The door to the office swung open without preamble. Not a knock or a call of any kind preceding it. The bastard of an uneducated swine just opened it.

  Norlam had half a mind to pin the man to the wall with a knife, but he didn’t.

  “We’ve got a new problem.”

  Norlam shifted his attention to his new guest. Joina was the youngest member of the town by arrival. Only six months in the town, he was a devout member of the cause. His only problem was his inability to keep himself calm. On three occasions already, he had almost startled their prey before they had been ready for the hunt.

  Norlam still didn’t know why he hadn’t just hunted the fool instead.

  When he looked at the boy, he remembered why. Joina had curly black hair that fell just a little over his eyes. Most times, they masked his eyes, but at times like this, when he was strung up in panic, his eyes grew wide and anyone could see the deep ocean in their baby blues.

  Joina stood at least a head shorter than Norlam with freckles under his eyes and a skinny physical structure that was still fleshing out with all the flesh he continued to eat.

  The reason Joina was still alive despite messing up three times in six months was because of how innocent he looked. Killing him for mistakes he made just seemed… cruel.

  Norlam sighed as he rubbed the wrinkles of annoyance from his forehead with thumb and forefinger. The idea of killing someone for a mistake because it was cruel was ironic, and the irony wasn’t lost to him.

  Being the town chief of a place that thrived on cannibalism did not explicitly mean that he was a monster. And yet, somewhere in his heart he knew that the world would deem him so.

  But he couldn’t blame them. You were a monster if you did not conform to societal norms.

  “Chief,” Joina pressed, closing the door behind him. “I really think we should…”

  His voice trailed off when he saw that Norlam was not alone. The look Norlam was giving him was probably another deterrent. People had always told Norlam that he had a look that always seemed predatory even before he’d ever tasted his first flesh.

  “Joina,” Norlam said, effecting as much calmness in his tone as he could reasonably muster. “What have I said about knocking before you enter?”

  The boy looked down, keeping his eyes to the ground.

  The question was easily considered rhetorical, so Norlam didn’t press the matter. Besides, he probably wasn’t really angry with the boy. There was just something about his job, being in his office, that irked him the wrong way.

  With his large desk of brown wood polished to a reflective shine and his cushioned chair, it was easy to be comfortable. There was also the beauty of how spacious it was. Norlam had left the town enough times to know that his office was the size of any half decent merchant’s. The two chairs on the other side of the desk were reserved for guests that he rarely had. Tonight, however, they were occupied by a single guest.

  Comfort, Norlam thought with a taste of disgust. Since his brain had become functional in life, he’d hated the word. Hated the feeling.

  Comfort was the killer of evolution. The killer of strength. Comfort belonged to the weak, those ready to stop growing. Comfort was often deserved, but just because something was deserved did not mean it should be claimed.

  That a man deserved to keep living did not mean he got to live. That a woman deserved to go back home to her loving family after traveling out to some random town for sightseeing did not mean that she got to go back home.

  That a person deserved comfort did not mean that they should lose themselves in its embrace. It was why Norlam hated his office. It gave him the illusion of comfort. Every day he wished he could simply throw off the pretense and be who he had always known he was.

  Alas, life didn’t work that way.

  In the end, all the contemplation dulled down to a tired sigh. “What is the problem, Joina? Get it over quickly so I can return to dealing with my guest.”

  “Yes, sir.” Joina bowed hurriedly. “I spotted four people coming into the town.”

  Norlam paused, holding up four fingers. “Four?”

  “Yes, sir.” Joina nodded.

  Norlam’s guest stiffened slightly. Paying him no attention, he continued the conversation with Joina.

  “You said people, so I’m assuming it’s different genders.”

  Joina nodded again. “Three men and a woman.”

  “How long ago?”

  “An hour… maybe two.”

  A scowl touched Norlam’s lips. Joina had the [Archer] class. One of the reasons Norlam had agreed to take him in was so that he could be used as a watchman. He had a skill that made his eyesight significantly better than that of anyone in the town. But sometimes the boy could be a real fool.

  “And why am I finding out two hours later?” he asked, doing his best to keep his cool

  Joina cowed away slightly. The boy knew that if not for the guest seated in the room Norlam would’ve struck him a few times to make a point.

  “Aitom wasn’t around,” he said in explanation. “And the third man was kind of off, chief. He wasn’t with the others. He just stood far off for a very long time, watching them. Something just wasn’t right about him. He had a damaged cloak, and I couldn’t see his face.” Joina paused as if for dramatic effect, eyes staring off in remembrance. “He just stood there. Then he was entering the town. Haven’t seen the likes.”

  Norlam pursed his lips in mild annoyance. Joina was a lot of things, but a liar was not one of them.

