12. Refuse

The black color, a shapeless body resembling nothing but the ugliest of things, and their quiet slow slithering makes up for the majority of Undeaths around the Dervie sector.

They call it, ‘the Shaper’.

Their black color blends well with the darkness, often fooling the poor inexperienced torchbearers into trouble.

And when they get into trouble, they have to deal with the Shaper’s strengths. True to its name, their body can shape into anything that resembles ‘violence’, namely weapons to claw through flesh or smash your skull.

Their flesh and limbs interconnect with each other like a sticky jelly, making them able to shrug off attacks, and they never know the meaning of wound, constantly regenerating. Such properties make them aggressive, unwilling to even back away.

An Undeath that can ambush in darkness, and an ability to make themselves unkillable, a horror in this dark world it seemed.

However, this Undeath has a glaring weakness.

Their soft body, which helps them to change shapes, is vulnerable to cutting attacks. Their bodies are in fact quite soft. Like other living things, they are made of a body and a soul, separating them both will guarantee their death.

While they are able to resist blunt and piercing attacks, a hit to their body causes them to stagger in pain. When this happens, they will be unable to move.

But, doing one of these is not enough. Beware the lone warrior of light!

Sharp blades you have such as Ruler won’t simply be able to defeat the Shaper without dealing against their guards.

Impaler, the Aider, and the likes of darts too won’t be able to harm them.

Thus, you must devise a tactic to defeat them.

How?

The best Lighbringers always rely on ‘Teamwork’!

By striking them with darts or Impaler, immobilize these foul creatures, then cut them down in a single stroke, else they will regenerate!

With these tactics, you will be victorious.

But, never let those pride blind you. The experienced warriors are always wary of all situations!

When the Shaper dies, they leave a foul stench and a dirty body. When you have the opportunity, spend that time to clean yourself.

…

After all, we are dealing against the curse of neverdeath.

-Tommy, Guide To Be The Best Lightbringer Vol. 1

***

(x37)1/4

I just beat the first Undeath with my own weapon… Well, not really a beating, but a practice to disable an Undeath called the shaper.

It was the strangest thing I’ve done here. I started by throwing the darts Regan bought from Vol before. This thing is small, but it’s effective.

With each blow they take, they paused briefly, perhaps spending the time eating the darts, but they will retaliate. The enemy then forms a weapon with their limbs to attack me.

However, their attacks are somewhat predictable. They only attack when they are immobilized, so I moved away and dodged it easily.

That is if I have enough room to get away.

What if there’s not enough space? I switched to my Aider.

When I hit their body, the impact gives the feeling of punching a jelly.

I hit them again, their body stopped moving, and they formed a weapon again. This time, what I do is to parry their weapon, causing them to spill out black goos and have their limbs retract.

When all is done, Regan steps in to slice the shaper into two.

And that was the basic of Undeath combat training.

The process surprisingly wasn’t difficult. I need to hold my anxiety and hit the enemy hard enough to stop them.

The weight and weapon training somewhat helps me in that battle. My arm has definitely gotten a little bigger than before.

I have to say, the awful drinks I had before helps me to build up some kind of resilience. The black goos and the smell now do not seem too demoralizing.

Still, I wonder why I am not as afraid as before.

…

As we go deeper, we encounter more Undeaths along the way, and the factory gets even more complicated to navigate. This causes us to move slower, but we’re pretty close to our destination.

We have to cross many small dark rooms, walk over small pipes, and climb ladders. The Shaper is especially good at coming out of blind spots. The only clue to detect them is to shine light unto them. If the light looks to be blocked by something strange, chances are it's them.

In battle, my job including Oskar is to make these Shapers stop moving, to give Regan easy time to kill them. Two people can do this job, while one of us fights off another Undeath. So far, we are doing pretty well. The small spaces help us defeat them one by one.

Regan and Oskar are experienced with this kind of stuff. Oskar never misses their attacks, and Regan’s face never flinches even when black goos dirtied their face.

Looking at them, I still need to improve myself. I need to prove that I can be useful too.

***

As we walked on the bridge, a flashing light came from a distance. This time, it behaves differently, as if it rises from below.

[ o o o I I ] it reads. That means hurry, or rescue.

Regan: “That’s Thorne. That means we’re close.”

Regan then pulls out a blue ‘Flare Gun’, fills it with a powder, points it up before pulling the trigger, causing a burst of smoke to come out… Then,

Nothing happens?

Ann: “What are you trying to-”

Suddenly, a sequence of flashes blasts from above, giving the same kind of signal as Flash Coder.

[ - - o I I ] means OK.

Regan walks to me to show the gun.

