"Zaetar, rise."
Again the ground opened — not gradually, but all at once, as though the terrain had simply decided there was something more important than its own integrity. The Aqrabuamelu emerged with the same monumental calm as always, turning to me and crouching with the specific care of something immense that had learned to be careful.
"Zaetar. At your command."
"Advance through the terrain."
"Understood."
With the time lost understanding the terrain and the enemy, what I needed most was speed. The Skaven were known far more for their stealth and cunning than for brute force — their advantage lay in the time given to them, and that was exactly what I wouldn't give. If I didn't give them time to prepare the terrain, their advantage disappeared. Taking away time was taking away the weapon.
I followed Zaetar's footsteps in a straight line — where he stepped, there were no traps. It was simple logic. His weight would activate any trigger that existed in the path, and whatever activated on him wouldn't hit me. I was the shadow of my own shield.
It worked until it stopped working.
Unfortunately it didn't take long for that to happen.
However it wasn't as I had expected — in fact I was surprised by something unusual. What was supposed to be stealthy and cunning simply appeared in the open — as though the enemy didn't need to resort to ambush. As though there was something ahead that made subtlety not just unnecessary, but slightly comical in retrospect.
"You've got to be kidding me."
In the Colosseum it wasn't permitted, in group missions, to use mounts, animals or warriors of any class to fight for you or with you — the rule was clear from the simple fact of not allowing the Lord or former Lord to enter accompanied by anything other than small items and weaponry. But in front of me was a Skaven mounted on something that broke that rule with the indifference of someone who had never recognized it.
The creature was nearly four meters tall.
A rat — in theory. In practice, something that had started as a rat and had been transformed into something else by a process that seemed neither natural nor intentional, just inevitable. The body was disproportionate: forelimbs longer than the hind ones, curving the silhouette forward like something permanently about to attack. The musculature wasn't defined — it was accumulated, piled on top of itself in layers that communicated not training, but mutation, directionless growth, strength that had been left over from some process the body hadn't been able to fully contain. The skin was exposed in places where the fur had fallen out or been torn away, showing scars that crossed without any recognizable pattern — not the battle scars that tell stories, but the scars of something that had survived itself repeatedly. The eyes were red — not the color, but the inflammation, like eyes that had seen too much and had stopped processing what they saw as information and started processing it as a stimulus to attack.
Saliva dripped from the open mouth in thick strings.
I needed a second to finish cataloguing what I was seeing. It wasn't hesitation — it was the time needed to align the image with what I knew, and accept that what I knew was enough to explain it.
"How the hell does he have a Swamp Abomination. Is this really a level C mission?"
The Swamp Abomination was a creature the Codex said little about — after all, it only reached a small part of human territory, and even then was rarely spotted with enough clarity for reliable documentation. What was known was that it was extremely strong, capable of rivaling an Urskra in brute force. And beyond strength, it had something few creatures possessed: a state close to Berserk Mode, activated when life reached its limit, pushing it beyond what the body should be able to endure. That was what placed it on the threshold between C+ and B- — not the size, not the resistance, but the capacity to become more dangerous exactly when it should be weakest.
The alliance with the Skaven wasn't a surprise. For a reason the Codex didn't confirm but speculated about, the two races could communicate in some way — probably due to physical similarities, though even that was debated. The truth was that Swamp Abominations only allied with Skaven. And the fact that that creature was there immediately explained why the Skaven wasn't hiding.
He didn't need cunning when he had that in front of him.
The Skaven on top of it was typical of what I had seen in the illustrations — dirty, hunched, with the specific characteristics of a race the swamp had shaped over generations. His appearance didn't set him apart from a mere newcomer. But a Swamp Abomination wasn't a creature any newcomer could acquire — not for money, not for influence. Whoever was in the saddle had history.
He held the reins with both hands — not for control, but for survival. It was visible that the creature tolerated the weight of the rider.
It didn't obey him.
It transmitted the specific aggression of something created to attack before thinking. The inflamed red eyes didn't assess me — they simply registered me as something in front of them, and therefore something to be removed.
And it was looking directly at me.
"Zaetar, come back and stay at my side."
