“Another one please, Koi.” Groaning, Carrie rubbed the bridge of her nose and caught the next shot as the bartender slid it down to her.

It was gone the second after it was received.

Koi’s Bar was a great little place that had sprung up in the city, well known for its amicable staff and deliciously high-quality drinks. No one actually knew how they acquired such a large supply of alcohol during such a tumultuous time, but on the same side of that coin, no one really cared either.

Carrie sure didn’t.

The past few months had been tough for her, what with all the pitched fighting and rescue efforts. Many people were in less-than-ideal situations since the conclusion of the Tutorial, whether in the departments of food, shelter, or danger. Some of the things she’d seen had been atrocious, but that was how the world was now she supposed; unforgiving and savage.

It was her choice to experience them anyway. She had been the one who had chosen to accept the Patriarch’s proposal for her to join the clan back when she’d met him at his abode, after all.

Not too many patrons could be found in the bar at the moment, mostly due to the fact it was a Monday afternoon, and Carrie liked it that way. It was quiet, there were no imbeciles catcalling her, and she could just enjoy the burning sensation of her sweet, sweet alcohol.

Catcalling had been far less of an issue than it used to be, as no one really wanted to risk offending someone sitting at the peak of level 50, but sometimes, the alcohol did get the better of people. Fortunately, with her relatively high Vitality, she rarely got even tipsy these days, and it was great. She did miss the blissful ignorance being drunk brought with it sometimes though.

Yelling out for another shot and splaying some more Shards onto the countertop, Carrie took the drink as it came and savoured its searing heat, before turning her thoughts to those she was close with. She had missed Kim recently, not because she was dead, but because she took it upon herself to become a healer and help others. The vast majority of people who drank the green fluid usually had those sorts of abilities.

Though, green seemed to be fairly uncommon among people, so it left Kim rather busy.

Together, they had decided to affiliate themselves with the Dojo, and quickly, the young healer was garnering the respect of the clan’s many members as she worked tirelessly. It made Carrie happy, to see her friend find her calling. She, on the other hand, had become the partner in crime of the ‘young matriarch’, as people had taken to calling her as of late.

Jane Carter. While cold and collected on the outside, Carrie had seen the tenderness and humour that she hid deep down. It was with pride that she could say she was the woman’s friend, and even confidante when she had things she needed to get off her chest. She was unanimously deemed to be one of the most promising individuals on the planet, already approaching the high sixties.

And the rumour going around was that her level 50 breakthrough had required far more energy than that of other people’s. Carrie didn’t truly know if it was a good thing, but the people around her were acting like it was, like it was a sign of immense potential or something. Carrie’s own hadn’t been too difficult, just a stalemate for a few weeks while she built up the energy needed to push past the ethereal barrier.

However, breaking through was nowhere near as hard as it had been when she decided to tell Jane about the fate of her brother. Carrie hadn’t realised the source of the resemblance at first, but when she heard the woman’s last name, it all fell into place, and she felt almost like she was obligated to let her know, especially since she had been tirelessly sending out shadow scouts to scour the continent for her family.

Like one would expect, she… hadn’t taken it too well. That was the first time her façade had broken, and Carrie saw the delicate woman that was hiding underneath. She had grieved for three days, telling her clansmen that she had had a breakthrough into the use of her Augments, but Carrie knew the truth.

She was vulnerable, and she didn’t want others to see it.

Carrie understood her perfectly. She herself still hadn’t gotten over his death, and sometimes, she was kept up at night by vivid memories of the moment. No matter how much time seemed to pass by, she couldn’t help but blame herself for his demise. It was her fault that Jane had lost her brother, and for that, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to forgive herself.

Growling to dispel the thoughts, she downed another shot. Then another one after that. The burn helped ease her mind, she found. It always had.

“I thought I’d find you here.” A voice spoke out behind the drunkard, and her shoulders tensed up in embarrassment as she recognised who it was immediately.

