THE UNBOUND MORTAL

Chapter 4

The heavy iron gate of the southern portcullis screeched upward with a groan of rusted chains, and two heavy boots slammed into Logan’s back.

He stumbled forward, his boots skidding across sharp, black shale. The iron bars slammed down behind him with a teeth-rattling boom that shook the dust from the canyon walls.

"Die well, trash!" a guard sneered from the safety of the battlements above. "Let the beasts chew your bones! Saves the city the cost of your burial!"

Logan caught his balance, kept his head low, and did not look back.

The air in Demon’s Maw Valley was thick, warm, and foul. It tasted of rotten eggs and burned fat. Long plumes of pale yellow sulfur rose from deep cracks in the ground, drifting across the narrow gorge like sickly ghosts. All around him, the black stone walls rose hundreds of feet into the gray sky, so steep and jagged they looked like the broken teeth of a buried giant.

On the ground, scattered among the loose pebbles, were bits of shredded armor, snapped wooden bows, and dark, dried patches of brown blood. The recruits sent in thirty minutes before him had already been butchered. Their screams had stopped before the transport wagons had even finished unloading.

A heavy iron chain clinked at Logan’s wrists.

He was not alone. Chained to the same five-foot steel bar were four other young recruits. Unlike Logan, each of them had a glowing window hovering near their temples, casting pale blue and green light across their terrified faces.

"Keep moving, you useless idiot!" a voice hissed from Logan's left.

The speaker was Austin Richardson. He was nineteen, with narrow eyes, slicked-back brown hair, and leather armor that was far too clean for a penal ditch. Above Austin’s forehead burned a soft, sky-blue title:

[Austin Richardson — System: Pyromancer Apprentice (D-Rank) — Level: 2]

"If you drag your feet and get us killed, Carter, I’ll burn your ears off before the monsters get us," Austin muttered, his teeth chattering with cold fear. He held a small bronze wand in his right hand. His eyes darted nervously between the dark pine trees growing along the canyon floor and his own glowing blue status screen. "The system says this is a Level Three danger zone. Why did the guards push us into a Level Three zone? My quest log says I only need to kill swamp rats!"

Beside Austin, two young men with low-grade Warrior systems and a girl with a Novice Scout interface huddled together. The girl was crying softly, her nose running, her fingers clutching a bent iron dagger.

"They threw us in here to die because the noble clans don't want to feed D-ranks," the girl sobbed. "And now we're chained to a blank! He has no stats! He doesn't even have a health bar! If a beast hits him, he’s dead weight!"

"Shut your mouth, Mia!" Austin snapped, squinting at his interface. "The system will give us an objective soon. As long as we follow the pathing arrows on the mini-map, we can reach the safety outpost. We just need to let the system guide our steps. That’s what the academy taught us. Trust the divine calculations."

Logan said nothing. He looked away from their glowing screens and studied the real world.

The pathing arrow Austin was staring at pointed straight down the center of the ravine—a flat, open stretch of dry riverbed covered in white gravel. It was completely exposed. Any predator resting on the high ridges would spot them in five seconds.

Logan shifted his eyes to the right. A narrow dry ditch ran parallel to the cliff face, hidden under the hanging boughs of weeping-needle pines. The wind blew from the south, meaning if they moved through the ditch, their scent would be carried behind them, away from whatever hunted in the valley.

Furthermore, Logan was not looking for an official safety outpost. He knew the layout of Demon's Maw from the forbidden pre-Awakening maps he had copied by hand in the city archives. Two miles south, hidden inside a natural cave system, sat an abandoned mortal mining cache from forty years ago. It had no mana crystals, which meant no high-level system user would ever bother looking for it. It was the only place he could hide before Brandon Cox’s clan organized a proper sweep.

"We shouldn't take the riverbed," Logan said calmly, his voice rough from the sulfur dust. "We need to drop into the ditch under the pines. Keep low. The wind is at our backs."

Austin stopped and glared at Logan with disbelief.

"Did the blank just speak?" Austin barked, his face twisting in ugly disgust. "You don't even have an interface, Carter! You can't see the mini-map! The system clearly shows the optimal route in bright green! Are you saying the divine system is wrong, and your dumb eyes are right?"

"The green arrow doesn't smell the sulfur," Logan said. "Look at the dust on those boulders ahead. It’s undisturbed. But look at the pine branches three feet off the ground. The needles are snapped fresh. Something heavy walked through there less than ten minutes ago. It's pacing the riverbed."

"Shut up!" Austin shoved Logan’s shoulder with his bronze wand. "You're a penal conscript with a zero rating! You follow where I pull the chain! I am a D-Rank Pyromancer. One spark from my wand can melt a pig's skull! If a beast shows up, my auto-targeting will turn it to charcoal before it touches me. Now walk!"

Austin yanked the heavy connecting chain, dragging Logan and the other three recruits out onto the open white stones of the dry riverbed.

Logan did not resist. He let his boots slide quietly over the rocks, his ears straining against the howling wind.

“Four seconds,” Logan thought. “That is how long it took them to make a lethal mistake.”

The wind suddenly died. The whistling sound through the jagged peaks stopped completely.

From the dark canopy of the weeping pines eighty yards ahead, three shapes dropped onto the gravel without making a sound.

They did not look like normal wolves or big cats. They were twice the size of a mountain lion, their bodies covered in dark, hairless gray hide that looked like wet rubber. Four jointed, spider-like legs propelled their low-slung torsos, and from their backs grew a cluster of twitching, bone-white quills. At the center of each beast's flat, triangular skull sat three vertical, milk-white eyes that leaked foul black pus.

[Abyssal Stalker — Level 4 (Mutated)]

[Threat Level: Moderate]

The red text hovered above the beasts' heads.

The girl, Mia, let out a shriek that bounced off the canyon walls like a glass bell breaking. "M-Monsters! Level four! Three of them!"