counting the bodies, already measuring the price of survival.
Bren wiped his blade clean on a fallen goblin's ragged tunic. His movements were stiff, deliberate, as though each cut of cloth carried weight. When he looked up, his eyes met Arin's for the briefest instant. There was no triumph there, only a grim steadiness, the look of a man who had seen too many victories that cost too much.
Arin drifted among the survivors, spear dragging in the dirt. His body still trembled with the aftershock of the fight, but it was not the blood on his hands that unnerved him—it was the absence he felt now that the warlock was gone. The battlefield was quieter without that thrumming presence, that unnatural force binding the goblins. Yet in that absence, he felt smaller, as though the surge of strength the world had granted him had only made the silence deeper.
He passed a cluster of villagers kneeling over a fallen watchman. The man's cuirass was split, his chest unmoving. Someone pressed cloth to the wound though there was no breath left to save. Their tears fell hot on the dead man's face.
Arin stopped, words caught in his throat. He did not know the watchman's name, only that they had fought side by side an hour ago, shield to shield. He remembered the weight of that man's shoulder pressing against his when the line threatened to break. Now that weight was gone, and the gap it left felt too large to speak of.
Elira's voice cut through, steady despite the strain. "Gather the wounded. Bring the dead to the edge. We'll not leave them among this filth."
The villagers moved, slower now, but they obeyed. Some carried bodies, others tore strips of cloth to bind wounds. A few set torches to the goblin tents, smoke curling into the afternoon air.
Arin remained still, his spear planted in the ground, until a boy—barely old enough to carry a shield—passed him, dragging a goblin's corpse by its ankle. The boy's face was white, eyes wide, lips pressed together hard enough to tremble.
Arin shifted, forcing himself to move, to help. The battle was over, but the weight of it had only just begun to settle.
And as the clearing filled with smoke and the low sound of grieving, Arin realized that though he had struck the killing blow, there was no glory in it—only survival bought at a terrible cost.
The return to Emberstead was not triumphant.
They came back in silence, burdened with more bodies than weapons. The village gates opened to the sight of torn shields and smoke-stained faces, and the air filled with a sound heavier than any battle cry: the wail of kin recognizing their fallen.
The survivors laid the dead in rows outside the square. Torches were brought, not for celebration but for a pyre. The villagers moved together, shoulders brushing, eyes averted, their grief a quiet tide that pulled at every step.
Arin stood on the edge of the gathering, hands raw on the haft of his spear. He watched Elira step forward, her voice carrying over the crackle of fire.
"They stood for Emberstead when darkness pressed against our walls. They gave their lives that we may live. Tonight, we honor them—not with sorrow alone, but with remembrance."
The torches touched the pyre, and flame licked skyward. Sparks drifted on the wind like stars torn from their places. Families pressed closer, some weeping openly, others bowing their heads in silence.
Arin felt the heat on his face, but he could not bring himself to look away. Each name that was spoken might as well have been etched into his chest. He remembered the weight of their shields beside his, the sound of their voices raised in fear and courage alike. He had survived, and they had not. The fire made no distinction.
Yet as the flames raged, something shifted behind his eyes—a strange clarity, like the whisper of the system itself brushing against his mind. His gaze lingered on Bren, then Elira, and faint, ghostly numbers shimmered above them before vanishing again.
A burning glyph unfurled across his vision:
--
Ability Unlocked (Lv. 5): Level Perception
Can perceive the levels of beings equal to or lower than his own.
Can also perceive those up to 10 levels higher than himself.
Levels above this threshold remain hidden.
---
When his vision cleared, he looked again.
Above Bren's broad shoulders flickered the number [Level 16], steady as stone. Above Elira, the same: [Level 16], her strength veiled until this very moment.
Arin's breath caught. He had fought beside them, seen their blades cut through foes as though they were reeds, but to know their strength measured so far beyond his own filled him with equal parts awe and unease. It was a reminder: he was still at the foot of a mountain.
When the last name faded into the night, Bren placed a hand on Arin's shoulder and steered him toward the gathering hall. Elira followed, her steps heavy but purposeful.
Inside, the air was close, the lamplight dim. The elders sat in a rough circle, their faces lined not only with age but with the grief of the evening. A silence stretched before one of them spoke, his voice hoarse:
"You are not of Emberstead, yet you fought as one of us. Without your hand, the warlock would have broken our line. Without your spear, many more of us would be ash tonight."