Regan: “Fill it up with these grinded powder, then you pull this bigger prime trigger. The bottom side you pull it for cross signals.”

Ann: “Prime trigger?”

Regan: “The [-] and [o] light is what we call prime signals.”

Intriguing.

That means signals such as [ - - o I I ] or [ o o o I I ] are considered prime, if I am not wrong.

Prime, huh? Does that mean it's common knowledge around here? They don’t seem particularly hard because only two signals is used ( [-] & [o] ), compared to signal with [x]

There is something else I want to ask.

Ann: “Why don’t we use Flash Coder to reply back?”

Regan: “If you use Coder, they can’t see it. We use this gun when there is an obstacle blocking the way. It is also the courtesy for the recipient to use the same signal tool as the sender.”

Different situations, different tools. Not only that, we have to understand the signals too.

I’ll have to study hard.

Anyway, we continued our journey. The rescue is coming.

***

At last, we finally reached our destination after climbing the stairs.

In an open ground, Thorne seems to be tending to the man who is lying on the ground.

Thorne: “You guys came. Come carry this man.”

Regan: “Ugh… The guy’s unconscious? Have you checked this man’s head?”

Thorne: “It’s fine, no head injuries. The heat is still there, too.”

This man appears to be healthy with no visible injuries, despite being unconscious.

Is this what every rescue looks like?

That man looks to be half bald with orange hair, has eyeglasses, and wears some kind of white uniform with pockets. Beside that man lies a brown satchel. I peered for a bit and found a bunch of papers inside. This man might be someone who works in some kind of research, like Jevannah.

This man’s uniform and the satchel seems to be a more complex design compared to plain robes we use.

The description looks to be quite fitting.

From outside of this city and a planner… I’m going to assume that this man is Seco.

Thorne: “So, who carries this man?”

Oskar: “...I cannot carry without letting my Chopper go.”

Regan: “If I carry this man on my back, I cannot fight.”

Thorne: “I need to find a new path. There are more Undeaths that I’ve anticipated.”

That leaves to…

Ann: “How about I do it?”

Regan: “No, no. We cannot let you do that. We don’t want you to exert yourself.”

Ann: “Huh? Why not-”

Regan: “You are not strong enough.”

Huh? No way. After all of my training carrying matoto fruits… It’s still not enough?

Thorne: “Nobody’s willing to carry? I think we should leave this man behind-”

Regan: “Shut up MUTE! Let me think about it.”

Thorne: “Huh? What is your problem?”

Regan: “My problem? My problem is why don’t you carry this man on your back?”

Thorne: “Tch, I said I need to find a new path!”

Regan: “Look at this MUTE, wasting people’s time again!”

Thorne: “You just like to mock me, aren’t you? And we have Oskar here. Just throw away your stick.”

Oskar: “No way! Who will disturb the Undeaths?”

Ann: “Guys, calm down!”

Thorne: “Tch! Why I teamed up with you useless lots!”

Ann: “Please, enough of this!”

Regan: “And you are useless as always, MUTE!”

Ah, damn it. My words cannot reach them. The three of them now argue with each other loudly. There’s no stopping them.

There’s nothing I can do with them, so I searched the place for a bit, and found something at a nearby building.

A small amber looking thing sticks to the tiny hole on the floor. It resembles the thing at Herith’s shop. They are hard to touch.

The shiny amber color, the little white crack details… I’m allured to it. Maybe this thing can be consumed… So I pulled that amber stick.

It snapped.

Then, I licked that stick… And it completely surprised me.

It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted! This sweet taste, no wonder about it, it’s the ingredient for the better matoto drinks! I think Fervil called it Forongi block.

I put that forongi block in my pouch, and looked for another of these things.

Soon enough, I found another one, but the color’s a bit greyish. It still has that amber color, so I pulled this forongi block… And it completely surprised me.

When it snapped, it released the most awful smell! Much more awful than dead Undeath!

Regan: “Hey! What are you doing?”

Ann: “I thought this was a forongi…”

Regan: “You IDIOT! That one’s contaminated. This is not good.”

Ann: “I don’t understand… Why do you sound worried all of sudden?”

Oskar: “...You didn’t know? The smell attracts Undeaths.”

Crap. This grey forongi is a trap!

Regan: “I don’t like the feeling of this. We gotta move!”

Oskar: “...Let’s go back to where we came from.”

Regan carries that man on their back and I take that satchel with me. We then walk quickly to the stairs to find out…

…That the Undeaths are already here! They came here so quickly!

Oskar: “The path’s blocked!”

Thorne: “Tch, I warned you guys. I’ll go find another way.”

