The giant guy kept his mouth shut. He didn't fire back at Kanos's sarcasm, just staring hard at the black axe stuck deep in the wolf's skull. The night wind blew past. A second later, the heavy weapon that looked as hard as steel cracked.
Shatter.
The axe crumbled into black dust, blowing away and leaving a massive hole in the monster's forehead. The man took a step back. He instinctively grabbed his bleeding left shoulder while his eyes looked back up at the tree.
"What kind of magic is that?" he asked. His voice sounded like grinding stones. "You are no fire mage. Not an earth user either. What was that?"
"The kind that lets you keep breathing to ask questions," Kanos rasped from the top of the mushroom. His throat was so dry his voice sounded like sandpaper. He peeked down. A five-meter drop right now looked like a guaranteed death pit for his battered body. "I am coming down. Do not punch me when I hit the bottom. Seriously, if you poke me I will actually die."
The giant guy didn't answer, but he lowered his stance. His fighting posture relaxed a bit. Kanos took a deep breath. He forced his body to lie flat on his stomach, lowering his legs first to find a foothold on the charcoal piton he drew earlier. His arm muscles shook violently. When the tip of his shoe touched the first piton, he let go of the mushroom's edge.
Unfortunately, Kanos forgot one thing. The time limit.
The charcoal piton had been stuck in the tree for a while. Combined with his sudden body weight dropping onto it, the structure just gave out. A small crack echoed. The piton snapped.
"Shit!" Kanos plummeted. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for his spine to snap against the giant tree roots down below.
The hard impact never happened. Something smelling like rust caught his body mid-air. The giant man snatched Kanos with his one good arm. It wasn't gentle at all. Kanos felt like his guts were getting scrambled when the steel-plated arm grabbed his waist, but at least his neck didn't break.
"So light," the man muttered. He dropped Kanos to the mud like a wet sack of cotton. "You don't eat enough."
Kanos quickly stepped back the second his feet touched the ground. He held back a groan from his ribs, leaned against the tree, and finally got a close look at this guy. Insanely tall. Kanos was one hundred and seventy-eight centimeters himself, and he still had to look up. The man's hair was cropped short and completely gray even though he looked like he was only in his early thirties. He had a thick diagonal scar across his chin. His clothes were battered, leaving only dirty leather pants and heavily dented steel gauntlets on his arms.
The guy appraised Kanos like a piece of junk. "Your clothes are weird," the man said, noticing Kanos's plain black t-shirt and cargo pants. "Which faction are you from? I don't see a guild crest on your shirt."
"Faction? I don't do factions," Kanos answered, wiping dried blood off his nose. "I just wanna go home, sleep, and pretend today never happened."
The man frowned. He narrowed his eyes a bit, staring right at the empty space above Kanos's head. He was checking Kanos's Status Panel.
At that exact second, Kanos noticed something flickering above the giant man's head too. The system glitched, revealing a red, cracked holographic panel right over the guy.
[ Belida Vanthorak - Lv. 48 (Status: Mana Seal / Severe Bleed) ]
Level 48. Kanos froze. That explained it. A guy built like a tank getting chewed up by a Level 16 wolf didn't make any sense until now. Belida was fighting completely nerfed, his mana sealed shut by some kind of curse.
A second later, the giant man's expression changed. From mere suspicion, it turned into total confusion.
"Your status panel is red," he muttered quietly to himself. "And your class... what the hell is this? Error? I have never seen a curse like this in my entire life."
"My whole life feels like an error right now," Kanos shot back sarcastically. He didn't care about any stupid panels right now. The smell of blood around them was getting intense. "Hey, big guy. If you wanna hold a job interview, it is best not to do it here. Unless you want to invite this wolf's extended family for dinner."
Belida snapped out of it. He nodded slowly, his eyes becoming alert again as he scanned the pitch-black forest. "You are right. This smell of blood will attract attention," he said. He turned around, heading west from the tree. "Walk behind me. Keep quiet. If you fall behind, I will not come back for you."
"I just saved your life, in case you forgot."
"And I just saved your spine from the tree roots," Belida replied without looking back. "We are even. Move."
Kanos snorted softly, but he forced his legs to walk. His mud-caked sneakers felt as heavy as concrete.
They walked through the incredibly dark forest. Belida moved without making a sound, which was completely insane for a guy his size wearing iron arm guards. Meanwhile Kanos stepped on branches, crunched dry leaves, and slipped on slick roots. Every time Kanos made noise, the giant man gave a sharp glare telling him to shut up.
The thin blue lines from Kanos's Structural Analysis skill flickered occasionally when he looked at the man in front of him. Kanos's brain automatically read the structure of the steel gauntlets the guy was wearing.
The iron plating was already thin. There were micro-fractures around the hinge of the left wrist. If that guy blocked one more hard bite, the metal would shatter and drive straight into his artery.
"Your left arm guard," Kanos whispered suddenly, cutting through the silence. "Do not use it to block anymore impacts. The hinge is cracked on the inside. One solid hit, and the metal will break inward and slice your own artery."
Belida stopped walking. He spun around quickly. His dark blue eyes shot a sharp glare at Kanos through the darkness.
"How do you know?" he asked suspiciously. He raised his left gauntlet slightly. From the outside, the guard just looked dirty and dented, the cracks covered by dried mud. "Not even a guild ironmaster could spot hairline cracks in this kind of darkness."
