After five minutes of trying to explain what ‘E-Class’ meant and why they weren’t going to last a hot second in a fight against a demon, Nic surrendered. If he didn’t take the archer and the old man with him, they’d just follow behind anyway, and then he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them.

He did, however, get the details of their Shards and Classes.

The old man - Norman - was a Fool. It seemed like a fairly strange choice with odd abilities, but Nic’s eyebrows raised when he heard what they did. System-Granted Classes themselves only provided information, allowing Natives some understanding of the new world they inhabited. But the old man’s Class ability was Dowsing, the ability to find things through fate.

That alone made him a catch.

His Shards were similar: Balance, a crude oracular ability to judge what might bring good or bad events in the future, and Fate-Weaving, which despite its grand name was only the ability to mark someone or something with a string, allowing the Shard’s bearer to know when they’ve been harmed or need to help.

Norman clearly didn’t think much of his abilities, disgruntled that he’d gotten nothing for head-to-head combat. But Nic was thoroughly impressed.

Although when Nic asked what kind of fortune Norman saw in him, the old man just grinned.

As for the kid, whose name turned out to be Kline, it was a mixed bag. His class was the basic Hunter, which simply let him learn the relative strength of beasts. Clearly he didn’t listen, either, or he wouldn’t have rushed in against the Larvae.

Shard-wise, he was gifted with Growth, which Nic had seen in action, Life-Infusion, which allowed him to slowly layer aura into objects or growing plants to increase their benefits, and Mist-Eye, which increased his reflexes to near-perfection but, according to Kline, left him with an utterly disabling headache.

“Tch.” Sofia tutted. “He has a top tier Shard like that, but he’s entirely the wrong bearer. His headaches are because it runs on Esper, mental energy, and he barely has any…”

Nic nodded.

He would’ve been delighted if someone with Kline’s skills had wanted to join Winterhome as a gardener, but the boy was clearly set on becoming a warrior instead. It was a grim reality that someone needed to put his hopes down.

For now, Nic would settle for showing him a glimpse of what fighting really was.

They made their way through the woods together, carrying torches to push back the ever-present gloom. There were luminous threads of silk that Nic found surrounding the encampment, woven through the trees to form strange, ominous glyphs. These were clearly part of whatever spell had drawn the humans into this shadowy half-place. They lit them up and kept walking.

The trail led them into rocky valleys, the earth rising up into hills of rubble where bits of the old Earth, twisted metal and pieces of bright foil wrapping, drifted about.

Nic was the first to spot the caves. A shallow river carved through the flinty hills and over rusting cars. It had eroded open caves in the base of the hills, their entrances dripping with fanged stalactites. Nic sniffed the air and felt the presence of something demonic.

“Okay. You two- you especially-” He stared down Kline. “Hold. Back.”

Norman nodded, grabbing his young friend and pulling him down into the tall grass. “We’ll keep hidden, ready to take a shot if we see one. And only if you look like you need help.”

Nic nodded. He could deal with that.

Pressing his resonant greatsword against the stony rubble, he conjured the fifth form. It was a huge, heavy blade forged from jagged shards of rock and twisting threads of dust. Its weight was reassuring in his hand, able to punch through heavy armor and defensive stances. Any heavier and he would have struggled to wield it at all.

He made his way into the cave, circulating aura into the Eight-Eyed Mantle.

The beast was here.

There was a flitting, unsure sense of danger, coming vaguely from all sides. He scanned the ground with his own gaze, not wanting to rely solely on a fallible technique. Water filled the base of the cave and rippled out with each of his steps. Stalactites and stalagmites aimed at each other like the spears of opposing armies. Luminous silk was woven between.

“Not going to come out..?”

Nic turned and swung suddenly, cleaving through a cluster of spiderwebs. They tore under the blade’s weight and sharpness.

He swung again, ripping into a cluster of glyphs formed from the webbing, destroying a day’s worth of work. “I can keep at this! And I’m not going anywhere!”

The omnipresent danger clarified into a single direction, the warning from the Mantle screaming in his head. Nic turned and caught the beast as it descended, cleaving off the bladed foreleg that had plunged towards his skull out of the dark.

A massive spider dropped from the ceiling. It was snow white and marked with chains of red, flowing across its carapace like blood against bone. From its mouth emerged dozens of waving harpoon-tongues, and its abdomen was a glowing beacon, full of an unearthly energy that made Nic’s stomach grind hungrily.

It was a demon alright.

Nightdoor Demon-Spider. E-Class // Demonic Sapient. Able to draw others into the spirit realm of demons, this spider hunts over days or weeks, letting its prey serve as incubators for Demonic Essence before reaping them to fuel its own cultivation. It injects its young into living hosts, turning them into corpse-puppets.

It immediately began to retreat through the cave as it screamed in pain, but Nic shot after it, almost skipping on the surface of the shallow water as he pushed everything into his legs.

The tongues shot out.

They crashed into the ground where he had been as he zigged and zagged, but they quickly turned, coiling back in on him from behind. He was forced to shift tactics before he reached the beast, and he darted up the stone column of a stalagmite with Mire-Caller wrapping his feet in adhesive.

They chained around the pillar like snakes, rushing up after him as his momentum began to fail, dragged down by the heavy blade.

Nic turned and sprayed Primordial Mist down at the reaching tongues. They turned grey and desiccated in moments, and he vanished into the fog, leaving the tendrils pursuing him to wither down to stone and ash in his wake.

