We ran like the hounds of hell were on our tail. Smoke obscured the end of the hallway, cutting off our view of the atrium completely.

“Xiphos! Please tell me you’re still alive,” I shouted as we got close.

“Just,” Xiphos’s voice came back weakly over comms. “We’ve fallen back outside, but it was a trap. I think they were waiting for us to head inside the lodge.”

A trap?

“Don’t come out here. Stay hidden. Find a higher vantage point if you can. Look out in the street, but do not reveal yourselves,” Xiphos said. “This mission might be on all three of you from here. If you were smart, you’d make a run for the cable car.”

Xiphos spoke like she didn’t expect to make it out of this alive.

“We’re not leaving you behind,” I said, trying to stay as quiet as I could.

Naginata pulled me into a nearby stairwell and we headed up to the next floor.

We dared to glance out of the stairwell window as we went. The sheer number of nemorti that now crowded the street outside the lodge was terrifying. They clustered around the front of the lodge, standing haphazardly. Boneclaws with explosive collars walked through the crowd, but none of them ran toward the lodge right away.

It was almost like the boneclaws were there as a warning. Was there something Naginata and I could do to use those to our advantage? Stiletto was down there, and he was the only one who could have hit one of their explosive collars with the required precision from this distance.

Xiphos, Stiletto and Khopesh appeared into our view outside the front of the lodge. They were being corralled like cattle by some other monster we hadn’t seen yet. This new infected was tall and lanky, almost like it was a 3D model of a human that had been stretched lengthways without being scaled sideways properly.

The ends of its fingers ended in savage claws, but it was the face that made me grow cold. A great spike, like an oversized needle, stuck out from where its mouth should have been. This gaunt, stretched out monster looked like a cross breed of a human and a mosquito.

The crowd of nemorti parted to let Xiphos and the others pass through when I had a thought.

We might not need to be accurate. We just needed to hit the ones with the explosive collars, and they would take out the surrounding nemorti.

“Naginata, we need to find a lighter or a box of matches in one of these rooms up here,” I said, keeping my voice barely above a whisper.

Naginata’s eyes went wide. “You don’t mean to use those Molotovs, do you? We could do more harm than good.”

“We aim for the explosive boneclaws. I don’t know for sure if fire will set the explosive collars off, but it’s the best plan I’ve got. That plan doesn’t matter if we can’t find something to light the Molotovs with though, so let’s move,” I said.

Naginata was sceptical, sure, but she went along with my crazy plan. Kaiser followed, protecting our rear flank. He looked a lot better now, which I was thankful for. He’d only been in my life for just over six months, but if anything happened to Kaiser I would straight up murder whichever motherfucker dared to threaten him.

We stayed as quiet as we could as we moved from room to room, turning them out as we went. We needed a lighter or something, sure, but we also needed to figure out how this all started. I consciously started looking for clues about this infection, and suddenly each time I opened a cupboard, a drawer, or looked under a bed, I got a little bit of experience.

The system wasn’t just reacting to my actions, but the intention of my actions as well.

“Whoa,” I said, trying to keep quiet. “Naginata, when you’re looking for supplies, try really hard to think about looking for clues about the source of the infection.”

Naginata gave me a quizzical look, but she didn’t ask any questions. She opened a nearby bedside table and her eyes went wide.

“Why did I get experience for that?” she asked.

“Intention. If we can take action and make the system believe we’re doing it to complete one of our quests, it gives us experience,” I explained.

“I understand. We must tell the others.”

“We’ll focus on saving them first. Once we find a lighter.”

A couple of rooms later we’d found some more ammo for all our weapons and a full box of matches. I couldn’t put the matches into my inventory because it was full, so I just slipped them into one of the pockets on my jacket.

I almost expected the jacket to jettison the matches because of my system-integrated inventory limit, but the box stayed in my pocket.

So the inventory was like some kind of limited bag of holding space where I could store the essence of my items, but I could still physically carry items on my person. That was good to know. I had no fucking idea how it worked, but that was fine. I drove my car every day but had no idea how a combustion engine worked and I still trusted it to function just fine.

