Five Points
The ruins didn’t let us rest.
It never did. We had to constantly stay alert.
We moved for hours after leaving the shrine, going through collapsed streets and half-buried structures that were breaking down, the light made it so that everything was barely visible. The air felt thicker the deeper inside they went, like the stage itself was closing in on itself on them.
Mira finally slowed down near what looked like an old marketplace. There were broken stalls everywhere. Some had torn banners. The stone pillars were all cracked straight down the middle like something had split them with a blade.
“We should stop here,” she said. “Just for a little bit.”
I nodded.
We didn’t sit down. Sitting felt dangerous, we had to be on alert… if we wanted to stay alive. Instead, we stayed standing, with our backs near each other, eyes moving, scanning the place constantly.
That’s when the system chimed.
LEVEL UP
I froze.
The words hovered in front of my vision.
Below it, another line appeared.
CURRENT LEVEL: 2
STAT POINTS GAINED: +5
Five stat points...
I stared at the numbers way longer than I should have, like it was some treasure.
So that’s how it felt…
There wasn’t really a rush of power, no warmth either. No immediate change. Instead it was just a quiet acknowledgment from the system.
Mira noticed my expression. “So you levelled up too.”
“Yeah.”
She let out a breath. “Finally. I was starting to think that you couldn’t level up..”
A new window opened before I could dismiss the first.
UNASSIGNED STAT POINTS: 9
4 from before.
Five from now.
nine points sitting there, untouched.
Waiting.
I could feel it this time.
Not the stats themselves, but the potential they all had. Like I could become anything I wanted.
Mira’s status window flickered open beside her. She winced.
“I’m level three now,” she muttered. “I dumped all five into Agility.”
I glanced at her. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? That mistake can… kill you.”
“It didn't really feel like a choice,” she said. “Everyone we’ve seen before either hesitated too long to do something about it or spent it all too quickly are dead.”
That was fair.
We didn’t talk for a moment.
Then something screamed.
It wasn’t far, not close either. Rather it was somewhere in between. It was a long, wet sound that echoed through the ruins and didn’t get silenced properly, like the ruins themselves wanted everyone to hear it
Mira tightened her grip on her blade.
“We should move now.”
We didn’t get a chance.
The ground ahead of us cracked.
Not like before. This was not random. Instead it was intentional.
The stone started to split apart as something tried to force its way upward, as the debris sprayed into the air, a massive monster rose from beneath the floor, its scales scraping against stone, each movement slow and heavy.
It was a serpent.
Its size was massive. As its body coiled around all the shattered pillars, eyes glowing a dull red as it tasted the air.
The system chimed immediately.
STAGE 2 ELITE MONSTER IDENTIFIED
NAME: RUIN SERPENT
Mira swore.
“Fuck, I thought we had some time to be, this isn’t fair.”
“I guess this damn world wants us dead,” I said.
The serpent lunged at us.
Everything after that blurred, each movement based off of instinct.
Mira moved first, going to the side as the stone exploded where she’d been standing a second earlier. I felt the danger before it reached us, my perception screaming at me to move before the serpent struck.
I barely dodged it.
I shoved Mira aside just as the serpent’s tail slammed down, missing her by inches. The impact sent a shockwave through the ground that shook my body.
Pain flared along my left arm as I hit the ground hard.
The serpent turned toward me.
Its big red eyes locked onto me.
The system whispered something new.
COMBAT EXPERIENCE ACCELERATED
So that’s how I leveled.
By almost dying...
Mira attacked from the sides, her blade flashing, striking the scales with precise attacks. Sparks flew, with each hit, but the serpent barely reacted.
“Its scales are too tough!” she shouted. “We can’t injure it!”
“I know!”
I rolled to the side as the serpent struck again, narrowly avoiding its jaws.
I didn’t have a lot of stats invested.
No Strength to rely on.
No Vitality either.
Just some perception.
And that perception screamed one thing at me.
The head isn’t the weakness.
I saw it then.
A faint distorted scale near the base of its stomach. A spot where my perception screamed at me to hit it.
A flaw.
“Mira!” I yelled. “Distract it! Make it go to the left side!”
She didn’t ask why. Not much time to question him.
She just did it.
She moved, fast and reckless, drawing the serpent’s attention with a number of strikes that forced it to turn to her. Its massive body shifted, exposing the weak spot I’d seen.
I ran at it.
I wasn’t fast.
I wasn’t really that strong either.
Still I grabbed the broken spear shaft from the ground, leapt onto a pillar, and drove the broken spear deep into the reverse scale.
The serpent screamed in pain.
The serpent tossed and turned, its body moving around violently as blood started spraying everywhere. A final roar echoed through the ruins before the creature collapsed, dying on top of the cold stone.
Silence followed.
The system chimed again.
ELITE KILL CONFIRMED
EXPERIENCE IS AWARDED
Another window appeared.
LEVEL UP
Then another.