I needed a moment to calculate. If the enemy had appeared without hiding, there were two possibilities: it had already set its traps and was waiting, or it was too confident to need them at all. The fact that it hadn't retreated upon seeing Zaetar reinforced the second — and the fact that it hadn't advanced immediately suggested some level of containment was being exercised. The Abomination wanted to attack. The Skaven was holding it back.
For how long, I didn't know.
"A humaaaaan… Delicious." — he said with the voice Skaven had — high-pitched, drawn out, with the quality of something that was enjoying itself before starting. — "What is that little pet beside you?"
Skaven weren't particularly intelligent when it came to knowledge that strayed from traps and venoms. If he knew my little pet was one of the most powerful creatures that had ever existed in the universe, he wouldn't be so animated. But I wasn't inclined to correct that misunderstanding with words.
"Zaetar. I'm going to perform the ritual — give me cover."
"Understood."
The problem was that Zaetar was a summoning — without his own armor, without weapons beyond his own hands. I had known that from the beginning and had calculated the variable. The Skaven had also noticed that. Before advancing, he took advantage of the distance to produce what looked like a crude blowpipe — small, rough, functional — and began firing several darts indiscriminately. Zaetar defended me, interposing his own body with the naturalness of something that didn't calculate the personal cost of a decision, only its effectiveness.
But it was clear from the small size and thinness of the darts that wounding wasn't their primary function.
"Careful, Zaetar — those darts must contain venom."
Even with his speed incongruous to his size, Zaetar couldn't stop all the darts while standing still in front of me. Some began to embed in his body, creating pus bubbles within seconds — faster than any venom I had seen documented. That wasn't easily accessible venom. It was the kind that took time to develop, to refine, to test — something only that race mastered with that depth. I felt envy for an instant. With a venom like that, many of the fights I had waged would have been little more than walks. But at the same time I understood why the Skaven, structurally weaker in almost every physical aspect compared to humans, were a race with a higher rank.
When Zaetar began to stagger and show weakness, the Abomination advanced in total rage and loss of control — surprising even the Skaven on top of it, who seemed to lose control for a few instants, the reins torn from his hands with the brutality of an animal that had decided patience had reached its end while the Skaven, trying to regain control, dropped his blowpipe. But instead of finding a dying opponent, the Abomination came up against the wall of a Primordial.
Zaetar didn't retreat.
The Swamp Abomination's bites and scratches also carried venom — however Zaetar seemed to be deliberately instigating that closeness. The dizziness had disappeared the moment of contact. What had appeared to be imminent collapse transformed into a frantic exchange of blows and bites, with Zaetar renouncing protection to go straight for damage. I hadn't ordered that. He had calculated it himself — had understood that the only way to give me space was to become the irresistible center of the Abomination's attention, and had done so with the coldness of something that had no fear of what would come after.
The swamp creature had wet fur — which was evident in the great Aqrabuamelu's difficulty in gripping it. Fast. Lithe. Impossible to hit directly. But at the same time too occupied to allow the Skaven to attack — he was holding on with both hands just to avoid being thrown by the uncontrollable mount, his entire body focused on short-term survival.
It was the opening I needed.
"AHHHHH!"
I felt my blood boil. Blood Magic was finally active. My vision went red at the edges. It wasn't panic. It was fuel.
"Let's fight together, Zaetar."
With me entering combat, the equation changed. The mount was fast, but it had no eyes in the back of its head. I took advantage of its blind spots while the sword cut — the creature's flesh was soft, without natural armor, just the wet fur that slipped under the blade but didn't stop it. All that mobility had a cost, and the cost was resilience. It could move better than anything that size had any right to move. But it couldn't absorb damage like something built for that purpose.
"Cursed human — AHHH!"
The Skaven on the mount began to show desperation. The voice had changed — not the high-pitched quality, but the tone. Fear had entered where arrogance had been.
That was the signal.
"Zaetar. Advance."
Zaetar advanced without concern for the wounds accumulating across his body — with the specific indifference of something that had been summoned for a function and didn't stop fulfilling it just because the pain had arrived. Trading damage with the Abomination that bit and scratched while being viciously impaled by the scorpion bulb, his function was simple: give me time while I went after the real enemy. The Abomination was the distraction. The Skaven was the target.
The small rat was still processing why the opponent seemed to be sacrificing itself. Even in that moment, he didn't understand that Zaetar was a summoning that had no fear of succumbing to pain. There was no fear to calculate. There was no preservation instinct to overcome.
