by Dante King
My eyes threatened to bulge out of my head. I knew Anna disappeared in a wave of light, leaving this scythe where she’d been, but... it wasn’t really her, was it? How the hell could a living person transform into a weapon?
I shook my head. Fuck this.
“I want answers,” I snapped, brandishing my blade.
“You shall get them,” Eliezer countered. He seemed pleased that we’d finally moved to the heart of the matter—his reason for being here. “You have passed the second test, Eric. You have forged your first weapon—the scythe you hold in your hands. Now I know that you are worthy to enter my homeworld, and walk the path of the Eternal Dao.”
“That’s all well and good,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “But where’s Anna? What the fuck did you do with my girlfriend?”
It was a little early to call my girlfriend, exactly, but the two of us had hit it off. Regardless, I doubted Eliezer of all people would make the distinction.
The old man gave me an irritated look. “I told you,” he said, clearly hating to explain things more than once. “I have done nothing. You are the one who transformed your woman into that weapon. You used your Dual Weapon Cultivation Core to transmogrify her into a Legendary Blade.”
That sounded like gibberish to me. I spit to the side, heedless of needing to clean the carpet later. “That’s it, asshole,” I said, shifting the weapon into a two-handed stance. “It’s go time.”
Eliezer might have called himself the Peak Supreme God. He could sure make a fancy light show inside of his tent. But he’d done something to Anna, and if I was ever going to experience another awesome night like the one I’d just had with her, I needed to rescue her from his clutches.
“I’m mad as hell,” I snapped, readying myself for battle, “and I’m not going to take it anymore—”
Eliezer struck. You wouldn’t have thought an old man could move like that, like lightning striking a tree, but Eliezer was no ordinary old man. His glaive materialized in his hands mid-strike, aiming at the same spot where he’d punched a hole through me the first time. His mistake.
This time, I was ready for him.
The steel blade of the glaive met my scythe, sparks flying. Eliezer was fast, but his attack held a curious sort of weakness—as if he were merely testing my defenses, not going for the killing blow. Was he trying to take it easy on me? I’d show him!
“Well done,” Eliezer said, cocking an eyebrow. I got the distinct impression he wasn’t the sort of man who dispensed praise easily. “You have grown in your power, young Eric.”
“You’re damn right,” I snorted, cocky as a bull. “Come on—try it again.”
Eliezer chuckled and shook his head. The glaive vanished, and he spread his arms wide. For a moment, he was just an old man, embracing the open air as if he were waiting for a hug.
“No. You attack me,” he said, that teasing lilt still in his tone. “Show me your finest strike!”
He was really going to let me get a free hit on him? Shit, I wouldn’t waste it, then.
My knuckles turned white as I gripped the scythe as hard as I could. A quick feint to the left made him tense—then I shot to the right, moving like an arrow in flight as the steel of my scythe sought flesh.
This is for Anna, asshole, I thought, closing the gap. And all those people you murdered!
Eliezer’s eyes widened briefly. Then, an instant before my weapon sank home, he smiled and traced a symbol with his right hand.
A deep gash appeared in the air, like a tapestry that had been torn in two. Warm, balmy air blew through the rip in space, green trees and blue sky on the other side.
It was too late to stop my swing. I tumbled forward, sailing through the portal Eliezer had just created.
The temperature warmed around me as I fell through the portal, sunshine beaming down on my naked body as I landed in a tangle of vines and branches. The sounds of a jungle reached my ears, birdsong and the buzzing of insects warring with the hooting of monkeys and other predators.
I let go of the scythe as I struggled to my hands and knees. The bladed weapon dropped into a tangle of vines, shimmered, and resolved into the form of a woman. Of Anna. She was back—except she’d never really left, had she? Eliezer had been right all along. The woman was the weapon.
