Chapter 6 - Salamander

Death wasn't much like Lan had expected; it was sudden and abrupt, passing as soon as it arrived. One moment he was a corpse, gutted like a fish on the end of a hooked blade. The next, he was standing right where he had first arrived in the tutorial, wooden stake still clenched in his fist, his knuckles turning white.

The last thing he remembered hearing before darkness swallowed his vision was, "Shit, I didn't get a single point for that one either!"

He stood in the vast hall, too stunned to react. His stomach dropped, and a wave of nausea overwhelmed him, black spots filling his vision, and his knees buckled.

"I just died… J-Jesus Christ! I just died…." Lan stuttered, the realisation hitting him like a sledgehammer.

In the hall, at least three hundred collapsed students were all wearing an extremely basic cloth robe tied with a red sash around their waists.

Some of them lay in a heap, shivering, clawing feebly at wounds that weren't there anymore. Others rocked back and forth, holding their knees tightly against their chests. Groaning and disoriented mutterings filled the hall.

Lan checked himself and noticed his clothes had also been swapped out with the same beige cloth robe with the red sash around his waist. He ran his hands over the rough material. It felt… cheap compared to the luxurious black uniform he had been wearing earlier.

Running through his memories as quickly as he could, Lan tried to figure out what was happening. Just how had he survived? Quickly, he remembered the prompt on the bulletin board.

If you die outside the bounds of the town, all points will be removed, and the pathfinder will be returned to the starting area. Or at least, that was the gist of it.

He couldn't quite believe that reversing death was possible. That the bridge was capable of such things was… terrifying.

Mostly, the people around him had begun to collect themselves. Some only seemed to get worse over time, devolving into sobbing messes. But most picked themselves up and stumbled out of the hall into the harsh artificial light of the tutorial.

They had work to do, after all. If they had already died on the first day, when the monsters were weakest, they needed to level like madmen before the next wave came.

Likewise, Lan clambered to his feet and lurched onto the cobbled road, quickly finding his way back to the bulletin board that now displayed a glowing leaderboard, on which thousands of names flickered, each with their own number of points beside them.

Lan searched for his name, and his gaze fell, plunging down the leaderboard to the bottom, where almost three hundred names were outlined in red, with zero points by their name.

Even then, he couldn't find his own name. He checked his profile to be sure and realised his name was still listed as Unknown by the system. Lan was just his nickname, so perhaps he didn't have a valid name yet.

On a whim, he muttered, "view name," and a detailed notification popped up in front of him.

[Name change available (1 of 1) – Designate name as ____]

His finger hovered over the blank spot where his name… his identity would go. Should he go with another alias, one that, if he made an enemy of other pathfinders, couldn't be tracked back to 'Lan'?

He figured that was the best move since he was particularly frail right now. 'What name should I go with?' Every name he could think of was embarrassing or stupid.

In the end, he decided to wait until he could think of a good alias and closed the screen. For now, he contended himself in knowing that the person called 'Unknown', with precisely zero points, was him.

***

Can you smell it? The rot and maggots writhe in a twisted and glorious dance. Can you hear it? The screams… the pitiful cries of agony that ring out in torment. Look down, peek beneath the veil, at the bridge's foundations, and you will see them.

The bodies… Oh, the bodies, how they writhe and squirm, chained by eternal undeath. Each one a copy, each one desperate for the embrace of nothing. They make up the bridge's foundations, and the number only grows, always more, never less.

Thorn was born there, plucked from a stray thought, the wisp of a dream long forgotten, drifting in the endless flow of consciousness.

He was wrenched from the stream and dragged into existence, gaining both sentience and a body. The bridge needs guardians, and he would be one of them.

Clenching his fist, he marvelled that motion was possible. Being able to move, think, and feel were genuinely unique gifts. An experience that could only be felt, never described.

Gazing out at the foundations where the endless bodies lay, he became lost in the wonder of sight itself. Before now, he would never have imagined such a thing was possible. Before now, he would never have imagined anything at all.

The landscape was twisted and black, the same dark granite colour as the bridge. All around him, billions… no, trillions of tombstones marked the endless lives lived and died on the bridge.

Above him, if there was such a thing in this place, flickering red lights glittered like stars, dancing and twirling in the murky gloom. Some shone brighter than others, while some barely gave off any light. They were flickering like oil lamps on the verge of running out of fuel.

Beneath each light lay many tombstones with the same name attached, each one a different, more ornate style than the last. The brighter the light, the more tombstones Thorn could see beneath them.

Far off, in the outer reaches of the foundations, he felt a change ripple across the fabric of reality. It was minor and inconsequential, but still, he felt it. The bridge was an extension of his body, and nothing escaped his notice within its bounds.

"More… New Pathfinders and some have already died… For fuel, they are but a pittance, but the bridge will never turn down challengers," Thorn muttered, not understanding how he knew the things he knew.

"Best of luck, fight hard and die harder,"

***

Lan had finally collected himself and was left at a crossroads of sorts. He was going to get even with whoever gutted him; that was already certain. The question was, when and how?