Another elder nodded. "For that, you will be honored as a defender of this village. You will be given a place here, should you choose to remain."
On the table between them lay the shattered remains of the staff Arin had claimed from the warlock's corpse. Its dark crystal was cracked, faintly pulsing with a light that seemed to bleed away with every heartbeat. An elder pushed a pouch of coin toward him instead, its weight solid, final.
"That relic will bring no good. We will not keep it here. But for your part, take this as our thanks."
Arin's hand hovered above the pouch before closing around it. The coins were cold against his palm, too small a weight for what the night had cost, but heavier than anything he had owned in months.
Elira's voice, firm despite her weariness, carried the final word: "You've proven yourself, Arin. Stay, if you will. Fight beside us again, when the time comes."
Outside, the pyre burned on, its glow spilling through the shutters. The smell of smoke clung to everything, seeping into skin and cloth alike.
Arin stood in the half-light of the hall, torn between the warmth of belonging and the pull of the road beyond. Emberstead had given him coin, shelter, and the offer of kinship. But in the heart of the flames, he saw not only what he had gained—but what the wider world might demand of him still.
The night dragged long, and the pyre burned until its embers were swallowed by dawn. Emberstead woke not to rest but to the weary rhythm of rebuilding: buckets passed hand to hand, shattered fences lashed together, and fields walked in silence to see what had survived the night.
Arin joined where he could, though no task seemed enough. His spear hand itched for an enemy, not a hammer, yet he worked all the same. He hauled stone, lifted beams, and let the ache of his body blur the sharp edges of memory.
It was midmorning when the sound came—distant first, then rising: the steady creak of wheels, the bray of mules, and the jingle of bridles. A cry went up from the watchtower.
"The caravan! The merchants are here!"
Heads turned. For a heartbeat the village stilled, every soul caught between grief and the instinctive pull of hope. Then, slowly, they drifted toward the gate. Even loss could not smother the need for trade, for word of the world beyond their valley.
The wagons rolled in beneath the battered palisade, their canvas sides streaked with dust and road-mud. Painted sigils marked their ownership—bright once, now faded by travel. The caravan master, a wiry man with a beard threaded in silver rings, raised a hand in greeting.
"Emberstead!" His voice was brisk, practiced. "We bring wares, news, and safe passage for coin. But gods, you look like a battlefield."
His words trailed as he took in the blackened pyre, the scorched shields leaning against the walls, the faces hollow with smoke and sleeplessness. His men shifted uneasily, their hands straying toward the knives at their belts though no threat pressed them.
Bren stepped forward, his broad frame cutting the tension. "We've weathered worse. You'll find trade here still."
The caravan eased into the square, villagers already gathering, coins clutched in calloused palms. The smell of spice, oil, and leather followed them—foreign scents that clashed with ash and sweat. Children peeked wide-eyed from behind skirts, marveling at the bolts of cloth and strange tools hanging from the wagons.
Arin lingered at the edge of the crowd, watching. The caravan was more than goods. It was a reminder that Emberstead was not the world entire—that beyond its fields lay cities, kingdoms, and dangers far greater than goblin raids.
When the merchants began calling out their wares, another voice slipped between the offers of salt and steel, low but insistent: rumors. Whispers of wars brewing on distant borders, of a cult stirring in the southlands, of adventurers chasing fortunes in ruins half-swallowed by forests.
Each tale was a thread tugging at Arin's chest, weaving a pull stronger than any coin purse or hearth fire. The system's gift still burned faintly behind his eyes, and the memory of levels flickering above Bren and Elira reminded him how small his place here was.
For the first time since the battle, the road beyond Emberstead felt less like exile—and more like calling.
The square filled with the chatter of barter, voices rising and falling against the background of creaking wagons. Cloth unfurled in bright bolts, jars of spice cracked open to release their fragrance, and weapons gleamed under the noon sun.
Arin kept to the edges at first, hands tucked behind his back, eyes restless. He felt the system stir within him, the strange sense that had awakened during the pyre. His gaze lingered on the caravan master, and faint, ghostly numerals sparked above the man's head:
[Level 14]
It vanished an instant later, but the sight struck him like an unseen blade. His breath caught, the power behind the ability finally settling into clarity.
