With the convenience of a dreamlike transition, with an illogical vault over the barriers of time and space, Vance found himself at the Sunshine Tavern. It was noon, but he headed to the kitchen as he normally would for a night shift. His body moved on its own as if to fulfill a duty—as if it had been programmed to follow a pattern that was reinforced by repetition. On his way to pick up his chef’s beret, Bianca greeted him with a warm smile and told him to give it his all. The tavern keeper gave him a sharp look from behind the bar. Then he was standing inside the kitchen with Nathan.

The young Pyromancer washed the vegetables at the sink and talked about the numerous adventures that he would one day embark on. And Vance smiled at him, teased him, and told him to grow up. After all, on average, it was much safer and much more lucrative to become a city guard or a merchant or even a priest. These were the “flameless jobs,” as people called them, ones that gave humans a long, fulfilling life. A city guard retired at 65 and received a pension until death. A merchant amassed enough gold to live the twilight years without financial anxieties. And a priest rose in rank to become a bishop, cardinal, or pope with much more power and influence.

Meanwhile, adventuring was only accompanied by exaggerated fanfare and public interest. It offered the benefits of fame and prestige, but the dangers of its reality were almost always ignored or romanticized: the gossipy newspapers talked about gilded heroes who vanquished heartless monsters and claimed bountiful treasures, but they seldom mentioned the nameless victims who died in remote caverns or the infirm graybeards who sold every last piece of rusty equipment and still ended up as beggars on the streets. Who would want to read such depressing tales? And who would want to concede defeat, even if small, to the forces of Primordial Chaos?

“It’s like Death paid them for advertisement,” Vance said, as he fried a fish.

“Look who’s talking! You’re Mr. Desperate-to-find-a-party,” Nathan retorted, moving from the sink to the cutting board. “It’s in our blood. We’re the kind that takes bigger risks. You know, make it or break it. That’s why it’s called adventuring in the first place. It’s not for everyone.”

“The economy needs young people to die.”

“That’s super dark, man!” Nathan cringed. “I know lots of guild jobs come from greedy merchants, but we sometimes get the chance to help out normal people. I got really happy the other day when I saved a farm from moles. Really felt loved and appreciated.”

“Whatever floats your boat.”

“You’re all grumpy ’cause you’re still level 5.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, man, just wait till your First Ascension. Everything you did will be rewarded. The whole world’s gonna feel different!”

Vance laughed; Nathan smiled.

Such a beautiful day it was. The weather was balmy. The sunlight was bright and prevalent, and the air was sweet-smelling—filled with the aromas of spring and the multifarious fragrances of the kitchen spices. And what strange peace it was that enveloped Cromsville. Peace. Quietude. Calm. A pavement flower was swaying in the breeze. A sleepy farmer was lying in the back of his wagon, with a straw hat covering his tanned face. The city squares and churches remained empty. Even the customers who ordered the food were vanishing with yawns.

Bianca appeared at the kitchen window and said, “Vance, could you come for a second?” And the Adventurer Slayer followed her outside. And the childishly envious Pyromancer trailed them both. The three stood in the sunlight and stretched their arms as if to embrace the needy world. Bianca smiled and held Vance’s right hand. Nathan smiled and held his left. The silence persisted with their fingers intertwined. And it was from there, from among the interlocked fingers, that a second warmth emanated and suffused the air of spring with a summery feel: Lima syndrome.

“Here it comes,” Bianca smiled.

“Phew! Finally!” Nathan said. “I’d gotten tired of pretending.”

“Pretending?” Vance asked.

But there was no answer.

Slowly, the sound of wheels creeped within earshot. With every moment, it grew louder and more distinct, and after only a few seconds, it had filled the peaceful world with a repetitive noise that was dissonance incarnate.

A white prison wagon turned the street corner. It was being pulled by two white horses, and its driver wore the distinctive uniform of the Inquisition—an ivory three-peaked biretta, a milky short cape that parted triangularly at the front, and snowy linen robes with a black trim and with a half-shaded circle drawn on the chest. Above the driver’s seat, there was an opening through iron bars into the heart of the mobile prison, and opposite this eerie opening was the Door of No Return, as the impassioned monks and priests called it in their fear-mongering sermons—a metal double door with ring knobs and a one-sided keyhole, decorated with a drawing of an eagle devouring a snake.

