Step. Step.
The crunch of gravel beneath their boots echoed faintly in the still air. The sun had begun its slow descent, casting a deep orange radiance that bled across the clouds like fire sared on canvas. Twilight approached, and with it ca long shadows and a dimming world.
Two n moved along the main street—one with a ragged backpack and a crude bone spear slung over his shoulder, the other gripping a revolver, its chambers empty. Behind the second man was Yuki.
So far, their path had been lined with—cars left abandoned mid-escape, so ramd into buildings, others crushed in head-on collisions. Shattered glass glittered like fallen stars along the roadside, and a silence clung to everything, broken only by the sounds of their footsteps.
Grrr!
A guttural snarl cracked the stillness like a whip.
Both n snapped their heads left. Inside a half-collapsed car, a figure thrashed—skin pallid and bloated, its face a grotesque patchwork of bite marks and blackened veins. A zombie, hopelessly wedged between a buckled seat and a warped steering wheel.
"That’s the ugliest one we’ve seen yet," Tevin muttered, stepping forward.
With a fluid motion, he hurled his bone spear. It sliced through the air with a whistle and struck the zombie square between the eyes.
The body slumped forward.
rek’s eyes glead faintly as the spear wobbled mid-air, then began to hum. It lifted, rotated once, and zipped back toward them, now carrying a faintly glowing essence core near its tip.
"That throw..." rek muttered, catching the returning weapon. "When did you get this good with a spear?"
Tevin grinned and held out a hand to take the core. "Job skill," he said, then added proudly, "Polearm Mastery. I picked the Bone Knight Job. Unique tier. Cos with three starter skills." He swallowed the essence corem "That was just a level two, by the way. Barely felt it."
rek said nothing, turning and continuing down the road. The wraith followed, step for step.
Tevin frowned and jogged to keep pace. "Hey, co on! You’re seriously going to keep your Job a secret when we could drop dead any second? Sharing might save our lives."
rek’s shoulders shifted. For a mont, he didn’t speak—then, as if changing his mind mid-thought, he said, "Weaver."
Tevin blinked. "Weaver? What kind of Job is tha—"
A silver arc flashed.
Yuki’s blade stopped an inch from Tevin’s neck. He froze, every muscle going rigid. His breath hitched, then slowly escaped as he noticed where she was looking.
Three hundred ters ahead, sprawled in the center of the intersection, was a massive dog.
No ordinary dog.
It was a rottweiler, but a monstrosity wrapped in black fur, its bulk rivaling the size of a small car. Thick muscle rolled beneath its hide even as it lay still, sleeping.
6 feet tall and 10 feet long, from nose to tail, this beast was terrifying. It definitely weighed a couple hundreds of kilograms—the weight of a bear combined with the speed of a dog!
Its breath ca in slow, rumbling waves that stirred the dust. One paw twitched.
Not a sound dared escape the trio now.
rek could feel it—the monstrous pressure radiating from the slumbering rottweiler. The energy curling off the mutated beast was dense and oppressive, far stronger than the Type One zombie they had slain at the complex. It was several levels above, perhaps even approaching the strength of a mini-boss.
If he could use that term.
All three of them together might pose a threat, yes—but rek knew there was no guarantee of survival. And when he thought about casualties, only one image ca to mind: his own lifeless body sprawled on the pavent.
His revolver, his one reliable weapon, was now little more than dead weight. No bullets.
On top of that, darkness was setting in fast. Shadows lengthened, swallowing what little light remained. While Yuki might still perform unhindered—whatever inhuman senses she possessed piercing the gloom—Tevin would be at a disadvantage. His youth and speed ant little if he couldn’t see the enemy coming.
Retreat was the only sane choice.
"This way," rek whispered, gesturing silently toward a narrow alley tucked behind a looming skyscraper. One by one, they slipped into the alleyway, moving like ghosts. The two n didn’t take their eyes off Yuki—her movents, her footfalls.
Every step she took had to be asured. Even the faintest clatter could awaken the slumbering giant behind them. And if that happened...
They didn’t speak again until they erged onto a side street, well away from the crossroads and the beast. The tension ebbed just slightly as they resud their trek in the creeping dark, until they ca upon a gas station, its sign barely visible.
"Extre?" rek muttered, reading the na painted across the faded canopy. He raised an eyebrow, lips twitching. The sky had turned a deep violet by now. Soon, the darkness would be absolute.
The glowing slits in Yuki’s helt shone brighter with every passing minute.
rek approached the convenience store, his boots crunching over dried leaves. To his surprise, when he gripped the handle and pulled, the glass door creaked open without resistance.
Step. Step.
Two slow steps inside. Then—he froze.
His pupils contracted sharply. Standing just a few feet ahead of him was a figure—no, a soul. Young, spectral, and burning with fury.
rek turned his head. Another stood to the side. This one older, but no less filled with rage. They weren’t like Yuki. These ones seethed with the primal rage.
Vengeance.
He could feel it—their grief, their anger, their pain. It clung to them like smoke. The air grew heavier, colder.
Just then, the door behind him opened and both Tevin and Yuki stepped in. Yuki imdiately locked onto the souls. Tevin, oblivious, scanned the aisles for anything useful.
"Over here!" Tevin called, kneeling beside sothing behind the counter. rek hurried over—and saw the corpses.
Two n. Bullet holes clean through their temples.
rek frowned. "’They were executed... by survivors.’"
"Howling Moon Gang."
