Chapter 33: Ruins Of Greyhaven

Frey stopped almost instantly.

The joking vanished from his expression without Jet needing to say another word, and the difference was enough for Jet to notice again that his friend wasn’t completely inexperienced.

Frey might behave like an idiot ninety percent of the time, but he had spent years training in martial arts and swordsmanship even before the Second Red Moon. Jet hadn’t.

Before his regression, all his understanding of combat had come from watching Raiders, hauling their equipment, listening to conversations he wasn’t included in, and surviving in a world where people stronger than him were everywhere.

His first real battle had happened only yesterday in the Thousand Boughs, where a Black-Fang Hyena had nearly torn him apart before Asura Physique began forcing his body to adapt.

After that came the Myriapod Caterpillar, then the Vorpal Bunny that had almost sliced him into pieces.

Without the Eight-Armed Asura changing the way his body processed combat, Jet would probably have died several times during his first Descent. Frey, meanwhile, already understood stance, distance, footwork, and weapon control at a basic level.

Jet had the superior supernatural foundation, but Frey had started learning how to actually fight long before him.

A faint scratching noise dragged Jet’s attention toward the second floor of a building across the street.

Both of them remained still as the sound came again, slow and unpleasant, like something hard scraping over stone.

Frey’s gaze followed his, settling on a window whose glass had disappeared long ago.

"Please tell me that’s a rat," he murmured.

Jet watched the darkness inside the room. "If the rats here are the size of people, maybe."

Something grey appeared around the edge of the window frame. At first it looked like a human hand, until impossibly long fingers curled against the stone and black claws dug into the surface.

A thin arm followed, then a bald head slowly emerged from the darkness.

The creature crawled through the window and clung sideways to the exterior wall with all four limbs, its body roughly the size of a small human but built with proportions that immediately made Frey’s face tighten.

Grey skin stretched over exposed ribs, its arms reached almost to its knees, and a crooked spine forced its torso into a permanent hunch. Its face might once have resembled something human if not for the mouth, which split almost to both ears when the creature opened its jaw and revealed several rows of narrow triangular teeth.

Another System notification appeared before Jet.

[Dungeon Monster Encountered.]

[Grave Gnawer.]

[Classification: White-Class Dungeon Monster.]

[Traits: Pack Hunter / Enhanced Olfactory Sense / Rending Claws.]

Jet read the name aloud under his breath.

"Grave Gnawer."

Before Frey can say anything, the creature suddenly opened its mouth and released a piercing shriek that tore through the dead streets.

Frey winced and immediately looked back toward it. "Oh."

A second grey hand appeared from the neighboring window. Then a third creature crawled onto the roof above them.

Another emerged from the mouth of a narrow alley beside the marketplace, moving on all fours with its head hanging unnaturally low.

A fifth slowly climbed from beneath the overturned wagon near the dried fountain.

Within seconds, Greyhaven was no longer empty. Grave Gnawers began emerging from everywhere Jet looked, crawling through broken windows, dropping from roofs, squeezing between doors, and climbing over walls with their claws scraping against stone.

Several remained hunched in the street while others clung to buildings above them, gradually spreading out until Jet realized they were being surrounded. More appeared from the road behind them, cutting off the direction from which they’d entered the town.

Frey counted several automatically before giving up when yet another group spilled from an alley farther ahead.

There were easily more than twenty of them now and probably closer to thirty, each creature producing low clicking noises while their mouths opened and closed around those rows of teeth.

Frey looked slowly around the street, and the disappointment he’d shown after entering Greyhaven finally disappeared.

A grin began forming across his face. "There we go. Now this is starting to look like a Dungeon."

Jet smiled as well and reached toward empty air. With a thought, his System Inventory opened and silver light flashed around his right hand as the Vorpal Blade materialized into his grip.

The single-edged Relic settled naturally against his palm, its iridescent surface reflecting the pale Dungeon light as herolled his shoulder and adjusted his stance.

Frey’s eyes immediately locked onto the weapon. "Hold on. That’s not some normal sword."

Jet glanced at him. "Good observation."

Frey stared at the blade for another second before recognition hit him. "That’s a Relic, isn’t it?"

Jet nodded once. "Yep."

Frey’s eyebrows rose. "You’ve entered the Beyond once."

"Yep."

"One fucking time."

"Yep."

Frey stared at him with growing offense. "And you already found a Relic?"

Jet’s grin widened. "Yep."

Frey took a slow breath, looked toward the sky as though asking some higher power why it hated him, then finally muttered, "Fuck you."

Jet laughed as Frey reached into his own System Inventory, but his amusement faded into interest when two large curved blades appeared in Frey’s hands.

Each weapon was roughly the length of his arm, with broadsilver-grey edges that widened slightly toward their tips, black-wrapped grips, and compact guards built for mobility rather than defense.

They weren’t extravagant weapons despite Frey’s personality; they looked practical, heavy enough to deliver vicious cuts while still allowing fast rotational movement. More importantly, Frey caught both blades cleanly and immediately shifted his grip.

His feet spread across the cobblestones, his center of gravity lowered, and his shoulders relaxed while the right blade settled slightly forward and the left remained closer to his body.

Jet watched the adjustment carefully.

There it was again, the difference between possessing strength and possessing training.

Frey wasn’t some sword master, but he knew what he was doing. Jet, by comparison, had received his first practical lessons from monsters attempting to dismember him.

Warmth spread faintly across Jet’s back beneath his clothes as Asura Physique responded to the approaching violence.

His fingers tightened around the Vorpal Blade while the nearest Grave Gnawers began creeping closer, and that familiar sharpening of his senses slowly returned.

He could see how the creatures distributed their weight across their limbs, how their shoulders moved before their claws touched the ground, how the pack was trying to close the distance without allowing either human an obvious route through them.

Frey casually rolled one wrist and spun the curved blade in his right hand through a single clean rotation before settling it back into position.

He didn’t look at Jet completely, keeping most of his attention on the monsters surrounding them, but the gold tooth in his grin flashed when he asked, "Race you?"

Jet shifted his right foot backward, lowering the Vorpal Blade beside his body while his own smile widened. "Loser buys lunch."

One of the Grave Gnawers suddenly threw its head back and screamed, and the entire pack surged forward at once.

Claws struck cobblestone, bodies dropped from rooftops, and nearly thirty pale shapes flooded the streetfrom every direction as Jet and Frey simultaneously pushed off the ground and charged straight toward them.