Splattered skin, once twitching intestines, melting organs muscles and bones interweaved into homogenous flesh. The mass stretched and extended fleshy tendrils all towards the spinal column above, if one could still even call it that. What was once a bony human spine now was anything but, a black centipede-like structure hung from the cavern’s ceiling its ‘legs’ as though glowing shafts of red hot iron being forged in blood.

The filaments of flesh wrapped itself and congealed around the black column of rage above, sculpting a new body for themselves.

First they gathered at the base of the spine, growing into a cradle that would be the hip bone in the human body. They continued with the femur tibia fibula and so on, grouping into fleshy bone mater that turned hard and flexible as steel, muscle white and polished like marble accompanied by pulsating branches of black vascularisation. The same process continued as the strands moved upwards, ever so closer to the dead stare of the skull above.

Soon formed greyish light brown skin devoid of any red hue whatsoever as if it were a corpse, hanged and drained of blood, sprouting from it at the scalp grew long silver strands of hair, the strands would grow until they reached to the body’s waist. Being all but formed, it was evident that the fresh flesh sculpture was that of a male, if one looked appropriately, or inappropriately rather. Sharp facial features that at first looked uncanny eventually turned recognisable, very recognisable as Michael now found out.

What first looked like a wretched murder scene a necromancer would delight in was now replaced by a sexy brown dude.

‘Staring isn’t gay Michael, it’s not gay…’

Michael told himself as he was engulfed by curiosity and repulsion towards the boy, rather, about the thing before him. A curiosity he’d much rather lack as Shepherd wasn’t wearing any clothes right now, and it turned even less appealing knowing that he wasn’t human anymore, if this was Shepherd at all at this point.

His eyelids trembled and a fresh pair of blood red irises finally revealed themselves to the world, Michael couldn’t help but flinch and fall backwards onto the floor again.

Recognizing the dried up liquid soiling the already rather dirty ground as well as Michaels jacket Shepherd couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Swimming in your puke there, huh Mikey”

He spoke? This thing spoke? Forget about Michael turning into a demon, he just pressed ‘yes’ to a tab as he did with the rest of them not knowing what he was getting himself into. Forget about the few people he killed for experience as a way to save his ass from the system disintegrating him. Forget about suddenly losing contact with his beloved parents for the first time in his life like so many others. Forget that the whole Benevolent charade altogether, hearing this guy speak after what had just happened brought a whole other level of chills rushing up Michael’s spine

“Uhh”

Shepherd frowned as he lowered his gaze to examine himself, he hadn’t been a porn star to have such evenly tanned skin across his body, at least not from what he remembered. The world looked strangely new after leaving the custom race editor, maybe something about his body changing that changed his perception?

Who knew? Anyway

“Ahem, yes, clothing, not available…”

“Just put my jeans on, here!

Michael yelled as he stripped himself of his dark blue jeans, revealing a pair of black leggings. Sighing in relief as he saw Shepherd put the jeans on without complaint Michael was finally feeling mildly more comfortable, stuffing his recollections of the last 15 minutes down somewhere in his brain he wouldn’t be looking at for a long time.

“Well that should do it, I would’ve had to remove them from your body myself if you weren’t so kind.”

Laughing nervously Michael took a step back, knowing fully well what Shepherd was indicating at, that something being a bad in Michael’s book, a very bad.

“Come on now, sit, let’s talk oh dear friend.”

Shepherd said with a wide smile

---

Hit points: 200/200

Mana: 250/200

Free stat points: 5

Name

Frank

Strength

Str

32

(+5)

Level

16

Constitution

Con

20

(+5)

Class

Shadow Bladed

Dexterity

Dex

37

(+10)

Race

Human

Agility

Agi

33

(+5)

Titles

First Blood

Energy Flow

EnF

10

(+5)

Status

/

Energy Capacity

EnC

25

(+5)

Critical hit chance

CritC

30

(+10)

“Hehehe”

“You look proud of yourself, you just killed a monster 10 levels below you and you’re smirking?”

It had been almost a week since Frank had last levelled up, dungeons took too long to repopulate and it was too dangerous and not to mention far away to go out in the unexplored wild lands that had formed after Benevolent. And plus, being in a guild and having that damned Elton around assured that the exp distribution wouldn’t all go to him and Marie as it did in the beginning. He knew that as much as the guild provided him safety, it also held him back.

“Hey I didn’t mean to upset you Frank, sorry hug?”

Seeing him frown Marie couldn’t help but try to cheer Frank up, if he felt bad she felt worse, or so she thought.

“It’s not you, and I’m fine.”

He said as he embraced her

“Yo sperm lips, stop the lovey dovey shit and let’s go find this thing.”

Not bothering to even turn to look at Jacob Frank whispered something in Marie’s ear and disappeared in thin air, leaving her in giggles.

Frank’s vision turned dark as if it were night time, he turned to Jacob with a sneer and began heading up the hill full of trees above making no noise whatsoever. He had risen his energy capacity or EnC to 20 with his title –First Blood- adding 5 more points for a total of 25, he only needed the stat for remaining hidden as a shadow indefinitely for two and a half hours straight, which was an insanely low mana cost for a skill.

