Morning came unannounced, and light bled across the floorboards, climbing the side of Brill's bed, washing over his face. He stirred, a hand rubbing at his cheek, fingers finding that patch of dark veins snaking beneath the skin.
'Unbreakable…'
The word stuck in his mind like someone repeating it over and over right next to his ear when he was alone.
He was lying in bed, eyes half open, and his thoughts tumbling over themselves in that messy jumble that made him feel so out of place.
'If I'm unstoppable… unbreakable… then I can be happy.'
It sounded beautiful. Too beautiful, really. Something that had to be for someone else.
'A goddess said it… so it's true… right?'
His fingers touched his mark again, then lifted, then pressed again, like he thought he could pull the truth out from under his skin.
'But… to kill…'
That didn't fit nearly as well.
He wasn't old enough to truly work all of that out, not even close. Anyone else his age would have rolled over in their sleep and thought of food, or games, or anything but this chaotic mess spinning around inside of his head. But Brill had never known how to shut out that noise; his father, his mother, the weight of the steel in his hands before he'd even known how to hold it correctly, something of it had stayed with him, just enough to make the problem worse.
He didn't want to kill anyone who did nothing to him, because that's how Idemay raised him. "Kill or be killed." But only to those who deserve death, or want to kill him. Which was the only way to sure live in a world like this where danger lurks around every corner
BANG!
The door was flung open hard enough to make the hinges rattle, and the puppy Hellfrit stood there, a whirlwind of fur and sharp points, clicking his claws as he skidded to a halt near the side of his bed.
"Get up! It's time to hunt and brutally kill monsters!"
Brill blinked at the chaos, pulling himself up slowly from the thoughts that still clung to him like a shroud and rubbing his eyes.
"Monster hunting?"
A memory ignited beneath the exhaustion; he remembered when his father had nudged him awake before the sun rose, speaking of tracking beasts in the woods. Then he'd trailed behind, observing, listening, mimicking him the entire time, watching his father hunt the monsters with ease.
Before he could respond, the sound of heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway and Idemay barreled in, her hair disheveled, one sleeve half rolled up, and her finger already aimed at Hellfrit like a pointed weapon.
"This mutt is showing off! Keeps saying he's the strongest calamity or some shit! We're heading out to the Lapnes Forest, come on, let's see if the rat has any teeth."
The Lapnes Forest sat just past the edges of the safer routes outside Cassady, a dip between the rolling hills and stretches of rugged ground where roots broke through the soil as if they were struggling for freedom.
It didn't hold the same dread as the Grudlen Woods, not by a long shot, but it wasn't friendly, not in the slightest. The place seemed to take delight in reminding trespassers of their true place if they lost focus, a hum that said, "you don't belong here."
In some places, the trees grew so close together that they blotted out the sun. Beasts resided in those pockets of darkness, creatures who had learned to move like shadows, to blend seamlessly with bark, to melt away into the undergrowth without so much as a rustle, observing much longer than they were noticed. Hunters from Cassady still hunted in its depths, for it was familiar enough to survive, yet wild enough to be considered worthy.
It had become a place to prove oneself, a proving ground where new adventurers, fresh fighters, even families with contract Divine Beasts would venture forth, pushing themselves just far enough to learn but never stupidly far. And some people would train their Divine Beasts out there.
Brill yawned, raking a hand through his already messy hair, the events of the previous night clinging to him in a dull, sluggish ache that the night had failed to fully erase.
"Can I eat something first? I'm hungry."
The instant the words left his lips, Idemay's demeanor changed completely, as if a switch had been flipped in her mind. She stepped forward, her arms wrapping around him in a spontaneous hug, her hand pressing against the back of his head. "You must be starving. Good morning to you too."
Brill remained silent for a moment, then leaned into her, his own arms coming up around her without conscious thought, holding on just a bit tighter than he normally would.
Hellfrit stared at them, his ears twitching. "The switch is insane..."
…
The Lapnes Forest didn't greet them with anything dramatic. Trees stood packed together in a way that blocked most of the sky, their trunks thick and scarred from years of claws, blades, and things that didn't leave clean marks. The ground dipped and rose, roots breaking through the dirt like old bones, and the air carried that damp, earthy smell that clung to clothes.
Brill walked a few steps behind Idemay at first, one hand brushing against the brown scarf wrapped around his neck, fingers catching on a dried patch that hadn't quite come out. His father's scarf. It hung a little too long on him, the ends bouncing against his chest as he moved, but he didn't adjust it, and Hellfrit looked at it.
Hellfrit trotted ahead like he was on some grand parade route, nose twitching, tail flicking with way too much confidence for something that still looked like it could fit under a chair or in someone's pocket.
Scattered through the forest, far enough apart that voices didn't overlap, other people trained with their Divine Beasts. One pair stood across from each other with a wide gap between them, a man barking commands while his beast, a six legged creature with plated glass like skin that refracted light into colors, darted in tight circles before launching itself forward at destructive speed.
