"This train only gets weirder and weirder..." - Kyoku said after killing another Faceless Nurse. As he moved through the wagons, he began seeing drawings and pentagrams, all plastered in blood. - "Even the amount of Faceless Nurses is increasing..."

Kyoku had gone through five cars already, nearing the middle of the train. The disturbing thing was that, the further he went in the train, the bloodier it got. Most unsettling of them all was a pentagram drawn in blood, with a weird symbol that looked like two moons faced against each other vertically -connected by a cross- in the center of it. The moons had very sharp looking curves, and pointed tips, from which fresh blood was dripping. It would've been very disturbing if the first thing he thought about wasn't Dreamworks, but who could blame him? Almost nothing seemed to affect his mental state.

"Sheesh... I feel like I'm in a Watain concert here..." - Kyoku said jokingly as he walked through the wagon. He killed one more Faceless Nurse, that one being the third one in that same wagon, picked up the 10¥ coin it dropped. - "First drop since that first one before.. but I got 54 XP at least"

In the wagons he had been through, he had killed a total of seven Faceless Nurses. What he learned was that the XP awarded after killing an enemy wasn't always the same. Some nurses gave him 6 XP, while others awarded him with 8 or 10. The second thing he realized was that not all enemies of the same species shared level or stats, since some of them had higher levels -which usually earned him more XP-, while others had varying stats.

Entering the sixth wagon, a shriek made him jump to the side. Up to that point, the Faceless Nurses had all been in his range of sight when entering a wagon. It was the first time he was 'ambushed' like that, so he was caught off guard. The problem wasn't the one Nurse he was easily able to avoid, thanks to his high Agility stat. It was that there were other three nurses on stand-by waiting for the ambush to either work or fail.

With a nurse behind, and the rest cutting his escape routes, Kyoku had only one way out. Hitting the nurse in front of him with the Broken Handle, he jumped up. Grabbing the handhold on the roof of the train, he used it to swing himself above the other two nurses, hitting one with a twist of his body.

"That felt... surprisingly natural" - he said when his feet touched the floor once again. Looking at his enemies, he realized that one of them had already died, as shown by the 7 XP points he just got. - "Well, just three to go"

*

"Sir, an unexpected annoyance appeared in the train" - said a man wearing a blood red robe, a hood hiding his face in its entirety. - "He is killing our puppets"

From a big chair decorated with skulls, a man stood up. He wore a Papal Regalia of sorts. A black alb under a blood red chasuble, decorated further by a golden tippet. From under his black -laced with gold- mitre hat, his silver hair fell well over his shoulders. In the darkness of the room, his bright purple eyes stood out even more.

"Send one of our stronger nightmares..." - he ordered to his apparent subject.

His answer came almost too excitedly. - "Yes, your eminence. I'll send one of my own creations!"

Once the subject had disappeared, the man went towards a table devoid of any decorations, bar the obvious to the eye. Muffled screams were heard in the church like room, coming from the woman tied in the table.

"Why scream? You should feel glad" - he said while drawing a knife from his sleeve. - "After all, you will aid his holiness step foot in our putrid land"

No more screams were heard in the darkness, as the woman no longer breathed, but bled from her throat into the table, bathing the wood and floor with the warm proof of her life.

"Who's there?!" - the 'priest' screamed as the sound of something hitting glass echoed all over the room. Looking towards one of the windows, he saw a black cat, looking at him with its heterocromatic eyes, one blue and one yellow. - "It was just a cat... leave animal, before I ignore your holy origins and sacrifice you too"

As if laughing at him, the cat just yawned in place. Once it felt like it had mocked him enough, it jumped through the window.

*

Sighing, Kyoku allowed himself to plop down against one of the few 'clean' parts of the wall. Clean meaning devoid of blood, as it was still rusty, mossy and overall, disgusting. He had finally reached the eight car of the train, meaning he was litereally in the center of it. He had survived other two ambushes, the difficulty ramping up from four to six Faceless Nurses, skipping five for whatever reason. It surely had nothing to do with six being the more 'satanic' number.