Then again, for 1 mana per minute -Shadow Form- only allowed him to move around enemies outside a 10 meter radius, and when he entered said radius the mana cost would double and the time in which it was spent would halven with each two meters passed. Effectively, at eight meters it would be 2 mana/30s, at six it would be 4mana/15s all the way up to striking range where the cost went up to a whopping 16 mana per second. A cost he didn’t need to worry about much though, since he rarely lingered near his foes before killing them and if he stood still the cost to the skill would halve. The only problem with the skill was that he couldn’t be armed with a weapon while using it and it would turn off the moment he pulled his long dagger out, not to mention he couldn’t wear any armour other than leather or padded cloth armour but then again, armour was for pussies Frank thought to himself.

He kept heading straight to the cave he’d seen marked on the map back with the party at a steady jogging pace as he dispatched rat kin one after the other.

Soon in just 15 minutes he had arrived at the dungeon entrance marked as The Rat King’s cavern. He thought about going back to bring Marie with him, but then he’d drag the rest of the party with him. This was clearly a higher level dungeon with the boss probably being around level ten to thirteen but it wouldn’t be a problem at all if he decided to solo it, Janna had given him a condensed mana stone after all, and he’d be full when he returned to the party so no sweating it.

Entering the dungeon still in his shadow form he lacked any vision problems, in fact, any vision de-buffs he’d receive other than straight up dirt in his eyes while in shadow form would actually raise his visual perception instead. With a smirk on how perfect the dungeon was for him he entered the cave.

“Where is the dungeon Jacob”

A deep voice which strung chords in people’s chests whenever they heard it left the hulking 300 pounds of pure muscle that was Herqul.

Turning his head unperturbed towards the two meter tall strongman Jacob frowned and crossed his arms.

“Wait for the monkey to return, let’s hope he doesn’t take all the exp that shit…”

Not quite interested in Jacob’s whining Herqul turned to James and the girls instead, walking towards them with his large steel shield and mace in hand. The group smiled and approached him as well as Janna left to comfort her brother.

“You and Frank never give in do you hahaha, and that kind of worries me that you’re planning to leave the guild Marie.”

The friendly giant said with a thoughtful stare. Then James joined in on the conversation

“There’s a whole new world to explore Herc, and you need survivability for that, right Marie?”

Sighing Marie smiled, a gentle expression forming on her face as she looked downwards to recollect herself.

“We’ve got some dreams yeah, I doubt settling down will be a possibility in at least the next decade, so might as well get something done. As for that… Well offence is the best defence no?”

Herqul stared at the small creature below him as Frank’s figure descended from a forested hill, his long dagger covered in crimson blood.

‘Heh, I gained another level from that rat king up there.’

“So what did you find?”

Grinning lazily at Jacobs question frank raised his shoulders in a shrug.

“No throbbing monsters to be seen Jay, maybe a few rats here and there and maybe a rat king somewhere but no juicy black monsters for you.”

“You little fuck…”

Seeing her brother angry again Janna let out a displeased sigh as she confronted Frank and Marie. Her brother was already in a bad mood and he wasn’t telling her about it, seeing that this meant that he’d be feeling even worse as he agonized over whatever it was she had to do something to give the guy a confidence boost.

“The captain may not have informed you Frank but, I’m not just the healer here, anything that’s done as a detriment to our guild by you especially I am to inform the captain right away when we return!”

Seeing Frank’s suddenly serious face she felt a sense of triumph over the weed head, only for her to become uneasy when his face turned into a pout, Frank never pouted, not when he was sad or angry that’s for sure.

“Well you can be our scout instead Janna, or maybe Jacob with his sorry ass at level seven could go sneaking around for his dreamed up big black throbbing monster. What do you say?”

The arguing continued for another ten minutes, until they heard a loud laugh from a tree nearby. Jacob couldn’t help but gasp at the laughing figure.

“How are you alive…?”

Everyone turned to the figure on the tree branch, he was skinny and clothed in a synthetic looking skin tight black top and black jeans. His eyes were a bright glowing amber colour, yet there was something uncanny about his pale bloodless face. He smiled widely only to jump down and run in the opposite direction to where they were.

Janna shuddered and couldn’t help but show a look of disgust as she covered her mouth. The rest of the party though shot question marks at her and Jacob.

“Michael you worm!”

Seeing that the rest of the party understood who they were up against Jacob nodded at Frank, who quickly disappeared into a shade for a chase as the rest began heading towards Michael.

---

Arriving below the dungeon’s entrance Michael smiled once more and addressed the sitting Shepherd before him

“Hey boss, we have company”

“Oh? Let’s greet them then”

Saying so, Shepherd stood from his sitting position and jumped up to the cave above in a single leap. Passing by a female figure in the now expanded cave he continued downwards to the depths.

“It might just be them, excited?”

The girl responded by turning her gaze out towards where Michael had ran from. Her eyes showed complex emotion, only to nod and follow the silver haired boy clothed in a long red jacket into the cavern. As for Michael, he remained outside, sitting right at the caverns entrance waiting for the long awaited first guests, his wide smile not leaving him for a second.