Immediately upon stepping back into the guild, Kreis had challenged me to a duel. He wanted me to prove I was able to fight well enough to join the team.

I, of course, couldn't fight with a sword at all. So now I was in quite a predicament, especially since quite a lot of my fellow guild-mates had created a ring.

Across from myself, Kreis was limbering up, swinging a dull training blade around, getting a feel for its movements.

Meanwhile, I simply stared at him, trying to unnerve him, and I wasn't entirely sure, but I think it was working.

He took a step forward, signalling he was ready to begin. I did also, bringing the longsword up to my chest, and across it in some-kind of defensive stance I had vaguely remembered from a HEMA video I had watched once.

As his feet approached, I watched his eyes. They were cold, impassive, and full of concentration. Then I would have to break that concentration, wouldn't I?

If my years of playing games had taught me anything, it was to make people angry if you wanted to win.

When he was somewhat close, he threw a swing, missing me entirely, his only objective to make me flinch. I did not. His smirk turned to a frown quickly at that.

Instead of a counter-attack, I took a half-step backwards, still holding my guard up.

He cocked his head to the side slightly, but came at me again. This time, he aimed properly, bringing his sword down in a diagonal slice aimed at my neck. If I didn't move my guard, I would be hit.

I didn't move, and his attack stopped short as he redirected it towards my stomach, bypassing my guard entirely. A feign. I had expected something like that from him, had felt it in my gut.

Yet as the blade went for my belly, I felt something inside of me guide my own hands. They were still mine to control, but it was as though a strong, but calm, pair of hands were clasped over my own. I brought my own blade down towards his neck.

If he had not stepped back with utmost alacrity, he would have had a nasty bruise. His own sword only scraped my abdomen, leaving nothing but a mark.

"Do you have a death wish?" he asked, then swung another swing that was nothing other than a test.

"In a way." I responded.

I felt the guiding hands grab my foot this time, putting it one step forward and swinging my sword with such haste I could barely tell I was doing it.

He brought his own blade up, at an angle, deflecting the strike, then brought his blade into me to hit my left ribs. I felt my hand accelerate before I had time to react, and my fist connected with his stomach. He staggered backwards.

"Wha..?" he said, looking at me with hatred. "This is a duel… not some barfight brawl!"

"All is fair in a fight, no matter who it is between."

I saw his nostrils flare, and he went red, standing up despite the wind being knocked out of him, and swinging his sword in quick succession. I kept stepping backwards, time and time again, until he had seemed to exhaust himself.

"Anger is your problem, it would seem." I said, taunting and chiding in the same sentence.

"Why do you sound, exactly, like him?" he said. "Must I always live under his shadow?"

"I don't know about that. Let me join the team, and I could help you."

He looked at me with an eyebrow slightly raised.

"How would you help me?" he said. "What could you possibly do?"

"People emulate those around them. I am much more patient than you. You're smart enough to guess from there."

He laughed, then took two steps forward before I could react. He drove his blade forward, as though attempting to skewer me.

This was going to hurt.

I let the dull blade smash into me, raising my own sword high up, ready for one massive smash. This time, I used my adornment. Two hands on the handle, I brought the dull edge down across his back, eliciting a cry of pain from him and he fell to the side.

At the end of the day, I was left standing. This battle only happened this way because he was arrogant and impatient. It was easy to piss him off.

Were it not for that, he would have beaten me easily. That, I was sure off.

I looked towards the north, looking out over the harbour. The guild hall, unbeknownst to me, connected to the harbour, and thus, the sea. Explains the fresh water for the baths, at least.

A large stone wall slopes down into the water, and the ground under my feet is sandy and grassy in equal measure. I sigh, then straightened, feeling the beginnings of a horrible bruise under my new tunic.

As I looked back towards the guild hall, I caught a glimpse of the Guild Master in one of the windows, and I caught his eye for just a second before he was gone.

I used the adornment from the Rustwraith, and he was looking at me when I did. Could he know?

Come to think of it… when I fought him, he used a sword that looked oversized to me, yet he handled it well. What if he was a student, or perhaps fellow practitioner of this Rustwraith-based fighting style. Xyippe did say that Kreis's master was friends with the Guild Master.

