Whatever Eric had expected when he pulled aside the animal skin doorway, it hadn’t been the sight of a dozen musclebound bearded men panting, snarling and hissing in pain on woven grass mats.

All of them were naked, save for loincloths. Loose piles of clothing consisting of undyed cloth, supple leather, and toughened rawhide had been laid in a careful bundle by all their feet. Though presently near naked, their warrior professions were obvious, both from their ice cold stares and the Flat-pommeled saber hilts clearly visible in the center of each of those bundles of clothing. Yet the most striking feature of this large hall-like chamber, the detail that made it clear that Eric was exactly where he needed to be, not simply chasing fancy or delusion, was that each and every warrior was covered in tattoos flaring brilliantly to Eric’s senses, radiating blood magics and spiritual energy to equal effect in an odd intermingling he had never expected to see.

A part of him was thrilled as he slowly made his way across the clay tiled chamber, wondering if, against all expectation, this was to be his path. Another part of him was horrified. Not by the exquisitely portrayed tattoos of fearsome looking tigers, leopards, and falcons, rendered near lifelike, nor by the power all of them so clearly radiated, but rather by what he could sense from the deviant art, even from here.

None of them seemed in sync or in harmony with any underlying cultivation base.

The warriors weren’t glowing with health.

They were pale with exhaustion.

It was as if the tattoos weren’t helping to channel or circulate spiritual energy from the major Meridian Gates to the farthest reaches of their bodies at all.

All he had to do was note the uniform heads of iron grey hair, weary eyes, and trembling bodies despite the rock hard muscle of endless training to know that it was much worse than that.

But it wasn’t until Eric had passed the second bed that he saw a man with brilliant white hair, groaning in clear misery, ripe with the sickly stench of illness, fear-sweat, and terror, that Eric could be certain.

The tattoos, radiating such crimson power, weren’t doing anything for these warrior’s cultivation.

They were tapping directly into the life-force of the wearer, as the piteously groaning elder Eric gazed down upon who couldn’t have been more than 25 years old, somehow he knew that, even as the man’s muscles shriveled as the tiger tattoo flared to exquisite life upon his chest. Letting out one last silent roar, and Eric knew in that instant that the man before him had been unmatched, peerless in battle, slaughtering all who stood against his tribe for the last three seasons before shriveling to a dried husk, here and now, before Eric’s very eyes.

A voice tutted and sighed behind Eric. “I told that fool he dare not claim the tiger again. But he did not listen, declaring that he’d rather die a warrior’s death than savor an old man’s rewards, no matter how much cattle, women, and gold his feats had earned him.”

Eric turned to see a wizened old man with snow white hair shaking his head. He wore an embroidered changshan jacket of finest silk over white robes of linen, and the honey-laden sympathy of his words couldn’t quite hide the cruel glint in his eyes as he gazed down upon the shriveled corpse.

“Poor Poo Ya. At least he fought well.”

Only then did the elder turn Eric’s way, hard dark eyes seeming to take Eric and all he stood for in a single heartbeat, features lightening with unexpected mirth. “Ah, how fascinating! How fortuitous! That an obvious outsider with hair like spun gold that would look fine woven into my jacket, and such beautiful sapphire blue eyes I would love to place on the hilt of my blade! And he dares to set foot in the heart of our territory. Our city! And radiating such power, such promise… yes. Yes, I can see why none of the guard stopped you, perhaps thinking you were my creature. Or… an emissary of something greater, perhaps?”

The elder rubbed his long sinuous hands together, the digits moving no less dexterously for being slightly gnarled, his smile revealing the perfectly white teeth of a man in the prime of his life.

“So, what can old Caoxin do for you, Spirit? You wish to infuse your wild essence with the power of blood and strife?” The man nodded thoughtfully. “Such a combination would indeed be powerful. You would no doubt best all your rivals! But beware. Such an infusion must be fed with the blood of a fresh mortal every full moon if it is to maintain its power, its potency. For no spirit has the life force necessary to feed it themselves.”

Eric could blame it on the stench of sickness, wood smoke, and death. The dim light of a poorly lit hall. The shock of somehow being transported inside a vision… a place? A point in time thousands of years out of sync with his own. But it was only then that he registered the source of those choked off whimpers the keening sobs quickly muffled to the sound of harsh threats and the crack of a whip, as the broken body of a young woman tumbled through a ceiling hatch to smack bonelessly against the clay tiles, neck clearly broken, the panicked brown eyes of what had once been a beautiful girl frantically darting everywhere, until by some freakish chance, locking directly with Eric’s own.