The beast screamed out in pain, and flickered out of sight.

Too late.

Nic could see the ripples underfoot. He dropped out of the mist, blade cleaving down.

The spider became visible again as he slammed into its back, piercing straight into the guts below, and twisting his sword savagely to bring out another scream. The blade trailed blood as he ripped it free and struck again, hammering as much as cutting. Blunt, goliath blows rained on the creature’s back, and it began to regrow its tongues, sending them up to attack.

One by one, Nic swept them away, clinging on as it reared about. With a sudden inspiration it tried to crush him against the wall and Nic was finally forced to jump away, leaping onto a stalactite to gaze down at the bleeding creature below.

“STOP!”

A single understandable word burst from the spider’s throat.

“Brother, fellow demon-”

Nic paused. Not because he was feeling particularly merciful today, but because he hadn’t realized the demons shared a language. Sure enough, as he croaked out his words, the spider understood.

“You’ve been hunting the locals, huh? Seems like about half of them have been eaten up.”

“Deeper in the cave brother, you’ll find some of them still alive. Wrapped in silk, absorbing tainted Essence. I would have feasted on them but you can have them!” The words were full of utter desperation. The spider was barely able to stand, blood trickling across its spiny shell. “I can make more, too. More vessels for us to draw from. This is my talent, you see?”

“Uh-huh.” Nic sneered.

“I can tell you’re not convinced, but consider! Even you, who might turn your nose up at killing Natives, will have enemies, yes? Enemies who you will kill and consume, one way or the other. Think on it…”

“I would make a fine jailer. I’m not a proud man or scheming by nature. I lived my life as an outer disciple, growing old as younger men than me seized glory. I understand how to serve- I spent a lifetime doing so. That’s why I had to seize my chance!”

Nic… as much as he hated it…

He could empathize with the creature below him. Given ten, twenty more years, Nic could see the bitterness that his old life bred overwhelming him. If after a full lifetime of drinking from that bitter cup he was given a path that required slaughter, perhaps he would’ve followed it.

Mercy, sad to say, was a luxury.

One that Nic had bought with his new strength. He had fought so he could protect others when he chose, so he didn’t have to live the kind of lives that desperate cultivation addicts did- abusing everyone and everything around them to grow stronger.

This old creature had fallen down a colder path.

And in the end, while Nic could justify killing the old spider, what would he gain by doing so? There was truth in the fact the demonic creature would be useful, especially if it was as loyal as it promised.

Nic was just about to make his decision.

And then the arrow stabbed into the creature’s throat. An instant later, there was a second bolt, a third-

They were blossoming into living vines within the creature’s throat.

The beast screamed and made a break for the cavern’s exit. Nic grimaced, cursing as he kicked off the pillar and swept down towards its back. His window of opportunity to end this with mercy was gone. He aimed to kill.

The sword cleaved through the thin point between abdomen and thorax, and the creature let out a final scream as the vines burrowed into its skull. It was a very human sound.

---

As Nic emerged from the mouth of the cave, his eyes were flashing with anger. Not because they’d fought back against a beast that was hunting them- but because they’d broken their word.

Norman was studying him carefully. The old man hadn’t fired himself, but he hadn’t stopped the boy either.

Kline just stared back, teeth grinding, full of stupid adolescent defiance. “You were talking with it.” His words were a point-blank accusation.

“Inkspur, whatever I say, that’s exactly what you say.” Nic said venomously, the little wyvern not arguing as they perched on his arm.

“You’re right, I was talking to it.” He spat back. “And I was going to spare its life, too, provided it didn’t harm anyone else.”

“I knew it. You’re not human, really. I can tell. My class says monster and sure enough, you were going to turn on us the moment you could…” Kline was puffing up, sticking his chin out. Nic badly wanted to take him down.

But he didn’t need to.

“No, I can promise you. I was born human. And so were all the rest. All of them, every damn monster in this forest. Including the ones you ate.”

“Oh, Jesus- Fuck!” Norman burst out in shock and turned away, looking ill. “You’re kidding, right? Like… Why the hell is everything around here gotta be…”

“Why don’t they talk, then? ‘Cause all I’ve seen is monsters trying to kill us.” Kline kept pressing but Nic saw the fear in him now.

“Because, you idiot, most of us can’t talk. Our voices were taken, exactly so that peace wouldn’t be a choice. So everything would come down to kill or be killed…”

“That thing ate my friends…”

“Yeah. Yeah it did that, and I’m not angry you killed the spider.” Nic sighed, pushing the anger out of his chest and rubbing his face. It was true.

Nic would have gained a lot more from leaving the spider alive, but in the end, it wasn’t up to him to demand the humans forgive the monster that had hunted them for days.

“But I’m near to the point of kicking you to the curb, because you saw me trying to handle the situation, and you stepped in, nearly getting yourself killed.”

Kline groaned, a soft sound of defeat, and gripped his head in pain. “I…”

“Kid?” Norman’s raeched to pull the hand away.

“It’s just--” The boy stumbled, trying to push the old man back. In moments Kline was on the ground, heaving up the contents of his stomach, still clutching his forehead “Just a headache…” He insisted in a weak, wavering voice.

“No.” Nic said. He was originally going to hold back on telling the humans about the real nature of monsters, but there was no time now...

Kline was going to be one.

“Goddamn kid. You’re growing horns.”