My situation in this guild just got more tenuous. I held no doubts that the Guild Master could kill me with ease if he decided. That, and he was probably influential enough to dispose of me discreetly.

Kreis rolled over, then dug the blade into the ground, pulling himself up with general difficulty.

When I killed Marad, I had wondered if I would get a small part of his speed as my own, but it seemed not. I did, however, get a general boost in… everything from the adornments I took from Marad and Gelt.

Especially in that fight, I had felt it. Just a little quicker. Just a little stronger. I could see why these so called 'Soul-Drinkers' got high off of the power. Even I had to admit, it was intoxicating. Like going to a gym and exercising, only it was instant. All you had to do was kill.

Humans can convince themselves to do many things.

I suppose I'm an example of that.

Before Kreis finished pulling himself up, I offered a hand, and he took it, to my honest surprise. When he was upright and stable, I asked him what he thought.

"Acceptable." he said, then limped off into the guild.

Alveros approached me, clapping quietly.

"I haven't seen Kreis get slapped with a sword that hard for quite some time. Not since Hallidais' training sessions, at least."

"The tough mentor type, eh?"

He nodded. "He was very tough on Kreis. Forced him into a strict discipline of sleeping and eating at certain time, training at a certain time, and on and on."

"He doesn't have any adornments, does he?"

"How could you know that?" said Alveros.

"Just didn't feel faster, nor did he use any abilities."

"Well, you know what they say. The first adornment is the one you'll spend most time with. Thus he opted to wait until he got to slay a Rustwraith Matriarch - which never came."

I walked back inside the guild, Alveros dogging my steps.

Only a few stragglers remained of the small, silent crowd that had surrounded us. I had expected cheers, bets and other such boisterous activity that usually came hand-in-hand with a fight. But instead, nothing.

Xyippe came down one of the corridors from the left, coming from the sleeping quarters.

"Kreis has gone for a lay down, and thoroughly intends to take it." she said. "Kicked his ass, ey?"

I lifted up my tunic, revealing the swelling purple bruise.

"Oh right. I thought you were liftin' your cloth for another reason!" she said, then winked. Alveros turned away, putting a hand on his forehead, either because of the flirting or the bruise. I couldn't tell which.

"Well, while you men were hashin' out the details, I got us a job. There's this graveyard down south, built into a hill made of stone, ancient as can be. Legends say some ancient king was buried there, and occasionally the servants he was buried with resurrect as shamblers."

"Good find, Xyippe." said Alveros. "Culling a few boneheads should be a simple task."

His cheeriness was off-putting. Like those people that are just… too nice.

"What are shamblers?" I asked.

"Yeah, course, you won't know. We call non-thinking undead shamblers. Separates them from actual undead, like those from Blakar."

"The difference being?"

"The difference being shamblers don't think, they just seek to consume souls. Undead from Blakar are able to talk, trade, think and feel. I've only ever met one once - they don't usually reveal themselves if they don't have to. People get antsy around a walking pile of bones."

"So we go there, break some skeletons, then get paid? Sounds good to me."

"Yeah. Though we should leave quickly. Shamblers don't tend to stay in one place at a time. They, for lack of a better description, shamble about."

"That depends on Kreis."

"Oh he'll be fine, he's got Krayos blood in him."

Oh, here we go.

"Krayos?"

"Don't really know. Dad told me they were some kind of brother race to man, but we eventually mingled together, but the blood still drips down. They heal faster, sleep less, and occasionally have bone-ridges from their backs. Nothing big."

"So he should be ready to go soon?"

"Let him sleep, we'll go tomorrow morning."

I nodded.

"I think I'll sleep it off too. Have a good night." I said to both of them, then walked down the corridor, eventually reaching my room. I searched for the key inside my pocket, then put it in the lock, and twisted.

I opened the door, and a hand wrapped around my neck and pulled me inside. The door slammed shut behind me, and as I tried to cry out, the hand around my neck stole the cry from my throat with a firm squeeze.