Anna looked extremely surprised to find herself no longer in my bed. She scrambled to her knees, a flimsy nightshift even thinner than the kimonos back at the county fair clinging to her sleek body. It hid nothing, merely augmenting her already gorgeous body. The transformation she’d gone through right after we finished having sex hadn’t changed—a pair of horns extended from the sides of her head, she still had the elf ears, and her ash-blonde hair still had that purplish tinge.
“What the fuck…?” Anna turned around to see me standing there, naked. “What the fuck happened, Eric? For a minute, I felt like I was… somewhere else.”
My ears pricked up. “Oh yeah?” I asked, reaching out for her. “Where were you, Anna? What happened?”
I wanted to know what she felt when she became a weapon. But if I thought there’d be an easy answer to that question, I was sadly mistaken.
“I’m… I’m really not sure,” Anna said, rubbing her forehead. A faint sheen of sweat stood out on her skin, brought on by the jungle heat. Soon enough that tight white slip of hers would be soaked through completely. “I felt… sharp. And angry. It’s all kind of fading now—the more I try to hold onto the memories, the more they slip away…”
“That’s because you are still untutored,” a voice said, brimming with laughter. “Both you and Eric.”
I turned sharply, groaning as Eliezer floated to the ground a few feet away. He touched down gently, his hands folded in the arms of his robes. Unlike Anna and I, he looked as unruffled as could be. You’d never have thought the two of us had just been locked in combat.
“Your nudity does not suit this realm,” Eliezer pronounced harshly. “Neither does your companion’s clothing. These things must be remedied before you can begin your journey.”
The Peak Supreme God snapped his fingers. Clothing appeared on Anna’s body—an Asian-style tunic cut low in the front, the fabric a rich crimson with gold and purple highlights. Stylish boots wrapped around her long, sultry legs, more appropriate for a walk through the woods than bare feet. She looked like a serving girl you’d see in the Emperor’s palace in a fantasy movie—the kind whose duties involved entertaining men with conversation and music while serving them food and drink. Almost like a courtesan.
A moment later, fabric settled on my skin, and I realized I was clothed as well. My own robes were a rich, dark silk that absorbed the light of the jungle sun yet remained cool. Long trousers stretched all the way down my legs, where I wore a pair of pointed black shoes.
Comfortable, I told myself, plucking at the fabric.
“Much better,” Eliezer said, as if he were agreeing with my thought.
I stood on solid earth, the ground beneath my new boots spongey. The smell of moss and mildew filled my nostrils, warring with the scent of jungle heat.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips. I no longer had a weapon to fight Eliezer with, but that didn’t mean I was defenseless. “Where have you taken us?”
A blinking line of text rolled across my vision. These words were larger than the ones I’d seen before, as if announcing a new movie or some grand event. They floated in the air longer than usual, like whoever wrote them wanted to be absolutely sure they were seen:
You have entered a Mana Zone (Verdant Ruins: Realm 1)
Well. That explained absolutely nothing.
“Anna, are you seeing this?” I asked, noticing the look on her face. For once Anna’s features had scrunched up at the sight of the strange words, as if they were visible to people other than me.
“I’m seeing it,” Anna said, cocking her head to the side. “I just don’t know what it means. It looks like something from a video game…”
A video game? That made a disturbing amount of sense. After all, if Eliezer was the Supreme God of the universe or whatever, didn’t that kind of make him the architect of this realm? His powers certainly fit into the mold I understood from the games I’d played back in college. I didn’t have a lot of time for gaming these days, but I’d poured countless hours into MMO’s like Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft. Often to the detriment of my studies.
Shit, I thought. Who knew I was actually training for this?
A vibration in my chest caught my attention. The thing inside me pulsed rapidly for a few seconds, then rested. After a brief break, it started the whole thing over again. It reminded me of a phone set to vibrate, so I tried rubbing the lump in my side. Nothing happened.
“Close your eyes and concentrate,” Eliezer said, unprompted. “Your Core will automatically do that the first time you enter an area. You will need to take stock of your abilities before you begin exploring.”
