The moment Corn laid eyes on the undead, he grabbed his blade and ran towards it.

“Wait, wait!” cried Line, pulling on the loose shirt.

Corn jerked backwards, cursing at the shirt.

But Line hadn’t finished explaining, “Holy Titans, Corn. He’s a man not a monster. The old man just died and resurrected as a spectre, do you have to scare him?”

Corn stopped mid-thrust but held his blade in the air.

“Fucking dragons, Corn! Haven’t you ever seen a spectre before?!”

“What is that?”

But the Player interrupted all of them. “Can I have my blade back? All of them,” she announced looking at them.

Corn sighed. He knew having any weapon would be incredibly important wherever he went and this dagger felt perfect for him. But he gripped the blade and handed it hilt-side to the Player.

“Thank you for the weapons,” he said bowing to the Player.

The blade flew out of his hands, towards the Player, and disappeared into thin air. The others still holding shields and swords were quick to hand them back just as courteously as Corn. When she got all the blades back, the barrier started moving again. This time they headed away from the guild war and the ever flowing spells.

The sun was finally up, greeting them with a bloody sunrise.

Corn stared at the old man. At first glance it was easy to mistake him for one of the undead. His fair skin was deathly pale and all his movements were just as jerky as the ice giants. But his face was radically different, his eyes weren’t glazed over like the ice giants and his face was capable of all the normal expressions instead of being scrunched into a permanent scowl. And, of course, he spoke.

“So, how’s it going?” the old man asked feebly.

Line replied with a question, “How was the resurrection, old man?”

“It was, ugh, very tiring,” he said, sitting down and massaging his brows. He lowered his voice to a whisper, “You see it was all thanks to Lady Player that we managed to escape. There was a necromancer capturing undead minions at the resurrection stone. If the Lady hadn’t fought off him off, whew I don’t even want to think about it.”

He paused and looked at his companion who now had white hair, “Though now that I think about it, I guess you should call me undead man instead of old man.”

He slapped his thighs and laughed boisterously.

Instantly Corn was reminded of the ice giant, the clacking sound was way too similar. He leant forward and asked them, “What is a spectre?”

Line instantly retorted, “How can you not know the cycle of life? People start out as babies and then they grow longer and taller and after that they become middle aged and then they turn wrinkly. And after that they become a spectre and then they die a true, true death. Even children know that people grow old.”

But the old man (who was currently undead) waved his hands to stop Line, “You are getting carried away, you know. Remember when others used to abuse and spit on us due to our ranks, do you remember how we comforted ourselves? We used to tell ourselves, oh we may be purpose slaves, but at least we’re not base slaves, those poor people. We’re definitely luckier than they are, at least we get to live in a city. Do you remember that Line? Maybe you should be a bit kinder to him.”

Line was instantly subdued. He looked at Corn with sympathy in his eyes.

The old man continued, “Spectres are normal people who have turned undead while the undead you saw out there, they’re monsters. Monsters who would rip your throat out and swallow your guts.

The thing is anyone can become undead. Elves, nymphs, humans and even monsters. It’s just that when a normal person becomes undead they don’t lose their minds so they’re called spectres. They’re still the same person, with the same personality-”

He abruptly started coughing and then retched in pain.

“-it’s just that they’re a lot weaker and vulnerable. Which reminds me, do any of you still have any life counters?”

Corn shook his head, while Line replied, “No I lost them all.”

“Then I’m just going to rest my weary bones now,” cackled the old man.

The conversation was over. Their short skirmish had exerted a toll on them and most of the crowd was already snoring. Even though Corn wasn’t feeling very sleepy, he lay down.

He woke up with a start.

Everyone else was wide awake and was staring at him. Both his hands were clutching his collar as though he wanted to tear it apart, an old habit. He quickly let go of his collar and looked around.

He was still inside the barrier but they had already stopped moving. On both sides were parties like them, most of them were on helicopters parked on the tarmac underneath them. Despite there being an odd plane or two they were the only people in a floating spherical barrier. Corn stood there silently, wondering what they were waiting for, but when he turned around he was stunned into disbelief.

He pushed his face into the borders of the barrier to get a closer look. In front of him were four huge arches. They stood at about a hundred and fifty stories tall and a few hundred stories wide, each one of them made up of a rock the colour of blood. The arches were arranged into a circle with each arch pointing into a cardinal direction and a huge dome, made out of the same blood red rock, covering all of the four arches.

