Jaded Series (Books 1-2)

Hadia knew she wouldn't be able to sleep while the others did. Karam had taken it upon himself to tend to Alim while Basima tried her best to take care of Jin. That left her to secure their base as best she could.

The first thing was to turn off those glowstones signaling their location in the dark night and start making sure every entrance was blocked off as best she could get it. She had seen enough bloodbaths of past events to know that just because they reached their base and triggered the enchantments didn't mean they were actually safe. While the monsters shouldn't be able to get through the enchantments, the other Champions definitely could and there were potentially environmental hazards they would need to deal with.

The last thing she wanted to experience in this creepy forest was a deathly fog that melted flesh it came into contact with.

That probably wouldn't be the case on the first floor where everyone was still a Mundane, but who knew what to expect with those sadistic gods. She learned very early on that the gods reveled in cruelty and seemed to favor those willing to inflict suffering for amusement.

After finding the rooms and helping Basima carry Jin to one of the beds upstairs, Hadia returned to the first floor and got to work, trying her best to ignore the sticky blood on the floor. Her initial plans to secure things were only slightly waylaid when she found Celia's corpse in the corner by the stairwell. She couldn't do much now aside from drag her out into the front yard and plan to bury her in the morning.

Once that was done, Hadia managed to find a hammer and nails and unused boards by the fireplace. There were only two windows, luckily; both on the lower floor on the walls without doors. The downside was there were two doors, the one in the front they first entered and another in the back leading into the small kitchen area.

She thought about boarding up both entrances but decided against it, settling for shoving a wooden chair under each handle and praying it would hold—at least long enough for them to prepare to fight. The windows she wished she could just get rid of completely but she could also see the advantage in being able to see any approaching enemies.

Hadia decided to just nail a couple boards against the glass panes. Even if someone managed to slide them open, it would ideally delay them from actually getting inside. She also found some blankets, taking one for each window to act as both a curtain and ideal seal any cracks in case that death fog really was a thing.

She felt beyond exhausted once she was done with the windows. Midnight had come and gone, which meant the ladder rankings had been updated and she sat on the sofa for a small break to look over the current standings. She couldn't help smiling when she saw Jin in third. A Servant rarely broke into the top three, even on that first day when things would get a bit chaotic at times.

The fact that there were only three deaths on that first day was actually the biggest surprise to her though. It was normally a blood bath as the various groups struggled to reach their bases. She could only assume it was due to the above average distribution on Blessings from the gods this Season.

Having all but the Servants get Blessings was extremely odd from what she remembered from past events. They were normally lucky to get a quarter of the Champions marked and blessed in total, often it would be less than that. It made her wonder if the gods were just expressing their particular disdain for the Servants this Season… or if they might actually be afraid of the unexpected Wayfarer on their team.

Hadia wasn't entirely sure what to make of the strange girl that fell from the sky. Part of her wanted to trust that Jin would be the key to their survival and even make it out of here at the end. The other part was screaming at her not to trust anyone, even someone who wouldn't have the same biased upbringing as the rest of the Champions.

She trusted Karam, at least. The gentle giant had been kind to her when she had first been transferred to the Servants. He even helped tend to her newly scarred face and didn't judge her for how she got them.

Hadia hadn't interacted with Alim or Basima much, though. She knew Alim was a friend of Karam's, so her trust in him felt partially extended to the deaf boy, but she hadn't been sure she could trust him not to drag them down. That was until earlier when he managed to save their lives.

She definitely felt like she owed him for that. Hadia was as terrible at reading enchantments as she was at reading books and knew that there was no way she would have managed the task she saw him almost die to accomplish.

Pressing the Money rune on her bracelet, she brought up the display for her points and the shop. With only two points from managing to kill one of the deranged forest critters on their way, there wasn't anything she could currently afford to spend those points on, but she was curious if there would be any options available yet.

Hadia gave a heavy sigh at the idea that she'd have to kill ten more Mundane monsters to afford a week of food for a single person. Luckily, Jin had a looting power that would make getting food a bit easier at least, and allow them to double up with the points, but she didn't want to rely on it.

She felt a chill crawl up her spine and shivered. Deciding to grab one of the blankets to warm her up as she kept watch on the sofa, she made her way to the chest she had found them in when she froze. The creak of floorboards she heard hadn't come from under her, and she wildly turned toward the kitchen area. The chair pinning the backdoor shut was still there, but the doorknob was twitching.

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Carefully moving toward the stairwell near the front door, she hoped alerting the others without letting whoever their potential intruder was know would mean they'd catch them by surprise. Stepping on the bottom stair however, caused a loud enough creak that Hadia winced and noticed the back doorknob stop its twitching.

Before she could run up the stairs, the door burst open as the chair failed to hold back the kick from their intruder.

"Get up!" Hadia yelled up to the others, hoping they weren't super heavy sleepers as she conjured her mace to her hand, and pulled the hammer out of the waist of her pants. She wouldn't let this would-be murderer kill the others in their sleep.

She ducked behind the stairwell's railing just as the head of a steel grappling hook slammed into the wall where her head had been. It was attached to a steel chain and was pulled back a moment later as her enemy swung it over their head in a circle, increasing its momentum before moving to swing it down on her head.

