[Kilser the Traitor - Level 7 unlocked!]

  “Two levels… cool,” Mark thought, waking after what felt like weeks of fever. His body ached, and his skin was damp with sweat. The nightmares that had tormented him began to fade as he forced his muscles to move, leaning slightly to the side to look around.

  They seemed to be in the massive forest where they had appeared on the first day of their resurrection. It was probably the middle of the morning, with sunlight filtering through the trees, illuminating the camp they’d set up against the side of a small hill.

  Arthur and Tobias sat near a burned-out campfire, chuckling over something Tobias was saying. The Gamer spoke with enthusiasm, his exaggerated gestures drawing even louder laughter from Arthur.

  Emily was kneeling next to an unconscious Viking. She looked deeply focused. A soft blue light radiated from her hands as she cast her [Heal] spell on him.

  In a corner of the camp, Erik Bloodaxe, a handful of his Vikings, and Gustav sparred with brutal intensity. Nearby, about forty horses shifted nervously at the constant clanking of metal.

  Gustav used his [Power Strike] against the Viking king. With a fluid sidestep, the king evaded the sword and countered with a swing of his massive battle axe, forcing Gustav to leap back in retreat.

  Mark looked around and felt a massive wave of relief when he saw Liam sitting on a branch of a nearby tree. He was looking out into the forest, keeping watch while dangling his feet from the considerable height.

  For a moment, Mark enjoyed the warm feeling of camaraderie at the camp, relieved by the fact that most of them had survived.

  Then he asked aloud:

  “Is this how you treat your fucking hero?”

  Arthur and Tobias looked towards him, both still with laughter in their eyes. Emily looked, too, and began to smile.

  “Why is nobody praying by my side, offering to sacrifice their worthless lives to the gods of this world for my speedy recovery?”

  Arthur laughed and stood up, approaching Mark.

  “We totally offered to sacrifice ourselves for you. But the gods said it was enough if we offered a couple of chickens and a small bag of rice.”

  “It surprised us all, the price the gods demanded,” Tobias added.

  “Yeah,” Arthur continued. “The second chicken was absurd: you’re not worth that much.”

  Mark laughed and groaned when he tried to stand up a little. The others pushed him down gently, and he was too tired to resist, so he kept lying on the small bed they’d made for him using a few blankets.

  “Come on, tell me what the fuck has been happening. How did we end up here?”

  Arthur, Tobias, and Emily sat near him. Emily grabbed Mark’s hand and started focusing and murmuring something to herself, as if she were doing some sort of magic. It was Arthur who answered:

  “We reappeared in the cave, after you killed the remaining Mongols. You can imagine how we reappeared: you were completely soaked, with a couple of nasty injuries, and coughing blood. Erik Bloodaxe was unconscious and delirious. Liam was on the verge of death. And the few of us who were still in one piece… well, we were fucking exhausted, coughing from all the smoke—when you finished the job, the fire had already started to take over the storage room.”

  “It was horrible,” Tobias summarized. “Completely horrible.”

  “Yeah,” Arthur said. “We hoped for a moment of rest. When we realized the blue cube was going to take us out of the pocket dimension, we grabbed as much water and food as possible to have some provisions.”

  “But there was no rest,” Tobias said. “Not a moment of rest.”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of fucked up. Because the instant we reappeared, we realized that the blue cube hadn’t brought all the Mongols into the ship. They must’ve been out of the cave, gathering wood for their barricade or something. They looked at us for a few moments, as if they didn’t fully believe that their comrades were gone. And then they started to run away. So Harald, Bjorn, Tobias, and I had to pursue them, hoping to stop them from reaching the rest of the Mongols and bringing reinforcements.”

  “Long story short… we failed,” Tobias said.

  Arthur made a dismissive gesture.

  “I wouldn’t call it a failure. We got three of them.”

  “But two escaped.”

