Chapter 83: Do Or Die
The golden rays of the morning sun filtered through the broken doorway and the gap in the kitchen wall, spilling across the floor in wide, warm bands that caught the dust drifting lazily through the air, each speck turning gold as it passed through the light.
Tyler stood behind the kitchen counter, leaning into it with one elbow, working a spoon slowly through the bowl James and Lisa had left him. *This is pretty good,* he thought, savoring the taste as he chewed, letting himself sit in the quiet of it.
He swallowed and paused, the spoon hovering just above the bowl. Flashes of James leaving played through his mind again, unbidden, the wagon, the wave, the shrinking shape of him swallowed by the light of the road.
The house felt truly empty now. But for some reason he couldn't quite name, he felt content. Maybe it was because James had left peacefully, with a smile that carried no regret in it at all.
Then the images shifted, and the weight of everything that had happened in the last two days pressed down on him all at once. He had learned just yesterday that James was the son of a hero.
That he carried dark mana inside him, something Tyler himself had confirmed. And now, less than a day later, he was gone.
On top of all of it, Heather, her level sitting higher than his own, and her mana, which had surprised him even more than that. He lifted another spoonful and set the spoon back down in the bowl without eating it, his eyebrows drawing together at the memory.
He remembered it clearly. The mana core inside James's daughter, vast and swirling with a deep red color, large enough that it startled him, comparable in size to his own, maybe close to it.
But that wasn't what had made his breath catch.
Threaded through those red particles, circling and swirling alongside them, was dark mana. The two intertwining inside her, moving together the same way they did inside James. Less of it than her father carried, but that did nothing to settle the unease sitting in his chest.
It still made no sense to him, how she could carry that same darkness inside her, the same as her father.
A small idea surfaced. "Maybe the dark mana showed up before Heather was born," Tyler muttered to the empty room. *That's gotta be it, right? Some mana engrams get passed on from parent to child. Maybe dark mana works the same way.*
His eyes widened slightly. *Wait, what if the skill she's using is a dark mana skill? That might be exactly why James and Lisa don't understand it.*
He paused, then shook his head slowly.
*Still doesn't add up. They said passive skills get passed on, right? And James is a knight. Lisa doesn't have dark mana.*
His heart started hammering against his ribs.
*I didn't check. But I don't think she does either.*
He finished the rest of the meal in silence, and the bowl shimmered faint blue before dissolving into his inventory. He stepped out of the house and into the morning light.
The street outside was alive with movement, people passing by in loose, unhurried groups, and everywhere he looked flower petals lay scattered across the cobblestones, caught by the breeze and tumbling lazily along the ground, deep purples, soft pinks, streaks of green and blue mixed in among them, the last remnants of yesterday's decorations settling into the corners of the street.
It genuinely felt like a new day. *I should probably go see how Kai's doing,* he thought, stepping out through the yard.
Across the street, near the building he had crashed through, a woman with long black hair was sweeping petals off the ground in slow, even strokes. She looked up and met his eyes, and what he saw there stopped him mid-step, something sharp and unmistakable, close enough to hatred that his eyebrows lifted before he could stop the reaction.
He looked away quickly.
Some part of him felt like he should say something. He didn't. He understood the look. He had ruined their home, whatever the circumstances, and he didn't blame her for it. Back in his old world, something like this would have ended in a courtroom, in debt, in consequences that followed him for years.
He was grateful, in a quiet way, that things worked differently here. But the guilt of it sat with him anyway as he kept walking, past the woman, past the ruined building, until he reached the marketplace.
Hector's shop stood open ahead of him, and he stepped inside. The small bell above the door rang out, and Kai looked up from behind the counter.
Tyler paused. Kai was dressed in the clothes Tyler had given him, but he looked different now, cleaner, more put together, his hair recently trimmed and his skin scrubbed pink from what had clearly been a proper bath.
"Tyler," Kai said, his voice a little less quiet than usual. "Good morning."
"Morning," Tyler said.
"How was the festival? Did you enjoy it?"
"Yeah," Tyler said. "You look great. How's work going?"
"Oh, it's good. Hector's been showing me how things work around here. I think I'm getting the hang of it." His voice dipped slightly. "The prices are still a little confusing, though."
"I'm sure you'll get there," Tyler said, stepping further inside. "Where's Hector? Is he in the back?"
"No, he went to buy more ingots. Did you need something from him? I can leave him a message."
"Not really," Tyler said. "I just came by to see how you were doing."
"I'm doing great, thanks. It's all thanks to you."
"Ah, don't worry about it," Tyler said, waving him off. "I guess I should get going, then."
"Bye," Kai said, waving as Tyler stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind him. *He looked like he was in a hurry,* Kai thought, watching him go through the window. *I wonder where he's headed.*
Tyler moved through the streets with his jaw set, his expression serious.