Right now, he doubted he would be strong enough to do anything. So, he needed to put that plan on the back burner. For now, he needed to focus on what he could do, which was relatively straightforward, if a little boring.

"Getting stronger it is," Lan mumbled, looking out into the forest sprawled out on either side of the path.

The wolves had come from there and, worse still would appear within the next thirty days. He needed to be ready for them, needed to get ahead of the curve, and this was his ticket.

Steeling himself, Lan stepped off the path and began pushing his way through tangled brambles and clustered branches, forging into the deathly quiet forest with grim determination.

Frustrations had overwhelmed him; he was so angry that he might explode if he didn't fight something… or kill something.

'How did I let my guard down like that? I should know better. I even ended up as fodder for some sick bastard's experiment.'

For years, he had survived alone on the edges of the district. He had learned not to trust, not to let his guard down and never to relax. And at that moment, he had broken every rule he had ever learned.

He was alert to the point of paranoia as he clambered his way through the forest, leaving the cobble path far behind him.

Not quite sure what he was looking for, Lan kept walking, scaling fallen trees twice as wide as he was tall and fording streams that glowed silver and gold.

The forest was practically prehistoric, countless enormous trees tightly packed together in a desperate fight for sunlight, their branches stretching up towards the sky like claws.

An idea crossed his mind, and he reached up and grabbed the end of a long-pointed branch. As he pulled on it, it bent like a willow; it was a far more malleable type of wood than usual.

With a bit of effort, Lan broke the long branch off the tree and swung it around, getting a feel for how it flew through the air.

His talent gave him ideas of how to use it, and he did as it suggested, cracking the end of the branch like a whip.

Grinning, he imagined what would happen if he slammed the branch into the back of whoever killed him.

Eventually, he calmed down and began to walk through the forest again, using the branch to cut away brambles and spiky bushes like they weren't even there.

Finally, he arrived at a gurgling river that carved its way through the forest floor. He didn't know much about monsters, but he was sure they had to drink water.

Deciding to follow the river until it reached a pond where monsters might come to drink, Lan walked alongside the river downstream, his eyes constantly scanning the surrounding forest.

After walking for almost half an hour, he found his way to a small pond, where he could see signs of animals having been there. Tracks in the dirt around the pond's edge and deep gouges claws had carved into nearby trees gave him an idea of what to expect.

Seeing as the claw marks were incredibly far up the tree, he gathered that whatever had made them was much bigger than a wolf anyway.

'I need to come up with a plan… a way to catch whatever attacks me. Since dying doesn't really matter, the worst that can happen is I have to make the walk back here and get my…' Lan froze, realising his backpack hadn't been brought with him after he died. Somehow it had slipped his mind in his confusion, but that made two things clear. The only thing that came with you after you died was you, and he definitely needed to kill whoever killed him.

The D-rank venom and rope were worth everything he'd earned in four years of working. Everything. Every penny he'd scrounged, every meal he'd stolen to save on food, every night he'd worked instead of sleeping. Everything.

And he wanted them back. He could already imagine what he would be capable of with venom that could burn through steel if his talent helped him use it.

Shaking his head, he realised that all his plans had gone up in smoke. He had been hoping to use the rope as a snare to trap monsters, but he wasn't sure what to do since he didn't have it.

He glanced around the clearing and only saw the willowy trees, stream and pond. Nothing popped out to him.

Curiously, he walked over to the pond, staring into its still, reflective surface. The water was so clear he could about make out the bottom where smooth rounded rocks had gathered.

An idea struck him, and he bent down, reaching towards the rocks. The very second his hand touched the water's surface, it exploded.

The rocks were thrown aside, and a creature Lan couldn't put a name to shoot out of its hiding spot like a torpedo. It had dark grey, scaly skin, the same hue and texture as the rocks it had used to hide.

Its head was flat and streamlined, jutting out above its head, and two bulbous eyes almost glowed as they locked onto Lan. Continuing the trend, its body was also flat and streamlined, with four short legs and a long flowing tail.

Lan threw himself back from the pond right as the water's surface exploded, very thankful he had put those points in dexterity earlier.

He couldn't take his eyes off the creature as it rose almost entirely out of the pond and snapped at the air where he had just been. Rows of sharp serrated teeth slammed shut where his head had been seconds ago.

Grunting, he crawled backwards, just managing to avoid the creature's second attack, as its long tail whipped out and gouged a tract in the ground between his legs.

With a splash, the creature fell back into the water, and the ripples on the pond's surface quickly died away into stillness. The only sign it had ever been there was the long trail it had gouged into the earth.

Lan blinked in shock and readied himself for another attack, his heart racing wildly from the stress. But the attack never came. Eventually, he just accepted that the creature, whatever it was, wouldn't or couldn't come out of the pond to get him.

As if on cue, a message from the system appeared.

[Alert: Turn on creature identification. Yes/No]

"Yes, of course. Why isn't this always on?" Lan cried as he reached out and pressed yes.