  “Yeah. Those fuckers were fast. Anyway, we had to escape from the cave as fast as possible, and find a new place to hide while everybody recovered…”

  “So we took the horses, salvaged everything that could be useful, and moved through the forest, hoping to reconnect with the rest of the Gamers.”

  “They’ve moved and are no longer near the fallen statue. We sort of know their direction since we can still sense Johan’s location through his tagline if we concentrate. But we couldn’t risk going there without knowing the distance. So we settled here while waiting for everyone to recover. We tried to go back to the Glimpse of Valhalla, but it didn’t work.”

  “Yeah. It sucks, but you probably cannot go there twice with the same armies.”

  “How long have I been out?” Mark asked. “When did you two weirdos start finishing each other’s sentences?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “You have been unconscious for three days,” Emily said, finally ending her strange incantation. “He’s fine,” she assured the others.

  Mark looked at her with curiosity. She smiled.

  “I earned a second Skill, [Diagnosis]. It’s not easy, but it helps me look over somebody and learn if there’s something wrong. It’s kind of funny—burned flesh, stab wounds, even drowning—I managed to heal those on the first day. It was hypothermia that almost killed you. My [Heal] spell eased some of the symptoms, but you had to fight through the worst of it alone.”

  “And we’re not finishing each other’s sentences,” Arthur said.

  “We’re just excited that you’re finally back,” Tobias added.

  Arthur and Tobias looked at each other, narrowing their eyes as if suddenly noticing it.

  Mark tried again to sit up. He gently brushed off the hands of the others who wanted to keep him lying down.

  “Wow… I feel very weird—my whole body is a little itchy,” he said when he finally managed to sit down. One of the blankets that had been covering him slid down, and he realized his left arm was completely covered in bandages. It didn’t hurt him, so he approached his right hand to unwrap the bandages.

  Emily put her small hand over his, as if asking him to stop. Mark looked at her face. Her lip was quivering.

  And suddenly, Mark realized that Arthur and Tobias had been making a little charade to keep him distracted.

  Gustav and the Vikings had stopped sparring and were looking toward him without approaching.

  Liam was peering at him over his shoulder; when he caught Mark’s gaze, the teenager quickly turned his eyes back toward the forest.

  Mark felt a knot of dread in his stomach.

  “What the fuck is happening?”

  Emily looked incredibly guilty, with tears in her eyes. And when she started talking, she did it in small whispers:

  “My [Heal] spell couldn’t… It has its limits. I tried as hard as possible… but apparently, I cannot stop the body from scarring. And after all you’ve done… I couldn’t… I couldn’t… I tried. Please, believe that I tried…”

  Arthur continued for her. His voice was finally serious, his face stern when he said:

  “Mark. More than half of your body was burned. It’s a miracle you’re still alive—even with Emily’s Skill—it’s a miracle. You have to see it as a miracle, no matter the price it took...”

  Mark got up, ignoring the protests of his body, and cast the blankets aside. He was naked from the waist up, and the left side of his body was completely wrapped in bandages.

  His heart pounded. His right hand was unscathed, and he touched the coarse fabric of the bandages. He traced the burn up—over his chest, his shoulder, his neck—until he reached the left part of his face, just below the eye.

  A significant part of his body had been scarred by the fire.

  “Who cares?” said Arthur, sounding a little desperate to pull him from his stupor. “I was always the pretty one anyway, right?”

  Emily punched Arthur’s shoulder. Mark forced a little laugh, but didn’t look at anybody.

  “Fuck you. You arrogant asshole”.

  After a few seconds of silence, he added:

  “Do you…” his voice faltered a little, and he made an effort to keep it steady. “Do you guys have a mirror, or something?”

  Emily did have a small mirror. And they left Mark alone in a private corner of the camp, behind some rocks. He carefully unwrapped the bandages, revealing the extent of the scars.

  His legs weakened a little. It was brutal. The burn scar stretched across the left side of his body, red and rough-looking. It was big and uneven, with some parts shiny and others kind of wrinkled.