Testing it, Arin let his eyes wander:
The wiry guard at the wagon's flank: [Level 11]
The spice-seller with gold teeth and quick hands: [Level 13]
A scribe tucked among the merchants, ink stains on his fingers: [Level 10]
Emberstead's smith, shoulders broad from hammering iron: [Level 5]
A farmer with dirt still under his nails: [Level 3]
A shepherd boy chasing a stray lamb past the stalls: [Level 1]
The numbers flickered and faded after a heartbeat, like candlelight in the wind, but they were enough to paint a clearer picture of the people around him.
Bren and Elira still stood tallest at [Level 16], far above the reach of most here, yet no longer veiled by mystery. Around them stretched the simple truth: Emberstead was small, its people humble, its strength thin.
The realization steadied Arin. He was not among giants, nor yet a child fumbling in the dark. He was climbing. Slowly, but climbing.
"First time seeing a caravan?" The merchant master's voice broke his thoughts. The man's silver-bearded smile was thin but not unkind. He tapped the side of his ledger. "You've got the look—half wary, half hungry. The road does that to folk."
Arin hesitated, then nodded. "I've… never left the village."
It was a half-truth, and it tasted like ash even as he said it. He was not born of Emberstead, not truly. But the days since the battle had made it the only place he could claim—his only anchor in a world that had already taken too much.
The merchant chuckled. "Then look close. The world is bigger than these fields. And more dangerous."
The words were punctuated by a cry from a weapons stall. One of the caravan guards had laid out a spread of blades, their edges catching light like hungry teeth. Villagers crowded around, eyes wide, purses small. A boy of no more than twelve tried lifting a short sword and nearly dropped it on his foot. The guard laughed and ruffled his hair before turning back to his wares.
Rumors flowed as freely as trade:
A kingdom to the west conscripting soldiers for border wars.
Caravans vanishing on the highroads, their wagons left stripped and bloodied.
A noble house in distant Avenholt offering coin for adventurers to cleanse ruins overrun by beasts.
Whispers of a shadow cult, always "in the south," though no one agreed where the south began.
Arin listened, the tales knitting themselves into a map he had never seen but now longed to walk. Each story stoked the pull in his chest, the urge to test his spear not against raiding goblins but the wider perils of the world.
Beside him, Elira caught his gaze. She didn't smile, but there was a knowing weight in her eyes, as if she saw the road calling him already.
"Careful, Arin," she said quietly. "The fire's still hot on your skin, but I know that look. Wanderers are made in moments like this."
Her words lingered even as the clink of coin, the shout of barter, and the scent of faraway spices filled the air.
For the first time, Emberstead felt smaller. Not weaker—just… smaller.
And the world, vast.
The merchant band lingered in Emberstead for only a day, yet in that brief span the village seemed to double in size. Strangers filled the square, their wagons spilling open with wares and stories alike.
Arin drifted among them, ears open, eyes testing his newfound sight.
A cloaked woman near the spice cart: [Level 7], her hands inked with symbols he didn't recognize.
A grizzled sellsword polishing a dented breastplate: [Level 12].
The tanner's son, gawking at crossbows he could never afford: [Level 2].
But then his gaze snagged on a shadowed figure leaning against one of the wagons. The man wore no armor, no mark of profession, only a long gray cloak. When Arin looked closer, expecting to see the faint shimmer of numbers, there was nothing.
A blank.
His stomach knotted. The system was clear: this one stood beyond his reach, stronger even than Elira or Bren. A reminder that, for all his growth, he was still gazing upward at peaks he could not yet imagine climbing.
The figure gave no sign of noticing his scrutiny, but Arin turned away all the same, the memory of that blank space heavy as iron.
Later, gathered around a fire where merchants and villagers mingled, the talk turned to dungeons.
"A new one opened near Greystone," a spice-trader said, his tone pitched low, as though the word itself carried danger. "A rift, just three days north of the highroad. They say it breathes like a living thing."
The sellsword snorted. "They all breathe, in their way. The question is what crawls out first. Rats the size of dogs, more often than not."
Another merchant leaned closer. "Or treasure. Don't forget that part. Steel that never rusts. Gems cut by no mason's hand. Scrolls written in tongues older than kingdoms. It's why adventurers flock to them, even if half never crawl back out."