And the shiver through his soul when she blinked, once, dry cracked lips desperate to speak, but no sound could come from her broken body before the light faded completely from here eyes.

Caoxin tutted and shook his head. “I told the fools on the roof to be careful, as I do every full moon. But there is always some tributary captive who is claimed without a virgin’s purity, and those wenches put the entire ritual at risk!” He sighed. “Ah well, we will simply make her tribe pay triple tribute next year.”

He then turned back to a still stunned and shaken Eric, flashing a twisted smile, dexterous hands now flashing an instrument of copper and blood, the bright hot tip crackling with fires tainted and foul.

“Did you really think you’d be permitted one of Caoxin’s tattoos as easily as that, outsider? That you could strut in on the coattails of legends, that we wouldn’t recognize your tribe at once?” The elder glared at the dozen or so men still lying on the grass mats. “Rise, fools! An intruder dares to enter our sanctuary!”

Before the words had even left the elder’s lips, a full dozen men had rolled to their feet, their wickedly sharp curved blades in grips either rock hard or trembling, yet not a one had failed to answer their master’s call.

The elder snorted, muttering under his breath as the dozen warriors slowly circled Eric and the elder. “Obedient to the last. And most of them have only a single season left. Pity. I was hoping for more time.”

The Elder glared at the intruder for long moments as Eric continued to stare at the broken body that had been so cruelly used and thrown away like it was nothing. Less than nothing. As trained and hardened warriors circled for the kill.

And beyond even Eric’s horror at what he had seen, was the odd sense of connection he had felt from that dying girl’s gaze.

He keenly felt the breeze from the opened door-flap trickle against his bare skin, somehow not surprised to find that he was just as naked, save for a loincloth, as the dozen or so warriors circling him even now. Yet he could still feel his connection to his own spirit-tool, one designed for far bolder works of art than the blood-cursed scalpal the elder cultivator was now flashing his way.

“Well, speak, intruder! Who sent you? Why are you here?” Caoxin flashed a twisted smile. “You are handsome enough. Should you surrender… you will enjoy life as a castrato. At least for a time.”

Eric gazed at the man for long moments, Soul Perception only now perceiving the twisted knots of crimson power riddling an incomplete set of meridian channels forced into a warped alignment that had, nonetheless, managed to extend this creature’s life for many mortal spans.

Burning away the promise of future generations to sate a twisted wujen’s desperate appetites. The sacrifice of his warriors robbed of the prime of their lives. The sacrifice of countless young women, anyone of whom could have given their future mates strong, beautiful children that would have benefited the tribe as a whole. Humanity as a whole.

Save for this abomination, draining dry the strongest, most virile of each generation, weakening an entire people, to prolong his own twisted life.

“I thought I was here to get a tattoo,” Eric said with the dry cracked voice of someone who hadn’t spoken in ages. “But now I think I was sent here for another purpose.”

The elder’s lip curled with bemused contempt. “And what purpose would that be? Lifelong fealty to our clan, perhaps?”

Eric slowly shook his head. “I think you already know the answer to that,” he said, ignoring their derisive sneers as he summoned not the mithril blade of transcendent dream and impossible wonder his now very mortal frame had no hope of using, but rather the blade he had trained with so diligently it was almost an extension of his soul. His 1821 Light Cavalry Saber now held in a grip so familiar, so comforting, it was as if it had never left his hand.

This earned hot-eyed gazes and furious glares from all the warriors encircling him.

“You think you have a chance, fool? One boy’s blade against twelve hardened killers? You’ll be eating that fancy steel before we’re done with you!” roared the closest of the twelve men who, despite how exhausted and worn he had looked minutes ago, was now all but brimming with vitality, as were all the others, their tattoos blazing a brilliant shade of crimson, muscles engorged with their lifeblood, their beady black eyes those of men eager to embrace the killing fields yet again.

Eric clenched his jaw, refusing to let terror or fury hold sway over his soul, no matter how loud his heart roared in his ears, a dozen powerful killers surrounding him at all sides. He locked eyes with the fallen wujen one final time, flourishing his blade. “Death sends her regards.”

The elder blanched and stumbled back from whatever he saw in Eric’s gaze, clearly finding little comfort in how utterly dwarfed Eric was by the looming giants all around him, just a pale shadow of the engorged raiders now surrounding him on all sides.

