Herald of death

The air fills with sulfur, the stench attacking Ethan's nose. They appear at the end of a vast, broken stone bridge, each slab fractured by age and neglect. The bridge arches perilously over a scorched landscape, where the ground itself seems scarred by some great cataclysm. Twisted, charred remnants of what might once have been trees dot the horizon.

Before them looms a titanic castle, its gargantuan stone walls climbing towards dark clouds. The architecture is a brutal mix of jagged spires and towering buttresses, all adorned with nightmarish gargoyles.

Iron-bound doors stand closed at the end of the bridge, their surface etched with a scene of ancient war. Armored warriors confront a horde of bizarre beings, each with unusually many eyes, mouths, and limbs.

Above, the few remaining beams of sunlight struggle through the clouded sky. The wind howls as it whips through the broken bridge.

Ethan slowly guides Specter nine to the ground, placing him on his back. Russ circles around them, watching every angle for hypothetical threats.

Ethan triggers predator's sight. Seeing no living beings but the three of them, he focuses on Specter nine's wounds. One of the bullets spread at impact and moves around his guts. The other remained in the form of a bullet and is stuck between two ribs around his heart.

"Be honest, how bad is it?" Specter nine asks.

Ethan smirks. "I've seen worse in people who survived their wounds," he says as he pulls out a first aid kit. Cutting down his patient's bulletproof vest, he explains, "I'm going to need you to stay as still as you can and to slow down your breaths. Can you do that?"

Specter nine nods and turns his gaze to the sky. With a pair of tweezers and a small scalpel, Ethan first addresses the wound near his heart. He tears the torn fabric to fully expose the wound. Using the scalpel, he makes a small incision to widen the entry wound. The edges of the skin part slightly, revealing the glint of the projectile lodges between the ribs.

With the tweezers, Ethan reaches into the small incision. His brow furrows in concentration, forming drops of sweat. Specter nine's breaths grow shallow and slow, obeying Ethan's instructions despite the pain.

Clasping the bullet, Ethan gently maneuvers it out. The bullet, coated with a mix of blood and other fluids, comes free. Blood emerges from the wound in small gulps. Ethan places a compress and guides Specter nine's right hand on it. "Press as hard as you can," he orders.

Ethan shifts his focus to the second, more challenging wound. Activating predator's sight once again, he perceives subtle heat pathways that mark the paths of the fragments. Ethan bends over the wound, his eyes not on the flesh itself but focusing through the lens of enhanced sight.

Each movement is slow, calculated to avoid unnecessary damage to the liver, gallbladder, or stomach. The fragments are hard to reach. As he probes, his hand adjusts to the feedback from the tweezers, feeling the resistance of tissues and the crunch of meeting metal fragments.

One by one, Ethan finds and extracts each fragment. Some are removed smoothly, while others require multiple adjustments. Ethan has to refill his ether every ten seconds to maintain predator's sight.

After the last fragment is safely removed and accounted for, Ethan closes the wounds with bandages. He hands his patient the remaining half of a healing potion.

"Ether manipulation leveled up, medicine leveled up, Predator's sight ranked up," the voice announces.

Ethan's senses sharpen further, and the world around him transforms into a sensory map of hyper-detail. His ears pick up every subtle sound in the desolate landscape, from the faintest crack of shifting rubble to the screaming wind. His sight overlays the auditory map with visual insights, rendering the surrounding ruins in stark contrast. Ethan sees not only the physical realm but also the heat signature of everything instead of only the living beings.

Unbearable pain pierces his mind, and he is overwhelmed by the barrage of senses that his brain struggles to process. Every distant rustle of wind, every shift in heat, even the faintest echoes of movement in the castle converge to assault his senses.

This unsustainable agony clouds his thoughts, blurring the reality that surrounds him. Through the onslaught, he wills the words into his mind, 'cancel predator's sight.'

He comes back to reality and falls on his back, his head ringing with a pulsating headache. "You gain a Willpower point," the voice screams in his mind with the violence of a jackhammer.

"I was going to complain that you didn't give me anything for the pain. But you look like you'd need it more than me," Specter nine jests.

Ethan closes his eyes. The hard stone floor is a comfortable bed compared to what he just experienced. "Sorry, I used my morphine, and my hideout was out of it. And the pills I have work too slowly," Ethan apologizes.

Russ licks Ethan's face, worried for his pained friend.

Specter nine stands up, scanning the castle and the desolated landscape. "Where are we, Ethan?" he asks.

Surprised, Ethan asks, "How do you know my name?"

"It appeared in the party invite, and I can see it alongside my own status," Specter nine explains.

"Status," Ethan says. Next to his own status, Ethan sees Russ's and a new, minimalistic one.

Kyle Bennett

Lv.4/20 (Warrior) Human

"We are in a dungeon, a place in another world you can reach using special stones left by monsters. Well, this one I got as a reward for being the first to clear another dungeon," Ethan explains with his eyes closed.

"How do we return to our world?" Kyle asks, his gaze captivated by the doors' illustrations.

"Using a return stone, I got two from my first dungeon. And I still have one left," Ethan begins. "We can wait here for few hours or even a day and return when things should have calmed down. But I'd like to explore whatever is behind those doors, as I have no way to come back here if we leave."

"You want to go in there? Now?" Specter nine asks.

Ethan clings to his consciousness to say, "After a nap." Russ places himself along Ethan's head, keeping watch over his sleeping master.