Book 1: Chapter 2

Book 1: Chapter 2

The cellar was cold. Colder than outside, much colder than it should be. He’d spent enough time in the modern world to recognize the feeling; this cellar was refrigerated. He knew he was right, there was no mistaking the feeling, but there was no machinery around that could explain it. The floor and walls were made of dirt. He hadn’t gone into any of the other cellars, maybe they were all like that? There could be some kind of magical cooling going on. On the shelves there were wheels of cheese, bread wrapped in thin cloth, and a few jars of preserves. Nothing that would really need to be refrigerated.

He would probably have to dart out to try to find something to cover himself with, even if that meant pulling clothes off the dead. If he could even bring himself to do it. He wouldn’t be able to stay here overnight, and who knew when the “danger” would arrive. Honestly he didn’t even know if he could trust that warning.

Just as he started to push the cellar doors open, he saw something through the thin crack of the door, and pulled his hand away like he’d been burned.

Something was moving through the town. Something bright, a flickering, unsteady light. Torches. Was it an army? If so then he was dead.

Thanks, Solia. After all the panic and despair her Skill had given him, he was still going to die. Thanks a lot.

And why was it so cold? It wasn’t fair that he’d die cold in both lives.Witness the debut of this chapter, unveiled through Ñôv€l--B1n.

With creeping dread, he watched through the gap in the door as the light grew brighter and brighter.

Then he saw them. Monsters or an army? How about both? He saw fire first, then noticed the things inside the fire. Black corpses, eyeless, with a thin layer of blackened flesh wrapped tightly over their bones. They marched as red and unholy flames wrapped their bodies, always burning but never diminishing. Their steps were artless and unnatural. An army of undead, wrapped in flame. A burning legion.

He stayed still, so terrified he couldn’t even think of moving. He barely knew if he was even breathing. But none of the monsters even glanced in his direction.

They marched forward, angry and callous. Incurious. Rank after rank, with strange mismatched weapons. Axes and hammers so large they never should have been able to carry them with those thin arms. Swords and shields, spears and pikes, even some with wooden longbows. Why didn’t the weapons burn? Magic?

He saw one break off the ranks to turn to one of the structures whose ruins were taller than the rest. One of the ghouls raised a hand, and a stream of flame shot from his hand and blasted into the still-standing wall. The force of it knocked the remaining structure to dust, lighting the ruins aflame again.

They were ghastly. And wrong. As wrong as an army of flaming undead, but also wrong, like there was something about this picture that was... not true. A deception.

Why was it still so cold? Was there cold magic in the cellar to protect anyone hiding inside from the giant flaming army outside? That would make sense. The dead villagers must’ve had some kind of magic, though it hadn’t saved them.

He snapped his focus back to the burning army. Wrong. The fire... it wasn’t real. His skill, [Know What’s Real], it was telling him something. The undead were real. The fire was fake. The entire undead army was real, but the flames were an illusion.

Then how had they burned the town down? He picked one undead soldier and watched him. Really watched him. The illusion didn’t go away, but he saw little glimmers, here and there. Tiny signs that what he was watching wasn’t quite right. When one ghoul’s flames touched another, they just sort of went through each other instead of combining. And his hand... it wasn’t at his waist. It was in the air. It was... holding a torch.

He saw a ghoul reach the well, the one structure that was still standing. In the illusion, the ghoul shot fire out of his hands. But through that, though... he could faintly see the shadows of reality. One ghoul hacked at the well with an ax, while the other lit it on fire with a torch. They were faking the flame attacks.

Why, though? This army was clearly capable of destroying a town, why bother with the subterfuge? It was here that his gaming knowledge came in handy, specifically his RPG knowledge.

He’d never been a huge MMO fan, though he’d played a few. They weren’t any fun solo, and he’d refused to invest the amount of time into them that it takes to make a good group of friends. In fact, he’d made fun of the guys who played so many video games that they completely failed to get a career. Ironic, because now his career was less than worthless, and the only thing that mattered was his video game knowledge. Not that this was a video game, he knew it wasn’t, but it was a good starting point for organizing his thoughts.

In lots of video games, the undead were weak against fire, while water or ice spells were weaker against them. These undead were disguising themselves with fire. Anyone who saw them would naturally try to fight against them with water or ice, which would do nothing.

That tactic wouldn’t work forever. It wouldn’t work at all if a group turned and fought. But that probably didn’t happen. Everyone probably panicked the second they saw the monsters arrive. And when they started lighting houses on fire, it would be hot enough to be convincing.