“This is going to work better if both you and I throw a Molotov from different vantage points,” Naginata said.

“Great idea. I can aim at one flank of the crowd and you can aim for the other. Man, why is it so hard to find matches or a lighter?”

“Not many people smoke anymore.”

“Yeah, true. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

It took another three rooms before we found a lighter. Naginata took it, and I kept the matches. I gave her half my supply of Molotovs, then we dared to look out one of the windows that overlooked the street again.

There were two of those crazy needle-faced mosquito monsters out there now. They stood on either side of Xiphos, Stiletto and Khopesh, who were all kneeling with their hands linked behind their heads. The crowd of nemorti and boneclaws had formed a wide circle around them, cutting off their escape in all directions.

A shirtless man stood in front of Xiphos. The fact that he wasn’t wearing shirt was strange enough, but the glowing red lines that seemed to form some kind of runic pattern on his exposed body made it very clear that this guy was infected too. Long dark hair hung on either side of his face. It looked greasy and matted, like it needed a good wash.

Suddenly Xiphos’s voice came through over the comms.

“You have us cornered. Tell me who you are and what’s going on here. We’ve been sent here to help you,” Xiphos lied.

Sure, EDGE Command had said that if we could find a way to reverse the infection we might be able to save these people, but that was only because I’d pushed it. I was sure that they’d rather we just wipe these people out.

Another voice came back over the comms, but it spoke in Romanian. I couldn’t understand a word that was being said. Naginata and I went very quiet as we listened. The words were unknown, but the tone was unmistakable. This guy was pissed. His body language said the same. He gesticulated wildly, hands balling into fists. His lips were pulled back, exposing his teeth as he spat vitriol at the rest of our team.

Xiphos couldn’t understand him either.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We don’t speak Romanian. Tell us what’s going on and we will help where we can.”

The runic patterns on the man’s skin glowed brighter for a second as he closed his eyes. It would have been the perfect time to attack if they weren’t surrounded.

When the infected man spoke again, he talked in clear English. Accented, but clear.

“You are trespassing in my land,” he said. “You killed my children from Incolţi, and they had barely begun to ascend. You have denied them the right to join with me. You bring weapons into my home and wonder why I want you to leave.”

“I am Xiphos. This is Stiletto and Khopesh. What is your name?”

He laughed. “Who I was before I became the ucigașul dragonului – the dragonslayer – does not matter. That man will not be able to rest until my divine purpose has been fulfilled.”

Dragonslayer? This had to be related to the Balaur legend and Mosul, the crazy old man in the woods. He’d gone on about some sleeping dragon, the one with seven heads that the myths and legends book mentioned.

I opened the comm channel. “Xiphos, ask this guy about Balaur. Ask him if this is the dragon he wants to kill.”

There was silence for a moment and I almost thought that Xiphos wouldn’t do what I had asked.

“You’re talking about Balaur, aren’t you?” Xiphos asked.

I watched from above as the dragonslayer straightened visibly at the mention of the legendary dragon’s name.

“What does an outsider know of the dragon with seven heads?” the dragonslayer asked.

“Not much, admittedly. We were sent here to find out why people went missing. The two villages that disappeared overnight, I assume that was your doing?” Xiphos asked.

“They are slaves!” the dragonslayer roared. “Slaves to he who sleeps. Just as I was, before I received my divine blessing. I know that you three have been touched by something too. Not by Balaur, no, but by something. You may be prophets of some other God, one that has no place in my home. It is too late to allow you to leave willingly, so I must finish things here.”

In a sudden burst of movement the dragonslayer surged forward and grabbed Stiletto by the throat. He lifted the sniper effortlessly as the mosquito-faced monsters pushed both Xiphos and Khopesh face down into the snow that covered the street.

The dragonslayer drew a stream of glowing white energy out of Stiletto, which rushed out of his mouth, nose and eyes. His mouth was frozen open in a silent scream.

“We need to move. Now!” I said.