“Kill him!” Caoxin screamed. “Kill him now!”

Quickness check made! You have evaded Piercing Strike! You have pierced Wujen Wards!

You have shattered your opponent’s jaw!

As shaken as Eric was to find himself in the body that had been his own less than a year back, the lessons of war he had embraced this past year had emblazoned themselves upon his body and soul. So when he sensed death rear back to strike, he was already dashing forward, seeking to break through the deadly ring of killers in the most expedient fashion he could.

Slamming right into the now snarling wujen who’s blood-tinged wards did absolutely nothing to counter a blade with no magical powers whatsoever, save being soaked in Eric’s blood, linked to his very soul.

A flash of blinding crimson light, the crunch of bone, a gurgling cry Eric paid no head to as he leaped back over the falling form of the shrieking elder spitting teeth and blood, raising his blade in tierce before embracing those elements of Polish fencing hammered into his forms, long ago.

A constant series of cross-cutting moulinets that besides looking damn good on the silver screen, were his only chance of parrying the trio of swordsmen now rushing forward, hot-eyed glares making it clear they yearned for Eric’s death above all else.

Which was good, Eric thought, as his heart pounded with terror and exhilaration, fiercely biting down on his lip as time seemed to stretch as furious snarls and curses turned tinny, indistinct, Eric’s focus now absolute and utterly upon the rapidly rushing men. Sensing their gazes locked completely upon his own. As if entranced by the near naked fey beauty that would dare presume to invade their space, strike down their wujen, and draw steel with a mocking disregard for the twelve killers eager to strike him dead.

So focused that the lead pair barely registered the thrashing wujen two of the three warriors stumbled over, one recovering with serpentine grace, the other grunting in surprised when his blade was twisted off line an instant before his intestines sprayed from the rent in his abdomen, letting out a single pained cry as he crashed to the ground.

The flinch and blink of disbelief of the man just behind him was an instinctive reaction that no amount of desperate backpedaling could prevent from costing the man everything, Eric’s saber snapping out with an adder’s grace, tearing completely through the man’s wrist and bathing the pair behind the stumbling warrior now kicked out of the way in a spray of hot sticky blood that had the warriors hissing and rubbing their eyes.

A lapse Eric was now helpless to take advantage of as he desperately weaved and dodged past the onslaught of killing blades eager to taste his own blood, Eric’s furious series of alternating crosscuts at least serving to knock aside what could so easily have been killing blows from trained warriors.

Lethal strikes downgraded to the shallowest of wounds that nevertheless stung with fearsome pain as Eric took one shallow wound after another to his shins, thighs, and abdomen. A desperate lurch was all that kept his kidney from being ripped completely open from behind.

Finesse check made!

A frantic drop and spin, and Eric was rolling under the man’s furious lunge, only to leap to his feet on lacerated thighs that now burned like fire. Adrenaline and hundreds of hours of dedicated training was all that allowed him to spring back to his feet in time to deliver a whipping slash that tore completely through the would-be killer’s neck as he spun around, right before crashing to the ground and kicking the clay tiles with a desperate gurgle as desperate hands clawed fruitlessly at the spurting blood gushing from the man’s neck, Eric’s blow not quite enough to severe the tattoo-infused warrior’s spine.

But more than enough for the dying man to roll and thrash and spray both Eric and the surviving warriors with what seemed gallons of blood that made Eric hiss, feeling as if he were being burned in truth by the acidic sting of the bile-enriched blood. Far, far too much blood spurting from all of those he had already sent crashing to the ground.

Eric’s eyes widened with a mixture of horror and awe, sensing so clearly, so viscerally how deeply their borrowed cultivator’s power had been tied to their life force, the bodies literally aging and withering before his eyes as they continued to spurt an endless supply of vitality laden blood etching Eric’s skin like caustic lye whilethe floor grew impossibly slick.

Eric’s inhuman Finesse, still intact, was all that kept him from collapsing, to the ground.

“He weakens, kill him!” Roared the nearest man still on his feet, and Eric couldn’t help but flash a fierce smile, happy for their bluster, their bravado, as they charged him once more. Only now nearly all of them were slipping on the blood-slicked tiles as they raced forward, furious roars and bluster a desperate counter to finesse and poise… and one that availed them very little as whipping saber countered cleaving scimitars with the gentlest of crimson kisses, gifting arterial blossoms that grew and grew no matter how wide the eyes of stumbling warriors, lurching back and falling to the blood-slicked grounds before their silent cries were replaced by gushes of crimson gore.

