I

Eva was hit by a strong smell as soon as she arrived at the dungeon entrance. There was the scent of burnt hair and burning wood, with a tinge of something metallic. Eva felt her pulse race as she left the cave. In front of her was a disaster. Night had fallen while she was in the dungeon, but she could still see much of the dungeon camp—or at least what was left of it. There were fires burning the remains of shelters and some of the stacked firewood as well. Burnt bodies lay smoking.

Eva couldn’t help but empty her stomach on the ground. There was a difference between a few dead bodies on account of monsters and the strong smell of death that the burning of the bodies released into the air. Wiping her mouth, she made her way to where she and Hideki had built their cabin. Her heart sank as she approached. There were bodies outside, while the cabin itself was smashed in several places. As she got closer, she was able to see that a couple of the bodies were human and a couple were landwalkers.

Eva entered the structure and looked around. There was a pile of bodies near the firepit in the middle that faced the storage area.

“No!” she screamed when she followed the trail of bodies to the storage area.

Eva rushed over and picked up the body in her arms. He was gone.

“Why are you dead? Why! If you were still breathing I could have used a potion! Why?!”

She hugged the rapidly cooling body and cried. Eva had stayed away from any kind of romantic entanglements once her divorce was completed, not wanting the same pain again. For the first time in a long time, she’d taken a chance with Hideki. Maybe it was the changes brought by the Tutorial, or maybe she just felt a connection with him that was right. She didn’t know.

What she did know was pain and rage. He’d been taken from her just as they were building a place to live out the Tutorial together. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t be able to continue after they were sent back to opposite ends of the world. No, what mattered was that he’d been murdered when she wasn’t there!

“I swear on my life that the assholes who did this will die,” she decided, her words filled with seething rage. “I will give them back the same pain tenfold!”

Eva kissed Hideki’s forehead and stood up to take the scene in. She was sure there were clues that she had missed in her initial rush. The first thing she noticed was that the bodies had been stripped of anything useful. If the gear was damaged beyond repair, it had been discarded to the side. Burns against several of the bodies indicated that Hideki had fought well despite the suddenness with which the fight happened. His Light Skill was devastatingly effective. All told, he had taken eight of them with him.

Eva used a broken spear shaft as a digging tool to make a pit to the side of the cabin that was two feet deep and long enough to set his body in. She lifted Hideki’s corpse and placed it into the pit. She covered his body with dirt and then she pounded part of a board from their cabin into the ground to mark the grave. Her heart was on fire and she would exact her revenge.

II

“H-hey,” said a voice some time later.

Eva turned to see a man in similar armor to hers approaching with three others. They were level 8, one of which she recognized from the group she arrived in the village with. She knew at that point that they were likely to not be enemies.

“Hm?” she asked.

“Are you ok? Do you need a Health Potion?”

“I’m ok, physically. My friend was killed by the bastards while I was in the dungeon. Do you know what happened?”

“We were having dinner and contemplating a dungeon run before sleeping,” he said. The rest of his team nodded in agreement. “When out of the woods came at least a hundred of those fishmen and humans. They started attacking and burning everything in their path. It was chaos. Martin here,” he pointed to the man, ”thought it would be a good idea to retreat into the dungeon for safety. We had to kill a couple on our way into the cave, and we chose Novice✦ to be safe since they wouldn’t have access to that one and couldn’t follow us inside.

“We completed the dungeon and came out to see all of… this. I heard the scream of someone alive and wanted to make sure they—you—were ok. There are a few others that left the dungeon as well. They looked like they went back towards the village. It’s where we’re going to go. Do you want to come with us?”

Eva considered her words carefully. She did not have the Tracking Skill, but she did have a way to light the area. If one of them would help her, she could get started dispensing justice right away.

“Before you go, do any of you have Tracking? I am going to kill every single one of those fuckers for what they did. So if you can get me to where they are—”

“I do,” said Martin, cutting her off. The rest of his team looked at him in surprise. “You three go on ahead to the village. I’ll catch up after I help her find her way.”

“Are you sure?” the first man asked him.

“Yeah. She reminds me a bit of my sister. God, I hope she’s doing ok in all of this.”