*Damn it. I can't do what I wanted to do.* He walked faster than he needed to, the frustration pushing his pace along without him fully noticing. *I promised myself I'd spend the whole day crafting. Bring my weapons to Hector, let him help me sort out the prices. But none of that's happening now. Because of this stupid quest.*
Annoyance and nerves sat together in his chest, an uneasy knot that hadn't loosened since the panel first appeared. *Why twenty-four hours? And death again, as the penalty. And on top of that, another boss monster. A Gloomfang Alpha.*
He thought of the Crimson Alpha, the ferocity of it, the raw terror that had gripped him even with James standing beside him, fighting at his side. He had barely walked away from that fight. If he had faced it alone, he had no doubt he would have died there.
He reached one of the waiting wagons near the edge of the marketplace and climbed up onto the side bench, settling in behind the driver, who sat forward on his own bench with the reins in hand. The wagon lurched into motion and began rolling toward the base, the wheels catching against the packed dirt beneath them.
Once they cleared the town gates, the road turned to gravel, and the wagon picked up speed, rattling hard over the uneven ground. Tyler paid none of it any mind. His focus stayed locked on the quest panel floating in front of him.
*I wonder how strong it is,* he thought. *Stronger than the one I fought with James?*
He exhaled, and the panel dissolved. He let his back settle against the wooden wall of the wagon, the wind picking up around him as their speed climbed, pulling at his hair and clothes. *I really hope not. I almost died last time. But I have to prepare either way.*
He straightened again, leaning forward against the pull of the wind. *System. Craft leather cuirass.*
The panel appeared instantly, the loading bar sweeping around its edge and filling within a second. [Crafting Successful.] He didn't react to the speed of it anymore, he had stopped being surprised by that a while ago. *Right,* he thought. *I'm definitely going to need more potions.*
The panel dissolved and his inventory opened in its place. He scanned through it, and the disappointment came fast. He hadn't noticed it happening, but somewhere along the way he had run completely out of vital flowers, the core ingredient for the health potion.
"Shit," he muttered, and the word left his mouth only to be swallowed instantly by the wind rushing past the wagon, torn apart before it had any chance of reaching the driver seated ahead of him.
*I need those flowers before I go anywhere near the boss monster's territory.* He paused, working through where he might still find them. *James said hexhorns like to stay near those flowers. So there should be a lot of them out in hexhorn territory. And since the hexhorns are all dead now, it should be a lot easier to get to them.*
Meanwhile, as Tyler rode toward the base, Bernardo sat on one of the long benches inside the hunter base's tent, tucked into the far corner where the canvas walls met in shadow, his fingers twisting against each other in a slow, restless knot in his lap. Across the tent, he watched the twins step up to the counter to accept a C-rank quest.
Serena stood behind the counter, a ledger open in front of her. "Sign here," she said.
Nathan leaned in slightly, his eyes fixed on hers in a way that made her shoulders draw in. "Hey, have I seen you somewhere? You look really familiar."
"Huh? No, I don't think so."
"Really? What's your name?"
"I'm Serena," she answered softly.
"Serena... aren't you—"
"Come on, let's go." Nigel cut in, sliding the quest flyer across the counter toward her. Serena took it quickly and tucked it into one of the drawers behind her. Before Nathan could get another word out, Nigel had already closed a hand around his brother's wrist and pulled.
"Man, what the hell?" Nathan muttered, wrenching his hand free.
"We need to finish this quest fast. We can't waste any more time."
"It's not like I don't know that." Nathan shouldered past him, deliberately clipping Nigel's arm on the way by. "Looks like Bernardo's gotten into that thick head of yours."
"Say what?" The heat climbed up Nigel's neck fast, and his hand curled into a fist at his side. Nathan didn't dignify it with a response. He crossed straight to the table where Bernardo sat. "We've got the quest. Let's go."
"All right," Bernardo said, rising from the bench.
Nathan's eyes cut sideways, catching the shape of the coin pouch pressing against the fabric of Bernardo's pocket, heavy and full. It held every coin they had taken from the houses across the north district, and by Bernardo's count, it came to eleven gold pieces. Enough to cover the ten gold, the full thousand silver, they owed as principal, with a single gold piece left over. But that was as far as the relief went. The interest Violet had named on top of it was a separate debt entirely, and that one spare gold piece didn't come close to closing it.
The three of them left the tent together, the twins walking ahead, Bernardo trailing a few steps behind.
They had argued over it more than once, but it had always come back to the same conclusion — Bernardo had to come with them, whether either side liked it or not. Neither trusted the other. Bernardo held the money because the twins holding it meant he'd never see either of them again once they crossed into the monster zone, and so it had been settled: he would carry the coin, and they would do the hunting, since he wasn't a hunter and had no claim to make there.
Still, walking a few paces behind them now, watching their backs, he found he couldn't bring himself to trust them even for the length of this walk.
As the three of them slipped past the treeline and disappeared into the monster zone, Tyler's wagon rolled up behind the tent on the opposite side. He paid the driver and dropped down onto the packed dirt, exhaling as his boots found solid ground, and started around the side of the tent toward the entrance.
For reasons he couldn't quite name, it felt like far longer than two days since he had last come out here to hunt.