Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 14: The Dinner Bell

​Rifling through a corpse while freezing to death isn’t exactly how I planned to spend my first night back, but Thirstfall doesn’t care about comfort.

​I dig through the swordsman’s remains. I don’t waste time rummaging. I know exactly what he had. I remember the weight on his left hip.

​The leather armor crumbles like wet paper, but I find it attached to his rotted belt: a rustic flint and a small ox horn sealed with wax and worn by time.

​I shake the horn carefully. Liquid sloshes inside.

​Oil. Old, thick, but flammable.

​"Thanks, buddy," I whisper to the skull. "You won’t need this where you are."

​I scan the surroundings for fuel. The tundra is mostly a graveyard of rocks and grey sponge, but a solitary silhouette breaks the horizon.

​A dead pine. Stunted, gnarled, standing alone amidst a sea of low shrubs and frozen moss. It looks like it died fighting the wind years ago.

​I snap a sturdy branch off its carcass. I wrap the driest rags I can find around it, and soak them in the rancid oil.

​It’s a primitive, ugly torch. But it’s fire.

​I stash the flint and stand up. The wind howls, cutting across the tundra like invisible razors.

​North, right?

​The memories I absorbed with Rescue are a mess. They don’t work like a GPS; they work like a fragmented fever dream. The dead man didn’t know the distance. His fear blurred his sense of space.

​He just knew safety was "that way." If he wasn’t sure, neither am I.

​I start walking.

​With every step, the cold bites deeper. It’s not just temperature; it’s a conceptual drain. The environment is sucking my existence dry.

​I pull up the HUD. The number glows, mocking me.

​[OXI: 610 / 1200]

[Status: Hypothermia (Stage 1) - Accelerated Drain]

​Dropping too fast. One point every two seconds. If I keep stumbling in the dark, I won’t be eaten; I’ll just black out and turn into an ice statue.

​I stop. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely hold the flint.

​I look at the darkness pressing in. Lighting a fire here is the equivalent of screaming in a library.

​"I’m about to light a literal ’Free Dinner’ sign..." I mutter, my breath freezing on my face. "Shit. It’s this or die."

​I strike the flint. Once. Twice.

​On the third strike, the spark catches. The fire explodes with a satisfying whoosh, casting a flickering orange light against the grey moss.

​The heat hits my face. The OXI drain slows instantly.

​But the relief is short-lived. The torch pushes back the dark, but it also creates long, dancing shadows. And at the edge of the light, I feel something moving.

​Shapes.

​Black blurs sliding between the rocks, too fast to be the wind. They were waiting. And now, I just announced exactly where I am.

​"Come on then," I say, with absolutely zero conviction.

​I immediately feel like an idiot. Encouraging death to come faster isn’t exactly smart.

​The only rational thought left is simple: Run.

​My lungs protest immediately. This Rank F body is pathetic. My legs burn, the freezing air tears at my throat, but I force myself to keep the pace.

​Running burns OXI. The cold burns OXI. Everything in this damn world burns OXI.

​But standing still burns life.

​The night falls completely, heavy as a tombstone. And with it, a heavy blizzard. The snow doesn’t fall gently; it attacks horizontally. The world shrinks to the six-foot circle of light from my torch.

​450...

​I hear a sound. But it isn’t a howl or anything else we used to hear on Earth.

​Click. Clack.

​It sounds like dry stones grinding together. Or teeth chattering in the cold.

​380...

​The sound multiplies. Click-click-clack. Right behind me.

​Go ahead, I think, gripping the hilt. I’m tough, bitter, and harder to swallow than a messy divorce with a greedy ex.

​I’m not stupid, so I keep running. Feet ahead I trip on a root, nearly face-planting into the moss, but I recover, using the sheathed katana to balance. Panic starts scratching at my mind.

​Then, I see it.

​Lights.

​Weak, flickering through the snowstorm, but unmistakable. High lanterns. Walls.

​The city.

​I check the HUD. The math is brutal.

​120...

​"Maybe today I will have dinner with my dead in hell..." I whisper to myself.

​I’m not going to make it, I think, feeling my legs turn to lead. Too far.

​The clicking stops. The silence is worse.

​I look over my shoulder.

​It bursts out of the blizzard.

​The Coral Ripper.

​It isn’t just a predator. It’s a nightmare of evolution. A quadruped with grey, hairless skin, covered in jagged, bleached plates of coral that grow like tumors from its shoulders and spine. It looks like a walking reef that dried out and learned to hate.

​Its milky, pupil-less eyes lock onto me.

​It’s not hunting anymore. It’s charging.

​"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck..."

A hundred and fifty feet to the gates.

​The Ripper is at sixty.

​I force my legs to pump faster, but the tank is empty. The beast gains ground with a jittery, unnatural speed, its armor clacking with every stride.