Elira, sitting with her arms folded, muttered, "A dungeon is never just coin. They change the land around them. Twist it. A village that ignores one too long may find its fields gone fallow and its wells gone dry."
Arin absorbed every word. He had heard the term before, but only as rumor, whispers carried by travelers at Emberstead's edges. To hear it spoken so plainly, as if they were storms to be tracked or markets to be traded in, gave the idea weight.
The road, it seemed, was not only lined with danger but punctuated by places where the very world fractured—where men and monsters both were tested.
When the fire died low and the villagers drifted back to their homes, Arin remained seated, staring into the embers. Dungeons, caravans, unseen powers stronger than even Bren and Elira—this was the shape of the wider world.
And for the first time, Emberstead felt not only smaller, but temporary.
The camp settled into uneasy quiet. Merchants, guards, and villagers drifted to sleep one by one until only the low crackle of fire and the whisper of wind in the trees remained. Arin rested at the edge of the circle, his thoughts heavy with numbers and shifting faces.
Across from him, Bren kept watch, whetstone hissing against steel. Elira sat close by, her gaze fixed on the treeline though her mind wandered elsewhere. Silence stretched between them, yet it was not an unfamiliar silence—it was the kind born of long years and heavier memories.
The fire's glow bent their thoughts backward.
The dungeon had not been deep. That was what they'd told themselves. A shallow ruin, half-mapped, a place for coin and training. They had laughed, Elira's younger brother walking a step ahead, blade ready, eager to prove himself.
Then the swarm came.
It poured from the cracks in the stone—claws, scales, and endless hunger. The narrow corridors turned into a grave. Bren's shield had shattered before the first hour passed, Elira's voice had broken calling her brother's name. They fought, and fought, and when the dust cleared, the dungeon gave nothing back but silence.
Bren remembered the weight of the broken sword in his hands, its edge twisted and stained. He had carried it out, not her brother.
Elira remembered the feel of that hilt when Bren pressed it into her palms outside the dungeon mouth. Cold, jagged, final. She had sworn then: never again.
They had chosen Emberstead after that day. Walls instead of caverns. A hearth instead of shifting stone. A place where memory could dull into routine, where no dungeon's hunger could reach them.
And yet—watching Arin now, the way he lingered by the firelight with eyes too sharp, too restless—they both felt the same unease.
Adventurers were made of such looks. And dungeons, whether shallow or deep, still waited beyond Emberstead's walls.
Arin stirred as the fire popped, breaking the thread of silence. His eyes swept the camp almost without thinking—yet the world no longer looked the same.
Above the head of a merchant's guard, he saw the faint shimmer: [Level 9]. The man's spear rested across his knees, his armor dented but serviceable. Another guard, leaning half-asleep against a barrel, carried [Level 7].
Arin's gaze drifted further. A younger villager, barely able to keep his eyes open, bore only [Level 3]. And one of the merchants—broad-shouldered, with a crossbow slung at his side—read [Level 12], higher than most in the camp.
The numbers whispered a strange order to the world, one he had never noticed before. Strength, fragility, potential—all laid bare with a glance.
But when his eyes touched Bren and Elira again, the numbers burned brighter, steadier than the rest: [Level 16], both of them. A gulf so wide it felt almost impossible to cross.
Arin shifted uncomfortably, lowering his gaze to the dirt. The knowledge was empowering, yes—but it also pressed down on him, a reminder of how far he had to climb.
He clenched his fist against his knee, the system's glow still fading from his vision. Level 6. Barely at the foothills. Yet if I survived Emberstead's fire, perhaps I can survive more.
Somewhere beyond the village, dungeons still yawned open in the earth, and the world waited with dangers greater than goblin raiders.
For the first time since awakening here, Arin felt the road pulling at him again.
---
Arin's Status Window
Name: Arin
Level: 6
HP: 28/28
MP: 10/10
Strength: 10 (Max: 76)
Endurance: 10 (Max: 83)
Agility: 10 (Max: 71)
Dexterity: 7 (Max: 68)
Intelligence: 9 (Max: 34)
Willpower: 8 (Max: 32)
Unallocated Points: 9
Ability (Lv. 5): Level Perception
Can perceive levels of beings equal to or lower than himself.
Can also perceive beings stronger than himself, but only if their level exceeds his by 10.
Levels above this threshold remain hidden.