I didn’t feel much like listening to Eliezer after everything he’d done to us. But he quite literally held our lives in his hands. So I closed my eyes, trying to block out all the panicked thoughts of where we’d ended up, and focused on that strange black mass inside of me.
White words flashed across the inside of my eyelids:
Eric: Black Core (Dual Weapon Cultivation)
Realm 1: Level 3: Stage 1: Early Core Formation
Huh. Alright. That definitely felt like something out of a video game. Some of the words made sense to me—‘Level 3’ was clear as day, for example, although I wasn’t sure how much power difference there was between levels in this world. But what the hell did ‘Early Core Formation’ mean? Dual Weapon felt self-explanatory, meaning I could probably use two weapons at once. But ‘Cultivation’?
I was about to ask Anna what her own readout said when she closed her eyes and went quiet. Reciting in a loud voice, she read:
Anna: Weapon Core (Scythe)
Realm 1: Level 1: Stage 1: Early Mana Gateway
So she was at a lower level than me. I’d have to remember that and make sure to keep her safe. The rest of it I didn’t really understand, but I was sure Eliezer was just itching to tell me.
“Very good,” the old man said, taking a step backward. No—floating backward, the same way he’d done on the way in. Show-off, I thought. “You have taken your first steps into this Realm. You should be able to feel your Core within you now, Eric. It is eager for you to begin sharpening your skills, discovering your true potential.”
I didn’t feel it. And then, suddenly, I did.
The world around me went quiet, my hearing sharpening like I was listening to the world through a pair of expensive headphones. I could hear the chittering of every insect in the trees, the trickle of tiny creek over the next hill as it wound through the rushes. Life surrounded me. Energy surrounded me. And as my Core shifted within my body, moving like a living thing, I became aware of just how much life surrounded me at all times.
It felt like enlightenment. The sort of things monks meditated under trees for years to understand. All living and nonliving things were connected, caught in a web of energy that permeated all of existence. A sense of awe overwhelmed me as my senses pushed outward, trying to feel everything at once. The energy of my Core seeped out into the jungle, resonating out over the trees at a vibration as old as life itself.
Anna felt it. “What is that?” she whispered, watching the branches of a nearby tree tremble.
Eliezer smiled. “It is him,” he said, pointing a bony finger at me. “You should be careful, young man. When you send signals like that across the Realm, you’re letting everything nearby know that there’s a Core in the area.”
“What does that mean?” Anna scanned the trees around us, shading her eyes with a hand across her forehead.
I felt the creatures approach before I heard them. They crawled up the nearby trees, chittering to each other in high, piercing tones. While I could sense them getting closer, my powers hadn’t developed to the point where I could tell what they were—so it was a surprise to open my eyes and see the canopy around us brimming with squirrels.
A warning flashed in front of my vision:
Monsters Detected!
Nippers
Either Anna hadn’t seen the warning, or she’d disregarded it. She stepped closer to the trees, cocking her neck to see the tiny creatures dancing in a nearby tree. One of the Nippers flipped in mid-air, swinging from a vine like an acrobat from branch to branch. Anna clapped with glee as it landed, utterly impressed.
“They’re cute!” Anna’s eyes lit up, like she was already imagining taking one home as a pet. “Look at them, Eric—they’re fucking adorable!”
“Uh, Anna?” I took a step forward, getting within arm’s reach of Anna. I got the distinct impression I might need to pull her away before things got ugly. “I don’t think these guys are here to welcome us to the jungle…”
Anna laughed. “You’re in the jungle, baby!” she sang, imitating an off-key Axl Rose. “You’re gonna die!”
“Anna, get behind me,” I said in a warning tone. She’d been joking, but I’d already noticed that other than one dancing, cavorting Nipper, the rest held themselves back with serious expressions. Almost as if the one creature was a decoy, intended to lure us into a false sense of security.
“Just a second, Eric,” Anna said, brushing my hand away. “Look at you, little guy! Who’s a cute little squirrel! That’s right, you are…”
“Anna!”
The Nippers in the trees began to move.