Apparently, whoever it was hadn't fought like that in a small cabin before because the hook ended up embedding itself in the wooden ceiling instead, eliciting a curse from the enemy and a shout from the girls in the room above.

Hadia took the opening, lunging herself off the stairs and ramming herself straight into the silver-clad man giving her a surprised look. They both tumbled hard to the floor with grunts of pain and annoyance.

The enemy managed to punch her in the side, but with her vantage point atop them, Hadia didn't hesitate to bring both the mace and hammer down on them in retaliation. He yelped as the hammer strike landed against his arms that had moved to block his face. Her mace had missed and hit the floor next to him though.

His body twisted, and he managed to get a leg under her enough to kick her off of him.

She stumbled as she tried to regain her footing, and the sound of metal clanging the ground next to her distracted her enough that she missed the punch aimed at her face.

Hadia managed to not fall to the ground again, and could feel the effect of her new Talent give her enemy another instance of [Bruised Ego], but the steel chain wrapping around her neck gave her something more pressing to be worried about. She dropped the hammer in favor of grabbing the chain to let her still breathe as the larger man grappled her from behind.

"Just stop struggling, you filthy Servant and die already! You can't hope to beat a Whisper!" the enemy growled into her ear.

Her vision almost went red in her rage as she twisted in his arms enough to bring her mace down on his unprotected skull while triggering her [Bone Breaker] ability.

The pressure of the chain vanished as the Whisper collapsed to the ground. Jin and Basima made it to the stairs by that point and were taking in the scene of her standing over the guy's unconscious body. He was bleeding heavily from the head wound but she could tell he was still breathing.

"Shit, Hadia, are you okay?" Jin asked her, finishing her descent down the steps.

"Yeah. Just a Whisper trying to get some easy points," she retorted, kicking at the would-be assassin.

"Should we tie him up and make a trade?" Basima piped up, keeping her distance from the enemy and staying crouched near the top of the stairs.

"Trade?" Jin asked in confusion, while crouching down next to the guy and patting him down.

"What are you doing?" Hadia asked curiously, wondering if the strange woman was trying to find a hidden weapon.

"Looting the body," she said nonchalantly. She tried picking up the grappling hook only to frown when it vanished after being tugged from the Whisper's hand. "I'm guessing I can't use weapons that come from someone else's abilities?"

"Not usually," Hadia answered, with a chuckle at the clueless Wayfarer. "And we could try trading the Whisper back to his Sect for supplies or points."

"Is that something the system helps facilitate?"

"System?"

"Er, the bracelet thingy or tower… However, it's enforcing the points and rules or whatever. Does it give us points for, like, releasing him near their base or something?"

"Oh, um, not really. We'd have to negotiate the deal with someone else who would transfer the points from their bracelet to one of ours. Touching the bracelets together allows for point trading between people which can be an important strategy at times," she explained, moving back to the back door to try securing it shut again before going to look around for some rope.

Jin just watched her for a long moment before finally asking, "So we would need to find a group of assassins and hope they'll touch our bracelets together and not kill us instead?"

Hadia only nodded, the grimace on her face making it clear she didn't like the idea either.

"What's going on?" Karam's low voice asked as he and Alim finally joined Basima at the top of the stairs. "Are you okay Hadia? Do you need healing?"

"I'm good, big guy," she replied automatically as she dug around in the chest of tools. "Just a bruised side."

"Is trading the only option we have?" Jin asked, still staring at her with an odd intensity.

Hadia rubbed the back of her neck, thinking through their options before admitting, "We can keep him as a hostage potentially, but there's definitely risks with that. Mainly that Whispers are trained better than any of us are. I think this idiot just underestimated us and got a bit cocky."

"Any other options that don't increase our chances of dying?" she asked, and Hadia hesitated only a moment before giving her a steely look.

"Turning him into points," she answered flatly, and knew that's what Jin had already decided on as soon as she said it. "You should probably be the one to do it, though," she added. At Jin's raised eyebrow she clarified, "A Mundane Champion kill is worth thirty points. You'll be able to afford something from the shop with that since you already have the most out of all of us."

"Can't we trade—"

"Only with other Sects. It's a point of strategy but they didn't want teams easily feeding everything into a single person to buy more expensive items early on. There's some ways to get around that with intersecting teams, but those don't usually form right away and there's a cooldown on how often you can do the transfers."

Jin gave an annoyed huff but bent down and roughly grabbed the guy by the shirt and started dragging him toward the front door. "You all wait in here," she coldly commanded them. "I'll be right back."

Hadia glanced at the stricken faces of the others—even Alim seemed to understand exactly what was happening despite nobody signing for him. She guessed it didn't take too much to understand what was going to occur when dragging an enemy outside.

"Are you really just going to kill him?" Basima asked in shock.

Jin paused at the bottom of the stairs with one hand on the door. Looking up at the younger blonde, the Wayfarer replied simply, "They asked for it by attacking us first."

The door was opened then, and Jin continued on her path out of it, dragging the soon-to-be-ash behind her.

Hadia forced herself to follow after Jin, though, knowing deep down that she needed to get used to seeing death. She just hoped she could still trust Jin not to see the rest of them as easy points, too.