CURRENT LEVEL: 3
STAT POINTS GAINED: +5
14.
I was sitting on 14 unassigned stat points now.
Mira stared at the space where the serpent had been.
“…You did it,” she said slowly. “Fuck that shit scared me. It shouldn’t have died, you know, it was too strong.”
“I know.”
“That shouldn’t have worked.”
I looked at my status window.
At the growing pool of points.
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“We sure are fucking lucky huh.”
Somewhere deep in the ruins, something shifted.
The ruins were really quiet.
Not the normal silence, instead they felt… empty
This was the kind of silence that came after violence.
The stone dust settled slowly into the ground through the air, drifting down like snow. The cracked marketplace looked worse now, with the serpent’s thrashing having torn apart what little structure remained. Broken pillars now lay scattered, all the stalls were reduced to splinters and rubble.
The serpent's body was already fading.
Slowly, the Ruin Serpent’s body began to dissolve into faint light, its massive body slowly disappearing, until only broken stone and dark stains remained. The place where it had died felt… strangely hollow.
The system windows still hovered at the edge of my vision, the stat points waiting to be assigned, these numbers promised potential.
I didn’t touch them… not yet anyways.
Mira exhaled slowly beside me, finally loosening her grip on her blade. Her hands were shaking. She tried to hide it by holding them together, and moving around, like I wouldn’t notice.
“That was just fuckingstupid,” she muttered. “We should’ve died.”
“Yeah. It’s a god damn miracle we’re still here you know”
She glanced at me. “You don’t sound surprised this happened.”
“I’m not really surprised… well maybe the adrenaline is messing with my head.”
We’d both seen a lot. Luck didn’t mean anything, rather it just meant that you were too weak to do something about it. In the end all it meant was that they lived for a little longer.
Around us, some other players began to search around. A few had been drawn in by the noise of the fight, arriving just in time to see the serpent fall. Some looked relieved. Others looked… disappointed.
Elite monsters didn’t spawn without reason.
And they didn’t die quietly.
“We need to get moving,” someone said from nearby. “That scream probably carried, more people are going to come.”
“I agree,” another replied. “But not too far. Everyone’s already exhausted.”
A small argument broke out among them. They argued on how long they had to rest. How risky it was. Who was hurt enough to slow the group down.
I listened in on their conversation without really paying much attention.
My eyes kept drifting back to the place where the serpent had died.
It wasn’t all skill.
Not really.
In the end… it was just another event.
All of this was all because the stage demanded it. In the end this was all because something had to test us, thin us out, it was all to remind us we weren’t meant to feel comfortable here.
“Hey.”
I looked up.
A man stood a few steps away from us, holding a water flask. He looked ordinary. He had average armor, average build, nothing about him really stood out.
He offered the flask. “You’re bleeding a lot… you should heal yourself."
I glanced down. Blood ran down his arm, it wasn’t too painful.
“…Thanks for the water.”
I took the flask, poured water as I cleaned the cut. It stung a lot more than I expected.
“Good call on the weak spot,” the man said casually. “Most people panic when they see something that big. You’re… well you’re quite smart.”
“It’s fine, no need to say anything,” I replied.
“... alright,” he agreed. “I’ll leave you alone.”
He leaned against a broken stall, watching the others. “That thing would’ve wiped a full party if… well better not to think much of it.”
I capped the flask and handed it back. “Thanks for this.”
He said. “No problem.”
That made me pause.
“Why would you help me out? You better get going the sound will attract a lot of players”
“It's fine,” he said lightly. “I’ll figure it all out when the time comes.”
He smiled. It was not a wide or friendly smile.
Something about that unsettled me.
Most players smiled like it was… protecting them. Like if they looked confident enough, they would stop thinking about everything.
His smile didn’t do that.
“Name’s… no” He stopped himself, then chuckled. “Actually, never mind. Names don’t stick long here.”
“…Yeah.”
We stood there in silence for a bit.
Then he spoke again.
“You ever notice how quiet it gets after a kill like that?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Everyone’s relieved,” he said. “But nobody’s really happy.”
I didn’t answer.
He straightened, stretching his back. “You should get some rest now. In your interest to go and assign your newly acquired stats. You’ll need them.”
“I know.”
“But you won’t yet,” he added, glancing at me. “Because it feels wrong to decide who you become, when you’re still stuck.”
My fingers tightened slightly.
He laughed softly. “Relax man. It’s just a guess.”
The group of players began moving again, forming up, going deeper into the ruins. Time passed quickly.
The man went off to help someone else who was limping, offering a shoulder without being asked.
I watched him go.
Something about the serpent’s death stayed with me.
Not really the fight.
Not the fear either.
But rather the fact that it ended.
That everything, no matter how overwhelming, eventually fell silent.
Somewhere deep in the ruins, stone shifted.
And for the first time since entering Stage 2, I wondered…
When it was my turn…
What kind of quiet would I leave behind?
End of Chapter 5.