  A man who’d crossed a large distance in the blink of an eye. That implied teleportation or speed. Teleportation would leave signs. Joina would’ve seen it happen. That he did not see any signs meant it was not teleportation.

  A speed class? Norlam pondered. Some classes were known to have very high-speed stats. A [Runner]?

  The [Runner] was an odd domestic class. All it did was specialize in increasing the speed of the person. They were not very popular. Used by most cities and towns, they were employed as messengers.

  But it couldn’t be. Joina made the man sound ominous. People with the [Runner] class were not ominous.

  “Do you remember anything else about the man?” he asked.

  Joina shook his head. “No. His cloak was hiding too much. I couldn’t even see a weapon or anything.”

  Norlam rubbed his jaw in thought. It had been a long time since he’d shaved, stubbles were already taking over.

  “Was the cloak big?” he asked.

  “Small and tattered.” Joina paused to think then shook his head. “I don’t think he could’ve hidden any weapon in it.”

  That would mean that in the worst-case scenario, the person had a class that focused on unarmed combat. It was the only explanation for how he moved so quickly.

  “So he was not with the other three.”

  “No, sir,” Joina answered.

  “I take it you have no idea where the lone guest entered. What of the other three, where are they?”

  “They took shelter in the abandoned adventure society hall.”

  Norlam almost scoffed in derision. Thinking about the building always annoyed him. It was a remembrance of the city of Elstrire’s attempt to control them. After the first three adventurers sent there had disappeared, the city had considered them not worth the stress and left it alone.

  As for the reason they were in no hurry to press on the matter considering the amount of money spent to build the hall, it was simple. Someone had used the hall’s creation to embezzle adventurer funds.

  The adventure society branch guild master in Elstrire was as corrupt as they came.

  “The abandoned adventure hall,” he mused, eyes darting over to his guest. “Do you know anything about this? Has the king sent another person to look into us?”

  His guest shook his head.

  Norlam found that he believed the man. He looked confused. He smelled confused. It didn’t matter. If they were not the king’s men, then they were free food.

  “Send someone to check on them,” Norlam said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Find out all there is to know about them and get back to me. If they are not with the current group that’s giving us trouble, then we’ll handle them accordingly.”

  Joina nodded once then hurried out of the office. He forgot to close the door behind him. Staring at the open door, Norlam failed to contain the growl of annoyance that bubbled in his throat.

  The sound made his guest give him a strange look.

  “When you’ve lived as long as I have doing what I have, you tend to develop habits,” he said in explanation. Forcing himself to ignore the open door, he focused his entire attention on the guest. “Now tell me about this miracle potion you were talking about.”

  “Would it not be better to deal with your new guests?” the man asked.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Norlam shrugged, nonchalant. “We get people popping in to look for trouble every now and again. The only reason we haven’t dealt with your group is because you arrived with a knight. The king does not play with his knights.”

  His guest sat back, his initial confusion gone. “That much is true. I wonder how you intend on handling the dead girl in their party, though.”

  “Dead girl?” Norlam frowned. “What dead girl?”

  “I see you are not aware of that.” The man gave him a smile. It was a slimy thing to look at. It told Norlam that he was dealing with a man that was willing to do anything to survive, no matter how cowardly.

  Norlam hated cowards, but he couldn’t fault a survivor.

  “What is this about a dead girl?” he asked, pressing the question.

  His guest folded his arms over his chest. It seemed he was beginning to think he had the power in the conversation now. The length of how wrong he was would dawn on him before the night is done. For now, Norlam was willing to allow him his delusion.

  “Two of my teammates went into the forest last night,” the man said holding up two fingers. Then he dropped a finger. “Only one came out.”

  “She could be missing,” Norlam suggested but the man shook his head.

  “I went in on my own and found the girl.” He shook his head in sadness. Surprisingly, the emotion seemed real, guilty even, as if the man felt he should’ve been able to save the girl. “I found her merged to a massive tree. Gone. There was nothing I could do to save her.”

  “Do the others know?”

  The man shook his head. “Not yet. I cleared the tracks that would lead them to her easily.”

  That was intriguing.

  “Why?”

  The man sat up. Leaning forward, he rested his arms on his side of the table. “Because I know the murderer, and I know the things I intend on doing to him. If my party members find him first, I will not be able to.”

  “So this is about vengeance.” Norlam could work with a man who had clear motives. “Did you love her?”

  “That,” the man said emphatically, “is not your business. Help me catch him and I’ll offer you what I brought.”

  Norlam offered him a smile that bared his teeth. “And if I ask you to hand it over now?”

  “It changes nothing.” The man met his gaze, undaunted. “Do we have a deal?”