“Adventurer Slayer, what is there to fear when you have pledged yourself to Thurvik?” Bianca said, her voice turning into the one heard at the shrine. “Tell me. Is it the Church you fear? Is it Thurvik you fear? Or is it …”

With a grinding roar, the prison wagon stopped in front of the Sunshine Inn. The Door of No Return opened on its own, and its creak beckoned to Vance, who wished he could melt into nothing or evaporate away in the heat of the sun. An escape, however, was impossible, because Bianca and Nathan held his hands with unhuman strength. They were the manacles that had been missing from his arrest, and they walked forward and pulled him behind them. He tried to struggle, but there was little to be achieved with resistance. They climbed into the back of the wagon and dragged him through the metallic maw of justice.

***

The door closed with a gut-wrenching clank. Vance flopped on a long wooden bench, sandwiched between Bianca and Nathan, and he ceased to resist. He no longer tried to pull himself free; he no longer sought the freedom of the sunlit world. And in the partial darkness, in the faint glow that still found its way through the barred opening, he saw Raine sitting on the small bench opposite his. The keeper of the guild archives held an infant in his arms, a baby that was only six months old and whose body was wrapped in white cloth.

The prison wagon began to move. It rumbled through the streets and shook to the rhythm of the pebbles under its wheels. An unseen pungi played freakish songs, and the world began to reel, twisting and dancing to the nauseatingly repetitive themes of the hypnotizing music. In this uncanny madness, Bianca, Nathan, and Raine turned into bodiless voices, and they whispered into Vance’s ears. So faint were the words they uttered that they were impossible to hear, yet Vance heard them through the deafening music with inexplicable clarity. They weren’t external but embedded inside him like his heartbeats.

“When did you start considering the Church your enemy?”

“When did you first violate the Decree of Amirani?”

“How many adventurers have you killed?”

“How many accomplices have you recruited in the course of the murders?”

“Would you like to summon any witnesses to your defense?”

“Do you deny your crimes despite the abundance of evidence against you?”

With every harsh question, the voices overlapped more until they merged in the end into a fourth voice that Vance had never heard before. He blinked once, and the prison wagon vanished into nothingness. A courtroom spread around him, its floor tiles and furniture flipping into place like checkers. Behind the judge’s bench, on the highest chair in the room, an inquisitor sat with a gavel in one hand and a holy book—Faith and Filiation—in the other. Only these two hands were fully visible, however, while the rest of the inquisitor was only a gradient of shadow—brightest near the waist, darkest at the head.

“Answer!” the inquisitor shouted. “Silence will not acquit you, sinner!”

“ ‘Fuck you!’ That’s my answer!” Vance said.

“Still silent?” the inquisitor said, hammering the bench once.

As the dull sound of the wooden gavel reverberated through the courtroom, Vance realized that the high-seated official wasn’t talking to him. In the abject seat of the defendant lay the infant whom Raine had been carrying. And it was at this thoughtlessly innocent baby that the inquisitor was shouting.

“If you will not speak, then the Inquisition will call its witnesses!”

And the witnesses were called.

Raine was the first to be summoned to the stand. When he appeared, he had a shiny halo above his head and two angelic wings growing out of his back. He pointed at the infant, who was laughing joyously and rolling sideways, and said with blind assurance, “It’s him, Your Holiness. There’s not a hint of doubt about it. He blackmailed me into submission. He threatened me with my past. All this time I was waiting for a chance to report him. And the papers that I now submit prove he murdered Benedict and his party.”

“What do you say in your defense, sinner?” the inquisitor said.

The baby laughed and rolled on its seat.

“No remorse, Your Holiness,” Raine said, adjusting his rimless glasses. “The sinner who appears before you feels no guilt. He forgot the value of human life and made a deal with Primordial Chaos.”

“This is a serious allegation. Do you have proof?”

“Yes, Your Holiness. It’s time to reveal the details of this demonic pact.”

Goats dressed as guild officials surrounded the baby on the defendant’s seat. They spread their gloved hooves wide and cast spells that shouldn’t exist. They bleated incantations that made no sense, and swayed with the moon-madness of intoxicated mystics. It was a cultic ceremony from the unwritten ages. Round and round they went, with their hooves joined and their eyes rolled up. At the end of the ritual, they dropped on the ground and lost consciousness in unison. Then a personless voice echoed through the courtroom and revealed shocking information: the hidden details of Vance’s class were exposed.

Class Report

Adventurer Slayer

The monsters fear the brave, and the brave fear you.

Rarity

Esoteric

Ascensions

0

Class Abilities

None Unlocked

Class Effects

Condemned You cannot lose the Curse of Thurvik (Bane). Guiltless Your Mana regeneration rate increases to 10 points per second. Murderous You do not get any EXP when you kill a monster, but you get 5 times the normal EXP when you slay an adventurer (a human who has killed a monster in the past 30 days). Killing other creatures, such as orcs and elves, awards normal EXP but may have unexpected side effects. Two-faced Only you can see your real stats. Others see fake level 5 stats, which are associated with your previous class. Your previous class has been set as Spectral Assassin.

