Deacon didn't move from where he stood atop the corpse of the Floor Boss.
His gaze locked on the rooftop, specifically on Liam Ross, who stood 200 meters away from him.
Blood ran hot down the side of his face, dripping down from what was left of the left side of his face. His cheek throbbed with every heartbeat; every breath stung like fire, but he gave no reaction to his injury.
He refused to look away.
Jass's voice rang out, distant. Esmerelda's too. Boots hitting concrete behind him.
All he could hear was the low thrum in his chest that came from his Undying Flame.
Liam stood still, bow slightly lowered, no attempt to hide himself nor nock another arrow. He even gave no reaction to the other members of the Top 15 cadets in their year as they crowded around him.
Deacon stared back at him, face half-covered in blood with most of his teeth on his left upper jaw visible and exposed to the air.
As if on cue, both Deacon and Liam turned their heads at the same time.
Deacon to his friends and Liam to the other cadets around him.
The air between them held something sharp.
He turned fully as Jass and Esmerelda closed in on him, voices rising through the white haze in his remaining ear.
"Deacon! Shit! Sit down, let me see your face–"
"– hold still, I've got a Health Vial. Don't move!"
Deacon's face, half covered in blood, shifted
Giving the barest image of a smirk.
They were frantic. Hands fumbling toward their belts, pulling out vials, uncorking them with trembling fingers. Esmerelda tore out a section of her robe, poured the medicinal contents of a vial on the cloth, and pressed the cloth to the side of his head trying to stop the blood. Her eyes were wide with panic. Jass jammed both a Health and Stamina Vial in his mouth and forced their contents down his throat.
"What happened?" Jass asked as his face slowly started to knit back together. She realized the hit he'd taken looked worse than it really was – judging by the fact that he still had, in her opinion, that stupid smirk on his face and was somehow still on his feet.
"Mutant bird," he said, his voice not betraying him. "I didn't notice it until it was too late… But I saw that it got killed right after. Don't know who landed the shot though."
Jass narrowed her eyes, staring at Deacon to find any signs of deception.
"That was an arrow," she muttered, half to herself. "…I saw it hit him in the face." Her head snapped to the side, scanning the area behind Deacon.
Jass' eyes traveled to where she saw the arrow land from just a few feet away from where Deacon stood when she'd seen him get hit. But what she saw wasn't an arrow.
It was just the impact crater – a spiral-shaped gouge of hardened, dry dirt. No hint of an arrow anywhere near the crater, except for the ones embedded into the fungal armor of the Floor Boss's corpse.
A moment passed.
Jass clenched her jaw and looked away from the impact crater and back to Deacon and Esmerelda.
Esmerelda, hands sticky with blood and what Deacon now recognized to be healing salve, finally exhaled the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.
Deacon didn't speak right away to tease Jass for her seriousness like always, instead, he stepped off the corpse of the Floor Boss like he hadn't just been inches from death.
The battlefield still thrummed with low, scattered screams and the guttural shrieks of ferals lurking in the side alleys. The cheers that erupted across the square when the Floor Boss collapsed were short-lived. The cadets who had survived, specifically those few who were still standing or dragging themselves up from cover, were already back on their feet, turning their weapons onto the still-writhing mutants that hadn't dropped along with the Floor Boss.
"We should harvest materials from it before we get swarmed," Deacon muttered.
By mutants? By their fellow cadets?
He didn't specify.
He stepped back toward the massive body of the Floor Boss, motioning for Jass and Esmerelda to follow with a head nod. His blades were still warm from the flame, still faintly glowing from the final surge of the Undying Flame. He tucked them back into their sheaths on his back and drew a dagger from his belt before crouching beside the Floor Boss' exposed side.
The fungal plating that had fallen around it, crunched under his boots.
Without hesitation, he drove the dagger into the ribcage.
The stench hit him almost instantly – wet rot and scorched flesh, like cooked meat left to fester under the sun, singed his nose.
However, yet again, he gave no outward reaction to the scent.
Bracing himself, he dug in deeper, found his leverage, and with a grunt, wrenched a rib nearly as thick as his forearm free. It came loose with a wet, sucking pop.
Shit.
He tossed it aside. It was not the right size.
Next, another rib – thicker, straighter.
Better.
He kept working.
Jass finally crouched beside him, watching as he snapped a third rib free. She didn't ask any more questions, just nodded when he finally reached deeper into the ruined shoulder of the corpse and tore out a jagged piece of arm bone. The upper humerus, clean-broken, hardened from the creature's unnatural density.
It was still hot to the touch.
"Take it," Deacon said, handing it to her without looking up. "Good for reinforcing your glaive shaft."
"Thank you," she muttered softly, realizing that Deacon's emotions had muted themselves.
This was now the fourth time she'd seen him become this way. The most recent one prior to this was the time after the tournament, where he ended up becoming brainwashed by Jeremiah Heart.
He hadn't spoken to anyone for a full week, instead focusing on training, he'd even skipped the detentions he received and had to meet with the headmaster after skipping classes for a week.
Esmerelda stood behind them, arms crossed, her robes still streaked in blood. She watched them work with a small shake of her head.
"I don't need anything from it," she said simply, voice low. "The spirits say I should use wood or other… things that are more attuned to them."
Deacon didn't answer, nor did he stop moving. Once he found a good second rib, he carved it free and tucked it under his arm.