Another group further off had a woman sparring directly against her beast, a towering horned creature with bark-like armor, each exchange sending bits of dirt kicking up around them as they tested each other.
Nobody stood close to each other, not even close enough to hear mistakes. At least a mile between each group, like an unspoken rule everyone followed without needing to say it out loud.
Further down the way, Hellfrit passed a cluster of wandering skeletons, their bones clacking as they stumbled through the brush, empty eye sockets pointed in no real direction.
Hellfrit didn't even slow down.
"Yeah, no. Boring," he muttered, barely giving them a glance. "I'm not wasting my super strong magic on them. It won't be impressive enough."
Idemay stared at him like she was deciding whether to kick him into them herself. "You can't be serious."
"So serious," Hellfrit shot back, lifting his chin like he'd just made a noble decision.
Brill didn't say anything at first. His hand went back to his cheek again, thumb pressing along those veins again.
'Unbreakable…'
'Holy Land…'
He couldn't take his mind off of it, and blinked hard and shook his head a little, like that would clear it, then looked toward Hellfrit.
"What's your… um… affinity?"
Hellfrit didn't even turn around when he answered. "Flames. Sounds boring, right? It's not. The flames I have devour things. You just gotta see it for yourself."
Idemay leaned down a bit, lowering her voice near Brill's ear. "I say we ditch the mutt."
Brill let out a quiet laugh, shaking his head. "I think he'll just find us easily if we abandon him, ma."
Idemay froze for half a second, then snapped her fingers in frustration. "Crap. I forgot dogs can sniff good."
They kept moving. A pack of small goblins with stretched faces and too many teeth scattered when they noticed them, their bodies moving in bursts as they vanished between the trees.
Hellfrit barely glanced at them.
"Nope."
A little further ahead, a cluster of horned rodents gnawed at something half buried in the dirt, their backs twitching as they tore at it. One of them looked up with its nose quivering.
"Nope." Hellfrit smugged.
Then a group of lanky, moss-covered creatures dragged themselves along the ground, their limbs bending in ways that didn't look comfortable.
Hellfrit sighed. "Still no."
By the third rejection, Brill and Idemay had both leaned against each other without realizing it, their shoulders touching as they watched him pass by yet another group like he was some kind of picky noble inspecting food.
"This is getting annoying," Idemay muttered.
Brill nodded. "Yeah."
Off to the side, another group of adventurers fought something larger, their Divine Beast stepping in with a shot of glowing gold energy that wrapped around its claws before striking. The impact sent the creature they were hunting tumbling across the ground, the air around it flickering with that unmistakable divine influence.
They moved past it, deeper still. Eventually, the sounds of other people faded completely, and then they saw them.
Three adventurers stood in a loose circle, weapons drawn, their attention focused on a group of blue slimes bouncing happily across a patch of open ground. The creatures made soft, wet sounds as they moved, their bodies wobbling with each hop, completely unaware of the blades pointed their way. They looked so happy.
The adventurers themselves looked ready. One held a blade of ice with a grip wrapped in dark cloth, another had a grimoire open in one hand with markings dancing across the pages, and the third stood with a long spear resting against his shoulder, armor pieced together from mismatched metal and leather.
Hellfrit slowed down. "Mmmm. There's a crowd here too," he said, stretching his legs one by one like he was preparing for something important. "And I guess I'm tired of walking. I'll fight these slimes."
Brill blinked at him. "Aren't slimes immune to fire?"
Idemay nodded immediately. "They are. Just like dwarves, Palta, and dragon-humans. These slimes are no different."
Slimes didn't burn the way other creatures did. Their bodies absorbed heat, dispersed it, turned it into something harmless before it could do real damage. Fire rolled over them, sank into them, then faded like it had nowhere to latch onto. It made them frustrating to deal with if fire was all you had.
Hellfrit waved a paw dismissively. "Don't worry. I'll make easy work of them. I didn't give away my entire arsenal of abilities. Don't wanna spoil the fun. Makes it more badass when the fighting starts."
Idemay crossed her arms, a smirk tugging at her mouth. "Aw, don't hurt the poor slimes too bad."
Hellfrit strutted forward like he'd been waiting his whole life for this exact moment.
The adventurers noticed him almost immediately.
One of them frowned, lowering his blade slightly. "Huh? What's a puppy doing here?"
Hellfrit didn't break stride. "Out of the way, Minotaurs! A calamity is passing through!"
The man blinked, then looked past him, his eyes landing on Idemay. Recognition hit fast.
"Former Knight Captain?!"
One of the adventurers stepped forth and put his boot before Hellfrit's path, his blade held low but ready, its edges gleaming a dim grey through the trees.
"This is our bounty, pup," he declared with more assurance than I think he felt. "It's not going to you, not while Idemay is watching."
Hellfrit stopped; at least, he did after he failed to immediately step past. He did, slowly. As if only just then remembering that he should bother with lower creatures.
"Fine. Let's make it turn-based." Hellfrit raised a paw, as if preparing to make a game out of it and announce its rules to an unsuspecting populace. "You go first... Wait. No. I go first, then I go second. Then you go next."
The adventurer's mouth hung open. "No way."
Then he spoke to his group of Adventurers, "We don't know what kind of slime this is, so I'll be the one to take charge."
His comrades said, "Got it."
He turned away from the puppy fully then, scoffing as a weak aura of power danced along the edges of his blade. His two companions began to spread out just enough to not get in each other's way, their focus fixed upon the blue blobs of goo that bounced along across the clearing.
They looked harmless. Utterly stupid and unthreatening the way they all jostled against one another.
Hellfrit asked Idemay, "They have magic, but I don't see any Divine Beasts.."
Idemay replied, "Relic type Divine Beasts. Their weapons are their Divine Beasts, transformed into them."
The one with the sword rushed ahead, ice magic on his blade, the first strike was a clean one.
It cut straight into the goo, but it didn't come out.
The steel was getting eaten, inch by inch, into the slime's body. Confusion twisted the adventurer's face as he tried to pull back.
"It's a—!"
Too late.
The slime yanked, even though the goo didn't look nearly strong enough to do that, it didn't look strong enough to do anything at all. But the man's whole body lurched forward and he was yanked off his feet as the goo grew and stretched around him, higher and wider, swallowing his whole head in one disgusting bite of its mass. The man's scream began, clear and was muffled, then silenced, as the blob completely consumed him.
His body remained visible within the ooze for a few seconds as it thrashed about within the goo, his hand still outstretched before him pressing into the sides.
Then the sound changed. A sloppy sounding tearing noise and something tearing that should not be tearing at all rang out. Splashes of blood erupted, flung across the dirt, into the trees, onto the boots of his still-stunned companions. The slime was eating the man inside of him, his bones and body breaking side to side and upside down.
His companions exclaimed:
"C-Cliff?!"
"No!"
The goo slowly subsided, and the thrashing stopped, nothing about the goo itself gave any indication that Cliff was no longer moving inside of it. The blue color began to slowly darken, in some places becoming almost black as bulges appeared within the goo's surface as though its contents were shifting themselves around piece by piece.
It began to change; Limbs formed from the ooze, first uneven and strangely thin, and then a face, in a horrid parody of a human being. The skin half formed, half remains, semi-transparent blue, and then came the eyes, both pitch black, tears of slime goo trickling down from them ceaselessly.
It stood there, wavering as it came to full height, holding Cliff's blade in its own hand. The ice magic on the edge still flickered as if unaccustomed to the flesh it now resided in.
"...Cliff! Can you hear me?!" The other adventurer yelled at the construct, voice cracking in a way that must have mortified him.
Idemay took a small step forward, just enough for Hellfrit to hear her. Her voice dropped, losing any trace of mirth. "Leech slime. Those things consume, they consume everything about you, everything you have, they retain. And a Relic type Divine Beast will think they are their hosts if their true host was consumed, like this adventure here."
Hellfrit said, "Something in me told me these things weren't normal slimes."
Neither adventurer hesitated now.
The first drew his spear and thrust it forward, the tip erupting into orange flame before cutting through the air in a fiery trail. The second threw open his grimoire and spoke words that danced on his tongue, sparks flying from his hands before streaking out as blasts of electric blue.
The re-constructed Cliff moved without any of the clumsy awkwardness of something newly born. He dodged the first attack by flipping his body, the spear merely grazing his side, and then met the next wave of energy with Cliff's blade, scattering sparks across the dirt.
And then he closed the distance with a speed that shocked both of them.
"Huh?!"
The spearman barely managed to dodge before Cliff's blade slashed across his torso, a bloom of blue ice spreading across the wound. He gasped and stumbled, and the creature didn't slow down.
It pivoted, bringing Cliff's blade around his neck in a clean movement that was all wrong coming from anything less than a trained killer.
SLASH!
The adventurers neck split as the construct slit it in half, blood spraying all over the grass under them.
The second adventurer yelled again, raising his hand again, more power gathering in his fingertips this time, far more volatile than before.
The thing that used to be Cliff charged straight into it.
The lightning strike hit him squarely and he faltered for only half a step, parts of him warping where it hit, before continuing his charge. The blade plunged straight into the Adventurers chest, the blue ice spreading through flesh and bone in an instant and freezing him in place.
Then everything stopped, both bodies fell with a soft thud at almost the exact same time, and there was a moment of silence.
And then the other slimes gathered. They pushed against the corpses, climbing over them, their bodies pressed together as the familiar process began again. The bodies were being devoured, their remains absorbed as the slime's surface contorted once more. Faces appeared, limbs pushed out, and black eyes blinked open.
Brill hadn't looked away once. He knew. All too well. Leech slime wasn't something you encountered often, they didn't advertise themselves, and by the time you saw them doing that to a person... Well. Ice was the best against them. Not that it could actually kill them, but it could stop their ability to do that. Fire didn't even matter, and blades... Not after they got close. It was a horrible thing to witness, but it was the only sure way to know what you were facing.
Hellfrit let a grin spread across his face, exposing those small, sharp teeth.
"Finally...!"