“The sinner’s true class has been revealed, Your Holiness,” Raine said. “The Curse of Thurvik is the vile contract that he wrote with Primordial Chaos. This is how he exchanges the life of innocent adventurers for forbidden power. And Two-faced is the reason why his Chaos Factor appears as zero.”

“I see … Having provided us with this invaluable class report, the witness is hereby pardoned forever and will not be deemed an accomplice.” The inquisitor hammered the bench with his gavel. “You may leave the stand and return to your duties at the Federal Guild. The next witness should step forward.”

The goats on the ground burst into flames and turned into ashes. Raine faded away into non-existence, just as fog does when a cold morning has progressed into a sweltering afternoon, and Bianca, out of all people, replaced him at the witness stand, appearing with an equally ethereal fade-in. Her tired eyes were covered with a crimson blindfold. Half of her mouth was sewn shut, upper lip attached to the lower with a bloodsoaked thread. And she spoke with the other half, which had the unintentional appearance of a distorted smile.

“It’s him, Your Holiness,” she said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

“What is your relation to the sinner?”

“I’m not really proud of it … but I gossip a lot. And Vance … The sinner used me. He used me to build a reputation as a struggling adventurer. I was rooting for him all this time. I thought he was working as a cook to pay for food and bed. I thought he was building a new life from zero. But it was all lies.”

“Are you confident?”

“Yes, Your Holiness. The sinner wanted to trick us. He wanted to be known for the exact opposite of what he was … to make sure that he would be called a coward or a loser but never a murderer.”

“The Inquisition recognizes the witness’s testimony as an honest account of the sinner’s deception. May Amirani bless your pure soul, young lady, and may you never be a victim of such deceit again. You may leave now. Get some rest to recover from these shocking events … Next witness.”

Bianca faded away from the stand, and Nathan replaced her. His clothes were smeared in blood. His throat had a fatal cut. And from his back, a short spear protruded like the bony remnants of a destroyed wing.

“It’s him, Your Holiness. No doubt about it,” he said, scratching his hair and then tightening his bandana over it. “He used me to collect information about the guild. Oh, and I’m the one who told him about the Seventh Moon Temple. I said no one goes there ’cause of the moths. Never realized he’d make it his base.”

“I understand that you were the one who led the Inquisition to this base.”

“Yes, Your Holiness.”

“What did you find there?”

“The unthinkable, honestly. The sinner was living with a real goblin. Yes, a goblin! And there were lots of human skulls. He was collecting them. No idea why. But well, you know, a psychopath does what he does. Anyway, he deserves the harshest punishment. Needs to get his deserts.”

“I assure you that justice will prevail.” The inquisitor hammered the bench. “Now that the sinner’s motives and methods have been detailed, it is time to hark back to his villainous past. It has come to our attention that he is also guilty of egregious crimes against his own blood, against his innocent family and kin. The last witness should step forward.”

***

Nathan disappeared from the stand, and a replacement materialized from thin air. It was Vance’s hulking father. He stood in leather boots, black pants, a gray tank top, and a smith’s apron. A shaggy black beard covered half his face, while a straight nose and two downturned eyes occupied the other half. His hair was short, with a balding pattern, and his ears stuck out as if there had been a stark error in their attachment. He looked impatient and disgruntled, and his bearlike hands were clenched tight.

Looking at these hands, Vance felt fear for the first time.

“You’re a bloodsucking elf!” his father shouted. “You destroyed everything I worked hard for! You ruined everything we had! And you left your poor sister to clean the terrible mess you made!” He walked around the witness stand and approached Vance, with angry steps that sounded like strikes on an anvil. “You abandoned us for that stupid dream of yours, and look where it’s gotten you! You should’ve listened to me. I knew what was best for you. I knew you couldn’t make it as an adventurer. You had a chance to lead a different life, to make me proud, to save our family. But you blew it with your disrespect and selfishness!”

Vance backed away, but his father grabbed him by the collar.

“And now you’ve even tarnished my name,” his father said, his foul-smelling breath blowing into Vance’s nostrils, his yellowish teeth appearing with a snarl. “Everyone will say that I raised a goblin! A murderer!” He slapped Vance, whose face turned red but never lost its defiant look. “You destroyed our family!” He slapped him again. “Was it worth it? Was anything you did worth it? Answer!”