“Ok. Be safe.”

The three others left in the direction of the village.

“Are you ready?” Martin asked moments later.

“Mhm.”

“Ok. I saw that they came in from the other side of the camp from here. You have a torch I could use?”

Eva Infused★ her sword with light, nearly blinding herself in the process.

“That’ll work. Can you keep it up all the time?”

“Long enough. I’ll follow you and protect you.”

“Thanks.”

Whil Eva followed Martin through the ruins of the camp, he got a better look at what had happened. Everyone who had died had been stripped of any valuables and most buildings had been torn to pieces or burned where they stood. There were fewer corpses than she had expected to see, something she hoped was a result of enough people having escaped to the dungeon in time and not because the attackers had an easy time of it.

At the far edge of the ruined camp, Eva could see trampled leaves and other detritus. It was so chaotic that she couldn’t pull any information from the tracks other than that there had been a hell of a lot of people. Martin, on the other hand, had no trouble when using his Skill. He moved deeper into the trees and she followed.

The going was slow as he had to stop every so often to check the tracks. Sometimes he needed Eva to be closer so that he could have better lighting and fewer shadows obscuring the details his Skill needed to operate. Apparently the Skill worked by looking at footprints, broken twigs, disturbed leaves, and other such clues and plotting a likely path from it. The higher the Skill, the more accurate the path and the less often one needed to check for those signs.

Eva knew she really needed to find the time to learn the Skill. This was the second time she’d seens it’s usefulness and yet she’d done nothing to try to train it. She had the power to make a difference, but she did not have the hunter-type Skills like Tracking or Sneaking that would allow her much more operational flexibility to prosecute her vengeance when the time came.

As time wore on, Eva got an idea of where they were headed. Martin led her slowly over a hill, through a valley, and over another hill. As they descended the hill, she got a view of the fort. Anger flared within her when she saw where the raid had come from. She knew the people in the fort were bad, but working with the invaders and raiding their camp? That was behavior that would need to be corrected fatally.

The raiders were throwing a party with a bonfire outside the entrance to the fort. She could see revelers through the trees, and she could hear the cheers with occasional frightened screams interspersed.

“Looks like that’s the place,” she told Martin. “Thanks for getting me here.”

“Are you going to be ok?” he asked.

“Of course. I have some issues to work through. Stay safe on the way back.”

“Thanks. Oh, do you have a way to light my torch?”

Eva nodded. He held out a makeshift torch that she lit with her fire Infused★ sword. As soon as she was done, she shut it off. Martin turned and left for the village. It was time for her to get closer and see what was going on with this place once her eyes were used to the dark again after being blinded by her own light.

Once she could see well enough, she did her best to keep quiet and approach the fort. Eva focused on her surroundings to get the most from her perception so that she wouldn’t be taken by surprise. The last thing she needed would be to die from something so preventable.

When she was close enough to the party to get a good view of what was going on, she took a quick survey. There were only humans. The landwalkers must have gone back to whatever shithole they crawled out of once the raid was finished. What she saw when she looked closer made her stomach churn. There were mainly men partying with only a handful of women partying with them. The rest of the women were being used for entertainment. Worst of all were the five women who were both still living and impaled on stakes. Eva recognized one of them as the woman who had been handling the scheduling for the dungeon when she went in! A fresh flash of anger ripped through her body. Every. Single. One. Would. Die.

As much as she wanted to go in guns blazing to save the people being abused, she only had one Health Potion✦. They all had Skills, and many of them had Classes as well. She knew she could beat any of them one on one, but to deal with all of them at the same time would be suicide. No, the best way to deal with the problem would be to nibble bits and pieces off of the group until none remained.

Eva did her best to sneak up on one man who had gone off to relieve himself in the woods near to where she was. She was not all that silent, but she didn’t have to be with how loud the party was. Even the occasional crack of a twig was barely loud enough to register over the din—even for her. Quietly, she pulled her sword from its scabbard. She Infused★ it with dark for extra damage as well as to remain hidden. She grabbed the man’s mouth with her left hand and dragged the sword across his neck with her right hand. He gurgled as he choked to death on his own blood.

