The battle was nearing its end — but my enjoyment was not.
I felt like a musician who had dissolved completely into his melody, forgetting everything around him. My sword danced to that music — tearing through everything within reach without distinction. It found the necks of some and the limbs of others, separating them with the clean precision of someone who has done this long enough that it no longer requires thought.
This is the first time I've heard music in the middle of a battle. Was it my mind that invented it, or the euphoria rising so high it had begun to compose its own score? I was a performer who had forgotten he was on a stage — forgotten the audience entirely — playing upon the necks of his victims, with blood as the only applause that mattered.
But the melody ended in a single instant, and the wolves ended with it.
The silence felt strange.
▶ Status — Lv. Up ◀ 「 Analyze all physical objects and reveal their hidden capabilities. 」
My hand was trembling. Not from fear. Not from pain. From happiness.
My body was exhausted — deeply, thoroughly exhausted in the way that only real fighting produces. But my blood was boiling with euphoria, and the two sensations existed side by side without contradiction.
I wanted more. But around me now there was nothing but my loyal thirty-five Dark Corpses — and three wolves that had somehow managed to survive until this moment.
Then the wounds made themselves known. The pain that the adrenaline had buried came flooding back all at once, sharp and insistent.
"Wounds will heal in thirty minutes."
That was enough of a reason to sleep.
I walked to the wolves' den — emptied now of everything that had been alive in it. The smell of blood and scorched fur still hung heavy in the air. Deep in the shadows of the caves, I could hear the faint sounds of wolf pups hiding, pressed into corners, too young to understand what had happened to their pack.
I ordered my Dark Corpses to handle it.
Then I found the largest cave, walked to the back of it, lay down on the cold stone floor —
And was unconscious before I finished the thought.
I hadn't realized I was that exhausted.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing that reached me was the smell.
Blood. Fresh, close, and strong.
The battle was far from the den. Why does it smell like it happened here?
I was out of the cave in seconds.
What I found stopped me mid-step.
More than thirty wolf corpses — heads severed cleanly, arranged across half the den's open ground. And standing in a straight, motionless line around the entrance to the cave I had been sleeping in: my Dark Corpses, every one of them, swords drawn and coated in blood.
They guarded me while I slept.
I focused on one of the corpses and felt my consciousness slip into its body — a sensation I was becoming more familiar with, like stepping into a room you've visited before. Through its eyes, I saw what had happened.
The corpses had been standing watch in silence when dozens of eyes appeared in the darkness — wolves that had survived the massacre, regrouped, and come for revenge in the night. What followed lasted less than five minutes. The wolves never reached the cave entrance.
I slept through a massacre.
And I'm genuinely upset about that.
I stared at the neatly severed heads for a long moment. The cuts were clean — the kind of clean that takes either skill or something stranger than skill. Why do they cut like that? Why do they cut exactly the way I would?
I had no answer. So I stopped looking for one, absorbed my soldiers back into the Inner Domain, and went back to sleep — annoyed, for the first time in recent memory, that I had missed something.
Morning.
I called the corpses back out, absorbed them properly, and headed into the forest. I killed several tigers and wolves along the way — nothing worth noting — until I found something that stopped me entirely.
It stood at the edge of a clearing where the trees thinned and the light came through in wide, pale columns. From the waist down: a horse — broad-chested, dark-coated, its four legs planted in the earth with the calm weight of something that has never needed to hurry. From the waist up: the torso and arms of a man, muscled and still, with a wooden bow slung across one shoulder and no arrows visible anywhere on its body.
It hadn't noticed me yet.
"Inspect."
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ CENTAUR — STATUS │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Level : 35 │
├─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Ability : Mana Arrow │
└─────────────────────────────────┘
Mana Arrow. I had never seen an ability like that. I wanted to watch it before I killed the creature — understand what it actually did, how it worked, whether I could learn from it.
I called one Dark Corpse forward and gave it a simple command through thought: attack, but don't kill it. Be obvious about the approach.
The corpse moved — footsteps heavy and deliberate against the forest floor. The Centaur's ears twitched. Its head turned. In a single smooth motion it raised the bow —
No arrow appeared. The bow was still empty.
Then, in an instant, an arrow formed between its fingers — dense, white, constructed entirely from compressed Mana — and it released.
The arrow crossed the distance and buried itself in the corpse's chest.
Interesting.
I tried to replicate it immediately. I gathered Mana, tried to compress it into a shape, tried to hold it in a form that could be launched. Once. Twice. Three times.
Nothing.
Meanwhile, the corpse I'd sent had ignored my secondary instruction to stand down and was now advancing on the Centaur anyway. The creature formed five arrows simultaneously, released them all at once, and the corpse dropped.
Lying completely still on the ground.
Like a corpse.
...It already is a corpse. That's actually impressive in its own way.
I watched the Centaur for ten hours without boredom — tracking it through the forest as it moved, following its path until it stopped at a rocky clearing and stood with fifteen others of its kind. A full herd.
I called all my corpses. Positioned them in a ring around the clearing, hidden between the trees.
Then I walked out of the forest myself — sword in hand.
Yes. I know what you're thinking.
I could have used a corpse as bait instead. The tactical choice was obvious. But when I decide to start a fight, I prefer to be at the front — the first one to face whatever comes. There's something in me that simply refuses to let others receive what was meant for me.
And besides — I wanted to test the Energy Shield. I had raised it to Level 10, its maximum, and I hadn't seen what it could actually do at full strength.
"Energy Shield."
The barrier materialized around me — a large circular wall of compressed Mana, solid and immediate. All sixteen Centaurs had turned the moment I appeared. All sixteen raised their bows simultaneously.
More than thirty Mana Arrows released at once.
Not one of them pierced the shield. But thirty arrows at maximum concentration drained it completely, and the barrier dissolved.
The Centaurs began forming their next volley.
Behind them, thirty-five pairs of hands erupted from the shadows. The Dark Corpses had closed the ring while every creature in the clearing was watching me. Two strikes each — vital points, no hesitation. In one second, all sixteen Centaurs were on the ground.
I wasn't the one who attacked from behind. I never said I was.
I simply made sure they were looking at me when it happened.
I died once because I forgot to watch what was behind me. That lesson has a permanent address in the part of my mind where things I will never repeat are stored.
"Absorb — Mana Shaping."
▶ Mana Shaping — Learned ◀ 「 Compress and shape raw Mana into a physical construct. Form and density are determined by the user's will. 」
I looked at the empty clearing. At the bodies. At the tree line where my soldiers were already returning to stillness.
Here is something worth remembering: when you're sleeping in a room and you suddenly feel that someone is standing behind you — trust that feeling. Someone is behind you. Turn around. See who's about to send you somewhere warm.