Could he use this information? Well, no, probably not. He was still just one little boy. If the worst happened and the undead spotted him, he’d try to grab one of their torches, but the odds that he’d be able to fight them off were less than zero. The ghouls weren’t that afraid of fire, not if they were carrying the torches in the first place.

With that in mind, he backed away from the door. His best chance was to stay in here and hide. Thinking about it again, the fact that he hadn’t found any bodies in the cellars was a really good sign. It was doubtful that the ghouls would’ve bothered to pull people out before slaughtering them. It made more sense to assume that the people hiding in the cellars had survived the night of the attack, then fled the area during the daytime. Using video game logic, ghouls hunted using heat vision. That could’ve been the reason the villagers magicked their cellars to be freezing cold. It was possible the army simply wouldn’t be able to see him down here.

He crawled underneath the shelves and lay in the cold dirt behind some bags of flour. He found a few empty bags and used them as a blanket, but it was still freezing cold.

Cold was better than dead. Wasn’t it?

He found flint and some cookware in the ashes of a home, and made a reasonable campsite kitchen. The bacon was fantastic, and he could use the grease to cook other things.

The army came, night after night. They gave up trying to burn what remained, and simply spent the night ambling around. One thing was clear; they weren’t leaving.

Two weeks passed, until one night, there was a change. He noticed the change even before he saw any undead. As dusk turned to night, he heard a soft, rhythmic sound. A repeated beat. Thump, thump, thump.

It was an ordinary beat, but to Mark it was almost hypnotic. It was the first sound of anything close to music that he’d heard since coming to this world, he was tempted to open his cellar door just a smidge to peep and get a better look. The flickering light cast by the illusory flames told him it was the ghouls making the sound, so he stayed hidden.

The first ghouls crossed the path that he could see from the tiny crack in his cellar doors, and he saw that they were marching. They walked in orderly lines, stepping to the same beat. Thump, thump, thump.

From the sound of it, they crossed the entire town, then split up. When he next saw the ghouls, they were split up into groups of three. They moved completely differently than he’d ever seen them before. Instead of the lazy, uncaring trudging, they now moved with energy and purpose. They rotated their heads from side to side, scanning the ground. They poked bushes with their weapons and pushed over piles of debris. Searching for something. Searching for him.

A ghoul reached the cellar doors, in the ground directly across from him. Mark expected it to turn away like they always did. Cellars are cold. Cold is uninteresting. The ghoul opened the doors, and walked inside.

If they were searching cellars, it wouldn’t be long until they entered his.

His heart beat like a drum, and so loud he was surprised the ghouls couldn’t hear it. Maybe they could. They’d come down any second and then...

No. He wouldn’t just sit and wait. He needed to do something.

He got a big flour sack, a full one, and dumped half of it on the floor. Then he pushed it behind all the other flour sacks, blocking the way with loaves of bread, jars and jugs, everything he could find. Then he climbed inside the half-empty flour sack, and tried to bury himself inside.

Before long, he stopped himself. Panic made him want to keep moving, but giving in to panic here would mean death. If the undead came down here, any tiny movement would give him away.

The flour was cold, like burying himself in snow, but he blessed the coldness if it was what was protecting him from the ghouls’ rotten eyes. He didn’t know. Even after all this time he didn’t know for sure, but it was the best he had. Hiding in the cellars had worked. Until tonight.

He lay absolutely still. Flour got up his nose but he didn’t dare cough, even though his throat started to burn. He could barely breathe. The flour sacks weren’t air tight, but close enough.

He heard something. Quiet steps, coming down the stairs.

He heard things being pulled off the shelves. A ceramic pot landed with a thunk. He felt the vibrations through the wood, as the things in front of him were being thrown to the ground.

The flour sack was still cold. He didn’t dare move at all, but where the sack touched his skin he still felt the draining cold. Would it be good enough?

The sounds stopped. He waited for them to pull him off the shelf, but it didn’t happen. He felt a snag instead, the walls of the flour sack pulling in tight, then away. Then, there was light. A little hole in the flour sack.

They must’ve stabbed it. They must’ve stabbed straight through, right between where his knee and elbow had been.

Somehow, through sheer force of character, he managed to avoid screaming. He forced his voice to stay silent. He forced his sobs of panic and relief to stay silent though he couldn’t stop the streaming tears.

He heard the ghouls’ footsteps retreat out of the cellar, and he didn’t make a sound.

Something appeared in his vision.

Through your efforts you have increased the following attributes. Will +1

For some reason, that didn’t help at all. He shivered in the dark until he fell asleep.