Vance remained silent.

“You turned your back on us!”

He tried to speak, but another slap sealed his mouth.

“You killed Jana!”

His knees failed him, but he hung by his father’s hand.

“You deserve to die!”

“Indeed, sinners must die,” the inquisitor said. “When Amirani created this world, he also created its natural law. Those who defy it have no place among us. To doubt the Decree is to sin. To submit to Chaos is to sin. The Church has brought prosperity to this land—enlisted the orcs and warded off invaders. And our just rule will last forever. Our just rule sentences you to death, sinner.”

The gavel fell thrice on the judge’s bench.

The door of the courtroom opened. Pushed and prodded by his father, Vance picked up the infant that had lain on the defendant’s seat. He walked out of the room with the baby in his arms. In the afternoon sun, in the courtyard outside, he dropped to the ground and embraced the baby and cried and cried and cried. It was an explosion of all the emotions that he had held back. He told himself that nothing mattered, but he still cried his eyes out. And he felt that he had been abandoned on an island of savages with the helpless infant in his arms.

“Why are you crying?” his father shouted. “Get up!”

Vance was pulled off the ground and forced to stand up. Pushed forward, he found himself standing in front of a guillotine-like machine. A heavy blade was reflecting the sunlight with ominous sparks, but it was attached to the crossbar in an inverted position: the sharp bit was facing the sky, and the blunt side was facing the earth. Such an orientation meant that it couldn’t behead its victims; it couldn’t even cut through their flesh. A condemned sinner would face a slow death resulting not from beheading but from battering.

“Put it in there!” his father shouted.

“No,” Vance said.

“I said put it in!”

After a merciless punch in the face, Vance was forced to put the infant in the guillotine-like machine. The baby giggled and looked up with strange curiosity, unaware of the harrowing end that awaited.

“Pull the lever down.”

“No,” Vance said. “You know he’s innocent!”

“Do it!”

“But you’ve never stopped blaming him for what happened!”

“Why do you never listen? Pull the damn thing down!”

“You made him feel all this guilt and shame for nothing!”

“By Amirani, what have I done wrong raising you?!”

Vance was pushed away. He fell in the dirt and looked up as blood oozed out of his bruised nose—the aftermath of the earlier punch. His father rotated a mechanical arm until two safety clamps were open. Then he pulled a lever, and the blunt side of the blade descended upon the defenseless infant. It hit with paralyzing force, but the infant only laughed. It was Vance who experienced the pain. It was Vance who felt the bones of his neck breaking. It was Vance who squirmed and struggled for his next breath.

“Everyone has a place in the world. You should’ve known yours. A hammer can’t replace a chisel. A swage can’t do what a mandrel does.”

His father rotated another arm and brought the blade up to its mechanical zenith. Then he pulled the lever that released it, and as blistering as before, it plummeted onto the infant. More laughter echoed while Vance felt the brunt of the excruciating pain.

“Why are you still breathing? Why are you alive?”

The blade climbed to the sky and fell again.

“How many lives will you destroy in the name of self-preservation?”

Up and down.

“How long will you continue struggling like a damn elf?”

Vance endured another pang of numbing pain. Then he stood up, soaked in blood, mangled at the neck, white-eyed and white-faced. Equip Spectre. He held the spectral dagger as though it were his final lifeline, and he walked toward his father with slow but steady steps. Right. Left. Right.

“You have no future! There’s nothing left!”

With a final lunge, Vance sank the dagger deep into his father’s chest. A look of horror and disbelief appeared on his father’s face, for even a stony-hearted sinner wasn’t thought capable of patricide—the infamous crime of the ancient Manyeheeven Kings. The dark-green cracks spread vertically and horizontally until they had formed a spiderweb. The dying father reached with his bearlike hands for his son’s neck, but it was too late to strangle the ingrate. Cursing his children and swearing to haunt them, the father collapsed on the ground. Then there was darkness.

“It’s over,” Vance sighed in relief. “The whole thing is finally over.”

But then the infantile giggles echoed again. The darkness suddenly receded. And there he was on the ground as his unflagging father rotated the machine’s arm. Up and down. A pang of intolerable pain. He got up and stabbed his father again. Patricide. Darkness. He sighed in great relief. Then he was on the ground again, and his tireless father was rotating the accursed arm of the machine. It was a loop of suffering. A never-ending vicious cycle of crime and punishment. Punishment and crime. Crime and crime.

“A boring nightmare, if I do say so myself,” Amirani smiled, sipping tea in the shade of a nearby tree. “Don’t you think so too, Jana?”