Naginata headed further down the hall with a Molotov in one hand and the lighter in the other. I had to wait until I got to the window to light mine. Matches weren’t something you could light single handed.

Naginata broke a window somehow from her room, then a Molotov sailed through the air at the crowd of gathered nemorti. The throw was very good. Naginata hit one of the boneclaws right in the chest. The glass bottle exploded, throwing flaming moonshine all over the gathered crowd.

While they were distracted, I kicked out the window in my own room and lit my first Molotov. A lot of the crowd had moved away from the site of the first fireball, making them cluster more towards my side.

My first throw wasn’t nearly as good as Naginata’s, but that didn’t matter. The very same moment that my Molotov exploded on a nemorti right next to a boneclaw, Naginata’s boneclaw exploded one the other side of the crowd.

The force over the explosion absolutely shredded the closest nemorti and knocked down the others who were still close by. Another Molotov was already in the air from Naginata, which hit another boneclaw towards the front of the resort. I threw another flaming Molotov and this time I hit the boneclaw I meant to hit with the first one.

Naginata’s second boneclaw exploded, followed soon after by my own, destroying a huge chunk of the crowding nemorti. The experience we got from these mass killings shot me up to Level 6, and then all the way to Level 7!

The dragonslayer dropped Stiletto as I lit a third Molotov and threw it. I didn’t want to burn through all of these in one fight as we might need them later. Stiletto tried to crawl away, which was a huge relief. The dragonslayer hadn’t actually killed him.

At the same time, Xiphos managed to roll away from under the foot of the mosquito-faced monster. She pulled out her sword, slashed through the lanky monster’s leg, then headed straight for the dragonslayer.

His back was turned, clearly surprised at our attack from above, and arrogant enough that he didn’t think Xiphos and Khopesh would be able to get free.

He never even saw Xiphos coming. She swung her blade back for a deadly strike, then attacked.

The blade sliced right through the dragonslayer’s neck. His head went bouncing off into the snow, trailing crimson blood and luminous red smoke after it.

I waited for his body to fall, but it never did.

Then the headless body turned right back towards Xiphos!

The stump of his neck bubbled and festered as brand new flesh appeared at the site of the wound. Xiphos took a step back at this unexpected turn of events.

She stepped right back into the waiting arms of the needle-faced monster she’d just de-legged! Its arms wrapped around her, holding her in place, as it slipped its savage needle into the skin between her shoulder and neck.

Its normally gaunt, empty looking midsection began to swell as it sucked the essence out of Xiphos. Whether it was actually sucking out her blood or her anima, I couldn’t tell. It might have been both.

We had to get down there and intervene, but with two extra skill points waiting, I needed to use those to get as strong as I could before we arrived.

“We need to get out there,” I said. “If you’ve levelled up, set your points as we run. We need to get down there before the dragonslayer kills our team.”

“Hai,” Naginata agreed. I didn’t know a lot of Japanese, but my daughter Lorelei watched enough anime with subs that I knew that one. Hai meant yes.

She was one of those kids who refused to watch the dubbed English voice track. She just had to watch it in its authentic form, which I could respect.

Kaiser stayed by my side as we ran, and I sunk my two points. One of them went into the second level of Call Him Spike, which boosted Kaiser’s armour by 10% and now reflected 14% of damage he received back to the attacker. The next point went into Share the Love, which redirected 25% of any damage I dealt as health to Kaiser.

We were both going to make it through this mission.

We had to.

I would make sure of it.

By the time we arrived downstairs and sprinted through the busted atrium, the dragonslayer’s head had completely regrown.

This motherfucker had a healing factor like the boneclaws, but it was a hell of a lot more powerful.

“I was wondering when you two would show yourselves,” the dragonslayer said in his Romanian accent. “Your friends are alive. There is much that I could learn from you all, so I will take what knowledge I can before I kill you. Or perhaps you would like to join my family? To ascend beyond this mortal shell?”

Kaiser whined.

“Yeah nah, I don’t think so mate,” I said before rushing down the stairs right towards the dragonslayer.