“One down,” she whispered to herself.

She smiled as she picked up the corpse and moved it deeper into the wood. Her targets wouldn’t find the body during the night, and she hoped that would give her enough time to make a good-sized dent in their numbers.

Basic Skill learned: Sneaking▲

Basic Sneaking▲ Lv 1

Dampens noise made by 1%

Eva chuckled quietly. Using Skills to kill enemies really did make them grow quickly. Though he’d been level 8, she’d only received half that number as experience now that she was in a higher tier. Killing them all might not be as lucrative for her growth as it would have been a day before, but she would enjoy every moment of her revenge. The fire in her core still burned as strongly as their bonfire.

Two more people broke off to use the facilities. Eva smirked as she Snuck▲ towards the two men entering the woods. A quick Observe✦ put them both at level 9. They wore slightly better gear than the average person defending the village—metal plates atop leather—but it looked similar enough.

“Did you have a go with the redhead?” one of them asked the other.

“Nah, man. She’s looser than your mom on a Friday night.” the second man laughed.

“Man, she was fine. That Asian chick from a couple days back was top notch though. Kinda sad what Brad did with her, you know?”

“Yeah. Impaling is shit way to go. I do feel bad for her daughter, ya know?”

“Mhm. Maybe they’ll find a blonde one of these days. It’s been a while since I had one of ‘em.”

“Me too, man. Me too.”

The sound of the party and the sound of their voices was more than loud enough for Eva to carefully approach them. They split and went to different trees to relieve themselves. It was time for her to strike. She Infused★ her blade with dark and slit the second man’s throat. He gargled as he bled, but otherwise made no loud sounds. She was able to carefully lower him onto the ground without alerting the other one.

“Hey Fred, are you done?” the other man asked loudly.

Eva Snuck▲ towards his back as quickly and quietly as she could.

“Hey Fred!” the man called again as she approached.

She grabbed his mouth with her left and slit his throat.

“Fred’s dead, man,” she whispered in his ear.

The night wore on in a similar fashion. Every now and again, some people would break off to do their business in the woods. Sometimes it’d be one person, but usually it was in twos or threes. The threes were a bit more tricky. She had less time to go from the first to the last before the living ones became aware that something fishy was going on.

There was one time where it was a group of four. That had been very difficult for her to complete without being detected. The first two fell quickly without notice. The third almost noticed her, but she beat the man to the punch and slit his throat in time. The fourth tried to escape, but she Charged★ him and sliced his head off. He had made some noise, but thankfully the party was loud enough that no one noticed. From then on, she left any foursomes alone. It was just too much risk to expose herself while there were plenty of easy pickings.

By the time the party died down and the revelers made their way into the fort, Eva had taken care of around 50 of them. Their bodies had been moved far enough away so as not to be seen when anyone else came into the forest during the night. She knew that when day broke, they would go looking for what happened to the missing people. She also knew that she needed rest before that happened so that she was fully focused and full on all her pools.

When dragging the bodies, a few things stood out about the people she was killing. The majority of them were under level 10, and their equipment was a bit better than what the ones she’d had the misfortune of not-really-training wore. Still, the gear had some major deficiencies compared to what she carried.

First of all, everything they carried was Basic▲. Without access to the dungeon, they had no way of making better stuff. The next thing she noticed was that they did not carry any potions or healing items beyond bandages. So while the quality of each piece was slightly better than usual, it was all worthless to her. In the end, she took none of it.

Eva yawned. It was late and she needed sleep. She looked around for a place to crash for a few hours and found a small hollow next to a fallen tree. Though it was dark, she could see that it was well hidden, so even if the bodies were found, she would have some time to figure something out before she was found.

In the morning, if she still had time, she would use her remaining shards to improve her gear. Maybe she’d get another self repair on her new equipment if she got lucky.

She used her backpack as a pillow and covered herself with leaves. In the past, she would have been unable to sleep following that level of carnage, but she’d died thousands of times and killed thousands of monsters. It just so happened that some of those monsters wore human skin. Eva kept her goal in the front of her mind as sleep took her.