Debt of Blood

Seeing my former comrades and friends was weird but I had no choice but to get over it. Get my head in the game, after all, I had debts to pay.

We got inside the Dungeon A. The walls were flickering, almost similar to what happened in the Merging Dungeons. Mazze waved us forward with all the enthusiasm of a man herding pigs to slaughter.

“Group Seven, take the second floor. Move!”

We did.

The air changed the moment we crossed the threshold. Of course,, the Dungeon Boss was dead, so we didn’t have to worry about facing it, but if Mazze was right about the Rovers, we needed to keep our guard up. My collar tightened with every breath reminding me I was enslaved.

The second floor’s corridors bled light from their walls —strips of glowing fungi, smears of violet crystal. And there was the smell. Coppery, wet, the stench of bodies.

“Stay sharp,” Thomlin muttered, his hand hovering over the runes stitched into his robe.

Why, I was just about to say that. He truly has changed.

There were a total of six corpses, divided among the three of us thralls. We carried them one by one, Thomlin and Grinn watching our backs the whole time.

That was it for Dungeon A.

A few moments later, Mazze and the rest of the thralls moved out with bodies in tow. A Mage from one of the groups, stood up and twirled her staff, the ground rose. 

Her incantations weren't loud — it was layered. Each syllable rattled against the air like falling gravel. The ground heaved. Fissures spidered outward, jagged spires rose, arching toward one another until they knitted into a hollow dome of seamless stone.

“Terra Gate,” Thomlin muttered under his breath. “An Earth-Rune speciality. By marking a ground on the receiving end, it can transport anything in a matter of minutes.”

We moved the corpses into that hut.

A low hum reverberated through the dome. Slowly, the structure sank, grinding downward as if pulled by unseen chains. In less than a minute, it vanished completely — corpses and all — leaving only the faint scent of turned soil behind.

“Where did it go?” Grinn asked, eyes wide.

“Probably to the Guild,” Thomlin said grimly. “They keeps the bodies until they are reclamed or burned. The Guild doesn’t waste time burying the dead....”

The next two dungeons blurred into routine: the stink of rot, the ache of lifting cold weight. We were attacked by a Spinehound once but Thomlin burned it before it could cause damage. 

It wasn’t until we got into Dungeon D that our luck changed.

The sixth floor was wide, its ceiling lost in shadow, fungi glowing faint turquoise across the walls. The air was rank — like wet socks and blood left too long in the sun.

And then came the sound.

Wet tearing. Bones snapping.

We rounded the corner and saw it.

A Rover.

It was crouched over a corpse, its jaw unhinged like a serpent’s with the movement of a chainsaw, grinding flesh and armor into slurry. Its body was humanoid — four arms too long, two of them had pincers at the end, bent at the wrong angles, tendons exposed outward. Its skin shimmered, translucent in patches, showing organs pulsing inside. Eyes — too many of them — rolled toward us, glowing a sickly green.

It hissed.

And the sound wasn’t animal. It was almost human, like someone trying to force words through a broken throat. 

The collar at my throat flared hot and the seal on my chest seared. My knees nearly buckled, but I forced myself upright, teeth clenched.

I reached instinctively for my pack —gone. Weapons—gone. What can we do? Should we make a run for it?

The Rover dropped its meal. Blood dripping from its jaw in thick ropes. Then it moved — crossing the space between us in a blur that left streaks of afterimage in the air.

Thomlin didn’t hesitate. “Hold the line! Grinn, with me!”

His staff whipped off his back in one clean motion.

Grinn unsheathed its sword — with a click, it split down the middle, becoming two distinct swords. One had a serrated edge, jagged like a beast’s teeth; the other curved slightly, its surface etched with shallow channels that glowed red as Thomlin’s fire poured into them.

The Rover lunged.

Grinn ran up the wall, spinning his swords with a skill I didn’t remember him having, then jumped, catching the beast’s claw with a flaming cross-strike. The shriek that followed drilled into my skull, the collar reacting and tightening against my neck. Sparks lit the walls like fireworks.