I took advantage of the second of confusion and advanced along the side — not in a straight line, because a straight line was predictable, and I had understood that the Skaven was more observant than his initial confidence suggested. Along the side, through the angle his mount didn't cover — without the blowpipe, he was an easy target, and while his only trump card was too occupied to protect him, I advanced with a leap driving the fully extended retractable sword deep into his chest.
He seemed genuinely surprised.
There was something almost melancholy in that — the surprise of someone who had built a solid plan and had found a variable that wasn't in the plan.
"A… summoning?"
It was tragic to realize he had taken so long to understand the obvious — that the great Aqrabuamelu wasn't a mount, wasn't another Lord, but something that had chosen to sacrifice itself because it had been made to do that.
Zaetar succumbed to the venom and continuous damage from the Abomination, which had entered Berserk Mode — and disappeared before managing to do more. The dissolution was quick, without drama. He simply stopped existing in that space, leaving the Abomination to thrash about alone, disoriented by the sudden absence of what had been occupying all its attention.
But not before fulfilling his function.
I had brought the Skaven down from the mount and run him through with the bronze sword. On top of the creature thrashing on the ground, stunned by the blade buried in its chest, I leaned my body forcing it even deeper — I could feel the blade passing through organs and still I pushed deeper. A guttural cry came out — not of pain, but the kind that emerges when something realizes it has lost before understanding how. The greenish blood began to flow, filling the ground around me, while the creature looked at me with the expression of something still trying to understand what had happened.
The Abomination, without its Lord, went still for a second — the Berserk Mode had been exhausted, and without direction, without the familiar weight of the rider, it simply stopped. It looked at me. Looked at the body. And retreated.
Not out of fear. With the indifference of something that had lost its reason for being there.
✦
[ You have killed the Skaven Lord. Do you wish to receive your epic item? ]
Where the frightened mount had retreated upon losing its Lord, a small chest appeared — causing the creature to freeze in place, as though the object were something it recognized and didn't know how to process.
"So that was it? Yes, I accept."
As soon as I accepted, the creature transformed into a small wooden figurine. The shape was the same as the Abomination, but the material clearly communicated it was an active item — the wood had markings that weren't decoration, they were mechanism. I put it away quickly and summoned Zaetar again while drinking the magic potion given by Cindra. I wouldn't economize — the Skaven's and its mount's agility would be a real threat to anyone with a Status below mine, and if there were more of this enemy on the other paths, I needed speed. If my team died too quickly, I would die with them.
"Zaetar. Advance as fast as you can."
The great Aqrabuamelu covered almost a kilometer in a few seconds to the enemy temple while I ran in his footsteps. The corridor's silence was different now — not the silence before battle, but the silence after, when the danger has passed and the environment hasn't yet decided what to be. I preferred the silence from before. It was more honest.
I believed there would be no traps on the open path, but preferred to err on the side of caution. As I climbed the steps and caught sight of the temple, the differences became visible — unlike ours, of clean marble and regular lines, this one was distorted, irregular, darkened. Built by a race that valued function above all else, and that had stopped caring about appearance at some point that probably coincided with the moment it realized appearance didn't kill anyone. There was something almost philosophical about that, if I had any inclination toward philosophy at that moment.
"So it's different for each one."
There was no sign of the enemy. The Abomination had retreated. The corridor was clear. I advanced.
As I advanced, I saw Zaetar retreat and step in front of me — then an arrow hit him in the chest, coming from a place I hadn't identified. The impact was silent — there was no sound of a crossbow string, no sound of a shot. Just the result.
"How… Where?"
Beside the temple was a semi-buried crossbow, the wood darkened by the soil to the point of being indistinguishable from stone. Then I realized I had stepped on a thread thin as a hair — transparent, or nearly so, the kind that doesn't exist to be seen but to be felt too late.
Zaetar tried to move, but couldn't. In less than two seconds, he dissolved.
"What strong venom. He died before reaching the temple. Cunning sons of bitches."
I had almost made the mistake I had warned the group not to make. I had underestimated the enemy after a victory — had carried with me the confidence of the previous combat into terrain that didn't deserve it. The trap had been there from the beginning, waiting with the patience that was the Skaven's true weapon. I had passed over the thread without noticing because I was too confident to notice that they might have created a contingency plan for exactly the type of situation I was in.