Yet there was no pause in the madness of that melee as roaring bearded man lashing out in a furious crosscut Eric stumbled back in trying to parry, still earning a wicked oozing slash from shoulder to right hip, his would-be killer flashing a fierce, broken-toothed smile.

Before his eyes bulged in confusion to find his blade bound by Eric’s complex hilt before a furious wrench and snarl sent it flying as Eric dipped and lunged forward, running his foe completely through before tearing out the man’s entrails with a furious yank and springing back as the final two warriors roared and struck as one.

Before tripping on the serpentine mass of entrails pouring of the screaming man desperate to hold himself together, his own saber completely forgotten, agony reaching sublime heights when the closest of the two upright warriors managed to get his foot caught in a loose loop of intestine, crashing to the ground. Then for a brief instant Eric was facing a single warrior once more, desperate to make it count.

He raced forward and slammed into the powerfully built warrior while deliberately pivoting his weight, allowing the grunting man pressing his blade so fiercely against Eric’s own to stumble over his right hip before Eric’s blade abruptly whipped forward in a wicked fast draw cut showering them both with sparks as the two sword blades bit into one another.

His snarling opponent roared, tattoo infused muscles allowing him to wrench his blade high, completely free of Eric’s blade. The warrior flashed a furious smile as he roared and brought his blade whistling down… before his eyes bulged in horror and he stumbled over as Eric slid back after snapping his wrist around in a tight underhanded moulinet, his blade now crimson with the arterial blood gushing from the warrior’s sliced-open femoral artery.

Eric wasted no time, racing forward to avoid any final strikes from a man he had fatally wounded, who might or might not be stumbling to the ground crying out as he futilely tried to stop the fatal gush of blood spraying them both… or perhaps he was embracing his last handful of seconds twisting around to plunge his scimitar through Eric’s back… so Eric could only race ahead, just trying to gain distance from dying men still holding sharp steel blades as he made a furious charge for the final upright swordsman now gazing at Eric in confused disbelief. As if unable to comprehend why the naked pale-skinned boy alone was standing in their sanctified hall where only the strongest were permitted to stand.

It was a dazed look that lasted for only a heartbeat in time as Eric’s blade windmilled forth, now embracing elements of longsword fencing with both hands on the hilt as he abruptly pivoted off his back foot, whipping his blade around in a high overhead strike that assured maximum momentum and power with the false edge of his blade, the reverse edge, extra length, and unorthodox style of attack allowing for the generation of arc and momentum completely at odds with the slashing cross-cut style Eric had used almost exclusively before that moment. It was a move that caught his foe completely off guard.

The man’s shorter curved blade was in no position to parry the windmilling Schielhau blow. No matter that a proper longsword with a longer hilt would have been far more devastating, the momentum generated with both of Eric’s hands upon the pommel was still enough to force his opponent’s awkwardly held blade off-line before cracking against the man’s skull and sending him crashing to his knees.

And it was a credit to the dark crimson arts and tainted cultivation base that Eric’s blow hadn’t broken that man’s skull. Just as countless other grievous wounds inflicted had failed to shatter bones, no matter how grievous the injuries to softer flesh happened to be.

A quick look all around made it clear that at least half of his foes were just seconds away from lurching back to their feet once more, having paid a fierce cost in terms of life force, salt-and-pepper hair now turning snowy white, yet ancient bitter eyes still had control of bodies engorged with blood, at least for the moment. Blood and killing fury they were eager to expend upon Eric’s own broken body, if they could.

Eric ruthlessly squeezed the icy surge of panic swelling in his chest, sparing a final glance at the now glaring warrior he had thought nocked out completely by a blow that had only momentarily stunned him, the man even now gripping his sword for a vicious draw cut to Eric’s knees that would surely spell his doom.

Before Eric whipped his blade around once more in a far more conventional cross-cut that tore right through the stunned warrior’s vulnerable neck as easily as he had ever sliced through tatami mats, albeit with far more blood.

Then he was madly sprinting back across the massive blood-soaked chamber with a furious roar of defiance, charging right into the slowly recovering men, lashing out with furious abandon at cold-eyed killers only now shrieking and begging for mercy as Eric’s blade whipped across their bodies at a frantic, furious pace, desperate to see them all crash down in final death before they could surround him once more.