  “You will have to give me the location of said culprit and give me guarantees that when this is done, your lady friend’s death will be tied to him.” Norlam sat back, rested against his chair. “I have no quarrels with the crown, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  The man got up, audacious. “Then you shouldn’t have taken the relative of a noble.”

  He walked out of the office after that and Norlam watched him go. Even in his annoyance, he could at least appreciate the man’s kind act of closing the door behind him.

  Alone in his office, Norlam allowed himself relax. The last few days had been stressful with the knight simply existing in the town. It was an odd thing. The knight never did anything, only the people that had come with him.

  It was as if they were the investigators and he was nothing but a witness to their investigations. Even when they encountered problems in the forest, he never raised his spear to help them. From the reports Norlam had been getting, they fought in the knight’s presence but fought alone.

  Something was going on. Something he did not understand. And he did not like not understanding. His hand gripped the surface of the desk and his finger nails scraped deep lines in it.

  Seeing the mess, he tried to buff the scrapes with the flat of his thumb. He cleaned out flakes of wood but nothing else. The scar remained.

  It didn’t matter. He didn’t like the table anyway.

  As for these new visitors, if they were not tourists, then they were investigators sent by someone other than the crown. Those were people he could deal with.

  Norlam of nowhere had never been one to shy away from a simple fight, and he was not going to start now.

  “Let them come,” he muttered into the silence of his office. “They are sustenance in the end.”

  …

  The air was cold and bitter.

  It was a funny thing how the mind of a person shifted perspectives quite easily. Most people would call a cool night breeze soothing. Some may call it cold but mostly when winter found itself lurking around the corner.

  Nastild was far from winter. Winter was passed and not coming soon.

  Still—Aiden looked to the sky, a sword in hand and one in its sheath at his waist—the air was was cold and bitter. Sad and ruinous. There was no beauty here. No accepted approach deemed humane.

  He let out a slow breath, a calming breath. It was the problem of some men to let the traumas of the past die rather than deal with them. Even in the Order they would teach you to deal with your trauma, to talk it out until your mind came to accept it and leave it behind.

  But the same Order also knew that not all traumas could be fixed. Not all injuries truly healed. Sometimes you were left with scars. Not the scars that mark you as a man who has lived. Not the scars that mark you as a man who has healed. Sometimes you were left with those grotesque and ugly scars. Sometimes you didn’t have scars—sometimes you were simply scarred.

  They were not the scars of a man who has lived but of a man who has refused to die.

  When the Order found you scarred, they left you to do what strong men did but not what healthy men did. You were left with your trauma, allowed to let it die rather than fix it. Then the master of the Order would pat you and the shoulder and say, “I will speak to fate for you.”

  It was always the same thing. Always. He would speak to fate for you. Aiden had never understood it until he’d walked into the room of trauma and hadn’t come out for four days.

  In the end, he had learnt something of himself. He had not been a healthy man, not really. There were scars that had healed the healthy way. Then there were the grotesque scars that had become his companions. But that was the thing about being scarred. Like evil, one was more than enough.

  When he’d heard the simple words ‘I’ll speak to fate for you,’ he’d understood what it meant then. He knew what the master of the Order was truly saying. There are traumas that you cannot rid yourself of, traumas you cannot kill. So let them die. Let them fester. And for your sake, I hope the desolation left behind does not consume you as it taints you.

  So it was in that way that Aiden had learnt that some things you don’t fix or heal from. It was in that way that he’d learnt that you simply learnt to live with them.

  He inhaled deeply once more and let the air out from his lungs. Aiden Lacheart had never healed from the town of cannibals. But unlike most men, he got the chance to face his trauma once more, a chance to rewrite his story and that of his brother’s.

  He had no plans of wasting the opportunity.

  The metallic color of a steel blade glistened under the dull light of countless stars and a crescent moon. He listened to it anticipate what was to come. The sword did not speak to him, not at all. But it is often in the nature of men to romanticize certain things. If it was poetic enough, it could be made beautiful.

  In front of him was a building, three floors high. There were two buildings on either side but both were dark, void of life.

  The building held within it the offices of those who played important roles in the town. The line workers, those who spoke to the missing and helped them feel safe and at home, people who wandered out into the open world and advertised the tourist attraction that was the town. The gatherers.

  On the second floor rested those who stood guard. They stood like mountains, protectors of the group. They mastered the sword and the spear. The art of grabbing and the art of biting. They mastered the animalistic and feral gifts that came with the title of [Cannibal].

  On the final floor, high above, was the man who had introduced himself in a time lost as the town chief. It was poetic to Aiden to remember that he did not even know the name of the man who had once tried to eat him. The man who had hunted him—then when he had failed—haunted him.

  Aiden looked down at the length of his blade. Steel greeted him with a friendly glimmer. If it is made poetic enough, even the greatest atrocities can be beautiful.

