Ank

The previous fight with the mummy gave my sister and I enough [Experience Points] to level up twice, bringing us to [Level: 54], and helped me to realize I needed more defensive power too, so I invested my spell points in [Summon: Fake breastplate] and [Summon: Fake Helmet] - just like the fake weapons, these armor pieces were greenish and translucent, and with no decoration, but they simply warped around my body, and still had a lot of openings.

My sister also invested in medium armor skill (my summons were light, but she was already using light armor, and the added weight from combining my summon with her usual equipment brought everything to the medium category), and also looted the long axe. Her flail ended up being stronger by 20 full damage points; the [Dungeon] weapon dealing 55 in base damage (ignoring all the movements learned every time Hunah invested in one of her proficiency, and hit harder than the base damage by itself, so she gave it to me.

In any case, after we rested from the encounter, we proceeded to go back to the cobblestone road, and follow it, however, this time we walked by the cover of the vegetation encircling the road from both sides, so to expose ourselves less, and not be surprised again.

After a few hours, and an increasing number of ruins, it became clear that the road didn’t lead to civilization at all.

“What is this?”, I asked, as we strode through long-abandoned stone buildings that started to sprout by the side of the road. Moss and roots grew up the lonely standing walls, preserving it somehow. Whatever decorated the interior of those buildings didn’t have the same luck, for the only signal of their past existence was vestiges of their decomposition.

People didn’t just abandon settlements, even if they ended up destroyed multiple times, there was always orders from some high ranking random to rebuild and repopulate the place, for some reason that mere isolated villagers like my sister and I, and everyone we lived with, didn’t really bother (or couldn’t) learn.

“Perhaps…”, Hunah started, looking pensive. “While you asked the caravan guards what have they killed in their way to our village, I’ve heard from the merchants about places of great treasures.”

“And?”, I ignored the stupid implied message that trying to learn more about monsters was useless.

“All around the world, strange ruins that seem to share a unique culture can be found; they vary from small villages, to cities, to castles and even grandiose palaces. It’s said that they contain great treasures, but… also great dangers. The places that aren’t completely controlled by powerful undeads, are infested by gigantic nests of a variety of monsters. Therefore, few actually risk exploring them. Because these ruins seem to have been erected around the same time, they’re named ‘Lost Age Civilization’. It is common knowledge.”

“No, it isn’t”, I pointed the obvious fallacy, to what Hunah simply sighed and shook her head, as if she didn’t have the energy to discuss something like that.

“Anyway, we’re lucky… Well, kinda”, my sister continued. “If this is part of the Lost Age Civilization, then it must be a small village.”

I immediately stopped, and, eyes widened, in disbelief, I had to confirm:

“This? A small village?”, I opened my arms, gesturing to everything around me; the incredibly well-constructed road, the large houses, and the hundreds of buildings in the very heart of the jungle, all of which, when in their prime, must have been thousands of times more impressive than anything our old homeland had; fuck, even comparing to the big city (my sister and I traveled to it a couple of times) those ruins we then were in sprawled for a larger territory and exhibited signals of more impressive constructions.

Still, Hunah nodded, replying:

“I know, impressive, right? I, too, never imagined something like this… But if this is a Lost Age Civilization ruin, it just has to be a small village. Otherwise, the mummy we fought before would be equipped from head to toe with the strongest magical items ever made by mortals, including almost miraculous healing potions.”

Not long after our little talk, my sister and I reached what seemed to be the center of the abandoned “village”. The buildings there were surprisingly well preserved, forming a circular plaza around a round stone tower; it was the largest construction around, with four floors still standing, even if the upper half of the tower seemed to have split from the rest of the building an unknown amount of time before our arrival, and rested by the side of it. There were, also, five more roads quite similar to the one we were following, all of these paths leading to the tower.

It was a place that looked good enough that, with just very little effort, people could be living there again. A place that looked good enough that, to have sex there would feel just like doing it publicly, but without any of the actual real dang-

“Ank”, Hunah called me back to reality. “I think we’re surrounded…”, cold, dark reality with five mummies coming from the remaining roads all at once.