Until with the final splash of a head spraying crimson gore as it splashed to the ground, it was done.

Eric, took sharp desperate gasps, refused to believe that it was finally over. That it could ever be over with his heart roaring in his ears, the memory of so many furious killing stares sent his way. Yet here he was, limbs trembling with exhaustion, breath coming out in sharp, ragged gasps, suddenly finding himself so weak he could barely move, legs almost completely covered in a shallow pool of blood. Far, far too much blood for the dozen withered corpses floating upon the surface.

And the hue and cry in the distance beyond the hut made it clear that the ancient city was now up in arms for one reason or another. Probably because of him.

Eric gazed at his own blood-soaked body in disbelief, every inch of him stinging from so many shallow cuts that could so easily have spelled his end.

He choked out rueful laughter, not needing any hard-eyed healer, friend, or sibling, to tell him how close he had just come to death… or that the hostile gaze of the wujen even now forcing himself back to his feet needed to be closed forever, or this nightmare travesty would happen again and again.

Caoxin roared and shouted unintelligible garble, his face scrunching in agony and humiliation before his eyes lit with a hellish inner fire and he jutted out his copper scalpal. The scalpal he had used to forge the tattoos that had given the men Eric had fought and killed such unholy Vitality as to fill this entire hall in a pool of blood.

“Viscorgolath!”

A garbled word the dark wujen struggled to say, Caoxin’s broken mouth curled in something that could have been unholy glee when a massive bolt of violet energy crackled through the ether, flaring so brilliantly that even the mage was momentarily blinded by the might of his spell.

Frowning seconds later when watery eyes revealed no body at all.

Before widening in confused disbelief to see the world spinning wildly all around him before Caoxin’s decapitated head splashed to the ground, drowning in the blood of his disciples and victims, lips locked in a silent scream as he desperately sought words that would avail him nothing before his head was submerged completely in the pool of crimson gore radiating such a fierce mixture of blood magic, necromancy, and spiritual energy.

Only then did Eric dare to acknowledge that the ordeal might finally be over, the flood of desperate relief ruthlessly pushed aside as he forced himself to wade through that awful caustic blood, blood that stung so fiercely as it came into contact with his own dripping wounds, checking each and every tattooed warrior that had come so close to cutting him down, taking the necessary steps to make sure that they could never, ever rise again, no matter how deep this increasingly unnatural pool of blood happened to be.

With a final glare for the thirteen decapitated heads, each and every one still blinking with manic intensity as they bobbed in the crimson waters, Eric waded for the exit he now dreaded approaching, heart already breaking for whatever nightmares he might find up there.

Forcing himself up the copper rungs of the ladder leading to the rooftop, wise enough to toss one furiously blinking head to the tip of his sword, slowly sticking it up through the squared opening, not surprised at all to feel the jolt of a blade against it. In fact, he had been counting on it. Seeing the wild-eyed man dressed in rough furs, eyes glaring with hate as he swung a copper scythe at the blood-soaked skull… his foot exactly where Eric needed it to be as he pivoted, twisted and lunged, feeling flesh part and a single scream before he dropped back down before any rebuttal could do him in.

Eric hissed, chilled to find the blood even higher in the chamber below when he splashed down once more. Before climbing back up the now blood-slicked steps, the reflected light from his carefully angled blood-polished blade showing a man groaning and cursing as he held his shin in the room above, now sporting an ugly gash.

A heartbeat later, Eric was springing through the trap door, a single roar the only warning he would give his foe exhausted limbs filled with rekindled fury at the horrific sight before him.

A dozen girls bound to crimson circles, sobbing and crying out as they were bled, drop by drop. The youngest couldn’t have been more than twelve.

But of the three closest to Eric… his heart swelled with horror, gazing into the eyes of children lost in the withered faces of dessicated crones.

Drained of youth, vitality and blood, until nothing was left. Nothing at all.

A snarling Eric couldn’t lash out quickly enough, cleaving through the panicked sentinel’s upraised hands in the blink of an eye, his backhand blow ripping completely through the monster’s protesting throat a second later.

And no more time did Eric waste, not a single second, as his crimson blade tore through bindings of blood, darkest magic, and bile.

At first, his saber’s desperate strikes did nothing. Nothing at all against chains of darkest magic, so distracted he was by the throbbing pain of so many cuts, so many nearly fatal cuts that had absolutely shredded his naked flesh.