Carrie let out a long sigh as Jane took a seat on the barstool beside her. She threw the new addition a sidelong glance. She could practically see the judgement in her gaze, and the woman wore a blindfold, “Carrie. It’s a Monday afternoon.”

“I know. I haven’t drunk that much yet.” She responded, her usually steadfast voice somewhat meek under her friend’s scrutiny.

An awkward silence reigned for a little while after that, before Jane finally called for a shot of her own and downed it. She hissed from the burn and rested a tender hand on Carrie’s shoulder, “The past is the past Carrie. He… died almost five months ago. You have to learn… to let go.”

Carrie tensed up at her words, and Jane’s voice became an octave quieter, “Granted, I haven’t let it go either, but still, it wasn’t your fault.”

Jane called out for another shot and downed it as Carrie finally regained her bearings.

“Maybe it wasn’t. But he’s still dead, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Her friend gave a sad smile and pointed to her silk-covered eyes with an idle gesture, “Sometimes, the things that happen to you are out of your control. And that’s ok.”

Carrie didn’t reply after that, only stew on her friend’s words in silence. Maybe it really wasn’t her fault. The magpie had knocked Brock off the building, she just hadn’t been strong enough… to save him. She crushed the shot glass to shards in her hand, feeling it cut at the skin of her palm ineffectually. At the end of the day, the thing she had to blame wasn’t just herself, but that she wasn’t enough.

But she knew it wouldn’t stay that way. She would become strong, if just to prove herself wrong. To prove that she was enough.

The silence stretched on for a while longer before Jane finally broke it and revealed the actual reason she was here. A distress call from one of their outposts had been received on their salvaged radios and they had been dispatched to investigate it. The news only made Carrie grimace.

She knew Jane and she also knew how selfish the woman could be for the sake of those she cared about. That time she had just spent trying to console her, it had been at the potential cost of lives. And for that, she wasted no time as they headed over to the nearest shadow scouts, and had themselves warped over to Outpost C.

It was a small town-esque population centre where the Dojo had stationed a small portion of their members. It was here that they had discovered a potent mine containing some sort of new, System originated metal, and from preliminary tests, it had been shown to far exceed the strength of even the strongest pre-earth metals. Plus, it possessed an abundance that was far higher than most of them as well.

Orichalcum, it had been named. The man that had found it happened to be fond of mythology, it seemed. Unlike the myth though, it wasn’t an alloy, but a pure metal.

The shadows bulged and shifted as their forms rose up from them and they were deposited several kilometres away from the clan capital. They bid their teleporters a brief goodbye as they returned to darkness and instead faced the ruins of the town ahead of them.

“Holy shit…” Carrie walked forward on the worn remains of a road and gazed upon the destruction surrounding them. Instinctively, she placed a hand on her mouth to prevent any potential vomit from spilling out.

Jane walked up beside her and chose not to comment, only grimace deeply.

Corpses were a sight to be seen in every direction one looked, torn asunder with their assorted organs strewn across the ground and hung over the crumbled remains of buildings. Handprints of blood and puddles of crimson decorated many of the surfaces of the area, highlighting the struggle these people faced before they were brutally slaughtered.

Carrie spread out her aura senses, but she couldn’t detect a single living being within the bounds of the town. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to one of the Dojo’s outposts. The Patriarch and his consultants were beginning to believe that the attacks were a deliberate targeting, what with the frequency that they occurred.

The culprits were clear. They knew that much. Those horrid Skin Walkers.

Standing in an oppressive silence, the two could see several puddles of reddish goo among the bodies of their fellow humans. By now, everyone was convinced that the creatures were not naturally formed, like usual monsters were, but instead artificial. They had the Titles to prove it. As for the person that would dare to create something like these things, they came up completely clueless.

Jane walked forward and knelt down beside the corpse of a man, his glazed eyes wide with terror and his lower body ruthlessly torn off, innards and his bloodied spine hanging out onto the asphalt. Licking her lips to ease the dryness, she closed his eyes with a hand and wished him a better life in the next, as was usual within the Dojo.