  He used the small mirror to look into his face—the right part of his face was normal, and when he focused on it, it felt as if nothing had happened. But then he moved the mirror a little, and he shivered when he looked into the left side of his face, where a pretty nasty scar reached up, almost reaching his eye.

  He tried to see the man he used to be. But the mirror didn’t lie. That man was gone.

  What a shame, he thought, feeling as if he had wasted the opportunity he had been gifted.

  He had barely arrived in this new world, and he was already mutilated.

  Then Emily arrived—probably to see how he was taking it—and when she saw the expression on his face, she hugged him with all her strength.

  Mark returned the hug, grateful for the affection. The mirror shattered on the ground when he let it go.

  Emily said:

  “Thank you, thank you. You saved our lives; you saved my life. I will never forget.”

  Suddenly, Mark didn’t feel like he had wasted any opportunity. And he would have willingly offered even more to save everybody—apparently, one of the injured Vikings had died the first night out of the Glimpse of Valhalla.

  After a few minutes, Emily left. She probably told everybody that Mark needed some time alone.

  To everybody’s credit, they left him grieving in privacy. Nobody came, and they allowed him as much time as he needed.

  And nobody said anything when he walked out, trying to hide he had been crying.

  Three hours later, they started the march towards the rest of the Gamers—everything was ready; they had just been waiting for Mark to awaken. They were really excited to share all the things they had discovered, the adventure they had lived. It was crazy to think that for the other Gamers, only four days had passed.

  Everybody was riding a horse. They had taken with them the mounts of all the Mongols they had killed—the Mongols had left their mounts tied right outside the cave. Harald and Bjorn were in the back of the group, making sure the horses without riders followed too.

  Apparently, the Vikings were going to join the rest of the Gamers. Nobody had really talked about it. Erik Bloodaxe had decided it himself, and nobody had had the courage to say no.

  A nice opportunity for Johan to show his leadership skills, Mark thought, trying not to worry.

  He knew that bringing the Vikings might cause serious problems, but he didn’t see any way to avoid it—and truth be told, he felt more affection for the Vikings than for most of the Gamers they had left behind.

  Some hours passed. Mark’s melancholy started to wear off, and he started to get bored. He was riding next to Arthur when he said out loud:

  “It must have been beautiful, all of you together, kneeling beside me and praying for the recovery of your saviour… Did you do that thing where each of you share the many ways I changed your lives?”

  Arthur, who clearly felt more comfortable with banter than with sharing any real feelings, answered:

  “I’ve been cleaning you every time you relieved yourself—going to bed and praying for a Skill that would provide for some fucking diapers. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t fall to my knees, oh great savior.”

  “Wait. Really?”

  “Yes. Really. You thought those things just happen?”

  Mark looked at the others, who were talking among themselves.

  “And was somebody keeping guard to make sure he didn’t do any weird shit? Or did you all just leave the degenerate to have his way with me?”

  “Fuck you, Mark…” Arthur said. “All my sacrifice and not even a thank you? Not even a small groveling on the ground saying I’m too good of a friend, and that you don’t deserve my generosity?”

  “Nah. It was the greatest honor of your life. A shame you didn’t have a camera, so you could take some pictures for your grandchildren.”

  Arthur laughed. And they smiled at each other—both knowing Mark would have done the same thing for Arthur.

  Mark thought about the many things that were going to happen.

  How would the rest of the Gamers react to the arrival of the Vikings?

  What crazy classes were the Gamers going to unlock?

  Who would learn magic and who wouldn't?

  Would they survive all the chaos that was coming?

  Mark laughed with excitement.

  “You’re no longer sad, my friend?” Arthur asked.

  “Nah. I’ve decided that this…” he made a gesture encompassing his scars, “this is a price. A price I have to pay for this adventure. And I pay it gladly; it’s been fucking awesome…”

  Mark no longer had to force his smile. He didn’t forget the toll the battle had taken. But when he looked at the open world around him, he felt energetic, alive. There was so much to explore. So much to learn…

  “Honestly? I can’t wait for the next one.”

  END OF BOOK 1