I awoke to a massive headache and there was a searing pain in my left arm, along with someone screaming at me to wake up. "5 more minutes..." I mumbled to whoever it was that was shaking me, but the shaking didn't stop. Instead I was met with a rather abrupt smack to the stomach followed by someone yelling "If you don't wake up I'm going to light Vorlander's pants on fire and pin all the blame on you!"

I was instantly awake and my eyes shot towards Alex and without thinking I said "Don't you even DARE pin the blame on me for your random ass shenanigans. I will melt your axe if you even attempt that you god damn- wait....where are we? and what the hell is-" I was stopped by more searing pain in my left arm and was clutching it in pain. I couldn't hear what Alex was saying over the sheer intensity of the pain I was going through. It felt like something was tearing flesh off of my arm in small little strands and replacing the flesh with something else entirely. It felt foreign and full of power yet not right, as if I should not let it exist, but I wanted it to exist all at the same time. I wanted to scream in agony but a hand covered my mouth and I heard a loud set of clunking footsteps echo in the distance. I then remembered where we were.

Thats right, we were in the dungeon and got screwed over by some Death Knight and I found some weird glowing sword. Speaking of swords where the hell was the sword? It was then that I noticed the notifications in my vision. The pain had subsided enough to let me think clearly and actually pay attention to what was going on.

The Cursed Sword of Hephalio has activated and given you a curse. The curse is Greater Mana Instability! For the next 72 hours you will have very unstable mana. Whenever you use mana the mana will run rampant and have a high chance of the spell failing or even backfiring and causing terrible repercussions.

Hephalio has enjoyed your suffering from the branding and has granted you a blessing! For the next 72 hours all spells you successfully use will deal 3x the normal damage and cost 50% less mana.

I stared at the notification in shock. What the hell was the cursed sword of Hephalio and why did it curse me? I then noticed another popup and read it.

You have been Branded by the cursed sword of Hephalio! The brand on your left arm will allow you to summon or unsummon the Hephalio. Hephalio has a chance to curse the user at whim and depending on the circumstances it may also grant a blessing as well. Be warned. Hephalio is known to drive its user to ruin and it is impossible to get rid of Hephalio as you have been branded with it's mark.

I blinked as I read the second message and then stared at my left arm. On my arm was a blood red glowing tattoo. It looked like a long wingless dragon coiling around my arm with it's mouth encompassing my left hand with the top of the dragon's mouth covering half of the top of my hand and the bottom doing the same for half of my palm. The rest of my hand was untouched by the tattoo The dragon itself looked ferocious and a combination between a dragon and a demon, and looked like it only took the ferocious parts of both to make a terrifying beast of slaughter. It also had several faint tattoos but I couldn't make out what they were. I felt like I would see the tattoos more clearly the more powerful I got but I had no idea where this knowledge came from. As I was staring at the tattoo I could have sworn I saw the eyes of the beast turn to look at me and heard the dragon snickered. It freaked me out and I moved my hand away from me in terror.

When the dragon, was that the right term to call it that? It felt wrong somehow but I was going to continue calling it that as I had no other name for what it was. The dragon didn't move from its original spot on my arm, causing me to relax and I then heard Alex say something, sounding real annoyed.

"What the hell is up with you? I used my Searching Call spell to find your location and find you in some crack, which I then found out was being constantly patrolled around by Death Knights. I then manage to get into the crack and find you passed out and your entire body was emanating a fierce aura and I couldn't get near you until just now, and when I do get to you I find that you now have some glowing Demonic Dragon Tattoo! Seriously what the hell have you been up to in the past 4 hours?"

...It had been 4 hours already? It felt like a few minutes had passed between me running away and me passing out but I guess a lot more time than I thought had passed. "I don't really know man. I was just running for my life and found this crack in the wall and dove into it to avoid certain death. I saw this weird sword and kept getting the thought to touch the sword. I seriously wish I hadn't touched the sword cause it freaking HURT." I shivered as I remembered the pain I had gone through just moments ago. The pain was mostly gone by this point and was reduced to a dull throbbing with the occasional burst of pain.

"Matthias we really need to get out of here dude. We can sort out the whole tattoo thing later on. But for now I want to focus on getting out of here alive." Alex was right on that so I got up with assistance from Alex. We then went near the crack and were checking for any Death Knights patrolling nearby when I thought about where the sword went and remembered the notification saying something about being able to summon the sword, so I tried to do just that. I just thought 'I want the sword to appear in my left hand'. Not a second later the sword did appear in my hand, only this time the runes were glowing blood red instead of a vibrant yellow like I remembered it was. The sword itself looked very menacing and powerful. I kept staring at the sword and noticed its yellow flames were now tinged with a very slight amount of red. I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't paying such close attention to the sword at the moment. The amount of red was almost nonexistent in the yellow flames.

