Last Man in the Death Game

Chapter 5: Denied

"You want us to sleep in the thing you knocked down?" Dani asked.

"One corner is still standing," Kael said. "Two walls and one way in. That's the best door we're going to find."

Oscar looked at the sky. It had started to change. The gray was turning darker, slow and heavy, like ink spreading in water. "Night's coming. Night mobs hit harder. Everybody says so."

"Then we don't sleep in the open," Mika said.

They limped back to the wreck. Jun leaned on Oscar the whole way. Dani carried Kael's bag without being asked, which he noticed and didn't mention.

The back corner of the barn had survived the collapse. Two walls met at a right angle, and a slanted piece of roof made a low cave. Boards blocked most of the front, leaving a gap about as wide as a man.

"Not bad," Oscar said. "You wreck a barn and get a bunker out of it."

They sat down in the dust. It was the first time all day Kael's heart rate dropped below a hundred. Jun sat beside him and pressed two glowing fingers to his leg. [HP: 38 → 45.] "That's the last of my mana," Jun said. "It comes back slowly. One point every ten minutes, if I'm lucky."

"Can I see your shield?" Kael asked Oscar.

Oscar handed it over. The crack ran from the top edge almost to the middle, and the iron rim was bent. Kael ran a thumb along it. A prompt popped up.

[Salvage: Iron-Bound Shield. Yields Wood Scrap x4, Iron Scrap x3.]

"Don't," Oscar said. "Don't you dare."

"I'm not going to salvage your shield."

"Your hand is glowing!"

Kael pulled his hand back fast. "Sorry. It's a very easy skill to use by accident."

He looked at the prompt again. Under the Salvage line, a second line had appeared, small and new.

[Mend: Iron Scrap x2 restores 40% durability. Wood Scrap x4 restores 20%.]

"Huh," Kael said. "Salvage Level 2 came with a bonus."

He tapped it. Gray light ran along the crack like water filling a ditch. The metal sealed with a dull, scarred line. The bent rim eased straight.

[Iron-Bound Shield: Durability 31 → 71.]

Oscar took it back very slowly, like it might bite. He ran his own thumb along the seam. His face changed.

"I've been carrying this thing since the plaza," he said quietly. "Waiting for it to break."

In the warehouse, the man who kept the forklift running was worth more than the man who drove it. Nobody ever put that guy on a poster.

Nobody said anything. Then Dani held out her staff. "Do mine."

"It's not damaged."

"Do it anyway."

"It costs Scrap," Kael said. "And I'm not spending it on a staff that isn't broken."

The mood loosened after that. Jun had sold insurance for eleven years. Mika had been a barista. Dani was in her second year of medical school, and she said it like she was apologizing. Oscar taught middle school gym, which explained a lot.

"And you?" Mika asked Kael.

"Warehouse. Night shift."

"Then you're the most qualified person here," Mika said. "You're used to everything going wrong at three in the morning."

Kael almost laughed. It was true.

Then the last of the light went out. There was no sunset. The sky just went from gray to black, all at once, like a lid being closed. No moon. No stars.

"How long is the night here?" Dani whispered.

[Night phase: 6 hours.]

Nobody liked the answer.

Far off, something howled. Something answered, closer. Then four more voices joined in, all from the direction of the creek. And one, deeper than the rest, that Kael felt in his chest.

"They're back," Jun whispered. "Five of them."

"Six," Mika said. "One's bigger."

Everyone got up. Oscar took the gap in the wall, shield high. Dani stood behind him with her staff. Mika had three arrows she'd pulled from the dead wolf, one of them bent. Jun sat at the back, pale and empty of mana, with a roll of bandages ready. Kael crouched at Oscar's shoulder with his hammer and his four Iron Scrap.

The first wolf hit Oscar's shield like a thrown sack of bricks.

[Iron-Bound Shield: Durability 71 → 58.]

"Hold!" Kael shouted. "One at a time! They can only get through one at a time!"