Thorne then runs away from us to the darkness… The liquid mark Thorne left behind shows a trail. Should we follow it?

Ann: “What do we do?”

Yeah, what do we do? Should we fight our way through the Undeaths?

The stairs width isn’t enough to fit more than one Undeaths, and I don’t see much of them either. This scenario is like my rescue from before. If we fight through it, we might be able to cut through them.

If we follow the new trail, we might end up somewhere we don’t know and we might be stuck. The thing is, I don’t want to stay here for long.

Regan: “Ann! You need to make a call!”

That’s right, I’m the leader here. The face Oskar makes seems to be battle ready, with their weapon already drawn. Regan too seems to look at the Undeaths intensely.

I think I made my decision.

Ann: “We should fight!”

Regan: “Alright, Let’s do this!”

Regan puts down Seco and draws their Ruler. The three of us will push through the Undeaths.

***

I don’t understand.

We’ve slew maybe more than 20 Undeaths, yet we didn’t even take the tenth step downstairs. They just kept coming.

Regan, who is basically a monster in training, is now sweating like crazy here. It’s no surprise, Regan’s the one that needs to exert more power than us to finish off these enemies.

The pool of black goos covered up until my knees. Moving was a struggle. The goos cover us even more when we push downstairs, but if we take a step backwards, we would lose ground.

And then, we reached the breaking point. Our robes are covered with black goos, the smells are unbeareable… We are getting desperate.

Regan: “ *huff* *huff* We’re not getting… Anywhere…”

Oskar: “There are too many of them!”

We haven’t got injured yet, but it’s better not to risk it.

Ann: “Let’s go back for now!”

We return back to where we began. Back to square one.

It seems we’ve made the wrong decision.

To make matters worse, more Undeaths are coming not just from the stairs, but from around us.

We are going to be surrounded. There’s no way we can fight so many of them at once, and with Regan having to carry Seco on their back, nobody can kill them.

It would be better if one of us could kill the Undeaths…

Then, I saw a light in the distance coming closer to us.

Thorne: “What are you idiots doing standing around here??”

Regan: “Can you at least send us a signal earlier?”

Thorne: “I did! Multiple times! Do you idiots not have eyes??”

Regan: “We’re busy fight-”

Thorne: “No time for this! Hurry!”

We then move quickly, following Thorne in front. There are numerous Undeaths, left and right. Me and Oskar occasionally push them back with our weapons.

Thorne stops at an intersection and points to the left direction.

Thorne: “We need to run from here. I need the light.”

The path on the left seems to be devoid of enemies… And Thorne already has a light. What for?

Thorne: “I need your light, NOW!”

Ann: “Ah, right!”

I share my light to Thorne, while Oskar fends off incoming enemies.

Thorne: “I need more! Hurry!”

Thorne intensely stares at me. The golden thread pulses so fast that Thorne’s cloak glows immensely.

Thorne: “That’s enough! Run!”

Ann: “Now??”

Thorne: “Yes! RUN!”

We then run towards the darkness, but something is strange.

The more I run, the faster I move… Is this the result from my training? Have I ever run this fast before?

Was it my panic state? Fight or flight?

I wasn’t particularly panicked, nor had to worry about Undeaths in this empty road.

What’s more strange is ‘us’. We ran together, at the same speed, uniformly, catching up with Thorne. Even I doubt Regan can run that fast carrying Seco.

As we keep running, we move at an unbelievable speed… As if my legs move on their own. What force did this come from? There’s no way I can run this fast on my own.

Then, I noticed a white stream, a wind or some sort coming from Thorne’s light. When my skin touches it, it feels warm and comforting. My tired arms seem to be relieved of pressure.

Ann: “Ah! Look over there!”

There’s danger in front of us. A large abyss, and there’s no bridge that crosses it.

Thorne: “Now, JUMP!”

Eh? Don’t tell me…

As soon as Thorne jumps, my legs too push the ground on its own.

We leap at a great speed.

My eyes can’t believe it. Below me is an abyss… Above me is an empty sky.

It’s just us, our light, and darkness, as if we’re floating in nothingness.

It’s… Wonderful, and bizarre at the same time.

Moments later, we land our foot on the opposite ground. We didn’t even stumble!

We just crossed the empty, dark abyss, with our legs!

Ann: “What… Was that just now??”

Oskar: “...The power of light.”

Regan: “Don’t rejoice just yet, we’ve got company!”

Uh oh, more Undeaths already here, and there are lots of them. In front of us lies a gate. I suppose the only way to open that gate is to activate the nearby symbols. Is it possible though, with this many enemies?