Pride was a different venom, but no less effective.
"Damn. I still have so much to learn."
I summoned Zaetar again, draining almost all my magic. This time I asked him to go ahead, slowly, with attention to the ground. He advanced with the care I had asked for — but care had a limit when the thread was the size of a hair and the floor was dark.
Zaetar died again due to another trap as well-hidden as the first — which forced me to use the last magic potion. All the profit I had obtained from the mission had been consumed within it. It was almost elegant, from a purely objective perspective: the Skaven hadn't needed to defeat me in open field. They had simply waited for me to arrive where they had prepared.
But summoning Zaetar one last time was enough to reach the enemy temple. When I raised my hands, the message arrived before I finished the gesture.
[ CONGRATULATIONS — THE HUMAN GROUP OF LEADER CINDRA WOLF HAS DEFEATED THE SKAVEN AND THEIR LEADER ZUBU THE NORTHERNER, WHO HAD ACCUMULATED 38 CONSECUTIVE VICTORIES. ]
[ CONGRATULATIONS — THE HUMAN GROUP OF LEADER CINDRA WOLF HAS DEFEATED THE SKAVEN AND THEIR LEADER ZUBU THE NORTHERNER, WHO HAD ACCUMULATED 38 CONSECUTIVE VICTORIES. ]
[ CONGRATULATIONS — THE HUMAN GROUP OF LEADER CINDRA WOLF HAS DEFEATED THE SKAVEN AND THEIR LEADER ZUBU THE NORTHERNER, WHO HAD ACCUMULATED 38 CONSECUTIVE VICTORIES. ]
The message filled my entire vision — repeated, insistent, like an announcement the system was determined that everyone should see. There was something excessive about it, a celebration that didn't consult the state of those receiving it.
Then it disappeared. And was replaced by another. More intimate.
[ CONGRATULATIONS LEONIDAS AQUILES FOR BEING THE FIRST HUMAN TO COMPLETE A LEVEL A+ MISSION AT LEVEL 1, ON THE FIRST INCURSION. YOUR NAME WILL BE WRITTEN IN THE COLOSSEUM'S BOOK AND YOUR REWARDS WILL BE MAXIMIZED. PLEASE WAIT… ]
"Level A+."
I went still for a second.
Had I processed those words correctly? I had read about classifications. A+ wasn't a level that appeared in newcomer missions. It wasn't a level that appeared in missions I would have chosen, even with months or years of experience. It was the kind of number that existed in another conversation, in another context, for another kind of person.
"What the hell was that."
✦
When I came to, I was back in the mission hall.
The transition had been instantaneous — without warning, without the interval of disorientation I had felt upon arrival. The system had simply brought me back, and the hall I had left as a neutral environment now had a different texture. The smell arrived before my eyes finished focusing.
Blood. Pus. The chemical and sickly sweet smell of venom that had reacted with skin.
The scream arrived before I could identify where it was coming from.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Cindra. Several darts embedded in her arm and leg — not fatal in themselves, but the venom on the tips didn't distinguish wound depth from wound importance. Screaming desperately under what appeared to be Desmond — and I say appeared to be because his face was completely swollen, with several arrows filling almost every part of his body, creating pus and blisters that covered him entirely. He wasn't in the position of someone who had fallen. He was in the position of someone who had chosen to stay where he was.
"My love… My love…" — her voice came out between sobs, without control, with the quality of something that had been compressed to its limit and had leaked through every crack at once. — "I'm sorry. What have I done."
I had won.
But the group had paid too high a price.
It took me a few seconds to map the hall completely. Sabina was hunched against the wall, open wounds on her stomach, her hand pressing the torn fabric with the automatism of someone whose body had made the decision to survive without consulting consciousness. Rondon was standing, but with the posture of someone functioning on inertia — the wounds accumulated all over his body appeared to have been made by something large, probably another Swamp Abomination, the claw marks too wide to be from Skaven and too deep to have been from any mere weapon.
They had encountered what I had encountered. Just without Zaetar.
