The three possessed Climbers hopped over my corpse wall and dropped down to meet me. Naturally, I responded by firing a round of blood spikes. Each of the Climbers had developed more of that rocky armor as metal though, and my attacks bounced right off.

  Lucille ran at me first. Having dropped her spear, she snarled and swiped at my face with her claw-like hands. Blood chains erupted out of Hemorrhage Gates on the floor to bind her, but as soon as they made contact, they lost their shape and became liquid.

  Guess it’s not going to be that easy.

  I punched her in the face, and she rocked back on her heels. My gauntlet melted away after contact, but I reformed it with fresh blood. As long as I limit my exposure to them, I should be able to do this.

  Lucille was only briefly stunned and looked undamaged. I glanced at the other two. They were hanging back. Just watching me. I didn’t like it. Were they trying to analyze me? Were they getting smarter?

  It didn’t matter. It was time to take one of them out while they waited.

  I pulled my fist back and gathered my strength. I activated Pugilist’s Blast and threw a right hook to her face. All of the gathered, condensed power of my strength, magnified by the ability, traveled through my gauntleted fist. As soon as the blow connected, all of that explosive power was unleashed on her. Her body burst apart, showering me in chunks of viscera and fragments of the alien rocky metal.

  It was a move that I could only use when protected by my gauntlets, and it had turned out to be a mistake.

  Her body exploding had covered me in the alien fragments. I screamed and fell to my knees, clutching my face. I was so wrong. It wasn’t metal or rock. It was alive. Every tiny fragment squirming and biting to get inside of me. To then grow and spread. They were eating away at me.

  I reached for the blood to heal me. There was a whole reservoir of it in that corpse mountain. It flowed to me.

  None of it helped.

  My power didn’t recognize what they were doing as damage. The whole System seemed to have trouble acknowledging their presence. The pain was getting worse, the deeper they burrowed. I clenched my teeth and eyes. I didn’t dare open either one lest it gave them a greater foothold.

  Todd and Mike’s footsteps echoed nearby, but I wasn’t worried about them. These things wanted my body so they wouldn’t attack me now. The thinnest silver lining to the world’s shittiest cloud.

  I had to think. There had to be a way. Healing wouldn’t work. Fighting didn’t work. Wait, what about outgrowing them?

  I extended my senses over to the corpse mountain and sent out one mental command.

  Consume.

  Unlike the small stream I was using for healing, I targeted everybody at once. A torrent of blood crashed over me.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 207 – Experience Acquired.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 208 – Experience Acquired.

  *DING!* Class: [Blood Reaver] has reached level 209 – Experience Acquired.

  Yes! This was something the System recognized. The levels kept coming. Experience points rolled in and I dumped them into the Constitution stat as fast as they came in. Slowly, the pain from the fragments was diminishing as they were having a harder time biting through my flesh.

  The danger wasn’t over though. We were locked in a state of limbo and I wasn’t sure if I had enough blood to break the stalemate.

  Hot breath fell on my left ear and all of the hairs on my body stood up. “Stop… resisting,” screeched the possessed Todd.

  I had to fight myself not to move. I could feel his presence towering over me. Getting ready to kill me if I didn’t stop. Footsteps moved away from me. Todd assumed I was complying, but in truth the blood had dried up. This was as tough as my body could get for the moment.

  The fragment’s teeth were still grinding against me. Some had already broken through. I could feel them squirming inside my arms and stomach. The ones on my face had ceased moving entirely, and that was enough to convince me to open my eyes.

  Todd and Mike stood over the Source Stone, gesturing to one another. No words were spoken but communication was happening all the same. Then they pointed at me angrily.

  I tried to get up and groaned. Moving seemed to excite the fragments more. I didn’t know what to do. Meanwhile, Todd and Mike kept glaring and pointing at me. I think one of them wanted to kill me.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Abruptly, Todd walked away and disappeared behind the corpse wall. Is he going to get more victims?

  He returned a moment later, holding my sword, and approached me with it.

  This time, I stood up to try and made it a couple of steps before I stumbled as a thousand tiny knives shredded my insides. Todd was closing in. I had nothing. No more tricks or powers. I produced a throwing knife from my inventory and weakly threw it. The knife harmlessly bounced off of him and he kept moving.

  I found myself slowly shuffling away until I reached the Source Stone. I thought maybe touching it directly might do something. Mike grabbed my arms before I could reach it. He pinned them behind my back and forced me onto my knees.

  Out of everyone, it was Donald that I cursed. He was the one who was supposed to stop this. He was the reason I was here. I shook my head. I’d had a bad feeling from the start and I should’ve listened to it.

  I thought about writing another companion message to Hugo and then changed my mind. There weren’t any words that would make it worth it. Better he thought I’d died suddenly without seeing it coming.

  Todd moved to the side of me and raised the sword up high. One stroke for a clean decapitation.