The voice was low and rasped like wind dragging over rusted tal. rek turned slowly. One of the souls had appeared just behind him, its gaze locked on the bloodied body it had once inhabited.
Despite the heaviness of the mont, the ceiling lights still shone brightly, offering a small comfort. Without them, this scene would have been haunting.
Acting on instinct, rek activated his job skill. An ethereal contract shimred into existence, floating between him and the two souls. Elegant yet ancient in design, its runes pulsed with dull light.
"I can help you," rek said gently. His voice was low, firm.
Tevinblinked, confused. He looked at rek, then at the seemingly empty space he was addressing. "Who are you talking to?"
But neither rek nor the spirits acknowledged him.
The souls hovered silently, studying the contract. Vengeance... the promise was written in every glowing line. After a long beat, they both reached forward. The contract burst into red-gold embers, vanishing into their spectral forms like wind-blown ash.
rek turned back to his companions. "I’ll be back shortly," he said calmly.
Without another word, he activated [Veilwalk]—and stepped into a sudden crack in space.
Tevin stared, wide-eyed. "He just—" he began, but no words could follow.
....
Ding!
The soft chi of the doorbell made Veyra, the shopkeeper of Morrow’s End, turn her head toward the entrance.
Her eyes narrowed. "You’ve t more wraiths?"
rek stepped inside, his boots striking the floor. He eased into the chair behind the counter and placed his hands on the smooth, gleaming surface.
"What ti is it here?" he asked, glancing at the ever-burning candles that lit the room—warm light without the sting of smoke.
"There is no ti in the afterlife," Veyra said simply. "To , ti doesn’t exist. But to you... it’s different."
rek blinked, montarily thrown by her voice—it had a soft, almost musical tone that made everything else seem distant.
"I found two more wraiths," he said. "And I already have a design in mind."
Veyra nodded. "What do you need?"
"Sixty ingots of dium carbon steel. A blood horse plu. And so mory cores." rek leaned back slightly. "The wraiths... they have no idea how to fight. Even with powerful shells, they’d be useless."
She stepped around the counter and pulled open a small drawer. "The total cost of your order will exceed the fifteen essence cores you currently have."
rek cleared his throat. "I know. I’ll pay the rest but—" He leaned forward, his eyes locking with hers. "Can you recomnd any mory core to ?"
Veyra blinked. For a mont, the silver-haired beauty looked caught off guard. Then she turned.
"Co with ."
She led him up to the second floor, a circular room filled with floating orbs of varying hues. Each one pulsed softly like captured heartbeats.
She gestured toward a cluster of crimson orbs.
"These contain the mories of Vulture Knights—brutal soldiers, efficient killers with a thirst for blood and carnage. Two level-five essence cores per orb."
"I’ll take it."
Veyra smiled again, a touch more curious this ti. "As you wish. But rember: one sunrise, one sunset. That’s how long you have to pay the twenty-seven remaining cores."
"I accept."
"You’re a daring man," she murmured, brushing past him on the way out. "Either a fool... or soone who knows exactly what he’s doing."
---
Monts later, rek stepped back through the crack, re-entering the convenience store. He found Tevin and Yuki had sealed the windows and door, preparing for the night.
Without a word, rek walked past them, book and pen in hand, and entered the storage room.
He sat cross-legged on the cold floor. From his wrapped package, he pulled out the mory orb. With a deep breath, he squeezed.
It didn’t shatter—but his mind blood with vision.
From above, he saw a battlefield: hundreds of soldiers in blackened steel locked in a brutal lee with a tide of beasts. Steel clashed, blades sang, and monstrous howls filled the air. He couldn’t tell what world this was—it felt too stylized, too cruel, like a war scene ripped from a movie.
Yet through the chaos, his hand moved. The pen danced.
Every scream, every deathblow, every gory triumph poured into his sketch. Line by line, he forged a vision: a suit of armor that was less protection and more declaration.
A dark, jagged exoskeleton, sleek but vicious—plating layered like shards of hate, with cruel angles and ragged edges as though torn from the bones of ancient beasts. Chains hung from joints and hips, so dragging, others coiled like they still rembered what they once bound. The helt bore a curved crown and a narrow visor shaped like a vulture’s beak, glowing faintly with a red pulse—a watchful eye that would never sleep.
’Vulture.’
He whispered the na under his breath.
Raising his hands, the ingots began to float.
Another deep breath—and the weaving began.
The tal grew soft and semi-liquid under his will, folding and twisting into form. This ti, he worked toward dium-weight armor—balanced, not brute. Perfect for mass-producing elite minions, unlike Yuki, but reliable in numbers.
The wraiths he t were corrupted, aning they’ve lost so sense of sanity— the success of this design would all depend on him.
Seconds blurred into minutes. Minutes into hours.
Still, rek remained seated—his fingers moving, shaping, without stop.
Sweat rolled down his brow. His top clung to his back. But he didn’t stop.
At 3 AM, they stood before him.
Two black suits of armor, hollow shells weaved in silence. Their blood-red plus, frayed and flowing behind their helts . In each of their hands: a double-bladed sword, twin edges bound to a single haft.
’Soul bind.’
He pressed a hand forward.
The wraiths were torn from the air and slamd into the armors, their entry silent, like spirits sinking into ancient graves.
The shells lurched back—then stood tall.
A pale white glow burned behind the slits of their visors. The faceplates grinned with jagged steel teeth. Their cuirasses, shaped like fused ribcages, frad their torsos like armored skeletons.
Reviews
All reviews (0)