"Cindra…" — Sabina said with the voice that had no more fury or hope, the kind of voice that appears after both have been exhausted and what remains is only fact. She rose slowly, advanced toward the woman while holding her own insides in place with one hand and the wall with the other. — "He's dead."
"Forgive me… My God… What have I done."
My joy had cooled before I finished processing the environment. The reality of the Oasis was this — you could win overwhelmingly and still have people at your side die. It wasn't a contradiction. It was mechanics. It was the kind of thing I had read and had processed as abstract information, and that was now in front of me as something concrete with smell and sound and expressions that could no longer contain themselves.
"Hey — you. You have the healing ability."
Rondon approached me. There was something different in his tone — not urgency, but pressure, the kind that comes from someone who had already considered the options and had arrived at the conclusion that there was only one. By the wounds, it was clear he had been hit by the Abomination's teeth and claws — even without venom as strong as the Skaven's darts, it was a sentence without treatment. The skin around the marks already had the wrong coloration.
"Heal me." — he knelt. — "You're the only person who can. We used all our potions on those creatures."
Sabina was in the same situation. The only way they had held on so long had been by using the potions — but it hadn't been enough. They knew about my healing ability. I had demonstrated it, and demonstration in the Oasis was permanent information.
"Of course…" — I stopped. — "I can only heal two of you with what I have. Do you have any more magic potions?"
The hall went cold.
There was no immediate answer. Just the processing — that specific interval in which information arrives and the brain examines it from every angle trying to find an interpretation that isn't the one it just received. But the mathematics was simple and had no alternative interpretation. All three were gravely wounded. All with venom. All looking at me with the expression of those who had just understood that the mathematics didn't add up. None seemed to have more potions. Like them, I had needed to use the magic potions to reach the temple — and I had only two heals remaining.
Two out of three.
Rondon began to laugh.
Not the laugh of someone who had found something funny. The laugh of someone who had reached the limit of processing and the body had chosen that response before any other.
"I can't believe you condemned us, you bitch." — the voice had changed completely. There was no longer the tone of someone asking. There was the tone of someone who had decided that asking was no longer the right category of action. — "How could I have been so foolish as to trust you. At least do us this favor and die for us."
He advanced toward Cindra.
Sabina advanced against him — but the Wind Shield stopped her before she got close. She hit the invisible field with force, opening her wounds further, and the impact threw her back against the wall. Cindra didn't try to retreat. Didn't try to defend herself. She was looking at Desmond's body with the eyes of someone who had understood that her actions had consequences. When Rondon finally got too close, she closed her eyes.
Not in panic.
With the specific calm of someone who had decided that what was coming was acceptable. Almost like a relief — the expression of someone who had carried the weight of a decision for too long and had reached the point where any conclusion was preferable to continuing to carry it.
The dagger entered.
Pierced the heart.
"No… What have you done."
I was in shock — not from the act itself, but from the speed. Rondon's madness hadn't grown gradually. It had arrived all at once, like the venom in his blood. There was a threshold I hadn't seen crossed, and when it crossed, what was on the other side was no longer the person who had knelt before me asking for healing.
"Rondon… Why?"
"Shut up — it's all her fault. We need to stay alive. I can't die."
The tears on Sabina's face became something else as she looked at Cindra's body. It was the transformation I had seen described but never observed in real time — the transition from sadness to fury not as a choice but as a chemical substitution, one thing pushing the other out of the way because there wasn't space for both at once.
Not sadness. Not despair. Distilled fury — the kind that doesn't need time to transform into action.
Her bird leg came down on Rondon's head before he could properly defend himself. The speed was incongruous with the wounds she was carrying — but fury of that kind doesn't consult the body.
A dry crack filled the hall as Rondon's head split and sprayed blood already the wrong color.
And then she turned to me.
The face had changed again. The fury was still there, but there was something more — the need to put it somewhere, to transform what had happened into cause and effect, into responsibility that belonged to someone.
"Why did you take so long." — it wasn't a question. — "Every second you wasted in there cost a life out here. This is all your fault."
The foot advanced toward my head — this time clearly slower due to the wounds.
I didn't move to escape. There was no decision in that — just an absence of movement. I simply held the leg in the air — with the strength the Aqrabuamelu had left me as inheritance, matched against the absence of strength of a dying person, I held it without effort, without intent beyond stopping what was coming.
"How… DAMN! LET ME GO! I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! ARGH!"
She began spitting blood. The venom had reached places where there was no coming back. Moving had cost too much — had accelerated what was already happening, drained what remained of her reserves. Her hands still tried to reach something. Her eyes still had the hatred intact.
"I… ARGH… WISH I HAD NEVER MET YOU."
She fell. Her eyes now lifeless still fixed on me with hatred and disbelief — the expression frozen at the last conscious moment, fixed on me with a permanence that hadn't been chosen.
The hall fell silent.
Four motionless bodies. One won mission. And me standing in the middle of both.
I had arrived with the intention of proving my worth. I had proved it. And what remained after was this silence, and these four, and the growing awareness that there was a difference between calculating the risk and feeling what happened when risk became result.
✦
[ Congratulations — all items received will be given to the sole survivor. Do you wish to register the victory? ]
"No." — I said. — "Just get me out of here."
The answer had come out before I decided to give it. It wasn't rational refusal — it was the reflex of someone who didn't want that to be recorded anywhere with the word congratulations beside it.
I didn't know what to think. I hadn't expected anything that had happened — not an A+ level mission, not the venom, not those senseless deaths. I had entered as a curious newcomer and come out as the sole survivor of something I was still processing.
When I left the Colosseum, the air outside smelled different. Not better — just different, the kind of difference the body notices when it has spent too long in an enclosed space. I couldn't hold back the vomiting.
"Lord… What happened?"
I raised my eyes. Morgana and Livina were in front of me, out of focus in a way that wasn't a vision problem. I put my hand near my face before understanding why.
I was crying.
There was no decision in that either. It was just what was happening.
"Lord…"
"Morgana." — my voice came out different. Smaller, as though the space it normally occupied had shrunk. — "I… need to rest."
My feet were weak. The tears didn't ask permission and I had stopped trying to deny them because denial cost energy I didn't have.
"What happened, my Lord?"
"I… won. And everyone died anyway." — I stopped. The next words took longer, because there was something in the formulation that I needed to get right, that I needed to say out loud to understand if it was true. — "This place isn't hope — it's the cradle of the desperate."
"That's not true, Lord." — Morgana said with the firmness of someone who had learned that certain compassionate lies do more harm than direct truth, even when direct truth hurts more in the immediate. — "You wouldn't be capable of such deceit, I know you. It wasn't your fault."
"If I had gone faster… If I hadn't summoned Zaetar so many times, I…"
"If you summoned him, it was because you needed to. The others are not your responsibility."
"Then why do I feel like they were?"
The question hung in the air. It wasn't rhetorical — it was genuine, the kind that doesn't seek an answer, but seeks company in the absence of one.
Morgana was silent for a second. Livina advanced in my direction with the step of someone who had decided that movement was necessary before having decided what to do with it.
"Because that is what we feel when someone dies near us." — her voice was softer, but no less direct. There was a difference between the softness of someone who didn't want to hurt and the softness of someone who had learned that hurting gently was sometimes the only honest service available. — "Guilt. But I say this as someone who has been through it — nothing here inside this hellish place is your fault."
I advanced through my territory stumbling and confused, still reflecting on her words while the girls followed me. The path to the room seemed longer than I remembered. Livina laid me on the bed. There was no hurry in her movements. There was intent.
I felt fragile.
I felt pathetic.
I had entered the Oasis with the coldness of someone who had calculated every variable and was prepared to accept the results. I had read about death here. Accounted for it, filed it under acceptable loss before anything had even happened. And I was lying in bed crying because four people I had known for less than a day had died — and one of them had died looking at me like it was my fault.
Maybe it was.
"Sleep." — Livina said, already rising with the same care with which she had laid me down. — "Everything is fine out here. Tomorrow you will be well and everything will be different. You are better than you think — if I went through this and overcame it, you will too."
She went to the door where Morgana was looking at me. Stopped with her hand on the handle. And without turning — as though some things are easier to say when you don't need to sustain the gaze of those receiving them — said the last thing before closing:
"On the other side of guilt is power."
The door closed.
The silence was different from the corridor's silence. It was the silence of a place that belonged to me — with my things, with the smell I had created by inhabiting it, with the specific dimension of something known. It should have been comfort.
It wasn't.
But it was what I had.