I then felt a pat on my shoulder followed by him saying "Alright the coast is clear lets book it." I started crawling forward and willed the sword to be unsummoned, which it did after I thought about it. Man this would be useful for travelling and other stuff. Too bad I can' travel with this stupid slave collar on, I thought to my self as I touched my slave collar while we ran

As we were sprinting down the halls we heard a thumping and clanking sound that indicated the arrival of a Death Knight. We quickly located that it was coming fro ma hallway behind us to the left so we booked it down a side path with Alex leading the way the entire time. "Man how the heck do you know where to go." I asked him. He simply laughed and said "The Searching Call spell lets me locate stuff and gives me directions to it provided I have touched the object and know exactly how it looks and also doesn't work for certain things. Oh it also has a range and constantly consumes magic so we better hurry or we'll be stuck walking blind until I get enough mana." At that we picked up the pace while Alex detailed his next great plan which involved inverting Vorlander's clothing and making his underwear glow vibrantly. I sighed as I listened to him. Alex never changes no matter what situation he is in.

~~~

"Haah haah, did we finally lose em? I seriously don't want to see another skeleton for a long while. I feel like i'm going to have nightmares about Death Knights." Alex and I were still running and he seemed rather tired of escaping from Death Knights the entire time. This place was infested with them, like seriously. "We climbed 15 staircases upwards and passed through what feels like 50 km worth of hallways. I didn't know I ran this far when escaping them. I seriously thought I had only ran along one floor, not descended down 15 floors. Running for your life can really make you get going huh." I said that and Alex laughed and then pointed at a tunnel. The exit should be just past that corner." I cried out in excitement and yelled "Finally we are going to be free! No more undead! I can't wait to punch Vorlander in the god damn face for nearly getting us killed." I had a rather evil grin on my face as I thought of the various spells I could use to torture Vorlander. The Dragon on my left arm pulsed in what I could have sworn was excitement. This made me stumble and nearly fall, but I righted myself and kept running.

The thing responded to my thoughts, it freaking got excited. This made me wonder what exactly had been branded onto my left arm. Or was something a part of my left arm now? I kept thinking of this and the excitement in the dragon tattoo faded into nothing and almost turned into something else. I couldn't really understand how this tattoo could feel things but it did and it felt disappointed from what I understood. I kept thinking about the tattoo some more but we had made it out of the dungeon a few moments later, not giving me nearly enough time to think about this situation.

What I saw outside the dungeon was a full battalion of knights and a large amount of adventurers at the ready with weapons drawn. They calmed down when they saw it was humans but didn't let their guards down, still suspicious of us. I saw Vorlander standing off to the side under a tent being yelled at by the Meldor. Stron was still injured but it looked like he had been healed somehow. I was glad he had survived as he wasn't a bad person to be honest. Vorlander looked furious but whenever he started acting out Meldor would increase his yelling and the killing intent would roll off of him in almost literal waves, quickly silencing any snarky remarks he had. We were walking over to them when someone nearby yelled "Stop! Who are you and why are you leaving that dungeon just now? It's been over 4 hours since the report had been made. Are you somehow related to the Death Knight incident? Speak!" The knight that spoke aimed his sword at us and the rest followed suit by getting into a battle ready stance.

Before I could even say anything I saw Meldor yell "Oi leave em alone , those 2 are part of the reason why we are still alive. If he hadn't figured out it was a Death Knight then Stron would have been dead and so would have most of the students!" With that the knights backed off but still kept a wary eye on us. I huffed and continued with Alex over to the group and waved at Maria, who looked relieved to see us alive. She ran to Alex and socked him in the gut, which caused him to wince in pain, before yelling at him.

"Why did you have to run after him, the direction the Death Knight went?! You both could have died! Do you know how stupid it was to just blindly charge after the Death Knight like that?!" She really seemed angry and chewed Alex out quite a lot before taking a deep breath and saying "I'm just glad my teaching instructor didn't die. You still have quite a lot to teach me so don't go off chasing Death Knights like a moron." I laughed at that and started talking with Stron and Meldor about what was going on outside the dungeon with all the knights and adventurers. From the sounds of it quite a lot happened and this became a bigger mess than anyone could have predicted.