Thorne: “We need to pass that gate for our exit.”

Regan: “There’s so much Undeaths here… Ann, I need your light!”

Ann: “Alright!”

I summon the rings and share as much light as I can towards Regan. The thread pulses, accompanied by flickering light.

Strange…

Regan: “Alright! Once I open that gate, I need you to push incoming Undeaths away.”

Ann: “Wait, how are you supposed to open the gate, while carrying Seco?”

That’s not possible. Regan needs to put down Seco to open the gate, but there’s too many enemies… Regan will risk getting attacked.

At that moment, I saw light beams being sucked towards Regan’s body. A paper came out from Regan’s body, then floated in front of Regan’s face.

Regan: “THE ANSWER IS THIS!”

That sentence immediately causes the gate to open by itself!

Thorne: “Let’s go! Follow me!”

Wasting no time, we ran towards the exit, pushing away several Undeaths, until…

Oskar: “Behind you! Watch out!”

I turn around and thrust my Aider towards the shaper.

Oh wait.

…I TOLD YOU NOT TO THRUST!

Ack! I forgot about that.

As I try to pull my Aider away, the shaper’s body wraps around the end of my weapon.

Ann: “Ugh! Get away!”

I can’t pull my Aider away, as the shaper slowly eats the Aider! Meanwhile, the shaper forms a weapon on the other limb. If I don’t do something, I’ll lose my Aider and my life!

I turn the grip in the middle then grab the half Aider. I knock the shaper weapon’s away before running away.

That thrust attack costs me half of my Aider…

…

As I ran and evaded enemies in narrow corridors, I saw Thorne and Regan’s light reduced to a small bright light. I shared so much light with them and when they do these ‘power of light’ things… I didn’t know using such power could shrink the light.

When I check the rings, the golden threads seem to be flickering. They blink faster the more distance we cover.

But more importantly, I notice that my light is… shrinking. The surroundings get dimmer.

This affects my mental being. Not even once I was giving the face ‘frightened’ when I was fighting the Undeaths, but now the dread creeps in, even though no Undeaths try to scare me at the moment.

The anxious feeling I was holding up began to burst open.

My forehead became wet on its own.

My heart beats really fast.

The fear is back.

I didn’t notice it at first, but my focus, the sense of touch of mine began to slowly degrade.

…

Have I been pretending to be ‘brave’ all this time?

No, right?

But where is this coming from?

???: “Does it matter?”

A whisper, out of nowhere, speaks to me.

Ann: “Who speaks? Show yourself!”

???: “You revel in this, don’t you?”

Huh?

???: “You will save no one.”

What? No! I already promised to-

???: “You tried to fool them! You pretend to know everything”

No! Get away from me!

???: “You make such decisions for what? To prove your point?”

You know nothing of me!

???: “You just kept denying it. The child of the False Maker even lies to themselves!”

SHUT UP! Begone you evil voices!

???: “In truth, you hated them, right? It’s better to leave them dead in here~”

I SAID SHUT UUUUUPPPPP!

Suddenly, my body hits a wall.

Oskar: “Hey, where are you going?”

Huh?

I’ve been running mindlessly…

Regan: “Hey! That’s not where we were supposed to go!.”

I turned around and saw Regan’s and Oskar’s face. They look really worried about me…

My consciousness and my focus had been so impaired, their voices seemed to echo the surroundings.

This is not good. My body feels shaky everywhere.

I tried the forbidden trick. My shaky hand caused me to spill the entire darts, save for just one.

I groan in pain as I stab my leg with a dart. The pain helped me briefly, before it mysteriously fade away.

The bleeding leg began to shiver in the cold. Blood kept flowing, but I felt no pain…

Then, my body moves on its own, as if a strange power pulls me away…

What is going on?

My vision’s going dark… My head’s getting dizzy…

What am I doing here?

Oh, right. I have to rescue Seco…

‘I’?

Isn’t that supposed to be ‘us’?

Why…

Does it really matter?

How about you tell me…

???: “Why do you even resist? You don’t need to do this.”

???: “Why risk yourself to dangers? You could just stay in the city and live a nice life.”

???: “You don’t know this person, yet you try to rescue them. Are you stupid? What if this person tries to do something awful to you?”

???: “I know! You wanted to lure them out of the city, feed them to the darkness, and claim the reward for your own, right? I mean, they’re such a pain to deal with!

I feel… So tired… So cold… I couldn’t see anything… The voices blur to the surroundings…

Maybe I should take a nap… I’ve done enough, right?

No, sleep is nice too…

I think I should do that.

> [ o - - I I ] W.A.P.