Surviving as a Broken Hero

Fwoooo.

A faint howling sound pricked my ears and grew louder with each step towards the tunnel until I stood at the mouth of it and gazed into a seemingly solid white wall of a raging blizzard, flakes of snow drifting into the tunnel and settling on its edges, melting quickly from the warmth of the tunnels.

While I was happy to see natural light again, there really wasn’t much else to see from there, and it became evident why Krylla had mapped out a path through the tunnels rather than the shortest path out.

—Walking through the blizzard would have been tantamount to suicide for me, who had no Item Bag, no true supplies to keep warm, and no shelter. It would have been difficult for even equipped travelers to pass through the raging snowstorm.

It made me wonder if the snowstorm was constant. It was at least a regular occurrence, seeing as Krylla had specifically mapped the route for me to go under it.

Fwoooo.

I stood and watched the howling storm for a few moments longer before turning around and heading back down the tunnel.

***

The rest of the journey through the tunnels was fairly uneventful. It took a few hours, most of which I stayed on the move and continued to hear things moving around me, just outside of my senses.

I wandered upon more bones and the dilapidated remains of other adventurers, but there was nothing left worth looting on what remained of their corpses, items long ago taken by others passing by or by the creatures of the tunnels.

Finally, the faint scratches in the ceiling I had been sensing through my echo sight continued up through a gradual incline, leading to a tunnel exit through which chilly air wafted down.

The night sky greeted my emergence, stars twinkling brightly overhead in the clear sky, absent of the light pollution common back on Earth. Of course, the stars in the sky were completely different after the Merge, wherever we had been transported to being very clearly a separate place, or even time, from the Earth that humanity had known.

The world after the Merge even had its own moons, three celestial bodies that orbited far overhead, smaller than what I had been used to on Earth. The ambient light they gave off on a good night was about equivalent to a bright, moonlit night from the world I had grown up in.

Notably, the sky was clear of clouds or signs of storms. It was still cold, but the snow had faded, and though a light layer of snow remained constant from when it had last fallen there, the mountaintop I emerged from was only lightly powdered in it.

From where I stood on a circular, flat platform near the mountain’s peak, I saw the city far below me, just a bit past the base of the mountain—the City on the Edge.

Looking at it from up there, it was clear why it had been called that.

The city quite literally was situated on the edge of a massive drop-off in the terrain. I could only initially see it as an inky black void beyond the city and the mountain range it was situated in, almost like the city was on the edge of an abyssal ocean.

As for the city itself, the walls of it were irregular, and the city didn’t look very carefully planned. Orange pillars of light that I could see from far above on the mountaintop were erected around the city, seemingly at random, and the city’s largest structure, akin more to a palace than a castle, balanced precariously on the furthest edge of the city itself.

The seeping cold snapped me out of my awe, the cold burning my ears and hands.

Judging from how high up I was and how far the city still was, it would be another few hours of trekking down the mountain before I reached the gates of the city itself.

It was far too cold for such a journey, as ill-equipped for the cold as I was, so I decided to turn back and retreat to the warmth of the tunnels for the night, choosing a place down the tunnel that was comfortably warm enough so that the cold didn’t bring me pain while also not so far down that I was back in the tunnel system itself with the creatures that had followed me along my journey. I was not eager for their company again, the image of the snakelike thing still fresh in my mind.

I slept through the rest of the night, waking up at some point when the daylight penetrated dimly into the tunnel.

When I emerged again out onto the mountaintop, the air still bit at me, though not as ferociously as it had during the night. The sun above provided a protective warmth, and the light wind could have been much worse.

Looking again at the city in the morning light, I saw the edge for what it truly was—the edge of the world itself. That was the best way I could describe it. It was a steep drop-off of the terrain that continued far down out of sight, through a hazy covering of… clouds?

The climb down the mountain was easier than I had initially imagined it would be, a crude pathway/staircase of sorts winding its way down the mountain and providing foot and handholds on the steepest descents.

It still took some time, but it wasn’t like I was trying to free-climb down the mountain as I had originally thought I would be doing.

The light powder coating the mountain softened my footfalls, and I eventually found myself looking ahead at the walk across the flat, snowy plain.

* * *

Reaper Scans

[Author – Farlight]

[Proofreader – Harley]

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* * *

After the walk, the city gates finally loomed before me. I could see the occasional traveler coming or going, but the size of the gates seemed to contrast the small trickle of travelers.

What’s more, on the final section of the plains to the city, bumps that I had originally assumed were rocks or boulders revealed themselves to be the well-preserved corpses of recently killed monsters that looked like something between mutated bison with squidlike faces and tentacles.

My eyes traced over the innumerable mounds jutting out of the snow as I approached the bored-looking group of guards at the gate entrance.

Surprisingly, the guards were a mix of different races, each wearing a matching red suit of leather armor, equipped with weapons of varying classes, with another human stepping forward to greet me.

“Tattoo?”

‘Tattoo?’

He spoke as if I should have already known what he was talking about. I guessed that the city didn’t get many new guests.

The guardsman took in my obvious confusion and sighed.

“A new one then, huh?”

The guard shuffled around his belt and reached into his Item Bag for a few moments before pulling out a metal vambrace with leather fastening straps.

“Do you already know the protocol?”

His voice had a somewhat hopeful, questioning tone to it. I could tell it was something he didn’t want to have to repeat.

“No… I don’t. This is my first time here, sorry.”

It wasn’t quite what I had expected. They weren’t even going to question how I had found them? I had thought that the city was supposed to be a secret of some sort.

The man exhaled a long breath.

“In order to enter the city, you must swear to a vow of secrecy, stating that you will not tell others about the city. To secure your vow, a seal will be placed on your wrist, which will warn the city and explode if you break said vow. If you refuse the vow of secrecy, because you have already made it to the city, we will have no choice but to execute you. Do you accept?”

Despite the threat in his message, the man spoke in a bored tone, already knowing what my answer would be. It was more of a formality, it seemed. Who would decline such a contract in front of them, after all?

“Sure… I accept.”

The man held the vambrace up between us.

“Hold out your hand for the seal.”

I reached my hand out, my sleeve reaching down to my wrist.

“Pull back your sleeve,” the guard said as he rolled his eyes.

I pulled back the sleeve and watched as he slid the vambrace over my hand. The vambrace came to a rest on my forearm and he tightened the leather straps before resting his hand on it.

The cool metal warmed as it emanated a purple glow for a few moments. Something scratched over my skin, almost giving off a burning sensation.

Something about the glow felt wrong to me, familiar. I knew I had felt the sensation before, but I wasn’t quite sure how to put my finger on it. I even suspected then that the seal wasn’t quite what it seemed, but I had no such actual evidence to back up my suspicion.

Then the man unfastened the vambrace and pulled it back.

The purple tattoo left behind on my skin looked like a series of ovals spiraling through each other around a set of horns at its center.

I examined the tattoo through the System.

[[Seal of Secrecy

This seal guards a secret kept by a pact.

-If the owner of the seal breaks the pact, they will receive punishment.]]

{{-This seal has the power to act as a focus for certain spells.}}