THE UNBOUND MORTAL

Chapter 6

Logan did not run. He planted his back foot, aligned his shoulders, and hurled his right dagger through the air.

The heavy, unmagical piece of scrap iron spun twice, whistling softly through the sulfurous wind, and buried itself four inches deep directly into the center of the beast’s third eye.

The eye popped with a wet sound.

The Stalker roared in agony, rearing back on its hind legs, clawing frantically at the iron sticking out of its brain.

Logan was already there.

He slid beneath the thrashing beast on the loose gravel, caught the wooden handle of his embedded dagger with both hands, and ripped it downward with the full weight of his falling body.

The blade carved through bone, palate, and tongue, splitting the monster’s lower jaw in half.

The beast collapsed sideways onto the white stones, shuddering twice before going completely stiff.

Silence returned to the gorge.

The only sounds were the whistling sulfur wind and the ragged, terrified gasps of the four surviving recruits.

Austin lay on his back, covered in warm, stinking black ichor. His leather armor was soaked. He looked down at his wand, then looked up at Logan, who was standing over the three dead Level Four monsters with a flat, indifferent face.

Logan’s hands were steady. His breathing was calm. His canvas jacket was ruined with blood, but there was not a single scratch on his skin.

Mia scrambled backward until her spine hit the rock wall, staring at Logan with wide, horrified eyes.

"You... you killed them," Austin stammered, his fingers trembling so hard he dropped his wand into the dirt. "No... that's impossible. I didn't hear a skill invocation. There was no mana discharge. Where is your system screen? Where are your damage numbers?!"

Austin looked up into the air around Logan's head.

There was nothing. No blue light. No silver glow. No damage logs displaying [Critical Hit: 450 Damage].

There was only a boy, two dull knives, and three dead carcasses.

"You're a blank," the young warrior with the buckler whispered, his voice cracking with superstitious dread. "Blanks can't kill Level Four beasts. The system math says an unawakened mortal only has five points of strength! A Level Four Stalker has forty points of constitution! The math doesn't work! It's impossible!"

"The math works fine if you cut the things that keep them alive," Logan said flatly.

He bent down, placed his boot against the third beast's snout, and pulled his dagger free with a dull suction sound. He wiped the black gore on the monster’s hide, then began working with swift, mechanical efficiency.

He sliced through the soft skin of the bellies, peeling back the tough, water-resistant outer hide. He used his smaller blade to sever the thick, fibrous white sinew along the beast’s hind legs—material that could be braided into bowstrings stronger than hemp. Finally, he cracked open the large femur bones and scraped the uncorrupted yellow marrow into an empty tin can from his pocket. Marrow was pure fat and calories. In this valley, calories meant life.

Austin slowly pushed himself to his feet. The terror in his eyes was rapidly being replaced by something uglier: humiliation, confusion, and fear of the unknown.

"You hid your rank," Austin accused, pointing a shaking finger at Logan. "You lied to the Inquisitors! You're using an illegal demonic cultivation method! That's why your status doesn't show! You're a witch!"

Logan did not even look up from his butchering. "If you don't take that chain off your friends and get into the ditch, the scent of this blood will bring five more packs within three minutes. Pick up your wand, Pyromancer. Your screen won't block their teeth."

Austin swallowed hard. He looked at the vast pool of black blood spreading across the white gravel, then looked at the dark tree line. He knew Logan was right. Trembling, he scrambled to unlock the others, and the four recruits scurried toward the safety of the pine ditch like frightened mice, not daring to look back at the young man who had just dismantled three terrors of the deep valley with scrap iron.

Logan remained by the alpha beast’s carcass for one more minute. He needed the venom sac located beneath the creature's lower gullet. Concentrated Stalker venom could be used to coat arrowheads; it paralyzed the motor nerves of anything it touched within seconds.

He sliced open the thick, muscular neck, pushing aside the severed windpipe. His blade hit something solid.

Logan frowned. The sound was not the dull thud of cartilage or the wet crack of bone. It was the sharp, ringing chime of metal striking metal.

“Did this beast swallow an adventurer’s weapon?” Logan thought.

He reached his bare, callused hand into the warm, gore-filled cavity, his fingers wrapping around a hard, flat object lodged deep inside the creature's lower throat, right where its secondary heart should have been.

He pulled it out.

It was not a weapon.

It was a heavy, triangular plate of dark, rusted metal, roughly the size of a man’s palm. It was ancient. The edges were jagged, as if it had been broken off from a much larger monument thousands of years ago.

Carved deeply into the cold iron were strange, twisting patterns—not the glowing, clean runes of the divine system, but rough, jagged grooves cut by an unguided mortal chisel.

The moment Logan’s bare skin made contact with the center of the plate, the metal did not feel cold. It burned.

A sudden, violent wave of dry, searing heat shot through the palm of his hand, traveling up his forearm like an electric current. It was so intense Logan almost dropped it, but he gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging as he held on.

His skin did not blister. His flesh did not char. Instead, the plate began to hum. A deep, subterranean vibration resonated through the bones of his arm, matching the exact rhythm of his own beating heart.

Fifty feet away in the ditch, Austin glanced back through the ferns. "Hey! What did you find in there? Is it a skill scroll? Is it a magic core?"

Austin squinted, activating his system’s appraisal ability from a distance. Above Austin’s eyes, the blue interface flickered with light.

A second later, Austin blinked, rubbing his temples in confusion. "There's nothing there. It's just a dead rock. The screen says: [Target: Null Matter. Object Does Not Exist in Divine Registry.] Stop playing with garbage, Carter, and let's go!"

Logan closed his fingers around the plate. “Object does not exist in the Divine Registry,” Logan repeated in the silence of his thoughts.

The plate pulsed again against his palm, hot, steady, and alive, an ancient, forgotten piece of iron that the gods in their high heavens could not see.

Before Logan could slip the plate into his coat, a long, low horn blast echoed from the northern rim of the gorge, high above the cliffs. It was the hunting horn of the Iron Vanguard Clan.

Logan turned his eyes toward the canyon rim. Through the swirling yellow sulfur mist, three armored figures on winged, reptilian mounts appeared against the gray sky, their red banners snapping in the gale.