"I just guessed," Kanos lied smoothly. "Your fighting style earlier was lopsided. You kept dodging to the right and blocking with your right arm. If your left arm was fine, your posture would be way more balanced."
Belida stayed quiet for a long time. He slowly lowered his arm. Kanos's reasoning made sense, but the look in his eyes showed he didn't entirely buy it.
"My name is Belida," he finally said. Short. Concise. "Belida Vanthorak."
"Kanos."
"Just Kanos? No family name?"
"I don't need a long name to walk in a muddy forest," Kanos answered exhaustedly. "Where are we actually going?"
"There is an old ruined watchtower about half a mile from here," Belida said, resuming his walk. "It is elevated and lined with stone. Low-level monsters do not like cold places like that. We can rest there until sunrise."
Half a mile. It sounded close if you were out for a morning jog on a flat sidewalk. But in this crazy forest where the ground felt like a swamp and the tree roots were the size of cars, half a mile felt like walking from Jakarta to Bandung.
Kanos looked down, focusing on moving his feet one by one. He didn't want to think about how wrecked his lungs were right now. He pictured a single straight line in his head, forcing his body to follow that line so he wouldn't collapse.
After God knows how long of pushing through purple thorny bushes and uphill climbs, Belida finally stopped. In front of them was a dark stone cliff. Attached to that cliff was a half-destroyed stone structure. It looked like a massive medieval watchtower. The roof was gone, leaving only circular walls about four meters high. Thick brush grew out from the cracks in the stone.
Belida easily climbed in through a collapsed section of the wall. He reached down with his uninjured right arm. Kanos stared at the huge hand for a second, then took it. With one strong pull, Belida hauled Kanos over the remaining stone wall until both of them were inside the tower.
This place was freezing. The stone floor felt hard but at least it was dry, no mud anywhere. In the middle of this circular room, there were remnants of long-dead firewood. The moment his feet touched the safe floor, Kanos's physical defenses completely crumbled. He collapsed, sitting against the cold stone wall. His legs sprawled out limply. He didn't care about pride or keeping up appearances in front of this stranger anymore. He was dead tired.
Belida gathered leftover dry wood from the corner of the tower, stacking it neatly in the middle. He took two small stones from his leather pants pocket and started striking them together. Clack. Clack. Small sparks jumped, igniting the dry moss. It didn't take long for a small fire to start, chasing away the darkness.
The reddish-orange light illuminated both their faces. Belida sat cross-legged across the fire. He took off his left gauntlet with great difficulty, wincing in pain when the iron finally slipped off his arm. The blood from the torn wound on his shoulder had clotted a bit, but it still looked terrible.
The man tossed his broken iron guard onto the stone floor. Kanos glanced at it. The cracked hinge was exactly as he had seen it using his skill.
"You are a mess," Belida commented, staring straight at Kanos.
Kanos chuckled softly, his voice incredibly hoarse. "Thanks. Glad to hear it from a guy who just got half his body mauled by a dog."
"Dog? That was a Mutated Shell-Wolf. A level sixteen monster," Belida corrected in an incredibly stiff tone. "Normal people do not wander alone in the Border Forest without a chest plate and proper weapons. Especially a level one like you."
"I didn't choose to take a stroll out here, Belida." Kanos closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the campfire. "One minute I was in my cozy room, doing my work. The next minute I was face down in the mud waiting to be eaten by a level sixteen."
Belida stayed quiet, absorbing Kanos's words. His sharp eyes kept studying Kanos's face, looking for any signs of lying.
"You are weird," Belida finally said. "The system never misreads someone's class. From beggars to kings, the system grants an identity. Your panel says error. The weapon you threw at me crumbled into dust. You are not from Arenthos, are you?"
"I am from Jakarta. Earth. You know it?"
Belida furrowed his brow. "There is no territory named Earth on the map of this continent."
"Figured." Kanos let out a long sigh. Reality hit him hard right now. A fantasy world, a number system, messed-up monsters, and a stray knight. All the isekai comic cliches he used to draw were right in front of his eyes. The problem was, he absolutely didn't have any overpowered skills to level mountains. All he had left were two chunks of charcoal in his pocket and twelve health points.
"You said you were an illustrator," Belida broke the silence again. His voice was lower now, like a man thinking hard. "Someone who draws."
"Yeah."
"That axe earlier... did you draw it?"
Kanos opened his eyes. He stared into Belida's blue eyes, which reflected the firelight. This giant man seemed stiff and all about muscles, but his brain worked fast. Kanos stuck his right hand into his cargo pocket, pulling out a chunk of black charcoal. He held it up so Belida could see it.
"It is not just magic popping out of nowhere," Kanos answered flatly. "This crazy world of yours... the air responds to what I draw. As long as I understand its true shape, how heavy it is, how its sharp angles work, I just pull a line using this."
Kanos twirled the charcoal in his fingers. "The lines I make act as a frame, then the dust in the air gets sucked in to fill that frame until it becomes a real object. Basically, if I understand the shape of the thing, I can make anything real."
Belida stared at the dirty chunk of charcoal in Kanos's hand. Then he looked at the battered, starving young man's face. Slowly, the corner of Belida's scarred lip pulled up slightly. A smile that was barely visible.
"Crazy bastard," Belida muttered softly. He leaned back against the stone wall behind him. "Get some sleep, Illustrator. I will take the night watch."