“Go for the arms!” Thomlin barked.

I tried to move, mistaking the order for me, but Grinn had already vaulted behind the Rover, slashing its sides. The creature's arms and torso fell to the ground, twitching, ichor spraying from its upper body. But the thing didn’t die. Instead, the severed arms and body crawled towards the fungi on the walls and began to shift, dragging meat back tothe  skeleton, knitting new arms in seconds.

I stood frozen at the edge of the fight, throat dry, collar burning. Instinct screamed at me to move, to grab a rope, a tarp, a damn stick, anything. But what could I do? Without my pack, my shovel, resonance? I was useless…

“It’s regenerating!” Thomlin’s hands moved fast – a rune glowing on the hem of his robe as he slammed his staff against the ground. A circle of flame surged outward, floating on the air before it shot, separating into five burning orbs converging on the Rover’s legs. The beast recoiled, its ichor bubbling as the flames burned.

The two of them fought like they’d rehearsed this a thousand times. Grinn ducked under a claw and came up slashing into the Rover’s shell; Thomlin’s staff ignited instantly, fire exploding into the exposed wound until the creature shrieked and stumbled, ichor boiling away in foul-smelling clouds.

They were amazing. In a group of five, three were utterly useless and I was one of them. 

But there was no time to wallow.

The Rover’s torso split open, its shell cracking apart, spraying ichor and from it spilled a swarm of black shrimp-like things with too many legs, eyes glowing violet. They hit the ground with wet slaps, skittering across the ground, sparks flying as their claws dragged against the turquoise glow of the dungeon.

My blood iced. “Thomlin…..BEHIND YOU!”

He half turned and evaded one of the creatures, then another, he hit with an elbow before ultimately getting slammed by two more on his blindside. BOOM! He got sent to the ground hard, the flames on Grinn’s sword faltering as a result.

I moved without thinking but Grinn’s voice snapped across the chamber like steel. 

“NO. Stay back. You’ll only get in the way. We can handle it.”

And he meant it.

The farm boy that was puking his guts out at the sight of blood was gone. This Grinn stood like a tempered iron, weight in his stance, certainty in his swing.

And me? I only had a collar.

While Grinn was handling the creatures, I moved to help Thomlin but even he didn’t need me. He muttered a spell and the swarm of creatures exploded and he rose to his feet.

But what he said next really shocked me.

“…Ash,” he rasped. “Can you help me with something?”

I didn’t have an answer so I just laughed that sounded more like a cough. As if being a spectator wasn’t hard enough.

“Help? With what? Look at me. No resonance. I have a dog collar for God's sake. I’m about as useful as my fellow thralls right now.”

The words broke out harsher than I meant them. My chest still burned with the seal or was it rage. My throat still itched from the freaking collar. Maybe I was jealous.

Since coming back, everyone had found their place, by everyone I mean, like my one real friend who knew about my struggles. My power. It was good but now it feels like I regressed to an extra, unimportant. Or maybe I was finally facing the truth, that Ash Rook had always been a background character— borrowing power from the dead, pretending to matter.

But Thomlin just shook his head, sweat dripping down his face. “I get it. You feel shitty. Like no matter what you do, it’s not enough. You probably want to give up, which I’m the worst person to tell you not to. But what I know from that day wasn’t the power you had or anything like that. It was my blood stumps dripping on the ground while you dragged me through filth to the Guild…. when you didn’t have to. That’s who I need right now.”

“Well, that's not me anymore.”

He smiled, his eyes locked onto mine. “In any case, I don’t need a warrior, Ash. I’ve got Grinn for that. What I need is a scrap picker, someone who sees the field for what it is. Who knows where to step, where to cut, where to stall. You have been to many dungeons before and you have always survived because you think and plan.”

I froze. What could I even say to that? Something about Thomlin was different, down to the way he talked.

“What exactly are you asking me to plan?” 

I admit, I’m curious.