The next morning he woke up before dawn, excited like a kid on Christmas morning. He burst out the door when the first peek of sunlight came over the horizon and he could be sure there were no more ghouls lurking about. He dashed over to the pitfall trap, shouting to the crows on the way over. “Come on! Come and see!”
Inside he found the corpses of three… corpses. What did you call the body of a dead undead? Worries for another time.
Although he’d seen them from peeking through a tiny crack in the cellar door, this was the first time he’d seen his enemies up close. Their skin wasn’t actually black like he’d first assumed; more of a dirty gray, it was the tight black woolen clothing they wore that had made them seem that way. It covered everything but their faces; they even wore tight skull caps. These weren't the clothes they’d died in; They fit too well. Someone or something had put new clothes on them afterwards. They weren’t walking skeletons, either, but something close. Their eyes were sunken deep into their skulls, their ears were the size of peanuts, and he was thankfully spared the sight of any… lower organs by the black clothing.
The sawdust and shavings had burned away, and large portions of the ghouls’ bodies were burned through as well. It also looked like he hadn’t gotten the sawdust explosion he’d been hoping for, or if he had, it hadn’t been effective. The ghouls weren’t shattered anywhere. Their injuries were all burns, straight through wherever the fire had touched them.
“So the fire killed them,” he told the crows. One of them was already down in the pit, pecking at the undead flesh curiously. “Or re-killed them, or whatever. That’s why I heard all that screaming. But how vulnerable are they really? This calls for an experiment!”
It took him longer than he expected to make a fire. Even with his flint it took some effort to make the sparks. The sparks he could make didn’t catch on the clothes of the ghouls. He finally managed to light some dead grass on fire, move that fire to a stick, and poke one of the ghouls in the cheek with it. The fire didn’t light immediately, but after two seconds it burst into flame, quick like toilet paper. It didn’t spread, just burned away the piece of undead flesh that had touched the fire, then went out.
These dudes were crazy vulnerable to fire. Carrying torches was actually really brave of them. If undead could even be brave. He didn’t think they actually feared death, but again that was relying on fantasy video game lore, and this wasn’t a video game. [Know What’s Real] didn’t let him forget it.
The other neat thing was the weapons. He’d been so focused on learning about the ghouls that he’d also forgotten one of the staples of RPG worlds: the loot. They carried really sweet looking jagged swords and cool clawed hammers. They had all sorts of claws and hooks, looking like the elaborate fantasy weapons he’d always dreamed about; or less flatteringly, they looked like the impractical mall-ninja stuff that hopeless nerds collected. But they couldn’t be impractical, since actual real life monsters were carrying them.
Sadly, he couldn’t use them. Too heavy. But one of the ghouls had a perfect black knife that he instantly fell in love with. It was scary sharp; he carved straight through a ghoul’s leg like it was made of paper.
He still wasn’t over the idea of making the dust explosion trap work, but he realized he should have done some testing rather than just assume it would work the first time tried.
He tried tossing some sawdust in the air, and putting a flaming stick inside the dust cloud he made, but that did nothing. Maybe the sawdust was damp or maybe this really just wasn’t as easy as he thought. He’d never actually seen this happen in real life.
After an hour or two of experimentation, he finally figured it out. Instead of trying different ways of adding fire to the sawdust, he lit a small fire on the floor and tossed the sawdust onto it. It made a really neat fireball that burned peach fuzz off his hands, but that was it. No concussive blast, non-lethal damage. Dangerous, but not that dangerous. Not dangerous enough to be a weapon against the undead. The regular fire from all the sawdust and shavings on the floor of the pitfall trap had been what killed them.
He ate lunch, puttered around the rest of the day, and then went to his home base cellar to wait for the rescue the System had promised him was coming.
He wondered what they would be like. Would they be adventurers? Knights in shining armor? An army of elves? He didn’t have a lot of context for what would actually happen in the medieval world in history, mostly he knew what would happen in Fantasy novels or video games, and in that case it would definitely be adventurers.
He tried to sleep, but for some reason he just couldn’t get comfortable. The sun was still up, so that was probably the issue. It wasn't that he was cold; with all the flour sack “blankets” he had made, he was already sweating and had to take a couple off. Even without the blankets it wasn’t really that cold.
That was it. It wasn’t cold. The enchantment on the cellar, whatever had been keeping it freezing cold, had worn off. The undead would see him now.
He raced out of the room, scanning the streets in a panic. There weren’t any undead yet. He ran from cellar to cellar, but they were all warm. Think. Would there be any reason that some other cellar might still be cold? He ran to the big house where he’d found all the meat. It probably wasn’t a house at all, more likely a butchery. Maybe that one? Its enchantment might be permanent, a way to keep the meat fresh, rather than an emergency thing the other cellars would’ve used.
It was dark outside. He’d never seen this burned down town in the dark before; he’d never cut it this close.
He found the butcher shop cellar, and ran inside. It was cold, blessedly, uncomfortably, cold. It immediately stung the sweat streaming from his skin, but he’d never been so happy to be so uncomfortable.
He heard the faint steps of the undead army not long after, but none of them entered his cellar. The cold was still a problem. There wasn’t anything to keep him warm, not even a flour sack.
For the entire night, he paced back and forth as quietly as he could, rubbing his arms and legs to keep the frostbite away. Several times he thought about just running outside to escape the cold. He imagined darting through the lines of undead like a ghost, of being so quick they couldn’t catch him, and escaping into the forest. That was suicide, he knew. These monsters had conquered a whole village full of adults with levels. They wouldn’t have any trouble catching one dumb, skinny little kid.
He was so wrapped up in his misery, that he missed it when the undead army left. When he finally noticed they were gone, there was already sunlight peeking through the crack in the cellar doors. He burst outside, and it felt like running into a warm hug. He lay on the grass, reveling in the feeling of life returning to his numb fingers and toes and immediately fell asleep.
When he woke up, the sun was already beginning to set. He had just enough time to sprint to his old cellar and grab all the flour sacks he’d used as blankets before hiding in the butcher shop cellar again.
Even with the flour sacks, it was still cold. This cellar was colder than the others had been. Which was a good thing for his survival, but a bad thing for his sanity. He fell into a fitful sleep, waking several times to check his fingers and toes for frostbite.
How long until someone came to rescue him? The problem was, he had no timetable. With the way travel would be in this low-technology world, it could still be months away, and that was only if his rescuers succeeded. They could fail, or give up. He had no idea what a Quest entailed, and had no way of knowing if it would entice someone to come all this way to rescue one no-name child.
He decided to strike out one more time. Last time hadn’t gone well, but he had a few advantages this time. He had better weapons now. But most of all, he was less naive. He packed up his things, and set off. Not towards where the undead came from, and not towards the giant spiders, either. To the east.
He didn’t even get as far as his first try. As soon as he stepped foot in the edge of the forest, a notification appeared.
Warning!
Leaving this zone will cancel the Quest that has been applied on your behalf. All rewards will be forfeited.
Just a little longer, Mark! They’re almost there.