"I've gotten 104 XP point, so now I have 158..." - Kyoku said while taking a breather. In the last fight he had gotten hit once, and the shock was still there. He hadn't gotten hurt, thanks to Gamer's Body, but he had lost 10 HP. - "Not feeling pain past the initial hit is weird... then again, not bleeding is weird too"

Kyoku had already gotten relatively used to his new physical and mental state. The only feeling left to him was the momentary high of adrenaline after the fight and the excitement of having such an opportunity. This was what he had been dreaming of, his escape from his mundane, societal shackles.

"Ok Kyoku, don't let it get to your head" - he told himself while taking a deep breath. He couldn't keep nothing but excitement in his mind. A healthy level of caution and a grain of salt towards everything he saw would be extremely helpful in surviving. - "This new part of the world is dangerous. And my only way to survive is to keep grinding"

WOW! The Gamer wants to grind!

How surprising!

Still, it is a sound conclusion. Take this as a small gift.

WIS +1 - INT +1

Even if Kyoku still didn't like Gaia's sarcastic comments, he did feel thankful for her constant rewards and the opportunity to live a life full of excitement. As such, he just silently thanked her, knowing that she could totally read his thoughts.

That was when, to his surprise, the door to the next wagon opened on its own. It was the first time that something approached Kyoku, instead of him approaching something. The figure that moved through the door was a few degrees more disturbing than a Faceless Nurse, and it certainly wasn't because of it's Stats.

The creature had a humanoid appearance, with a masculine torso. The biggest problem was that, instead of arms and legs, it had long, sharp blades grafted where it's wrists and ankles should've been. Its double-jointed legs were used as front legs and, between them, hung a head -devoid of eyes and nose-. Two holes opened and closed slowly on either side of its chest, as if it inhaled and exhaled through them. It looked like a sick take on childbirth and Mengele's worst experiment.

Needler:

A monster created by '???' with the purpose of harvesting souls. It has marked The Gamer as its sole prey.

Level: 5

Class: Abomination

Creator: '???'

STR: 14 VIT: 30

AGI: 25 INT: 2

WIS: 1 CHA: 1

"So the strongest fucker I encounter is..." - Kyoku doubted what kind of words he should use to describe his enemy, so he stopped and analyzed its appearance once again. - "... is the aborted result of Lucas and Queen Tiffany's affair?!"

Kyoku wondered why such an enemy was Level 5, since it didn't look like much, but he understood quikly. The Needler didn't move like the Nurses, in a constant seizure and a slow pace. It moved quickly, agilely and on every surface available. Kyoku had to keep himself focused on its every movement so as to avoid being hit. Afater all, he had no way of recovering the lost HP yet.

Sidestepping a vertical slash from one of its bladed legs, the tanned teen smacked the creature with a hit on the joint that held most of it's weight, Dead Aim telling him that that was the best point to strike. The orange 12.5 singaling that the skill did it's job properly, but the Needler's VIT wasn't a prank, since Kyoku was forced to dodge another hit as soon as he had gotten on in himself. Unluckily, Kyoku failed to realize that there was a seat right behind him.

Stumbling for a second, he was able to recover his balance quickly, just not quickly enough. Receiving a slash from the Needler, Kyoku could see that he had lost 20 HP, and the hit hadn't been critical. Even if he had still 120 HP, he couldn't afford to lose more, since he didn't know how many of these creatures there could be. Rolling backwards, he got back on his feet.

"You really are trickier to deal with" - Kyoku said as he dodged a horizontal slash and countered with another hit to the weakest joint. - "Unluckily to you, I get used to it quickly"

It didn't take him too long to completely break one of the creature's joints. Only three hits, two of which had been criticals. With its mobility reduced, the Needler had no way of out-maneuvering Kyoku's speed. A quick check to the Abomination's Status Board showed that it's Agility had a modifier of (-10).

It only took Kyoku a few more hits to completely end the creature, whose weakes point was actually the head hanging between its legs. something Kyoku found funny and disturbing at the same time, since it felt like the Needler's weakest point was its nutsack.

Enemy Drops:

- Bloody Blade

- ¥50

- 28 XP

"Huh... I hope it's not the one that was on its leg"