Surviving as a Broken Hero

Of course, I didn’t trust the guy. He had only helped with killing the dragon due to his own self-interest, and he had already cut away portions of it that he had put in his item bag as proof of his accomplishment.

He had something to return to the Lion Guild with to show that everything hadn’t been a complete failure.

I held no delusions that he was actually interested in stopping the demons. Rather, he was interested in just how strong the being who had corrupted the dragon with demonic energy was.

If it could corrupt a dragon, it had to be at least as strong as one, right?

Demons hadn’t really been labeled or encountered much at that point in time, but what if he went back with not only proof that he had killed a dragon but proof that he had killed a demon lord as well?

I didn’t believe that he was so single-minded as to believe that the demons held no threat at all.

He was a high-ranking member of the Lion Guild and a scout party leader at that, so he had to realize the threat that the demons held.

If he returned with the head of one of the beings that led the demons, though, he would be held in that much higher regard.

I was grateful that our interests coincided for the moment, of course, but we were far from friends, and we both knew it.

We made camp at the base of the mountain for the night. We weren’t really in any hurry, as we had stocked up on warmth stones and food for the journey before leaving.

Having found a small overhang that formed a small cave at the base of the mountain, we set a fire with pre-prepared material from Koise’s item bag and chewed through the tough, salty jerky that was good as traveling food.

Koise sat with his back to the cave’s rear wall, facing the entrance as his eyes shut and his breathing steadied. There was no way to tell if he was asleep or just relaxed.

I watched the lightly drifting snowfall glittering in the moonlight, the white expanse back towards the city like a still ocean.

The city’s pillars of light shone up into the sky in the distance.

It was almost comfortable. The cave contained the warmth from the warmth stones we had scattered about, and when I lay down and shut my eyes, I could almost imagine being back home on Earth during the winter, gentle snowflakes drifting outside my window.

***

—Thump.

Something landed roughly on my chest, and I flailed briefly before my hand came to rest on it and I recognized what it was…

‘Jerky?’

It was more of the salty jerky we had eaten the previous night.

Koise was snuffing out the fire, pushing as many remnants of it as he could into his item bag to hide that we had ever been there.

“Eat and get up, we have to get going.”

“I thought there wasn’t any hurry?”

He finished erasing what traces he could and turned his head to look at me.

“There’s no hurry in the sense that our prey isn’t running away. However, there’s no telling what they might do next. We don’t know if they’re aware of the dragon’s death or if they know we’re coming. The less time they have to make their next move, the better off we’ll be.”

He was right, of course, but being awoken so suddenly still rubbed on me the wrong way.

I took a bite of the jerky, the salt drying my mouth and rubbing down the back of my tongue.

If there was one thing I was grateful for in the new world we found ourselves in after the Merge, it was the air.

Back on Earth, the air had only been getting worse and worse. It had been so bad that rainwater had been toxic, the particles in the air caked the lungs, light pollution had made it hard to see the stars, and the pollution in the air hadn’t just been strong enough to smell, but also to taste.

There, in the world after the Merge, none of that was an issue.

I didn’t know how the dwarves, elves, orcs, or other races had been in regard to technology or their own species’ outlook had been on their home planets and realms, but humanity had been looking pretty bleak.

The new world had changed all of that.

Of course, most had vanished mysteriously with the Merge, leaving only the lucky few who had crossed over without being trapped in stasis in dungeons or straight-up vanishing to enjoy the untainted air, the crisp rain, and the clear stars.

The journey through the mountains was breathtaking at the same time as it was exhausting, even with my System-enhanced body.

There were no pre-paved pathways, old roads, or ruined routes.

It was only the two of us wading through waist-deep snow, crossing frozen rivers, and freezing our asses off atop the snowy peaks.

We passed a few untouched dungeons along the way, making it all the more clear to me just how much there was still left to explore, even after six years. The other races had been in that new world even longer, and yet they still had much they had left to explore in their own territories, not to mention how much there was still left unknown in the world.

Finally, after having crested the top of a mountain that could have been any other, Koise reached out and stopped me while pointing to something on the mountain opposite us, hardly more than an irregular dot on the peak from the distance we were at.

“There, do you see it?”

I squinted my eyes at it, but I didn’t have any method of seeing things that far away.

“See what?”

“It’s what we’re looking for. Whatever corrupted the dragon is in there.”

I stood still for a moment and watched as if doing so would make anything clearer to me.

There was something I did see, though, for just a moment…

Crackle!

Bolts of lightning periodically struck down from the sky on something where Koise was pointing… in their camp.

My mind went back to when Rhil had been sucked through the portal. She had been in a cold place within caves…

“It’s a good position. They’ll see us if we just try to go directly across from here.”

There was no doubt in my mind that what was waiting for us was more demons. Atop the peak as they were, their sentries would be able to easily look down and see us if we continued on as we had been.

“So what do you think we should do?”

We both stood silently before our eyes locked at the same time, the same thought coming to both of us.

We spoke at the same time.

“Fuck,” Koise cursed.

“We have to go under,” I said.

I was assuming that the extensive cave system under the mountains went that far, but if it was like the rest of the mountains, it probably was—especially if the faint hope I had about Rhil was right.

The problem we were faced with, then, was figuring out how to get into the tunnel system again.

Not only that, but we would also have to navigate those labyrinthine tunnels without losing ourselves along the way.

***

We went back the other way in search of a way under the mountains. We weren’t so lucky as to spot an immediately obvious opening, but with my heat and echo senses paired with whatever passive or active skills Koise had, as his class seemed to specialize in tracking and hunting, we were eventually able to find a crevice in the earth buried under the snow.

Luckily, my echo sight allowed me to get a decent grasp on how far the crevice extended and whether it widened or shortened, so I was somewhat confident in squeezing myself into it and shuffling along sideways. The stone pressed against my ribcage and back in a suffocating manner.

It was only a short distance, but the last few shuffling sidesteps of the constricting opening had me sucking in my ribs and letting my breath out to squeeze through. I had to drag my pack by my side the entire way.

Koise unslung his bow and followed me.

Even though I had never been the claustrophobic sort, I wasn’t the type that enjoyed squeezing into narrow spaces with literal tons of earth above me. Though we found ourselves facing a long, expanding tunnel, it was like the constant threat of the weight of the earth was always pressing down on us, ready to smother us at a moment’s notice.

We wandered and took whichever tunnels we could find going downwards.

I wasn’t even sure whether we were going in the right direction, but Koise assured me that we were on the right track.

Luckily, we were unassaulted, and the tunnels were warm enough that we were able to get along without freezing and were able to save on warmth stones.

Eventually, after traveling through the tunnels for who knows how long and turning back from multiple dead ends along the way, Koise stopped at an intersection of tunnels.

“It should be about here,” he said, his voice sounding confident at his declaration.

“What should be about here?” I asked, tentatively scouting the tunnels ahead as far as my echo sight could see.

We were in a gloomy darkness, only the faint light of a purposely smothered light stone that would have never been enough for the unassisted to see by.

I didn’t need anything to see at all, echo sight being perfect for seeing in the darkness of the tunnels, but apparently Koise needed at least a little light, as whatever enhanced sight his class gave him appeared to work off of enhancing his sight rather than creating a new sense or altering the spectrum of light he saw by.

“The enemy camp.” He pointed at the ceiling of the tunnel, only an arm span above us, “It should be right above us.”