Before accepting that pain, binding wounds with crimson magics, the blood mastery skill he himself had forged and only now fully recalled, absorbing and claiming for his own the dark significance of scars now completely sealed and covering near every inch of his body.

Never before had it been so easy to cleave through darkest enchantments. Now parting as easily as gossamer strands before a blade red with the essence of Fire, Fury, and Dominion. Parting to his will as he pulled free one girl after another, heart breaking for the naked withered bodies of so many keening girls who would know nothing but hardship, pain, and despair for the remainder of their too short lives, and a handful of girls still flush with youth and hope, sobbing with relief, crying out to him in a language he couldn’t at all comprehend.

Eric strove to speak, to comfort, to assure, then turning around to find some semblance of clothing he could use to protect those girls before finding some sort of shelter, a sanctuary that would claim them. Could claim them.

Before a wide-eyed Eric caught sight of what had alarmed so many girls he had freed from the grip of monsters.

The crimson scars he had thought sealed tightly shut were now glowing a brilliant fiery red as Eric collapsed to the ceiling of that ancient sacrificial chamber, thousands of years and half a world away from the timeline he called his own. Yet real enough, it seemed, to transform him in ways he could scarce conceive as his body ignited with a white hot flame.

What he felt then transcended any previous comprehension he had of pain, even in the orcish fire pit that had first sent him catapulting along the crimson path he now embraced, reforging him anew in ways transcendent, terrible, and irrevocable.

He had no idea of the shrieks ringing in his ears as blinding white light transformed to blackness was that of the terrified girls, or his own.

Congratulations!

You have successfully completed the Trial: Crimson Crucible!

You now contain a PRISTINE set of Peripheral channels forged in battle that you may infuse with spiritual energy of a degree and intensity strong enough to anchor the eventual formation of a Silver Seed! And (should you prove worthy) an eventual Golden Core!

Note! Your Cultivation is now irrevocably aligned to the Path of Peril!

Meditation now avails you no direct advancement!

Only through evolving in the crucible of combat, facing creatures of a higher rank than yourself, can any consort of Death possibly ascend as a cultivator!

Eric howled with a discordant mixture of fierce triumph and white-hot agony, sensing the dark fractal pattern countless killing blows narrowly countered had inflicted upon his flesh. So too, the crimson sprays of so many ancient killers spraying him with their life blood had soaked his flesh in patterns equally as significant, his body now an exquisite tapestry of killing blows survived and delivered. A crimson collage blazing with all of his essences and spiritual affinities, fused in an eternal matrix of crystalline flame.

After what seemed countless hours screaming in the memory of an orcish hell pit, Eric was almost surprised to feel unspeakable pain fading away as if a dream, eyes coated by soothing darkness speckled with a thousand brilliant twinkling stars when he dared to open them once more, his still naked skin caressed by the cooling breeze of moist air and the chill of damp grass he was currently laying upon.

He spent long moments in a daze, focusing on nothing more than slow deep breaths as he allowed his mind to drift, to embrace the lightest of meditations as he tried to process everything that had happened to him since daring those steps to a city of mystic lights that had, in fact, been Death’s domain.

Or an extremely powerful cultivator and Classer who had claimed that title, radiating such power that Eric wouldn’t dare dispute it. And the epiphanies and insights he himself had gained into the dao of life and death and the twilight between them serving as the ultimate catalyst for evolution, the advancement of both mer and man, had been beyond profound.

It had, in fact, served to shape his cultivation path in ways he hadn’t planned on, but perhaps should have expected.

His was not a broken limited path at all.

It was merely one that required facing all obstacles with absolute killing intent. Never fearing placing himself against ever greater risk, ever greater peril, to ascend at a lightning pace beyond all precedent… or perish to folly, or far worse, cowardice, and ultimately prove himself unworthy of Death’s regard or evolution’s grace.

Eric shuddered at the thought. Clenching tight the hilt of a crimson sword he was somehow holding.

Not the comforting hilt of his 1821 cavalry saber, but the hilt of what now truly was his deadliest and most valued weapon, a dachi of a length and balance to be used equally well as a long sword or saber, by someone with his unique blend Strength, Finesse, and training. And by some odd twist that soul-bound mithril blade was now the only thing on his person.

He shook his head in bemused disbelief at the turn of events that had him lying prone upon grounds he had so recently claimed, and surrendered.

Before hearing distant shouts and cries of battle, some distance away.