  He raised the steel to his face. With his free hand, he inscribed upon it a single enchantment and his interface came alive.

  [You have used class skill Unarmed Engrave]

  …

  [You can used Enchantment of Lesser Dismemberment]

  [Effect: 25% increase in chances of dismembering an enemy in every blow]

  [Duration: 00:05:00]

  …

  [Dimensional Mana Detected]

  …

  [Enchantment of Dismemberment is now Enchantment of Lesser Void Dismemberment]

  [Effect: 52% increase in chances of dismembering an enemy in every blow]

  [Duration: 00:09:04]

  The steel of his blade shimmered slightly. Then it trembled, vibrated under the power of the enchantment. Aiden watched a small darkness, like shadows of falling snow, cling to the edges of his sword.

  He watched the weapon a little longer and saw that the vibration did not stop, would not stop. If you were poetic enough, you would say the sword was crying, mourning perhaps, for what he intended to make it do.

  “Excuse me, young man.”

  The voice of was gruff and deep, designed to intimidate.

  Aiden raised his head to look at the man who had spoken to him and lowered his sword. He was tall, intimidating by size. Aiden would have to reach up on the tip of his toes if he wanted to touch the copper-colored beard on the man’s jaw or grab a handful of the mane of hair that fell down to his shoulders.

  As the man approached him, eyes on the sword, Aiden was reminded of what the giants looked like when they were under the effects of [Curse of humanity]. Could the man be a giant? Unlikely. Maybe he simply had a touch of giant’s blood in him from some ancient ancestor in his genealogy.

  More important was what Aiden could smell on him. Blood. So much blood. So much human blood. The cannibals didn’t even bother to cook their prey… not that it would’ve made it any better.

  “You cannot be here, young man,” the man said in a deep, angry baritone. “Off with you. Return to your residence. Don’t make me—”

  Aiden moved. There was nothing fancy about the action. He hadn’t even needed to think of it.

  His foot shot out with enough force to break the man’s knee. The man fell down to the single knee and cold steel relieved his head from his body.

  [You have dealt a Fatal Blow!]

  [You have slain Exadil Lvl 46!]

  …

  [You have slain one with the title Cannibal]

  [You have slain an unnatural predator of your kind.]

  Aiden did not look down at the dead. He stepped over the man and made his way to the door to the building. Behind him, blood pumped from a severed neck, bathing the floor crimson. The moon and the stars bore witness to what he had done.

  They would bear witness to the chaos he would bring.

  Aiden opened the door to the building and stepped inside. Warm air met him. It was simple, the warmth of other people. There was nothing untoward about it.

  Aiden looked at the people present, and they stared back at him. Confusion and a sense of wariness filled the air, none of it his.

  The warmth that came with it was simple and normal.

  To Aiden it was putrid.

  Thirteen men, he counted. Four women.

  He lowered his center of gravity, crouched forward so that one leg bent at the knee while the other extended to the side. Sword arm held out behind him, the tip of his sword pointed back and away from him.

  When Aiden moved, it was with a calm anger. He was a calm sea with the worst predators lurking beneath.

  [Congratulations Prisoner #234502385739!]

  [You have used a Flow from the Order Sword Technique.]

  [You have used the first Flow of the Fourth Order.]

  [You have learnt Conqueror’s Sword]

  …

  [Error! Error! Error!]

  [Error detected!]

  [Prisoner #234502385739 does not meet the requirement to learn this Technique]

  [You have not learnt Conqueror’s Sword]

  He ignored the notifications that followed.

  [You have dealt a Fatal Blow! x17]

  [You have slain one with the title Cannibal x16]

  [You have slain an unnatural predator of your kind x16]

  Aiden knew who had not died. She was a woman rested against the wall, gasping for air for a life that would not come. She had lost her arm and the right side of her upper torso and was bleeding out all over the place. The wall behind her was stained in her blood. It drew a map of what he had done to her.

  It was her last impact on the world. A dirge to her demise.

  Aiden did not look at her. He did not end her suffering. Instead, he made his way forward, footsteps carrying him up the stairs. Four steps up and his interface came alive.

  [You have slain Sel-elna Lvl 39!]

  …

  [You have slain one with the title Cannibal]

  [You have slain an unnatural predator of your kind]

  She was dead.

  An unnatural predator of your kind.

  Sometimes, his interface gave him notifications that seemed to justify his actions. Aiden closed his mind to the idea and continued climbing up.

  His interface definitely made it sound poetic.

  Aiden would’ve smiled if he could. But he could not. There was nothing to smile about. He had only pain to give tonight.

  It is often in the nature of men to romanticize certain things. The words played in his head like a solemn ritual.

  If it was made poetic enough…

  …even the greatest atrocities could be beautiful.