Carrie herself would have moved to begin the final rites, if not for a slight footstep her enhanced ears caught from behind her. She gritted her teeth and placed her hand on her rapier.

Future Past.

Suddenly, she flickered out of existence, only to appear right behind the drooling beast as it prowled toward where she had once been standing. Her future self struck out with her blade and pierced right through the back of its skull, killing it instantly. Then, as the Technique’s duration ended, she returned to her past state where she had been standing prior.

She turned around and faced the monster as it fell forward, its corpse already beginning to liquefy. Carrie hadn’t even been able to sense its aura like she usually could. She had noticed a marked increase in intelligence lately, but were they also getting stealthier too? No wonder the outpost fell so easily.

If that’s true, then this is really bad.

Carrie looked around but could spot no more hiding beasts. She didn’t discount their existence here, however, and stayed clear of the obscuration of the rubbles. Kneeling down, she bid a woman farewell and found solace in knowing that this had all occurred a while ago. Judging from the way the blood was already drying, probably hours prior.

Carrie paused mid-step. Then how did a distress call get sent?

As if her revelation was the signal that they were waiting for, dozens upon dozens of Skin Walkers burst out of the ruins of the buildings, some even crawling out of piles of rubble or the covered potholes that led down to the filthy sewers beneath.

“Hey, Jane…” Carrie took a step backward as a horde of the beasts came from the direction ahead, only for her to look behind her and notice a crowd just as large approaching from there as well.

“I know.” Immediately, the woman’s aura burst out of her and engulfed the area as she dashed forward to the first of the monsters. Carrie watched as Jane unsheathed the tanto on her back and swiftly slit the throat of her target.

This was where the fun part happened.

All around them, every single beast within the range of her aura also had a savage gash carve itself appear across their throats, startling them and putting them on the instinctual defensive. Granted, the wound was nowhere near as deep nor bad as it had been on the first Skin Walker, but in time her attacks would add up.

Carrie joined the skirmish too and let her own aura free, using her second Technique, Sorrows of Time, to drastically slow the movements of the monsters around her while she used her first to significantly speed up her own. She was a spectre of death as she cleaved, punctured, and slashed, each attack ending the life of one of the disgusting creatures surrounding them.

Her Augment of Piercing did its part perfectly and filled those trying to attack her from behind with dozens of gored holes every second until they were no more than dying carcasses reminiscent of Swiss cheese. Her leg snaked out a second later and caught a beast in the abdomen before she spun around and jabbed her rapier up through the bottom jaw of a Skin Walker beside her.

Needless to say, it died outright.

But just as the hordes began to thin, things became weird.

As one, each and every Skin Walker suddenly crumbled to their knees, screaming out in guttural agony as they clutched at their heads and preached about a promise that had been made. The speaking was nothing new, as Carrie had seen many do it before, but the part about promises was. Her whole body became cold, and her blood froze like ice in her veins as she recalled a single memory from a darker time.

Wait… no…

The monsters rapidly began to melt to their familiar death state of goo, only this time, the red goo all flowed toward one direction as a massive tide of bodily filth. Through the opened potholes, the fluid seeped down into the hidden depths of the sewers, until the town was devoid of the stuff. An eerie silence fell over the area.

Jane instantly bolted in the opposite direction of the nearest pothole as her outstandingly potent senses felt what was occurring beneath, “Carrie! RUN!!”

But her warning came too late.

The entire street of the outpost exploded up and outward in a gargantuan surge of gleaming blood and stone debris, crimson tentacles snaking out and snatching Jane by her leg before dragging her unwillingly into its fold. Carrie fell to her behind and scrambled back, recognising it all. The feel of the energy, the terror she felt, even the scent of it all.

“Hello, Carrie.” Ryan’s hoarse voice resounded from deep below, and Carrie’s eyes shook, “I was wondering when they’d send you.”

Her world was rendered red a moment later.