A hundred and twenty feet.

Thirty feet for the monster.

​I see the faint line where the snow stops accumulating on the ground. The border of the Safe Zone. The limit of Ocean’s Law.

​I throw my torch back, trying to hit the beast and buy some time. I lunge forward, burning all the remaining OXI, life, soul, and whatever hell remains within me.

​The Ripper hisses—a sound like steam escaping a vent—and bunches its hind legs.

​It’s going to jump!

​It wants to snag me before the line. It launches itself like a limestone torpedo, jaws unhinged, aiming specifically for my throat.

​"Come on, you ugly bastard," I whisper, tasting blood.

​The beast leaps. A perfect arc. A ton of death flying in my direction.

​A normal person would keep running and die with jaws in their spine a a few feet away from salvation.

​I am not normal.

​"HERE WE GO MOTHERFUCKER!"

​The exact moment its shadow covers me, I slam my heels into the ground.

​Dash Stop.

​A Rank A movement with a useless Rank F body.

​My knees pop with the deceleration.

​My OXI plummets from the burst effort. I feel my legs giving out, begging to surrender, but I don’t give up.

​I throw my weight backward, rolling in the opposite direction, right under the arc of its jump.

​The Ripper sails over me.

​It can’t stop. Physics is a bitch and reefs can’t fly.

​CRACK.

​It sounds like a wrecking ball hitting a wall of glass.

​The Coral Ripper hits the invisible barrier of the Safe Zone at full sprint.

​Ocean’s Law doesn’t forgive.

​The impact is absolute. The creature’s momentum is halted instantly, but its armor isn’t. The razor-sharp coral plates on its shoulders and chest shatter upon contact, exploding outward in a violent cloud of debris.

​It’s like a fragmentation grenade going off.

​Zip. Thud. Slash.

​Jagged shards of reef fly past my head like a shotgun blast. One piece slices my cheek, drawing a line of hot blood. Another embeds itself in the frozen dirt just an inch from my eye.

​But I don’t blink. I don’t look away.

​I watch the beast bounce off the barrier, stunned, its chest now a ruin of cracked plates and exposed flesh.

​It falls backward. Right toward me.

​I’m already on my knees.

​I draw my Katana. It’s dull, rusted, a piece of junk against a healthy monster. But this thing isn’t healthy anymore. Its armor is gone.

​I brace the hilt against my hip, grip the blade with my gloved left hand to steady the aim, and point the blunt tip upward.

​"Sit, Pal!" I yell.

​The massive body of the Ripper falls straight onto the sword.

​THWACK.

​The blade finds the soft spot amidst the shattered coral. It takes effort—the muscle is still dense—but gravity does the rest.

​The steel forces its way through the exposed belly, tears through guts, and stops only when it hits the spine.

​The beast crashes on top of me. The weight nearly breaks my ribs.

​It’s still alive.

​Its claws tear at the dirt inches from my face. The jaw clicks one last time, dark blue blood dripping onto my forehead mixing with my own.

​I hold the hilt with everything I have, screaming against the weight, feeling its death rattle vibrate through the steel into my bones. My lungs collapse and I taste blood in my mouth.

​One second. Two.

​The milky light in its eyes fades.

​The weight vanishes.

​The body dissolves into a cloud of grey ash and shattered coral dust, coating me in filth.

​I fall back onto the snow, gasping.

​"For God’s sake..."

​[OXI: 15 / 1200]

[CRITICAL ALERT]

​My vision starts to darken.

​I frantically grope the ground where the monster died. Ash... mud... sharp fragments... ​My fingers touch something hard.

​I grab it.

​Twenty Scales. Glowing faintly. ​I don’t think. I shove Ten of them into my mouth and swallow.

​Heat explodes in my stomach, flooding my veins like liquid caffeine.

​[OXI: 265 / 1200]

​The red alert vanishes. The cold takes a step back.

[Reward: +3% to Rank Advancement.]

I force my legs to straighten, but they tremble like leaves in a storm. I’m caked in a vile paste of monster ash, unburnt oil, and cold sweat.

​I spot the battered scabbard lying a few feet away in the snow. As I bend down to grab it, the world tilts. My knees buckle, completely shot from the exertion of that dash stop. I stumble, flailing for a second, barely catching my balance before I face-plant into the mud.

​Regaining my composure with a groan, I wipe the thick, black wolf blood from the rusted blade onto my thigh and guide it back into the sheath with a sharp clack.

​"Best. Job. Ever," I mutter, spitting blood to the side.

​Looking at the other side of the invisible barrier, two guards on the wall are staring at me, mouths open, lanterns illuminating my sorry figure.

​I spit another glob of blood onto the ground and give them a crooked red smile.

​"Open late?"