Their sheer size gave Corn a fright, but it was the blue vortex of energy inside of the arches that stunned him even more. Even though the sun was up, the blue sheen from the vortexes covered all the people around the great monument, like a huge storm waiting to unleash its destruction. They were positioned right in the corner between two arches and to him it felt like two blue eyes staring right into him, thirsty for his blood.

“It’s a planar portal,” came Line’s voice from behind him. “It’s pretty amazing isn’t it? It makes you feel like a mouse in front of a dragon.”

“Yeah.”

“Though I’ve never seen it before, I’ve definitely heard of them. What a sight! Only one of them exists per plane. They’re one of the greatest pieces of architecture and the only way to travel from one plane to another. I can’t believe I’ve finally reached here.”

He turned his head to look at the old man talking to someone else on the other side of the barrier, safely out of ear shot.

He continued, “You know I’m still pretty curious about your ranking. The lives of base slaves are rumored to be unbearable torture. They can’t even advance to the next rank. What was your life like? How is it that you don’t know any of the most basic facts of life?”

Corn was silent.

“I mean life as purpose slave is still pretty bad. People treat you like shit as though your lives don’t matter one whit; as though you’re just a tool to be used. But base slaves are supposed to have it even worse. Why? And how did you even get out?”

Corn remained silent.

“For someone who doesn’t have Stats you’re still a pretty good fighter. You’re calm, cool and capable of doing crazy things people of your power wouldn’t dream of. Normally I wouldn’t just trust a stranger I know nothing about but you’ve stuck to your guts, so I’ll trust you for now.”

And with that Line walked away leaving Corn with his thoughts.

“What do you mean there are ‘others’? I’ve been waiting here for three hours. I don’t care about how you rank the importance of my mission. My ranking should be sufficient to allow me to pass and I’ve been waiting before all these ‘others’ you’ve been rambling about. Either you let me pass or suffer the wrath of all the Angels of Iterra.”

The angel was still hovering above them in the barrier. For a moment Corn thought she was talking to herself, but then he remembered that she was a Player and had a screen of her own. Who knew what Players could do with a screen?

“Yes, the destination is Verre of the Fifth system, which is in the documents I sent you. It’s one portal across, stop stalling for time.”

And with that the angel gave up negotiating and the barrier moved closer to the portal. As they moved closer Corn noticed a faint translucent shimmer across the entire monument. There was a barrier across the entire monument. Just as they were about to collide with the shimmer, it formed an opening and let them through.

As they moved closer to the portal a man flew up right in front of them. He was wearing brilliant orange armour as a knight would and holding a flaming halberd. He rode a black, wingless horse that was running on the air itself. The moment he saw the angel he stopped and bowed in deference.

“I didn’t dare think an Angel of Iterra would be escorting those vermin. I though surely It would be-“

“Cut the bullshit. Of course you knew, I sent you the documents with my seal on it. You may not value their lives but you had better value my time. In fact, I know which portal to take, I’ll be leaving.”

For a moment the knight stared at his screen, until he announced solemnly, ‘Approval granted.”

“Of course it’s granted.”

Up close the sheer size of the vortexes dominated their minds. Most of the crowd had closed their eyes and curled up into a ball. The elf had married Corn’s arm. Even Line was shaking in fear. The swirling chaos of blue had bewitched Corn into a trance.

He stared calmly at it as though he was entering the maw of a dragon. It was chaos unbridled, chaos so awe inspiring the only sane option was to watch calmly as it ripped him into shreds and be thankful for his death.

But within seconds they had passed through. No one felt a thing.

One second they were being swallowed by chaos and the next their entire surroundings transformed. Corn turned around to stare dumbly at the blue vortex. Of the four arches in this side of the portal, one of them was broken at the foundations itself. Instead of four vortexes there were three and a pair of broken red stumps.

After a few trifling formalities they were off. Only after he was far enough did he wake up from his stupor. When he looked at the rest of his companions he noticed they were catatonic. Line was staring dumbly, drool dripping out of his mouth. He tried to shake him awake.

“Leave them. It’s a natural response. They’ll wake up eventually.”

He withdrew from Line and looked outside. He blinked and then closed his eyes. Was he seeing things?

Corn was exhausted. This day had stretched into an eternity. Escaping itself was hell, let alone fighting a monster and zipping around planes. Maybe he was seeing things.

He opened his eyes. Nope still the same. There was no sun. Instead the sky was filled by a huge disc of pale yellow and mottled brown. The sky was pale yellow, lit up by the huge disc and an ambitious star hanging in the corner.

He clutched his knees and whispered to himself, “Say hello to freedom.”