It worked. That was the whole point of the gap. Wolves clawed at the boards on either side and snarled through the hole, but only one could reach Oscar at a time. Claws screamed on wood. The whole barn shook with every hit. Dani's fire lashed over his shoulder. [Cradle Wolf HP: 45 → 23.] Mika's first arrow missed and stuck in a board. She swore, loudly, and reached for the next. It finished the wolf.

Second wolf. Third. Every hit chewed at the shield. [Durability 58 → 40 → 22.]

"Kael!" Oscar barked. "Shield's dying!"

Kael slapped the shield with his palm. [Mend: Iron Scrap x2.] The crack glowed and sealed. [Durability 22 → 62.]

"Again when I say," Oscar grunted, and slammed a wolf back into the dark with his shield.

Three wolves down. Two more circled outside the gap, and then the whole night seemed to hold its breath.

The boards shook. Something huge stepped into the gap. The name tag hung above its head like a small, cold star. [Cradle Alpha. Lv 4. HP 120.] It was twice the size of the others, with a torn ear and one milky eye.

Then the name tag flickered. For half a second, the letters twisted into something else. [wolf_alpha_TEST_01.] Then it snapped back.

Kael blinked. He looked at the others. Nobody had reacted. Nobody had seen it.

TEST. Like something left over from before the game opened.

The Alpha hit Oscar's shield with one swing. It rang like a bell. [Durability 62 → 14.] Oscar dropped to one knee.

"Mend!" Oscar barked.

Kael slapped the rim. [Mend: Iron Scrap x2. Durability 14 → 54.]

"I've got one big spell left," Dani said. Her staff glowed red. "Five seconds to charge."

"Five seconds," Oscar said through his teeth. "I can do five seconds."

It wasn't enough. Kael saw the math at once. The Alpha swung every two seconds, and every swing took forty off the shield. Kael could give back twenty a tap, and his iron was gone, so every tap cost four wood. He had to keep a number above zero for five seconds. It was the worst kind of math.

[54.] The Alpha swung. [14.] Tap. [34.] Tap. [54.] Swing. [14.] Tap. [34.] Tap.

"Now!" Kael screamed.

Dani's staff flashed white. A ball of red fire the size of a wagon wheel tore through the gap and slammed into the Alpha's chest. The whole barn lit up orange. [Cradle Alpha HP: 120 → 31.]

The Alpha staggered, roaring. Its milky eye turned toward the barn.

Mika's bent arrow went straight into the milky eye.

[Cradle Alpha defeated.]

The two surviving wolves had already run into the dark.

Silence. Then Jun started laughing, and then Dani, and then all of them, with the wild, high, terrified sound of people who had expected to die.

Kael slid down the wall and sat in the dust with his hands shaking. He checked his bag out of habit. Iron Scrap: none. Wood Scrap: seventeen.

[Party kills: Cradle Wolf x3, Cradle Alpha x1.]

[Level 3 reached. Max HP 66.]

[Standing: 9,741 → 9,566 / 9,879.]

Kael stared at that last one. One hundred seventy-five places in one night. He needed about four hundred more. For the first time since the plaza, the number didn't feel like a wall. It felt like a hill.

"For the record," Oscar said, "I'd like to take back everything I said in the plaza."

"You said one thing."

"I'd like to take it back twice."

"Now can you do my staff?" Dani asked.

"Still not broken."

"Day one's not over," Oscar added. "Your trial. You still owe us till morning."

"Guess I do," Kael said. Mika grinned so wide it looked like it hurt.

Outside, the Alpha's body was fading into gray light, the way the wolf's had. But this time something stayed behind: a single yellowed fang, lying in the dirt.

Everyone else was busy hugging or crying or checking their HP. Kael crouched over the fang.

He didn't reach for it. He just hovered his palm. Salvage always lit up first.

This time, it lit up wrong.

[Item: unknown.]

[Deprecated data detected.]

[Salvage: Access denied.]

Kael read it three times. Denied. Not "impossible." Not "invalid." Denied, like a door with a lock on it.

And Kael had always been good with doors.

In the corner of his vision, the faded third line in his skill list pulsed once, like it agreed.

[Night phase: 5 hours, 41 minutes remaining.]

Somewhere above the dark, Warden Zero said nothing at all. Kael found the silence worse than a whisper.