Anna trailed off, frowning as she squinted at something I couldn’t see. “Monsters…Nippers? These things are monsters…?”
The dancing Nipper landed with a flourish on the jungle floor. As one, the entire tribe of them turned eyes on Anna. A red glow lit up their eyes, their mouths peeling back to reveal long, crooked fangs. Their bushy tails straightened out, going from the adorable question mark shapes I recognized to a flat edge like a knife.
They no longer looked like cute, cuddly animals. They might have been tiny, but these things were predators.
Chapter 4
I pulled Anna out of the way just as the closest Nipper struck. The one who’d been dancing around and showing off only moments ago sprang forward, its fangs flashing in the light as it tried to sink them into Anna’s flesh. She screamed, falling on her ass into a pile of leaves as more Nippers jumped into the fray.
“Shit!” I leapt between her and the creatures, trying to give her enough distance to escape. “Eliezer, help me out here!”
The Peak Supreme God cocked an eyebrow. “Who, me? I’m just an old man, Eric. You must handle these creatures on your own.”
Great. Not only had I not been warned about these monsters, I’d also have to fend them off on my own.
I had no weapon—I’d lost my scythe when Anna reappeared on the forest floor. But the Nippers weren’t large, and while their fangs certainly looked vicious, they probably couldn’t bite deep enough through my skin to do serious damage. Probably.
A Nipper launched itself from a nearby branch, spreading its arms as it soared toward me. Its tiny limbs concealed a membrane stretching from its paws to its hips, like those of a flying squirrel. Although the name was something of a misnomer—technically, all the creature could do was glide.
So instead of flying into my face and gnawing on my right ear, you could say it glided into my face. Still hurt like the devil, though.
“Fuck!” I wrapped a hand around the Nipper and tossed it, aiming at one of the creatures still waiting on a branch. A piece of my ear flew off along with the monster, droplets of blood staining the leaves. “Jesus! I feel like Evander Holyfield!”
The Nippers gave me no time to regroup. A half-dozen jumped onto the forest floor, surrounding me with their tiny knife-like tails. A trio soared past me on those flabby membranes, their glowing red eyes fixed on Anna.
“Get back!” I commanded, waving Anna away. �
��Let me handle this—”
I screamed in pain as tiny fangs sank into my arms. The squirrels acted like teeny-tiny vampires, only instead of trying to drink my blood, they just focused on making as many puncture wounds as possible. Four of them latched onto my right arm, weighing it down with squirrel meat as they nibbled and gnawed. Grabbing them one at a time, I used them as projectiles to try and knock some of the second wave out of the air.
It didn’t work. The squirrels were too agile. They’d practiced this. They were like cavemen bringing down a wooly mammoth: first they swarmed it, using numbers to overwhelm the larger foe. A death by a thousand cuts quickly followed.
I don’t know about a thousand, I thought, slamming my arm against a nearby tree to try and dislodge them. But it feels like I’ve got about a hundred fucking teeth marks right now…
Blood flowed from the wounds, dripping to the jungle floor. The world swam around me—I’d begun to get light-headed. If we didn’t find some way to turn the tide soon, I’d pass out—and then the Nippers would have their way with me and Anna.
“Anna!” I spun around, trying to catch up to her. She’d scooted backward across the jungle floor, kicking out at the trio of Nippers giving chase. For the moment, they seemed content to tease her with a few nibbles and slashes—but soon, their bloodlust would kick in, and they’d give her the same thrashing they were laying down on me. There was only one way to stop it.
I needed my scythe back.
“They’re trying to eat me!” Anna shrieked, her eyes wide with horror. The creatures she’d called cute and adorable only a few moments ago moved in closer, eager for the kill. “Eric, help—!”
“You have to turn back into the scythe!” I screamed, gritting my teeth from the pain. Fuck, it felt like a couple of the Nipper’s fangs were all the way down to the bone! “I need that weapon!”
Anna kicked out frantically as a Nipper settled on her leg. “I don’t know how!”