  A crossbow bolt Slammed into Todd’s armored chest. Rather than a fiery explosion, white foam burst out of it and quickly spread across his body until only his head was untouched. The foam turned gray as it hardened, immobilizing him. Mike let go of my arms just before a spirit summon wolf fell on him. The pair landed on the floor together. The wolf gnashed its teeth, trying to get to his neck, while Mike wrestled to hold it back.

  A second wolf ran up to me. It bit down on the back of my cloak and dragged me across the floor until we’d reached the corpse mountain. Hugo and Damian stood at the top of it, looking relieved.

  “How…” I coughed into my hand and was surprised to see blood in it. “How did you get in?”

  Hugo shrugged. “Dunno. One minute there was this invisible barrier and the next it was gone. As soon as we stepped inside, we saw this pile of bodies and figured you had something to do with it.”

  I smiled weakly. “Thanks for coming.”

  Damian nodded. “Of course.” He gestured with his crossbow. “Now, what are we doing with them?”

  “The Climbers they’re possessing are probably already dead. Don’t hold back.”

  The bolt loaded on his crossbow magically changed to one with a small cannister attached below the tip. “Excellent.” He tossed a potion bottle to Hugo, who caught it with his green skeletal ghost hand.

  Hugo took off flying with his ghost hand floating beside him while Damian took aim. He then paused and looked at me. “Wait, what about that big stone thing?”

  I shook my head. “Forget it. The plan didn’t work.”

  Damian shrugged and raised the crossbow to his shoulder and looked down the sights.

  Hugo was about to drop the potion over Mike when the darkness surrounding us vanished. Suddenly, we were back in the brewery. Todd yelled something unintelligible and cracks formed along the hardened foam. He broke free and ran towards us, only making it a few steps before collapsing. Mike stopped fighting the wolf and went dead too.

  Hugo circled back to us. “What just happened?”

  “IT IS READY,” Donald said, their booming voice echoed around the room.

  A large black sphere formed in the air over the Source Stone. It pulled the bodies of Mike and Todd towards it. Chunks of their flesh fell away as this black hole sucked them inside entirely.

  I thought it was over with them gone, but then my body seized up. I choked on the pain, unable to make a sound, as all the fragments in my body were violently ripped away towards the sphere. Once they were gone, I laid on the floor moaning, until Damian pressed a potion to my lips. Instinctively, I drank it and felt some of my health return to me.

  The bodies of Lucille and Donald’s brother flew across the floor next and up into the sphere. It was taking back every last scrap of the alien substance while ignoring everything else. Once there were no more bodies or fragments, the Source Stone was torn out of the ground. It flew up into the sphere and the sphere shrank. Growing smaller and smaller until it popped out of existence.

  Huh, so Donald was telling the truth after all.

  “So what just happened?” Hugo asked again.

  “The Shard kept its word and got rid of the problem,” I said as Damian helped me to my feet.

  “Can you walk?” he asked.

  “I’ll walk out of here. I’m officially done with this floor.”

  Hugo landed on one of the bodies and handed the potion back to Damian with his ghost hand. “Still, it would’ve been nice to take out a couple of them.”

  “I didn’t get anything,” I said. “Not even experience.”

  *DING!* Quest Completed – Congratulations, you have finished your quest. Your reward has been deposited in your domain.

  *DING!* You have gained [A Worthy Reward for a Promise Kept]

  “Looks like I spoke too soon,” I muttered.

  “Aw, I didn’t get anything!” moaned Hugo.

  “You didn’t do anything,” said Damian.

  “I assisted! That guy would’ve been playing soccer with Lucas’s head if my wolf hadn’t intervened.”

  “We don’t even know if it's good,” I said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  Hugo flew to my shoulder, and we started towards the exit.

  “Hey, what about all these bodies?” Damian asked.

  I shrugged. “Leave them. I don’t want to still be here when this town learns we’ve killed their only source of alcohol. Do you?”

  “Good point.”

  As we got outside the brewery, we found some of the people I’d heard screaming. A couple of bodies lay dead and a small crowd had gathered. They looked concerned, but were unwilling to touch the bodies or go near the brewery.

  “The threat’s over,” I told them before grabbing a nearby pumpkin from a cart for good measure. I’m not sure why I wanted it. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome after seeing so many of them today? Or maybe I just wanted one tangible thing to come out of all of this.

  “Hey! You have to pay for that!” a man yelled.

  “It’s our pumpkin tax for saving your town,” Hugo said.

  “Saved it from what?” he asked. “These people just fell down screaming and then died.”

  I didn’t really feel like arguing about the interdimensional threat they’d been saved from. So I just said, “that’s… complicated Climber business.”

  He held out his hand for compensation. “Well, you can’t just take it.”

  I could’ve paid for it, but instead I made a point of eyeing the cart filled with pumpkins, the ones on the floor, and the ones on other stalls. There was an overabundance of them. No one would miss a single pumpkin. In fact, once the festival was over, I’d gathered the distinct impression that the towns folk would be sick of them.

  Instead of answering the man, I turned away and stalked back to the elevator with the pumpkin under my arm.