The air behind them buzzed with noise: shouting cadets, the clang of steel, the brief flickers of mana flaring up as the remaining mutants were cut down in bursts of coordinated group attacks. All around them, the fractured remnants of the assault force picked through bodies, regrouped, scavenged for supplies, and some rushed around to complete their secondary objectives in order to access Floor Two.
None of it mattered to Deacon at the moment.
The thrum of the Undying Flame in his chest pulsed with each heartbeat, steady, quiet, controlled now. The roar of it had dimmed, but it hadn't gone out.
He'd unlocked his Innate Skill.
He stood finally, slinging the salvaged bones over one shoulder and sheathing his dagger.
Jass fell into step beside him without a word. Esmerelda was behind them, silent.
Deacon glanced toward the rooftop where Liam Ross had stood – now empty.
Turning back to Jass and Esmerelda, he spoke softly, "we should head somewhere safe and take a breather before we go onto the next Floor."
"Yeah," Jass agreed softly as she and Esmerelda followed Deacon's lead. "We should also finally make our Party once we check our Status Pages."
The group moved in silence.
The weight of bone and blood across his shoulder and lingering pain barely registered to him as they slipped through the cracked streets and broken alleyways that were covered in mutant corpses and blood.
Eventually, they reached the old convenience store, with Deacon's pockets filled with Elite Beastcores that he'd personally carved out along the way.
Its sign was half-hanging from rusted bolts, and the inside had been somewhat picked clean in the time that both Deacon and Jass had last been here. But the attic, reachable only by a half-collapsed staircase behind the counter, was still intact.
They climbed quietly.
Deacon went first, followed by Jass and then Esmerelda, just before the door shut behind them with a dull thump caused by the surprisingly still-functioning door closer, muffling the chaos that continued to echo outside.
The attic was low-ceilinged, filled with crates, and the wooden beams warped with age and mildew. But it was dry, quiet, and safe – for now at least.
Three steel fire pits had been dragged from the store below and placed in a triangle between them by Jass. She was nursing her fingers, after having stuffed the campfires with kindling that she gathered from tearing them off from old crates. There was no need to waste kindling from their bundles when Floor Two could take place in a desert or an island.
Considering how their Floor One was a theme they had never learned about before, there was no telling if Floor Two would be like the previous year's, a mountain range, or something completely different.
Then Jass broke the silence. "You'd think killing a Floor Boss would feel better."
Reaching into a few nearby crates, Deacon noticed a few items that caught his attention and pulled them out.
Esmerelda snorted. "Second that."
Turning around to face Jass and Esmerelda, he tossed to the both of them three items each: a packet of crackers, a bag of marshmallows, and a bundle of chocolate bars.
"Thanks," Esmerelda said as she caught all three items that were sent her way and popped open the marshmallow bag with curiosity.
"What are these?" she asked, eyes full of curiosity as she squished one in between her fingers. "They look like pillows." She then popped one into her mouth and her eyes went wide.
"Oh, my System!" she exclaimed as she turned to face Jass, who looked back down at her own sealed bag of marshmallows. "Jass, you have to try it. It tastes like… like Ms. Eunice getting fired."
"What?" Jass said, raising an eyebrow at Esmerelda practically inhaling marshmallows like a vacuum cleaner. Shrugging to herself, she popped open her own bag and gave a similar reaction. "Oh, my System! It does taste like that old hag getting fired."
"Try combining all three of those together and toasting it over a fire," Deacon said softly as he snapped his fingers over his kindling, casting Ignis, and setting alight his campfire.
Both Jass and Esmerelda watched as Deacon layered a cracker with a piece of chocolate then with a marshmallow then with yet another cracker before holding it above the flames of his campfire.
Quickly copying Deacon's actions, they created their own cracker-chocolate-marshmallow-cracker sandwich, they let it toast above the flames of their own campfires and waited a few seconds after Deacon removed his own before stuffing them in their mouths entirely like chipmunks.
They both practically melted to the floor as satisfied moans left their lips.
"It's called a smore," Deacon said as he took a bite out of his own smore, his face breaking into a soft smile as a memory resurfaced in his own mind about both the taste of the smore as well as his own similar reaction to when he first had one with his father when they went camping.
"They're gods for all I care," Jass muttered under her breath as she quickly began making another one, along with Jass, who nodded in agreement.
Softly chuckling at them, Deacon felt emotion bleed back into his heart.
Taking in a deep breath, he took out a piece of parchment from his bundle from one of his pouches on his belt and tossed it into the flames of his campfire.
Deacon Surtr Hayes
Race: Jötunn Lv 5
Class: Warrior Lv 6
Health: 310/310
Mana: 49/50
Stamina: 163/170
Stats:
Vitality: 31
Strength: 30
Endurance: 17
Agility: 12
Intelligence: 5
Wisdom: 5
Willpower: 16
Perception: 5
Free Points: 11
Racial Traits:
General Skills: Identify (Initiate), Meditation (Initiate)
Class Skills: Basic One-Handed Weapon Mastery (Common), Light Shield Mastery (Initiate), Academy of Beginnings Sword Style (Uncommon)
Spell Masteries: Fire [Spark (Initiate), Ignis (Common), Flame Armament (Common)], Water [Water Ball (Initiate)], Earth [Gouge Ground (Initiate)]
Affinity: Fire (High) – Innate skill: Undying Flame
Achievements: